The Guardian

In the 80s, the psychologist Stanley Milgram sent 130 researchers into New York with a simple mission: queue-jumping. Milgram is better known for his studies on obedience, in which ordinary people were induced to give dangerous electric shocks – or so they believed – to unseen victims. Perhaps his queue-jumping experiment wasn’t so controversial, but it was provocative enough: researchers were told to find a queue, enter it between the third and fourth person with the words, “Excuse me, I’d like to get in here”, and see what happened. What happened was this: half the time, no one said a thing; only 10% of the time was there a serious confrontation. Milgram speculated that this wasn’t just because people fear conflict, but because every member of a queue has an interest in keeping it orderly: better to absorb a solitary rulebreaker in silence than to lose your place to admonish the culprit, risk a fight that slows everyone down or trigger the collapse of the queue. Respect for this firm-but-flexible orderliness must be why the British love queues, since it surely can’t be that we’re a nation of sheep who enjoy delays because they give us something to moan about.

Queues aren’t just a microcosm of the unspoken rules governing human interaction. For many of us, they’re also the context in which we most often confront impatience and frustration, those ubiquitous, low-level obstacles to a happy life. Companies know this, and deploy numerous tactics to make the time pass more quickly. Indefinite waits seem longer than defined ones, writes business guru David Maister in The Psychology Of Waiting Lines, which is why Disney theme parks use complex formulae to calculate and display wait-times. “Pre-process” waits seem longer than “in-process” waits, which is why restaurants will seat you before they’re ready to serve you. Customers are happier when queues are acknowledged: when a supermarket calls “all staff to the checkout”, it’s as much about you hearing it as about staffing. And occupied time passes faster than unoccupied time: mirrored walls are especially effective, because most people love looking at themselves.

If you’re in the mood for self-improvement, queues are also the perfect opportunity to develop what Albert Ellis called “high frustration tolerance” – observing our thoughts and learning to distinguish preferences (“I’d like to get served soon”) from the absolutist “musts” that cause negative emotions (“I must get served soon, and this waiting is intolerable!”). And queues bring sharply into focus how much of our lives we spend in a queue-like state of mind, leaning into the future, absorbed in thoughts about later, wanting it not to be now. Can you, as Eckhart Tolle suggests, relax into the waiting instead, treating it as an oasis, a pause in the rush of events?

Yeah, me, neither. But it’s worth a try: figure out how to find enjoyment in a queue, and you’ll be able to find it in almost anything.

Prohibido Prohibir

Yesterday I went to the cinema to watch an interesting movie made by a Chilean-born director (but living in Brazil right now) called Jorge Durán. Its name is “Prohibido Prohibir” and counts with the staring roles of Caio Blat, Maria Flor and Alexandre Rodrigues.

 

This movie is about the history of three young friends –Paulo, León and Leticia—, university students that are involucrated in a “love triangle”. Paulo studies Medicine, León Sociology and Leticia Architecture, and they live in a flat near a “favela”. Besides that, they live a tragic history trying to help a patient with cancer of an hospital, and her children. All those experiences make they will affront several moral and ethic dilemmas, and also make them know the hard and complex reality of their city and country, Brazil.

 

The movie shows in a very honest way the things that university life is made. Very recommended!

Advantages and disadvantages of using blogs in the English classroom

I think that the activity of writing blogs in English is important and useful, but the form in which it is used in the classroom is not the best way to develop those abilities in the best way, in my opinion. Anyway,it’s an innovative method of learning that could get better results if it could be used better. So, this essay consists about pros and cons of the actual way of using the activity of writing blogs in English, starting with the pros:

As I see it, the benefits of blog writing are in the liberty that the teacher gives to the students to develop a text of their interest, but always among a common point to evaluate it. Because of that we (students) can write very different things about a same topic, with the opportunity of choosing our better option of expressing something with the best words in English as we can. Besides, the activities aren’t too long and we have the option of finishing our writings with the enough support to write our ideas in the best way we can, like dictionaries, translation pages, and so on.

But, which are the disadvantages of that activity? Maybe they are not at the essence of it, but maybe in the way the course develop this activity.

I think that there are not enough reinforcements and motivation to make a constant effort to write an activity per week. This is because the teacher don’t care very much about the evolution of our writings: he is not able to comment all the posts of all their students, of course, but there aren’t enough organisation to have a constant evaluation. More over, there are few reinforcements to have that constant flux of creation.

All things considered, we have a very innovative and interesting tool to increase our abilities writing in english. An interesting tool that should be used better.

A site that I like a lot.

Hi!

I like to surf the net, I do it everyday! And one of my favorite places to go in internet is Last.fm, a “social website” that has extensive information about music bands, and everything related to the world of music. It’s like a music library in which You can make a profile to register your musical preferences while You chat and/or meet other people with similar musical taste than You. Also, You can see events and concerts programmed in your city, or in any place in the world, and you can also talk to other people who are planning to go the event.

But what I really love from this page, is that is the database of all the songs that you’ve heard in your computer since you downloaded the last.fm software and made the profile. Now, I can remember what song I heard the last Friday’s night, or which music band is the one that I’ve heard the most. You can also see what songs are your friends or other people listening right now, or see your musical compatibility with them. I have joined a group of Porcupine Tree’s fans, where we discuss things related to the band, and now I’ve been discovering some new bands that are similar to Porcupine Tree. It’s such an addictive site! I can’t remember how I found it, but maybe it was a recommendation from a friend called Camila, who has a profile since 2006.

You can take a look at my database at www.last.fm/user/mojigato . If You like to discover new music everyday You’ll enjoy the site, surely!

An interesting career-related topic

One of the courses that I found more interesting in this years was phychopatology. I like this area because it take information about the mental illness and their teraphies, and specially how various visions of the psychology’s spectrum of theories defines the mental illness and the adaptability of some behaviors.

Inside this area, a topic that I find interesting to investigate is the concept of personality disorder (formerly knew as Characteriological disorder). This type of mental illness is very difficult to identify and has its basis in personal and social disfunctions, fact that give the personality disorders a wide range of classifications.

According to the American Psychological Asociation, these disorders are grouped in three clusters, that I quote here:

Cluster A (odd or eccentric disorders)

Paranoid personality disorder
Schizoid personality disorder
Schizotypal personality disorder

Cluster B (dramatic, emotional, or erratic disorders)

Antisocial personality disorder
Borderline personality disorder
Histrionic personality disorder
Narcissistic personality disorder

Cluster C (anxious or fearful disorders)

Avoidant personality disorder
Dependent personality disorder (not the same as Dysthymia)
Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (not the same as Obsessive-compulsive disorder)

Otto Kernberg, has a theory that explains three mental-psichic schemes: Neurotic, Border-line and Psychotic. This theory fits with the description of the three cluster, quoted above, and has an inspiration to the APA for making this classification.

Instead its in discussion yet, this page contains a simple description of each cluster and its disfunctions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_disorders

And, finally, I invite you to take the test of this page:

http://www.4degreez.com/misc/personality_disorder_test.mv

This test can help you to know more abour your personality and, depending of your results, it can help you to determine whether or not you have a personality disorder. Good luck on it!

See you!

Last weekend

Last weekend was amazing! Muse, an english rock band came to Chile and I went to see them! The venue was Teatro Caupolicán and the concert tickets were sold out several weeks ago.

The queue was very long and the waiting very nice, because I went with some friends. When We entered to the venue the waiting made in me a lot of anxiety, until the start of the show: at 9 o’clock the band arrived to the scenario and the crowd were at a incredible state of euphoria. At this time I went the happiest person in the world: one of my favorite bands playing some of my favorite songs was a experience that I’ll never forget.

The show was amazing! Really good from the beginning to the end! Next to this we went to a party at Discotheque Blondie where we listen to british rock and dance our favorite tracks. Finally we went to a friend’s flat were we slept until next day. Sunday was really peaceful and I take a lot of time for myself, doing my readings for next week.

Next, some videos and photos of the show:

That’s all. Greetings!

Recommended Web Sites in my Area

Hi!

This time I’m going to put two links in my blog that I believe are very useful to all the people that are studying, teaching or just interested in psychology, both of them in english of course!
The first link is http://www.psychology.org :

This page contains a lot of definitions, papers and links that are related with psychology. It has many different papers of a lot of different subjects related to psychology. It’s a very friendly site, in the sense that it’s very easy to explore and find the information that you need.
The second link is http://www.kivaspirit.org/Counseling/persintro.html :

As a well-developed test, this page is an evaluation that try to show you the kind of person you are. This questionnaire is based in the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire (PDQ4) of mental illness and lifestyle resources. It consists of statements where you should choose between true and false. It takes approximately 20 minutes to answer all 99 questions. Very interesting!

See you next time =)

Music I like

Hi again!

This time I’m going to write about an underground song that was very difficult to find until the massive arrive of Internet. Its name is “Eternal Life”, and its written and composed by Jeff Buckley, an American singer-songwriter. He gained popularity in early 1990s playing cover versions at venues in Manhattan, and later composing his own material. The quality of his compositions brought the interest of several record labels, and finally Buckley signed with Columbia and, after recruiting a stage band, recorded his debut studio album, Grace. This record got a success in UK, USA and Australia, and it went on to receive much critical acclaim.

The band toured widely to promote the album in several countries, and in 1997 Jeff stopped touring for record his new studio album and…the happy story ends.

In the same year, May 29th exactly, Jeff went to a river to take a leisure time and suddendly drowned. His body was found five days later.

Although Buckley died, his work continue to remain popular and regularly featured in ‘greatest’ lists in the music press.

About the song, its an angry one. Its about people behind desks and people behind masks to be ruining other people’s lives, initiating force against other people’s lives, on the basis of their income, their color, their class, their religious beliefs, and any other classification.

In Jeff’s own words, “Eternal Life was inspired by anger over “the man that shot Martin Luther King, World War II, slaughter in Guyana and the Manson murders.”

Eternal Life is now on my trail
Got my red glitter coffin, man, just need one last nail
While all these ugly gentlemen play out their foolish games
There’s a flaming red horizon that screams our names

And as your fantasies are broken in two
Did you really think this bloody road would
Pave the way for you?
You better turn around
and blow your kiss hello to life eternal, angel

Racist everyman, what have you done?
Man, you’ve made a killer of your unborn son…
Crown my fear your king at the point of a gun
All I want to do is love everyone…

And as your fantasies are broken in two
Did you really think this bloody road would
Pave the way for you?
You better turn around
and blow your kiss hello to life eternal….

There’s no time for hatred, only questions
What is love, where is happiness, what is Life,
where is peace?
When will I find the strength to bring me release?

And tell me where is the love in what your prophet has said?
Man, It sounds to me just like a prison for the walking dead
And I’ve got a message for you and your twisted hell
You better turn around and blow your kiss goodbye
to life eternal angel…

The video…there is no video!!! =( i’m so sorry, hope that I will put an audio in this post, soon.

See you!

About me

Hi!

My name is Sebastián Rueda. I’m 20, and I study psychology at Universidad de Chile, an interesting career. I like to listen to the music and also play the piano, sometimes. My favorite website is last.fm, where I find new music to listen. 

I live in Huechuraba with my family in a flat, and I have two pets, a cute couple of dogs called Melody and Ringo, like the The Beatles’ drummer. I like eating rice, and chinese food is my favorite!

I like to surf in the net, and this is my first blog that I write in english entirely. This is a great opportunity to improve my writing in English. I hope that.

See you!