This is the first entry. It took me all day to realise I could just try loading the preferences page with another browser instead of IE 5.1, because I could never see my profile settings whenever I tried with IE. So I tried Chimera, a Mozilla build for OS X, and voila, I filled in the questionnaire you see to the left.
I also filled out a questionnaire at university today in a Psych 500 level experiment. That questionnaire was 20 pages of "If (x number) people out of (x number) died from (something terrible), how would you rate the possibility of death? (very low to very high)." Usually, it was something like, "5 people out of 100 die of tetanus," or "79 die of anthrax." I answered "very high" for all of them but one. Supposedly, multiple people are dying of single causes, so it doesn't matter if the numbers are low. It's scary. But when 3 people out of 10,000 die from measels, I chose the middle option. That was the only ratio that didn't scare me too much.
When we were debriefed, we learned the experiment supposedly altered the progression of the variables to see if you were less or more likely to say "very high" once you had already assumed one situation would be the worst you would be reading. Aahh, Psychology Grad students are so relentless in their pursuit of explaining the obvious, you just want to take one home and have them explain a sitcom to you, for kicks. And to hear them say "debrief" a few more times.
I also filled out a questionnaire at university today in a Psych 500 level experiment. That questionnaire was 20 pages of "If (x number) people out of (x number) died from (something terrible), how would you rate the possibility of death? (very low to very high)." Usually, it was something like, "5 people out of 100 die of tetanus," or "79 die of anthrax." I answered "very high" for all of them but one. Supposedly, multiple people are dying of single causes, so it doesn't matter if the numbers are low. It's scary. But when 3 people out of 10,000 die from measels, I chose the middle option. That was the only ratio that didn't scare me too much.
When we were debriefed, we learned the experiment supposedly altered the progression of the variables to see if you were less or more likely to say "very high" once you had already assumed one situation would be the worst you would be reading. Aahh, Psychology Grad students are so relentless in their pursuit of explaining the obvious, you just want to take one home and have them explain a sitcom to you, for kicks. And to hear them say "debrief" a few more times.