The hard problem: Tom Stoppard on the limits of what science can explain. When Tom Stoppard was writing The Hard Problem, his play about the conundrum of human consciousness, one of the scientists he consulted was American evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson. The play offers, among other things, a challenge to Wilson’s view that altruism, as a consciously motivated action, can be completely accounted for in terms of evolutionary theory. In the play, Hilary, a young psychologist, scornfully rejects the idea that brain activity “explains” emotions such as sorrow. She ends up quitting a brain science institute and heads off to study philosophy in New York. Wilson has just published a book called Does Altruism Exist? For such theories, selfless actions boil down to selfish ones. In his book, Wilson tries to return evolutionary theory to the orthodoxy he claims Darwin believed in, namely that altruism is not a fiction, but rather involves real sacrifice that can be explained scientifically.
David Sloan Wilson: Yes. Wilson: Not true, but keep going. How to Recognize and Combat Thinking Traps That May Be Controlling Your Life. As a human being, you probably will have noticed that what people think and say often bears little relation to how they act. Is it because individuals think what they say is accurate when it isn’t? According to the concept of The Thinking Trap, this is the case.
We have a misguided view of what we do and why we do it. What we say is not a guide to our real selves and what we do is a much clearer insight into who we really are. Disassociation of what we say and do operates in almost all aspects of existence from what we perceive to how we behave. The Introspective Illusion The introspective illusion is the ideology that we like to know about ourselves and how we do things, but it is actually misplaced confidence.
Factors are Hidden from us that Prevent Conscious Rational Choices The fact that most people do not consciously know what affects their decisions and behaviour is a strange and somewhat frightening concept altogether. Self and Societal Deception What do our Conscious Thoughts Do? Why Honest People Do Dishonest Things. Every day we are bombarded with temptations — to cheat on our diets, to spend instead of save our paychecks, to tell little white lies. It can be exhausting to have to continually remind ourselves that, long-term, we want to be upstanding people, so we shouldn’t make tempting but unethical short-term decisions. But what if simply thinking about dishonesty could make it easier for us to behave ethically? This novel possibility comes from a set of studies published May 22 in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, which demonstrate that anticipating temptation decreases the likelihood of a person engaging in poor behavior.
In this set of studies, lead researcher Oliver Sheldon, a specialist in organizational behavior at Rutgers University, and co-author Ayelet Fishbach, a social psychologist at the University of Chicago, set out to understand the factors that influence self-control in ethical decision-making. So why do good people do bad things? Meaning and Happiness. Human Behaviour. A common objection to the idea of a Resource Based Economy (RBE) is the assertion that something called 'human nature' would prevent humans from being able to form a peaceful, functioning society. This is because it is supposedly in the 'nature' of humans to be violent, greedy, selfish, and lazy.
It is thought that without money, humans would have no motivation to work or contribute meaningfully to society. Furthermore, it is thought that without laws, prisons, or other forms of punishment, we would not be able to cooperate with each other and society would be reduced to animalistic chaos and violence. However, a true understanding of the mechanism of human behaviour shows that the assertion of 'human nature' is a scientific fallacy. In order to understand human nature, we must first understand some basic concepts in genetics. Genotype + Environment = Phenotype Genotype refers to the specific set of genes an individual has inherited. -- Jas Garcha Citations: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Review 6. 7. 8. Towards a De-biased Social Psychology: The effects of ideological perspective go beyond politics. | funderstorms. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, in press; subject to final editing before publication This is a commentary on: Duarte, J. L., Crawford, J. T., Stern, C., Haidt, J., Jussim, L., & Tetlock, P. E. (in press). Political diversity will improve social psychological science. “A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.” — Robert Frost Liberals may be too open-minded for their own (ideological) good; they keep finding fault with themselves and this article is a good example. Duarte et al. argue that our science would be better if more “conservatives” were included in the ideological mix.
In any case, we shouldn’t wait for conservatives to arrive and save us. Politics is the least of it. Examples are legion. Personality and abilities are heritable. Human nature is a product of evolution. REFERENCES Kenrick, D.T., & Funder, D.C. (1988). Like this: Like Loading... A Layman’s Guide to Mindful Meditation. “Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed.
Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings.” ~ Rumi Here’s the thing: we all know we should meditate, right? Even conventional doctors are informing us about the huge benefits of meditation. When it comes down to it, meditation can be as simple, or as complex, as we want it to be. All of life is a moving meditation. So if our goal is to achieve presence with the vibration of the universe, and presence is about being in the moment and familiarizing ourselves with the current state of our mind-body-soul, then how do we actually do it? We do it by finding a sacred “place” to “perform” our meditation. The main purpose for resonating with this sacred vibration is to nix the overreach of the Ego. Here’s an interesting video by Andy Puddicombe: All it takes is 10 Mindful Minutes Samadhi.
Improving Memory - Top 10 Tips for Improving Memory. 11. Get some sleep. Researchers have long known that sleep is important for memory and learning. Some recent research has shown that taking a nap after you learn something new can actually help you learn faster and remember better. One study actually found that sleeping after learning something new actually leads to physical changes in the brain. Sleep deprived mice experienced less dendtritic growth following a learning task than well-rested mice. So the next time you are struggling to learn new information, consider getting a good night's sleep after you study. 10 Fascinating Facts About Human Memory References: Bjork, D. (2001, March). Yang, G., Lai, C. This content is provided in partnership with National 4-H Council. 4-H experiences help GROW confident, caring and capable kids.
Cognitive neuropsychology. An introduction Cognitive psychology is the scientific investigation of cognition, that is, of all mental abilities: perception, attention, learning, memory, processing of spoken and written language, thinking, reasoning and belief formation (Coltheart, 2002). It assumes that cognition can at least in principle be fully revealed by the scientific method, that is, individual components of mental processes can be identified and understood. These individual components of mind are mental modules, and thus contemporary cognitive psychology often assumes the modularity of mind (Fodor, 1983).
Any theory about any domain of cognition will therefore be a theory about (a) what the modules are of the system by which performance in that domain is accomplished, and (b) what the pathways of communication between these modules of the system are; that is, a theory about the functional architecture of the system. Characteristic features of cognitive neuropsychology Inferences from double dissociation 1. The Art Of Manipulation. Editor’s Note: Nir Eyal is a founder of two startups and an advisor to several Bay Area companies and incubators. He is a Lecturer in Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and blogs about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business at NirAndFar.com.
Follow him on Twitter@nireyal and see his previous Techcrunch posts here. Let’s admit it, we in the consumer web industry are in the manipulation business. We build products meant to persuade people to do what we want them to do. We call these people “users” and even if we don’t say it aloud, we secretly wish every one of them would become fiendishly addicted. Users take our technologies with them to bed. When they wake up, they check for notifications, tweets, and updates before saying “good morning” to their loved ones. When Is Manipulation Wrong? Manipulation is a designed experience crafted to change behavior — we all know what it feels like. Yet, manipulation can’t be all bad. A More Addictive World The Peddler. Raising a Moral Child. Genetic twin studies suggest that anywhere from a quarter to more than half of our propensity to be giving and caring is inherited.
That leaves a lot of room for nurture, and the evidence on how parents raise kind and compassionate children flies in the face of what many of even the most well-intentioned parents do in praising good behavior, responding to bad behavior, and communicating their values. By age 2, children experience some moral emotions — feelings triggered by right and wrong. To reinforce caring as the right behavior, research indicates, praise is more effective than rewards. Rewards run the risk of leading children to be kind only when a carrot is offered, whereas praise communicates that sharing is intrinsically worthwhile for its own sake. But what kind of praise should we give when our children show early signs of generosity? Many parents believe it’s important to compliment the behavior, not the child — that way, the child learns to repeat the behavior.
Photo. The 12 Cognitive Biases That Prevent You From Being Rational. The human brain is capable of 1016 processes per second, which makes it far more powerful than any computer currently in existence. But that doesn’t mean our brains don’t have major limitations. The lowly calculator can do math thousands of times better than we can, and our memories are often less than useless — plus, we’re subject to cognitive biases, those annoying glitches in our thinking that cause us to make questionable decisions and reach erroneous conclusions. Here are a dozen of the most common and pernicious cognitive biases that you need to know about.
Before we start, it’s important to distinguish between cognitive biases and logical fallacies. Some social psychologists believe our cognitive biases help us process information more efficiently, especially in dangerous situations. Confirmation Bias We love to agree with people who agree with us. Gambler’s Fallacy t’s called a fallacy, but it’s more a glitch in our thinking. Post-Purchase Rationalization Neglecting Probability. How the Mind Works: 10 Fascinating TED Talks. How memory works, what visual illusions reveal, the price of happiness, the power of introverts and more… 1. Peter Doolittle: How “working memory” works “Life comes at us very quickly, and what we need to do is take that amorphous flow of experience and somehow extract meaning from it.” In this funny, enlightening talk, educational psychologist Peter Doolittle details the importance — and limitations — of your “working memory,” that part of the brain that allows us to make sense of what’s happening right now.” 2.
“What motivates us to work? Behavioral economist Dan Ariely presents two eye-opening experiments that reveal our unexpected and nuanced attitudes toward meaning in our work.” 3. “Why do people see the Virgin Mary on a cheese sandwich or hear demonic lyrics in “Stairway to Heaven”? Using video and music, skeptic Michael Shermer shows how we convince ourselves to believe — and overlook the facts.” 4. 5. 6. “Can happiness be bought? 7. 8. 9. 10. Gut Feelings Shape The Acceptance–or Rejection–Of Evolution. Caltech economist nets MacArthur genius grant. A Caltech researcher who fused economics and neuroscience to make sense of human decisions that often don’t make cents has won the MacArthur genius grant. Colin Camerer came to Caltech in 1994 with an MBA in quantitative studies and a doctorate in decision theory from the University of Chicago’s business school, a place he described as “the temple of beliefs in highly rational people who make really good decisions and take into account the future.”
“I just thought that was a useful caricature, but not the right model of human nature,” Camerer said. “That’s what got me into behavioral economics.” Veering from the notoriously conservative orthodoxy of economics at the University of Chicago to study human behavior may seem a risky career turn, but things got weirder when Caltech opened its brain imaging lab in 2003. “Caltech is a very adventurous place,” Camerer said. “I improvised,” said Camerer, who is the Robert Kirby Professor of Behavioral Finance and Economics.
5 Logical Fallacies That Make You Wrong More Than You Think. The Internet has introduced a golden age of ill-informed arguments. You can't post a video of an adorable kitten without a raging debate about pet issues spawning in the comment section. These days, everyone is a pundit. But with all those different perspectives on important issues flying around, you'd think we'd be getting smarter and more informed. Unfortunately, the very wiring of our brains ensures that all these lively debates only make us dumber and more narrow-minded. For instance ... #5. Think about the last time you ran into a coworker or family member spouting some easily disproven conspiracy theory -- somebody who still thinks Obama's birth certificate is a fake or that Dick Cheney arranged 9/11 to cover up his theft of $2.3 trillion from the government.
That has literally never happened in the history of human conversation. Getty"OK, so Dick Cheney doesn't have a third arm. The Science: Yes, kids, being a dick works. So During Your Next Argument, Remember ... You do this, too. Living in America will drive you insane — literally. This article originally appeared on Alternet. In “The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why?” (New York Review of Books, 2011), Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, discusses over-diagnosis of psychiatric disorders, pathologizing of normal behaviors, Big Pharma corruption of psychiatry, and the adverse effects of psychiatric medications. While diagnostic expansionism and Big Pharma certainly deserve a large share of the blame for this epidemic, there is another reason.
A June 2013 Gallup poll revealed that 70% of Americans hate their jobs or have “checked out” of them. Life may or may not suck any more than it did a generation ago, but our belief in “progress” has increased expectations that life should be more satisfying, resulting in mass disappointment. For many of us, society has become increasingly alienating, isolating and insane, and earning a buck means more degrees, compliance, ass-kissing, shit-eating, and inauthenticity. In 2011, the U.S. Worries About Success Can Make You Successful - Economic View. Greece, the Euro, and Behavioral Economics. Review of The Promise and Peril of Real-Time Corrections to Political Misperceptions by Garret and Weeks. '+windowtitle+' Penn State’s Punishment: Denial, Identity and Self-Worth « Shrink Talk. 5 of my favorite psychology books. What does the way you count on your fingers say about your brain? | Corrinne Burns | Science.
15 Common Cognitive Distortions. 5 Scientific Ways the Internet is Dividing Us. Know Thyself…And Everyone Else Too, Apparently. Why working-class people vote conservative | Society. What you do affects what you learn. Two obviously wrong statements about personality and political ideology « The Hardest Science. Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism. The Information Diet: How to Be a Smarter Consumer of Information.
Psychology & Neurocience. Top 5 Ways We Suck. The Other Porn Experiment. 10 of the Most Surprising Findings from Psychological Studies. Country Music, Openness to Experience, and the Psychology of Culture War | The Moral Sciences Club. Fraud and Justice : The Frontal Cortex. Buy More Experiences and Less Stuff. The Anti-Gladwell: Kahneman's New Way to Think About Thinking - Maria Popova - Life. The Quiz Daniel Kahneman Wants You to Fail | Business.
Game Theory. Neurophilosophy | Science. Scientific American: Scientific American Mind. What's Wrong With the Teenage Mind? Psychology and Advertising: How Neuromarketers Abuse Science. Myths about our minds. Heuristics: Cognitive Rules of Thumb. List of cognitive biases. Psychology. Psychology News. Psychology Today: Health, Help, Happiness + Find a Therapist. Caffeine - a powerful and addictive drug | Mind-Body Self Help.