The British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA) wants your Beatles memories. Working with scientists at the University of Leeds, the BA is running an online survey aimed at creting the world’s largest database of “autobiographical memories” every undertaken. The timing: 44 years ago this month, the Beatles occupied the top five positions on Billboard’s Top Pop singles chart. According to a BA press release:
Psychologists know that certain cues are successful at triggering the recollection of events from our lives – our ‘autobiographical memories’. Music in particular has a strong emotive and recollective power in relation to our long-term memory.
Whilst the majority of memory studies look at ‘flash-bulb’ events such as the shuttle disaster this will be the first time psychologists have attempted to gather a huge database of memories by tapping into the unique global influence the Beatles have in shaping our personal identities. As global pop icons, the impact of the life, times and music of the Beatles spans different generations, countries and cultures.
The results of the Magical Memory Tour will help further our understanding of how children develop a capacity for memory, how adults process memory and how memory changes in older adulthood.
The survey is aimed at anyone, anywhere, who has a memory relating to the Beatles – you don’t have to be a fan to get involved! Participants should think about the first thing that comes to mind from their life that is related to the Beatles. It may be a very vivid memory relating to a particular album, song, news story - or even band member.
Has Al Gore grabbed the mantle of Boomer-in-Chief from his old boss, Bill Clinton? Syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman thinks so, arguing that Gore’s striking post-political reinvention as the leading global warming evangelist points the way for an entire generation asking itself what’s next as it starts turning 60:
“The attention on Al Gore’s trajectory from loser to laureate misses something about this second act and second actor. As he approaches 60, Gore’s staking out something of a new path for his generation…[Gore is] the model for what Marc Freedman calls the “encore career.” The head of Civic Ventures, a think tank promoting civic engagement as the second act for boomers, Freedman says, “Gore found himself by losing himself - literally losing - and being liberated from ambition, the idea that there’s a particular ladder you have to scurry up and if you don’t make it to the top it’s all over. Essentially he found a different ladder.”
Gore’s reinvention extends beyond his work on the environment. His recent book, The Assault on Reason, is a remarkable analysis of what’s gone wrong with American democracy and prescription for change.
Put all that together with the Nobel Prize and you’ve got to wonder why he’d even consider returning to his first career in politics.
Americans are eating more spicy food, but it’s not due to a big increase in culinary adventure. Turns out taste buds start to go as we age–and when that happens, people eat spicier food. The Boston Globe explains that the Boomer age wave is driving a major increase in spicy food offerings on grocery shelves, and the popularity of ethnic restaurants featuring hot food:
“So far, few marketers or researchers have studied the link between boomers and spicy food. The industry is just now starting to draw the connection, food scientists say. Research in this area has been slow in part because the science of smell and taste is complicated and still emerging. What’s known is that at a certain age - after about 40 for most people - the number of nerve receptors in the nose and tongue that respond to smell and taste dim and decrease. As that happens, complex flavors become duller. Sweet and sour tastes decline sharply; salty and acidic tastes remain brighter for longer. The tastes that penetrate the fog most clearly come from another group of flavors called sensory irritants. These hit the body not through taste or smell, but through the chemosensory system, which conveys sensations like touch, temperature, pain, and pressure. A list of foods in the sensory irritant category reads like a roster of modern flavorings: habanero, jalapeno, black pepper, horseradish, ginger, cinnamon. All of them - generally lumped together as “spicy” or “high-flavor” - help kick up the overall sensory experience of eating.”
Evidence of the trend turns up in older Americans’ preference for more flavorful cheeses, visits to websites for spicy food aficionados, and growing use of the word “spicy” on restaurant menus. (Yes, there’s actually someone tracking this–MenuMine, a database maintained by the Foodservice Research Institute.)
Yes, best line of the week would be better. But I just ran across this in Rachel Johnson’s wonderful July 1 column in The Sunday Times about life reinvention, second careers and Boomers who will work until they drop. Sorry I’m running so late…
“In the future, I reckon, we will always be both too young and too poor to retire.”
That Washington Post study on all those humorless old people is stirring up a firestorm of comment. Many are not amused. Tom Mann, senior vice president of advertising at Erickson Communities and publisher of The Erickson Tribune, wrote today to let me know about a new tv ad the company is testing that relies chiefly on…humor! to attract residents to its senior communities. About the Wash U study, Tom says:
I’m not buying it. Several other experts agree with me. Note today’s posting on David Wolfe’s Ageless Marketing. When we did the rough cuts for this spot, which we did at the WWII memorial in DC, seniors happily volunteered their own scenarios. In fact, we had so many retirees volunteer as they walked by that we had a tough time picking our favorite lines. Which is another interesting fact about this spot, it wrote itself.
So here’s the new Erickson ad:
Erickson is testing the ad on local tv in Chicago this evening and will then decide whether to expand to a major campaign.
Meanwhile, back at the Department of Research on Humor and Aging, colleague John McMennamin of McMennamin Consulting has rapped my knuckles for promoting an ageist view of elder humor, and criticizes Wash U’s methodology:
The two panels had very inadequate sample sizes of 40 each! The age groups were extreme, with the older group being over 65 (the median age not defined), and the younger group composed of graduate students. With these extreme age differences, there was very little, and certainly not significant, difference in comprehension. The headline should have read “The responses to humour changes very insignificantly over a 50 year period from college to retirement! . . . Those who have pre-conceived notions (a large majority of managers) will not read beyond the headline. They will just add this notion to their long list of improperly conceived biases against older workers.”
For the record: I’m not buying the results of the study either…I found it kind of absurd. I am, however, trying to mount an anti-Ferd’nand campaign.
Chuck Nyren points to interesting comment on the study at Time Goes By.
Matt Thornhill’s Boomer Project thinks Wash U has a point..
Music in particular has a strong emotive and recollective power in relation to our long-term memory.
Gore’s striking post-political reinvention as the leading global warming evangelist 
, and the popularity of ethnic restaurants featuring hot food:
Johnson’s wonderful July 1 
