Interrelativity

Category: Psychology

  • The Commoditization of Twitter Followers

    I have a love/hate relationship with Twitter. I see – and have increasingly experienced – many benefits to its use, especially with respect to its propensity to foster meaningful new connections with consequential strangers and acquaintances. However, I am becoming increasingly cynical about some of the practices that are evolving, particularly with respect to the…

  • The Dark Side of Digital Backchannels in Shared Physical Spaces

    Recently, I've been disturbed to read about some significant frontchannel disturbances arising through the use of Twitter backchannels to heckle speakers at conferences. Having finished off my last blog with an example of the beneficial ways that Twitter helps us connect with consequential strangers, I want to revisit some issues that initially arose [for me]…

  • Positivity, Praise, Practice and Perseverance

    I was recently given an unsolicited opportunity to practice what I've preached here on my blog, about being positive (or filling buckets, as I'd put it) in the context of my family. My son came home with a mid-term report card that wasn't all As, and I immediately focused on finding the causes for the…

  • Revenge of the Community Organizers

    One of the low points of the recent U.S. presidential campaign for me – and there were many – was Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's contemptuous dismissal of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's earlier career chapter as a community organizer during her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention: I guess a small-town mayor…

  • Satirization or Assassination?

    The New Yorker published its July 21 edition this week, with a cartoon on the cover depicting U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, in a way that reflects some of the worst fears of what I suspect is a nontrivial percentage of the electorate. On the cover, shown on the…

  • Snoop: An Investigation into Possessions, Perceptions, Projections and Personalities

    Sam Gosling‘s new book – Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You – blends an engaging and accessible overview of some of the key concepts and research findings in personality psychology and environmental psychology with what amounts to a collection of short detective stories. Snoopology, the art and science of determining “which of your tastes…

  • Do YouJustGetMe? Do I Even Get Myself?

    David Evans presented a paper at the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM 2008) this week on the science of interpersonal perception, or more specifically: how well people are able to understand (or “get”) others based on others’ online profiles, and what elements of those profiles are most important to that understanding. The…

  • The Paradox of Choice: Decisions, Happiness and Appreciation

    In addition to seeding my last post – on Dark Nights of the Soul – by sending me a link to an evocative image, Yogi also sent me a link to a 20-minute video of Barry Schwartz giving a presentation on The Paradox of Choice a few years ago at a TED conference. The presentation…

  • Re-rethinking Recommendation Engines: Psychology and the Influence of False Negatives

    Alex Iskold posted an interesting article on Rethinking Recommendation Engines on ReadWriteWeb yesterday. I like (and recommend) his crisp and clear delineation of different types or sources of recommendations – personalized (based on your past behavior), social (based on past behavior of others who are similar to you) and item-based (based on the recommendable items…

  • Music and Personality: Reflective and Complex

    As part of my ongoing personal and professional re-engagement with music (since the initiation of my instigation at MyStrands), and renewed exploration of how tastes in music and other media can offer new opportunities for engagement marketing, I was reading up on some of the work by Peter Jason Rentfrow and Sam Gosling on music…