Net

The Psychology of Immersion - Virtual Reality Is Reality

A recent article in Wall Street Journal talks about virtual relationships and their affect on real relationships. According to a recent study cited we can learn the following about the cognitive processes in players brains:

• On a neurological level, players may not distinguish between virtual and real-life relationships
• People socializing in virtual worlds remain sensitive to subtle cues like eye contact - in one study, participants moved their avatars back if another character stood too close, even though the space violation was just virtual
• Our brains are not specialized for 21st-century media - There is not switch that says "Process this different because it is on the screen".

More discussion at the MIT Advertising Lab and Neuromarketing

"All Marketers are Liars" - Seth Godin speaks at Google

                 

Here is a very good and entertaining video wih Seth Godin, the author of six bestsellers, most recently, All Marketers are Liars. The video is a part of the Authors@Google series. The bottomline: Be personal & relevant and most of all: Tell a story - don't sell blue boxes! It's amazing how  many companies and advertisers that still don't understand that.

uiGarden - For Chinese & Western UI Practitioners

I stumbled upon uiGarden, a bilingual Online magazine for Chinese and western user interaction designers. Due to my involvement in Maxthon I often ponder about the differences in Chinese and western user interface design and uiGarden is a welcome resource in trying to make sense of it all. There is both an English & Chinese site, and the great thing about it is that all articles are translated into both languages.

Technorati Tags: Interaction Design, China, uiGarden, Usability, User Experience

PeaceMaker - Become A Peace Maker

I really believe that games are excellent for learning and practicing new tasks, but to making peace in the Middle East? Impact Games have just released PeaceMaker, a video game to promote peace. PeaceMaker is a role-playing game were the goal of the player is to establish a stable resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and win the Nobel Prize before his/her term in office ends.

I find this a very creative approach to problem solving. While the game starts as a zero-sum game, the key to success is to gain momentum and create a win-win scenario. Now that is great - win by create a win-win scenario! Although I don't believe the game will have any impact what so ever on our daily affairs here in Israel, I support anything that can make even one person change his or her mind.

What I especially like is that the game encourages players to play on both sides of the conflict, thus being forced to see and experience the other side. I can imagine how this could be applied in other areas as well such as business, intercultural communications, politics, relationships and psychology in general.

Or what about role-play games for :

• Parents & Children
• Politicians & Voters
• Spouses
• Prosecutors & Lawyers
• Recruiters & Employees
• Agreements negotiations
• Police & hostage takers

Technorati Tags: Games, PeaceMaker, Israel, Peace, Impactgames

Personality Secrets in Your Mp3 Player

A recent study put participants in same-sex and opposite-sex pairings and told them to get to know each other over 6 weeks (Rentfrow & Gosling, 2006). Analysing the results, they found the most popular topic of conversation was music. What is it about music that's so useful when we first meet someone and what kind of information can we extract from the music another person likes? In the first week on average 58% of the pairs discussed music compared to 37% of all the other categories of conversation combined.

This is very interesting since it suggests that we probably think that music indirectly is telling something about the others person's personality. To test how good music really is as a measure of personality, a test was conducted that asked to judge other peoples personality based only on their top 10 list of songs. Compared with participants results on a standard personality type test measuring the Big five personality traits: openness to experience, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability.  Some of the interesting finding were:

• Likes vocals: extraverted
• Likes country: emotionally stable. On the face of it, this is bizarre really because country music is all about heartache. Either the emotionally stable are attracted to country music or it has a calming effect on the unstable!
• Likes jazz: intellectual

The big problem with this study is however, that the age group tested was around 18 year old. Young people tend to talk about music more than older people. There are other problems as well with this study, however, I find the subject of judging a personality based on his favorite music quite interesting. I guess I would end up as an emotional unstable person based on this study. I hate country music, but loves jazz, classical, reggae and greek music...I guess I suffer from a split personality.. Via PsyBlog

BTW, would be great to combine Pandora with a personality test and then offer people to meet with other's like themselves...Perhaps a more effective way of finding a new partner or friends?

Technorati Tags: Mp3, Pandora, Personality, Psychology, Dating, puppy

Anthropology 2.0

Learning About Learning

I have been thinking a lot lately about what the most important skills that I can teach my children as they grow up. I have reached the following conclusion:

1. To treat others like you would like them to treat you (old Jewish wisdom ;)
2. Learning about learning
3. To be curious
4. To be passionate about what you do

The first one is is obviously the most important. But what I want to emphasize here is: learning about learning. In my eternal quest for knowledge and experience be it in academia, personal development or business (I prefer to see them all as part of one...) I have come to realize that the most important skill set today is to learn about learning i.e. learn how we acquire knowledge learn all kinds of heuristics and techniques for acquiring knowledge. Since I have a background in Psychology learning about some of these heuristics were a part of my curriculum, still it took me some years to realize how important they really are.

Once you have learned all kinds of techniques for learning, your capacity for learning almost anything is enormous. It doesn't really matter what the subject is: medicine, physics, philosophy or business. Coupled with curiosity  and the passion to learn - you have all the necessary tools you need to get by.

I would even go so far as to suggest to make "learning about learning" a mandatory part of any schools curriculum. Children are very curious by nature and building on that, learning about learning is something that they would absorbed like a sponge. Obviously, it has to be taught in a fun way and stimulating manner.

Having kicked off the subject, I will start sharing some books, techniques etc that I have found very helpful in learning about learning. What tools do you use?

Technorati Tags: , Cognition, Cognition, Learning, Creativity, puppy, puppy, puppy, puppy, puppy

I Love University Campuses

Stanford University
Originally uploaded by Net.

There is something almost magical about wandering around University Campuses. Yesterday I took a long walk around the Stanford campus, something I always do when I am in Palo Alto.
I can't describe what it is, but I have always had this special feeling about university campuses. I have always love learning for the sake of learning, and always been a very curious type.

I used to love walking around Lund University campus in Sweden during my studies and spend hours just hanging around, inhaling the atmosphere and digging into course books not relevant at all to my own studies. Walking around Stanford just brings that feeling back.

Bob Marley used to sing " the power of philosophy flows through my head.." that is exactly what I feel walking around here. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in some philosophy, psychology, political science or business class here. Flying from lecture to lecture stimulating my curious intellect. Not for making another thesis, but just for the sake of learning... Am bored a weirdo or just are there others like me out there?

Technorati Tags: Stanford

iTTQ: IM and IpTV at It's Best!

Tencent has partnered with TCL to develop an Internet-enabled, interactive TV with QQ-branded applications like IM and games.  It is called iTTQ. The photo above is from iTQQ's demo at TCL's Industrial Research Institute in Shenzhen. iTQQ seems amazing. According to Intel's Mobile in China blog, this new iTQQ TV can both play TV programs, online games, photo albums, e-cards and instant messages. Finally the older generation can communicate with their children with no former Internet experiences.

Another cool thing is that the remote control can be used to communicate with children to know when they will be home for dinner etc. People can also share their favorite programs instantly via the QQ enabled remote control. No set-top box in the way..

Once again QQ has demonstrated that it is still possible to be innovative on the IM arena. I bet this is going to be a big hit. Would love to see the same implemitation in Europe and the US too.  Via Virtual China.

Technorati Tags: China, China TV, IM, iPTV, iTTQ, TCL, puppy, Stanford, Tencent, TV

Marketing To Your Mind

It definitely seem like Neuromarketing is on the rise. The Time has a great article on Neuromarketing.

Like the article says, to scientists, it's all part of the larger question on how the human brain makes decisions. However, the answers can be invaluable to business.

Perhaps the future stores will be equipped with a portable brain scanner where you first scan your brain - and then the scanner tells you what you would like to buy...

Technorati Tags: Brain, Marketing, Neuromarketing, Neuroscience, puppy, Stanford

No Excuse To Be Ignorant Anymore With Open Culture

No good  excuse to be ignorant anymore. Open Culture explores the best of contemporary cultural and educational life and connects users to free, high-quality cultural media (enriching podcasts, videos, online courses, etc.) that make learning dynamic and fun. You'll find great lectures in Podcast format from Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Berkley University as well as many other universities, institutes and colleges. Just fill up you iPod with lectures in Psychology, Physics and Art & Humanities and tickle your intellect..

Technorati Tags: Podtech, learning, Openculture, Podcasts, Stanford, Yale, Harvard, Education, Lectures

The Heuristics of War - Why Hawks Win

I stumbled upon a very interesting post in the Frontal Cortex (not my own frontal cortex - a blog...) discussing a great article in Foreign Policy by Daniel Kahneman and Jonathan Renshon called Why Hawks Win. The article describe some of the mental biases previously discovered by Prospect Theory and how these biases affect peoples decision about Foreign Policy.

It is really interesting reading and the take away is that understanding these biases can help ensure that the hawks don't win more arguments than they should. This article makes me think about my studies in Psychology and Intelligence Analysis and how valuable an awareness of these biases have proven to be to me in wether in business or human relationships. (is there a difference?). It is easy to forget to think proactively about these matters, but I keep on trying keeping it in mind, by reader studies and articles like the above mentioned to remind me of its importance.

I really think this world would look a little bit better with these things in mind. So many serious mistakes are the result of misunderstanding of the other..

If you are interested in learning more about these biases take a look at these links for starters:

• Prospect Theory
• Fundamental Attribution Theory

Technorati Tags: Daniel Kahneman, Foreign Policy, Fundamental Attribution Error, Prospect Theory, Psychology, bfbw, b4bw, Social Media, War

Brain Branding - Coke is it

One of my favorite blogs: NeuroScience Marketing, published a very interesting article about a new study presented at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). The study shows that people presented with known brand images processed them in areas of the brain associated with positive emotions, while unfamiliar brands took more effort for the brain to process and activated areas of the brain associated with negative emotions:

The results showed that strong brands activated a network of cortical areas and areas involved in positive emotional processing and associated with self-identification and rewards. The activation pattern was independent of the category of the product or the service being offered. Furthermore, strong brands were processed with less effort on the part of the brain. Weak brands showed higher levels of activation in areas of working memory and negative emotional response.

Another interesting writes NeuroScience Marketing blog, that both Coke and Pepsi are both well established and recognized brands and both spend huge amounts on marketing, but Coke seems to have a stronger branding (based on functional magnetic resonance imaging results).

Technorati Tags: Branding, Marketing, Neuromarketing, Psychology, Red Herring

Susan Wu @ CRV is Blogging Too

A month ago I had the pleasure to meet with Susan Wu, new associate with CRV. Today I noticed that she started to blog too. Susan is really bright and I especially paid attention to a blog post she made on StartCamp: the Art of the Pitch.

Susan highlights two key takeaways on "How to pitch to VCs"

1. Though the process may seem labyrinthine and intimidating, we VCs are just human beings.
   
   2. Your customers are all human beings. Even if you are building super high tech widgets[1], your customers are still human beings.

I could not agree more with her. I think many entrepreneurs many times forget that at the end of the day, we are all human beings - sharing the same basic needs, fears and prone to err.

Susan urges entrepreneurs to "help" VC to help them frame their thinking. I think this is a very important lesson. Since I have a deep background in Psychology (before I defected to business ;), I know how important it is to frame thinking.

You can have the most brilliant idea or technology, but if you can't make others understand it - what good will it do?

I really recommend anybody, to learn about framing, in order to learn how to facilitate the thinking process. A basic course in Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) will can also be extremely helpful for this purpose. It's money well spend and will be helpful in many other areas besides pitching to VCs.

Great post Susan - keep the coming! :) BTW, thanks to Susan's blog I learned about Snowcrash, a book I will pick-up on my next trip.

Technorati Tags: Charles River Ventures, CRV, Framing, NLP, Susan Wu, Quickstart, Snowcrash, StartupCamp, the art of the pitc, Venture Capital