Can you tell real science from a convincing, but made up story? Join researchers from the University of Aberdeen's Perception Group for an interactive evening exploring how our perceptual and attentional systems work.
We’ll take a series of familiar phenomena and popular beliefs and offer you two explanations for each. Both will sound plausible. Both will draw on real psychological ideas. But only one will stand up to the scientific evidence. The other may sound positively supercalifragilisticexpialidocious - but as Mary Poppins reminds us, saying something loudly and convincingly doesn’t make it true.
Expect demonstrations, creative experiments, audience voting and some carefully constructed scientific fibs as we explore what research can, and cannot, tell us about attention and perception.
Will you spot the fiction before we reveal the evidence? Come along and put your scientific detective skills to the test.
Topics include:
- Beer Goggles: Love at First Pint?
- Want to Stop Time? Take a Glance at a Clock!
- 50 Shades of Yummy: High-Art Aesthetic or Appetite Killer?
- Hypnotised! A Special State or the Power of Suggestion?
- Picture-Perfect Memory … or Not?
- Better Looking Together: The Cheerleader Effect
- The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress: The Looming Lunar Mystery
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