May 26, 2016 09:14 PM
Robot trust study
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brie...ust-study/
EXCERPT: Granting an unknown person access to a building was a humorous premise for a Seinfeld episode, but the decision to trust a stranger reveals insights into human psychology and touches on broader issues of trust in society. But what if, instead of a human, a robot knocked at your door? It’s a question that Harvard University senior Serena Booth set out to answer with the help of a small, wheeled robot — well, more like a roving nightstand — that she stationed at the entrances to several dorms on campus. And as it turns out, we tend to place more trust in a robot if it looks like it has a job to do....
Why a well crafted melody has the power to colonise your mind
https://aeon.co/ideas/why-a-well-crafted...-your-mind
EXCERPT: [...] Advertising jingles work because music is powerful. Note that those advertising jingles that assaulted me in the supermarket were decades old and yet still had the power to shape my thoughts and behaviour. There is no escaping commercial uses of music to shape our behaviours, it seems. Advertisers understand that music is an extraordinarily effective means to implant messages in consumers’ minds that can and do reverberate and even shape behaviour for decades.
Although we can regularly screen out the thoughts, sounds, images, memories, opinions and ideas of others as foreign and potentially noxious, it ain’t the same with music. If one of those ‘foreign’ messages gets packaged into a catchy melody or a well-crafted song, we not only let the message in and take it to heart, we might end up constantly repeating it and go searching for more of the same! The well-crafted melody or song is an extremely powerful way to colonise or influence other minds. While most of us can resist this mind control when it comes in the form of speeches, tracts, newspapers and blogs, we have much less power when that message comes as a song or a jingle. Music, like religion, may be a prime example of one of Dawkins’ postulated ‘memes’ – those informational replicators that use our minds to propagate themselves regardless of the fitness consequences for us. Why is music so powerful?...
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brie...ust-study/
EXCERPT: Granting an unknown person access to a building was a humorous premise for a Seinfeld episode, but the decision to trust a stranger reveals insights into human psychology and touches on broader issues of trust in society. But what if, instead of a human, a robot knocked at your door? It’s a question that Harvard University senior Serena Booth set out to answer with the help of a small, wheeled robot — well, more like a roving nightstand — that she stationed at the entrances to several dorms on campus. And as it turns out, we tend to place more trust in a robot if it looks like it has a job to do....
Why a well crafted melody has the power to colonise your mind
https://aeon.co/ideas/why-a-well-crafted...-your-mind
EXCERPT: [...] Advertising jingles work because music is powerful. Note that those advertising jingles that assaulted me in the supermarket were decades old and yet still had the power to shape my thoughts and behaviour. There is no escaping commercial uses of music to shape our behaviours, it seems. Advertisers understand that music is an extraordinarily effective means to implant messages in consumers’ minds that can and do reverberate and even shape behaviour for decades.
Although we can regularly screen out the thoughts, sounds, images, memories, opinions and ideas of others as foreign and potentially noxious, it ain’t the same with music. If one of those ‘foreign’ messages gets packaged into a catchy melody or a well-crafted song, we not only let the message in and take it to heart, we might end up constantly repeating it and go searching for more of the same! The well-crafted melody or song is an extremely powerful way to colonise or influence other minds. While most of us can resist this mind control when it comes in the form of speeches, tracts, newspapers and blogs, we have much less power when that message comes as a song or a jingle. Music, like religion, may be a prime example of one of Dawkins’ postulated ‘memes’ – those informational replicators that use our minds to propagate themselves regardless of the fitness consequences for us. Why is music so powerful?...