22 March, 2007

Now that Paul and I have finished our work with the Student Skills Competition, I’ve recovered (mostly) from my cold, and the conversation I’d been apprehensive about this morning is over with, a lot of the stress I was experiencing earlier in the week

has become managable again. There’s still plenty on, but it’s all looking a bit more pleasant from here on.

I just wanted to say a big thank you to everybody who put up with me while I was being unpleasant, and a particular thank you to Ele, who picked exactly the right moment to give me a hug and a Kinder Surprise Egg, the toy from which I’ve just now got around to building (busy? me? never…)

In order that I don’t just fill Abnib with cliché crap about the various ups and downs of my life, here’s a fun link: Warbears is a wonderful Flash puzzle/memory game that distracted me for a long time while I worked out how to finish even the first mission. Have a play.

Scott Adams has just written an article proposing an experiment that I’d like to try. Research has shown that people are significantly more likely to believe something that conflicted with their previous beliefs if they write about it: in the experiments that lead to this discovery, volunteers were asked to write about a viewpoint other than their own on a given issue, and it was observed that within a few months there was a reasonable likelyhood that they had changed their beliefs to those they justified in writing. It turns out that making people read about a point of view is not nearly so effective at persuading them to adopt it as making them write an argument for it does.

This experiment involves standing around somewhere with a clipboard and offering a token reward (a quid, or a chocolate bar, or something) in exchange for participating in a study into handwriting when writing lies (this isn’t actually what we’re doing, but hey…). Participants are asked to write a couple of sentences about how attractive the experimenter is, and, if they’re willing to be contacted about "further research," to leave their e-mail address or phone number (on an appropriately laid-out form).

Some time later, the experimenter will have a list of contact details for people, many of whom will find the experimenter more attractive than they did when they first met. It’s an instant "little black book."

Day: 22 March 2007

De-Stressing

An Experiment I Want To Try