Information such as the types of music, magazines, books, movies clothes a person likes, membership preferences, convey a lot about that persons behavior. Research, published in the June issue of the Journal of Psychological and Social Psychology, indicates that your musical tastes may indeed reflect more about your psychology than previously realized. This research shows that music preferences can offer some important insights into a person's psychology, and might even serve as a tool when trying to learn more about someone," says study author Sam Gosling, a professor at the University of Texas. Many studies show that preferences in music, movies, TV shows, travel, books, plays, even favorite colors, politicians, movies or pop stars — says a little something about who a person is, and can help discover a person's tastes and likes and dislikes. A study by Alan Hirsch M.D., director of Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation states that even favorite pizza toppings of a person show a correlation to their behavior. Various preferences of a person convey a lot about the individuals psychology. These preferences can provide insights on traits like, if the person drinks, smokes, has hemorrhoids or practices safe sex. Most major retailers and web portals collect detailed data from users. This includes geographic area, ISP information, and what was queried. Nearly all major retailers also track and archive preferences of their customers. Many retailers use services of The Return Exchange, to track customers' return habits. The Return Exchange maintains a database of shoppers' return habits by combining data from a number of retailers into one database.
Research published by David Dunning of Cornell University, Chip Heath of Stanford University and Jerry M. Suls of the University of Iowa reveal that other people who are not involved in any type of relationship with an individual are better judges of an individual's relationships and abilities. These researchers have been studying a large body of research into self-evaluation, and much of it reveals that most of us have flawed views about us and our relationships. That can have consequences, because if we don't know about our relationships and who we are, we could be endangering others as well as ourselves. People deceive themselves because they lack the necessary information to make an accurate assessment; and they often ignore or undervalue the information they do have.
From Your Credit Card Company Is Building A Psychological Profile Of You by Chris Walters
The next time you apply for a credit card, your credit report and income will be only a part of the criteria used to determine your creditworthiness. For that matter, as long as you have the card, what you use it for will be noted and added to a growing set of data that makes up your psychological profile, which will then be referred to every time the bank deals with your or reevaluates your risk as a customer.
The New York Times Magazine takes a look at this new method of determining credit risk, pioneered by Canadian Tire executive J.P. Martin about 6 years ago.
Martin's measurements were so precise that he could tell you the "riskiest" drinking establishment in Canada - Sharx Pool Bar in Montreal, where 47 percent of the patrons who used their Canadian Tire card missed four payments over 12 months. He could also tell you the "safest" products - premium birdseed and a device called a "snow roof rake" that homeowners use to remove high-up snowdrifts so they don't fall on pedestrians.It's not just that what you buy reflects your socioeconomic level and current financial status, however; what Martin did was take the raw data and tease out personality traits that explained the the purchases while predicting future behavior.
From Review - The Time Paradox by Marion Ledwig
Time makes a difference with regard to everyone's life because quite obviously everyone's life is finite and time is the medium in which we live. The authors however also point out that the proverb "time is money" actually is not quite correct, because you can't buy yourself more time, so that time is worth more than money. Time cannot be replenished in contrast to other goods, such as gold, diamonds, etc., so you have to be careful how to spend your time. What is gone is gone. The authors ask mindfully "Why do we often spend our money more wisely than our time?" (p. 9 this volume) and suggest some interesting answers. They also point out that how you spend your time today will definitely determine both your past and your future.
In chapter two a historical account on time perspectives is given that humans changed from event time to clock time, where event time is "the time when events occur in the environment – for example, when the sun is high in the sky, when a species of birds sings, or when the tide comes in." (p. 33 this volume) The authors point out that although we rarely consider our relationship to time that "Our preoccupation with time is so complete that the word 'time' has become the most popular noun in the English language." even trumping sex (p. 43 this volume).
For the current Western world the authors have identified six different time perspectives: (1) past-negative, (2) past-positive, (3) present-fatalistic, (4) present-hedonistic, (5) future, and (6) transcendental-future. In this chapter the reader will also find the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI) where you can determine how your own relationship to time actually looks like. It also gives prototypical character studies of each perspective, so that you can understand better what is meant by each perspective.
Chapter three details the different past time perspectives. The author in particular point out that not your actual past matters, but your attitudes towards the past matter and that a positive attitude to the past is vital. Moreover, they emphasize since you usually reconstruct your memory, you can also reconstruct your memory in a positive way and therefore reclaim the past in such a way that it is beneficial to you.
In chapter four the authors emphasize that persons who have high markers in present hedonism or present fatalism are more aggressive, more depressed, less conscientious, less emotionally stable, have less concern for future consequences, have less ego control, less impulse control, are more novelty-seeking, more sensation-seeking, lie more, steal more, etc.
Chapter five deals with the future time perspective and emphasizes that persons who have high markers in the future time perspective are less aggressive, less depressed, have more energy, use drugs and alcohol less, are more conscientious, have more concern for future consequences, have more ego control and self-esteem, are less sensation-seeking, show less anxiety, have a higher grade point average, study more, are more creative, lie less, etc.
In chapter six the authors discuss the transcendental future, whether there is a time after death and discuss how suicide terrorism is related to time perspectives. In particular they point out that the transcendental future can be used as a tool for good or evil.
From Ego and the Uninformed - Perhaps the Greatest Threat to Security by Kevin G. Coleman
...Almost weekly, I am surprised at one or more aspects of cyber attacks that I had never considered. I am not the only one that experiences such humbling events on a regular basis. In a discussion with a federal agent from a three letter agency he and I talked openly about how most organizations are at risk and don't even realize it. I will never forget his words. He said, “Many corporate security people suffer from delusions of grandeur. They think they know but really don't.” If that was not bad enough, there are a lot of security people that are driven because their ego is so big, that they always have to be at the front and no one could beat then and breach their security. I have seen firsthand how those responsible for security allow their ego to interfere with good judgment. Anyone who thinks their security is beyond the possibility of being compromised should find a new profession. We have had significant success integrating psychological aspects and factors into our work so I asked our PsychologicalAspect ( News - Alert) Subject Matter Expert (PASME) about this. She told me about a psychological study of security professionals that revealed some interesting dominant personality traits. People with dominant psychological aspects like self-adulation, intellectual arrogance and selective perception seem to be drawn to the security field...
From What Does Your Facebook Profile Say About You? by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown and Lang Davison
What does your Facebook profile say about you? Research shows most of us have little idea. Psychology professor Sam Gosling's book Snoop found that "people are virtually clueless about the impressions their [Facebook] profiles convey."
Our own observation finds some folks post only professional information on their pages, while others post exclusively personal stuff. And a third group posts both.
It's the latter group, obviously, that are the more daring: they're crossing the nearly taboo boundary that separates the personal and the professional.
[ ... ]
Why does it make sense to reveal our personal selves to social media sites? It may be that boundary breakers posting a mix of personal and professional information online are making a connection between what they share of themselves and their effectiveness as managers. Sharing personal information further humanizes people whose roles may otherwise make them seem remote or inaccessible. This effect extends beyond senior managers to peer relationships deeper in the organization. Seeing a more rounded person can't help but extend and develop professional relationships, furthering the trust that's crucial to collaborative knowledge creation--the lifeblood of innovation.
There's a more general point here: we're moving from a world of stocks to flows, one in which to grow and develop, collectively and individually, we need to constantly refresh our stocks of knowledge by participating in relevant flows of new knowledge. Flows require reciprocity: why would you exchange a flow of knowledge without trusting me to do the same? Yet trust is difficult to build and maintain if we keep a significant part of ourselves hidden.
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