Drunk Tank Pink

drunktankpink

Being that I’ve been on the Player Behavior team at Riot for many months now, I’ve taken some interest in social psychology. My uncle recommended to me a couple books, and I just finished this one that was quite interesting.

Adam Alter was recently featured in a Big Think video that gives his book a good explanation here.

In short, Drunk Tank Pink is a collection of descriptions of experiments (with citations) that give explanations for changes in our behavior that come from places we may not ordinarily think. The book is logically divided up into sections starting from how names, labels, and symbols change our behavior, to how theĀ presenceĀ of people and culture affect our decisions, all the way to color, locations and even weather.

For example, studies show that it may be beneficial for you to wear red to appear more romantically attractive to people. You may recover more quickly in the hospital if you face a window with a view of nature. You also may be able to reduce crime in a city by installing blue lights in troublesome areas. You can even get people to be more honest by putting them in front of a mirror. There were countless fascinating studies in the book.

While these things are obviously interesting in terms of gaining strategic advantages in a lot of different situations, the book serves more as a reminder that we are psychologically predisposed to react and behave in particular ways, and we may not be as completely in control of ourselves as we might think. Of course, awareness can only benefit us.

Rob / May 12, 2013 / Cool Stuff / 0 Comments

Hi!

Hey look! A post! See? There’s activity here!

Rob / March 18, 2013 / Uncategorized / 0 Comments

Terraria

OMG. so good.

This is probably the most fun I’ve had playing a game in a decade. There’s been a long delay between me playing the game and actually writing this post, but I still am able to adequately gush about how much I love this game.

I may have a bit of a hard time describing it. On one hand, it’s very sandboxy, and you can pretty much do whatever you want whenever you feel like it. If you feel like exploring, go explore. If you feel like building something, go build something. If you want to slice up some enemies, go right ahead. The world is yours. In that regard, it can be somewhat comparable to Minecraft, but in most respects it’s very very different.

Some might complain that the game is somewhat directionless, and I admit that to begin with I wasn’t sure what to do, but as soon as I started discovering and looking up all the amazing things I could accomplish, I couldn’t put the game down.

The game does a fantastic job of giving you incremental improvements to things like weapons and armor, decorations for your house, etc, so you always feel rewarded for the time you put into the game. And the game isn’t MMO-ish in that it feels like you have to put in your time to acquire something. You’re always about to get the next cool thing.

The bosses are tough and fun, the different terrains bring you plenty of surprises in mobs to fight, and the items that you find are exciting and interesting.

Go play this game. It’s super fun multiplayer. There’s so much to dooooo~~~~!

Rob / November 17, 2012 / Uncategorized / 0 Comments

Rob / November 5, 2012 / Uncategorized / 0 Comments

Blood Test

Nurse: Are you ready?

Me: I suppose so. It’s been a while since I’ve had this done.

Nurse: You’re not going to piss the floor are you?

Me: Well, I wasn’t planning on it.

Nurse: Don’t worry, I’m very gentile.

Me: I’m still allowed to say “ouch” aren’t I?

[Inserts needle.]

Me: Ouch.

Nurse: Are you ok?

Me: Yep. The anticipation is always worse than the real thing.

[Vial number 2 finishes filling. Needle comes out.]

Nurse: There. See? Absolutely painless, right?

Me: Well I wouldn’t say painless, but it could have been a lot worse.

Nurse: Ok, you’re all set. Have a nice day.

Rob / June 29, 2012 / Life / 0 Comments