unconscious suggestion / derren brown

So Derren Brown comes across as a bit of a prick. That lottery thing - what was the point?

Some of his other stuff, though, is annoyingly impressive.

This is pretty good:
Subliminal Advertising
(embedding disabled)

Psych? Magic? I guess it'll be about 30 years til some secrets come out, if the former cameramen get desperate enough for cash to do some retrospective documentary or something.

In the meantime, this is a pretty good article on unconscious influences.(pdf)
[from The Psychologist - A research journal "in a form suitable for our wide-ranging non-specialist audience" (ie. pop psychology that's not bullshit)]

Just seen there's another one, with guys from Saatchi&Saatchi.
American Version

tender is the psych

F Scott Fitzgerald

Just finished The Great Gatsby.

Not read Tender is the Night, but like the fact that someone's done a bit of a psych-filtered analysis. And a bit of an insight into Fitzgerald.

From The Psychologist.

'scary' brain science

Sometimes I read psych/science stuff and it seems a bit weird or implausible, but I just assume that either I've forgotten to the point of incomprehension most of contents of my degree course already, or the field has really moved on in the last... 9 months.
Whilst the former is likely enough still true, it's at least slightly comforting that the ever-reliable Mind Hacks blog is around to confirm that often the case is just lazy/ill-informed journalism.

Dressing-down of Sunday Times article



(oh.... just realised I left a comment on the article, where I sound like a bit of a twat, and now I'm sharing the article link around..... (realised as in just connected these two things together... ok, well, whatever))

Equation of procrastination

ok, all the usual caveats about models, especially psychological ones, especially cognitive-psychological ones, but at the same time the beautiful thing of formalised representations of slightly abstract phenomena, which I think I'm in love with... this week: Temporal Motivation Theory

U=EV/ID

Desire to complete given task = (expectation of success * value of completion) / (immediacy of task * personal sensitivity to delay)

Telegraph article here, very slightly more in-depth take from Science Daily here... or, if you've really got something else you should totally be doing right now, presentation by Piers Steel (theory author) here (including suggestions for motivation control n' that).