Letters Remain

Author: Lloyd Morgan

  • Separating Conversations: The Cocktail Party Effect

    The ‘cocktail party effect’ is the name given to our unusually adept ability of separating out conversations from one another. However it appears that we are unusually bad at retaining information from the discarded conversation(s): Cherry [1953] found his participants picked up surprisingly little information [from the ‘rejected’ conversations], often failing to notice blatant changes…

  • The Dunbar Number and the Limits of Social Networking

    The Economist looks at whether Dunbar’s number, the supposed limit of stable social relationships, holds true on social networking sites. That […] online social networks will increase the size of human social groups is an obvious hypothesis, given that they reduce a lot of the friction and cost involved in keeping in touch with other people. […]…

  • Leaving Infants in Cars

    A child is accidentally left in the back seat of a car and dies from hyperthermia: a parent’s worst nightmare, I imagine, and something many believe wouldn’t happen to them (itself a big part of the problem). In an article debating the legal ramifications of such an accident, The Washington Post presents not only a…

  • Busking in the London Underground

    Walking through the London Underground I usually don’t give much thought to the designated busking areas. However, the scheme, started by Transport for London in 2003, is surprisingly involved, as I discovered after reading this profile of Mike Muttel, an Underground busker. Muttel’s official busking license, good for one year, hangs visibly from a lanyard…

  • Unlikely Events Influenced by Financial Incentives

    With the UK’s Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, proposing that alcohol should cost a minimum of 50p per unit, many opposers are arguing that the increase would “punish ordinary drinkers without deterring the winos, brawlers and wife-beaters”. However, as Tim Harford notes, it may well work as the unlikeliest of events are influenced by…

  • Why Marriages Fail

    Dr Rob Dobrenski of Shrink Talk has an absolutely fantastic post on reasons why marriages fail. These are the seven he felt worthy of note: Marriage requires compatibility not just at the point of saying ‘I do,’ but across the entire life span. Assuming that marriage implies monogamy, the institution itself is counterintuitive to biology.…

  • Subconscious Social Interactions

    Some recent research has shown that our conscious minds controls less of our interactions than previously thought: The researchers could predict how around 70% of the students would rate an instructor just by analysing the instructor’s body language in 30 seconds of soundless video. […] The researchers were able to devise an algorithm that could…

  • Incidental Similarities and Compliance

    We are more likely to comply with requests from strangers if we believe we share seemingly uncommon, incidental characteristics (e.g. first name, birthday, etc.), according to a 2004 research study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (pdf): Four studies examined the effect of an incidental similarity on compliance to a request. Undergraduates who…

  • The Birthday Problem

    I’ve heard of this ‘problem’ numerous times before, as I’m sure many others have too. Nonetheless, everytime I do hear it, it fascinates me. The birthday problem (or paradox, as it’s often referred), looks at the probability of two or more people from a randomly chosen set of people sharing a birthday. In a group…

  • Unsolicited Internships

    Expanding on an idea originally posted on the Freakonomics blog, Andrew Lynch suggests soliciting people you admire or respect for an unpaid internship: Find someone you really admire or respect. Email them. Describe your skills, how you can help them, what you have to offer. Link them to your blog full of quality posts. Then…