1,069 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2018
    1. Think about it this way: How much better might it feel to take a breath after making a mistake, rather than berating ourselves?“All you have to do is think of going to a friend,” Dr. Neff said. “If you said, ‘I’m feeling fat and lazy and I’m not succeeding at my job,’ and your friend said, ‘Yeah, you’re a loser. Just give up now. You’re disgusting,’ how motivating would that be?”This is the linchpin of being kinder to ourselves: Practice what it feels like to treat yourself as you might treat a friend. In order to trade in self-abuse for self-compassion, it has to be a regular habit.AdvertisementSo the next time you’re on the verge of falling into a shame spiral, think of how you’d pull your friend back from falling in, and turn that effort inward. If it feels funny the first time, give it second, third and fourth tries.And if you forget on the fifth, remember: Four tries is a lot better than zero.
    2. But it’s step three, according to Dr. Brewer, that is most important if you want to make the shift sustainable in the long term: Make a deliberate, conscious effort to recognize the difference between how you feel when caught up in self-criticism, and how you feel when you can let go of it.“That’s where you start to hack the reward-based learning system,” Dr. Brewer said.
    3. The second step to self-compassion is to meet your criticism with kindness. If your inner critic says, “You’re lazy and worthless,” respond with a reminder: “You’re doing your best” or “We all make mistakes.”
    4. 3 steps to self-compassionFirst: Make the choice that you’ll at least try a new approach to thinking about yourself. Commit to treating yourself more kindly — call it letting go of self-judgment, going easier on yourself, practicing self-compassion or whatever resonates most. To strengthen the muscle, Dr. Brewer suggests “any type of practice that helps us stay in the moment and notice what it feels like to get caught up. See how painful that is compared to being kind to ourselves.”
    5. core to self-compassion is to avoid getting caught up in our mistakes and obsessing about them until we degrade ourselves, and rather strive to let go of them so we can move onto the next productive action from a place of acceptance and clarity
    6. researchers found that “self-compassion led to greater personal improvement, in part, through heightened acceptance,” and that focusing on self-compassion “spurs positive adjustment in the face of regrets.”
    7. The solution? It’s called self-compassion: the practice of being kind and understanding to ourselves when confronted with a personal flaw or failure
    8. Evolutionary psychologists have studied our natural “negativity bias,” which is that instinct in us all that makes negative experiences seem more significant than they really are. In other words: We’ve evolved to give more weight to our flaws, mistakes and shortcomings than our successes.
    1. Similarly, the moral foundations theory originally put forth by Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham purports that humans have (in the most common and widely discussed versions of the theory) five innate moral building blocks: care/harm; fairness/cheating; loyalty/betrayal (associated with in-group/out-group consciousness); authority/subversion; and sanctity/degradation (“sanctity” is also often referred to as “purity” in the relevant discussions). Liberals are highly attuned to care/harm and fairness/reciprocity, but conservatives, while valuing care, also emphasize authority and purity, which means that their approach to care/harm will be very different from that of liberals. (In fairness, many on the far Left also emphasize purity and fall into authoritarianism.)

      This could be worth a read as well.

  2. Jul 2018
    1. I think of research as a conversation, and it really is very much like a conversation. No single person dominates it, but what does happen is when you interject something, when you contribute something to a conversation, you want to be understood, you want to be heard, you would like people to pay attention, you would like it to have some influence on the way the conversation goes. You don't control it. But thinking in conversational terms and trying to say something that is interesting as a criteria, not merely publishable but actually is interesting -- that's been part of what moved me.
    1. توهم یا به فارسی پریشان‌پنداری به دو صورت حسی و اطلاعاتی می‌باشد

      نمونه‌ی حاشیه.

    1. Phil Tetlock, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, who has studied forecasting in depth, suggests that “vague verbiage gives you political safety.”
  3. Jun 2018
    1. WHERE TO FIND FLOWFlow tends to occur when a person faces a clear set of goals that require appropriate responses. It is easy to enter flow in games such as chess, tennis, or poker, because they have goals and rules that make it possible for the player to act without questioning what should be done, and how. For the duration of the game the player lives in a self-contained universe where everything is black and white. The same clarity of goals is present if you perform a religious ritual, play a musical piece, weave a rug, write a computer program, climb a mountain, or perform surgery. In contrast to normal life, these "flow activities" allow a person to focus on goals that are clear and compatible, and provide immediate feedback.article continues after advertisementgoogletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1404853927369-9'); });Flow also happens when a person's skills are fully involved in overcoming a challenge that is just about manageable, so it acts as a magnet for learning new skills and increasing challenges. If challenges are too low, one gets back to flow by increasing them. If challenges are too great, one can return to the flow state by learning new skills.How often do people experience flow? If you ask a sample of typical Americans, "Do you ever get involved in something so deeply that nothing else seems to matter and you lose track of time?" roughly one in five will say that this happens to them as much as several times a day, whereas about 15 percent will say that this never happens to them. These frequencies seem to he quite stable and universal. For instance, in a recent survey of 6,469 Germans, the same question was answered in the following way: Often, 23 percent; Sometimes, 40 percent; Rarely, 25 percent; Never or Don't Know, 12 percent.A more precise way to study flow is the Experience Sampling Method, or ESM, which I developed at the University of Chicago in the early 1970s. This method provides a virtual filmstrip of a person's daily activities and experiences. At the signal of a pager or watch, which goes off at random times within each two-hour segment of the day, a person writes down in a booklet where she is, what she is doing, what she is thinking about, and whom she is with, then she rates her state of consciousness on various numerical scales. At our Chicago laboratory, we have collected over the years a total of 70,000 pages from about 2,300 respondents. Investigators in other parts of the world have more than tripled these figures.article continues after advertisementgoogletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1456244145486-0'); });The ESM has found that flow generally occurs when a person is doing his or her favorite activity--gardening, listening to music, bowling, cooking a good meal. It also occurs when driving, talking to friends, and surprisingly often at work. Very rarely do people report flow in passive leisure activities, such as watching television or relaxing.Almost any activity can produce flow provided the relevant elements are present, so it is possible to improve the quality of life by making sure that the conditions of flow are a constant part of everyday life.FLOW AT WORKAlthough adults tend to be less happy than average while working, and their motivation is considerably below normal, ESM studies find more occasions of flow on the job than in free time. This finding is not that surprising: Work is much more like a game than most other things we do during the day. It usually has clear goals and rules of performance. It provides feedback either in the form of knowing that one has finished a job well done, in terms of measurable sales or through an evaluation by one's supervisor. A job tends to encourage concentration and prevent distractions, and ideally, its difficulties match the worker's skills.Nevertheless, if we had the chance most of us would like to work less. One reason is the historical disrepute of work, which each of us learn as we grow up.Yet we can't blame family, society, or history if our work is meaningless, dull, or stressful. Admittedly, there are few options when we realize that our job is useless or actually harmful. Perhaps the only choice is to quit as quickly as possible, even at the cost of severe financial hardship. In terms of the bottom line of one's life, it is always better to do something one feels good about than something that may make us materially comfortable but emotionally miserable. Such decisions are notoriously difficult and require great honesty with oneself.article continues after advertisementgoogletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1468856734952-0'); });Short of making such a dramatic switch, there are many ways to make one's job produce flow. A supermarket clerk who pays genuine attention to customers, a physician concerned about the total well-being of patients, or a news reporter who considers truth at least as important as sensational interest when writing a story, can transform a routine job into one that makes a difference. Turning a dull jot into one that satisfies our need for novelty and achievement involves paying close attention to each step involved, and then asking: Is this step necessary? Can it be done better, faster, more efficiently? What additional steps could make my contribution more valuable? If, instead of spending a lot of effort trying to cut corners, one spent the same amount of attention trying to find ways to accomplish more on the job, one would enjoy working--more and probably be more successful. When approached without too many cultural prejudices and with a determination to make it personally meaningful, even the most mundane job can produce flow.The same type of approach is needed for solving the problem of stress at work. First, establish priorities among the demands that crowd into consciousness. Successful people often make lists or flowcharts of all the things they have to do, and quickly decide which tasks they can delegate or forget, and which ones they have to tackle personally, and in what order. The next step is to match one's skills with whatever challenges have been identified. There will be tasks we feel incompetent to deal with. Can you learn the skills required in time? Can you get help? Can the task be transformed, or broken into simpler parts? Usually the answer to one of these questions will provide a solution;that transforms a potentially stressful situation into a flow experience.
  4. Apr 2018
    1. he first seven major shooting cases—Loukaitis, Ramsey, Woodham, Carneal, Johnson and Golden, Wurst, and Kinkel—were disconnected and idiosyncratic.

      Seven though? In such a short time period? These must have known about prior ones or else perhaps the theory doesn't hold as much water.

      Similarly suicide could be added as a contagion that fits into this riot model as well.

    2. “But group interaction was such that none could admit this without loss of status; in our terms, their threshold for stealing cars is low because daring masculine acts bring status, and reluctance to join, once others have, carries the high cost of being labeled a sissy.” You can’t just look at an individual’s norms and motives. You need to look at the group.

      This might also be the same case with fraternity shenanigans and even more deplorable actions like gang rapes. Usually there's one or more sociopaths that start the movement, and then others reluctantly join in.

    1. Psychology in Modules (Myers & Dewall, 2015). This textbook was at the campus bookstore in print, loose-leaf format, but could be ordered in electronic or bound formats. In the preface of the Worth Publishers’ textbook, 77 reviewers and consultants from a variety of institutions were listed. The open-source textbook was the 1st edition of OpenStax College’s Psychology (OpenStax College, 2014)
    1. When questioned about their attitudes and behaviours, people in more individualistic, Western societies tend to value personal success over group achievement, which in turn is also associated with the need for greater self-esteem and the pursuit of personal happiness. But this thirst for self-validation also manifests in overconfidence, with many experiments showing that Weird participants are likely to overestimate their abilities. When asked about their competence, for instance, 94% of American professors claimed they were “better than average”.This tendency for self-inflation appears to be almost completely absent in a range of studies across East Asia; in fact, in some cases the participants were more likely to underestimate their abilities than to inflate their sense of self-worth. People living in individualistic societies may also put more emphasis on personal choice and freedom.
    1. studies how we think, feel and behave from a scientific viewpoint and applies this knowledge to help people understand, explain and change their behaviour.

      What a psychologist does. Its their main purpose.

  5. Mar 2018
    1. When we ask someone for an opinion that person takes a half step back from us and becomes a critic.” Instead of using the word opinion, you should ask for advice on your plan. “That person takes a half step forward because the word ‘advice’ asks for their collaboration.”
    2. “[Trump voters] don’t want to believe that they were stupid,” he says. “Cognitive dissonance research shows that the more consequential your error, the less willing you are to believe it was an error, because that undercuts your view of yourself as a good decision maker.”
  6. Jan 2018
    1. Even the simple act which we describe as "seeing some one we know" is, to some extent, an intellectual process. We pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we have already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him which we compose in our minds those ideas have certainly the principal place. In the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our own ideas of him which we recognise and to which we listen.

      There is some evidence, though it's not universally accepted, that we have a single neuron for people we know well. Participants in a study had a single neuron that would consistently fire when shown an image of their grandmother and a different one when shown a image of Halle Berry. Psychologists wonder how we can still easily recognize people after they get a dramatic hair cut or something as one would think they would no longer fit our mental image of them.

    1. all his memories of the days when Odette had been in love with him, which he had succeeded, up till that evening, in keeping invisible in the depths of his being, deceived by this sudden reflection of a season of love, whose sun, they supposed, had dawned again, had awakened from their slumber, had taken wing and risen to sing maddeningly in his ears, without pity for his present desolation, the forgotten strains of happiness.

      Here music brings back memories similar to how, in the Overture, the madeleine calls up memories for the narrator. Psychology explains this phenomenon, of a sensory experience bringing back a vivid memory. We used to think memories were stored in one area of the brain but it seems that memories are more a neural pattern connecting different sensory systems. So a certain smell can set of the firing of all the other sensory experiences associated with it. Apparently smell is the sense that is best at bringing up memories but sounds and tastes can definitely do so too.

    1. Miranda suggests "being honest about where we don't always tell the truth" to others or to ourselves, because of shame, fear, or other long held pain.

      She talks about her spiritual experiences, including a challenging experience of "dark night of the soul" and how she navigated that by continual acceptance practice: "feeling everything".

      The partial truth of the self-talk of "I'm not good enough", is that the separate self actually cannot, because it is illusory.

  7. Dec 2017
    1. Ironically, research has shown that personality traits are determined largely by heredity and are mostly immutable. The arguably more important traits of character, on the other hand, are more malleable—though, we should note, not without great effort. Character traits, as opposed to personality traits, are based on beliefs (e.g., that honesty and treating others well is important—or not), and though beliefs can be changed, it's far harder than most realize.
    1. A mental map (or cognitive map) is our mental representation of a place. It includes features we consider important, and is likely to exclude features we consider unimportant.

      (Urban planner Kevin Lynch, early 1960s)<br> Elements of mental maps

      • paths
      • edges - boundaries and endings
      • nodes - focal points like squares and junctions
      • districts
      • landmarks

      Modern maps could use augmented and virtual reality to help clarify those elements, making a place easier to navigate and use. But they can also add useless noise that makes the place seem more confusing than it actually is.

  8. Nov 2017
    1. The best mode of government for youth in large collections, is certainly a desideratum not yet attained with us. It may well be questioned whether fear, after a certain age, is the motive to which we should have ordinary recourse. The human character is susceptible of other incitements to correct conduct, more worthy of employ, and of better effect.

      This idea that fear cannot effectively regulate behavior after a certain time is founded on basic social psychological principles. There is a concept of internal versus external justification. With an external justification, such as fear, one does something only because they know they have to, which leads to only a temporary change. Internal justifications, such as belief in a system of governance or code of ethics, leads to a permanent change because one does it because they believe it is right.

    1. we argue that “consciousness” contains no top-down control processes and that “consciousness” involves no executive, causal, or controlling relationship with any of the familiar psychological processes conventionally attributed to it
  9. Oct 2017
    1. The Bystander Effect - Crowds sometimes fail to help someone in trouble: everyone assumes someone else will do it.

      Similarly, people in groups often fail to check facts as carefully as they would if they were alone. They assume someone else has already checked.

      Careless people, and bots, tend to share news quickly, without bothering to fact check. Once something has been shared thousands of times, even fairly careful people are likely to assume it must be true.

      Again, if social media was to think a bit bigger, there are ways to apply this insight to deprivilege the influence of the quickest, and privilege the influence of those making informed decisions.

    1. what about the increas-ingly tense background music in a lV drama, or the sounds that let us know when a computer is starling up? Whether big or small, each of these aural components conveys meaning.

      In psychology, classical conditioning is a type of associative learning that links automatic behaviors with previously neutral, or unrelated, stimuli. Ivan Pavlov’s experiments on dog digestion first introduced the concept of learned associations to the psychology community by demonstrating the transformation of a neutral stimulus into a stimulus that can prompt unconscious behavior. In his experiments, Ivan Pavlov recognized that the natural, unlearned response of dogs to the presence of food was salivation. Salivation was not a learned behavior, but an automatic response to a natural stimulus (food) in the dog’s environment. In this case, food is an unconditioned stimulus because it always induces salivation, which, itself, is an unconditioned response. These two variables encompass a natural stimulus-response relationship, which Pavlov sought to infiltrate with a third variable.

      Ivan Pavlov:

      Ivan Pavlov wondered if introducing a neutral stimulus before the unconditioned stimulus would cause a dog to associate both stimuli with salivation. In other words, would the dog execute the unconditioned response of salivation even before the unconditioned stimulus is presented? If this neutral stimulus, able to be perceived by the dog but not naturally associated with his experiment’s unconditioned stimulus (food), regularly preceded the arrival of the unconditioned stimulus, would the dog eventually begin salivating before the unconditioned stimulus (food) even arrived? The answer is yes. Pavlov and his fellow researches sounded a bell before presenting a dog with food for several trials. Once the food was given to the dog, the dog would salivate.

      Principally, the sound of the bell was a neutral stimulus. It did not naturally cause the dog to salivate. However, through its continuous pairing with the unconditioned stimulus, food, the sound of the bell became conditioned. Acquisition took place as the dogs learned the link between the sound of the bell (the neutral stimulus) and the arrival of food. Eventually, as classical conditioning completed, the dogs salivated at the sound of the bell alone because they began to anticipate the arrival of food.

      One episode of The Office demonstrates this concept of classical conditioning. Jim, a character on the show, conditions his coworker Dwight to reach for an altoid every time his computer shuts down. Because his computer emits an audible noise every time it shuts down, Jim is able to condition Dwight into associating meaning with the sound of his computer shutting down. As mentioned in the text, “small aural components convey meaning,” This clip of The Office demonstrates why and how, seemingly insignificant aural sounds like the sound of a computer turning off, can provoke unconscious or conscious meaning in our lives. In this case, every time Dwight hears the sound of a computer shutting down, he unconsciously reaches for an altoid.

      The following variables are necessary to understand the following clip of The Office:

      Unconditioned Stimulus: offering an altoid

      Unconditioned Response: reaching to grab the altoid

      Conditioned Stimulus: sound of the computer shutting down

      Conditioned Response: reaching to grab the altoid

      Jim Classically Conditions Dwight on The Office: https://vimeo.com/35754924

      Link to photo of Ivan Pavlov: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Pavlov

    2. Like the tools in a toolbox, though, modes can sometimes be used in ways that weren't intended but that get the job done just as well (like a screwdriver being used lo pry open a can of paint).

      An example of a mode being used in an unintentionally effective way would be the aural mode of Flannery O’Connor’s voice as she reads her short story “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.” Before reading the linguistic content of her story, my high school professor played an audio recording of O’Connor reading this story in a ballroom theater.

      O’Connor is a Southern author from Savannah, Georgia, so one of the first characteristics I noticed of her voice was its accent. Next, I noticed the bluntness with which she spoke. Her voice sounded rather dry and sarcastic at times, which perfectly illustrated, even softened the uncomfortable humor present in the story. I became so engrossed with the aural mode of O’Connor’s short story that once the linguistic mode caught up to me, I felt shocked by the grotesqueness of the events unfolding.

      The aural mode of O’Connor’s reading deceived me and lured me into a state of selective-attentiveness, however, this deception worked well to demonstrate the content of her story. “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” is, itself, an illusory and misleading narrative that culminates in a dreadful tragedy which appears quite suddenly and viciously. Until one rereads the story and recognizes the points of foreshadowing present all along, O’Connor’s voice served an unintentional purpose of misleading the (in this case) listener.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQT7y4L5aKU

    3. But a visual presentation of complex information can allow readers to make quick com-parisons.

      In her TEDx Talk, Amy Cuddy shared research of other scientists in her field that demonstrates the significance of body language in our conscious and unconscious judgements of others. The “quick comparisons” of “visual representation[s]” mentioned in the text can be directly related to Nalini Ambady’s research on what she termed “thin-slice judgements.” Thin-slice judgements are often unconscious, initial evaluations of another person’s character, yet they influence our perceptions and long-term impressions immensely.

      Nalini Ambady’s research challenges the popular belief that human intuition is biased and inaccurate. Brief observations, such as those based on a singular photo or 2-second clip, are powerful demonstrations of “fast thinking.” Fast thinking, despite its quick judgement and conclusion, is no less significant than long-term evaluations. According to Ambady, quick comparisons shape our preference towards both job candidates and romantic partners. They even accurately predict the teaching effectiveness of college professors.

      In 1993, Ambady published her first findings on the significance of nonverbal behavior in our determination of another person’s character. In this study, Ambady produced 30-second soundless clips of college lectures; she then asked participants to whom the professor was a stranger to evaluate that professor’s teaching effectiveness. Students of the professor also rated his or her teaching effectiveness, and surprisingly, independent scorers and actual students of the professor produced similar assessments of teaching effectiveness.

      Even when shortened to 10 second, 6 second, and 2 second clips, brief, soundless college lectures induced similar ratings of teaching effectiveness between independent raters and actual students. Ambady’s following studies further supported her assessment of the accuracy of “thin-slice judgements, showing that nonverbal behavior (which can be taken into context as all that does not encompass the linguistic mode or the aural mode) efficiently communicates information about our environment.

      Alex Todorov of Princeton University conducted a study that found that 70% of the outcomes of Senate and gubernatorial races could be predicted solely based on photos of the candidates’ faces.

      Thin-Slice Judgements in the Clinical Context by Michael L. Slepian, Kathleen R. Bogart, and Nalini Ambady

      The 30-Sec Scale: Using Thin-Slice Judgements to Evaluate Sales Effectiveness by Nalini Ambady, Mary Anne Krabbenhoft, and Daniel Hogan

      Nalini Ambady, Stanford psychology professor, dies at 54 by Bjorn Carey

      Alex Todorov's Research: On the Face of It: The Psychology of Electability by Maria Konnikova

    4. body language

      Amy Cuddy is an American social psychologist who has produced significant research on nonverbal behavior and language. In her TEDx Talk, Amy Cuddy shared research (both her own as well as that of others) that demonstrates the significance of body language and other nonverbal cues in our daily interactions and perceptions of our environment. Our emotions and our physiology are influenced by and understood through our nonverbal expressions. Nonverbal expressions of power and dominance cause humans and animals alike to make themselves bigger. When we feel powerful, we take up more space by spreading ourselves on a couch or entering a room emphatically and assertively. These expressions of power are “universal and old.” In fact, they are ingrained within us. Congenitally blind people and those born with sight perform the same gesture of pride when they win at a physical competition. It doesn't matter if they've never seen anyone do it. Both groups of people lift their arms over their head in a V shape and lift their chin - this is the posture of pride studied extensively by Jessica Tracy.

      In contrast, expressions of powerlessness make the person or animal small. When we feel powerless or scared, we close in on ourselves, and wrap ourselves up. We don’t want to bump into the person next to us. As a professor at a competitive collegiate institution, Amy Cuddy has observed classic cases of alpha male gestures of dominance as well as gestures of powerlessness most often occurring within populations of women in her classes.

      Some people raise their hands really high and occupy a lot of space in the classroom environment; others appear to be “collapsing in on themselves” when they enter her classroom. Correlated with gender, expressions of power engender greater participation in class; expressions of powerlessness are associated with lower participation in the classroom setting. So, even though equally qualified women and men enter the same university, they still experience differences in grades, a fact that seems to be partly attributable to participation. So Cuddy hoped to answer the question of whether or not our nonverbal expressions govern how we think, feel, and behave. She also wanted to explore if one could experience a behavioral outcome by faking confidence and enthusiastic participation.

      Physiologically, those who feel more powerful are more likely to be assertive, confident, and optimistic; these people feel that they will win even at games of chance. Powerful people take more risks, and show higher levels of testosterone or the dominance hormone, and lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol. For one of Cuddy’s experiments, people were made to adopt either high power poses or low power poses. First, participants spat in a cup. Then, for two minutes, participants would either adopt a high-power or low-power pose. After two minutes, participants are asked to rate how powerful they feel on a series of items. Then, they are given an opportunity gamble, and afterwards spit in another cup.

      Cuddy’s results:

      1. 86% of the participants who adopted a high-power pose gambled.
      2. 60% of the participants who adopted a low-power pose gambled.
      3. People who adopted the high-power pose experienced a 20% increase in testosterone.
      4. People who adopted a low-power pose experienced a 10% decrease in testosterone.
      5. Participants who adopted a high-power pose experienced a 25% decrease in cortisol.
      6. Participants who adopted a low-power pose experienced a 15% increase in cortisol.

      Cuddy’s results demonstrate that as little time as two minutes of power-posing can lead to hormonal changes and behavioral differences, causing us to either feel confident or stress-reactive. In order to apply the significance of body language and power posing to real life, Cuddy and fellow researchers needed to choose a situation that is comparatively evaluative and invites social threat, and other stressors. They felt the most relatable situation would be that of a job interview. Participants in this second study either adopt low-power or high-power poses and aftwerwards undergo a stressful, five-minute job interview. Participants are recorded and judged during the interview. Judges are trained in nonverbal cues, and appear with stoic expressions the entire time.

      Four independent coders then evaluate the interview tapes of the study’s participants, and determine who they would hire. These coders are unaware of the hypothesis and conditions of the experiment’s participants. Participants who adopted the high-power poses were hired, and rated more positively overall. The content of the participants’ speech was not necessarily the determining factor. In other words, their linguistic communication did not significantly influence their hiring. The presence of their speech (their enthusiasm, passion, and seeming authenticity) did, all of which was influenced by their initial body language.

      Amy Cuddy’s TEDx Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks-_Mh1QhMc

      Link to photo of high-power and low-power poses

      Link to photo of Allyson Felix

  10. Aug 2017
    1. 4,997 English words rated on a scale from 1 (humorless) to 5 (humorous) by 821 participants.

  11. Jul 2017
    1. Psychotic, hysteric, obsessive, pervert ― which are we?

      Funny, easy to read, lay description of Lacan's different personality configurations. From a Malaysian news source, so some of the examples might seem obscure to some.

  12. Jun 2017
  13. May 2017
    1. reasoning

      If we're talking about reasoning, it is very psychological. All of these different focuses are connected as we all know. But, something like reasoning connects to the psychology of your audience. I would not deliver the same reasons for an argument to our class as I would say a grade school class.

    1. Web comic explaining the backfire effect -- our tendency to react hostilely to information that contradicts our core beliefs. Trying to argue past this tendency is usually futile. The best thing we can do is to be aware of it within ourselves, and try to raise the same awareness in others. The kind of examples given here seem like a good way to do that.

  14. Feb 2017
    1. an eight-stage theory of psychosocial development

      For the uninitiated, I wonder if one of these resources is a good, openly-licensed introduction to Erikson's ideas, or if there is something better. I didn't see a good overview at The Noba Project.

    1. The contagious euphoria you felt has a name: “collective effervescence,” coined a century ago by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim. It’s that glowy, giddy feeling where your sense of self slackens, yielding to a connection with your fellow, synchronized humans.
  15. Jan 2017
    1. But for me, hope is not a feeling. It is not an emotion. Hope is action. Hope is found in motion.

      ...

      Hope begins the moment that somebody stands up and says, “Let’s roll.”

      ...

      It is clear to me though that hopelessness and despair often lead to an inability to act. When that happens, we must rely on others to act. Anyone that was gone through trauma and faced extended periods of indecisiveness can understand this. This is why a sense of community is so important, and that we share in our action by relying on others to back us up.

  16. Dec 2016
    1. The question that I think we should be asking ourselves is, what is it that my culture is preventing me from seeing?

      ...

      It seems that education is more about filling brains, than teaching people to think.

      Education ought to be about drawing something out, not putting something in. One of the things that people should be taught at school, is to think critically about the things that they consider most indisputably correct.

      -- Iain McGilchrist (The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World)

      http://iainmcgilchrist.com/

    1. Thoughtful blog by Grete Howland, about being raised as an evangelical Christian -- and then discovering that it isn't for her.

      For those raised in more liberal, free-thinking denominations, such as certain Episcopal congregations or the Unitarian-Universalist church, the religious molding might not be such a bad thing. In those cases, you might have been taught that everyone is unconditionally welcome in the love of God, that all belief systems are worthy of respect, that decolonization is mandatory practice, to have a community service mindset, and the basic lesson of self-reliance. These are examples of habits and traditions one might want to continue practicing, regardless of personal faith or continued church involvement.

      ...

      I had been taught (1) to put my faith in God regarding everything--finances, relationships, and so on--and (2) that the way to deal with stress and pain was to pray for their causes to be gone. I was not supposed to change my thinking; God was supposed to change my circumstances.

    1. Another 23 percent showed signs of accepting the story to some degree, the researchers said.

      The headline for this article is really deceptive. Or the summary of the statistics is sloppy. Or both. Either way, this is dangerous from a political perspective, as is evident in the comments field. From bipartisan, lazy accusations of "fake news" to disbelief in the accounts of survivors of abuse, this story will be used in nasty ways that go far beyond what it deserves.

  17. Jul 2016
    1. the results remain compelling nonetheless

      At least, they’ve become unavoidable in class discussions even tangentially related to social psychology. In intro sociology, they lead to some interesting thoughts about lab vs. field experiments.

  18. Jun 2016
  19. serval.unil.ch serval.unil.ch
    1. Dependence on those who distribute valued resources isthe equivalent of powerlessness, and powerlessness has been as-sociated with a basic inhibition or avoidance motivational orien-tation (Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003

      Dependence is equivalent of powerlessness, and powerlessness leads to inhibition, avoidance.

    1. A few cognitive scientists – notably Anthony Chemero of the University of Cincinnati, the author of Radical Embodied Cognitive Science (2009) – now completely reject the view that the human brain works like a computer. The mainstream view is that we, like computers, make sense of the world by performing computations on mental representations of it, but Chemero and others describe another way of understanding intelligent behaviour – as a direct interaction between organisms and their world.

      http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.com/p/about-us.html<br> Psychologists Andrew Wilson and Sabrina Golonka

    2. Misleading headlines notwithstanding, no one really has the slightest idea how the brain changes after we have learned to sing a song or recite a poem. But neither the song nor the poem has been ‘stored’ in it. The brain has simply changed in an orderly way that now allows us to sing the song or recite the poem under certain conditions. When called on to perform, neither the song nor the poem is in any sense ‘retrieved’ from anywhere in the brain, any more than my finger movements are ‘retrieved’ when I tap my finger on my desk. We simply sing or recite – no retrieval necessary.
  20. Feb 2016
    1. The science of the individual relies on dynamic systems theory rather than group statistics. Its research methodology is characterized by “analyze, then aggregate” (analyze each subject separately, then combine individual patterns into collective understanding) rather than “aggregate, then analyze” (derive group statistics based on aggregate data, then use these statistics to evaluate and understand individuals).

      A mathematical psychologist at Penn State University, Molenaar extended ergodic theory (link is external) to prove that it was not mathematically permissible to use assessment instruments based on group averages to evaluate individuals.

      A Manifesto on Psychology as Idiographic Science, Peter Molenaar

  21. Jan 2016
    1. Alice Maz on communication failures due to different cultures of conversation and values.

      Most people value feelings, shared perspectives, and social status. They see correction as an attempt to knock them down a peg. Nerds value facts, logic, and the sharing of information. A genuine nerd shares information with no intention of knocking anyone down, and prefers being corrected to remaining misinformed.

  22. Dec 2015
    1. The Book of Human Emotions, Tiffany Watt Smith

      Emotions are not just biological, but cultural. Different societies have unique concepts for combinations of feelings in particular circumstances.

      If you know a word for an emotion, you can more easily recognize it, control it -- and perhaps feel it more intensely.

      Emotions and how they are valued also varies across time as well as space. Sadness was valued in Renaissance Europe: they felt it made you closer to God. Today we value happiness, and we may value it too much. Emodiversity is the idea that feeling a wide range of emotions is good for you mentally and physically.

    1. This could be the first time we can talk with empirical evidence about language requiring innate components or not.

    1. a sophisticated creation thatseems to simultaneously extend but also threaten our understanding of what it means tobe human.

      So if it threatens our understanding of what it means to be human.. is that beneficial to our ongoing research of essentially what makes us humans by constantly pushing our understanding to be deeper? or is harmful and uprooting of the interpersonal/cultural norms we've established?

  23. Nov 2015
    1. Still I hear a voice saying that the gods cannot be deceived, neither can they be compelled. But what if there are no gods? or, suppose them to have no care of human things—why in either case should we mind about concealment? And even if there are gods, and they do care about us, yet we know of them only from tradition and the genealogies of the poets; and these are the very persons who say that they may be influenced and turned by 'sacrifices and soothing entreaties and by offerings.'

      This is a very atheistic argument for such an early time. It gives us insight into Greek society - the Greeks didn't think anywhere near as highly of gods as our society does now. This is a valid argument, and it also provides insight into human nature. In this case, Glaucon is denying the existence of god in order to promote his argument. Often, people will reject hypotheses because they want increased freedom of action.

  24. Sep 2015
  25. May 2015
    1. That is, the human annotators are likely to assign different relevance labels to a document, depending on the quality of the last document they had judged for the same query. In addi- tion to manually assigned labels, we further show that the implicit relevance labels inferred from click logs can also be affected by an- choring bias. Our experiments over the query logs of a commercial search engine suggested that searchers’ interaction with a document can be highly affected by the documents visited immediately be- forehand.
  26. Jan 2015
  27. epwebdev2b.apa.org epwebdev2b.apa.org
    1. Sobel, D. M. & Kirkham, N.Z. (2012). The influence of social information on children’s statistical and causal inferences. In F.Xu (Ed.). Rational constructivism in cognitive development.
    2. Kirkham, N. Z. (2009). Altogether now: Learning through multiple sources. In S. P. Johnson (Ed.), Neoconstructivism: The new science of cognitive development. New York: Oxford University Press
  28. Oct 2013
    1. since he who compares himself to no one else will necessarily attribute too much to his own powers

      Interesting claim on human psychology. The hermit thinks he's more clever than he actually is. From a weak empirical standpoint, I am inclined to agree with him.

    1. For it will be necessary, above all things, to take care lest the child should conceive a dislike to the application which he cannot yet love, and continue to dread the bitterness which he has once tasted, even beyond the years of infancy

      Wise caution

  29. Sep 2013
    1. In regard to each emotion we must consider (a) the states of mind in which it is felt; (b) the people towards whom it is felt; (c) the grounds on which it is felt.

      Detailed attention to the psychology of one's audience.

    1. The above are the motives that make men do wrong to others; we are next to consider the states of mind in which they do it, and the persons to whom they do it.

      Straying into psychology