From the New Scientist newsletter: http://tinyurl.com/ot8h8
Researchers at the University of Twente in the Netherlands are developing an 'anti smoking chatbot' - a female virtual coach that will help smokers trying to quit by answering their questions and 'listening' to them with appropriate facial expressions and voice tones. They plan to develop more 'virtual coaches' for other user groups.
The response of Londoners on the day of the 7/7 bomb attacks was notable for the lack of panic - contrary to what we are often led to expect, everyone stayed calm.
An interesting article by Simon Wessely, of the King’s Centre for Military Health Research, in the Journal of Mental Health argues that:
the role of information is important to consider as it may have effects not just on decisions about travel arrangements but also on psychological and social responses to a <terrorist> attack. The role of our leaders is the key to reducing damage and this depends not just on their reactions now but on a systematic programme of research into possible consequences of <terrorist attack> – not a piecemeal response following an attack.
He makes some points that are worth drawing attention to:
I feel this article would also be relevant to companies that have to deal with large-scale health and safety incidents, or even less life-threatening 'shocks' like redundancies or plant closures.
When I read this piece I thought he was commenting on the London bombings - in fact it was published in the February 2005 edition of the journal!
The article is in PDF form - download it here.
Psychologists at Washington University report that the memory function of people in their mid-60s and up is easily swayed by the power of suggestion, making them more vulnerable to memory-related scams. A full report appears in the May issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology (JEP): General, which is published by the American Psychological Association.
For example, an unscrupulous contractor can tell an older customer, “I told you it would cost [a much higher price than was originally quoted] and you agreed to pay!” Without a written estimate, the customer is likely to “remember” it that way, too, and be overcharged. Another scam, “you forgot to pay me,” also underscores the need for written receipts. Some con artists even run their own rudimentary memory tests on the elderly, checking to see if their memory is bad enough to make them good victims.
Get the full story here.
My own experience (of being on the receiving rather than the perpetrating end) suggests that you don't have to be that old to not always remember clearly what was said - just being preoccupied with something else and not giving something your full attention will do it.
What is consciousness? The best summary I've found of where we are up to in understanding this is an article by Susan Blackmore. Susan brings an extra dimension to her understanding - as well as being a psychologist, she is also practises Zen meditation (though she says "I am not a Buddhist", and has experimented with psychedelic drugs.
After discovering her fascinating site, I will definitely be reading her book The Meme Machine
One perspective she doesn't mention is Ken Wilber's Four Quadrants model, in which subjective experience is a different, yet linked, realm to the objective world studied by science. In this model, the sense of self is not reducible to the physical functions of the brain (as most researchers into consciousness in the neuroscience field believe) but they are linked. Makes sense to me.
Most of the information about Wilber's ideas on the web get very complicated and jargonised very quickly - why I'm not sure. The most accessible description of the basic model is here.
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