I’ve been thinking that it’s really interesting that, at least in the Sherlock fandom, there are two aesthetics of how we, broadly speaking, relate to Benedict Cumberbatch vs Martin Freeman.
Now, I know not all of us think of things this way, but the concept is out there; the idea of these actors as, ‘daddy’, and, ‘son’. The thing I find fascinating is that each fandom (if we were to pretend they’re discrete groups) has an aesthetic that seems to follow from the relationship it implies between the actors and the fans.
A psychologist walked around a room while teaching stress management to an audience. As she raised a glass of water, everyone expected they’d be asked the “half empty or half full” question. Instead, with a smile on her face, she inquired: “How heavy is this glass of water?”
Answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz.
She replied, “The absolute weight doesn’t matter. It depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, it’s not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my arm. If I hold it for a day, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn’t change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.”
She continued, “The stresses and worries in life are like that glass of water. Think about them for a while and nothing happens. Think about them a bit longer and they begin to hurt. And if you think about them all day long, you will feel paralyzed – incapable of doing anything.”
Remember to put the glass down.
“Particularly prone to serious procrastination problems are children who grew up with unusually high expectations placed on them…or else they exhibited exceptional talents early on, and thereafter “average” performances were met with concern and suspicion from parents and teachers.”
Holy SHIT
WELL THEN
Yep.
They actually tested me for a learning disability in high school because I was consistently failing math.
They discovered that I actually scored in the 80th percentile in that sort of learning.
Problem was, in every other subject, I was in the 99.8th percentile.
I had never learned how to study because I never needed to—and then, when something proved to be even the slightest bit challenging, my brain went
“LOL nope this is impossible abort”
Meanwhile, this entire time I’m scraping by in subjects like English. The assignments I did turn in, I’d score top marks—but I’d avoid turning in projects I didn’t think were “good” enough.
Essentially, my brain had two settings: “100%” or “0%”.
This sort of Baby Genius shit makes kids and adolescents neurotic and self-destructive.
Your professor will not be happy with you if he says the Stanford Prison Experiment shows human nature and you say it shows the nature of white middle class college-aged boys.
Like he will not be happy at all.
In an experiment revealing the importance of having friendships, social psychologists have found that perceptions of task difficulty are significantly shaped by the proximity of a friend.
In their experimental design, the researchers asked college students to stand at the base of a hill while carrying a weighted backpack and to estimate the steepness of a hill. Some participants stood next to close friends whom they had known a long time, some stood next to friends they had not known for long, and the rest stood alone during the exercise. The students who stood with friends gave significantly lower estimates of the steepness of the hill than those who stood alone. Furthermore, the longer the close friends had known each other, the less steep the hill appeared to the participants involved in the study.
In other words, the world looks less difficult when standing next to a close friend.
my new favorite psychological study, done by Schnall, Harber, Stefanucci, and Proffitt and published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
(via prosetintmyworld)
The study in question is “Social Support and the Perception of Geographical Slant” and was published in September 2008; you can read it here.
(via tygermama)