Recently in Psychology Category
According to a chapter in the forthcoming book, The American University in a Postsecular Age, about the secularization of universities in America, professors in American institutions aren't nearly as anti-God as they're often portrayed. Make no mistake, as a group professors are more atheistic/agnostic than the American public, but the numbers aren't terribly lopsided. According to the chapter in the book by Gross and Simmons, their survey found 23.4% of professors are atheist or agnostic, compared to roughly 7% in the general US population. The percentage of atheists is higher in elite institutions (37%), but so is the percentage of those professors claiming to believe in God (33%) or "Believe in Higher Power or God some of the time" (29%). The rate of professors who believe in God is higher at community and 4-year colleges. Interestingly, professors in my own field of Psychology have the highest percentage of atheists/agnostics along with Biology (61%). Frankly, I expected to see Philosophy up there, too, if not higher. Not surprisingly, the disciplines with the highest rates of belief in God are the non-scientific ones like accounting, finance, elementary education, criminal justice, nursing, etc.
I was able to find a draft of the chapter by Gross and Simmons (the latter is from George Mason, by the way) describing this survey and its results. There was a short summary published in Harvard Magazine this past summer (Gross is from Harvard).
I guess I'm a rare bird to be a Psychology professor who believes in God.
**I'd love to post the figure of results, but I'm pretty sure it'd be a copyright violation.**
It has been a week since my last post. I was in Stevenson, WA (in the Gorge) for the 2007 Driving Assessment Conference. The conference was great, as was the setting. Before returning to the Portland airport (PDX), my travel companions and I headed to the world famous Powell's Books in downtown Portland. There were nearly as many books as there were tattoos in the joint.
I now have a week at home and work before heading out for a 7-night Eastern Caribbean Cruise with my wife. I'll do my best to post several times before next Saturday afternoon when we depart.
The new moleskine PDA worked well during the conference. I'll continue to post updates on my progress with the it.
BTW, any comments on the trial new blog name?
Our new driving simulator at GMU is finally fully operational as of yesterday. It can now rotate 90º to the right and left, hopefully adding some strong motion-cues to participants when they turn. This feature is truly unique, let alone for a simulator this size. There's a small pitch-motion system as well to give drivers a sense of acceleration and braking feel.
A video of the simulator in action will be available soon. It's very cool! Now it's time to dive in with some experimental studies.
I knew what I was doing when I signed up to teach History and Systems in Psychology, a required course for GMU Psychology majors. I'm the only tenure-line faculty member to teach a section of History and Systems this semester. Most faculty avoid it. I find the history of psychology interesting, mostly because of the development of the study of mind/brain into a science. However, one of the perks for me is living out my fantasy of being a Philosophy professor, if only for a few weeks. The history of Psychology begins with ancient philosophical explorations of epistemology, the mind-body problem, and early hints of naturalism. The Roman Period and Middle Ages were largely void of significant contributions to philosophy, but things quickly picked up with the Renaissance (pronounced re-NAE-sense by one of my undergrad professors, much to the chagrin of my roommate of the time). I'll be covering the Rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, etc.) and the Empiricists (Locke, Hume, Berkeley, etc.) in the coming week.
I didn't see the broadcast on Sunday, but 60 Minutes ran a story about usability including an interview with Human Factors Design guru Don Norman. Check it out here.
The Boomers had Kennedy's assassination, Generation X had the Challenger explosion, and we all have the 9-11 attack. Where were you when you heard about the Twin Towers on 9-11-01? Not surprisingly, this phenomenon is a topic of study in cognitive psychology called flashbulb memory. Such memories are characterized by vivid accounts of personal circumstances at the time a significant incident, usually a shocking event of national or international importance. This is a familiar experience for most people. Evidence suggests, however, that flashbulb memories aren't nearly as well preserved as people believe. I had a student tell me that she went home and read her diary from 9-11-01 after I lectured on flashbulb memory and she was shocked to learn that many of the details that she remembered were different from those she recorded at the time. One theory suggests that there is something different about such emotionally charged memories that makes them less susceptible to forgetting. I come from the theoretical tradition that shuns special status memories. The vividness of the memories likely results from repetitive retellings over time, which also explains the creeping loss of accuracy.
