There are a lot of weblogs I read, sites I visit to keep up with a variety of interesting topics that time and circumstance prevent from studying in a more disciplined and focused manner.
Literature, writing, poetry, education, honest politics, religion, science, health care, computer technology, graphics and fine art, film making, etc., they’re all part of our lives and it’s always a matter of priority as to what we give our mind to at any one time.
I’ve forgotten from where I got this link to the Research Digest Blog of the British Psychological Society but it has some terrific posts and information on one of my favorite topics–psychology. Take this bit from Psychological Research in Virtual Worlds:
One research paradigm known as Transformed Social Interaction purposefully breaks and alters the rules of social interaction in order to gain insight into communication and interaction processes. In the physical world, two people interacting in the same space necessarily share the same reality. On the other hand, in a virtual environment where users view the shared environment from their own computer terminals or virtual reality goggles, their realities need not be congruent. Thus, for example, I may perceive my avatar (a digital representation of myself) to be short while you perceive my avatar to be tall. These non-congruent reality scenarios open up a range of research questions in stereotype threat, behavioral confirmation, and self-perception theory among other psychological theories.
This thought ties into one of my favorite suborders of psychology, perception. Perception comes within every topic–except perhaps something such as Algebra that requires some strict adherence to rules and even that grants some leeway. The question of perception is tremendously interesting when it involves looking further into the factors that influence how one will experience and remember an event. To consider all these influences and how they affect a virtual world where players may see scenarios not based on reality but on perceptive creations of the mind would be most interesting to study.
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