Implicit Association Tests

As part of my Marriage and Family sociology class, I was asked to take the Sexuality IAT on this website. It's free and only takes about 10 minutes, so you should go check it out yourself.

The test shows you two group headings, one on the left and one on the right. As images and words pop up you are supposed to sort them using the E key for left and I key for right. The order of word sets is randomized, but I first had bad on one side and good on the other. The words were pretty easy, tragic for bad and beautiful for good as an example. Then I had gay people on one side and straight people on the other. This time sometimes words were shown (like homosexual or heterosexual), or pictures such as a man and woman in wedding attire or two women. But then they put the two word sets together...

My first set like this had both bad and gay people on the left with good and straight people on the right. Words describing good or bad were shown in green, while pictures/words depicting sexual orientation were in white. The words/pictures didn't have to correspond to both words on the correct side, just one depending on the color.

After that section I did it again, only with the words reversed. Bad was with straight people and good was with gay people. Your automatic preference for one sexual orientation over the other is figured out by which group you finish the fastest and with the least amount of errors, straight people with good or gay people with good.

My results were "little to no automatic preference between Gay People and Straight People." =]

(source)

What was your results? What do you think about this test, is it accurate?

A sure fire way to get people to take the stairs

Volkswagen has started something they term The Fun Theory, which is "the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better." One way they've done this is by creating a giant piano out of stairs. There is an escalator right next to it leading to the same place, but that's no fun, is it? Take a look at this video:

Now I'm just waiting for someone to organize a flash mob around it.

Other things they've done is create a "speed camera lottery". Speeders get photographed and receive a citation. People abiding by the speed limit get entered into a lottery for a chance to win part of the money collected from said citations. That's definitely a lottery I would participate in!

"We don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it"

A woman shared this video with a forum I frequent when the subject of education reform was brought up. This man is hilarious and makes some very interesting, and true, points about how our education system stifles creativity. While that was fine in the days of old when your future was to be a factory worker, today we *need* the creative minds in order to advance.

Learn more through Comic Sans?

I found an interesting article (via passive-aggressive notes) that details how reading information in annoying fonts may help you retain the information better.

I can totally see how reading something in such a font would help with remembering it, as your brain is using more energy to read it in the first place. Your brain is probably thinking "I better remember this so she doesn't make me read it in Playbill again".

However it also has the downside of making people read things in fonts that they hate. Once or twice it might work, but I'm sure after that people will just stop reading it. And then they will learn way less than if you had just put it in Times New Roman. There's a whole website dedicated to the hatred of Comic Sans, after all.

ETA: I found this monologue, from the POV of Comic Sans that I found interesting and also wanted to share.