Pick a Psych Journal, Any Psych Journal

July 19, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston

I’ve been reading Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness. As Gilbert warns in the Foreword, it’s not a self-help book on how to be happy. It’s an academic psychologist’s take on how we think about happiness and about other things. Like most academic books, it cites many journal articles, especially those based on psychology experiments.

As I read Gilbert’s summary of one experiment, I said to myself, “That sounds like a JPSP article.” Now, there must be dozens of psychology journals that cover the kinds of topics Gilbert was talking about, but this study seemed like just the kind of thing that would appear in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, at least as I remembered that journal from my days in grad school long ago. I turned to the notes in the back of the book, and I was right.

Amazing. I felt like I was watching myself as a magician – eyes closed, hand pressing his temple in great concentration – calling out the name of the selected card. Jack of Hearts. Maybe I did learn something in grad school. (Full disclosure: mostly out of ignorance, I had enrolled in a social psychology program; my degree is in “psychology and social relations.”)

A few pages later, the same thing happened – from Gilbert’s description of a study, I was almost certain it would be a JPSP article. Again I checked the endnotes, and again I was right.

Unusual powers of perception? Then I recalled one technique that a magician can use to be sure of knowing that the card you selected was the jack of hearts.




So I took a quick look through the endnotes and did a rough count. If journal citations were playing cards . . . .


I’m exaggerating. Other journals were represented. There were “only” 77 JPSP citations. In some chapters, that was one per every three footnotes. Surely, there must be measures of journal influence and dominance in their field. I wonder if the degree of citation inequality varies among disciplines.

What Color Is Your Paramour?

July 16, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston
Sociological musings in the checkout line at the Publix. Two lovers, two magazines. Same story. But why is A-Rod so much darker on the In Touch cover than on Us?


I did not buy the magazines to see if the stories too were different. I didn't even buy the Star to see if Mary Kate was going back to rehab.

Virtual Bumps

July 13, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston

Optical illusions. I had always thought of them as fun, like a joke. Interesting too for speculation about abstract matters of perception or cognitive science. This blog has even had a post about one very small but useful application of trompe l’oeil.

Yesterday’s New York Times has a story about trompe l’oeil speed bumps. If you’re driving and you see these in the road ahead of you . . .


. . . you’d probably slow down. At least the first time. After that, you might realize that these “bumps” were really two-dimensional representations.

I wonder if the traffic people in Philadelphia took their idea from artists like Julian Beever.


The illusions as photographed are wonderfully deceptive. But they fool the eye only from certain angles. Look at this sidewalk swimming pool. That’s Beever himself about to test the water with his toe.


Now look at this same sidewalk from a different angle.


Oh well, maybe the Philadelphia drivers will slow down just to admire the art.

Something About Role

July 10, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston

These photos illustrate something about role, but I’m not sure what.




Rev. Christopher J. Waitekus, the priest at St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Lenox, literally wears two hats. Right after the Sunday mass, and still wearing his priestly vestments, he pops on his policeman’s hat, walks out onto Main Street, and directs traffic. He has to get his flock quickly out of the church parking lot, and the town police force is fully deployed elsewhere to handle Tanglewood traffic.