Tag: Unintended Consequences

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More proof that cats are out to destroy us.

Exposure to cats in childhood increases the chance of suffering from serious mental health problems like schizophrenia…The parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which is thought to be the cause, is carried in the intestines of cats.

This Childhood Pet Increases Risk of Serious Mental Illness

By Jeremy Dean at PsyBlog

Can't have a post like this without the Louis Wain cats.
Can’t have a post like this without the Louis Wain cats.

Read more:

Is childhood cat ownership a risk factor for schizophrenia later in life?
Estimating the population attributable fraction for schizophrenia when Toxoplasma gondii is assumed absent in human populations

 

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THE MUSUBI MURDER August 2015 Amazon / B&N /Powell’s /Audible / iTunes

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“Stop bragging. It annoys people.” –Science

You Call It “Self-Exuberance”; I Call It “Bragging”

[P]eople overestimate the extent to which recipients of their self-promotion will feel proud of and happy for them, and underestimate the extent to which recipients will feel annoyed…Because people tend to promote themselves excessively when trying to make a favorable impression on others, such efforts often backfire, causing targets of self-promotion to view self-promoters as less likeable and as braggarts

More at PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Asking about the other person, showing genuine interest, requesting advice, and other tips for staying out of “Braggart’s Jail” HERE

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THE MUSUBI MURDER August 2015 Amazon / B&N /Powell’s /Audible / iTunes

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How Lobster Got Fancy – one of the most remarkable rebrandings in product history

“Lobster shells about a house are looked upon as signs of poverty and degradation,” wrote John J. Rowan in 1876. Lobster was an unfamiliar, vaguely disgusting bottom feeding ocean dweller that sort of did (and does) resemble an insect, its distant relative. The very word comes from the Old English loppe, which means spider. People did eat lobster, certainly, but not happily and not, usually, openly. Through the 1940s, for instance, American customers could buy lobster meat in cans (like spam or tuna), and it was a fairly low-priced can at that. In the 19th century, when consumers could buy Boston baked beans for 53 cents a pound, canned lobster sold for just 11 cents a pound. People fed lobster to their cats.

How Lobster Got Fancy – Pacific Standard.

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THE MUSUBI MURDER August 2015 Amazon / B&N /Powell’s /Audible / iTunes

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I’m over on Higher Education’s Premier Online Publication ™ today, blogging about online education.

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Disclaimer: I realize that in a sparsely-populated area, online education can be the only option a student has. I also realize that some of my fellow Miserians teach online, and are putting a great deal of effort into making the online experience as valuable as possible for their students. Any ire and snark are properly directed toward those administrators, trustees, and anecdote-besotted pundits who seem convinced that online education is either a magical money multiplier, or simply a trend not to be missed out on. 

Inside Higher Ed reports a study out of California that compared students enrolled in online classes and their face to face equivalents.

The researchers found online students lagging behind face-to-face students in three critical areas:

  • Completing courses (regardless of grade).
  • Completing courses with passing grades.
  • Completing courses with grades of A or B.

Read the rest over at College Misery, Higher Education’s Premier Online Publication ™>>

Frankie Bow’s first novel, THE MUSUBI MURDER , is available at Audible.com, Amazon.com, and iTunes.

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COLLEGE MISERY: Today’s Administrative Vocabulary Word: Ethical Fading

“A senior administrator,” Mr. Harris says, “does not wake up in the morning and say, Today I am going to do something that lands me on the front page of the Chicago Tribune for the wrong reasons.” Instead, he says, what comes into play is a phenomenon known as “ethical fading,” in which the culture or structure of an organization causes those within it to lose sight of ethical considerations.

Oops, looks like I accidentally sent my moral sensibility through the dryer.

COLLEGE MISERY: Today’s Administrative Vocabulary Word: Ethical Fading.

Frankie Bow’s first novel, THE MUSUBI MURDER , is available at Audible.com, Amazon.com, and iTunes.

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People prefer a healthy-looking leader to an intelligent-looking one.

“Health was an influential cue across all scenarios, while intelligence only had an effect in half of the presented scenarios. “

Well, at least intelligence wasn’t a negative predictor (The study was done in the Netherlands; I wonder how the same experiment might turn out in the US).

And yes, apparently there is a way to manipulate “intelligent-looking.”

“[H]igh and low apparent intelligence prototypes were created as described in Moore et al. (2011). Briefly, these prototypes were created by regressing ratings of attractiveness, masculinity, health, and perceived age against ratings of perceived intelligence. The faces with the largest positive and negative residuals (i.e., those who were rated as looking much more or less intelligent than predicted by their age, attractiveness, masculinity, and health) were “averaged” using Psychomorph software to create composite high and low perceived intelligence faces…”

Faces manipulated for apparent intelligence and health

Also, if you can figure out a way to make yourself look taller, that helps too.

Frontiers | A face for all seasons: Searching for context-specific leadership traits and discovering a general preference for perceived health | Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

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