Facebook Info Box

So, I've been pretty bored over the Christmas break (at least, until I got about ten new books for Christmas), so in my boredom, I came up with a great idea for another Greasemonkey user script for Facebook. This one was much more adventurous than my previous Facebook script.

I was inspired by the new popup box that Facebook is using for poking people. It even uses some Ajax, which is very cool. I decided I wanted to something like that, but even cooler. I was also partly inspired by another user script called inYOfaceBook, which has a popup of large profile images, when you hover your mouse pointer over smaller profile images (like you find in searches, the mini-feed, etc). I decided to combine the two, and add a few more features.

So, after installing this script, a Facebooker can hold down the Alt key, and hover the pointer over a picture, or a name (usually linking to a Facebook profile), and a box will pop-up with that person's picture, and various useful things to do (message, poke, view wall, etc). You can also click on the image, and it will cycle through the various sizes (mini-thumb, like you see on a wall-post, mid-size-thumb, like you see in a search, and full size, like on the profile). Soon, I'll add the person's Networks (or at least the main one) in the box too.

The other feature I'm planning on adding is being able to pop-up just the person's full-size picture, maybe by holding Shift, instead of Alt, and hovering over the link, or picture.

Here's a screenshot.

Project Implicit: Speed vs. Accuracy & Men, Women, Science, Art

Here's another set of Project Implicit results for me:

Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for Accuracy compared to Speed. Depending on the magnitude of your result, your automatic associations may be described as 'slight', 'moderate', 'strong', or 'little to no preference (or identity)'.

That seems to be pretty spot on for me. I prefer to do things right, than do them fast. And here's another set of results:

Your data suggest a strong association of Male with Science and Female with Liberal Arts compared to Female with Science and Male with Liberal Arts. If your performance is described as '(slight, moderate. or strong) association of Science with Male and Liberal Arts with Female' compared to the alternative pairings, it means you responded faster when Science and Male words were classified with the same key than when Liberal Arts and Male items shared a key. If your association was stronger for 'Liberal Arts with Male, Science with Female' you were faster when using the same key for Liberal Arts and Male items.

I think these results must be the result of culture, rather than actual personal feelings on my part. Also, their definition of Liberal Arts didn't quite jive with mine. They included Music, which I consider to be a Fine Art, rather than a Liberal Art.

Project Implicit and First set of Results

I recently signed up for a study being done by Harvard Research. It's called Project Implicit, and the point is to determine what certain people implicit feel. Here's what the site says:

It is well known that people don't always 'speak their minds', and it is suspected that people don't always 'know their minds'. Understanding such divergences is important to scientific psychology. This web site presents a method that demonstrates the conscious-unconscious divergences much more convincingly than has been possible with previous methods. This new method is called the Implicit Association Test, or IAT for short.

The most common type is automatic preferences for one thing over another. On their list of demonstration tests, for example, they have tests that show if a person has an automatic preference towards light- or dark-skinned people (I have none either way), or if a person has a preference towards Judaism or other religions (I have a strong preference towards Judaism).

If one registers for the study, whenever they log in to the site, they'll be given a random test, and then given the results of said test. So, I decided it would be interesting to post some of the results of the tests I've taken. I'll just quote them exactly, and I'll put one result in a post. The following is regarding my preference for US places over Foreign.

Your data suggest a strong automatic preference for American Places compared to Foreign Places. Depending on the magnitude of your result, your automatic associations may be described as 'slight', 'moderate', 'strong', or 'little to no preference (or identity)'. How implicit associations affect our judgments and behaviors is not well understood. Also, the score described above may be in_uenced by a number of variables including your familiarity with the categories and the particular items used to represent the categories. As such, the score should serve as an opportunity for self-reflection, not as a definitive assessment of your implicit thoughts or feelings. This and future research will clarih the way in which implicit thinking and feelings affects our perception, judgment, and action.

I'll post more results soon.