Human Mind

In an ever more connected world have mobile phones become more of an obsession than a convenience ?A recent study has revealed the extent of our tendency to spend time using mobile phones, or more specifically, the penchant for sending text messages. More than ninety percent of Americans own a mobile, connecting together modern society more than ever before. Everywhere you go you are likely to find people texting on their phones;whether they be walking down the street, standing in a bus queue or even attending a funeral.

Nowhere ( aside from at the wheel ) seems to be an inappropriate place to send a text message.Has the art of a face to face conversation been lost ? Is our obsession with mobile phones and texting really an "epidemic" as some have suggested ? We can"t take our eyes off the things, even when we should! Security cameras caught a poor woman walking, with confidence, straight into afountain. She just got wet, but another man could have been killed as he nonchalantly strolled off a train platform.  

View: Full article |  Source: CBS News  

A new study claims to be able to determine your personality based on the way that you eat your eggs.Based on answers provided by over 1,000 people, scientists believe they have uncovered a statistical relationship between the way in which eggs are cooked and a variety of different personality traits. The results suggested that poached egg eaters are more likely to be outgoing and positive, boiled egg fans are disorganised, scrambled egg eaters are guarded and those who prefer friedeggs tend to have a higher sex drive.Commissioned by the British Egg Industry Council the study also revealed other traits relating to lifestyle choices and gender.

More woman than men are said to be fans of poached eggs while fried egg eaters are more likely to be young males. Boiled egg eaters are more likely to be careless and impulsive while scrambled egg eaters are more likely to have a senior-level job and to own their own home. Using sophisticated maths and a process known as data mining, scientists have uncovered astatistical relationship between a person"s character, lifestyle and social class and whether they like their eggs boiled, fried, scrambled or as an omelette.  

View: Full article |  Source: Telegraph  

New research has indicated that belief in various paranormal topics differs between men and women.While both genders tend to believe in paranormal topics the key difference is in which ones. Teacher and researcher Kylie Sturgess found that women were more likely to believe in astrology, psychics and ghosts whereas men are more predisposed to believe in aliens, cryptozoological creatures and conspiracy theories."Women are morelikely to be at the "social" end of paranormal beliefs," said Sturgess.

"They"re more likely to believe in things like mediums, astrology, psychic healing, and ghosts. Men, for instance, are more likely than women to believe in the alien astronaut theories of Erich von Daniken, and more cryptozoological things like the Loch Ness monster." Studies have also shown that men are also more likely to believe in conspiracy theories, creationism and the notions of historicalrevisionists, while women are more likely to believe in telepathy and New Age theories.  

View: Full article |  Source: Sydney Morning Herald  

Cognitive scientist Lars Hall set out to determine just how easy it is to fool our moral principles.Hall and his team at Lund University in Sweden conducted an experiment in which 160 volunteers were asked to fill out a two-page survey about the morality of various world issues covered in the news. In each survey one of the questions was a trick in that when the page was turned over the premise would be altered to mean the opposite of what the volunteer had originally arguedbut while leaving their response unchanged.The volunteers were then asked to read out and discuss some of their answers including that to the trick question.

53% of those taking part not only failed to pick up the change but actively argued in favor of the altered statement even though it was the stark opposite of their original position. Hal and his team attributed this result to a phenomenon known as "choice blindness" which highlights the inherent inaccuracies in self-report questionnaires. People can be tricked intoreversing their opinions on moral issues, even to the point of constructing good arguments to support the opposite of their original positions, researchers report today in PLoS ONE.  

View: Full article |  Source: Nature.com