Everybody Laugh

Because I love Honest Trailers, and recently read and loved Watchmen:

More Collaborative Research

On the Association for Psychological Science mainpage today is an article about the need for more collaborative and interdisciplinary research, and an effort by APS Fellow Brent Roberts to help facilitate that:

The Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Initiative (SBSRI) is a new group focused on providing the diverse behavioral and social science faculty with new opportunities to enhance collaboration on large-scale, interdisciplinary research projects: The kind of projects that have the potential to change the world.

“The Initiative has a number of aims that are intended to help faculty with the proposal development and application process. At the broadest level, we are catalyzing groups of social scientists who might not interact directly because they are housed in separate units,” Roberts explains. “For example, we have a number of social scientists interested in collaborating with engineering researchers to bring their technological creativity and vision to the task of assessing psycho-social phenotypes.”

One of the things I've really enjoyed about working in health services research is that it is very collaborative and interdisciplinary. Our researchers have a variety of backgrounds: psychology, neurosocience, economics, nursing, medicine, epidemiology, sociology, library science... As the linked article points out, to study complex social issues requires a multifaceted approach. By bringing together people who look at a problem from different angles, we can get closer to a real solution and hopefully make positive changes in people's lives.

Of course, it takes more than just bringing those minds together to effect positive change. That is, interdisciplinary teams may be a necessary condition but not a sufficient one. It requires good project management and oversight, or else you risk ending up with a cookie cutter solution: one that includes a variety of different approaches but has no synthesis across them.

This certainly isn't easy. Anyone who has tried synthesizing multiple theories in a single field can tell you how difficult that can be - now try doing that with theories and approaches across different fields. Perhaps initiatives like SBSRI can help determine the best way for integrating the interdisciplinary approaches. Either way, it will be interesting to see the work that comes out of SBSRI and other similar groups.

John Oliver on Journalism

I was going to write today's post on insomnia, but I'm too tired. The end.

Kidding. So instead, I'll just share John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on journalism:

I mean, if the newspapers go away, how can I write about the dangers of low scientific literacy and the sad state of scientific journalism? #investifarted

Ch-Ch-Changes

It's been a busy past few days, so I unfortunately haven't been blogging. I plan to get back in the habit soon - because I have news DT readers: I'll be leaving my position at VA next week and will start a new job in September. So I'll have a couple of weeks to relax, refresh, and do all those things that have been on my personal to-do list for ages. It struck me this morning just how long that list is, and how many items on the list are simply flights of fancy. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I laughed at myself when I realized that one of the items on that list was "learn to beat box."

Compare that to what I actually did on my summer vacation as a kid: read, go to the library, watch TV, play outside. I suspect my two weeks off will look more like that, and less like a whirlwind tour of self improvement. I'm also considering doing some short trips to nearby places I've been meaning to visit, but we'll see.

Saturday, I cleaned out my office. It looks so empty in here today. But I was glad to get it done so I wouldn't have to stress about during my final days. I also found some interesting lost bits of technology, that I put on my newly clean shelving unit:

In case you're wondering, the giant object on the right and the smaller one on the far left are old transcription equipment. Both play cassette tapes (the big one plays full-sized cassettes, the smaller one plays mini cassettes) and have a foot pedal so you can stop and start playback without having to take your hands off the keyboard. These days, we use a USB foot pedal that stops and starts a media file on your computer. But we had to use these older devices as recently as 4 years ago, when we did a multi-site quality improvement project and had sites recording focus groups with whatever equipment they had on hand (to keep costs down). If that equipment was a tape recorder, that's what they used. I still remember the look on one of our research assistant's faces when I showed him what he would be using to transcribe the tape recordings.

I also found some of the crazy pens people have given me over the years - I collect crazy pens - and an owl slap bracelet:

Measuring Up

Two things crossed my email inbox just now, both having to do with measurement:

A study about height of Americans versus citizens of others countries found that Americans now rank 37th in the world in terms of height. One hundred years ago, Americans were the 3rd tallest. Using data from epidemiological studies and population health surveys, they looked at height for 18.6 million adults born between 1896 and 1996:

Height is one of the most heritable human traits, but the researchers say environment also plays a role. “Genetics doesn't change so quickly, so if you see a change over 100 years, it has to be environmental,” says the new study’s co-lead author, Mariachiara Di Cesare, now at Middlesex University London. A major influence on height, especially early in life, is nutrition. Another is childhood infections, so clean water and health care are also important.

Essentially, these findings are a sign - according to the authors - that conditions are improving in many countries, which explains the increase in height:

The authors assert that the study shows the potential of using height as an indicator of human development. It is easily measured and provides a link between early-life experiences, health, longevity, education and earnings.

The other is this picture, which I present without comment:

And in response to the claims Trump has made with regard to hand size and other potentially related measurements, I give you this Snopes link.

More on Impression Formation

A recent article on the Association for Psychological Science website summarizes research on impressions, showing why first impressions are so important, and why it's easier for someone to grow to dislike you over time than to grow to like you:

Across five experiments, Klein and O’Brien found that this moral tipping point is asymmetric — a moral improvement takes a lot more work for us to notice compared to a moral decline, even if the evidence is we observe is the same in each case. In other words, “it is apparently easier to become a sinner than a saint, despite exhibiting equivalent evidence for change.”

The researchers conducted the study using scenarios with a hypothetical coworker, Barbara. They described Barbara as having a neutral personality, but noted that she could occasionally be nice and other times be mean. They described her behavior as it occurred over a period of weeks, and asked participants how many weeks of consistent behavior it would take before they concluded that Barbara had undertaken a "moral change."

When Barbara’s behavior turned mean, it only took a few weeks for participants to conclude that she had taken a turn for the worse. However, it took many more weeks of positive behavior to convince people that Barbara was changing for the better.

The authors explain their results, in part, with the negativity bias, which I blogged about during April A-Z.

Burn It To the Ground

I'm having one of those comically bad days, which included breaking one of my favorite mugs and forgetting my office keys at home. Needless to say, I'm not sure today is the best day to write the post I had planned about psychology knowledge, using that knowledge to get people to spend money, and the Dunning-Kruger effect. Hopefully tomorrow.

In the meantime, I had a wonderful weekend, that included a trip to the Renaissance Faire with awesome friends and a Dissertation Burning party with other (but still awesome) friends.

To quote one of my favorite movies (Donnie Darko), "Burn it to the ground."
Edit: Then the universe took pity on me - it ended my usually 2-hour meeting after 15 minutes, then played one of my favorite songs on the radio.