Two Selves

Now Dove again posts an interesting video on YouTube. Also, you are available to this experimental series on their site (all the sketches are available to see). The basic story of the experiment is that a FBI trained artist draws two sketches of each participant's face. One is based on his/her own descriptions to his/her face, while the other comes from what a perfect stranger who just met him/her describes to his/her face. Check out the result of it!

Now I want to guess about the background story of this experiment. In social psychology, there is a concept of the actor-observer bias that actors tend to attribute their own behavior to environmental factors, whereas observers are likely to attribute the same behavior to actors' own personality. Suppose that I pick a wallet at a crowded street. Then, I take the wallet to the police office. For my standpoint, although I want to take it without going to the police office (get the money), I visit there because I (the actor) am afraid to become a thief and get caught, and think there are so many people watching my behavior (situational factors). On the other hand, people around there or the police officer (the observer) may assume me as decent and honest (personality), regardless of whether or not I believe myself as honest. This asymmetric perception is similar to what this experiment shows.

In the video, many participants believe themselves as whatever such as beautiful, attractive, neutral, ugly, or terrible, but they are amazed when seeing the two sketches of themselves. This is because there are clear differences between the two sketches. What we think of ourselves and what others think of us are different. As Daniel Kahneman points out, we are an animal to believe "what you see is all there is". In reality, it seems  two selves are existing: one from my mind, and the other from others'.

*the title of this entry refers to Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, but my intent to use the word is different from his use (experiencing and remembering self).

Future Tense Is Annoying?!

Here is an intriguing study by Keith Chen that I found on TED and want to share. The study basically reveals a relationship between linguistic characteristics and savings rates, based on statistical analyses. The researcher focuses on  future tense using among languages, and for some languages like Japanese there is no future tense to describe future things, while others such as English use future tense. Instead of using future tense, Japanese language, for instance, uses present tense for future events.

Is this interesting? Yeah, it is for me.

I guess people who have experience to learn different language from the native one would get such feeling too. If so, let's check out the following clip. Find something interesting!



Now my little story is below.

For the first time when learning future tense at an English class, I just couldn't understand the concept because my native language is Japanese (no future tense). I thought when saying something for the future, for instance, I state it rains "tomorrow" using key terms like "tomorrow," so it is not necessary to use "will" or "is going to." I felt English is so annoying... much easier to say just adding "tomorrow", "future", or " later" instead of using future tense. And also, according to the aforementioned research, future tense users are less savings rates, health behaviors, and retirement assets. It seems to me using future tense has no merit?!

At last, one thing I want to mention is there is past tense in Japanese!

Online Lies

Which do you think more people would lie, online or face-to-face? Here is an interesting talk by Jeff Hancock on TED.

Although it is scientifically true, what he finds seems to be needed more evidence in order to prove his insistence, I think. For instance, people more easily write like "I'm on my way" on twitter than other social media or email, because tweets are usually assumed as not serious even if some of them lie or overstate.

Anyway, this is very inspiring!!

Spider Silk Strings for Violin

A Japanese professor, Shigeyoshi Osaki, made a new type of violin strings using thousands of strands of spider silk. If you wonder how it sounds and looks like, see below.



In general, violinists use an aluminium-cored or nylon string for their violin (I'm using an aluminium-cored string because they are cheaper than a nylon). A few violinists who can afford to buy use a gut string, but this is more expensive and likely to exhaust than an aluminium-cored and nylon. According to Pro. Osaki, a spider silk string is the best in those strings in terms of tension and sound. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any difference of sound in the video... Just it sounded like an ordinary violin to me.

At any rate, if this string is cheap and popular, I'd like to try it. However, it wounld take some time to be so.

Cherry Blossom

There are beautiful cherry trees in full bloom in Japan. I went to a neighbor park in order to see cherry blossoms today, though they are not fully blooming. Here are some photos I took.

Spring is just beginning here!

One Year After The Earthquake

Landscapes of then and now in Tohoku. 

Remember still on the way of recovery in Tohoku, and Fukushima nuclear plants. 

More photos, if you want to see, click here. And, here is an article by the Japanese prime minister. 

How To Get A Seat: Smartly But Strangely

I was sitting on a seat. Woman was coming and then standing in front of me. With little courageous, I said to her "Would you like to have a seat?" And, I gave up my seat to her... because she is attractive or I'm a gentleman. No, just because she looked like pregnant! And, I sat on an inappropriate space. What I am talking about now is "priority seats." The priority seats are set up for those who are disabled, pregnant, or having babies to have a seat easily. (In Japan, a subway line have conducted a policy that all seats are priority seats...Even more, they are right now considering about making the most priority seats on the priority seats. What a mess...)

Japanese sign for priority seats on trains

Just in case you really want to get a seat, Try out the following way. In China,  there are 1.3 billion people living. According to some article, to get a seat on public transportation, some women wear a fake pregnant belly! Wow!

After knowing this news, I re-thought that woman whom I offered my seat was really pregnant, just a bit fat, or wearing a fake pregnant belly??