The Null Device

2006/11/10

An argument that the abundance of images of attractive people causes widespread unhappiness:

Psychologists Sara Gutierres, Ph.D., and Douglas Kenrick, Ph.D., both of Arizona State University, demonstrated that the contrast effect operates powerfully in the sphere of person-to-person attraction as well. In a series of studies over the past two decades, they have shown that, more than any of us might suspect, judgments of attractiveness (of ourselves and of others) depend on the situation in which we find ourselves. For example, a woman of average attractiveness seems a lot less attractive than she actually is if a viewer has first seen a highly attractive woman. If a man is talking to a beautiful female at a cocktail party and is then joined by a less attractive one, the second woman will seem relatively unattractive.
Psychologists Sara Gutierres, Ph.D., and Douglas Kenrick, Ph.D., both of Arizona State University, demonstrated that the contrast effect operates powerfully in the sphere of person-to-person attraction as well. In a series of studies over the past two decades, they have shown that, more than any of us might suspect, judgments of attractiveness (of ourselves and of others) depend on the situation in which we find ourselves. For example, a woman of average attractiveness seems a lot less attractive than she actually is if a viewer has first seen a highly attractive woman. If a man is talking to a beautiful female at a cocktail party and is then joined by a less attractive one, the second woman will seem relatively unattractive.
The strange thing is, being bombarded with visions of beautiful women (or for women, socially powerful men) doesn't make us think our partners are less physically attractive. It doesn't change our perception of our partner. Instead, by some sleight of mind, it distorts our idea of the pool of possibilities.
Our minds have not caught up. They haven't evolved to correct for MTV. "Our research suggests that our brains don't discount the women on the cover of Cosmo even when subjects know these women are models. Subjects judge an average attractive woman as less desirable as a date after just having seen models," Kenrick says.
So the women men count as possibilities are not real possibilities for most of them. That leads to a lot of guys sitting at home alone with their fantasies of unobtainable supermodels, stuck in a secret, sorry state that makes them unable to access real love for real women. Or, as Kenrick finds, a lot of guys on college campuses whining, "There are no attractive women to date."
This effect apparently manifests itself in higher rates of divorce or persistent singleness due to people exposed to quantities of images of attractiveness their brains are not evolutionarily adapted to, and thus developing dissatisfaction with actual potential partners.

Mind you, this article is rather male-centric (it's partly a survey of studies, and partly a lament from the head of a Los Angeles PR agency, kvetching bitterly about all the unfeasibly gorgeous women he is surrounded by and how their presence is making his life a hell), and doesn't cover the female perspective; i.e., whether women are bombarded with images of unfeasibly attractive potential male partners, and whether this causes them to feel dissatisfied with actual partners (or potential partners) to the same extent.

(via Mind Hacks) beauty evolutionary psychology media psychology sex 0

Jens Lekman writes about Gothenburg, specifically explaining the significance of Hammer Hill (which sounds like Sweden's answer to Bethnal Green or Notting Hill), Kortedala (which is apparently much, much worse) and Tram #7:

I told you where tram # 7 goes. It was a temporary stop. She don't live here anymore, it was a long time since we broke up. Still, taking # 7 from Sahlgrenska down to the Botanical Gardens is , if you do it at the right time, a breathtaking experience. The sky opens up, the tracks underneath creaking, the trees embracing you as you come down from the bridge and into the lushness of Slottskogen. I used to test my songs during this little trip. If they managed to keep me focused despite the heavenly views and the loud creaking, then they had something. The other day I took this trip and listened to the new songs. They did well.

(via Bowlie) gothenburg indiepop jens lekman psychogeography sweden 0

BBC News Magazine has a piece on subversions of office jargon:

Enough with all this blue sky thinking in the workplace. Not just because the phrase is yet another example of meaningless office twaddle. But because it is time for some red sky thinking, the signal, in these darkening autumn days, that it is nearly time to go home.
A polidiot is someone promoted beyond their abilities thanks to their political skills. How to spot them? Well, they will be the ones testiculating - waving their arms around while talking nonsense. Often supported by a backing singer, that familiar person in a meeting who doesn't contribute their own ideas but just nods along with the boss.
But spare a thought for Valerie; hard at work, but baffled. At her office, the mission is to herd the dinosaurs to the right end of the cricket green. What does it mean? She has no idea.
And then there are terms like "raise the bar on this" (leave it for the pub), and "expectation management" (or what the boss wants to hear).

culture jargon language subversion 0

A Russian inventor has come up with a modern take on a popular Victorian invention, and developed a coffin with a panic button which, should you be buried alive, you can press to alert someone to exhume you. The button conveniently glows in the dark; it is not clear how it works, though I'd guess it connects to the mobile phone network. Of course, if the embalmers get to you before you're buried, it'll be too late.

(via Gizombo) burial coffin macabre technology 0

Nolan Bushnell, the founder of pioneering video game company Atari (of little relation to anything named "Atari" after about 1982 or so), talks about the state of videogaming, his new casual video-game bistro concept and why Sony's PS3 is (in his view) doomed to failure:

I saw a very large and untapped market, which is the entrepreneur's dream. There was no real venue for social games. Games got violent in the mid 1980s... that lost women. Then they got long-form and complex. That lost the casual gamer.
I think Sony shot themselves in the foot... there is a high probability [they] will fail. The price point is probably unsustainable. For years and years Sony has been a very difficult company to deal with from a developer standpoint. They could get away with their arrogance and capriciousness because they had an installed base. They have also historically had horrible software tools. You compare that to the Xbox 360 with really great authoring tools [and] additional revenue streams from Xbox live... a first party developer would be an idiot to develop for Sony first and not the 360. People don't buy hardware, they buy software.

(via Gizmodo) atari games interactive entertainment sony video games 0

Downloadable copies of tapes of Australian experimental/electronic composition/sound art from the 1980s, from a magazine named NMA. Expect aleatoric piano tinkling, electronic drones, detuned cellos, musique concrète, and the odd Japanese TV commercial.

(via cos) experimental mp3s sound art what is music? 0

In Japan, an elderly man has been arrested for playing copyrighted Beatles songs on his harmonica without permission. It turns out that 73-year-old Masami Toyoda is a serial copyright pirate, having repeatedly performed copyrighted songs in the past.

(via /.) copyfight galambosianism 0