1,295 research outputs found
âMy Flesh Be Hackedâ: Corporeal Conflation in Alan Cummingâs one-man Macbeth
Contemporary one-person productions are vastly different from how an ensemble of players performed Shakespearean tragedy in early modern England. However, I argue that a recent staging of Macbeth, produced by the Lincoln Center Festival and starring Alan Cumming (2013), is a constructive tool to consider Shakespeareâs Scottish play and the questions it raises about embodiment. Specifically, I contend that through Cummingâs performance, the paradoxical non-unity of the concepts of sovereignty, gender, and madness are given material expression, revealing something about the deconstructive work accomplished by Shakespearean tragedy. Having interviewed Alan Cumming, I use his first-hand account (along with performance reviews and scholarly criticism) to discuss the resonances of one-person productions and what this performance reveals about Shakespearean tragedy.Les seuls en scĂšne contemporains sont radicalement diffĂ©rents des reprĂ©sentations dâune tragĂ©die shakespearienne par une troupe dâacteurs dans lâAngleterre de la premiĂšre modernitĂ©. Toutefois, jâavance lâidĂ©e quâune mise en scĂšne rĂ©cente de Macbeth, montĂ©e par le Center Festival de Lincoln avec Alan Cumming Ă lâaffiche (2013), est un outil opĂ©ratoire pour envisager la piĂšce Ă©cossaise de Shakespeare et les questions quâelle pose quant Ă la notion dâincarnation. Plus prĂ©cisĂ©ment, je soutiens que le travail dâacteur de Cumming donne une expression concrĂšte Ă lâabsence dâunitĂ© paradoxale des concepts de souverainetĂ©, de genre et de folie, en rĂ©vĂ©lant quelque chose de la dĂ©construction rĂ©alisĂ©e par la tragĂ©die de Shakespeare. Lâentretien que jâai eu avec Alan Cumming me fournit un matĂ©riau de premiĂšre main (en plus des critiques et de la littĂ©rature scientifique sur la question) pour analyser les rĂ©sonances crĂ©Ă©es par les seuls en scĂšne et ce que ces reprĂ©sentations thĂ©Ăątrales rĂ©vĂšlent de la tragĂ©die shakespearienne
Intuitions about intuitive insight and intuitive choice
A long tradition in Western thought has enshrined reasoning as the surest way to reach a sound decision, although the opposing point of view, that sees intuition as a superior basis of many decisions, has had many advocates throughout history. But how do people actually balance intuition and reason when making decisions? I report nine studies that indicate that people use features of the choice (Studies 1-3) or features of their mental states (Studies 4-8) as cues when deciding whether to follow intuition or reason. That is, features of the choice and the chooser's mental state are matched to the characteristics of rational or intuitive processing to determine whether to follow intuition or the dictates of a more deliberate, reasoned analysis. Choices that are seen as objectively evaluable (Study 1), complex (Studies 2a and 2b), or important (Study 3) elicit a preference for choosing rationally, as do mental states of carefulness and caution (Studies 4, 5, and 6). Conversely, mental states involving vividly pictured choices (Study 7) or persistent intuitions (Study 8) elicit an increased preference for choosing intuitively
People's intuitions about intuitive insight and intuitive choice.
How do people balance intuition and reason when making decisions? We report 6 studies that indicate that people are cued by the features of the decision problem to follow intuition or reason when making their choice. That is, when features of the choice resemble features commonly associated with rational processing, people tend to decide on the basis of reason; when features of the choice match those associated with intuitive processing, people tend to decide on the basis of intuition. Choices that are seen as objectively evaluable (Study 1A), sequential (Studies 1B and 3), complex (Study 2), or precise (Study 4) elicit a preference for choosing rationally. This framework accurately predicts peopleâs choices in variants of both the ratio-bias (Study 3) and ambiguity-aversion paradigms (Study 4). Discussion focuses on the relationship between the task cuing account, other decision-making models, and dual-process accounts of cognition
The spotlight effect and the illusion of transparency in social anxiety
[Clark, D. M., & Wells, A. (1995). A cognitive model of social phobia. In: R. G. Heimberg, M. R.
Liebowitz, D. A. Hope, & F. R. Schneier (Eds.), Social phobia: diagnosis, assessment, and treatment (pp.
69â93). New York: Guildford Press] cognitive model of social phobia suggests that both public and private
sources of information contribute to the construction of the self as a social object, which is thought to
maintain the disorder. This study used two concepts developed in social psychology that might help to
explain the processes that contribute to the development of this constructed self. These two concepts are the
spotlight effect [Gilovich, T., Medvec, V. H., & Savitsky, K. (2000). The spotlight effect in social judgment:
an egocentric bias in estimates of the salience of oneâs own actions and appearance. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 78(2), 211â222] and the illusion of transparency [Gilovich, T., Medvec, V. H., &
Savitsky, K. (1998). The Illusion of transparency: biased assessments of othersâ ability to read oneâs own
emotional states. Journal of personality and social psychology, 75(2), 332â346]. Participants performed a
memory task under either a low or a high social-evaluative condition. In the high social-evaluative
condition, participants reported higher levels of the spotlight effect and more negative evaluation of task
performance, compared to participants in the low social-evaluative condition. There were no differences
between the two conditions in levels of the illusion of transparency. Surprisingly, however, in the low socialevaluative
condition, participants reported higher levels of the illusion of transparency than the spotlight
effect, whereas, in the high social-evaluative condition, they reported the opposite. Results suggest that the
spotlight effect may be specific to social-evaluative concerns, whereas, the illusion of transparency may
represent more general features of social anxiety concerns. Implications of the results for Clark and Wellsâ
cognitive model of social phobia model are discussed
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Bodysnatching in Contemporary Anglophone Drama, 1996-2022
In this dissertation, I explore the ways in which contemporary theatre stages possibilities and crises of embodiment. In order to penetrate the complex relationships between character, performer, text, and production, I coin a critical term: theatrical bodysnatching. This term refers to a dissonance or power struggle made manifest in performance, in which a performerâs body seems to resist the character it inhabits in ways that enhance, rather than detract from, the thematics of a theatrical production.
In order to demonstrate the power of theatrical bodysnatching, I analyze playtexts, theatrical performances, reviews, and performer interviews. I argue that theatre is a medium optimally suited for staging sociopolitical dialogue because it models a kind of self-reflexive critique, in which performing bodies both embrace and resist the demands of the playtext. As a result, theatre creates a provocatively charged experience for spectators and performers, in which both parties are thematically implicated in the aims and preoccupations of a given play. Just as the performerâs body does not dissolve but instead accomplishes the crucial work of ideological exposure, the audience also becomes a marked, integrated presence and source of commentary in these bodysnatching plays.
In this dissertation, I harness a particular selection of Anglophone drama from the late 20th to early 21st century in order to demonstrate how the often uncanny, subversive nature of live performance allows for radical reconsiderations of embodiment. By examining the ways in which these strangely iterated charactersâ and the performers who portray themâ unfold onstage, theatrical bodysnatching poses urgent questions of exploitation, agency, and resistance
The dark side of self-and social perception: Black uniforms and aggression in professional sports
Black is viewed as the color of evil and death in virtually all cultures. With this association in mind, we were interested in whether a cue as subtle as the color of a person's clothing might have a significant impact on his or her behavior. To test this possibility, we examined whether professional football and ice hockey teams that wear black uniforms are more aggressive than those that wear nonblack uniforms. An analysis of the penalty records of the National Football League and the National Hockey League indicate that teams with black uniforms in both sports ranked near the top of their leagues in penalties throughout the period of study. On those occasions when a team switched from nonblack to black uniforms, the switch was accompanied by an immediate increase in penalties. The results of two laboratory experiments indicate that this finding can be attributed to both social perception and self-perception processes--that is, to the biased judgments of referees and to the increased aggressiveness of the players themselves. Our discussion focuses on the theoretical implications of these data for an understanding of the variable, or "situated," nature of the self. A convenient feature of the traditional American Western film was the ease with which the viewer could distinguish the good guys from the bad guys: The bad guys wore the black hats. Of course, film directors did not invent this connection between black and evil, but built upon an existing association that extends deep into our culture and language. When a terrible thing happens on a given day
The problem of shot selection in basketball
In basketball, every time the offense produces a shot opportunity the player
with the ball must decide whether the shot is worth taking. In this paper, I
explore the question of when a team should shoot and when they should pass up
the shot by considering a simple theoretical model of the shot selection
process, in which the quality of shot opportunities generated by the offense is
assumed to fall randomly within a uniform distribution. I derive an answer to
the question "how likely must the shot be to go in before the player should
take it?", and show that this "lower cutoff" for shot quality depends
crucially on the number of shot opportunities remaining (say, before the
shot clock expires), with larger demanding that only higher-quality shots
should be taken. The function is also derived in the presence of a
finite turnover rate and used to predict the shooting rate of an
optimal-shooting team as a function of time. This prediction is compared to
observed shooting rates from the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the
comparison suggests that NBA players tend to wait too long before shooting and
undervalue the probability of committing a turnover.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures; comparison to NBA data adde
The Reputational Consequences of Failed Replications and Wrongness Admission among Scientists
Scientists are dedicating more attention to replication efforts. While the scientific utility of replications is unquestionable, the impact of failed replication efforts and the discussions surrounding them deserve more attention. Specifically, the debates about failed replications on social media have led to worry, in some scientists, regarding reputation. In order to gain data-informed insights into these issues, we collected data from 281 published scientists. We assessed whether scientists overestimate the negative reputational effects of a failed replication in a scenario-based study. Second, we assessed the reputational consequences of admitting wrongness (versus not) as an original scientist of an effect that has failed to replicate. Our data suggests that scientists overestimate the negative reputational impact of a hypothetical failed replication effort. We also show that admitting wrongness about a non-replicated finding is less harmful to oneâs reputation than not admitting. Finally, we discovered a hint of evidence that feelings about the replication movement can be affected by whether replication efforts are aimed oneâs own work versus the work of another. Given these findings, we then present potential ways forward in these discussions
Hot Streaks in Artistic, Cultural, and Scientific Careers
The hot streak, loosely defined as winning begets more winnings, highlights a
specific period during which an individual's performance is substantially
higher than her typical performance. While widely debated in sports, gambling,
and financial markets over the past several decades, little is known if hot
streaks apply to individual careers. Here, building on rich literature on
lifecycle of creativity, we collected large-scale career histories of
individual artists, movie directors and scientists, tracing the artworks,
movies, and scientific publications they produced. We find that, across all
three domains, hit works within a career show a high degree of temporal
regularity, each career being characterized by bursts of high-impact works
occurring in sequence. We demonstrate that these observations can be explained
by a simple hot-streak model we developed, allowing us to probe quantitatively
the hot streak phenomenon governing individual careers, which we find to be
remarkably universal across diverse domains we analyzed: The hot streaks are
ubiquitous yet unique across different careers. While the vast majority of
individuals have at least one hot streak, hot streaks are most likely to occur
only once. The hot streak emerges randomly within an individual's sequence of
works, is temporally localized, and is unassociated with any detectable change
in productivity. We show that, since works produced during hot streaks garner
significantly more impact, the uncovered hot streaks fundamentally drives the
collective impact of an individual, ignoring which leads us to systematically
over- or under-estimate the future impact of a career. These results not only
deepen our quantitative understanding of patterns governing individual
ingenuity and success, they may also have implications for decisions and
policies involving predicting and nurturing individuals with lasting impact
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