"Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them." - Alfred North Whitehead.
Theory One:
Human beings perform most of their activities out of habit. Every time you log into computer, which sites to you visit? Probably the same routine sites you visited the day before. Who did you talk to on the phone last week? Probably the same 5 people you always talk to. What is important here, is that when anything turns into a routine, it no longer becomes a decision. You perform without thinking.
Our brains only have the capacity to execute so many decisions in a day - and less important decisions are pushed back into a form of a routine. Red light you stop, green light you go, and everyone hates the yellow because it involves just tiny bit of unnecessary decision making we don't need in our lives. This is why we get extremely tired when we travel, because we find ourselves in a situation where we need to make more decisions than we ever did. From my experience, third and fourth day is usually the worst, and we begin to adapt to the new environment.
The Strange Case of a Turkey and a Polecat: (Cialdini, 2)
Mother Turkeys spend most of their time nurturing their young, but virtually all their nurturing is triggered by one sound: the "cheep-cheep" sound of young turkey chick. If the chick makes a "cheep cheep" sound, the mother will care for it; if it does not, the mother will ignore the chick or sometimes even kill it.
Animal behaviorist M.W. Fox took a stuffed polecat, the natural enemy of turkeys, and hid a tape recorder inside the polecat. The recorder inside the polecat mimicked the "cheep cheep" sound made by the turkey chick. The mother turkey began a vicious attack against the polecat until the "cheep cheep" sound was turned on, and the mother turkey greeted the predator with acceptance and love. When the recorder was turned off, it began a vicious attack against the stuffed polecat. When the sound was turned on again, the turkey ceased its hostile activities.
Though the mother turkey seems incredibly silly in this experiment, human beings are not all that different. In psychology, we call these behaviors the "fixed pattern behaviors," where a certain behavior occurs in virtually the same fashion and in the same order every time. What are these behaviors? you may ask. That is the topic of "Influence, the science and practice," and my future blogs (since it's waaaaay past my bed time). If I draw enough attention here - meaning if I see sufficient number of comments, I will write more about this topic. If not, well, I'll shut up and post more pictures I suppose.
Keep in mind...
...that obviously, we cannot say every single human beings act in same mechanical, predictable patterns all the time. What we are trying to say is, enough people act in similar, predictable patterns for it to be statistically significant in certain situations. What are these situations? well, let me see how many people find this topic to be interesting...
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LA pictures, though I don't have any pictures of Kevin T.T
The reflection was NOT photoshopped. BUT, it's really easy to know what I did if you look at it carefully...
couple self portraits.
out of focus on purpose.
Karen is sooooo cute.
F for Fred. Actually, for FAIL.
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