Tuesday

Well Tuesdays symposium went quite a bit smoother. I started off the day attending a symposium that was centered around Stereotypes, prejudice, with Dr. Doris Van Auken and actually I ended up meeting the first presenter at a lot of lectures later. He even was taking the same plane from Germany to Heathrow that I was. So that was a great experience. Needless to say I didn't really think to much about the stereotypes I have about people who can't speak. Very interesting topic and very interesting presenter. After that I went to the "Internet access" zone of the conference and posted that first post. Walked around the posters for a bit, nothing there was outstanding but a few were interesting. I was a bit unnerved by the lack of print outs so I had to memorize or take notes on their posters which of course made me feel like a doofus. After a conversation with Dr. Van Auken well after the conference she stated that some of the posters were well below what she expected to see. Unbelievably, one person merely printed out their research paper and just slapped that on the wall!

But lets talk about some of the stuff I saw that was worth while and get off this negative subject.
I had to attend the symposium entitled, "Self-regulatory strenght and ego depletion: a decade later" with Alex Bertrams (Germany), Braqndong Schmeichel (USA), Alexander Unger (Germany), and Kathleen Vohs (USA). I was not actually aware of the topic before going in, but after leaving I still felt motivated to learn more about these two phenomena. Each one of the presenters was quite good.

During the symposium I felt kind of like a jerk. I got there a good 20 minutes early, and everyone else showed up 10 minutes before it started, and needless to say the room was PACKED!! two of the presenters even sat on the floor.

After that I was on my way to the Invited address, "Social Learning of Fear" when I ran into a fella I met the night before while attending Josh Jost's discussion. That's him in between some of the other Berliner students. So we ended up talking for a good hour and getting lunch. Ahhh the German people are quite wonderful to chat with. Once I realized the time I darted back to the conference to get good seats for the Controversial Debate which as I was told would be packed...and indeed it was.

Needless to say I got there right in the middle of the invited address scheduled before the debate and I must say...it was quite interesting. The topic was called, " The cultural psychology of globalization." Essentially if you are primed with information about your culture, then another persons culture, then asked to describe another persons culture they become more their-own culture and you become your own culture. My guess is that I was the only person in that room who was both American and Awake the whole time. I suppose it was not very interesting to the two other Americans in the room.

Finally the controversial debate! And this we have pictures of thanks to the CPO Hanser Service GmbH. So as you can see Dr. Van Auken was quite engaged on this particular topic, as were we all! This was hands down the most interesting topic of the day.

The debate was ushured in by Elsbeth Stern (Switzerland) giving a fantastic overview of the topic and the presenters and including a bit of her own research in there as well.

This brings to Dr. Van Aukens "Pensive Picture." I didn't take this shot but its quite good if you ask me and a fairly good illustration of how engaging this topic actually was. Starting with the American, Camilla Benbow, describing her population and the caveats of educational psychology in the first place. Mind you her population is the top 1% in terms of IQ (e.g., the sons and daughters of the sons and daughters of Yale for generations). In any case her point was well made and indeed she left on quite the high note by saying, "You know, it all depends."

The next presenter did not really chime with me nearly as smoothly as Camilla Benbow, although, she too had her points that appeared to be valid. (I am not going to get into the specifics in this post for the sake of brevity.

Now I'm sure some of you are wondering why exactly my face looks like I'm quite irritated and yet interested. Well there is a grand reason for that and the words from Dr. Hugh's mouth described them best which without a direct quote was something to the effect of, "Typically when there is a debate and the mic is offered to the floor, the person with the mic asks a question. They don't typically give their research and data as a rebuttle." So I'm sure you can figure out what happened exactly. The presenters opened the floor to the attendee's and 2 of 5 actually asked a question! Mind you when the last person actually got up he stated right away, "I have a question" which was followed by nearby applause. Now I don't want to sound negative about this. I'm just stating I feel it was inappropriate to pick up the mic on a Q&A and not actually follow the premise.

Aside from that the day was by far the most interesting up to the point (easy considering it was merely the second day) and was by far the most conference intensive day I had. It always surprises me the sheer number of people who are willing to strike up a conversation at the drop of a hat if they merely have one thing in common such as attending this type of conference. I think it is that (and my basic knowledge of psychology) that really makes going to conferences worth while. I'm going to move onto Wednesday in the next post.