The Writing Reader
People liked potential partners that matched their ideals more than those that mismatched their ideals when they examined written descriptions of potential partners, but those same ideals didn’t matter once they actually met in person, according to a new study by psychologists Paul W. Eastwick, Eli J. Finkel and Alice H. Eagly.
“People have ideas about the abstract qualities they’re looking for in a romantic partner,” said Eastwick, assistant professor of psychology at Texas A&M University and lead author of the study. “But once you actually meet somebody face to face, those ideal preferences for traits tend to be quite flexible.”
Say you prefer a partner who, online or on paper, fits the bill of being persistent. “After meeting in person, you might feel that, yeah, that person is persistent, but he can’t compromise on anything. It’s not the determined and diligent kind of persistent that you initially had in mind,” Eastwick said.
The idea is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, said Finkel, associate professor of psychology at Northwestern University and co-author of the study.
“People are not simply the average of their traits,” he said. “Knowing that somebody is persistent, ambitious and sexy does not tell you what that person is actually like. It doesn’t make sense for us to search for partners that way.”
“Thinking about this or that feature of a person apart from taking the whole person into account doesn’t predict actual attraction,” Eagly said. “While some online dating sites have video features that provide some context, generally people are matched on their answers to specific questions that do not capture the whole person.” -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Write a story or scene about people who met on line and then get together for a date OR create a list for your protagonist’s ideal mate and contrast them with his or her actual mate.
Journaling Prompt: Write a list of traits for your ideal mate. Compare it to people for whom you have felt an attraction.
Art Prompt: Ideal mate
Photo Credit: Don Hankins on Flickr
Kit had lost people before, and it was always like this. There would be tears tonight, and anger at him and at his bridge, anger at fate for permitting this. There would be sadness, and nightmares. There would be lovemaking, and the holding close of children and friends and dogs-affirmations of life in the cold wet night. -Kij Johnson, The Man Who Bridged the Mist (October/November 2011 Asimov’s)
Writing Prompt: Write a poem or scene about grief.
Journaling Prompt: Write about your own experience with grief.
Art Prompt: Grief
Photo Credit: allspice1 on Flickr
“For a long time we’ve asked ourselves, ‘How come smart, rational people carry out short-term schemes that in the long-term undoubtedly are going to sink them?’” says author Ramy Elitzur, who holds the Edward J. Kernaghan Professorship in Financial Analysis and is an associate professor of accounting.
“The answer is — we’re not rational. We’re rational only in a limited sense.”
The study bases its findings on a model of the manager-owner relationship over time. The model is also noteworthy for combining principles of game theory — used to predict strategic behaviour — with the idea of bounded rationality — that our decisions are always made within the limits of available time, information, and the human capacity to analyze it. -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Write a story or scene about someone who carries out a scheme doomed to fail.
Journaling Prompt: Write about a time when you misjudged a situation.
Art Prompt: Scheming
Photo Credit: Big C Harvey on Flickr
“If I am out of my mind, it’s all right with me thought Moses Herzog.” -Saul Bellow, Herzog
Writing Prompt: Using the first line above, write a story, scene or poem.
Journaling Prompt: Do you ever wonder if you’re crazy? If so, is it all right with you?
Art Prompt: Crazy and Happy
Photo Credit: Nina Matthews Photography on Flickr
en·nui [ahn-wee, ahn-wee; Fr. ahn-nwee] noun
a feeling of utter weariness and discontent resulting from satiety or lack of interest; boredom
Writing Prompt: Write a story, scene, poem, or haiku using the word of the week
Journaling Prompt: When do you feel ennui? How do you change how you feel?
Art Prompt: Ennui
Photo Credit: Stewart Black on Flickr
Adventure is when you go into the woods and stay there a real long time—so long that Mom begins to get worried—doing things. It’s tracking a deer or a rabbit in the snow. It’s looking to discover a fossil that no one has ever seen before. It’s seeing how close you can get to a flock of wild turkeys without them running away. It’s swimming in a new place, or going fishing with Grampa. Any boat ride is an adventure. It’s finding a perfect stick, and pretending it’s a gun or maybe even a magic sword. -Stephen Brennan and Finn Brennan, The Adventurous Boy’s Handbook: For Ages 9 to 99
Writing Prompt: Create an adventure for your protagonist.
Journaling Prompt: Write about an adventure you went on as a kid.
Art Prompt: Adventure!
Photo Credit: {studiobeerhorst}-bbmarie on Flickr
Confessions, when true, are an important tool in convicting criminals. But false confessions frequently play a major role in convicting innocent people. Experiments show that juries and potential witnesses are influenced by confessions even if they know they were coerced. Also in the lab, experienced polygraph examiners, fingerprint experts, and other experts, when informed of a confession, see what they expect to see — that is, evidence of guilt…
To back up these findings with real-life data, the psychologists thoroughly reviewed the trial records of 241 people exonerated by the Innocence Project since 1992. Of these, 59 — or 25 percent — involved false confessions, either by the defendant or an alleged accomplice. One-hundred eighty — or 75 percent — involved eyewitness mistakes. The analysis revealed that multiple errors turned up far more often in false confession cases than in eyewitness cases: 69 percent versus fewer than half. And two thirds of the time, the confession came first, followed by other errors, namely invalid forensic science and government informants.
Kassin believes the findings “greatly underestimate the problem” because of what never shows up in court: evidence of innocence. Told the suspect confessed, “alibi witnesses back out, thinking they’re mistaken,” police stop searching for the real culprit. “We show that confessions bring in other incriminating evidence that is false. What we don’t see is a tendency to suppress exculpatory evidence.”
The study throws doubt on a critical legal concept designed to safeguard the innocent: corroboration. Appeals courts uphold a conviction even if a false confession is discovered, as long as other evidence — say, forensics or other witness testimony — independently shows guilt. “What these findings suggest is that there may well be the appearance of corroboration,” says Kassin, “but it is false evidence that was corrupted by the confession — not independent at all.” -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: prompt here
Journaling Prompt: prompt here
Art Prompt: prompt here
Photo Credit: andrewrennie on Flickr
…right now her most pressing problems were the five blocks between her and the train station, and the sky full of water above her. On the bright side, she didn’t have to worry about the rain smearing her makeup— she just didn’t wear the stuff. One time in college she’d made an abortive try, but the sight of her round face staring back at her from the mirror with the first hint of blush inexpertly applied made her feel like an inexpertly polished turd. Makeup and designer clothes were for some jet set, days-of-wine-and-roses, dating, frolicking-in-front-of-the-cameras subphylum of humanity to which she did not belong. Hospital scrubs and a clean face— this was her lot in life. -Lee Doty, Out of the Black
Writing Prompt: Write a self-description for your protagonist. How does it differ from your description?
Journaling Prompt: Write a description of yourself.
Art Prompt: Self-portrait
Photo Credit: rharrison on Flickr
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