How Creativity Connects with Immorality In the mid 1990’s, Apple Computers was a dying company. Microsoft’s Windows operating system was overwhelmingly favored by consumers, and Apple’s attempts to win back market share by improving the Macintosh operating system were unsuccessful. After several years of debilitating financial losses, the company chose to purchase a fledgling software company called NeXT. However, despite the widespread positive image of Jobs as a creative genius, he also has a dark reputation for encouraging censorship,“ losing sight of honesty and integrity”, belittling employees, and engaging in other morally questionable actions. In a recent paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers at Harvard and Duke Universities demonstrate that creativity can lead people to behave unethically. In one study, the authors administered a survey to employees at an advertising agency. These studies demonstrate that there is indeed a dark side to creativity.
10 Mind-Blowing Theories That Will Change Your Perception of the World | Reality is not as obvious and simple as we like to think. Some of the things that we accept as true at face value are notoriously wrong. Scientists and philosophers have made every effort to change our common perceptions of it. The 10 examples below will show you what I mean. 1. Great glaciation is the theory of the final state that our universe is heading toward. 2. Solipsism is a philosophical theory, which asserts that nothing exists but the individual’s consciousness. Don’t you believe me? As a result, which parts of existence can we not doubt? 3. George Berkeley, the father of Idealism, argued that everything exists as an idea in someone’s mind. The idea being that if the stone really only exists in his imagination, he could not have kicked it with his eyes closed. 4. Everybody has heard of Plato. In addition to this stunning statement, Plato, being a monist, said that everything is made of a single substance. 5. 6. Enternalism is the exact opposite of presentism. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Creativity and IQ, Part I: What Is Divergent Thinking? How Is It Helped by Sleep, Humor and Alcohol? 16Share Synopsis In this two part blog post, we’ll look at the creative process and how your IQ level is critical in this process. A creative advert for condoms. What makes it creative? Left brain vs right brain and creativity Have you ever heard people say that they tend to be more of a right-brain or left-brain thinker? While there is little evidence that a more dominant ‘half brain’ (left or right) determines a person’s personality as shown here, there is good evidence that regions of the right hemisphere have a key role in what is called divergent thinking and the creative problem solving that depends on it. Convergent thinking and divergent thinking The psychologist J.P. What is divergent thinking? The idea of divergent thinking has become important in the scientific study of creativity because many widely used tests for creativity are measures of individual differences in divergent thinking ability. An example of a divergent thinking question is: Or What is creative inspiration?
Your Initial Choices Often Get Stronger We’re gearing up toward yet another election cycle. In the presidential election, most voters already have a pretty clear preference. However, there are always at least 10 percent of voters (and sometimes even more) who classify themselves as “undecided.” Even people who are officially “undecided” may have some leaning toward one candidate or another. Quite a bit of research suggests that the way that someone is leaning influences the way they interpret new information. The idea behind this effect is that we like to keep our beliefs consistent. An interesting set of studies in the August, 2012 issue of by Evan Polman and Jay Russo examined some seemingly small factors that can have a big impact on this kind of spreading coherence. In their studies, they had people express a preference for two restaurants. The first feature people saw favored one restaurant over the other. But, that isn’t the interesting part. Why would having to darken a box increase people’s commitment to an option?
Being Dishonest Enhances Creativity It’s no secret that people frequently break rules. Whether it’s lying to a friend, stealing someone’s lunch out of the fridge at work, or running a red light, rule breaking is prevalent in our daily lives. Though, in most instances, breaking the rules carries a negative connotation, this isn’t always the case. Take creative thought as an example. Thinking “outside the box” or operating “outside the lines” is at the heart of creativity and is seen in a relatively positive light. Given that both dishonest and creative acts involve rule violations, it begs the question of whether people most likely to bend the rules are also the most creative and, even more so, whether one from of rule breaking – say dishonesty – can trigger creative thinking. Dishonesty – violating the social norm that we should tell the truth – is one form of rule breaking that seems to happen all the time. Answer: Tape For more on creativity, check out my book Choke.
Abstraction Abstraction is a process by which concepts are derived from the usage and classification of literal ("real" or "concrete") concepts, first principles, or other methods. "An abstraction" is the product of this process—a concept that acts as a super-categorical noun for all subordinate concepts, and connects any related concepts as a group, field, or category.[1] Abstractions may be formed by reducing the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, typically to retain only information which is relevant for a particular purpose. For example, abstracting a leather soccer ball to the more general idea of a ball retains only the information on general ball attributes and behavior, eliminating the other characteristics of that particular ball.[1] Origins[edit] Thinking in abstractions is considered[by whom?] Abstraction involves induction of ideas or the synthesis of particular facts into one general theory about something. Thought process[edit] Cat on Mat (picture 1)
All-Natural Sleep Aids Do you have trouble falling asleep at night but dread the idea of taking sleeping pills and dealing with potential side effects? If you’re looking for alternate ways to induce the zzz’s, here are some natural remedies that can help lull you into dreamland. MelatoninMela…what? This natural hormone, which is made by the body’s pineal gland, is available over the counter, and many health experts say it can safely help you get drowsy before bed (it may even have immune-stimulating and antioxidant benefits, too). But, as with all herbal and natural remedies, it’s best to get your doctor’s OK first. Awareness Breathing Does your mind race with thoughts and worries in bed? YogaWhat can a few downward-facing dogs do for your sleep quality? Passionflower This exotic-sounding herbal supplement is commonly used throughout South America for help with sleep and relaxation—it’s even found in some sodas. Total DarknessOf course you turn off the lights before dozing off (you do, right?).
right brain, left brain The "Interpreter" in Your Head Spins Stories to Make Sense of the World | Mind & Brain The left hemisphere specializes in speech, language, and intelligent behavior, and a split-brain patient’s left hemisphere and language center has no access to sensory information if it is fed only to the right brain. In the case of vision, the optic nerves leading from each eye meet inside the brain at what is called the optic chiasm. Here, each nerve splits in half; the medial half (the inside track) of each crosses the optic chiasm into the opposite side of the brain, and the lateral half (that on the outside) stays on the same side. The parts of both eyes that attend to the right visual field send information to the left hemisphere and information from the left visual field goes to and is processed by the right hemisphere. More than a few years into our experiments, we were working with a group of split-brain patients on the East Coast. We asked why he chose those items. What was interesting was that the left hemisphere did not say, “I don’t know,” which was the correct answer.
Genius or Madness? 6 November 2012 Genius or Madness? Professor Glenn Wilson “Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide” (John Dryden, 1681). “There is no great genius without a tincture of madness” (Seneca, 1st Century A.D.). Many great artists and scientists appear to have gone slightly mad following their lofty achievements. Beethoven and Van Gogh are also said to have gone progressively mad, though the reasons are equally debatable. For others, the genius and madness appear in parallel. John Nash, the Nobel-winning mathematician who developed “game theory” for the social sciences also suffered paranoid delusions throughout his career. Sometimes it is a matter of chance or social milieu that determines whether an individual is deemed brilliant or crazy. Many lists of creative achievers throughout history have been compiled along with mental health symptoms and diagnostic categories retrospectively assigned to them. Could the environment also be involved?
Creativity Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and somehow valuable is formed, such as an idea, a scientific theory, an invention, a literary work, a painting, a musical composition, a joke, etc. Scholarly interest in creativity involves many definitions and concepts pertaining to a number of disciplines: psychology, cognitive science, education, philosophy (particularly philosophy of science), technology, theology, sociology, linguistics, business studies, songwriting, and economics, covering the relations between creativity and general intelligence, mental and neurological processes, personality type and creative ability, creativity and mental health; the potential for fostering creativity through education and training, especially as augmented by technology; and the application of creative resources to improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning. Definition[edit] Aspects[edit] Etymology[edit] History of the concept[edit] Ancient views[edit] The Enlightenment and after[edit] J. J.
Temporal lobe epilepsy Introduction[edit] Over forty types of epilepsy are recognised and they are divided into two main categories: Partial seizures and generalized seizures. Partial seizures account for approximately sixty percent of all adult cases.[1] Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is the single most common form of partial seizure.[2] Signs and symptoms[edit] When a seizure begins in the temporal lobe, the symptoms experienced by the patient, and the signs seen by bystanders, depend on the precise location of the seizure focus. In 1981, the ILAE recognized three types of seizures occurring in temporal lobe epilepsy. Simple partial seizures[edit] Simple partial seizures (SPS) involve small areas of the temporal lobe such as the amygdala and hippocampus. A simple partial seizure may or may not progress to any of the seizure types listed below.[6] Complex partial seizures[edit] Secondarily generalized tonic-clonic seizures[edit] Post ictal period[edit] Interictal period[edit] Causes[edit] Febrile seizures[edit]
Laughter Produces Endorphins, Study Finds The answer, reports Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist at Oxford, is not the intellectual pleasure of cerebral humor, but the physical act of laughing. The simple muscular exertions involved in producing the familiar ha, ha, ha, he said, trigger an increase in endorphins, the brain chemicals known for their feel-good effect. His results build on a long history of scientific attempts to understand a deceptively simple and universal behavior. Social laughter, Dr. In five sets of studies in the laboratory and one field study at comedy performances, Dr. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, eliminated the possibility that the pain resistance measured was the result of a general sense of well being rather than actual laughter. “The causal sequence is laughter triggers endorphin activation,” he said. Robert R. It has not always focused on the benefits of laughter. Dr. Dr.