by david allan van nostrand | Jul 3, 2023 | Case Study, Human Behavior, The world around us, Using Information
In 2016, I converted the more than 1,000 slides I had built for my classroom lectures at the University of the West Indies into articles that I posted on a new site, LetsTakeACloserLook.com. The subject of most of those early articles was an amalgam of what I call the...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 26, 2023 | Human Behavior, Psychology, Shaky Science
Personality tests are designed to reveal what’s going on in our subconscious minds, the deep-down place where our emotions and inner conflicts reside. Structured surveys have a list of anywhere from 10 to 600 questions and test takers answer each by choosing...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 19, 2023 | Human Behavior, The world around us
New Yorker writer Maria Konnikova tells us how in 1923, neurologist Sir Francis Walshe noticed some interesting things involving yawns and motor reflexes. They led him to conclude that yawning was an act outside our conscious control, deep down where our lizard brains...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 5, 2023 | Case Study, Human Behavior, Items in the News, Unintended Consequences
Bud Light put two marketing executives on leave after someone thought it was a good idea to appeal to a transgender crowd that makes up less than one percent of the population. That promotional campaign backfired with unintended consequences, cutting into sales (-25%)...
by david allan van nostrand | May 15, 2023 | Americana, Anthropology, Case Study, Human Behavior
After living among them for many years, University of Michigan anthropologist Horace Miner wrote about the exotic habits and magical rituals of a tribe called the Nacirema. His ethnography “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” was first published in 1956 and was such a...
by david allan van nostrand | May 8, 2023 | Anthropology, Human Behavior, The world around us
Beginning in the 15th century and for the next 200 years, European explorers and traders roamed the world in search of peoples to conquer and resources to wrongfully take by force and/or guile. In doing so, the Westerners came into contact with people who looked,...
