THE READING ROOM
Notes on
the notes.
The field notes on the homepage lean on other people’s careful work. Every numbered claim is filed here under the note it supports, with a plain line on what each study found and how firm the ground is.
HOUSE RULES
I. The numbers match the small figures on the homepage.
II. Each card says what the study found, in plain words.
III. Where the evidence is mixed, the card says so.
or browse the catalog ↓
EX LIBRIS
Hagoski
field notes on the human animal
16 SOURCES · 4 NOTES · 4 SIGHTINGS
⁂
THE CATALOG
Sources, filed by note
Each card’s number matches a small figure on the homepage. The drawers follow the page from top to bottom.
THE PREMISE
An old animal in a new world
No. 1
THE PREMISE
Li, N. P., van Vugt, M. & Colarelli, S. M. (2018)
The evolutionary mismatch hypothesis: Implications for psychological science
Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(1), 38–44
WHAT IT FOUND
Minds evolved to handle the inputs of ancestral settings. Modern surroundings supply different ones, in new amounts and intensities, so responses that once helped can misfire.
HOW TO READ A CARD
No. 1
Matches the small figure beside a claim on the homepage.
WHAT IT FOUND
The finding, in plain words.
WORTH KNOWING
Limits, caveats and mixed evidence, where they matter.
READ IT ↗
Opens the original source in a new tab.
NOTE 01
The hose in the grass
No. 2
NOTE 01
LoBue, V. & DeLoache, J. S. (2008)
Detecting the snake in the grass: Attention to fear-relevant stimuli by adults and young children
Psychological Science, 19(3), 284–289
WHAT IT FOUND
Preschoolers and adults, including the children’s own parents, picked out a snake among flowers, frogs or caterpillars faster than the reverse. People who didn’t fear snakes were just as quick.
WORTH KNOWING
It shows fast detection, not an inborn fear.
No. 3
NOTE 01
Nesse, R. M. (2019)
The smoke detector principle: Signal detection and optimal defense regulation
Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, 2019(1), 1
WHAT IT FOUND
When a false alarm is cheap and a miss is costly, the best-tuned defense goes off often. Plenty of false alarms is what a well-designed system should produce.
WORTH KNOWING
Also behind the “Got a minute?” aside, which borrows the logic but hasn’t been tested.
NOTE 02
The seat by the wall
No. 4
NOTE 02
Robson, S. K. A. (2009)
Build for comfort and for speed: Designing your dining room seating for maximum performance
Restaurant Startup & Growth, January 2009, 29–33
WHAT IT FOUND
Asked to choose a restaurant table, people of many ages and backgrounds chose ones against a wall. Tables in the middle of the room were picked less than 2 percent of the time.
WORTH KNOWING
A trade-magazine summary of Cornell survey research, not a peer-reviewed paper.
No. 6
NOTE 02
Appleton, J. (1975)
The experience of landscape
London: John Wiley & Sons (book)
WHAT IT FOUND
Proposed prospect-refuge theory: people are drawn to places where they can see out while staying sheltered, a preference he traced back to survival.
WORTH KNOWING
A 2016 review of the tests (Dosen & Ostwald) found the evidence inconsistent, which is why the homepage says “may.”
No. 5
NOTE 02
Kimes, S. E. & Robson, S. K. A. (2004)
The impact of restaurant table characteristics on meal duration and spending
Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 45(4), 333–346
WHAT IT FOUND
Over 1,400 meals at one 210-seat restaurant, parties lingered at wall-side banquettes and finished faster at exposed tables in busy traffic areas.
WORTH KNOWING
One restaurant, so the authors treat the results as tentative.
No. 7
NOTE 02
Kim, J. & de Dear, R. (2013)
Workspace satisfaction: The privacy-communication trade-off in open-plan offices
Journal of Environmental Psychology, 36, 18–26
WHAT IT FOUND
In surveys of more than 42,000 office workers, people in private offices were the most satisfied. In open plans, noise and lost privacy outweighed any gain in easy interaction.
WORTH KNOWING
Behind the open-plan aside. It measures satisfaction, not who chooses which desk.
NOTE 03
The first night somewhere new
No. 8
NOTE 03
Agnew, H. W., Webb, W. B. & Williams, R. L. (1966)
The first night effect: An EEG study of sleep
Psychophysiology, 2(3), 263–266
WHAT IT FOUND
Over four nights in a sleep lab, 43 young adults woke more and got less REM sleep on the first night. By the second night, their sleep had largely settled.
No. 9
NOTE 03
Tamaki, M., Bang, J. W., Watanabe, T. & Sasaki, Y. (2016)
Night watch in one brain hemisphere during sleep associated with the first-night effect in humans
Current Biology, 26(9), 1190–1194
WHAT IT FOUND
On a first night in the lab, a network in the left hemisphere slept less deeply than its partner on the right, and odd sounds sent to that side woke people more often and faster. By the second night, the difference was gone.
WORTH KNOWING
“Night watch” is the authors’ reading. Only the first deep-sleep stretch of the night was measured.
No. 10
NOTE 03
Rattenborg, N. C., Amlaner, C. J. & Lima, S. L. (2000)
Behavioral, neurophysiological and evolutionary perspectives on unihemispheric sleep
Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 24(8), 817–842
WHAT IT FOUND
Some animals sleep with one half of the brain while the other stays awake. Among mammals it turns up only in aquatic species such as dolphins; in birds it’s widespread and helps them watch for predators.
NOTE 04
Half a conversation
No. 11
NOTE 04
Emberson, L. L., Lupyan, G., Goldstein, M. H. & Spivey, M. J. (2010)
Overheard cell-phone conversations: When less speech is more distracting
Psychological Science, 21(10), 1383–1388
WHAT IT FOUND
Overhearing one side of a phone call hurt performance on attention tasks; hearing both sides, or one person’s monologue, didn’t. Once muffled so the words couldn’t be made out, the half-conversation stopped distracting.
No. 12
NOTE 04
Amtrak (2014)
Sound of silence: The Amtrak Quiet Car
Amtrak blog, November 2014
WHAT IT FOUND
Amtrak’s own account: in early 2000, regular commuters on an early-morning Philadelphia–Washington train, worn out by other riders’ phone calls, talked their conductor into keeping one car quiet. The idea spread quickly.
MORE FIELD NOTES
Smaller sightings
No. 13
MORE FIELD NOTES
Radvansky, G. A., Krawietz, S. A. & Tamplin, A. K. (2011)
Walking through doorways causes forgetting: Further explorations
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64(8), 1632–1645
WHAT IT FOUND
In virtual and real rooms, people remembered less about objects they had just handled after walking through a doorway than after walking the same distance inside one room.
WORTH KNOWING
Not settled: four 2021 experiments (McFadyen et al.) found no reliable doorway effect, except under extra memory load.
No. 15
MORE FIELD NOTES
Ulrich, R. S. (1984)
View through a window may influence recovery from surgery
Science, 224(4647), 420–421
WHAT IT FOUND
In records from one Pennsylvania hospital, gallbladder-surgery patients whose window looked onto trees went home sooner, drew fewer negative nurse notes and needed fewer strong painkillers than matched patients facing a brick wall.
WORTH KNOWING
23 matched pairs: influential, but small.
No. 14
MORE FIELD NOTES
Wardle, S. G., Taubert, J., Teichmann, L. & Baker, C. I. (2020)
Rapid and dynamic processing of face pareidolia in the human brain
Nature Communications, 11, 4518
WHAT IT FOUND
Brain recordings showed illusory faces in everyday objects get picked up almost as fast as real faces before being sorted out as objects. The authors read this as a face detector tuned to catch every face, at the price of false alarms.
No. 16
MORE FIELD NOTES
Hirschauer, S. (2005)
On doing being a stranger: The practical constitution of civil inattention
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 35(1), 41–67
WHAT IT FOUND
A close study of elevator rides: how strangers place their bodies, avoid contact and look occupied, and how much quiet effort it takes to stay strangers in a small box.
WORTH KNOWING
See also Zuckerman, Miserandino & Bernieri (1983): about half of solo riders gave a fellow passenger one brief glance, then kept their eyes elsewhere.