How was that egg salad sandwich? Eggcellent, but there wasalad of mayo on it for my taste.

What a short guy wears in the summer: shorts.

Weiner's Wiener

It's been a slow June on the blog. Just 2 one-line posts from Kyle, both of which were quite unpleasant for me to think about. I'll class it up a little bit with a high-brow discussion of politics and research.

I'm fascinated by this story that's been everywhere lately about congressman Weiner putting photos of his penis on twitter. It's like a news story caricature. There have been an incredible number of stories lately about famous people, often politicians, getting caught doing some ridiculous sexual thing. They must understand that getting caught cock-tweeting, or trolling for gay sex in bathrooms, or sleeping with everyone, or whatever else is going to basically ruin their lives, and they just dive right in there anyway. I wonder whether it's more nature or nurture: is it that people who get into being a celebrity or politics have always had a deep need for social reinforcement and that's why they do this stuff, or is it more because being famous gives people power, and makes them think they can get away with anything? Which came first, the fame or the boner?

Another funny part of this story is that the guy's name is Weiner. I came across this article about how this is related to an interesting psychology finding, where people have strange attractions to things that are related to their names.

I don't really buy this explanation, but it brings to mind another interesting finding on rumors. My dissertation advisor wrote a paper about how, when something seems easy to think about, people judge it as more true, among other judgments. For example, people say that "woes unite foes" is more true than "problems unite enemies" and so on. If we didn't already have certainty that Weiner showed is Wiener, we'd be more likely to believe it because it's easy to think about, or "fluent".

In addition to rhyming, I think one could increase fluency of a rumor by having some sort of conceptual relationship between the actor and the deed. For example, maybe American Airlines is doing too much racial profiling against muslims. Or Philip Morris is doing too much air pollution.

Here's a few other fluent rumors for your reading enjoyment:
-Fidel Castro was castrated for infidelity
-Pittsburgh Steelers have been stealing from their players.
-Exxon executive caught with pornography (x-rated)
-Shell oceanic oil spill
-Many commercially available Sony goods are phony. Especially their phones.
-An ear was found in a Tyson Chicken product
-Food bought at SafeWay is unsafe for consumption.

We're actually thinking about writing a paper about this. If we get into it, I'll be looking for some more of these to choose from.

Another cool finding on rumors, also by my advisor, is that people often forget the valence of a message but remember the parts of it. So you take a random group of people and tell them "Shark fin does not prevent arthritis". Later on, you'll find that the people who you told this to are actually more likely to believe that shark fin does prevent arthritis, compared to a random group of people who you never told that first statement to. They remember hearing something about shark fins and arthritis and some guess that there was a positive relationship...

What dogs eat in the morning: barkfast.

Viagara and wine: a hard attack waiting to happen.