This photo taken in a medical office waiting room provides a clear example of how the problem of obesity in North America has influenced institutional furniture purchases.
Obesity and Furniture Design
Reply
The persuasive power of words
A short video found here illustrates the power of words to influence the behavior of others, in this case, to create empathy and generosity.
Linear Perspective
Here is a nice example of linear perspective in which more distant objects appear to converge toward a single point. It was taken in the hallway of a cruise ship.
Conservation
One of the authors and his wife were in a small cafe in Italy, where they ordered two glasses of wine. The owner did not have two identical glasses, so he carefully adjusted his pour to compensate for the differing shapes. The photo shows the result and nicely illustrates an adult’s ability to display conservation.
Foot-In-The-Door Scams
Here are examples of how the foot-in-the-door influence strategy is used by creative, self-serving scammers. The first one is based on Sue Frantz’s experiences in Paris a few years ago and can be found in longer form here.
“In the petition scam, the thief approaches a likely mark with a clipboard in hand and asks, “Do you speak English?” When the mark says, “Yes,” the thief asks something like, “Would you sign this petition to support people who are deaf and mute?” When the mark says they are indeed willing, the thief hands over the clipboard and a pen. After the mark signs, the thief asks for a donation to support the cause. The money “donated” does not go to a cause other than the thief’s own.”
Here is another version, also from Paris, this time experienced by one of the authors of the Examples compendium:
Arriving at the top of Montmartre, he was approached by two women who purported to be deaf and mute. One of them pushed a clipboard into his hands and pointed to a page of English text stating that they were collecting money to help deaf people. Being a generous sort, he handed over five Euros, at which point the other woman, looking annoyed, lifted the clipboard page to reveal a table that informed him that the “minimum” donation is 10 Euros. Embarrassed at having failed to see this foot-in-the-door scam coming, he took back the five Euro note as if to exchange it for a ten, then informed the women in rather obscene French idiom that he was on to their game. They must have miraculously recovered their hearing at that point because they reacted with shock and hurried off to find a new mark.
Why You Should Not Pee in the Shower.
Blogger Mark Frauenfelder recently provided the following example of how classical conditioning might create problems for people who urinate while showering:
“Pelvic floor therapist Dr. Alicia Jeffrey-Thomas, who has a doctorate in physical therapy, says peeing in the shower is a bad idea, even though a recent survey revealed that 76% percent of people like to do it.
“Your bladder relies on signals it gets both from the stretch of the bladder walls as it fills, as well as signals from the brain which let it know when to contract to urinate,” she told Buzzfeed. “We want to avoid training our bladder to associate certain signals with the urge to pee. In this case, peeing in the shower associates the sound of running water with urination or with submersion in water. This can often transition into being triggered by other sounds of running water (like when you’re running the faucet to wash your hands or the dishes) or when you’re in bodies of water.”
Lie Detection Machines
Lie detectors are not infallible, but people who believe they are infallible may be more likely than non-believers to confess to their crimes. In one small town police station which had no polygraph, a kitchen colander was placed on a burglary suspect’s head and attached by wires to a copy machine on which there was a sheet of paper that read “He’s lying!” When he denied committing the burglary, an officer pressed the “copy button,” and when the “He’s lying!” paper emerged, the suspect confessed.
[Source: Shepherd, C., Kohut, J. J., & Sweet, R. (1989). News of the weird. New York: New American Library.]
Cognitive Processes in Medical Diagnoses
The following story exemplifies the overall value of thinking and provides a nice introduction to its role in problem solving, and decision making:
Dr. Joyce Wallace, a New York City physician, was having trouble figuring out what was the matter with a 43-year-old patient, “Laura McBride.” Laura reported pain in her abdomen, aching muscles, irritability, occasional dizzy spells, and fatigue. The doctor’s first hypothesis was iron-deficiency anemia, a condition in which there is not enough oxygen-carrying hemoglobin in the blood. There was some evidence to support this idea. A physical examination revealed that Laura’s spleen was a bit enlarged, and blood tests showed low hemoglobin and high production of red blood cells, suggesting that her body was attempting to compensate for the loss of hemoglobin. However, other tests revealed normal iron levels. Perhaps she was losing blood through internal bleeding, but other tests ruled that out. Had Laura been vomiting blood? She said no. Blood in the urine? No. Abnormally heavy menstrual flow? No. As Dr. Wallace puzzled over the problem, Laura’s condition worsened. She reported more intense pain, cramps, shortness of breath, and loss of energy. Her blood was becoming less and less capable of sustaining her, but if it was not being lost, what was happening to it? Finally, the doctor looked at a smear of Laura’s blood on a microscope slide. What she saw indicated that a poison was destroying Laura’s red blood cells. What could it be? Laura spent most of her time at home, and her teenage daughters, who lived with her, were perfectly healthy. Dr. Wallace asked herself, “What does Laura do that the girls do not?” She repairs and restores paintings. Paint. Lead! She might be suffering from lead poisoning! When the next blood test showed a lead level seven times higher than normal, Dr. Wallace had found the answer at last.
To solve this medical problem, Dr. Wallace relied on her ability to think and, more specifically, to weigh the evidence for and against various hypotheses to reach decisions about what tests to order and how to interpret their results.
[Source: Adapted from Bernstein, D.A. (2019). Essentials of Psychology (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. p. 238.]
Classical Conditioning in the Classroom
A professor who used a microphone while teaching a large class had the unfortunate habit of occasionally walking in front of the amplifier’s speaker, which resulted was a loud screeching sound (US). The first time this happened, the students were startled (UR), and over time, whenever the professor even approached the speaker, many of them had a startle reaction (CR).
Human Olfaction is Underappreciated
Although commonly regarded as a less important sense, human olfaction has been underestimated. Humans can detect some odors better than other animals can, have relatively large olfactory bulbs (which seems to be important in olfactory ability) and the number of olfactory neurons does not vary as much across species as is the case with other physical features. Figures associated with these findings can be found in this article:
McGann, J. P. (2017). Poor human olfaction is a 19th-century myth. Science, 356(6338),
available here
