Humans are Weird

[moon_custafer]

This game, found via littlefluffy.com, seems to have been designed by psych students at McGill, and is one of several supposed to improve your self-esteem by training you to focus on smiling rather than frowning faces.

What fascinates/disturbs me is that in playing it I realized that I can read words way faster than I can identify facial expressions. Mind you, this may be partly visual - the names were written in nice legible dark-blue-on white, whereas the faces were tiny photos. After a while it helped to tell myself to stop trying to interpret expressions and just click on the beige or brown blobs with white dashs across the centre (teeth) and not on the plain blobs (no visible teeth, therefore not smiling).

I don't think this will actually help my social skills.

Comments

Re: Think fast!

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know all that - I'm just thinking this game might actually worsen social skills, since the most effective way to play it (for me anyway) is to make oneself *not* see the faces as faces, but as abstract shapes. I'm amused at the naiveté. Actually, since these people appear to be the doctors/researchers of the future, I'm a little frightened by the naiveté.