1,044 Matching Annotations
  1. Apr 2020
    1. Revisiting a landmark always suggests closure, prematurely inviting the reader to leave the hypertext and do something else.

      Of course if we can create a stream of posts, perhaps the reader will gain Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of "flow" and therefore never leave?

    1. Fascinating results of an experiment (n=500) with Mechanical Turk workers.

      ‘Taken together, this total pattern of data supports Maslow’s contention that self-actualised individuals are more motivated by growth and exploration than by fulfilling deficiencies in basic needs,’ Kaufman writes. He adds that the new empirical support for Maslow’s ideas is ‘quite remarkable’ given that Maslow put them together with ‘a paucity of actual evidence’.

      Maslow always contended that it is only through becoming our true, authentic selves that we can transcend the self and look outward with compassion to the rest of humanity. Kaufman explored this too, and found that higher scorers on his self-actualisation scale tended also to score higher on feelings of oneness with the world, but not on decreased self-salience, a sense of independence and bias toward information relevant to oneself. (These are the two main factors in a modern measure of self-transcendence developed by the psychologist David Yaden at the University of Pennsylvania.)

      Kaufman said that this last finding supports ‘Maslow’s contention that self-actualising individuals are able to paradoxically merge with a common humanity while at the same time able to maintain a strong identity and sense of self’.

    1. Seeing people around you wearing masks when you’re not can also heighten anxiety about coronavirus and make it seem like the virus is nearby and spreading, even if it’s not, Bufka says. “It could make you feel like, wait, I’m missing something? Is there some information that others have that I don’t have, whether it’s prevalence in the local community or new information about masks being valuable?”
    2. “Even if experts are saying it’s really not going to make a difference, a little [part of] people’s brains is thinking, well, it’s not going to hurt. Maybe it’ll cut my risk just a little bit, so it’s worth it to wear a mask,” she says.
  2. Mar 2020
    1. Adam Smith, writing in 1790, said we can only expect real sympathy from real friends, not from mere acquaintances. More recently, in 1973, Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter established as a bedrock of social network analysis the idea that we rely on “strong” ties (our inner circle) for support and weak ties (our acquaintances) for information.
    2. The third reason is that in our moment of vulnerability, our need to talk is greater than our need to self-protect.
    3. The second reason is that when we are dealing with something difficult, we commonly prefer to confide in people who have been through what we are going through rather than those who know us, seeking “cognitive empathy” over guaranteed warmth or closeness.
    4. The first is that our closest relationships are our most complex ones.
    5. Small says there are three reasons we might avoid those closest to us when we are grappling with problems about our health, relationships, work, or kids.
    1. Using Facebook ads, the researchers recruited 2,743 users who were willing to leave Facebook for one month in exchange for a cash reward. They then randomly divided these users into a Treatment group, that followed through with the deactivation, and a Control group, that was asked to keep using the platform. 

      The effects of not using Facebook for a month:

      • on average another 60 free mins per day
      • small but significant improvement in well-being, and in particular in self-reported happiness, life satisfaction, depression and anxiety
      • participants were less willing to use Facebook from now
      • the group was less likely to follow politics
      • deactivation significantly reduced polarization of views on policy issues and a measure of exposure to polarizing news
      • 80% agreed that the deactivation was good for them
    1. [GROUPS]

      Medicine Treatment - gets actual treatment

      Placebo Treatment - gets fake medicine

      Control - gets nothing

      MEDICINE = THERAPY

  3. Feb 2020
    1. So this is one case where we could test and sort individuals to predict success in different learning tasks, something I talked about in this short article about helping students develop strategies for memorization. Perhaps researchers could tackle some other ways to harness the multiple capacities idea to steer students into the subjects and learning strategies that will work best for them.

      I'm struggling a little with the elements of "sorting" and "steering" here. On one hand, it's important to read this in the context of delivering thoughtful instruction matched to the individual's needs and existing abilities. Further I might argue that part of the job of good academic advising entails delivering a mix of easier and harder experiences so the student is neither coasting nor stressed all day. And yet we know that there are deep risks in this kind of "tracking" for students to get pigeonholed and left behind.

  4. Jan 2020
    1. How Businesses Use Psychology to Increase Sales?EveryDesignsJan 31 · 3 min readBusinesses use everything in their power to increase their sales. They offer a discount, indulge in aggressive marketing, create a monopoly and apply various business strategies to skyrocket their growth.One more thing that businesses use, which works on background level is psychology. Psychology is a very important part of human behavioral science. Every single person behaves in a very different way. Their likings are different, their understanding is different, every single person is very different from others.So, it becomes difficult for businesses to target a bigger audience. Therefore, to understand their customers, businesses use psychology and its application in business operations.In this article, we will discuss how businesses use psychology to increase sales. But before that let’s find out why it is business psychology.What is Business Psychology?Business psychology is a field of psychology that deals with providing insight into people and their behavior. It takes a practical approach by studying a monitored group of people and giving a conclusion towards specific behavioral research.Using business psychology corporate can come up with plans and strategies to the target audience and provide them with a solution to their problem. The very basic job of a business psychologist is to understand the customer’s needs and help the business to deliver that.Behavioral Psychology in BusinessBehavioral Psychology is the study of human behavior in context with the environment. The environment plays an important role in the behavior of a person. A kid when brought up in a secure and friendly environment tends to be more successful and moral whereas a kid who had an abusive father or mother a.k.a. bad environment tends to become a criminal.It's simple: kids learn for their parents and even an adult is susceptible to influence from other behavior. A prime example could be peer pressure. Peer pressure can make you do things that you do not want to do like drinking alcohol.Many studies like this one suggest that the majority of people started drinking due to peer pressure. Behavioral psychology helps in understanding these behaviors and comes up with a solution that benefits society.Here are some of the principles that behavior psychology deal with, within the context of business.The Human Learns Better VisuallyAbout 65% of people are visual people meaning they like and respond to visuals better and faster than any other means. So, influencing people using visuals like graphic design helps a business much better. A business needs to have professional graphic design services to ensure they can market their products better.Psychology of ColorsColor is one aspect that makes humans special. As you know, humans are one of the few species who can see such a wide range of the color spectrum. Therefore, colors play an important role in people’s life.You can use different colors to subtly convey a message regarding your business. To learn more, check out the article on Color Psychology and see how you can use colors to market your brand.Customer LoyaltyEveryone likes reward and Rewarding programs are the best customer acquisition tool that big corporate uses. A prime example of this could be a reward program by Starbucks that they offer on their mobile app. You can also provide your customers with rewards that help your customers in connecting with your business on a personal level.Social Psychology in BusinessSocial psychology is a study of human behavior when influenced by other people’s behavior. Here the psychologists use the data produced by the interaction of two subjects to design a strategy for their businessThe following are the best examples of social psychology in action-Word of Mouth MarketingWord of mount marketing is the kind of marketing where a person buys a product just because it was recommended by someone. It is so powerful that it can even work online by posting customer’s reviews. This is the reason why people keep testimonials and reviews on their websites.Reciprocity PrincipleWhen a business offers an unmatchable value to its customers than people would respond to that by providing a similar proposition by becoming your customer. You can use this principle to provide your customers with Freemium tools to increase sales.ConclusionIn order to increase revenue and business, you can use any of these psychological principles. Big brands use this principle to achieve that so why don’t you?

      Businesses use everything in their power to increase their sales. They offer a discount, indulge in aggressive marketing, create a monopoly and apply various business strategies to skyrocket their growth. psychology is one of the tools that businesses implement into their operations. so, here is how businesses use psychology to increase sales?

    1. Color Psychology- Build your Brand Image using Color Theory January 9, 2020 shivkumar Logo & Branding Color, psychology and branding are all very different things, but when we combine all of them, you get a guide that helps businesses in building their brand using color psychology. Why You Should Care About Color Psychology? Human behavior has always been a very interesting area of study for many scientists, questions like-Why everyone has different opinion about certain things? Why do women and men think differently? And thousands of different questions needed to be answered. One of the questions that scientists have been researching about is colors and its effect. Humans are one of the few species that can see colors. The other species like monkeys, ground squirrels, some birds, insects etc. can see few colors but not as good as humans. So, it becomes essential for us to find out why. Color influences our daily behaviors in many ways. We react differently when we look at certain colors. It creates a physiological change in your body’s biochemistry, which leads to certain decision like buying it or not.  Using this knowledge, we can help businesses in building their brand image by addressing the psychological behavior of a customer. Taking this path for influencing the customers, make it an easier and effective approach for business as it saves money, time and other resources. What is Color Theory? Color theory is a guide that designers use to mix, match and combine to create visual effects in their designs. There are 18 decillion numbers of colors that is, 1 followed by 33 zeros, it becomes extremely hard to create a guide and include all those colors in a book. Since designers are more creative people, and providing them with a study material containing details about these colors can be overwhelming for them. So, Color theory was introduced that helps a designer to create his/her own color that they want. If you want to understand the color theory, we need to understand what a color wheel is? Color Wheel for Better Understanding of Color Psychology Color wheel is an arrangement of different colors and illustrates the relationship between primary, secondary and tertiary colors. In order to understand color psychology, we need to understand what colors are, which can only be done using color wheel. Components of Color Wheel The color wheel contains different colors and can be categorized as follows- Primary Colors Primary Color consists of three colors that make all the other colors. The three colors are red, blue and yellow. These colors are also used to make secondary colors. Secondary Colors Secondary colors are purple, green and orange which are placed between two primary colors. The secondary colors are formed by mixing the primary colors, which is as follows- Red+ Blue= PurpleBlue + Yellow= GreenRed+ Yellow= Orange Tertiary Colors Tertiary Colors are a combination of primary and secondary colors. The color formed is similar to the primary color but with a difference in its tone. There are six tertiary colors which are as follows- Red-OrangeYellow-OrangeYellow-GreenBlue-GreenBlue- PurpleRed-Purple Saturated Color or Hue Saturated Colors or Hue are those colors that are pure in nature meaning the colors are untouched. In this color scheme, no other colors are mixed with the original color to form a pure color. Tone Adding grey color to the base color gives a toned color. For example-adding grey to red increases the tone of red and you achieve a different color. Since, grey is made up of black and white, altering the percentage of black and white in the grey gives different grey color which in turn alters the red color. Tone is often used to decrease the intensity of the color. Tints Adding white color into the base color gives a tinted color. For example-adding white color to red forms a different color, which lightens the brightness of the color red. You get a pinkish color which is also one of the favorite colors of women. Tints are often used to decrease the brightness of the color. Shade When black is added to the base color, we get a different shade of the color. For example- adding black color to red color, form a maroonish red which is a darker form of red color. Shades are often used to intensify and decrease the brightness of the color.  Warm and Cool Color Since white light is made up of seven colors therefore, whenever the light hits the surface of the color, it absorbs some colors and reflects others. For example- when light hits a blue color surface, it absorbs all the color but reflects the blue color, giving it its blue color. Colors can be distinguished into two broad categories based on the amount of light it reflects and absorbs. Warm colors and Cool colors, as the name suggests, warm colors are hot in nature and cool colors are cool in nature. You can find the difference between warm and cool color by drawing a line in between the color wheel. Neutral Colors Neutral Color are those colors that are neither warm nor cool hence, they are named cool. These colors are hidden in the color wheel and cannot be found easily. Neutral colors include black, white, gray, brown and beige. They are called neutral colors because of their distinction from the other colors. Neutral colors are used to create shade, tone, tint and other color alteration.   Color Schemes for Branding Your Business Now, we know what colors are and different types of colors that can be used for branding. Creating a brand design is more than just using colors, but, it is using colors for a purpose that tells a story. Using a color combination of two or three colors helps in creating a design that is lively and conveys a story. The color wheel helps us in finding these combinations that go well with each other. There are few general geometric combinations that look very good and can hold true for any color. These geometric shapes when moved from color to color, the other colors also match accordingly. Complementary Colors Complementary colors are those colors that are placed opposite to each other in a color wheel. This combination is best when you want to make things stand out like on a CTA button, CTA Text etc. It visually registers better when we use complementary color because of the contract created by the color. Opposite attracts which makes these color schemes more appealing to the eyes and can be used to instantly attract the attention. As the above image shows, the complementary color (Left Side) helped the CTA button to get highlighted easily, whereas, on the right side, we have to add shadow to make it look distinct and still the design cannot do the job that a complementary design does. You can use the complementary color scheme in the logo design to make your logo different and help it to stand out from the crowd. These colors are versatile and are best for marketing your business. You can use this color scheme to create your website as well as a logo that complements each other.  Split Complementary Colors Split complementary colors are best if you want to use three colors. In this color scheme, the contrast is not complementary but still creates a distinction that gets registered. Using split complementary colors in the designs is quite tricky and might come as funky. So, if you are a business that deals with professionals, businesses must keep away from these colors. As the above image shows a web page design that uses three split complementary colors. The design has a base color as rose pink and purple as supporting complementary color. The CTA buttons are yellow-greenish (Rio Grande) color. They complement each other and at the same time do not create intensity that complementary colors do. Analogous Colors Analogous means similar or comparable. Analogous colors are a group of three colors placed next to each other in the color wheel. These colors have the potential to create a seamless look that relaxes you. This type of color scheme is subtle yet alluring which makes it best choice for interior decoration, posters design, paintings etc. Monochromatic Colors Monochromatic colors are those colors that use tone, tints or shades of a single color. The use of monochromatic colors is to add sophistication and elegance to the design. They are also seamless and can be used for product package design, website design, photography etc. The best way to use the monochromatic colors is with a neutral color to create a distinction that is necessary for certain designs. Using Triad, Tetradic, and Polychromatic Color Schemes for Branding There are lot of colors and different color models to follow. Marketing your brand has multiple channels and each channel has its own design requirement. Since, design and art are subjective, it is not necessary to follow just two are three colors. You can use multiple color schemes to create a design for your brand. These color schemes are named as triad, tetradic, and polychromatic colors which means three colors, four colors and multiple colors respectively. There are two different channels when it comes to marketing and these are Digital marketing and print marketing. Both of these channel uses different model for designs. CMYK Color Model CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (black). This model is used for the printing process which uses ink plates with the same color. All the branding materials that require you to print like business card design, flyer, ad poster etc. must follow this color model to get the best results. RGB Color Model RGB stands for red, green and blue. This model is used for marketing over digital medium. Since the screens of our devices RGB pixels for displaying the image, it is the best choice to create a design based on RGB model. Choose the Best Colors for Your Business There are overwhelming numbers of colors in the world. There are so many options to choose from. What should I choose? Well! It depends on different factors like demographic, culture, gender etc. but we can narrow down our search for the best color for branding your business image by learning about the psychology of colors and how they emotionally affect our choices. Color Psychology of Red Red is a powerful color and can grab instant attention. It contains high energy and can be associated with attraction, love, anger, strength, power and many other emotions. A business that needs to create stimulates physical senses like hunger, lust and passion. Psychologically, it energizes the physical body and increases blood circulation and heart rate, which makes it the best option for the food industry. Some of the businesses using the color red are McDonalds, KFC, Coca Cola, etc. Color Psychology Negative Effect of Red Red is a very powerful color and requires a balancing color which cancels out the negative effect. Some of the negative traits that are associated with red color are danger, anger, aggressiveness etc. therefore, it becomes extremely important for you to balance this emotion by adding colors like white, blue, yellow etc. Color Psychology of Blue Blue is the most used color for branding as it is the safest due to its quality. It evokes calmness and serenity feelings which make it the best option for business. Many studies suggest that, blue color is also the most preferred color for men. A business that wants to create trust and sincere feelings in their customer heart should use this color. Some of the businesses using the color red are Facebook, Samsung, HP, Intel etc. Color Psychology Negative Effect of Blue Blue can create a feeling of aloofness and sadness and can lead to loss of appetite which makes it the worst option for the food industry. To balance these emotions, you need to pair it with a complementary color or neutral color like white.  Color Psychology of Green Green color is nature’s color and therefore, associates it with growth and vitality. We can find green color in nature and when we see green color, we often get an image of leaf, plat or tree in our head. It is a very relaxing color and evokes a feeling of safety and compassion. It is also associated with money because of the use of green color in Dollar. You can find many businesses related to finance industry to have green or blue color logo design because of its association with growth, nature, security etc. Some of the businesses using the color green are Subway, Starbucks, TD Ameritrade etc. Color Psychology Negative Effect of Green The color green can induce a feeling of jealousy, which works sub consciously. Jealousy is a negative emotion but, if used correctly, can increase your business growth. Cultural significance is really important when dealing with the color green as different culture has different meaning associated with this color. Color Psychology of Yellow The color yellow is the brightest color of all the visible color spectrum, filling it with energy and optimism. It can grab instant attention and increase metabolism due to its energetic nature. Traffic signs and warning signs are all written in red and yellow. Some of the businesses using the color yellow are McDonalds, Lays, IKEA, Nikon, IMDB etc.   Color Psychology Negative Effect of Yellow Aggressiveness is also associated with the color yellow, therefore, often balanced with black or white. Some of the compatible colors of yellow are blue, red, orange etc. Color Psychology of Orange Orange is the combination of red and yellow making it energetic like them. It can grab attention and can induce feelings like excitement, enthusiasm, and warmth. Halloween is associated with orange color, therefore, it can have a cartoonish and dark assessment by the viewer. Some of the businesses using the color orange are Amazon, Modzilla, Harley Davidson, JBL etc. Color Psychology Negative Effect of Orange We see orange colors in nature either on a flower, fruits, vegetable or on the dying leaves during autumn season. This makes it a contradicting color which makes it a controversial. It gets balanced when using it with colors like white, black, blue etc. Color Psychology of Purple Purple is a royal color that can be found as the go-to choice of many historical figures. You can find many royal prince and princess dressed with a beautiful silk and muslin clothes colored purple. Wisdom and prosperity is indicated by using purple color. Some of the businesses using purple color are Cadbury, Yahoo, Twitch, FedEx etc. Color Psychology Negative Effect of Purple Purple is also associated with mysteriousness and Premiumness which makes it unopened or approachable to everyone. If your business image demands you to be open then it becomes very difficult for you to use this color. You can use the color with other colors to get past this feeling and create the balance. Color Psychology of Gold Gold, as the name suggests, is a royal and rich color. Gold as a metal is a high priced metal that makes it one of the most valuable things on earth. This quality can also be noted when we use the gold color in our designs. It expresses charm, confidence, luxury, and treasure which makes it valuable. Some of the businesses using the color gold are Royal Stag, Bacardi etc. Color Psychology Negative Effect of Gold Since it is associated with premium class and rich features, this color is not for everyone. If your customer base is a premium class, then you can use this logo, and if you want to be approachable to every section of the society, then you must use some other color. Color Psychology of Silver Silver is a metallic color that is associated with strength and power and therefore, is often used by card manufacturers. It’s glamorous, modern, sleek, high-tech etc. making it an appealing choice for a young audience. Some of the businesses using the silver in their brand image are Audi, Jaguar, Lexus, Toyota, Honda etc. Color Psychology Negative Effect of Silver Silver can be a little cold and impersonal, which makes it un-connecting. This color sets a fence around it making it un-approachable which can be good as well as bad depending on your customer base. For a luxury brand, the customer base is the premium class of society, making it acceptable. Color Psychology of Black Black is the darkest and most powerful color of all. It is the most mysterious and sophistication oriented color making it the best option for premium and popular brands. Some of the businesses using the black color are Nike, Addidas, Gucci, Puma, Apple Inc. etc.   Color Psychology Negative Effect of Black Black can be aloof, secretive, sad, and negative feelings that can intrigue your inner insecurity. It has the potential of depressing you and creating a void within. It is necessary for you to use this color with caution and to balance it with a color like white, yellow etc. The color black can match any color, making it versatile color choice.   Color Psychology of White White is opposite of the color black and is innocent and self-sufficient. It’s a neat, pure, simple color that evokes the same feeling. Some of the businesses using the color white are Vans, WordPress, Wikipedia, etc. Color Psychology Negative Effect of White White is often connected with boring and un-impressive features. The color white when used alone can easily pass you conscious mind, but, when used with other colors can create an influential design that can get instant attention. Color Psychology for Marketing and Branding There are many studies that show that color has a huge influence in creating a brand. Human beings are visual animals making it one of the most used channels to influence. Branding and marketing depend highly on visual imagery to promote their brand image and products. Color appeals to the psychological part of the human brain and creates an influential patch for brands to adapt. The right color for your brand depends on many factors like brand voice, brand image, demographic, culture, industry and much more.

      Color psychology plays an important role in building a brand image. Branding and marketing use colors to influence customers and branding.

  5. Dec 2019
    1. All therapy books start with a claim that their form of therapy will change everything. Previous forms of therapy have required years or even decades to produce ambiguous results. Our form of therapy can produce total transformation in five to ten sessions! Previous forms of therapy have only helped ameliorate the stress of symptoms. Our form of therapy destroys symptoms at the root!
    2. All therapy books propose an answer: the proof is that the patients get better. But my patients do not get better.
    1. Inaction, more than anything else, is the cause of our failures and our miseries. If we could consistently do the things we know we ought to, life would be much easier. Your projects would be more successful. Your goals would become a reality. Your life could be better. We all know action is hard. But why? Why do we struggle so much to take action?
    1. Парадокс. Работа ставит перед людьми задачи, требующие актуализации их навыков и умений; в результате они чувствуют себя более счастливыми, сильными, креативными и удовлетворёнными. В свободное время передними, как правило, не стоит никаких задач, их способности не задействованы, и потому они скучают и чувствует себя а печальными, слабыми и неудовлетворёнными. При этом люди стремятся поменьше работать и побольше отдыхать.
    2. Индейцы-шушвапы почувствовали, что наступает момент, когда жизнь теряет смысл: становится предсказуемой, мирной и сытной,— поэтому всё племя каждые 25-30 лет переселяется в другое место.
    3. Две основные стратегии для улучшения качества жизни: Попытаться подстроить внешние условия под наши цели. Изменить восприятие нами внешних целей так, чтобы они лучше соответствовали нашим целям.
    4. Личностный рост происходит следующим образом. Мы развиваемся, когда действуем ради самой деятельности, а не когда руководствуемся внешними побуждениями. Если мы выбрали цель и сконцентрировали на ней всю психическую энергию, всё, что будем делать, принесёт радость. И вкусив эту радость однажды, мы устремимся ощутить её снова с удвоенными усилиями. Личность становится сложной после переживания потока.
    5. После переживания состояния потока личностная организация становится сложнее. Именно в возрастании сложности личностный рост.
    6. Когда входящая информация нарушает упорядоченность нашего сознания, подвергая опасности структуру целей и приоритетов, мы оказываемся в состоянии внутреннего беспорядка, или психической энтропии.
    7. Внимание формирует личность, а личность направляет внимание.
    1. Внутреннее чувство пустоты, от которого страдают пассивно зависимые люди, является результатом того, что их родители не сумели удовлетворить детскую потребность в любви, внимании и заботе.
    2. У невротика потребность быть любимым чрезмерна. Такой человек не способен достичь той степени любви, к которой стремится – все мало и мало. В этой причине скрыта вторая причина – это неспособность любить.
    1. Те люди, которые продолжают непроизвольно возвращаться к воспоминанию о событии, видеть о нем сны, и при этом держат все это в секрете, оказываются наиболее подвержены различным заболеваниям и иным неприятностям, связанным с высоким уровнем стресса.
    1. How to sway the other side: Use their morals against them Willer’s work is based on moral foundations theory. It's the idea that people have stable, gut-level morals that influence their worldview. The liberal moral foundations include equality, fairness, and protection of the vulnerable. Conservative moral foundations are more stalwart: They favor in-group loyalty, moral purity, and respect for authority.
    2. In a more recent effort Willer and a co-author found, in a nationally representative sample, that conservatives would be more willing to support a hypothetical liberal candidate for president if that candidate used language that reflected conservative values. For instance, conservatives who read that the candidate’s “vision for America is based on respect for the values and traditions that were handed down to us...” were more likely to say they supported him than when the candidate’s message was framed with liberal buzzwords.
    3. In 2015, in a series of six studies, he and co-author Matthew Feinberg found that when conservative policies are framed around liberal values like equality or fairness, liberals become more accepting of them. The same was true of liberal policies recast in terms of conservative values like respect for authority.
  6. Nov 2019
    1. But we can take steps to control and lower our stress levels and, as a result, our arousal. Techniques like consciously controlling your breathing, and listening to chilled music have been known to help. More traditional advice, like reducing how much coffee you drink, eating a balanced diet and getting enough sleep each night should also be helpful

      Reduce stress by:

      • controlling your breathing / meditating
      • listening to chilled music
      • reducing coffee
      • eating balanced diet
      • getting enough sleep
    2. In our third study, we had 169 participants jog on the spot for 60 seconds. We found that these participants were more likely to share embarrassing stories – or open up to others – after physical exercise. Usually, people might disclose personal information like this to people that are close to them, but it seems we are more likely to open up to strangers when aroused, particularly by physical exercise

      After exercising we might be more prone to revealing a secret as well

    3. Information that we’re usually careful about disclosing, like secrets and very personal information, are more likely to be disclosed when we default to more automatic responses; mainly because they require some degree of effort to conceal.

      Therefore we tend to disclose secrets easier under stress

    1. At some point, we replaced the order of displaying the superpower packs (SP) from ascending to descending

      The revenue from the most expensive pack increased, but in the end the total revenue stayed as before the change

    2. Users don’t appreciate it when you try to trick them out of their money, or when they think you are doing that. A better approach would be to give them the opportunity to get what they want for free (even with a lot of work involved), and give an alternative purchase option. In this case the purchase will be perceived as a small cheat to make life easier instead of a shady scheme to get users to pay

      If you care about reviews

    3. There were four packs respectively containing 25, 50, 150 and 500 superpowers. We increased the biggest power pack from 500 to infinity. Practically, nothing changed. 500 superpowers were more than enough for the entire game, and very few users had spent all of it. However, after the change was made, the revenue from this pack grew by 50%

      Word "infinity" might work well for your sales

    4. I observed a similar effect in my own business when I was producing and selling metal license plates (sold via partner brick-and-mortar stores and through our own online store). At the start, the prices we set were relatively low ($3-5). But in a few months, we raised the prices by 2-3 times, and the plates then cost $15-25. Contrary to our expectations, the conversion rate almost doubled, as well as the average order amount.

      Example of placebo effect on selling license plates.

      $15-25 price range sells more than $3-5. Maybe because the product is unique and people prefer to pay once but expect better conditions

    5. With a vitamin C priced at $3, 100% of participants experienced relief. But the drug priced at $0.1 only worked in 50% of cases

      Placebo effect experienced on people trying to reduce the pain. Higher value of a product = higher effectiveness

    6. The word “free” makes any product more attractive to its potential customers. If you have a way to distribute your product for free, at least partially (a trial option, a limited version), then make sure to use it. This approach will greatly expand the top of your funnel. Once done, you will simply have to learn how to convert these new users into the paying ones

      Try using the word "free" somewhere in your sales. For example, try adding "free delivery for minimum $20 shopping" and you will see increase in sales

    7. I decided to compare how those who got it for free and those paid for it went through the levels in the game. There was a hypothesis that those who got it for “free” should stop using the game faster and sooner than those who paid for it. The hypothesis turned out to be wrong. The users of both the free and the paid version had identical behavior in the first 40 levels However, after level 40, the “free” players started quitting the game much faster. I interpreted this as those who received the game for free appreciated it less, so their motivation to go till the end or return to it after a couple of days was less

      If you get something for free, you tend to appreciate it less, although it's of the same quality as the paid version

    8. When we make decisions, our perception is influenced by a lot of factors such as presentation, packaging, brand, opinions of people around us, experts’ opinions, our own expectations, etc. Each of these factors can ultimately determine how much a person will like your product and how much she will be willing to pay for it

      Summarising, pay more attention to the background behind the final product

    9. In one case, the participants were given brochures describing the capabilities of a new audio system. The only difference between the brochures was that the first one was published on behalf of the system’s manufacturer and the second one on behalf of an independent research center. The participants who had seen the second brochure were willing to pay twice as much as the first group for the audio system

      It's similar to Brain.fm, which includes all the scientific facts on their homepage

    10. those who received coffee when the table was beautifully set appreciated the taste way more, and were also ready to pay more for it

      You will achieve higher sales with better packaging

    11. Joshua Bell, one of the best concert violinists in the world played for free, for 45 minutes, on a violin worth $3.5 million dollars at a subway station. He managed to raise $32. Most people (98%) who passed by paid no attention to him, only 2% gave him some money, and less than 0.5% stopped to listen (those were the people who actually recognized him)

      Influence of the environment plays an important role. If a homeless violinist had to play in an opera, he would have been more respected, although he would have been on the same level as he plays on the subway

    12. If you want to change the rules of the game in a field that you are about to enter, try to portray your product as something new and different. Doing so will enable you to set the rules of the game from scratch and be the first one to establish the anchor. And when you install the anchor, do not lower the price; there will still be time for that (making a discount always sounds better than raising the price)

      Tip for establishing new product: visualise your product as a new solution and do not start with a lowered price. Later you will attract customers with a discount

    13. When the sales agents of a health insurance company that was selling its services via phone asked people (who agreed to proceed) why they chose their company, the proportion of those who eventually decided to purchase the insurance increased significantly. As they thought about the answer to this question, the respondents subconsciously convinced themselves that they had made the right choice, further strengthening their decision and eventually leading to their making the purchase

      Marketing trick: ask why someone chose your service, so their mind will be more aware and convinced of the right choice; hence, buy your product again

    14. People also tend to form new “rules” when they encounter something for the first time. Starbucks is very different from other coffee stores. Therefore, when interacting with them, people create new rules instead of resorting to existing patterns

      Therefore Starbucks can be considered as something different than a regular coffee shop

    15. we tend to base our decisions on things we’ve experienced before, to make decisions easier

      We're basing decisions on previous experience rather than considering pros and cons.

      Therefore, after buying one expensive coffee at Starbucks, the next time we will also do it, as we would remember how good it was, but not how expensive.

      That is how we form good and bad habbits, which are so hard to get rid of

    16. It is difficult to find a logical explanation for this, but apparently the prices that end with 9 trigger some kind of automatic mechanism

      When presented with the price catalogues of:

      • $39
      • $34 and $44

      The first option would exceed all the other numbers of orders

    17. Offering to proceed with a $1 per day tariff and the one that costs $350 per year are mathematically equivalent, but trigger different reactions in customers. The first option can be compared to purchasing a water bottle in a grocery store, and the second option is more like purchasing a mobile phone

      Better to present sale in the form of $1 per day than $350 per year

    18. Mathematically equivalent statements are not necessarily equivalent psychologically

      For example, presenting two sets:

      A: A drunken motorist runs over a woman.

      B: A motorist runs over a woman.

      People would choose A as the more likely, but in fact it's just a subset of B.

      Same in this case:

      A: If you fly with this airline once a year, there's a possibility of one air crash in a 1000 years.

      B: 1 in every 1000 flights ends in a disaster

      It also applies in case of graphs:

    19. Do not lower prices. The price that you declare at the very beginning will become the reference point. You can also try to show your customers big numbers before starting to talk about the money

      Advice for marketers

    20. people are guided by the available prices to assess the rest of the offered goods

      For example, court judges were asked to roll a die before passing sentence, and the length of their verdict correlated with the values ​​they got on the dice rolled. Of course, the judges didn’t realize that the die roll had affected them

    21. Salesmen in retail stores try to sell the most expensive things first, or at least offer them to customers. For instance, a person who came to buy a suit is first shown the suits. When the customer makes his choice, then the salesperson suggests appropriate accessories, such as a tie to go with the suit. Compared to the suit’s price, the tie looks very inexpensive and is an easy upsell

      Propose the most expensive thing first.

      Case 1: For example, when someone wants to buy a suit:

      1. Suit
      2. Tie (small price in comparison to suit)
      3. Socks (small price in comparison to suit)

      Case 2:

      1. Overpriced real estate
      2. The right real estate
    22. We rarely think in absolute terms, and we don’t have a universal measure to understand the value of a certain thing. Therefore, we tend to evaluate things by comparing them to others

      The bait principle

      It can be supported by an experiment.

      1st version: Group of people was presented with 3 options:

      • a web subscription ($59) <--- 16% votes
      • a print subscription ($125)
      • print + web subscription ($125) <--- 84% votes

      2nd version: Group of people was presented with 2 options:

      • a web subscription ($59) <--- 68% votes
      • print + web subscription ($125) <--- 32% votes
    23. The lack of a ready-made pattern of behavior makes people rely on “simple” factors in decision-making (such as other people’s behavior, template principles, pre-designed baits, etc.), rather than the correct ones

      Use this for your advantage in sales

    24. The circles drawn in the center of the image above are identical. But depending on their environment, their perceived size changes

      Use this property in marketing:

    1. Excess success in“Don’t count calorie labeling out: Calorie counts on the left side of menu items lead to lower calorie food choices

      Under review at Meta-Psychology. Contribute with open community peer review comments directly on the preprint.

      The fully transparent editorial process can be found here: https://osf.io/4tgq9/

    1. From Peg Cheechi, an instructional designer at Rush University: informing faculty members about the advantages of working with experts in course design.

      The Chronicle of Higher Education is a website and newspaper informing students and faculty of college affairs and news.

      Rating: 9/10

    1. Perceived moralityof direct versus indirect harm: Replications of the preference for indirect harm effec

      Submitted to Meta-Psychology. Follow the fully transparent review process here: link

      Contribute with open community peer review by commenting directly on this preprint.

    1. With every negative emotion you’re experiencing, ask yourself: “Why am I feeling this? Is there a past experience that’s triggering this?”In short – sit with your discomforts, don’t run from them

      Dealing with negative emotions

  7. Oct 2019
    1. Analysis of data collected in 1970 from 48.738 young Swedish men, compared to national suicide registers, shows that lower intelligence increases suicide risk. Low emotional control significantly contributes to suicide in young men, but becomes less of a factor with age. Low intelligence, however, remains a significant contributor to male suicide throughout life.

      Intelligence as well as emotional control significantly contribute to male suicide

    1. How to Turn Your Mind from an Enemy to an Ally

      If there was a manual for advanced souls, it would had to end with "Everything in this book may be wrong."

      • Richard Bach, Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the advanced soul
  8. Sep 2019
    1. It is so interesting how "kin" varies so widely throughout the world. In some societies with multiple wives to one man, the children of them will just consider all of them mothers and not worry about blood. While here in the United States, we have whole TV dramas about finding your blood related mother or father. In the U.S., we have definitely glamorized being a blood related parent more than someone who takes care of kids they have taken duty of. Even now, when speaking of adopting a child, there will still be people that say "When are you going to have real kids" or ask women why they won't have kids if they don't want them.

    1. However, if you believe that you are indistractable, you empower yourself to respond more healthily to whatever distractions get in your way

      How to be Indistractable (summary): How to be Indistractable (summary)

    2. identity pact is another way to change your response to distractions. Your self-image has a profound impact on your behavior

      Identity pact - give yourself a new identity, like "vegetarian" to force yourself to stop eating meat

    3. price pact puts money on the line. If you stick to your intended behavior, you keep the cash. If you get distracted, you forfeit your funds

      Price pact - make an agreement with your friend that you will give him a lot of money in case you won't finish what you want to

    4. effort pact is a kind of precommitment that involves increasing the amount of effort required to do something you don’t want to do

      Effort pack is one of the examples of precommitments. You can use "Forest" app as example to help you with it

    5. you can take back your smartphone in four steps
      1. Remove needless apps.
      2. Shift the usage of mobile apps to desktop.
      3. Rearrange icons on your screen.
      4. Adjust notifications.
    6. The right approach is to ask whether the external trigger is serving you, or whether you are serving it

      Way to decide if it's better to eliminate the trigger or not

    7. research shows that ignoring a call or message can be just as distracting as responding to one

      Notifications are one of the main sources of distraction

    8. After all, the most important people in your life deserve better than the leftover time in your day

      That's influential...

    9. Go ahead and scroll through social media, but at allotted times

      Don't stress about purely working on your values. Allocate the time for the other activities, but only do them at the allocated time

    10. Turn your values into time

      Don't just talk about your values, but invest them into time

    11. Don’t pick your goals, pick your values

      Pick your values instead of goals. Otherwise others will dictate your activities and use your time. Example values:

      • being a contributing member of a team
      • being a loving parent
      • being in an equitable marriage
      • seeking wisdom
    12. “leaves on a stream” method. Imagine yourself beside a stream, on which leaves gently float by. Place each thought and negative feeling in your mind on one leaf and watch them float away

      Use "leaves on a stream" method when facing distraction. Put then on the leaves and let them float away. Apart from it:

      • identify things that prompt the distraction
      • log how you feel at that time
    13. You can’t control how you feel, but you can learn to control how you react to the way you feel.To start, you can change how you think about the bad feelings that can lead to distraction.

      We have lack of control over our feelings, but not over our reaction

    14. The truth is, we overuse video games, social media, and our cell phones not just for the pleasure they provide, but because they free us from psychological discomfort

      Root cause of human behaviour is the desire to escape discomfort

    15. The opposite of “distraction” is “traction.” Traction is any action that moves us towards what we really want. Tractions are actions, done with intent.

      Traction

    16. distractions aren’t necessarily your fault, they are your responsibility

      Learn to become indistrictable

    1. How to Use Psychology in Web Design – A Complete Guide

      With years of experience in the web designing industry, we’ve delivered hundreds of projects for our clients that have significantly increased the business conversion rates for them, using our web design psychology.

  9. Jul 2019
    1. How Close to the Mark Might Published Heritability EstimatesBe?

      This manuscript is under peer review at Meta-Psychology. Please contribute with open community peer review directly at the preprint.

      The transparent editorial history can be found here:

      https://osf.io/y369z/

  10. Jun 2019
    1. Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences should not be conflated with the idea of "learning styles". Most people benefit from multiple modes of learning.

    1. Throughout the past two decades, he has been conducting research in the fields of psychology of learning and hybrid neural network (in particular, applying these models to research on human skill acquisition). Specifically, he has worked on the integrated effect of "top-down" and "bottom-up" learning in human skill acquisition,[1][2] in a variety of task domains, for example, navigation tasks,[3] reasoning tasks, and implicit learning tasks.[4] This inclusion of bottom-up learning processes has been revolutionary in cognitive psychology, because most previous models of learning had focused exclusively on top-down learning (whereas human learning clearly happens in both directions). This research has culminated with the development of an integrated cognitive architecture that can be used to provide a qualitative and quantitative explanation of empirical psychological learning data. The model, CLARION, is a hybrid neural network that can be used to simulate problem solving and social interactions as well. More importantly, CLARION was the first psychological model that proposed an explanation for the "bottom-up learning" mechanisms present in human skill acquisition: His numerous papers on the subject have brought attention to this neglected area in cognitive psychology.
  11. May 2019
    1. Thanatos is the irrational urge to destroy the source of all sexual energy in the annihilation of the self

      Therefore there are really only two drives: (a) Thanatos - the drive to destroy oneself, which leads to all self-destructive behaviors and its logical maximum suicide, and (b) Eros - the desire to replicate oneself, which leads to all self-reproductive behaviors, sex, and more, has its logical maximum in reproduction. It's just an attempt to cause your information to continue to exist. You can make friends, you can preserve your thoughts via books, you can build something; they're all attempts to ensure that we continue to exist in some way.

    2. Eros (the life instinct), which covers all the self-preserving and erotic instincts, and Thanatos (the death instinct), which covers all the instincts towards aggression, self-destruction, and cruelty.

      This is why they called him Thanos - he is the death instinct! It is literally a war of complexity vs simplicity, life vs entropy.

    3. originated in the emotional crisis which he suffered on the death of his father and the series of dreams to which this gave rise.

      Dreams associated with traumatic events, used to process these traumatic events. What dreams did I have?

      1. Dream of the inky black void, running through it to smash glass walls after glass walls.
      2. Running away from a soldier and hiding in a cave
      3. Running down the street and then leaping into the air and swimming, swimming through the sky
    4. many neuroses (phobias, hysterical paralysis and pains, some forms of paranoia, and so forth) had their origins in deeply traumatic experiences which had occurred in the patient’s past but which were now forgotten–hidden from consciousness.

      This is so true. I have traumatic experiences and possibly complex PTSD associated with the past.

    1. The machinery that accomplishes these tasks is by far the most powerful and complex of the sensory systems. The retina, which contains 150 million light-sensitive rod and cone cells, is actually an outgrowth of the brain. In the brain itself, neurons devoted to visual processing number in the hundreds of millions and take up about 30 percent of the cortex, as compared with 8 percent for touch and just 3 percent for hearing. Each of the two optic nerves, which carry signals from the retina to the brain, consists of a million fibers; each auditory nerve carries a mere 30,000.
  12. Apr 2019
    1. Jung was one of the first people to define introversion and extraversion in a psychological context. In Jung's Psychological Types, he theorizes that each person falls into one of two categories, the introvert and the extravert. These two psychological types Jung compares to ancient archetypes, Apollo and Dionysus. The introvert is likened with Apollo, who shines light on understanding. The introvert is focused on the internal world of reflection, dreaming and vision. Thoughtful and insightful, the introvert can sometimes be uninterested in joining the activities of others. The extravert is associated with Dionysus, interested in joining the activities of the world. The extravert is focused on the outside world of objects, sensory perception and action. Energetic and lively, the extravert may lose their sense of self in the intoxication of Dionysian pursuits.[77] Jungian introversion and extraversion is quite different from the modern idea of introversion and extraversion.[78] Modern theories often stay true to behaviourist means of describing such a trait (sociability, talkativeness, assertiveness etc.) whereas Jungian introversion and extraversion is expressed as a perspective: introverts interpret the world subjectively, whereas extraverts interpret the world objectively.
  13. Mar 2019
    1. This link is to a three-page PDF that describes Gagne's nine events of instruction, largely in in the form of a graphic. Text is minimized and descriptive text is color coded so it is easy to find underneath the graphic at the top. The layout is simple and easy to follow. A general description of Gagne's work is not part of this page. While this particular presentation does not have personal appeal to me, it is included here due to the quality of the page and because the presentation is more user friendly than most. Rating 4/5

    1. This page is a simply presented list of many learning theories, both popular and less well known. The layout is clean. The pages to which the listed items link are somewhat minimal in nature so this would give a basic tour or overview of the models and would allow viewers to review the names of some of the learning theories. This page does not prioritize learning theories or identify and establish those theories that are the most prominent.

    1. Abstrac

      In his commentary, Alex Holcombe makes the argument that only ‘one or two exemplars of a color category’ are typically examined in color studies, and this is problematic because a color such as ‘red’ is a category, not a single hue.

      Although in some fields it is very important to examine a range of stimuli, and in general examining the generalizability of findings has an important place in research lines, I do not think that currently this issue is a pressing concern in color psychology. Small variations in hue and brightness naturally occur in online studies, and these are assumed not to matter for the underlying mechanism. Schietecat, Lakens, IJsselsteijn, and De Kort (2018) write: “In addition, we conducted Experiments 1 and 3 in a laboratory environment, but Experiments 2, 4, and 5 were conducted in participants’ homes with an internet-based method. Therefore, we could not be completely sure that the presentation of the stimuli on their personal computers was identical for every participant in those experiments. However, we expected that the impact of these variations on our results is not substantial. The labels of the IAT (i.e., red vs blue) increased the salience of the relevant hue dimension, and we do not expect our results to hold for very specific hues, but for colors that are broadly categorized as red, blue, and green. The similar associative patterns across Experiments 2 and 3 seem to support this expectation.”

      We wrote this because there is nothing specific about the hue that is expected to drive the effects in association based accounts of psychological effects of colors. If the color ‘red’ is associated with specific concepts (and the work by Schietecat at all supports the idea that red can activate associations related to either activity and evaluation, such as aggression or enthusiasm, depending on the context). This means that the crucial role of the stimulus is to activate the association with ‘red’, no the perceptual stimulation of the eye in any specific way. The critical manipulation check would thus be is people categorize a stimulus as ‘red’. As long as this is satisfied, we can assume the concept ‘red’ is activated, which can then activate related associations, depending on the context.

      Obviously, the author is correct that there are benefits in testing multiple variations of the color ‘red’ to demonstrate the generalizability of observed effects. However, the authors is writing too much as a perception researcher I fear. If there is a strong theoretical reason to assume slightly different hues and chromas will not matter (because as long as a color is recognized as ‘red’ it will activate specific associations) the research priority of varying colors is much lower than in other fields (e.g., research on human faces) where it is more plausible that the specifics of the stimuli matter. A similar argument holds for the question whether “any link is specifically to red, rather than extending to green, yellow, purple, and brown”. This is too a-theoretical, and even though not all color research has been replicable, and many studies suffered from problems identified during the replication crisis, the theoretical models are still plausible, and specific to predictions about certain hues. We know quite a lot about color associations for prototypical colors in terms of their associations with valence and activity (e.g., Russell & Mehrabian, 1977) and this can be used to make more specific predictions than to a-theoretically test the entire color spectrum.

      Indeed, across the literature many slightly different variations of red are used, or in online studies (Schietecat et al., 2018) studies have been performed online, where different computer screens will naturally lead to some variation in the exact colors presented. This doesn’t mean that more dedicated exploration of the boundaries of these effects can be worthwhile in the future. But currently, the literature is more focused on examining whether these effects are reliable to begin with, and explaining basic questions about their context dependency, than that they are concerned about testing the range of hues for which effects can be observed. So, although in principle it is often true that the generalizability of effects is understudies and deserved more attention, it is not color psychology’s most pressing concern, because we have theoretical predictions about specific colors, and because theoretically as long as a color activates the concept (e.g., ‘red’), the associated concepts that influence subsequent psychological responses are assumed to be activated, irrespective of minor differences in for example hue or brightness.

      Daniel Lakens

      References

      Russell, J. A., & Mehrabian, A. (1977). Evidence for a three-factor theory of emotions. Journal of Research in Personality, 11(3), 273–294. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0092-6566(77)90037-X Schietecat, A. C., Lakens, D., IJsselsteijn, W. A., & Kort, Y. A. W. de. (2018). Predicting Context-dependent Cross-modal Associations with Dimension-specific Polarity Attributions. Part 2: Red and Valence. Collabra: Psychology, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.1525/COLLABRA.126

    2. A claim about a category requirestesting multiple examples of that category

      Submitted to Meta-Psychology. Contribute with peer review directly on this preprint. The editorial process can be found here:

      https://osf.io/vg5wa/

  14. Feb 2019
    1. Racialized Sexism/Sexualized Racism: A Multimethod Study of Intersectional Experiences of Discrimination for Asian American Women

      This article has been featured in an Article Spotlight! For a summary of the article from the author, please visit https://www.apa.org/pubs/highlights/spotlight/issue-119.

    1. The Kids Are Alright (Mostly): An Empirical Examination of Title IX Knowledge in Institutions of Higher Education

      This article has been featured in an Article Spotlight! For a summary of the article from the author, please visit https://www.apa.org/pubs/highlights/spotlight/issue-120.

    1. Reframing Marginalization and Youth Development: Introduction to the Special Issue

      This special issue has been featured in an Article Spotlight! For a summary of the special issue from the editor, please visit https://www.apa.org/pubs/highlights/spotlight/issue-122.

    1. Community-Based Mental Health Intervention Skills: Task Shifting in Low- and Middle-Income Settings

      This article has been featured in an Article Spotlight! For a summary of the article from the author, please visit https://www.apa.org/pubs/highlights/spotlight/issue-127.

    1. Do Outcomes of Clinical Trials Resemble Those “Real World” Patients? A Reanalysis of the STAR*D Antidepressant Data Set

      This article has been featured in an Article Spotlight! For a summary of the article from the author, please visit https://www.apa.org/pubs/highlights/spotlight/issue-125

  15. Jan 2019
    1. neolo-gisms

      "a new word that is coined especially by a person affected with schizophrenia and is meaningless except to the coiner, and is typically a combination of two existing words or a shortening or distortion of an existing word" This is interesting from a psychology point of view https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/neologism

    1. Although we believe that this study establishes the presence of g in data from these non-Western cultures, this study says nothing about the relative level of general cognitive ability in various societies, nor can it be used to make cross-cultural comparisons. For this purpose, one must establish measurement invariance of a test across different cultural groups (e.g., Holding et al., 2018) to ensure that test items and tasks function in a similar way for each group.

      This is absolutely essential to understanding the implications of the article.

    2. The mean sample size of the remaining data sets was 539.6 (SD = 1,574.5). The large standard deviation in relationship to the mean is indicative of the noticeably positively skewed distribution of sample sizes, a finding supported by the much smaller median of 170 and skewness value of 6.297. There were 16,559 females (33.1%), 25,431 males (48.6%), and 10,350 individuals whose gender was unreported (19.8%). The majority of samples—62 of 97 samples (63.9%)—consisted entirely or predominantly of individuals below 18. Most of the remaining samples contained entirely or predominantly adults (32 data sets, 33.0%), and the remaining 3 datasets (3.1%) had an unknown age range or an unknown mix of adults and children). The samples span nearly the entire range of life span development, from age 2 to elderly individuals.

      My colleague, Roberto Colom, stated in his blog (link below) that he would have discarded samples with fewer than 100 individuals. This is a legitimate analysis decision. See his other commentary (in Spanish) at https://robertocolom.wordpress.com/2018/06/01/la-universalidad-del-factor-general-de-inteligencia-g/

    3. Alternatively, one could postulate that a general cognitive ability is a Western trait but not a universal trait among humans, but this would require an evolutionary model where this general ability evolved several times independently throughout the mammalian clade, including separately in the ancestors of Europeans after they migrated out of Africa and separated from other human groups. Such a model requires (a) a great deal of convergent evolution to occur across species occupying widely divergent environmental niches and (b) an incredibly rapid development of a general cognitive ability while the ancestors of Europeans were under extremely strong selection pressures that other humans did not experience (but other mammal species or their ancestors would have experienced at other times). We find the more parsimonious model of an evolutionary origin of the general cognitive ability in the early stages of mammalian development to be the more plausible one, and thus we believe that it is reasonable to expect a general cognitive ability to be a universal human trait.

      It was this reasoning that led to the decision to conduct this study. There is mounting evidence that g exists in other mammalian species, and it definitely exists in Western cultures. It seemed really unlikely that it would not exist in non-Western groups. But I couldn't find any data about the issue. So, time to do a study!

    4. Panga Munthu test of intelligence

      To me, this is the way to create tests of intelligence for non-Western cultures: find skills and manifestations of intelligence that are culturally appropriate for a group of examinees and use those skills to tap g. Cross-cultural testing would require identifying skills that are valued or developed in both cultures.

    5. Berry (1986)

      John W. Berry is a cross-cultural psychologist whose work stretches back over 50 years. He takes the position (e.g., Berry, 1986) that definitions of intelligence are culturally-specific and are bound up with the skills cultures encourage and that the environment requires people to develop. Therefore, he does not see Western definitions as applying to most groups.

      After this study, my position is more nuanced approach. I agree with Berry that the manifestations of intelligence can vary from culture to culture, but that underneath these surface features is g in all humans.

    1. Access to gender-responsive substance use disorder treatment services, especially for pregnant women

      Stigma is particularly high for this group, along with the felt shame that pregnant women bear, which serve as barriers to accessing high quality drug addiction support. Because group therapy is one common form of treatment, retention is lower because the group majority is male. Women who do seek out help do not always feel psychologically safe in these treatment settings. Additionally, they may not appropriately address the unique needs of mothers and expecting mothers. I wonder about regional differences, SES, race/ethnicity...

    1. We believe that members of the public likely learn some inaccurate information about intelligence in their psychology courses. The good news about this implication is that reducing the public’s mistaken beliefs about intelligence will not take a massive public education campaign or public relations blitz. Instead, improving the public’s understanding about intelligence starts in psychology’s own backyard with improving the content of undergraduate courses and textbooks.

      To me, this is the "take home" message of the article. I hope psychology educators do more to improve the accuracy of their lessons about intelligence. I also hope more programs add a course on the topic to their curriculum.

    2. The introductory psychology textbook is difficult to produce with uniform accuracy, as authors have only a limited area of expertise, yet must write chapters that discuss the entire breadth of psychology.

      My heart goes out to anyone trying to write an introductory psychology textbook. It's impossible to be an expert on every area of psychology, so some weaknesses are inevitable. These authors are trying their best.

    1. Under review at Meta-Psychology. Contribute with peer review here. The editorial process can be followed at:

      https://osf.io/s6yr4/

  16. Dec 2018
    1. But the bottom line seems to be that we now have a better idea why rewards work better than punishment with pre-adolescent children. So if it is an explanation you need for why you should reward good behavior more than punish bad behavior, at least with pre-adolescent children, now you have one. The task that still remains, of course, is regulating one's own irritability, frustration and thus behavior in the face of annoying child behavior so that we can ignore it.
  17. Nov 2018
    1. The Modern Stoicism movement traces its roots to Victor Frankl’s (Sahakian 1979) logotherapy, as well as to early versions of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, for instance in the work of Albert Ellis (Robertson 2010). But Stoicism is a philosophy, not a therapy, and it is in the works of philosophers such as William Irvine (2008), John Sellars (2003), and Lawrence Becker (1997) that we find articulations of 21st century Stoicism, though the more self-help oriented contribution by CBT therapist Donald Robertson (2013) is also worthy of note. All of these authors attempt to distance the philosophical meaning of "Stoic"—even in a modern setting—from the common English word "stoic," indicating someone who goes through life with a stiff upper lip, so to speak. While there are commonalities between "Stoic" and "stoic," for instance the emphasis on endurance, the latter is a diminutive version of the former, and the two should accordingly be kept distinct.
  18. Oct 2018
    1. Cloninger has trained rats and mice in mazes to have persistence by carefully not rewarding them when they get to the finish. “The key is intermittent reinforcement,” says Cloninger. The brain has to learn that frustrating spells can be worked through. “A person who grows up getting too frequent rewards will not have persistence, because they’ll quit when the rewards disappear.”

      I wonder if this could be applied to my cat?

    1. The Online Disinhibition Effect (John Suler, 2004) - the lack of restraint shown by some people when communicating online rather than in person. (It can be good as well as bad. How can we reduce the bad behavior?)

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_disinhibition_effect http://truecenterpublishing.com/psycyber/disinhibit.html

  19. Sep 2018
    1. Next time you need to avoid saying yes, use “I don’t” in your refusal, to reinforce the helpful behavior of saying no to things that aren’t worth it.
  20. Aug 2018
    1. The researchers anticipated that four aspects of mindfulness would predict higher self-esteem: Labeling internal experiences with words, which might prevent people from getting consumed by self-critical thoughts and emotions; Bringing a non-judgmental attitude toward thoughts and emotions, which could help individuals have a neutral, accepting attitude toward the self; Sustaining attention on the present moment, which could help people avoid becoming caught up in self-critical thoughts that relate to events from the past or future; Letting thoughts and emotions enter and leave awareness without reacting to them.
    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.

  21. 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.”
  22. 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.
  23. 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.

  24. 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.”
  25. 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.

  26. 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.