Why feeling like a fraud can be a good thing Image copyright iStock If you feel inadequate or that you are likely to be "found out" at work, you're probably not alone. It's part of a phenomenon called the "imposter syndrome" and it's very common, writes journalist Oliver Burkeman. "I have written 11 books but each time I think 'Uh-oh, they're going to find out now,'" the novelist Maya Angelou once said. "I've run a game on everybody, and they're going to find me out." Angelou was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and won five Grammys for her spoken recordings, plus a myriad other awards. But the "impostor phenomenon" - sometimes known as impostor syndrome - had her firmly in its grip. You've probably felt the same. So you may not find it reassuring to learn that Angelou felt it too. "Sure," you tell yourself, "she thought she was a fraud - but I really am one. Image copyright Getty Images But the truth is you're far from the only sufferer. "But you have to come across as being relatively competent and confident." Image copyright AFP
10 Psychological Studies That Will Change What You Think You Know About Yourself Why do we do the things we do? Despite our best attempts to "know thyself," the truth is that we often know astonishingly little about our own minds, and even less about the way others think. As Charles Dickens once put it, “A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.” Psychologists have long sought insights into how we perceive the world and what motivates our behavior, and they've made enormous strides in lifting that veil of mystery. Aside from providing fodder for stimulating cocktail-party conversations, some of the most famous psychological experiments of the past century reveal universal and often surprising truths about human nature. Here are 10 classic psychological studies that may change the way you understand yourself. We all have some capacity for evil. We don't notice what's right in front of us. Think you know what's going on around you? We can experience deeply conflicting moral impulses.
The McGurk Effect (Or, Brains are Weird) 12.6K 33Share57 The McGurk effect is mind-blowing. It involves showing a person's lips making the shape of one sound—like "bah"—while the audio is actually the person saying "fah." The effect is named for researcher Harry McGurk, who published a 1976 paper with John MacDonald entitled "Hearing lips and seeing voices." What's most interesting about the McGurk effect is that, even when the viewer knows what's happening, it still works. Why Can’t You Remember Your Future? Physicist Paul Davies on the Puzzlement of Why We Experience Time as Linear “If our heart were large enough to love life in all its detail,” French philosopher Gaston Bachelard wrote in his 1932 meditation on our paradoxical experience of time, “we would see that every instant is at once a giver and a plunderer.” Nowhere is this duality of time more disorienting than in the constant mental time travel we perform between what has been and what will be in order to anchor ourselves to what is. As our lives tick on, gradually robbing the future of potential and robbing the past of relevance, we trudge along the arrow of time dragging with us this elusive curiosity we call a self — an ever-shifting packet of personal identity, mystifying in how it links us to our childhood selves and misleading in how it maps out our future selves. Davies writes: With these buttons, gone would be the orderly procession of events that apparently constitutes my life. Complement it with T.S.
I thought I was damaged. Then I learned I’m introverted. Not long ago, I discovered Michael Schiller’s terrific Social Introverts Facebook Fan Page. We started corresponding, and I’d love to share the note he sent me about his passion for helping introverts appreciate their own quiet perfection. ~ Susan Click image to "Like" Michael Schiller's "Social Introverts" FB Fan Page Hello, Susan. I spent my entire life thinking that I was psychologically damaged, that my aversion to social gatherings and crowds was a disorder or a phobia. It wasn’t until the middle of last year that I discovered that I am completely normal, that my disposition was born in me, and that it was no mistake. I smile more than I ever have, and I seldom wait for an excuse. Now I’ve made it my mission to try to help bring that same relief to others like me, who may also be spending their lives hating themselves by mistake. 665share
What is white noise? Commercially available white noise generators are a popular option for people who have trouble sleeping. Clinical and anecdotal evidence suggests the technology works. But how does it work? In this DNews report, Amy Shira Teitel explains how color is a useful metaphor for understanding white noise. If it's playing loud enough, white noise essentially masks other sounds by drowning them out. At night, that sound that wakes you up is typically a spike -- a sudden change in frequency relative to background noise. RELATED: This Genetic Condition Makes You Need Less Sleep White noise generators work by flooding the brain with "flat" ambient sound at all frequencies. Interestingly, recent studies suggest that a different shade of sound, as it were, may be even more effective than white noise. In other words, with pink noise the lower bass frequencies are louder. You can check out the video above to hear some audio samples of both white noise and pink noise. -- by Glenn McDonald Read More:
Luck Is a Bigger Contributor to Success Than People Give It Credit For I’m a lucky man. Perhaps the most extreme example of my considerable good fortune occurred one chilly Ithaca morning in November 2007, while I was playing tennis with my longtime friend and collaborator, the Cornell psychologist Tom Gilovich. He later told me that early in the second set, I complained of feeling nauseated. He yelled for someone to call 911, and then started pounding on my chest—something he’d seen many times in movies but had never been trained to do. Ithaca’s ambulances are dispatched from the other side of town, more than five miles away. Doctors later told me that I’d suffered an episode of sudden cardiac arrest. If that ambulance hadn’t happened to have been nearby, I would be dead. Not all random events lead to favorable outcomes, of course. Most people will concede that I’m fortunate to have survived and that Edwards was unfortunate to have perished. My having cheated death does not make me an authority on luck.
Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder | Symptoms and Treatment | All Natural Therapy and Self Help Definition - Borderline Personality Disorder is a defined as a serious mental illness characterized by pervasive instability in moods, interpersonal relationships, self-image, and behavior. The instability of BPD often disrupts family and work life, long-term planning, and the individual's sense of self-identity. Originally thought to be at the "borderline" of psychosis, people with BPD suffer from a disorder of emotion regulation. While less well known than schizophrenia or bipolar disorder (manic-depressive illness), BPD is more common, affecting 2% of adults, mostly young women or by another estimate, 1-3% of the general population. Some suggest that the name itself, Borderline Personality Disorder, is an inappropriate term for this disorder, or "a misleading label". The disorder has nothing to do with neurosis or psychosis, but rather involves emotional volatility, what one reporter described as "a [very] thin emotional skin". 1. 2. Current Treatment Approaches: 1. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
A Super Simple Hack for Falling Asleep Faster 2049 7ShareNew Next time you're counting sheep to no avail, try sticking one foot outside the covers. According to the above video from Science of Us, studies have shown that a higher internal body temperature makes people more alert and awake—and that the opposite is also true. Just before drifting off, our bodies automatically cool down. But if sleeping still isn't coming naturally to you, you can actively lower your body temperature by keeping one foot cover-free.
Surfing Uncertainty: Do our dynamic brains predict the world? Mehau Kulyk/Getty ON the 300th anniversary of Johannes Kepler’s death, Albert Einstein said: “It seems that the human mind has first to construct forms independently before we can find them in things.” He was referring to Kepler’s astounding deduction that the orbits of planets around the sun were not circular as scholars had believed, but elliptical – a feat that would set the stage for Newton’s laws of motion. Were Einstein alive today, he might be amazed at his own prescience. The clue is prediction. The traditional bottom-up view of visual perception, for example, holds that our brain analyses incoming signals, finds patterns of ever-increasing complexity, and makes sense of what’s out there by matching observed patterns against internal representations. In this paradigm, which has its roots in ideas developed by German physician Hermann von Helmholtz in 1860, our brains actually generate sensory data to match what’s coming in, using internal models of the world and of our bodies.
How to Deal with Borderline Personality Disorder Steps Method 1 of 4: Understand "Borderline Personality Disorder" (BPD) 1Expect some of these character traits in the person with "Borderline Personality Disorder" (BPD), such as:Poor, or lack of, control over emotions.Sudden changes in mood.Poor follow-through. Frequently changing opinions and plans.Inability to maintain normal emotional relationships, throwing temper tantrums, arguing over insignificant events, fits of rage, at times "for no clear reason".Or the opposite, called "flat affect", often unable to feel or express anger.Fear of loneliness and isolation: yet, often at the same time, showing a tendency to avoid people, keeping them away.Fear of abandonment. 2See some characteristics on the positive side:Can be highly creative.Have a quick wit and are sometimes considered the life of the party.Are often talented and particularly intelligent. Method 2 of 4: Causes of BPD 1Understand the causes of BPD. Method 3 of 4: Seek professional assistance Method 4 of 4: Dealing with it all Ad
Watch This Selective Attention Test 3Share0 Just watch this video first, then read the words. Seriously. Follow the instructions and count how many times a player wearing white passes the ball: Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris study how the human mind works. First is their most famous video, involving basketball passing. How did you do? Perhaps more importantly, would you like to try out more videos like this? If you're into this stuff, check out the authors' website, and their book about what these tests reveal.
Future - The enormous power of the unconscious brain If you don’t think the act of stacking and shuffling a set of cups could boggle your mind, watch the video below. In it, neuroscientist David Eagleman introduces 10-year-old Austin Naber – a world record-holding, champion cup stacker. Naber moves the cups around at a blistering pace and when Eagleman has a go at keeping up with him, the difference in skill and speed becomes immediately apparent. “He smoked me,” Eagleman admits. Both Eagleman and Naber had their brain activity monitored via an electroencephalogram (EEG). “His brain was much more serene than mine because he had automised his behaviour,” explains Eagleman. The reason you practise sports over and over again is so you get really good at automising your action – David Eagleman It’s a question that Eagleman explored in a PBS television series that aired recently on BBC4 in the UK. You’re already aware of the fact that breathing and organ functions are things we do “automatically”, but there are lots of other examples.