Humans are social beings. This has numerous implications: For example, we know what others know or can know, and so we do not use gestures to communicate when we talk on the phone. We are sensitive to social norms, and we typically conform with those norms—even if they are communicated by a computer. We are […]
In the late 90s, Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks starred in the romantic comedy, “You’ve Got Mail”, which romanticized the idea of online dating and amplified AOL’s fame. “The Dating Game” Shortly after this movie, the year 2000 was the official start to dating websites with the release of eharmony, according to the “history of […]
The Psychonomic Society will have a new Digital Content Editor from 1 January 2020 onward. But that’s not the only change of the team: There have been two resignations, and one new appointment to the position of Digital Associate Editor. I am sad to say good-bye to Steve Weisberg and Anja Jambrozik. And I am […]
My term as Digital Content Editor of the Psychonomic Society will come to an end on 31 December. The next day, I will start serving on the Society’s Governing Board. Building up the Featured Content section and running this blog has been an extremely enjoyable experience during the last 5 years. We ran our first […]
One of my favorite xkcd comics is Settled. See below. It’s a cool example of statistical inference. Evidence accumulates for a null hypothesis without any new data coming in. The only thing that changes over time is the expectation under the counterfactual: if Bigfoot were real, the ubiquity of cell phone cameras means that we […]
This commentary is in two parts. As a contributor to the special issue, I enjoyed reading these commentaries, and felt compelled to synthesize that enjoyment. That’s the first part. The ideas sparked by these commentaries lead to the second part. There I consider a potential next step in progress in our field, and link it […]
What were we thinking? Is it possible to discover how past cultures made decisions, prioritised issues, or which ideas were felt to be emotional or bland, offensive or pleasant? Language provides a fossil record of society, and big data has made huge progress in making historical psychology through language analysis possible and accessible. A step […]
It’s easy to get excited about the promise of big data and naturally occurring datasets. Whether you were first captivated by “culturomics” nearly a decade ago or are first discovering its potential in this special issue of the Psychonomic Society’s journal Behavior Research Methods, you are not alone in seeing big data or naturally occurring […]
Where are we? What are we going to do? During the 1880s and 1890s, Francis Galton collected one sample of response time from each of 17,000 Britons. Clearly, he had no concept of intertrial variability, so one sample seemed to suffice. Times have changed and we live in a world where not only can we […]
The big data special issue from the Psychonomic Society’s Behavior Research Methods is particularly timely. Big data is becoming increasingly prevalent in behavioural sciences and it is arguably transforming many areas of research. However, this change is not one that was planned or designed by scientists. Advances in technology and digital records mean that governments, […]