I might even start out with the cliche, “Once upon a time …”

Then I launch into the story. It’s not a science fiction story, and it requires you to engage no extraordinary belief systems. However the story isn’t exactly like daily life. We know this to be true due to the fact that if television were just like daily life, we wouldn’t watch. Thus, television must be more exciting than daily life.

Off of the top of my head, I’m thinking of an episode of Desperate Housewives that I saw somewhat recently. One of the characters killed a man in her living room, but there was soon — like very soon — to be a part in that living room.

They had to dispose of the body.

Now I’m going to go out on a limb and suppose that you’ve never found yourself in such a situation. Nor, I’m guessing, have any of your friends or family told you a similar story that actually happened to them.

So we’re in new territory here. We’re weaving a tale that is completely outside of your comfort zone and beyond your realm of personal knowledge.

Despite this foreignness, a decade of research in our lab shows that you can make snap-second judgments about the plausibility of events as they unfold.

If, for instance, we were to lean the body against the wall and put a lampshade on his head to pretend he is a lamp during the party, you would quite rightly say, “That would never happen!

My question is this: where does that come from? That is, how you decide what is implausible in the world of the unlikely?

Yet hundreds — perhaps more than 1,000 by now — of participants in our lab show that they make these decisions easily, quickly, and consistently.

The same is true to things highly likely to happen. That is, if the story were to have continued that the women stuffed the corpse into a spare bedroom, you likely would have surmised that this could have happened.

If either case, you would have made the decision quite quickly. Our data show, however, that you would have made the decision about the implausible even slightly more quickly.

For someone interested in the brain, however, this presents a challenge.

How did you actually make that decision?

From the standpoint of what’s in the brain, they are fundamentally different processes. We can argue that for the highly likely scenario, you can drawn upon actual experiences. That is, there are actually memories stored in the network of your brain that suggest that this could happen.

Yet for the implausible case, almost by definition, such memories cannot reside in the brain.

Yet you make the decision equally as quickly — perhaps even faster.

How?

We’ve tried many methods to infuse the decisions with cognitive roadblocks to make it more difficult, but precious little light has been shed.

These cognitive roadblocks can be thought of as slow-motion video, where we slow down the process to get a better look. Still no clear pattern emerges.

Even more interesting are the cases where the next event in the story might or might not happen. These do slow people down, but when we force them to decide under time pressure, they seem to be able to speed things up while coming to the same conclusion.

We are not totally lost here. We have some insight, yet these hypotheses become much more difficult to test. We’re lining up two new studies as we speak to delve once again into the process of reality in an attempt to force the brain to reveal its secrets.

I’ll keep you posted in this space. Experience tells me that we’ll learn a little bit while stumbling upon new questions that had not yet occurred.

The human mind remains the most complicated object in the known universe, and its recursive hold on my imagination is as firm as it ever was.

The grandest canyon of all

In hindsight, this year will be remembered for the family trip to the Grand Canyon.

We packed up our lives and headed toward our first foray into camping at Mather Campground at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon National Park. Although I had great trepidation about our “roughing it” skills, the trip was far better than my greatest hopes.

Despite the chilly nights, the girls took to camping and demonstrated great appreciation for the natural world.

That was my greatest hope, and the park’s outstanding Junior Ranger program helped tremendously. Thank you, National Park Service.

The girls went on hikes, listened to stories, sought out information, and left the park wanting to be park rangers when they grow up. For a dad who worries how to endear science to his daughters, this was outstanding.

Sure, we cooked by the campfire less than intended, taking full advantage of the Canyon’s many eating establishments. As a first camping trip, however, I cannot recommend the Mather Campground more highly. It was ideal.

The camping trip also allowed me to peek at another great passion of 2011, the cosmos. Without the right equipment for my Rebel T1i, I could not do true time lapse photography, and focusing on infinity is a little trickier than it seems. However, one night as the girls all slept, I snuck outside the tent and took a few shots.

And we managed a quick stop at Four Corners National Monument on the way home. After almost a week in Northern Arizona, we nearly wilted in the 100+ degree heat.

Graduate students moving on

Bittersweet goodbyes also marked the year, with three bedrock lab members moving on.

Leslie Moya finished her master’s degree — with a superb thesis — and decided that she’d had enough grad school … for now.

Original Texas Tech Communication & Cognition lab member and stalwart, Wes “Tiberius” Wise, moved on to life as an assistant professor. Joining him was three-year lab veteran Curtis Matthews. Our loss is the Wildcats’ gain.

Note: My lack of a picture of the gents is proof that advisors are always in graduation photos yet scarcely subsequently see them.

Love what you do

I embarked 2011 as the Interim Chairperson for the Department of Advertising, effective as the New Year’s clock struck midnight. The interim tag was dropped on Sept. 1, and accepting this position marks one of the great decisions of my career.

It is my pleasure to work with the greatest faculty, staff, and students I’ve ever met, so the many hours have been met with even more fun.

There were work trips to Tech’s Junction campus; Mesa, Arizona, for the American Academy of Advertising; St. Louis for the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications; and Orlando for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges.

Man, I hate Abilene

The very worst thing ever happened with Emily spending the first five weeks of the year out-of-town from Sunday afternoon until Friday evening to train for her new job. That almost killed me. Somehow the children survived.

Man of honor

A final highlight of the year came in my service as Man (rather than maid) of Honor for my former master’s student (now Ph.D.) Jessica Freeman’s wedding.

She and her groom are amazing people, and the entire wedding weekend was a delight.

Let’s hope the Mayans were wrong

In all, 2011 was a heckuva ride. Cannot wait for 2012!

Unless we all die, of course. Then it can wait!

Some time ago I was watching a program about improv — why I don’t know — and they said that the first rule of improv was not to say “no.”

You see, that kills the sketch dead. There is nowhere to go from there. You have taken away all inertia.

And last evening I was thinking how well this lesson applies to all of life.

Automobiles

No one wants to be involved in an unintended crash. But least of all with a bridge piling. Your automobile has built up a great deal of inertia, and hitting a steel-reinforced concrete pier brings that all to an immediate halt.

Damage is maximal. Fatalities are likely.

Physical altercations

No sane person wants to be punched in the face. It hurts and kills.

So imagine that your face is hanging out, and all of a sudden, a giant fist is proceeding toward it with maximal velocity.

What to do?

In all cases, it is difficult to stop the fist dead in its tracks. There’s a lot of inertia behind that fist.

That’s why most martial arts teach redirection. It’s difficult to stop a flying fist, but it’s comparatively easy to redirect it.

What if it’s all about inertia and redirection?

Thinking about all of these scenarios, I wondered whether the key to life happiness simply rests in the concepts of inertia and redirection.

In a marriage–as with improv–a conversation has nowhere to go when someone says “no.”

But it’s so expedient. We all do it. A hundred times a month in little conversations that mean nothing.

Yet what if these simple inertia-killing “nos” have the same effect they do when crumpling a car, concaving a face, or draining the humor from a previously funny improv sketch?

‘Til death do us part

A marriage is yoked at the most crucial part of a person, the essence, or “soul,” if you will. So these little refutations might have far more damage that colliding with a bridge in the most protected “crumple designed front impact zone.”

Instead they come at your heart, where you’re most vulnerable.

And what if it’s just as simple as taking the story in a new, related direction, as in improv?

As a side note, we were watching the comedy It’s Kind of a Funny Story last night, and one character jokes that he heard that Zach Galifianakis’ character was psychologically committed because he tried to rape a penguin at the zoo.

So I’m not saying that if your partner suggests going to the zoo to violate a penguin, you suggest violating a flamingo instead.

Clearly I’m talking about less substantial — legal and ethical — situations

I’m merely saying that if you replaced your goto “no” with some improv style redirection, your life might be markedly higher.

A non-example

My wife and I have a running joke about one day buying a motorcycle with a sidecar.

To be clear, neither of us has any desire to actually do this.

But on a somewhat often basis, I make the joke about buying a sidecar with an eject lever in case she gets too lippy.

At which time she protest that she’s not riding in a sidecar, and it’s funny and we both know it’s serious

Better example

To my knowledge, I have been on a sailboat once in my life, and I generally liked it despite the fact that I knocked my pre-teen head on one of the large poles, whose name I don’t event know … that’s how serious I am about sailing.

But in my heart, I long to retire and sail the world.

And for a really long time, this elicited the same reaction as the sidecar. But this time it hurt a little. Sometimes a lot.

Again, we’re yoked at our dreams.

Then one day that changed. One day she said something akin to:

“Instead of just buying an expensive sailboat someday, why don’t we go on a sailing trip or take lessons to see whether we even liked it.”

And that changed everything.

So does that make me Gilligan or the Skipper?

Now it’s something that we both share. Not a point of separation but a point of unification.

More than a year ago, Emily was at a conference in Corpus Christi, Texas, and she brought me back a small wooden sailboat.

It’s one of my most prized possessions — it’s about four feet from me as I type.

With a simple act, she turned an inertia killing “no” into something we share and something that continually reminds me how much I love her and how glad I am that out 6.5 billion people on the planet, how very happy I am that my dreams are yoked to her.

So, I say to you, what if it really is just that simple?

I arrived in Bloomington, Indiana, on Jan. 2, 2002 to begin a joint doctoral program in Telecommunications and Cognitive Science.

Working with Annie remains one of the greta joys of my professional life.

Thankfully I save almost everything, so I have a record of our first e-mail exchange. I wrote at the end of my first year as a master’s student.

She wrote back the next morning, May 18, 2000, describing her program of research. In this e-mail she outlines what I have come to believe is the best way to run a lab:

I do think that the program here at Indiana is/can be very rigorous. In many ways our curriculum asks students to identify their interests and needs and goals and then design their own program, with the help of their committee, to get them there.  For this reason it can be as challenging as you want to make it!  The basic Ph.D. core is, I think, a solid group of courses.

Since you’ve read my work you probably already know that a lot of my work was/is done as a team effort – with graduate students. I expect my Ph.D. students to contribute to all aspects of the research done in the lab from data collection to analysis to coming up with ideas for future studies (not all of these at first but all of them by the end of your studies).

I like to think that my Ph.D. students, when they are done, are methodologically well trained, and theoretically proficient in the field in general – and then have their own specialties of which they know (I would hope) more than me.

It is always my hope that I will learn from my Ph.D. students, not just that they will learn from me.  I expect them to branch out, learn more, and share the knowledge they learn and use with the lab group (in lab meetings) and the field (in conference papers), etc.

…

My own work tends to travel across content types (political advertising, news, prime time TV, PSAs, etc.) and recently has been moving into other platforms from TV (audio only, computer display, video games, etc.)  However, my theoretical approach is consistent (limited capacity information processing approach) and my methodology is generally experimental with an emphasis on covert measures of processing.

They grasped the minutiae of playing but did not really get it. We helped them buy properties and houses, and then they started seeing how the values increased.

I admit that I missed the moment my 7-year-old “got it,” but my wife said she saw the twinkle in her eye. Ninety minutes later, Piper had cleaned us all out.

Mostly my girls played very lovingly. They didn’t want to bankrupt anyone, and they tried to be sweet.

But that’s not the story.

The story is when Piper dropped a $100 bill on the ground. She asked Chloé, 11, to pick it up.

“No,” Chloé says.

“I’ll let you keep it,” Piper says.

Chloé picks it up.

Then Piper takes another $100, holds it at arm’s length, wiggles it, flashes an evil grin, and drops it like popcorn for her pigeon sister to fetch.

A few minutes later, I landed on the hotel I helped her build, and I didn’t have that much cash. So I offered the electric utility up for auction.

“I’ll give you $500 for it,” Piper blurts out.

“Piper, you’ll go broke if you keep doing that,” Chloé insists.

Again, she’s 7, and she just leans back, gets a smug grin on her face, wave her open palms over her treasure trove of riches, as if to say, “When hell freezes over.”

So she had no payday loan predation in her, but when she had the chance to rub a sister’s face in it, power corrupted absolutely.

That said, I am working on two new series for the upcoming academic year. It seems foolhardy to launch academic-related series during the summer.

The first series will cover thoughts for undergraduate students to maximize their experiences at a research-intensive university. I’m really looking forward to it.

The second series will deal with the activities of my lab. Just the other day, I mentioned a bedrock article in our field (roughly let’s call it media psychology), and the student had never heard of it.

Both of these series will deal with advice I give all the time. But this Weblog will provide a semi-permanent home for these thoughts so when I forget a piece, people will still have a chance to see what I missed.

The lab series likely will launch first. I hope for the undergraduate research series to launch along side my first-ever teaching of IS 1100, the Freshman Seminar at Tech.

Looking forward to your comments.