by david allan van nostrand | Oct 25, 2021 | Human Behavior, Items in the News
In the film Seabiscuit, the trainer tried to cure the horse’s nervousness by putting a goat in the stall with him to keep him relaxed. Seabiscuit grabbed the goat by the neck and threw it out of the stall. The trainer tried again with a horse named Pumpkin and a...
by david allan van nostrand | Sep 20, 2021 | Human Behavior, Items in the News, Surveys
Social scientists often get inspiration from day to day occurrences. They notice something, realize they’ve it seen before, and want to know more about it. So they do research, sometimes observational, sometimes surveys, and now and then both. Back in the 1970s, two...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 30, 2021 | Human Behavior, Items in the News, Psychology
Lying and the ability to detect lies are related skills. Knowing when someone is lying comes in very handy in poker games when an opponent is trying to steal the pot by bluffing. Did you know good bluffers are better than lousy bluffers at detecting when someone is...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 16, 2021 | Human Behavior, Items in the News, Using Information
People who like to avoid shocking discoveries, who prefer to believe that society is just what they were taught in Sunday School, who like the safety of the catchphrases of what Alfred Schütz has called the “world taken-for-granted,” should stay away from sociology....
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 2, 2021 | Conformity, Human Behavior, Psychology
Monkey see, monkey do is an American English idiom that says children learn by imitating what they see others do. Some etymologists trace the origin to an old African folk tale about a traveling hat salesman who took a nap under a tree. While he was sleeping, his...
by david allan van nostrand | Jul 19, 2021 | Human Behavior, Unintended Consequences
A woman named Liza asks a man named Henry to fetch a pail of water. Henry says he cannot because there’s a hole in the bucket. Liza, a practical woman, tells Henry to fix the hole. Henry asks what he is supposed to fix the hole with. Please click on the link here to...
