The Dark Side of the Mobile Phone

Posted on 2012/02/27 by Jason Hensel

For every good aspect of mobile phones, there’s a dark side attributed to them. Most prominently, it’s been the debate about if they’re contributing to brain cancer. There’s been no decision on that one yet. However, there are two new studies about other dark sides to mobile phone use that you may find interesting.

The first is a study from researchers at University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business that shows mobile phones make users less socially minded.

The researchers found that after a short period of cellphone use the subjects were less inclined to volunteer for a community service activity when asked, compared to the control-group counterparts. The cell phone users were also less persistent in solving word problems–even though they knew their answers would translate to a monetary donation to charity.

College students, men and women in their early 20s, took part in the study. The researchers say, though, that they expect similar findings in people in other age groups due to the ubiquitous nature of mobile phones.

The authors cited previous research in explaining a root cause of their findings: “The cellphone directly evokes feelings of connectivity to others, thereby fulfilling the basic human need to belong.” This results in reducing one’s desire to connect with others or to engage in empathic and prosocial behavior.

In a second study, it appears that mobile phones also contribute negatively on users’ linguistic abilities. According to research from the University of Calgary, people who text more are less accepting of new words.

The study, conducted by Joan Lee for her master’s thesis in linguistics, revealed … those who read more traditional print media such as books, magazines, and newspapers were more accepting of the same words.

Lee says that we assume that text messaging encourages unconstrained language. However, this is not true.

“The people who accepted more words did so because they were better able to interpret the meaning of the word, or tolerate the word, even if they didn’t recognize the word. Students who reported texting more rejected more words instead of acknowledging them as possible words.”

People who read traditional print media expose themselves to variety and creativity in language, Lee says. These traits aren’t normally found in colloquial text messaging among young people.

“In contrast, texting is associated with rigid linguistic constraints which caused students to reject many of the words in the study,” says Lee. “This was surprising because there are many unusual spellings or ‘textisms’ such as ‘LOL’ in text messaging language.”

Lee suggests that frequency plays a large part in the acceptance of words by people who text a lot.

“Textisms represent real words which are commonly known among people who text,” she says. “Many of the words presented in the study are not commonly known and were not acceptable to the participants in the study who texted more or read less traditional print media.”

It’s beginning to look like if people really want to be anti-social and dumb, they should choose to use their mobile phones more.

(Photo via Flickr: Anders Adermark / Creative Commons)

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Review: Imagine

Posted on 2012/01/02 by Jason Hensel

There was much talk about innovation and creativity in 2011. In fact, I heard or saw the word innovation so much that its mention would bring on waves of hostility in me. Everyone talked about it, making it not, well, very innovative.

Most writers were telling you what to do to be innovative or creative. Rarely did you read why it happens. It’s as most people wanted to jump to instruction without knowing reason.

That’s where Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer comes in. As with his previous book, How We Decide, Lehrer explores the basis of a brain function that everyone wants to know about. Yes, he does offer creativity advice, but he bases it in reason. You have to know the hows and whys before you can know the whats.

Lehrer leads readers through many examples of innovation and creativity, touching on everything from how Bob Dylan found his writing muse to how no-wrong-answers brainstorming doesn’t work in the long run to the benefits of living in a city. And he keeps your interest, because he’s a great storyteller who asserts authority. He doesn’t just report research; he guides with pristine narrative.

“The Power of Q” chapter is one of the more interesting sections. It’s about socialist Brian Uzzi and his study of Broadway musicals, about why some are successful and some are not. Uzzi found that successful productions needed a certain amount of people who have known each other for a long time and a certain amount who are new to the operation. In other words, a sweet spot of social intimacy is needed.

The reason I found this chapter interesting is because around the same time I was reading it, the Dallas Mavericks were restructuring their championship team, losing several players that helped them win it all last season. I’ve always been one that feels you don’t break up the house, you keep teams together for the long-term in order to ensure yearly success. After reading this chapter, though, I’m thinking differently about teams (sports or work). Perhaps it is best that the Mavericks shook things up, bringing in some new faces to play with a few of the old-timers. (However, maybe it’s not working; the Mavericks are 1-4 at the time of this review.)

What Lehrer suggests–and something he consistently suggests in his writings–is that you should know yourself best. Find what works for you, because for every piece of research saying one thing, there will be another saying the opposite. Maybe you work better getting away from a problem. Or maybe you work better with a group. However you work best, identify that and edge toward it. That is where you’ll find your creativity. For you see, science is primarily about paying attention, and until you pay attention to yourself first, nothing will change. Lehrer’s latest book is a great tool toward this needed self-consciousness in society.

(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will publish Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer in March 2012.)

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Hit That Perfect Beat

Posted on 2011/12/202011/12/20 by Jason Hensel

A former band mate of mine once told me he would be happy to have a one-hit wonder. I thought he was crazy. I wanted a long life full of hits (and fame and groupies and all that comes with the rock-n-roll lifestyle). One-hit wonders seemed so fleeting and defining.

Besides, a musician doesn’t set out to write one hit song and then retire for life. If that happened, hit songs would be easy to craft and more people would do it.

But stop the record. A new study has found what it takes for a song to be a hit. University of Bristol researchers claim that predictions can be made using machine learning algorithms.

The team looked at the official U.K. top 40 singles chart over the past 50 years. Their aim was to distinguish the most popular (peak position top five) songs from less popular singles (peak position 30 to 40).

The researchers used musical features such as, tempo, time signature, song duration and loudness. They also computed more detailed summaries of the songs such as harmonic simplicity, how simple the chord sequence is, and non-harmonicity, how ‘noisy’ the song is.

A ‘hit potential equation’ that scores a song according to its audio features was devised. The equation works by looking at all the U.K. hits for a certain time and measuring their audio features. From this the researchers had a list of weights, telling then how important each of the 23 features was and allowing them to compute a score for a song.

The researchers classified songs as hits or not-hits based on their scores. The team had a 60 percent accuracy rate and noticed some interesting trends.

Before the 1980s, the danceability of a song was not very relevant to its hit potential. From then on, danceable songs were more likely to become a hit. Also the average danceability of all songs on the charts suddenly increased in the late 1970s.
In the 1980s, slower musical styles (tempo 70-89 beats per minute), such as ballads, were more likely to become a hit.
The prediction accuracy of the researchers’ hit potential equation varies over time. It was particularly difficult to predict hits around 1980. The equation performed best in the first half of the 1990s and from the year 2000. This suggests that the late 1970s and early 1980s were particularly creative and innovative periods of pop music.
Up until the early 1990s , hits were typically harmonically simpler than other songs of the era. On the other hand, from the 1990s onward hits more commonly have simpler, binary, rhythms such as 4/4 time.
On average, all songs on the chart are becoming louder. Additionally, the hits are relatively louder than the songs that dangle at the bottom of the charts, reflected by a strong weight for the loudness feature.

You can read more about the research at ScoreaAHit.

My favorite trend is the part about the late 1970s and early 1980s as periods of more creative and innovative music. I definitely agree with that.

Now, if you’ll pardon me, I have a hit song to write. The secret formula has been found.

(Photo via Flickr: Paul Townsend / Creative Commons)

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Sweet Tooth Equals a Sweet Deal

Posted on 2011/10/182011/10/19 by Jason Hensel

Your sweet tooth is more than a preference for desserts. It’s also an indicator of your personality and behavior, according to a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Let’s read the study’s abstract together:

It is striking that prosocial people are considered “sweet” (e.g., “she’s a sweetie”) because they are unlikely to differentially taste this way. These metaphors aid communication, but theories of conceptual metaphor and embodiment led us to hypothesize that they can be used to derive novel insights about personality processes. Five studies converged on this idea. Study 1 revealed that people believed strangers who liked sweet foods (e.g., candy) were also higher in agreeableness. Studies 2 and 3 showed that individual differences in the preference for sweet foods predicted prosocial personalities, prosocial intentions, and prosocial behaviors. Studies 4 and 5 used experimental designs and showed that momentarily savoring a sweet food (vs. a nonsweet food or no food) increased participants’ self-reports of agreeableness and helping behavior. The results reveal that an embodied metaphor approach provides a complementary but unique perspective to traditional trait views of personality.

The part about increased agreeableness through sweets fascinates me. Do this mean you should bring sweets with you before every meeting? What does it say about someone who doesn’t like sweets? Does a preference for chocolate over hard candy indicate a different type of sweet and agreeable personality? So many questions.

(Photo credit via Flickr: Keith Macke / Creative Commons)

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Practice May Not Be Perfect

Posted on 2011/10/17 by Jason Hensel

One of my goals this year is to write more so that I can become a better writer. If I’m not writing on 750words.com, then I’m doing my best to write at least 20 minutes a day.

Why do I do this? Well, I love writing; however, I also know that practice makes perfect. Or so I thought.

Now comes along Zach Hambrick from the University of Michigan. He says that working memory capacity may be what ultimately makes a person great.

“While the specialized knowledge that accumulates through practice is the most important ingredient to reach a very high level of skill, it’s not always sufficient,” said Hambrick, associate professor of psychology. “Working memory capacity can still predict performance in complex domains such as music, chess, science and maybe even in sports that have a substantial mental component such as golf.”

Hambrick says that when someone such as Malcolm Gladwell writes that practice is what separates those who are good and great, he’s wrong.

“The evidence is quite clear: A high level of intellectual ability puts a person at a measurable advantage–and the higher the better.”

However, it’s still not known if a person can improve his general intelligence, because a lot of it based in genetics and environments.

“We hold out hope that cognitive training of some sort may produce these benefits,” Hambrick said. “But we have yet to find the magic bullet.”

Until then, I’ll keep practicing.

Which do you find makes you greater in your chosen pursuit: intelligence or practice?

(Photo credit via Flicker: Alastair McDermott / Creative Commons)

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Sleep Could Improve Your Memory

Posted on 2011/10/032011/10/02 by Jason Hensel

I’m a night owl. I’m one of those people who works better at night and feels like there is a lot to do while awake. Sleep can come later. And studies have shown that night owls have higher intelligence than those who wake up early. Yep, stay up late and become smarter. I knew I was doing something right.

Not so fast, opposing scientists say. In fact, sleep helps you learn and remember.

“We speculate that we may be investigating a separate form of memory, distinct from traditional memory systems,” said Kimberly Fenn, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. “There is substantial evidence that during sleep, your brain is processing information without your awareness and this ability may contribute to memory in a waking state.”

In a study appearing in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, findings suggest people derive vastly different effects from “sleep memory,” with some memories improving dramatically and others not at all. This ability is a new, previously undefined form of memory.

“You and I could go to bed at the same time and get the same amount of sleep,” Fenn said. “But while your memory may increase substantially, there may be no change in mine.”

She added that most people in the study showed improvement.

Fenn says she believes this potential separate memory ability is not being captured by traditional intelligence tests and aptitude tests such as the SAT and ACT.

“This is the first step to investigate whether or not this potential new memory construct is related to outcomes such as classroom learning,” she said.

It also reinforces the need for a good night’s sleep.

“Simply improving your sleep could potentially improve your performance in the classroom,” Fenn said.

My memory is not what it used to be, and I’ve chalked that up to getting older. Maybe, though, it’s my lack of sleep. Maybe I’m trading memory for intelligence, and I’m not sure that’s an exchange I want to make. Would you?

(Some story materials provided by the University of Michigan.)

(Photo credit: Austin King / Creative Commons)

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Embarrassed People are More Trustworthy

Posted on 2011/09/30 by Jason Hensel

You may be embarrassed by being embarrassed, but that’s not a bad thing. In fact, it makes you more trustworthy.

“Embarrassment is one emotional signature of a person to whom you can entrust valuable resources,” said University of California Berkeley social psychologist Robb Willer, a coauthor of a study published in this month’s online issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. “It’s part of the social glue that fosters trust and cooperation in everyday life.”

The researchers conducted a few experiments to get to their findings.

In the first experiment, they videotaped 60 college students recounting embarrassing moments such as public flatulence or making incorrect assumptions based on appearances. Typical sources of embarrassment included mistaking an overweight woman for being pregnant or a disheveled person for being a panhandler. Research assistants coded each video testimonial based on the level of embarrassment the subjects showed.

The college students also participated in the “Dictator Game,” which economics researchers use to measure altruism. For example, each was given 10 raffle tickets and asked to keep a share of the tickets and give the remainder to a partner. Results showed that those who showed greater levels of embarrassment tended to give away more of their raffle tickets, indicating greater generosity.

Researchers also surveyed 38 Americans whom they recruited through Craigslist. They asked survey participants how often they feel embarrassed. They were also gauged for their general cooperativeness and generosity through such exercises as the aforementioned dictator game.

In another experiment, participants watched a trained actor being told he received a perfect score on a test. The actor responded with either embarrassment or pride. They then played games with the actor that measured their trust in him based on whether he had shown pride or embarrassment.

The results consistently showed that embarrassment signals people’s tendency to be pro-social.

“You want to affiliate with them more,” said Matthew Feinberg, a doctoral student in psychology at UC Berkeley and lead author of the paper. “You feel comfortable trusting them. Moderate levels of embarrassment are signs of virtue. Our data suggests embarrassment is a good thing, not something you should fight.”

How easily do you get embarrassed?

(Story materials provided by the University of California Berkeley.)
(Photo credit: Sarah Rebecca / Creative Commons)

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