Hurricane Irene

"The men were amazed and asked, "What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!" -- Matthew 8:27

Today's prayer: "Father, the winds and waves obey your voice. Please speak peace to this storm and to all in its path. Amen."

Theatre / Dance show: Miles Ahead at the Cochrane Theatre, Southampton Row

The first thing I notice about this production is the classy band, led by Paul Jenkins (MD/Tpt/Flugel), and consisting of Julian Siegel (Tenor Sax) , Nathaniel Facey (Alto Sax), Martin Shaw (Tpt), Graham Harvey (Piano), Oroh Angiama (Bass), Shane Forbes (Drums) and  Jo Caleb (Guitar).

On Friday 16th and Saturday 17th September there are four performances of Miles Ahead at 3pm and 8pm on each of the two days at the Cochrane Theatre in Southampton Row WC1.

Miles Ahead consists of two shows which also include dancers (what follows is repoduced blurb from HERE )

- FOOTPRINTS IN JAZZ a suite of contemporary jazz dance pieces captures the individual human spirit and collective creative expression that reflects the essence of jazz. Original jazz compositions by Paul Jenkins, creates the perfect musical partnership for captivating jazz dance staged and choreographed by Dollie Henry. Inspiring dance, music and theatrical flair effortlessly infuses the soul and passion of the jazz art form.

-TOUCHES OF MILES pays homage to the life and music of jazz Trumpeter & Composer - Miles Davis in celebration of his 85th Anniversary. This original jazz theatre creation brings to the stage riveting live jazz music with a selection of Miles' classic compositions including; All Blues, So What, Tutu, Milestones, Seven Steps, Aranjuez and lays the canvas for enthralling jazz dance that colourfully weaves through each variation of the music capturing the cool and enigmatic style reminiscent of a true jazz legend."

Small venue licensing: "Frustration levels beginning to rise again."

Feargal Sharkey, Chief Executive of UK Music, who has taken a leading and very public role in the music licensing debate is sounding a note of caution in an interview published today. Interviewed by the Morning Advertiser he says:

Things have been in purgatory lately. There are promises and reassuring comments being made by Government, but I can’t see much evidence of anything being impacted yet. It’s not to say that it won’t happen, but I think there are frustration levels that I can feel beginning to rise again. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has repeated the ambition of the coalition to reduce the red tape and the bureaucracy that is associated with live music, and perhaps it’s now time to start delivering on those commitments.

We’ve made it perfectly clear from the beginning that we cannot see any reason to waylay music while we wait for the Licensing Act. We don’t think that live music, overall, should have anything to do with the Licensing Act whatsoever.

In terms of the smaller premises, we’re somewhat confused and bewildered that anybody thinks that regulating those kind of small-scale venues and pubs is either reasonable, necessary or, indeed, proportionate."

Background: The Live Music Bill is due to go to the report stage in September, and be voted on in the House of Commons in the spring. There is supposed to be a consultation exercise under way (I make that consultation number 12 or possibly 13, we'v e kinda been here before....), but Sharkey is clearly sensing that things are coming unstuck..... 

Most recent statements from the ministers Hunt and Penrose in the summer have been supportive of the bill. Penrose said  in an interview in May:

 'Live entertainment is a good thing. It improves our cultural life, provides enormous pleasure for millions and should be encouraged, not stifled by the clammy hand of bureaucracy. The current regime makes it harder for new talent to get a chance to perform in front of audiences, imposes a deadweight cost on small businesses and voluntary bodies who want to put on shows, and in a small but significant way, reduces our free speech. As long as we have proper controls on alcohol, and spectator safety and noise nuisance are controlled, the rest is mostly bonkers red tape, and it’s time we consigned it to the bin.'

Let's hope that this process isn't coming off the rails yet again, and that a DCMS minister will get up on his hind legs and confirm that it isn't.

Full text of the  Morning Advertiser interview

Feast

Our round-up of the latest juicy tit-bits from the world of psychology:

The problem with twin studies (via @mrianleslie). A tendentious view from Slate magazine. For an alternative view, check out the Digest's own guest post on "Why psychologists study twins".

The latest issue of The Psychologist magazine is out now, is open access, and has a special focus on Milgram's classic obedience studies. There's also a feature on the psychology of better meetings, and much more.

Also, on Milgram - check out this original 1974 Psychology Today interview with Milgram by Carol Tavris.

Free book chapter from The Analysis of Failure: An Investigation of Failed Cases in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. Further info.

New Scientist has a special feature on animal senses.

Cognopedia is a free online brain and cognition encyclopedia. Via @mocost

26 days left to watch the latest episode of Horizon on how the first 9 months of our lives (in the womb) have a far reaching influence on our health and personalities.

The excellent series of "Out of Mind" columns for Prospect magazine, by neuropsychologist Paul Broks, are now free to access and come highly recommended. "Alternately whimsical, profound and poetic, [the column] recounted ephemeral scenes from meetings with brain altered individuals and spun them into reflections on the science and philosophy of human nature," says @vaughanbell, also rather poetically.

New book: "Brain Culture: Neuroscience and Popular Media" by Davi Thornton.

Confidence intervals made easy. Ben Goldacre makes stats accessible in a column about the media reporting of unemployment stats. Tim Harford replies (and there's a comment from Ben lower down).

Guardian research suggests Twitter used mainly to react to, rather than orchestrate, the recent English riots.

BBC Radio Four's Material World had a segment on time perception (from 11 minutes in, although it felt longer).

Reports and news from the Association for Psychological Science's recent annual convention.

Get your diaries out: 12 September, Charles Fernyhough, novelist and psychologist, is speaking at the School of Life about memory; 17 Nov Catherine Loveday, neuropsychologist, is giving an open lecture at Uni of Westminster on the brain and music.

Our off-spring title The BPS Occupational Digest has an interesting post on how work technology at home can make it more difficult to unplug psychologically from the office.

Important articles from the 100-year archive of the British Journal of Psychology made free to access.

The latest edition of Head to Head on BBC Radio Four revisited a debate between B F Skinner and Donald Mackay on the question of free will and social control. Contemporary psychologists reflect on the classic debate. via @BPSOfficial

5 "Mindshifting talks on happiness" from TED.

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That's all folks. If you prefer your psychology news on the fly, follow @researchdigest. For links to eye-catching studies that we didn't have time to Digest for you, go to Extras; for links to the latest journal special issues in psychology, try our aptly named Special Issue Spotter. 

Prolific gossipers are disliked and seen as weak

Gossip might be the social glue that binds us, but prolific proponents of tittle-tattle should beware - gossipers are perceived not just as unlikeable but also as lacking social influence.

Sally Farley made her finding after asking 128 participants (mostly female students) to think of someone they knew, who either did or didn't gossip a lot, and to rate that person for likeability and social influence, plus there were 21 other distracter items. To further conceal the true aims of the study, the actual word "gossip" was never used. Instead, participants were told the research was about "informal communication" and the specific instruction was to think of someone who "spent a lot of time (or little time) talking about other people when they were not around". Among those participants asked to imagine a gossiper, a further detail was to imagine someone who either said negative things or positive things about people in their absence.

Prolific gossipers were liked less than non-gossipers, and negative gossipers were liked least of all. On a 13-item liking scale, with each item scored between 1 and 9, the negative gossipers averaged 37 points, the non-gossipers averaged 47. Moreover, prolific gossipers were perceived as less socially powerful than non-gossipers, especially if they were negative gossipers.

These findings actually contradict some prior research showing, for example, that it is girls with more friends who are more likely to gossip. The anthropologist Robin Dunbar has even likened gossiping to the mutual grooming performed by non-human primates, with both activities serving to enhance social bonds. "Perhaps high gossipers are individuals who we welcome into our social networks for fear of losing the opportunity to learn information, but we tend to keep them at arms length," Farley said, attempting to reconcile her results with this earlier research. Another possibility is that the relationship between gossiping and social power is curvilinear, with low and high levels harming one's social status, but the act of moderate gossiping attracting more favourable judgements.  Unfortunately, the current study only asked participants to imagine high and low gossipers.

Another related line of research has documented a common-sense effect known as "the transfer of attitudes recursively", which simply put has found that people who say nice things about others in their absence are judged as more likeable, whereas those who slag people off behind their backs are judged more harshly. The current study effectively extends this to show that negative gossipers are not only disliked, but also seen as socially weak.

"Despite the shortcomings of the present study, it represents one of a few empirical investigations into how gossipers are perceived by others," Farley concluded. "Future research should consider other important moderators of gossip such as inclusion in the gossip, topic of the gossip, and motivations for gossip (group-serving versus self-serving)."
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Farley, S. (2011). Is gossip power? The inverse relationships between gossip, power, and likability. European Journal of Social Psychology, 41 (5), 574-579 DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.821

Previously on the Digest: How our visual system is guided by gossip radar.

This post was written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.