How to Live With an Unknowable Mind. We know surprisingly little about our own personalities, attitudes and even self-esteem. How do we live with that? How do you imagine your own mind? I sometimes picture mine as a difficult and contrary child; the kind that throws a stone at you for no reason and can’t explain itself. Or while at the beach it sits silent, looking miserable. One reason minds can be frustrating is that we only have access to part of them, by definition the conscious part. Except we don’t know it’s doing things we haven’t asked it to, because we can’t interrogate it. This is quite a different view of the mind than Freud had. The idea that large parts of our minds can’t be accessed is fine for basic processes like movement, seeing or hearing. Other parts would be extremely interesting to know about. Here are three examples of areas in which our self-knowledge is relatively low: 1.
You’d be pretty sure that you could describe your personality to someone else, right? Don’t be so sure. 2. 3. Road to self-knowledge. 6 Easy Steps to Falling Asleep Fast. Psychological research over three decades demonstrates the power of Stimulus Control Therapy. Can’t get a good night’s sleep? You’re not alone. In surveys of what would improve people’s lives, a good night’s sleep frequently comes near the top of the list. Poor sleep results in worse cognitive performance, including degraded memory, attention, performance and alertness. And in the long term insomnia is also associated with anxiety and depression. And people’s sleep gets worse as they get older. After 65 years old, between 12% and 40% of people have insomnia. All sorts of methods have been tried to combat poor sleep, from drugs through psychological remedies to more outlandish treatments.
The problem with drugs is that they have side-effects and are often addictive. Stimulus Control Therapy Professor Richard R. Of these the most successful single intervention is called Stimulus Control Therapy (Morin et al., 2006). Why it works This is just as true of thoughts as it is of actions. Top 10 Self-Control Strategies. The science of self-control: use rewards, commitments, self-affirmation, adjust values, fight the unconscious and more… Self-control is vital to our success. People who have good self-control tend to be both more popular and more successful in many areas of life. Those with low self-control, though, are at risk of overeating, addictions and underachievement.
Unfortunately, as we all know to our cost, self-control frequently fails. Part of the problem is we overestimate our ability to resist temptation (Nordgren et al., 2009). Self-control can be built up, like a muscle (Baumeister et al., 2006). 1. Research has found that self-control is a limited resource (Vohs et al., 2000). At any one time we only have so much self-control in the tank. Recognise when your levels of self-control are low and make sure you find a way to avoid temptation during those times. 2. Make the decision before you’re in the tempting situation. 3. Rewards can really work to help strengthen self-control. 4. 5. 6. 7. Revenge of the Introvert.
There are as many introverts as extraverts, but you'd never know it by looking around. Introverts would rather be entertained by what's going on in their heads than in seeking happiness. Their big challenge is not to feel like outsiders in their own culture. by Laurie Helgoe, Ph.D. After ten years as a psychologist practicing psychodynamic psychotherapy , I reclined on the couch of my own analyst feeling burdened by my chosen work. After a day of seeing patients, I was drained. Then I heard myself say: "I don't like being a therapist. " Suddenly I felt free, loosed from expectations that never fit. As a card-carrying introvert , I am one of the many people whose personality confers on them a preference for the inner world of their own mind rather than the outer world of sociability. Over the past two decades, scientists have whittled down to five those clusters of cognitions, emotions, motivations, and behaviors that we mean by "personality" factors.
Introversion in Action. Rebecca Saxe: How we read each other's minds. Get Anyone to Like You – Instantly – Guaranteed. Get anyone to like you - Instantly - Guaranteed If you want people to like you, make them feel good about themselves.
This golden rule of friendship works every time - guaranteed! The principle is straightforward. If I meet you and make you feel good about yourself, you will like me and seek every opportunity to see me again to reconstitute the same good feeling you felt the first time we met. Unfortunately, this powerful technique is seldom used because we are continually focused on ourselves and not others. We put our wants and needs before the wants and needs of others. The simple communication techniques that follow will help you keep the focus of the conversation on the person you are talking to and make them feel good about themselves. The Big Three Our brains continually scan the environment for friend or foe signals.
Eyebrow Flash The eyebrow flash is a quick up and down movement of the eyebrows. Head Tilt The head tilt is a slight tilt of the head to one side or the other. Smile. Superstitions – Where Do They Come From? “When you believe in things that you don’t understand Then you suffer… Superstition ain’t the way…” – Lyrics from “Superstition” by Stevie Wonder You are an intelligent, rational person on your way to work when a black cat dashes across the street in front of your car. Do you get an uncomfortable feeling of impending doom? While shaving or applying makeup, you accidentally drop the mirror and break it. Does the anguish of enduring seven years of bad luck overtake you? Have you spilled some salt? Webster’s Dictionary definition: Superstition: 1. There are probably as many varied superstitions and myths as there are people who create them and pass them on. Breaking a mirror is said to bring bad luck for seven years.
Superstitions involving cats are believed to have originated in ancient Egypt where cats were considered to be sacred. Every culture has superstitions. Drop a fork, a woman is coming to call. For just about anything you can think of, there exists a superstition. Psychology | Documentary Heaven | Watch Free Documentaries Online. 10 Interesting Things About The Human Body. Skinner on Campus. Blog : Test Your “Subitizing” Ability.
Recently I found myself reading about “subitizing”, which is the process of instinctively counting small sets of items in a fraction of second. For example, try quickly counting a few of these: The Wikipedia article indicates that you can nearly always correctly count four or fewer items in a small fraction of a second. Above four, you start to make mistakes. I wanted to test this claim in Mathematica (using myself as the test subject). If you have the free Computable Document Format (CDF) browser plugin (or Mathematica 8) installed, then you can play the game right here in your web browser (if you don’t have the plugin, you’ll just see a placeholder image): <div style="margin: 0 auto; background-color:#ddd; width:500px; height:275px;"><div style="padding:10px; text-align:center; ">To view the full content of this page, please enable JavaScript in your browser.
Creating a game like this in Mathematica is surprisingly easy. Generating “Subitizing” Diagrams Creating the Interactive Game.