Another peek inside the cognitive toolbox: The grapes of Roath

Overlooked gems can have surprising origins. It would be nice to report that our toolbox article (Macrae, Milne, & Bodenhausen, 1994) was the culmination of hours of intellectual debate, reasoned deliberation, and much head scratching (or in Milne’s case—hair pulling). This, however, would not be true. Indeed, it would be something of an exaggeration to announce that as much as 45 min was spent considering the pertinent issues. Things just did not happen that way. The basic idea originated one Thursday evening in a wine bar in Roath, an area of Cardiff (Wales, United Kingdom) relatively near the university. Each week Alan Milne and myself would consume a few glasses of wine in the bar during happy hour. The purpose of the weekly meeting was supposedly to talk about research, but somehow we rarely achieved such a heady objective. For a reason that never became entirely clear, happy hour in the wine bar seemed to attract the Cardiff look-alike set. Thus, each week we would sample the grape and stare at Princess Diana, Clint Eastwood, and Cher. The result—it was very easy to get distracted. On one occasion, Milne was even asked to autograph a forehead. In such an environment, science inevitably suffers.