“Videri quam esse” (“To seem to be, rather than to be”)
I'm strange but i like to be a good strange, My name is Clarence, born in 1988, Pisces and I'm a student of Sociology and the child of the internet. I usually feel like my life has no meaning and i want to die but sometimes it seems like life is worth living for and i love everything in it. If it seems odd to read think what it might be like living it. I like reading philosophy, fiction and tech news.
This Blog is where i collect all the the weird and interesting links from around the net, its not meant to be that serious and just fun. If you stop by here you can enjoy comics, tech, current events, sociology, a little pornography (or erotica if you prefer to call it that) and more weird stuff. Please feel free to tell he what you like and dislike about the site and more of what you want to see.
Please feel free to talk to me by letter in my ask or by following me on other social networks but please just throw me a message WHO YOU ARE.
By the By it goes without saying you should make sure children don't read most of this.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
We are all susceptible to the hindsight bias, which refers to our tendency to overestimate our powers of prediction once we know the outcome of given event. For example, research has shown that on the day after an election, when people are asked which candidates they would have picked to win, they almost always believe they would have picked the actual winners- even though the day before the election, their predictions wouldn’t have been nearly as accurate.
Elliot Aronson in The Social Animal (via psychologicalsnippets)
Social Psychology Basics
Our perception of ourselves in relation to the rest of the world plays an important role in our choices, behaviors, and beliefs. Conversely, the opinions of others also impact our behavior and the way we view ourselves. Social psychology is a branch of psychology concerned with how social phenomena influence us and how people interact with others. There are some basic aspects of social behavior that play a large role in our actions and how we see ourselves.
- Social behavior is goal-oriented. Our interactions function to serve a goal or fulfill a need. Some common goals or needs include the need for social ties, the desire to understand ourselves and others, the wish to gain or maintain status or protection, and to attract companions.
- The interaction between the individual and the situation determines the outcome. In many instances, people behavior very differently in various situations. The situation plays an important role and has a strong influence on our behavior.
- People spend a great deal of time considering social situations. Our social interactions help form our self-concept and perception.
One method of forming self-concept is through a reflected appraisal process in which we imagine how other people see us. Another method is through a social comparison process whereby we consider how we compare to other people in our peer group.- We also analyze and explain the behavior of those around us. One common phenomenon is expectation confirmation, where we tend to ignore unexpected attributes and look for evidence that confirms our preexisting beliefs about others. This helps simplify our worldview, but it also skews our perception and can contribute to stereotyping.
- Another influence on our perceptions of other people can be explained by the theory of correspondent inferences. This occurs when we infer that the actions and behaviors of others correspond to their intentions and personalities. While behavior can be informative in some instances, especially when the person’s actions are intentional, it can also be misleading. If we have limited interaction with someone, the behavior we see may be atypical or caused by the specific situation rather than by the persons overriding dispositional characteristics.
Studying social psychology can enrich our understanding of ourselves and of the world around us. (Source)
Tai's Psychology Blog: Social Identity Theory
History and Orientation
Social Identity Theory was developed by Tajfel and Turner in 1979. The theory was originally developed to understand the psychological basis of intergroup discrimination. Tajfel et al (1971) attempted to identify the minimal conditions that would lead…
(Source: utwente.nl)
Catching emotions from others
Emotion can spread rapidly through large crowds, as the massive social proof leads us into extreme states. This explains much of crowd behavior, where ‘normal’ people act in ways they may later deeply regret.
Social contagion effects can also occur when people believe they have been infected by a disease. As more people show the (psychosomatic) symptoms, this is taken as proof that ‘I am bound to get it’. Source