Piano Stairs! (Not everyone thinks they're a good idea.) Also see "The Deepest Trash Can". Both videos are from Volkswagon Sweden, whose new English-language website, TheFunTheory is still under construction. But here's the Swedish-language version.
posted by zarq on Oct 9, 2009 - 26 comments

Peter Morville is widely recognized as a father of the information architecture field, and he serves as an advocate for the critical roles that search and findability play in defining web user experience. His recent project titled Search Patterns, is a sandbox for collecting search examples, patterns, and anti-patterns; for example spime search, the ability to query objects in motion and find things in the real world. Morville is also on the editorial board of the new Journal of Information Architecture.
posted by netbros on Jul 31, 2009 - 4 comments

New botanical research is shedding light on plant behavior and "intelligence". [more inside]
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing on Jun 11, 2009 - 37 comments

At Psychoanalyst TV, we aggregate psychology and neuroscience videos, and put them on our own TV channels. Its companion site, Neurological Correlates, A Neuroscience Tabloid of Dysfunctional Behavior - Mostly Psychopaths, Narcissists, Obesity and Addiction. Includes such gems as Visualizing Desire and Sadobabies - Runaways in San Francisco.
posted by nickyskye on Jun 4, 2009 - 10 comments

"Web professionals are often expected to be “always on”—always working, absorbing information, and honing new skills. Unless our work and personal lives are carefully balanced, however, the physical and mental effects of an "always on" life can be debilitating." Burnout: Running On Empty [more inside]
posted by netbros on May 27, 2009 - 56 comments

As the market plummets, it might be interesting to look at the neurological background in the breakdown of trust. The author, Jonah Lehrer, is a young brainiac writer for Seed and the excellent Frontal Cortex. l Scientists immediately discovered a strong neural signal that drove many of the investment decisions. The signal was fictive learning. l One way to think of the financial markets right now is that instead of being populated by rational agents, they're full of people with borderline personality disorder. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Oct 9, 2008 - 32 comments

Are you an older sibling? Did you feel unfairly treated compared to your brothers and sisters? Well, now you have science to back you up. According to Games Parents and Adolescents Play, a new sociology study published in The Economic Journal, the oldest kid in the family really does bear the brunt of parental strictness, while the younger brothers and sisters generally coast on through. [more inside]
posted by netbros on May 5, 2008 - 67 comments

From Ants to People, an Instinct to Swarm. Carl Zimmer looks at the work of Iain Couzin. [Via The Loom.]
posted by homunculus on Nov 13, 2007 - 17 comments

I appreciate you for reading this article. I resent you for snarking in the thread without reading it.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Sep 5, 2007 - 293 comments

Bonobo chimpanzees are commonly thought to be "an example of amicability, sensitivity and, well, humaneness" in the animal kingdom. Ian Parker's Swingers suggests a darker, more savage side to the species that belies popular perception.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Aug 3, 2007 - 20 comments

OMG!! Chicken cops break up bunny brawl!
posted by orthogonality on Apr 14, 2007 - 54 comments

Filmmaker David O. Russell's history of abusive behavior is well-documented. It spawned fistfights with George Clooney on the set of Three Kings. But two recent videos from the set of I ♥ Huckabees provide a telltale glimpse of how Russell's "directorial style."
posted by ed on Mar 22, 2007 - 97 comments

Urban Etiquette : Confused about when to answer your cellphone? Not sure when to take off your iPod? Baffled as to what to say to that guy you saw in that movie with that chick when you see him on the street? Worry no more. In too much of a hurry to read this long article from New York Magazine? This short guide has you covered. Here are a few more New York specific examples. When all else fails, ask Mr. Social Grace. [more inside]
posted by grapefruitmoon on Jun 22, 2006 - 52 comments

The avuncular state - "A smarter, softer kind of paternalism is coming into style"
posted by Gyan on Apr 12, 2006 - 9 comments

It's official, humans are dumber than chimps. These guys show (at the NY Times level) that human kids will over-imitate every ritualized nuance modeled for them, whereas chimp kids just wanna get the damn cookie out of the box. Their website also describes more of their studies.
posted by Eothele on Dec 13, 2005 - 42 comments

Sarah Elizabeth Witt struggles to convey a word game [direct to quicktime] that caused her doctor to diagnose her as obsessive-compulsive.

"When I hear a word that starts with the letter U, I immediately gain access to the letter Y!"
posted by odinsdream on Nov 24, 2005 - 16 comments

Diet and behavior.
posted by Gyan on Sep 30, 2005 - 30 comments

"Creatures are out there that can control brains." [pdf]

The women "spent more money on clothes and were consistently rated as more attractive", but were "less trustworthy and had more relationships with men". The men become "less well groomed undesirable loners who were more willing to fight". All "are at greater risk of being involved in car accidents". Why? Something has its tentacles in their brains. They probably got it from that cuddly old species, the domestic cat, which the parasite infects by making infected rats "almost taunt" the cats into eating them.

Parasites in the brain alter their host's behavior. It's not just video game fiction. Various multi-host parasites make their living by making their hosts less ambulatory and less willing to explore, by castrating them and making them less cautious of predators, or by forcing their hosts to stay out all night so as to be eaten in the morning. These parasites offer yet another example of how stupidly clever evolution can be, and raise questions about how free "free will" really is.
posted by orthogonality on Jun 10, 2005 - 80 comments

Behavior in the voting booth. (by Louis Menand)
posted by advil on Sep 10, 2004 - 7 comments

How dogs became man's best friend: Dr Hare's hypothesis is that dogs are superbly sensitive to social cues from people...
His experiment was simple. He presented his animal subjects with two inverted cups. Then he hid the cups behind a screen, put a small piece of food under one of them, and took the screen away. The animal had to choose which cup to look under. If the experimenter gave no cue, both species got it right 50% of the time, as would be expected. However, if he signalled in some way which was the right cup, by pointing at it, tapping it, or even just gazing at it, a dog would choose correctly every time, while a chimpanzee would still do only slightly better than chance. [More at Harvard Gazette]
-- My question: are you able to reproduce his results?
posted by MzB on Feb 21, 2004 - 21 comments

Vixen Love - Read the logs of AIM users tricked into a relationship with a mindless chat bot named Emily. Remember, VixenLove is just out to make friends!
posted by anastasiav on Dec 5, 2003 - 20 comments

The International Center for Bathroom Etiquette makes me really glad that I'm a girl. I had no idea there were such complex decisions to be made about where to stand and which sink to use.
posted by anastasiav on Nov 23, 2003 - 41 comments

At the recent Digital Games Research Conference held at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands, Florence Chee and Richard Smith presented a paper on Everquest and its implications for addiction policy. Here's the full text and a decent summary here.
posted by Ufez Jones on Nov 7, 2003 - 5 comments

Monkeys down tools . - Demand fair pay for a fair day's work. " Researchers taught brown capuchin monkeys to swap tokens for food. Usually they were happy to exchange this "money" for cucumber. But if they saw another monkey getting a grape - a more-liked food - they took offence. Some refused to work, others took the food and refused to eat it. "
posted by Blue Stone on Sep 22, 2003 - 21 comments

Riddle me this: why are so many people in such a hurry to monitor, record and analyze every aspect of modern life? A UCLA professor wants to outfit an entire first grade classroom with minuscule sensors. The National Science Foundation awarded $1.8 million to fund the study, which will see students wearing special caps tracking their location and what they're looking at while cameras and microphones will record their activities. All the data gathered will be processed by a data-mining software package. [more inside]
posted by Irontom on Aug 4, 2003 - 24 comments

I yearn for your tasty flesh

[ Gene Study Finds Cannibal Pattern ] - "Deep in the recesses of the human heart, lurking guiltily beneath the threshold of consciousness, there may lie a depraved craving — for the forbidden taste of human flesh. The basis for this morbid accusation, made by a team of researchers in London, is a genetic signature, found almost worldwide, that points to a long history of cannibalism" (NYT)
posted by troutfishing on Apr 11, 2003 - 45 comments

Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing : "To offer a psychological explanation for the atrocities committed by perpetrators is not to forgive, justify or condone their behavior. Instead, the explanation simply allows us to understand the conditions under which many of us could be transformed into killing machines." (James Waller) In a Salon interview about his widely acclaimed, pathbreaking book Waller states, "Most people don't understand how easy it is to develop us-them [mindsets]......In our climate of fear in response to terrorism, I think we could pretty easily turn on people who have been our neighbors."
posted by troutfishing on Mar 17, 2003 - 37 comments

Testimony of Teens Kidnapped w/ authorization of parents and taken to overseas "behavior modification" schools. After researching these schools almost 5 years ago I am horrified that most of them are still running and whose teachings are even showing up in the form of seminars in kindergarten. Has anyone else had experience with schools like this, whether directly or through a family member or friend ?
posted by bkdelong on Sep 30, 2002 - 17 comments

Rejection reduces IQ "To live in society, people have to have an inner mechanism that regulates their behaviour. Rejection defeats the purpose of this, and people become impulsive and self-destructive. You have to use self-control to analyse a problem in an IQ test, for example - and instead, you behave impulsively"
posted by zeoslap on Mar 17, 2002 - 21 comments

The Science of Getting Schnockered The "New Scientist" directory of articles relating to drunkenness. Some of my favorites: why drunk people tend to stagger more to one side than another, drunks can control their behavior if they really want to, and girls can match boys drink for drink, so long as they stick to beer.
posted by Shadowkeeper on Jan 15, 2002 - 7 comments

How Culture Molds Habits is a fascinating article. Read this article, tally another point for nurture. I've long thought this was true, but Nisbett's supposedly gathered rather a lot of data proving it is so. The article raises some interesting parts of the study, but I think the ramifications bear some considering. I'd be interested in reading the full study when it's published, but I haven't a clue where to get the Psychological Review. And can you imagine what the advertising execs will do with this stuff? Ads tailored to the way you think. Wheee. It does, of course, raise some fun questions about religion and politics.
posted by fable on Aug 8, 2000 - 4 comments