DEDICATED MICROCOMPUTERS AND PERSONAL COMPUTERS AS EXPERIMENTAL TOOLS IN THE PHYSICS LABORATORY

Modern microcomputers and personal computers increasingly provide the user with facilities until recently found only in mainframes. As a result a new category of small scale, but computationally and numerically demanding laboratory experiments and instruments have become realizable on the spot. Three examples of pertinent experiments/instruments designed at the Signals and Systems Department, Faculty of Physics, Delft University are discussed

Helping to overcome intervention inertia in Bystander’s dilemmas: behavioral disinhibition can improve the greater good

Conventional wisdom holds that behavioral disinhibition has negative effects on what humans do. Behavioral disinhibition may indeed frequently have negative effects, but in the present paper we reveal some positive consequences as well: The disinhibition hypothesis proposed here states that people may feel inhibited to intervene in situations in which non-intervening bystanders are present and that, therefore, behavioral disinhibition may help to overcome the bystander effect. Findings presented here provide evidence supporting this prediction both inside and outside the psychology laboratory: In both real-life and controlled bystander situations, people were more likely and faster to provide help when (unrelated to the bystander situations) they had (vs. had not) been reminded about having acted with no inhibitions. These findings suggest that, in contrast with what various theories and worldviews dictate, behavioral disinhibition may have positive effects on helping behavior and hence can be conducive for the greater good