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I felt strongly enough about this to post my first comment on Slashdot. Flame away at the noob.

Psychological Bulletin, a peer-reviewed and well-respected psychology journal, published a large meta-analysis of existing (published and unpublished) research on video games and aggression-related outcomes in 2010: Violent Video Game Effects on Aggression, Empathy, and Prosocial Behavior in Eastern and Western Countries: A Meta-Analytic Review (pdf). The authors analyze results from 136 studies (total sample size, 130,296) that used a variety of methodologies (laboratory/experimental, correlational, and longitudinal). They find (from the abstract): "The evidence strongly suggests that exposure to violent video games is a causal risk factor for increased aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, and aggressive affect and for decreased empathy and prosocial behavior."

The journal published with it a critique from a perennial naysayer on the video game violence - aggression hypothesis: Much Ado About Nothing: The Misestimation and Overinterpretation of Violent Video Game Effects in Eastern and Western Nations (pdf), as well as a response to the critique (pdf) and an additional comment (pdf).

I am happy to leave you all with this information--though the fact that it is social science rather than hard science means that many Slashdot readers will dismiss it reflexively--but I'd like to share a sentence from the abstract of the additional comment piece with the readers of Slashdot: "The results of meta-analyses are unlikely to change the critics’ view or the public’s perception that the issue is undecided because some studies have yielded null effects, because many people are concerned that the implications of the research threaten freedom of expression, and because many people have their identities or self-interests closely tied to violent video games." (emphasis mine)

My right to free speech includes updating my blog from the passenger seat.
But seriously why would anyone think it is OK to operate a nanny state?

Also there was a test almost 20 years ago about cellular phones and driving.
"Research has shown that use of cellular phones does not interfere significantly with the ability to control an automobile except among the elderly, where potentially dangerous lane excursions can occur."

But there are other studies, one shows hands-free doesn't help with the distraction part of the equation:
"The increased cognitive workload involved in holding a conversation, not the use of hands, causes the increased risk."

Is chatting with your passengers a distraction too? I think logically, yes. It's possibly worse than using a cellphone because you might be tempted to make eye contact with your passenger, which would be even more dangerous. (I think we have all done this)

I see two choices, we either accept the small but significant loss of life that comes with civilians driving cars, or ban all private car ownership and leave it to the professionals.

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/12/5/353 (2010) [pdf]

(Searching for a freely available version of this studies might pay off)

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/12/5/353 (2010) [pdf]

(Searching for a freely available version of this studies might pay off)

There are absolutely no gay marriages that can build a proper family.

Really? Reality is disagreeing with you.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/peds.2009-3153v1
http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/parenting.aspx

If you can read German or Spanish, here's a couple more
1
2

I can link some more if you like.

Tall people already receive higher salaries than short people. It's probably easier for them to get a job, too.

Clinical is a treatment oriented field, not a research oriented.

I am a professor of psychology (but not clinical psychology) at a research university. Parent poster does not know what s/he is talking about.

Again, this is completely wrong. Any APA-accredited program in clinical psychology will require you to study neuroscience, cognitive psychology, social psychology, etc. in addition to more practice-oriented training in assessment, treatment, etc.

Moreover, clinical scientists do basic research in pretty much every area of psychology. My department has clinical psychologists who do neuroimaging, endocrinology, electrophysiology, as well as all manner of behavioral methods, etc. as part of their basic research toolkits. They difference between them and the rest of us is that they are typically focused on understanding psychopathology, whereas (say) a non-clinical cognitive neuroscientist might be studying attention without necessarily working toward understanding its role in ADHD etc.

What complete bullshit. This is a fucking troll, and a bad one. If you were for real and paid any attention to the subject matter at hand, you'd have recognized APA's latest assessment of the demographics of the field from Monitor. And even a half assed troll would have noticed I said I was quoting APA. I knew what I was talking about, I knew where it came from, and if you have a problem with it that just proves you're so deficient in clue receptors that you can't possibly be real.

Sure, the arrangements you suggest are possible but by no means common. The arrangement of departments and programs are more different than similar, and vary at each place over time, because they're based on the people, not a predetermined structure. And when people come and go the arrangement changes more or less according to their contribution to the department's structure and functioning. And in case your dipstick still shows a quart low on your attention neurotransmitters you do realize I am talking about department structure and not program requirements imposed from outside, right? You see, I said that but I've said other things you completely failed to notice.

And don't try to give me that shit about they "study" all those fields. They get one 3 hour class only in most of them. That's not studying a field, that's familiarization. It's so they can recognize it as something they've seen and not just stare blankly and drool like some dizzy twit sitting around white knuckling a ten year tenure at some little 4 year paper mill with 7th year students.

You know why you're such a bad troll? Because you don't realize you are one. You probably think you're not. You're wrong.

You know, maybe I did miss out on seeing some of the possibilities of departmental and program structure because I didn't spend all my time in academia. For a while I did intra-opertive neural monitoring. Me and my programmable electrophys amps because a whole different set of eyes in the OR. The neurosurgeon relied on me tell him where and when to cut or not cut. But hey, I could have been a perfesser of psychology at a "research university". There's no such thing. There's places where you teach and places where you teach and do research, and they're all schools and there's virtually none of the former. "Research university" is a bumper sticker for your vita and ego so you can hear yourself sound like you're a step beyond your plain vanilla garden variety university, when the truth that even your podunk, backwoods, just crawled out from under the community college rock and managed to get two whole departments running, home grown outfit requires its people to do research too, just like a "research university". It may be Stroop cards and reaction times rather than dipole localization using 128 channels each of concurrent MEG and EEG, but it gets done and it gets printed. And if you ask someone from a "research university" exactly what criteria must be met, you'll get vague, mumbled weasel words as they try to wiggle away, thinking "aw shit, they're not supposed to ask, they're just supposed to be impressed."

Clinical is a treatment oriented field, not a research oriented.

I am a professor of psychology (but not clinical psychology) at a research university. Parent poster does not know what s/he is talking about.

"Clinical psychologist" covers a lot of ground, and there are many practitioners who use that title. But if you go to a Research I university for a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, you will be trained as a researcher. (You will also be trained in parallel to do psychotherapy, which is why it will probably take you 1-2 years longer than your classmates in other areas.)

Other fields develop the tools that the clinicians use to fix b0rken br@nes. For instance, ADD is attentional, which is a subfield of cognitive psychology. They do research in order to uncover the underlying processes. To treat it with drugs requires research in psychopharmacology. To measure it requires training in methodology and imaging technology such as electrophysiology. You can work in any of those fields and contribute some meaningful work for clinicians to use, and that's just one example from the pages of the DSM.

Again, this is completely wrong. Any APA-accredited program in clinical psychology will require you to study neuroscience, cognitive psychology, social psychology, etc. in addition to more practice-oriented training in assessment, treatment, etc.

Moreover, clinical scientists do basic research in pretty much every area of psychology. My department has clinical psychologists who do neuroimaging, endocrinology, electrophysiology, as well as all manner of behavioral methods, etc. as part of their basic research toolkits. They difference between them and the rest of us is that they are typically focused on understanding psychopathology, whereas (say) a non-clinical cognitive neuroscientist might be studying attention without necessarily working toward understanding its role in ADHD etc.

Fun fact: In 1909 Coca-Cola was sued in Federal Court under the Pure Food and Drug act. Not because of the cocaine that was still in it at that time but because of the caffeine. In the end the whole thing never went to trial, not because they showed that caffeine was safe, but because it was determined by a judge to not be an additive.

The problem with artificially good-tasting things isn't some sort of Spartan discipline thing, like you claim. Some people might say "The point of X is Y bad thing, so you should have enough self-control to avoid X, rather than reduce the amount of damage that Y causes", but the real issue is that artificially low-Y X-products mess up your body's perception of the relationship between X and Y.

See this article in Behavioral Neuroscience. The experimenters gave one group of rats glucose and another group saccharine. The rats who ate saccharine gained more weight. They suggest that eating foods which your body predicts have high calories, but that don't actually have high calories, messes up your regulation of energy and the storage of calories as fat. FTFAbstract:

These experiments were designed to test the hypothesis that experiences that reduce the validity of sweet taste as a predictor of the caloric or nutritive consequences of eating may contribute to deficits in the regulation of energy by reducing the ability of sweet-tasting foods that contain calories to evoke physiological responses that underlie tight regulation.

I also read somewhere (though I can't find the source) that eating things that taste high-calorie, but aren't, inhibits your natural association between sweetness and calorie content. So the next time you eat something with real sugar in it, your body is unable to recognize that this (unlike the Sweet 'N' Low you usually eat) will make you gain weight, and you eat more regular sugar than you would have if you always ate real sugar.

What a Bunch Of FUD....

If you're going to throw crap out there, you might want to trying providing links that back up your claims.

It was the same with airbags. Aside from unbelted passengers, airbags didn't improve safety. But Ralph Nader, knowing this, got up in front of Congress and lied in order to get airbags passed that would kill infants, while also working to prevent warning labels on them initially so that people wouldn't be scared of them. So we've had presidential candidates who worked very hard to pass regulations that killed babies by ejecting their heads out of the back of car windows while their bodies were still strapped into their car seats. Safety doesn't matter nearly as much as the appearance of safety. .

Study after Study after Study have shown quite the opposite. In fact, there have even been papers that conclude that the media have skewed their reporting on the subject to basically fall in line with what you were spouting about above.

The point of an airbag is to cushion and slow the upper torso and head from striking hard objects that cause rapid deceleration of the body and head in collisions (super high G forces) which leads to injury and death. While the initial airbags had their faults, and have caused deaths when used both properly and improperly, they have saved far more lives than they have claimed.

We have passed a law about the same. But there's so few Police on patrol the law just isn't being enforced. I still see plenty of drivers hand holding a mobile, despite the fact you can get a bluetooth headset for £8 in the UK.

The trouble with this is that using a hands free phone while driving is just as dangerous as using a normal phone. _All_ studies (not sponsored by headset manufacturors) have shown this, again and again. See here here here and most obviously here for a few examples. From that last : "Conclusions - When drivers use a mobile phone there is an increased likelihood of a crash resulting in injury. Using a hands-free phone is not any safer.". From Wikipedia : "Driving while using a handsfree cellular device is not safer than using a hand held cell phone, as concluded by case-crossover studies.[15][16] epidemiological,[1][2] simulation,[4] and meta-analysis[6][7]. The increased "cognitive workload" involved in holding a conversation, not the use of hands, causes the increased risk.[17][18][19] One notable exception to that conclusion is a study by headset manufacturer Plantronics.

I can't believe this is not common knowledge yet. The law in the UK differentiates between hands free and normal phoning for _no_ reason whatsoever. Many of these studies were released prior to the introduction of the law in the UK. The cynic in me wonders whether the differentiation is due to the fact that police use hands free, and radios all the time, and making them illegal would make them sad :(. Just to conclude, the people who are tutting at mobile users while talking on their hands free are _just_ as dangerous as those they are frowning upon.

We have passed a law about the same. But there's so few Police on patrol the law just isn't being enforced. I still see plenty of drivers hand holding a mobile, despite the fact you can get a bluetooth headset for £8 in the UK.

The trouble with this is that using a hands free phone while driving is just as dangerous as using a normal phone. _All_ studies (not sponsored by headset manufacturors) have shown this, again and again. See here here here and most obviously here for a few examples. From that last : "Conclusions - When drivers use a mobile phone there is an increased likelihood of a crash resulting in injury. Using a hands-free phone is not any safer.". From Wikipedia : "Driving while using a handsfree cellular device is not safer than using a hand held cell phone, as concluded by case-crossover studies.[15][16] epidemiological,[1][2] simulation,[4] and meta-analysis[6][7]. The increased "cognitive workload" involved in holding a conversation, not the use of hands, causes the increased risk.[17][18][19] One notable exception to that conclusion is a study by headset manufacturer Plantronics.

I can't believe this is not common knowledge yet. The law in the UK differentiates between hands free and normal phoning for _no_ reason whatsoever. Many of these studies were released prior to the introduction of the law in the UK. The cynic in me wonders whether the differentiation is due to the fact that police use hands free, and radios all the time, and making them illegal would make them sad :(. Just to conclude, the people who are tutting at mobile users while talking on their hands free are _just_ as dangerous as those they are frowning upon.

"The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

"People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it."

http://psycnet.apa.org/?fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121

ignorance is bliss?

"The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

"People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it."

http://psycnet.apa.org/?fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121

Look up "unskilled and unaware". It's an APA study that basically says that when you judge your own skills, you use your own skills as a benchmark, thus inflating your perception of what you are capable of. In other words, you don't know what you don't know.

In an interesting twist, extremely skilled persons under-rate their abilities.

Ah, here we are:
http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf

found via:
http://www.damninteresting.com/unskilled-and-unaware-of-it

A pair of studies was done, one of which directly measured causation (the first was correlational and had a self-reporting factor--not a strong argument).

Non-press release version: http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/psp-784772.pdf

Participants were divided into two groups, playing either Wolf3D or Myst. Those playing Wolf3D later punished an opponent (gave a noise blast) for a longer period of time than the Myst players.

Another thing to note is the factors considered in how this happens:

. . . violent video games may have even stronger effects on children's aggression because (1) the games are highly engaging and interactive, (2) the games reward violent behavior, and because (3) children repeat these behaviors over and over as they play (Gentile & Anderson, 2003). Psychologists know that each of these help learning - active involvement improves learning, rewards increase learning, and repeating something over and over increases learning.

(Emphasis mine)

In other words, the factors that teach agression are also exactly the same factors being explored to make them useful as general educational tools. By having an incentive system and making it easy to restart, video games naturally push you learn while also supporting "overlearning" (related to the concept of muscle memory in martial arts or playing musical instruments). But you can't have one without the other.

A pair of studies was done, one of which directly measured causation (the first was correlational and had a self-reporting factor--not a strong argument).

Non-press release version: http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/psp-784772.pdf

Participants were divided into two groups, playing either Wolf3D or Myst. Those playing Wolf3D later punished an opponent (gave a noise blast) for a longer period of time than the Myst players.

Another thing to note is the factors considered in how this happens:

. . . violent video games may have even stronger effects on children's aggression because (1) the games are highly engaging and interactive, (2) the games reward violent behavior, and because (3) children repeat these behaviors over and over as they play (Gentile & Anderson, 2003). Psychologists know that each of these help learning - active involvement improves learning, rewards increase learning, and repeating something over and over increases learning.

(Emphasis mine)

In other words, the factors that teach agression are also exactly the same factors being explored to make them useful as general educational tools. By having an incentive system and making it easy to restart, video games naturally push you learn while also supporting "overlearning" (related to the concept of muscle memory in martial arts or playing musical instruments). But you can't have one without the other.

A pair of studies was done, one of which directly measured causation (the first was correlational and had a self-reporting factor--not a strong argument).

Non-press release version: http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/psp-784772.pdf

Participants were divided into two groups, playing either Wolf3D or Myst. Those playing Wolf3D later punished an opponent (gave a noise blast) for a longer period of time than the Myst players.

Another thing to note is the factors considered in how this happens:

. . . violent video games may have even stronger effects on children's aggression because (1) the games are highly engaging and interactive, (2) the games reward violent behavior, and because (3) children repeat these behaviors over and over as they play (Gentile & Anderson, 2003). Psychologists know that each of these help learning - active involvement improves learning, rewards increase learning, and repeating something over and over increases learning.

(Emphasis mine)

In other words, the factors that teach agression are also exactly the same factors being explored to make them useful as general educational tools. By having an incentive system and making it easy to restart, video games naturally push you learn while also supporting "overlearning" (related to the concept of muscle memory in martial arts or playing musical instruments). But you can't have one without the other.

Well, what I don't see is the direct relation to causality. They show there's a strong connection between violent video games and violence. But a connection doesn't imply causation.

The excellent link in hardburn's post above has a great answer to this whole "correlation is not causation" response that people like you always trot out when confronted with a study with conclusions you don't like:

The overly simplistic mantra, "Correlation is not causation," is useful when teaching introductory students the risks in too-readily drawing causal conclusions from a simple empirical correlation between two measured variables. However, correlational studies are routinely used in modern science to test theories that are inherently causal. Whole scientific fields are based on correlational data (e.g., astronomy). Well conducted correlational studies provide opportunities for theory falsification. They allow examination of serious acts of aggression that would be unethical to study in experimental contexts. They allow for statistical controls of plausible alternative explanations. [my emphasis]

Yes, as I highlighted, there are whole scientific fields whose data is based on nothing but correlations.

Good science starts with a clean slate (Ok, we know violence is an affect, let's study violent and non-violent groups and try to see the common factors and differences) and look for an outcome. Bad science starts with an outcome and looks to justify it based off of observation (That's not applicable to instances of verifying predicted outcomes based on an otherwise complete model)...

If that is true, then the theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun must be bad science, because this is exactly how modern heliocentrism got started. Galileo's heliocentric model had no predictive advantage over the geocentric models of his day. It took about 100 years for evidence that supported Galileo over his adversaries to appear.

At any rate, the idea that "good science starts with a clean slate" just doesn't survive when confronted with the history of science. Take, for example, Thomas Kuhn's famous notion of normal science from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . Normal science is a period in the history of a science where there exists a paradigm. It is fair to say that during normal science, what scientists do is to take the existing paradigm and try to show, over and over again, that the paradigm explains everything. In your terms, they start with the outcome (e.g., planets orbit around the Sun) and try justify it with observations.

So basically, the most important book about the history of science in the second half of the 20th century contradicts your claims about "good" vs. "bad" science.

Actually, I had found this particular article some time ago, and I've used it before. The fact that it came from the same author as the study in the OP was a coincidence. I'm going to continue using it until somebody can give me a through critique of it on scientific merits, rather than ad hominems or vague attacks on strawmen.

And your evidence of repeatable independent experiments showing this, or that this is the scientific consensus?

Go searching around the APA website for video games. I've looked myself, and it's why I've changed my opinion on the subject. It's hard to find any support there for the idea that video games violence doesn't cause increased aggression, even in adults.

in fact, they're are only slightly worse then the worst study in the batch.

That said, there is nothing wrong with meta studies, you just need to keep in mind the pitfalls.

The man wrote this piece of shit:
http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2003/10/anderson.aspx

it's chalk full of logical fallacies and misinformation.

I could use his exact same arguments to prove that drinking milk causes kids to be more violent.

His work is sloppy. Anyone with some dignity would recognize that and either do a good series of studies, you stop flapping their gums about their pet project.

One day, he decided the he could build a career of proving TV cause violent behavior;which he molded to include video games; Which is fine, but when your data relies on specifically cherry picked studies, it is highly unlikely you have found any plausible causation.

Anecdotal information actually shows opposite patterns. Talk to any drill sergeant about who he would rather be training, a high school football player or a video game player.

Yeah, it's just anecdotal, and could very likely be wrong due ti some sort of bias. I am just the picky sort that wants to look at the actual studies.

It's only an "agenda" in the sense that it has a viewpoint you disagree with.

Here's an article done a while back by the same psychologist as the study done in the OP: http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2003/10/anderson.aspx. To summerize:

Video Game Violence, and media violence in general, are more than proven to increase aggression. This is not an area of "mixed results" any more than any other group of studies--there are always outliers. It's as conclusive as wifi and cell phone signals not causing cancer or being responsible for "electrosensitivity". Probably more so, since media violence has had over 40 years of research, whereas EMF health studies are relatively recent.

He also has some very pointed words about the massive overuse of the phrase "Correlation is not causation".

If you still think he has an agenda, then read this:

Media violence is only one of many factors that contribute to societal violence and is certainly not the most important one. Media violence researchers have repeatedly noted this. (Emphisis mine)

In other words, if your goal is to reduce violence in society at large, media violence, including video games, are not where you should be focusing your efforts. These studies in no way justify going to huge lengths to censor such violence. They justify parents being more attentive. Inattentive parents in various forms are probably a bigger factor in overall societal violence than any specific media violence.

You can't allow "researching facts" without at the same time allowing "researching the case" by the same mechanism. (Unless your mechanism is the Encyclopedia Brittanica-dead tree edition, or the like.)

To take it a step further, professional knowledge is placed under limits as well. The question is one of "becoming a defacto unsworn expert witness", and unduly swaying the jury.

If, in the jury room, I stand up and announce myself as "Dr Science!", an expert on epistemological ontology, and I *know* the defendant is innocent "because, in my experience, blah, blah, blah", the other jurors may well ignore evidence given in the trial. I'm "an expert", after all.

And in any case, lawyers get success by picking jurors who they think might be sympathetic to their case, not ones most likely to intuit "the truth".

The article mentioned in Ambient belonging: How stereotypical cues impact gender participation in computer science. Cheryan et al., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol 97(6), Dec 2009, 1045-1060.. My institution apparently doesn't subscribe to this APA journal. Here is the lead author's website. She posts reprints of many of her papers on her lab's website, but this current paper is listed as in press. I agree with Laird that it would be nice to read what the article actually said. But I also think that it was weak to posti a blog response criticizing a popular news medium's reporting on a scientific paper, without first reading the paper. The blog post consists of suppositions of how the popular report may have differed from the facts in the academic paper. And then warns that the popular media is just trying to attract eyeball to advertising rather than establish "truth". Of course, the rich irony here is that the blog post is based on no primary source (e.g. an interview or the academic article in question) and makes a controversial opposing claim based on little to no information or evidence, and does all this on an advertising supported site!

Such as this paper which found that music had no change on productivity. I know that personally listening to music helps me drown out office noise and I much prefer it when I am "in the zone" doing some programming or whatever.

Your boss makes decisions based on his assumptions rather than based on facts. i'm guessing he's religious as well.

I'm way late to this conversation, but you can objectively say that your boss is wrong.

General consensus in scientific community is that office noise involving speech associated with open cubicle environments can have a significant negative effect on job performance, job satisfaction, and stress levels of employees. Office "white noise" (ie: people walking, doors opening/closing, printers, keyboards, etc.) have much less of or an insignificant effect.

As for listening to music, the same applies but results vary depending on the individual. Music that is interpreted by the individual listener primarily on a melodic or rhythmic level have a positive effect on mental-spatial performance. Lyrics in songs that are not tuned out by listeners generally has the same negative effect as office noise involving speech.

However, as others have noted, the decision your boss is making may not (or likely isnt') be based on evidence and may be prompted by something else unrelated to job performance (music is just the scapegoat).

I'd say the best thing to do is make sure before/after effects of are objectively measured (not just for performance but also for job satisfaction).

The measurements revealed that for all types of tasks, subjects lost time when they had to switch from one task to another, and time costs increased with the complexity of the tasks, so it took significantly longer to switch between more complex tasks. Time costs also were greater when subjects switched to tasks that were relatively unfamiliar. They got "up to speed" faster when they switched to tasks they knew better, an observation that may lead to interfaces designed to help overcome people's innate cognitive limitations.

Or here:

"People can't multitask very well, and when people say they can, they're deluding themselves," said neuroscientist Earl Miller. And, he said, "The brain is very good at deluding itself. Switching from task to task, you think you're actually paying attention to everything around you at the same time. But you're actually not. You're not paying attention to one or two things simultaneously, but switching between them very rapidly. Think about writing an e-mail and talking on the phone at the same time. Those things are nearly impossible to do at the same time. You cannot focus on one while doing the other. That's because of what's called interference between the two tasks. They both involve communicating via speech or the written word, and so there's a lot of conflict between the two of them."

Researchers say they can actually see the brain struggling. And now they're trying to figure out the details of what's going on.

Regarding music, see Music while you work: the differential distraction of background music on the cognitive test performance of introverts and extraverts, Adrian Furnham, Anna Bradley, Department of Psychology, University College London, UK:

The current study looked at the distracting effects of pop music on introverts' and extraverts' performance on various cognitive tasks. It was predicted that there would be a main effect for music and an interaction effect with introverts performing less well in the presence of music than extraverts. Ten introverts and ten extraverts were given two tests (a memory test with immediate and delayed recall and a reading comprehension test), which were completed, either while being exposed to pop music, or in silence. The results showed that there was a detrimental effect on immediate recall on the memory test for both groups when music was played, and two of the three interactions were significant. After a 6-minute interval the introverts who had memorized the objects in the presence of the pop music had a significantly lower recall than the extraverts in the same condition and the introverts who had observed them in silence. The introverts who completed a reading comprehension task when music was being played also performed significantly less well than these two groups. These findings have implications for the study habits of introverts when needing to retain or process complex information.

Not that I agree with the boss of course; I like listening to music to block out the sound of people talking, which is a bigger distraction. I would imagine that if there were a comparison between working while listening to music, and working in a noisy, talkative environment, you'd find that the latter has worse performance results than the former. And no, I don't have a citation for that :)

Despite the fact that spousal abusers are just as likely to be women and that the abused are just as likely to be men

Citation needed.

One citation

TWO! Two citations ha ha ha haaaa!

THREE! THREE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE CITATIONS! ha ha ha haaaa [looks around as thunder rumbles and lightning flashes]

Lots more citations as well as discussion of the work done by Murray Strauss, Suzanne Steinmetz and Richard Gelles can be found at the domestic violence wiki

Despite the fact that spousal abusers are just as likely to be women and that the abused are just as likely to be men

Citation needed.

One citation

TWO! Two citations ha ha ha haaaa!

THREE! THREE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE CITATIONS! ha ha ha haaaa [looks around as thunder rumbles and lightning flashes]

Lots more citations as well as discussion of the work done by Murray Strauss, Suzanne Steinmetz and Richard Gelles can be found at the domestic violence wiki

Despite the fact that spousal abusers are just as likely to be women and that the abused are just as likely to be men

Citation needed.

One citation

TWO! Two citations ha ha ha haaaa!

THREE! THREE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE CITATIONS! ha ha ha haaaa [looks around as thunder rumbles and lightning flashes]

Lots more citations as well as discussion of the work done by Murray Strauss, Suzanne Steinmetz and Richard Gelles can be found at the domestic violence wiki

Other research has shown a correlation between lack of ability and overestimation of ability in self-assessment.

Unskilled and unaware (pdf) is one such study. Very interesting stuff.

That's not at all how I read that (IMHO interesting) comment. What I read is: lack of expertise on in a field robs you of both the ability to form an accurate opinion, and the ability to perceive the holes in your reasoning that led you that that inaccurate opinion. Ignorance begetting confidence, in all good faith. Which is nothing new at all (one of the most enlightening psychology paper I've ever read -- do check it out). It has nothing to do with being a 'moron', and that you read it as such possibly tells more about you than it does about the original poster.

despite the fact that the human eye doesn't see it as particularly distinct from its neighbors

Color is culturally based. It's not so much that the human eye doesn't distinguish the color, but that our culture doesn't treat it as a distinct color. For example, Russians have distinct words for light blue and dark blue, segregating them into distinct colors where English speakers tend to just see 'blue' and not distinguish as much on hue.

There have been several studies about how perception is influenced by language. It's not that the eyeball works differently in different cultures, rather that the arbitrary lines our different cultures have between regions of color space determine how we define various colors.

In Newton's case, it's possible that Indigo was a separate, well-defined color region that we've since lost in common usage. The color still exists, we can still distinguish it as unique when placed between it's neighbors, but on it's own we'd probably just call it either blue or purple. I'm not suggesting that Wikipedia is wrong about the history of ROY G BIV and Newton's fondness of the number seven, just that language defines our perception of color simply because in English, we have common words for those colors. Seven is pretty arbitrary, but so is three (RGB), four (CMYK), or five (Hexachrome). It all depends on why you're categorizing colors. This isn't even getting into gamuts or color theory. The human eye is based on red, green, and blue receptors, but that's just a physical adaptation to allow us to see all colors in our visible spectrum. We're more sensitive to some colors over others, but there's no reason we couldn't see indigo as a distinct color other than that in our culture it's not all that common to distinguish it as separate. There's no reason there should be six arbitrary colors in the rainbow rather than seven, eight, ten, or twenty.

Take teal, for instance, another rarely-used color. Some people will call it blue, others green. Still others will just call it teal. Our language doesn't change the color itself, just how we categorize it.

The idea that there are only seven distinct colors (or any arbitrary number) is silly when you take language out of it and just apply numerical values to colors. What color is #fc0? Yellow? Orange? Orangish-yellow? What is the exact wavelength of 'red'? What color is at 450nm? (Hint: it's somewhere between yellow and green). The seven traditional colors of the rainbow are all about 20-40 nm apart except yellow and green, and red and orange. There really should be a color in between, and in some cultures there are.

They aren't morons. They are unskilled and unaware.

The most obvious counterexample to the "AI" nonsense is to consider that, back around 1800 or any time earlier, it was obvious to anyone that the ability to count and do arithmetic was a sign of intelligence. Not even smart animals like dogs or monkeys could add or subtract; only we smart humans could do that.

Interestingly, in recent years, many animals have been found to be able to perform simple mathematical tasks.

Dolphins:
http://www.apa.org/monitor/sep05/marine.html
Monkeys:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317526,00.html
Dogs can do calculus:
http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20031008/Feature1.asp

Any distraction is bad, but cell phones are worse than passenger conversations:

http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/xap144-drews.pdf

I included the part I found offensive, your "they are such a tiny percent of the population that it is essentially irrelevant."

It has been said that they don't fit the mold of pure male or pure female.So, someone who has a penis but has 2 X Chromosomes is not a male, and someone who has a vagina even if they have a Y Chromosome is male?

You didn't answer either to either question, is someone who has a penis a male? And is someone who has a vagina, and gives birth to a living baby, a female? Are you dodging them?

I never said that. I said that anyone with a documented gender abmormality that could cause confusion (like being XY with and giving birth, or XX with a penis) should be excluded from gender-based competition.

You never said that either, you said the Olympic Committee was right in it's decision. I even included that part, "So I would think the Olympic ruling is sane. A Y-chromosome defines male. The organs the chromosome are supposed to trigger to be made do not." I then pointed out that most people do not use your definitions of male and female.

What they are or are not isn't for you to decide.

Yet you are doing exactly that, you are deciding what they are and are not. My aim is not to decide what people are and are not, though I never did say it I fully support each individual's ability to decide for themselves what they are though I'd personally get rid of gender classifications. Actually I support research into ways to allow a person to, if they decide to, how they can become pregnant and carry a baby to birth or impregnate someone else and sire a baby. I have no problem with one person becoming pregnant and giving birth at the same tyme they fertilize another person's egg making them pregnant.

The dictionary has nothing to do with fairness or the perception thereof. This isn't about classifying them.

You define what things are and classifies them yet when I point out you're wrong, as I did providing a link to the definition of "male" and female (oops the link didn't work the first tyme you indicate I shouldn't do that.

In most cases, hermaphodites are sterile

I don't know the ratio of those intersexuals who are fertile to those who are sterile, however some can have babies:

• "How do doctors and parents decide sex assignment in babies born with ambiguous genitals?"
  "A variety of factors go into this decision. Important goals in deciding sex assignment include preserving fertility where possible"
• "Is it possible for an intersex person to sire or bear children?"
• "There are dozens of named medical conditions that may lead to intersex anatomy. Fertility is variable."

And, oddly enough, from the definition you posted, an infertile person, regardless of reason, is neither male nor female.

male "noun: a person who belongs to the sex that cannot have babies".

Falcon

You don't believe in evidence. There either is evidence supporting your claim, or there isn't.

I said "I believe there is evidence". I'm'a assume English isn't your first language (for now; more on that below) and explain that the phrase means "I'm not certain, but I think evidence has been found".

But since you're calling me out on it, I'll look at your links. Link the first:

This powerful combination of two studies presents persuasive evidence that violent video games do indeed increase aggression in some players.

Link the second:

Playing violent video games like Doom, Wolfenstein 3D or Mortal Kombat can increase a person's aggressive thoughts, feelings and behavior both in laboratory settings and in actual life, according to two studies appearing in the April issue of the American Psychological Association's (APA) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Furthermore, violent video games may be more harmful than violent television and movies because they are interactive, very engrossing and require the player to identify with the aggressor, say the researchers.

Link the third:

After 40+ years of research, one might think that debate about media violence effects would be over. An historical examination of the research reveals that debate concerning whether such exposure is a significant risk factor for aggressive and violent behavior should have been over years ago (Bushman & Anderson, 2001). Four types of media violence studies provide converging evidence of such effects: laboratory experiments, field experiments, cross-sectional correlation studies, and longitudinal studies (Anderson & Bushman, 2002a; Bushman & Huesmann, 2000).

Link the fourth:

The link between anger and aggression is far from clear, and they would like to see similar results reproduced with other test groups and using different games and experimental setups. It's also worth noting that they attempted to measure a wide range of additional factors during their study, but many of these measurements produced statistically insignificant or contradictory results.

This is the first one that doesn't claim the connection is well-established, but it does find a causative link between aggressive behavior and violent media. It attempts to establish that there is an additional factor. Link the fifth:

After an average playtime of 56 hours over the course of a month with âoeAsheronâ(TM)s Call 2,â a popular MMRPG, or âoemassively multi-layer online role-playing game,â researchers found âoeno strong effects associated with aggression caused by this violent game,â said Dmitri Williams, the lead author of the study.

Teenagers experiencing 56 hours of fantasy violence over one month and then self-assessing their feelings. 'Nuff said, I hope. Link the sixth:

A brain mechanism that may link violent computer games with aggression has been discovered by researchers in the US. The work goes some way towards demonstrating a causal link between the two - rather than a simple association.

Link the seventh:

After an average playtime of 56 hours over the course of a month...

Same as five.

You don't believe in evidence. There either is evidence supporting your claim, or there isn't.

I said "I believe there is evidence". I'm'a assume English isn't your first language (for now; more on that below) and explain that the phrase means "I'm not certain, but I think evidence has been found".

But since you're calling me out on it, I'll look at your links. Link the first:

This powerful combination of two studies presents persuasive evidence that violent video games do indeed increase aggression in some players.

Link the second:

Playing violent video games like Doom, Wolfenstein 3D or Mortal Kombat can increase a person's aggressive thoughts, feelings and behavior both in laboratory settings and in actual life, according to two studies appearing in the April issue of the American Psychological Association's (APA) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Furthermore, violent video games may be more harmful than violent television and movies because they are interactive, very engrossing and require the player to identify with the aggressor, say the researchers.

Link the third:

After 40+ years of research, one might think that debate about media violence effects would be over. An historical examination of the research reveals that debate concerning whether such exposure is a significant risk factor for aggressive and violent behavior should have been over years ago (Bushman & Anderson, 2001). Four types of media violence studies provide converging evidence of such effects: laboratory experiments, field experiments, cross-sectional correlation studies, and longitudinal studies (Anderson & Bushman, 2002a; Bushman & Huesmann, 2000).

Link the fourth:

The link between anger and aggression is far from clear, and they would like to see similar results reproduced with other test groups and using different games and experimental setups. It's also worth noting that they attempted to measure a wide range of additional factors during their study, but many of these measurements produced statistically insignificant or contradictory results.

This is the first one that doesn't claim the connection is well-established, but it does find a causative link between aggressive behavior and violent media. It attempts to establish that there is an additional factor. Link the fifth:

After an average playtime of 56 hours over the course of a month with âoeAsheronâ(TM)s Call 2,â a popular MMRPG, or âoemassively multi-layer online role-playing game,â researchers found âoeno strong effects associated with aggression caused by this violent game,â said Dmitri Williams, the lead author of the study.

Teenagers experiencing 56 hours of fantasy violence over one month and then self-assessing their feelings. 'Nuff said, I hope. Link the sixth:

A brain mechanism that may link violent computer games with aggression has been discovered by researchers in the US. The work goes some way towards demonstrating a causal link between the two - rather than a simple association.

Link the seventh:

After an average playtime of 56 hours over the course of a month...

Same as five.

Tasers cause brain damage.

Bypassing the Slashdot summary (which appears to have been written by the authors of the Scientific American Article that the link takes you to - or at least it uses their exact words), and ignoring the Scientific American Article, which was written by the authors of a paper to promote their own paper - I went to the article (The Bright Side of Being Blue: Depression as an adaptation for analysing complex problems" 2009, Psychological Review, 116, 620-654).

The authors' main point seems to be that if a person has a complex problem that needs to be solved, then withdrawing from social contact, ruminating on your problems, taking no pleasure in anything (i.e. focusing exclusively on your problems) and so on (the symptoms of depression) make sense because the chance of solving a problem will be higher. And, since depressed people have a cognitive style which cause them to be better at focusing on the micro-detail of problems ("ruminating"), depression has an adaptive function - it helps us solve problems.

It's certainly true that depressed people are very good ruminators, although this is generally described in negative terms as a "faulty cognitive style" because depressed people ruminate on problems that either (a) have no real existence outside of their heads or (b) exist but would be solved (or accepted) by most people without the person becoming disabled. Hence we hear stories of people who commit suicide for odd-seeming reasons (someone insulted them on facebook).

So, I'm thinking that the authors are over-extrapolating a slight superiority in a particular problem-solving skill to a conclusion that "Depression [is] an adaptation for analyzing complex problems". I'm thinking that depression is to problem solving what cytokine storm is to a healthy immune response.

I remember a study was reported a couple of years ago or so saying that incompetent people thing they're great at what they do. They lacked the mental equipment to judge performance. This sounds like the same song, second verse.

I believe that you are referring to this 1999 Study of the Dunning-Kruger Effect by . . . Dunning and Kruger.

Career criminals believe that only idiots get caught, and since they're smarter than everyone else (thanks to the Dunning-Krueger effect), they won't be caught.

That paper is the best (+1 Informative), most insightful (+1 Insightful), most disturbing (+1 Troll) and funniest (+1 Funny) psychology paper I have ever read.

http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf

Sorry if it offends your sensibilities.

Its not a bromide, its been studied quite extensive in Sweden and the US.

Read this study before you start your rant:
http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/xap144-drews.pdf

Passenger conversation is no where near cell conversation in degree of disruption resulting in missed tasks.

Your assertion, sir, is indefensible.

There is no difference between having a cell phone conversation while driving and having a conversation with the guy/gal in the seat next to you, unless you somehow drop the handset...

Bullshit. Since you obviously lack the common sense to figure this out from experience, here is was 30 seconds with Google will tell you. http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/xap144-drews.pdf http://www.ergoweb.com/news/detail.cfm?id=2293 http://www.psych.utah.edu/AppliedCognitionLab/HFES2004-000597-1.pdf

Another point worth noting is that even the APA doesn't condone the use of 'outdated' tests, which the Rorschach would certainly qualify under:

APA ETHICAL PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGISTS AND CODE OF CONDUCT http://www.apa.org/ethics/code.html

http://www.apa.org/ethics/code.html#2.07

2.07 Obsolete Tests and Outdated Test Results.
(a) Psychologists do not base their assessment or intervention decisions or recommendations on data or test results that are outdated for the current purpose.

(b) Similarly, psychologists do not base such decisions or recommendations on tests and measures that are obsolete and not useful for the current purpose.

Another point worth noting is that even the APA doesn't condone the use of 'outdated' tests, which the Rorschach would certainly qualify under:

APA ETHICAL PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGISTS AND CODE OF CONDUCT http://www.apa.org/ethics/code.html

http://www.apa.org/ethics/code.html#2.07

2.07 Obsolete Tests and Outdated Test Results.
(a) Psychologists do not base their assessment or intervention decisions or recommendations on data or test results that are outdated for the current purpose.

(b) Similarly, psychologists do not base such decisions or recommendations on tests and measures that are obsolete and not useful for the current purpose.

Fuck you and your defeatist attitude

Get help, you need anger management.

http://www.apa.org/topics/controlanger.html#manage

Because I have absolutely no point and am clearly trolling.