Internet Psychologist
The BBC called me recently and asked me to appear on the breakfast show on one of their local radio stations, Radio Solent in Southampton. I was to be interviewed about the psychology behind the fascination with virtual pets – the kind of “animal” you can create and care for …
We now have more computers per household than bicycles. Apparently, there are an average of 2.6 computers in each home. The result is we are spending more time attached to our PCs than we are to each other. And that is certain to have several impacts on our lives – …
Like almost anything else in life, it’s clearly possible to become addicted to the Internet. If you find that you are spending hours in front of your PC screen, when there are other things to be done that get ignored, there’s a danger of addiction. However, new research from the …
Every day I read something that just makes me realise how little the world’s authorities and governments actually understand anything about the Internet. Today, two American legal cases show that the “establishment” is thrashing around like some dying monster, unaware of its own demise. Firstly, there’s been a major patent …
If you want to get a top blog you need to write about politics or blogging itself. That’s the conclusion you can draw from a year-long study by Internet metrics analysts Nielsen. They measured the top blog postings according to how many people commented on them and how many links …
Years ago in the dim dark distant past of psychology – the 1970s – we thought that human memory was a chemically mediated function within the brain. Now, there is a growing belief that memory is based on DNA and much of it could therefore be distributed throughout our body. …
I’ve just been listening to a programme on BBC Radio Four where there was a man from the Sherlock Holmes Society of London talking. He spends part of his life dressed up as Watson, playing the Victorian, fictional character. Alongside 65 other members of the society he recently went to …
A survey of 750 of the world’s leading “futurists” has revealed a largely negative view of how the Internet will affect our lives by the year 2020. According to the research, we’ll have less access to the Internet because of limitations imposed by governments. The futurists also believe addiction to …
The chances are you know where your prized possessions are. If I asked you to find your iPod or your mobile phone, you could probably get it within seconds. If I asked you where your partner was at the moment, or a member of your family, you could probably be …
In a traditional shop everything you do is controlled by the retailer. The route you take through the store has been pre-planned. Retail psychologists observer shopper behaviour and help retailers maximise their sales by having the right offers in the right place. It is no coincidence that most supermarkets are …
New psychology research at Princeton University provides a clue to Internet marketers about what they need to concentrate on. The study was conducted to find out how long we need to make up our mind about a person by looking at their face. It has been known for some time …
Recent research suggests people leave a web site 50 milliseconds after they enter it, unless they see some reason to linger. In other words, people are making an instant decision as to whether or not your site provides them with what they want even before they’ve had a chance to …