Swim through a Cave

Do you how it feels to swim through a cave underwater?

It feels bloody awesome.


Feel it. Click on the video.




Yep, we're back to diving in Lembeh.

Child's play! The developmental roots of the misconception that psychology is easy

The widespread misconception that psychology is easy and mere common sense has its roots in the biased way that children work out whether a topic is challenging or not.

Frank Keil and colleagues asked children aged between five and thirteen, and adults, to rate the difficulty of questions from physics (e.g. How does a spinning top stay upright?), chemistry, biology, psychology (e.g. Why is it hard to understand two people talking at once?) and economics. The questions had been carefully chosen from earlier pilot work in which they'd all been rated as equally difficult by adults.

Consistent with the pilot work, the adults in the study proper rated the questions from the different disciplines as equally difficult. However, children from age 7 to 13 rated psychology as easier than the natural sciences - physics, chemistry and biology, which they rated as equally difficult.

Young children can't possibly have the depth of understanding to know which scientific questions are more difficult. Instead they must resort to some kind of mental short-cut to make their verdict. Keil's team think that children's feelings of control over their own psychological faculties - memories, emotions and so forth - and the superficial familiarity of those kinds of concepts, likely lead them to believe psychological concepts are easier to understand.

A second study provided this account with some support. This time children and adults rated the difficulty of questions from within the various branches of psychology. Similar to the first study, the children, but not the adults, rated questions related to social psychology, personality and emotions as progressively easier, compared with questions related to cognition, perception and biological psychology, which they rated as progressively more difficult.

So, when do these childish misconceptions leak through into adult judgments? For a third study, another batch of children and adults were again presented with the same questions from the different scientific disciplines, but this time they were asked to say whether they would be able to solve each question on their own (or require expert help) and to estimate what proportion of the adult population would know the answers.

This time the adults as well as the children tended to say they could solve more psychology questions on their own, compared with questions in the other sciences, and kids and adults estimated that more people knew the answers to the psychology questions. Remember these were psychology questions that adults had already rated as just as difficult and complex as questions in the other sciences. 'Such biases [towards seeing psychology as easy] may be observed when tasks do not so directly ask about difficulty of understanding and instead use measures such as ease of learning on one's own,' the researchers said.

Keil's team said their findings have real-life implications, for example in the court-room. 'If psychological phenomena are seen as usually quite easy to understand and largely self-evident and if such judgments are inaccurate and underestimate the need for experts,' they warned, 'cases might well be decided in ways that unfairly exclude valuable expert insights.'

In fact, the researchers pointed out that such situations have already occurred. In the US trial of former Presidential Assistant I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, for example, the judge disallowed the use of psychology experts on memory, on the basis that the jury could rely on their common sense understanding of memory. This is particularly ironic given that prior psychology research has shown that jurors and judges have a woefully poor understanding of how memory actually works.
_________________________________

Keil FC, Lockhart KL, & Schlegel E (2010). A bump on a bump? Emerging intuitions concerning the relative difficulty of the sciences. Journal of experimental psychology. General, 139 (1), 1-15 PMID: 20121309

Related article in The Psychologist magazine: 'Isn't it all just obvious?'

16th-month Diamond Earrings

Still suffering from jetlag.

Urgh.

Slept throughout the day today again. And eight hours in the day time yesterday.

Will resume travelogue entries soon. Hopefully. Pray hard for me.

I really hate jetlags.



In the mean time, I have some happy news to share. :D

Two weeks ago (before my flight to SA), I received my white valentines present from my baby on our 16th month anniversary dinner.

It's a pair of diamond earrings from him! ^^




*heartz*


Reason being he lost my valentines gift when he was visiting me over CNY in Bangkok, well, not really lost, but kinda got confiscated by the custom officers for bringing in a rare plant to the country.

Stupid officers. T_T

Now I will never see what kind of gift I would receive on my valentines.

Stupid stupid officers. Ruined my surprise.

He got fined for that too.

Sigh.

Sad.


After throwing (quite) a bit of tantrum for losing my gift (valentines is very very very important to me), and knowing that fact that I didn't receive any gift on our first year anniversary last year :((, I was feeling rather affected by the whole thing, emotionally wise (girls do what girls do best).

Afterall, I have nothing physical to commemorate these special days on - something a guy will NEVER understand.

*exhale loudly*


So I guess he tried to make it up to me on our 16th month.

What a weird day to commemorate on. -.-




But it's not how expensive the gift is, it's the thought and meaning behind it that counts.
(Though I'm not disagreeing that diamonds are really captivating)

Btw, baby drew this design himself. ^^


*muaks muaks* my cream puff!

Scary health messages can backfire

A short while ago there was a shocking advert on British TV that used slow motion to illustrate the bloody, crunching effects of a car crash. The driver had been drinking. Using these kind of scare tactics for anti drink-driving and other health issues makes intuitive sense. The campaigners want to grab your attention and demonstrate the seriousness of the consequences if their message is not heeded. However, a new study makes the surprising finding that for a portion of the population, scare tactics can back-fire, actually undermining a message's efficacy.

Steffen Nestler and Boris Egloff had 297 participants, 229 of them female, average age 35, read one of two versions of a fictional news report from a professional medical journal. The report referred to a study showing links between caffeine consumption and a fictional gastro-intestinal disease 'Xyelinenteritis'. One version was extra-scary, highlighting a link between Xyelinenteritis and cancer and saying that the participant's age group was particularly vulnerable. The other version was lower-key and lacked these two details. Both versions of the article concluded by recommending that readers reduce their caffeine consumption.

Before gauging the participants' reaction to the article and its advice, the researchers tested them on a measure of 'cognitive avoidance'. People who score highly on this personality dimension respond to threats with avoidance tactics such as distracting themselves, denying the threat or persuading themselves that they aren't vulnerable.

The key finding is that participants who scored high on cognitive avoidance actually rated the threat from Xyelinenteritis as less severe after reading the scary version of the report compared with the low-key version. Moreover, after reading the scary version, they were less impressed by the advice to reduce caffeine consumption and less likely to say that they planned to reduce their caffeine intake.

On the other hand, highly cognitive avoidant participants were more responsive to the low-key report than were the low cognitive avoidant participants. In other words, for people who are cognitively avoidant, scary health messages can actually back-fire.

'Practically, our results suggest that instead of giving all individuals the same threat communications, messages should be given that are concordant with their individual characteristics,' Nestler and Egloff said. 'Thus, the present findings are in line with the growing literature on tailoring intentions to individual characteristics, and they highlight the role of individual differences when scary messages are used.'
_________________________________

Nestler, S., & Egloff, B. (2010). When scary messages backfire: Influence of dispositional cognitive avoidance on the effectiveness of threat communications Journal of Research in Personality, 44 (1), 137-141 DOI: 10.1016/j.jrp.2009.10.007

Also on the Digest:
-Morbid warnings on cigarette packs could encourage some people to smoke.
-How to promote the MMR Vaccine.
-Public health leaflets ignore findings from health psychology.

Research Digest voted best psychology blog

I'm thrilled to announce that the Research Digest blog has been voted the best psychology blog in the inaugural Research Blogging Awards. My thanks to everyone who voted for the Digest, to the awards founder Dave Munger and the sponsors at Seed Magazine. Congratulations to the winners in the other categories, especially to Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science who won the overall research blog of the year.

The Digest blog is mentioned in this podcast about the awards.

Back from South Africa

I just got back from the most amazing trip in my life (I think, since I don't remember when was the last time I enjoyed so much on a trip).

South Africa you rocked!!!

Jetlag sucks, just took a shower after my second 4-hr nap of the day.

Never felt clean after a long deserving shower with my loofa. Oh yea~

Fresh!



Anyway, just a short quite update on South Africa, my article about it was published last saturday if you have yet to read it.

Read it here ->

http://thestar.com.my/metro/story.asp?file=/2010/3/27/central/5925621&sec=central


As for this great white shark photo:


Credit: Piyapong, the greatest photographer to travel with
(na, don't say I never credit you nowa)


Ok. Time to hunt for dinner. Ciao

Pray Hard

"News about Jesus spread far beyond the borders of Galilee so that the sick were soon coming to be healed from as far away as Syria. And whatever their illness and pain, or if they were possessed by demons, or were epileptics, or were paralyzed -- he healed them all." -- Matthew 4:24

What does it mean to pray hard? I'm actually puzzled by this statement, mostly because if you can "pray hard" then surely you can "pray harder" or maybe even you can "pray easy."

Let's look at healing. Do you find yourself praying harder for a serious condition like cancer and maybe not as hard for something like an ear infection? Since God is doing the healing, then why would one healing be more difficult than another? To quote Bob Hostetler, "there is no hard or harder with God."

Does our inconsistency in how we pray reveal that we think that one healing is harder than another? Do we believe that what Christ has done is enough or do we think that we must somehow add something to accomplish the healing? Do we doubt God’s willingness to heal? If we believe that Christ has already paid the price for healing, then a healing simply must be received by faith as a gift. We must learn to rest completely in the completed work of Christ and Christ’s revelation of the will of the Father to heal all who come to Him in childlike faith.

Now that was easy!

Large, longitudinal study finds tentative links between internet use and loneliness

Internet use is growing at a phenomenal rate and much ink has been spilled by commentators forecasting the psychological consequences of all this extra web-time. A lot of that comment is mere conjecture whilst many of the studies in the area are cross-sectional, with small samples, producing conflicting results. The latest research contribution comes from Irena Stepanikova and her colleagues and involves a massive sample, some of whom were followed over time. The results suggest that more time on the internet is associated with increased loneliness and reduced life satisfaction. However, it's a complicated picture because the researchers' different outcome measures produced mixed results.

Over thirteen thousand people answered questions about their internet use, loneliness and life satisfaction in 2004 and in 2005. They'd been chosen at random from a list of US land-line numbers. The majority of the people quizzed in 2004 were different from those quizzed in 2005, but 754 people participated in both phases, thus providing some crucial longitudinal data.

An important detail is that the researchers used two measures of internet use. The first 'time-diary' method required participants to consider six specific hours spread out over the previous day and to estimate how they'd spent their time during those hours. The other 'global recall' measure was more open-ended and required participants to consider the whole previous twenty-four hours and detail as best they could how they'd used that time.

The cross-sectional data showed that participants who reported spending more time browsing the web also tended to report being lonelier and being less satisfied with life. This association was larger for the time-diary measure. The strength of the association was modest, but to put it in perspective, it was five times greater than the (inverse) link between loneliness and amount of time spent with friends and family. Turning to web-communication, the global recall measures showed that time spent instant messaging, in chat rooms and news groups (but not email) was associated with higher loneliness scores. For the time-diary measure, it was increased email use that was linked with more loneliness.

The longitudinal data showed that as a person's web browsing increased from 2004 to 2005, their loneliness also tended to increase (based on the global recall measure only). Both measures showed that increased non-email forms of web communication, including chat rooms, also went hand in hand with increased loneliness. Finally, more web browsing over time was linked with reduced life satisfaction by the time-diary measure, whilst more non-email web communication over time was linked with reduced life satisfaction by the global recall measure.

Perhaps the most important message to come out of this research is that the results varied with the measure of internet use that was used - future researchers should note this. The other message is that more time browsing and communicating online appears to be linked with more loneliness, the two even increase together over time. However, it is important to appreciate that we don't know the direction of causation. Increased loneliness may well encourage people to spend more time online, rather than web time causing loneliness. Or some other factor could be causing both to rise in tandem. It's worth adding too that the web/loneliness link held even after controlling for time spent with friends and family. So if more web use were causing loneliness, it wasn't doing it by reducing time spent socialising face-to-face.

'We are hopeful that our study will stimulate future research ... ,' the researchers said, 'but at this point any claims suggesting that as Internet use continues to grow in the future, more people will experience loneliness and low life-satisfaction would be premature.'
_________________________________

Stepanikova, I., Nie, N., & He, X. (2010). Time on the Internet at home, loneliness, and life satisfaction: Evidence from panel time-diary data Computers in Human Behavior, 26 (3), 329-338 DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2009.11.002

Cookie goes Hiking

Beautiful view of Cape Town from Table Mountain.




Cookie: "I'm on top of the world! Wheee!"

This weekend at the Tasting Room...

Spring is finally here! And it definitely has felt like it over the past week. I hope everyone who made it to the St. Veronus Celebration enjoyed the beer – and the waffles! I apologize for the confusion in the newsletter last week regarding what day we'd have our special releases available. I hope everyone that wanted to try those beers got the chance! If not, you may still have the opportunity...

The Holiday Wine Cellar Imperial Porter will still be pouring this weekend. We also have a VERY LIMITED amount of Melange #3. If that's what you're after – come early!

This weekend we have one of our favorite food trucks stopping by to serve you some tasty snacks with your beer. Friday night Louk's Greek Gourmet to Go will be returning. A few weeks ago their truck was out of commission and we missed them, but they're back in business so come ready for some Greek grub!

This weekend we'll be pouring:

Orchard White (available for growler fills)

Rugbrød (available for growler fills)

Mischief

Melange No. Sechs (Reserve Society growler fills)

Saison Rue

Saison De Lente (Reserves Society growler fills)

Holiday Wine Cellar Imperial Porter w/Vanilla Bean & Bourbon Oak Cubes

Melange #3 (LIMITED!)

Hope to see you there!

Sorting

Jesus prayed:
"And I give myself entirely to you so they also might be entirely yours. I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me because of their testimony. My prayer for all of them is that they will be one, just as you and I are one, Father -- that just as you are in me and I am in you, so they will be in us, and the world will believe you sent me. I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are -- I in them and you in me, all being perfected into one. Then the world will know that you sent me and will understand that you love them as much as you love me." -- John 17:19-23, NLT

I recently listened to a podcast by Danny Silk and I had to laugh out loud when he began describing how he sorts out his M&M's by color before he eats them. I do the same thing! First I sort them into groups by color. Then I eat select M&M's from each pile until the piles contain the same number. After that, I eat my least favorite colors (bye bye red!). Before you call the OCD police, let me explain where I'm taking this. Sorting. We all do it. And sadly, we do a lot of it in the Body of Christ (think denominations). We like to sort. It helps us decide who's in our group and who's not. But Jesus prayed in John 17 that we would be ONE. There is no sorting in the number ONE. Can't be done. The Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) are ONE and that's God's desire for us. In fact, Jesus said that's how the world will know we belong to Him -- when we become ONE. I know I will never be able to eat M&M's again without remembering that Jesus prayed for us to be ONE.

Extras

Eye-catching studies that didn't make the final cut:

Many of us misunderstand mirrors.

How to Gain Eleven IQ Points in Ten Minutes: Thinking Aloud Improves Raven's Matrices Performance in Older Adults.

Well-Being Is Related to Having Less Small Talk and More Substantive Conversations.

Stress broadens men's sexual tastes.

Exposure to the letter 'F' impairs students' performance. The letter 'A' has the opposite effect.

Optimism boosts the immune system.

The adverse effects of using social norms in health communication.

Cameron's body language rated as more attractive and younger than Brown's.

We persist in putting men's names before women's.

Brain scan reads people's episodic memories.

Personality impressions associated with four distinct humor styles.

People act less altruistically and are more likely to cheat and steal after purchasing green products than after purchasing conventional products. [Open Access]

The multiple meanings of “neuro” in neuropsychology.

Last year, functional magnetic resonance imaging made its debut in court. Virginia Hughes asks whether the technique is ready to weigh in on the fate of murderers. [Open Access]

Moms do badly, but grandmas do worse: The nexus of sexism and ageism in children's classics.

Can't wait for the fortnightly round-up of 'Extras'? Several of these links appeared first on the editor's Twitter feed.

Cookie Eats

Having breakfast after a good night sleep.




Cookie: "Yummy. I love eggs and cherry tomatoes."

Time Machine

"Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits at God's right hand in the place of honor and power." -- Colossians 3:1

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever." -- Hebrews 13:8

I am constantly looking for anything to help train me to pray for the sick. Books, teaching tapes, articles, etc.... I'm intrigued by what everyone has to say. But, the Word of God should always be the beginning and our default position. In some ways we need to get in a time machine and go "back to the future." Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and he healed ALL who came to him. No exceptions.

It might be helpful to picture a time machine when praying for someone's healing. If I inwardly remind myself that if that person standing before me were able to get into a time machine and go back to one of the healing events described in the New Testament that Christ would heal them. He healed all who came to Him. The person I am praying for is coming to Jesus in the same way. They are demonstrating simple faith by asking for prayer. Nothing has changed. The very same Jesus in those events 2000 years ago is seated at the right hand of God. Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever! Amen.

A social version of a basic cognitive mechanism

We're slower to direct our attention to the same location twice in succession, a well-established phenomenon that cognitive psychologists call 'inhibition of return' (IoR). It's thought the mechanism may act to make our search of the visual scene more efficient by deterring us from looking at the same spot twice. Now Paul Skarratt and his colleagues have documented a new 'social' form of inhibition of return, in which people are slower to attend to a location that social cues, such as gaze direction, suggest another person has already attended to.

Twelve participants sat at a table with an animated character projected opposite. Each participant and their animated partner had two lights and two buttons in front of them, near the middle of the table (see figure above). One light/button pair was to the left, the other pair was to the right. The basic task was to press the corresponding button as fast as possible when its light came on. Participants were slower to respond to a light when the animated partner had just responded to the adjacent light on their side of the table - this is what you might call a weak version of social inhibition of return. However, when two large vertical barriers were put up with a gap in the middle, so that the participants could only see their partner's eyes and initial reaching action, and not their actual button presses, this social IoR disappeared.

In a second experiment, the animated partner was replaced with a human. This time, the social IoR effect occurred even when the barriers were erected and only the partner's eye gaze and initial hand movement could be seen. In other words, inferences about where the partner was going to attend, based on their eyes or early hand movement, seemed to be enough to inhibit a participant's own attention to the same location. For some reason, this strong version of social IoR only occurred with a real, human partner, not the animated, computer-controlled partner of the first experiment.

The final experiment added yet another visual barrier, which left only the partner's eyes or only their early hand movement visible. This was to try to establish which cue was the more important for provoking social IoR. The answer was that both cues were equally effective.

It's only supposition at this stage, but Skarratt and his team think social IoR could be supported by the postulated mirror neuron system. Monkey research has shown, for example, that there are mirror neurons in the premotor cortex that fire whether a monkey sees another person grasp an object or if they just see the initial part of that grasping movement.

'Although the critical mechanisms underlying social IoR remain to be discovered,' the researchers said, 'the current study indicates that it can be generated independently of direct sensory stimulation normally associated with IoR, and can occur instead on the basis of an inference of another person's behaviour.'
_________________________________

Skarratt, P., Cole, G., & Kingstone, A. (2010). Social inhibition of return. Acta Psychologica, 134 (1), 48-54 DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2009.12.003

Figure courtesy of Paul Skarratt.

Where is Cookie?

Cookie: "Sigh.. travelling is so tiring. I hate long-hauled flights. Need my beauty sleep."

A Noble Cause

Have you ever petitioned God for a "noble cause"? Or pleaded for someone's healing by reminding God that this person has small children at home or that they're a good person? To some degree I think we all have. We sometimes forget that Jesus Christ himself already became the noble cause for us.

I love the scene in the movie, Princess Bride, where Inigo and Fezzik take Westley to Miracle Max. (In my opinion, it's one of the greatest scenes in the movie.) Inigo and Fezzik are in a "terrible rush" to get Westley revived so they can storm the castle and rescue Buttercup.

Here's the brief exchange:
MIRACLE MAX: "Don't rush me, sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles. You got money?"
INIGO: "Sixty-five."
MIRACLE MAX: "Sheesh! I never worked for so little, except once, and that was a very noble cause."
INIGO: "This is noble, sir."(pointing to Westley)"His wife is crippled. His children are on the brink of starvation."
MIRACLE MAX: "Are you a rotten liar."
INIGO: "I need him to help avenge my father, murdered these twenty years."
MIRACLE MAX: "Your first story was better."

Roger Sapp (in "Healing Hints) presents it this way: "Occasionally someone will try to receive healing by presenting what appears to be a noble purpose in their healing. They may want to raise their children. They may want to "glorify God" in their healing. While sounding noble, these people are often unable to receive healing until they simplify their motives and simply accept that Christ wants them well. Often these "higher purposes" for their healing reveal that they do not really believe that Christ wishes them well simply because they are sick and in pain. Jesus Christ never had complex responses for hurting people. When the sick came to Him, He felt compassion for them and that compassion was enough to motivate Him to heal them. The people coming to Him did not need a noble purpose to receive healing. God is glorified in Christ's simple but profound love and ministry to hurting people."

Familiarity

"When Jesus had finished telling these stories, he left that part of the country. He returned to Nazareth, his hometown. When he taught there in the synagogue, everyone was astonished and said, "Where does he get his wisdom and his miracles? He's just a carpenter's son, and we know Mary, his mother, and his brothers -- James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas. All his sisters live right here among us. What makes him so great?" And they were deeply offended and refused to believe in him. Then Jesus told them, "A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his own family. "And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith. -- Matthew 13:53-58

It has been said that "familiarity breeds contempt." I would like to discuss this phrase as it applies to the Matthew 13 passage above. We are told in Acts 10:38 that "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and he [Jesus] went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him." Jesus did great works everywhere he went but we see that when he returned to his hometown the people were deeply offended and refused to believe him. Why is that? And what can we learn from this?

It is often human nature to not respect someone (or the anointing on their life) when we know them well enough to know their faults, their family, or their history. Most people who answer the call of God on their life do not answer it at infancy. Therefore, and in some cases, that call comes only after many years of working it out, making mistakes, and growing up. Those years are riddled with mistakes and bad choices that are well known to those closest to them.

Fortunately for us, God equips the called and he is the one most familiar with our frame. He doesn't wait until we've grown up in the faith to start using us. God will always supply the anointing to accomplish the call on our life. If, for example, we have a call to perform miracles, they will most often (but not always) be best received by those not familiar with us. Our family members and even our closest friends may not recognize the very anointing that God has put right in front of them because it looks like "us." It's too familiar and it weakens their faith. Even Jesus did not perform many miracles in his own hometown because the people did not have faith. They knew Jesus' family and they knew him to be a carpenter's son.

I've heard stories of incredibly gifted evangelists who've seen thousands saved and yet their own family members won't listen to a word they preach. Or what about the miracle worker who God has used to heal and deliver hundreds from illness and yet their family members are stricken with all sorts of diseases? Let's not discount the familiar because that "familiar" person may just be the one God put in your life to carry the anointing you need for your situation.

The sight of their own blood is important to some people who self-harm

The sight of their own blood plays a key role in the comfort that some non-suicidal people find in deliberately cutting themselves. That's according to a new study by Catherine Glenn and David Klonsky that suggests it is those self-harmers who have more serious psychological problems who are more likely to say the sight of blood is important.

There are plenty of anecdotal reports hinting at the importance of the sight and taste of blood to self-harmers, as well as references in popular music. 'Yeah you bleed just to know you're alive,' sing the Goo Goo dolls in Iris. 'I think it's time to bleed I'm gonna cut myself and Watch the blood hit the ground,' sings Korn on Right Now. However, this is the first systematic investigation on the topic.

Glenn and Klonsky recruited 64 self-harmers from a mass screening of 1,100 new psychology students. With an average age of 19, and 82 per cent being female, the students answered questions about their self-harming and other psychological problems and specifically reported on the importance of the sight of blood.

Just over half the participants said that it was important to see blood when they self-harmed, with the most common explanation being that it helps relieve tension and induces calmness. Other explanations were that it 'makes me feel real' and shows that 'I did it right/deep enough'.

The participants who said blood was important didn't differ in terms of age and gender from those who said it wasn't. However, the blood-important group reported cutting themselves far more often (a median of 30 times compared with 4 times) and they were more likely to say they self-harmed as a way of regulating their own emotions. The blood-important group also reported more symptoms consistent with bulimia nervosa and borderline personality disorder.

'Overall, these results suggest that self-injurers who report it is important to see blood are a more clinically severe group of skin-cutters,' the researchers said. 'Therefore, a desire to see blood during non-suicidal self-injury may represent a marker for increased psychopathology.'

Glenn and Klonsky said more research was needed to find out why the sight of blood has the significance it does for some people who self-harm. However, they surmised that the sight of one's own blood could, after an initial rise in heart-rate, lead to a rebound effect characterised by reduced heart-rate and feelings of calmness.
_________________________________

Glenn, C., & Klonsky, E. (2010). The Role of seeing blood in non-suicidal self-injury. Journal of Clinical Psychology DOI: 10.1002/jclp.20661

Cookie Travels

I've created a flickr photo set for Cookie, called Cookie Travels.

First of many to come...





Cookie: "Boarding on SIA flight to Cape Town, South Africa in three hours time. Bai Bai Everybody!"

Eye of the Needle

"Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." -- Luke 18:25, NIV

If we're going to have riches we will have to stay on our knees! This passage speaks of a gate in Jerusalem called the eye of the needle. When I was young I thought it referred to the eye of a sewing needle. There is no way anything could pass through that kind of needle (except, of course, a piece of thread). A camel could not pass through this gate unless it stooped and had all its baggage removed. After dark, when the main gates were shut, travelers or merchants would have to use this smaller gate, and then the camel could only enter unencumbered and crawling on its knees!

We need riches because as Joyce Meyer always says, "Ministry is expensive." God blesses us so that we can partner with him in ministry, not so we can stock all our barns with stuff. Riches won't keep you from entering the kingdom of God, but the love of them might. :)

My New Set of Nails

Camwhore session!




I managed to take several close up photos of my new set of nails.




It's been a while since I started doing nail art again. Few years back when I had a full time job and a fix salary, I was spending a good RM300 every month just to get my nails done, that's two sets of nails per month, or one session every two weeks.




There's something about owning a set of pretty nails that shouts: "I'm high maintenance, beautiful and confident!"

It's like wearing sexy matching underwater and bra, no one can really see it but it's how it made you feel as a person.

Sexy, sophisticated and confident.

Or somewhat.

Besides, it's fun. It's like choosing what earrings to wear everyday, instead, you choose what your nails wear every two weeks or so.




I was having french manicure for two months before I decided it was time to go back to the nail art craze, since I won't be seeing myself going into any formal job application anytime soon.

For this set I got my nail artist to put on some lace on my nails and she did up pretty nicely on the 3D flowers with some crystals on it.




Currently she's working on a set of new nails for me. Can't wait for my new set of nails.

I decided not to have the nail art done directly onto my nails, which I used to do, because I couldn't be bothered to sit through two hours in the parlour waiting for my nails to dry. So I got her to do up a new set every time I visit her and put it on straight once it's done.




Which means not far from now, I'm going to have a whole collections of nails I can use whenever I wish all stacked up nicely in my wardrobe, an addition to the 4657 necklaces and earrings I have at home. Wooo!

A different set of nails for different occasion.




Now that's fun. Hehehe....




I know I know. Girls have a weird sense for the term Fun.

How to give advice

Information, information, information. That's the message from one of the first studies to look at people's preferences for different forms of advice. Reeshad Dalal and Silvia Bonaccio presented hundreds of students with fictional decision-making scenarios, such as choosing which job to apply for. The students were offered various permutations of advice and asked to say how satisfied they'd be if a friend had given them that advice. The different kinds of advice were: which option to go for; which option not to go for; info on how to make the decision (e.g. use a points allocation system); information on one or more of the options; and sympathy about the difficulty of making a decision. Whilst all forms of advice were positively received, the students' consistent preference was for information about one or more of the options.

A second study spiced things up by introducing more varied decision-making scenarios: where to locate a new store; how to lay off excess staff; and how to invest some inheritance. A fresh batch of students were presented with the new scenarios and this time they were to imagine they'd solicited the advice from an expert, rather than a friend, to see if this made any difference to their responses. Information again came out as the most preferred form of advice. However, this time round, specific advice on which option to go for was also particularly well received, especially in the investment scenario.

The researchers said past research on advice giving has tended to focus purely on advice in the form of 'I recommend option X', so this study makes a novel contribution. 'Across the situational and dispositional variables we examined, decision-makers appeared to want their advisors to provide information about the alternatives,' the researchers said. Advice that says 'go for option X' can also be well-received but only in specific circumstances, such as when advice has been explicitly solicited from an expert.

When it comes to lessons for real life, Dalal and Bonaccio said more research was needed to see how their results generalise, but in the meantime they advised: 'Individuals who are advising decision-makers should at the very least be careful to provide information along with their recommendations.'
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Dalal, R., & Bonaccio, S. (2010). What types of advice do decision-makers prefer? Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2009.11.007

Related Digest item: 'We're more likely to listen to expensive advice'.

A Thousand Generations

“You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand [generations] of those who love me and keep my commandments.” (Exodus 20:4-6)

Have you ever thought about four generations versus a thousand generations? In four generations, you have thirty ancestors, and in ten generations you have 2,046. God says if we love Him and keep His commandments He will show love to a thousand generations. Wow! Can you wrap your head around that? What we do today will impact many generations to come. Never underestimate the obedience of one life.

The Special Issue Spotter

We trawl the world's journals so you don't have to:

The Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging (Cortex).

Emotional States, Attention, and Working Memory (Cognition and Emotion). [Includes free intro]

Social Anxiety in Childhood: Bridging Developmental and Clinical Perspectives (New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development).

Emotional intelligence (Australian Journal of Psychology).

Celebrating 25 years of the journal Sexual and Relationship Therapy (Sexual and Relationship Therapy).

Angel's Window

Last post we were on our way to Angel's Window - a dive site discovered and named after my dive guide, Angel.




Why is it called Angel's Window? Let's find out.




Diving in Lembeh was a whole new experience compared to all my previous dives in this region (well, I only ever dived in this region).




Firstly, the marine lives I encountered here were different.

Like this crazy colored fish.




Just kidding. I edited that one from the feisty clown fish.


But on the more blurred note, it was my first time coming across a ghost pipefish.


so blurry, like a ghost.


It was tiny and with the digital compact I have, it was difficult to capture from a distance without scaring it away.

But basically it looks pretty much like this up close.


taken off the internet


Quirky right?

They always swim with their heads down.

Cardinal fish are among the rarer fish I came about.


little nemo hiding among the soft coral


Then there's sweetlips, quite a few of them on this one single dive.

These little cuties are TINY.




And they get tinier each time I spotted one.




The third one I found was so tiny, I thought it was a speck of dust fluttering with the current on the seabed. It took the dive guide exactly 10 minutes and 10 cm distance to convince me there was something there, and another 10 minutes it convince me it wasn't a plankton. @_@

Obviously something so small couldn't be captured by a petty camera.


It likes to flutter like a butterfly, really cute, and from a respectable distance, you wouldn't know how the fish really looks like with all that fluttering.

But this is how it looks like if you use a macro up close.




Pretty ain't it?


Now let's play photo treasure hunt.

Do you see any live organism in this photo?


apart from the corals, of course



Anything? Found it? No? Yes?



Well, here's the answer.







Ta-da! Coral shrimp.




This bugger kept running underneath the coral when I was trying to take a photo of it. Hold still you!!


Then there was my favourite fish diving in Lembeh.

First time encountering a Leaffish!




Leaffish, in my opinion, is the most mesmerizing beautiful fish ever.




This particular white leaffish was so serene and settled that it allowed me to get really up close to it to take these two rather close up shots.
(keep in mind I'm using a digital compact in this, so in order to have this shot, I was REALLY close to the fish, like in-your-face kinda close)

I was tempted to hold my breath taking these shots but we all know photographing divers shouldn't do that.


Oh look, scorpion fish.




Such a big difference from the beautiful leaffish. This fish looks kinda delicious. Yum.*cough*


Oh, look at the time...




I mean gauge. Not much oxygen left.

Let's move on quickly to our main topic here shall we?


Now in order to know the true beauty of Angel's Window, watch this video.







That's right.

The dive site Angel's Window consists of two natural cave-like "windows" that divers can swim through. It's like a little wonderland underwater.




It's quite fun actually, going around, down and through circles and holes. It's the perfect place to play hide and seek, underwater style (I wonder if divers here have ever done that before on their leisure time).

On second thought, it could get pretty scary getting lost here.


Moving onto the last chapter of this entry.


I want to show you a little collection of nudibranch photos I took on my first day of diving.




The owner of the lodge I was staying in showed me his collection of nudi branch photos, being an underwater photographer himself, his pro pics of these underwater slugs got me really enticed in the vast variety of the species.

On occasions, I saw one or two not-so-pretty nudibranch here and there.

But more often that not, I would come across cute flabby ones like this.




Or really pretty ones like these.




This is my favourite shot of all nudibranch's I have.

Not only were they colorful, they have this fake coral on their backs as they slide through the corals and stones to act as a camouflage.




Don't you think they look like two mini-cows with horns on the run (a slow run, ok that's cold).




Photo Treasure Hunt number 2.




Spot the marine inside.



Can you see a nudibranch hanging off at the side?




Some of these nudibranch have hairy tentacles all over them that they look just like part of the coral.




This one's not poisonous so it won't harm you if you brush over its back to feel the tentacles, though I strongly not recommend you to touch simply if you're not familiar with a certain creature's nature and characteristic.




They're pretty aren't they?

I think I'm beginning to form an adoration toward nudibranch. :)