Why great ideas come when you aren’t trying History is rich with 'eureka' moments: scientists from Archimedes to Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein are said to have had flashes of inspiration while thinking about other things. But the mechanisms behind this psychological phenomenon have remained unclear. A study now suggests that simply taking a break does not bring on inspiration — rather, creativity is fostered by tasks that allow the mind to wander. The discovery was made by a team led by Benjamin Baird and Jonathan Schooler, psychologists at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Jeremy Mayes / GETTY IMAGES Archimedes made his breakthrough discovery of displacement while relaxing in the bath. After the two minutes were over, participants were given a 12-minute break, during which they rested, undertook a demanding memory activity that required their full attention or engaged in an undemanding reaction-time activity known to elicit mind-wandering.
12 Practical Business Lessons From Social Psychology The Foot in the Door PhenomenonIt’s been said many times that business is all about people. That being the case, perhaps we should stop reading management books for advice and start looking at social psychology. Very simply, social psychologists study how people interact with others – their families, friends, and yes, business partners. Smart marketers and executives have been using the findings of this growing field for decades to close sales, hold effective meetings and get their way in negotiations. But rather than putting you through an academic psychology lesson, we condensed the most useful concepts into one article. Foot In Door The Concept: If you’re wondering how to convince superiors, employees or customers to do what you ask, try using the foot in the door phenomenon. How You Can Use It: This handy principle has countless applications in the business world.
The Impressive Power of a Stranger’s Advice Spend more wisely by learning to take other people’s surprisingly accurate advice. Most people are much better at giving advice than taking it. When it comes to spending our money, we like to think we know best what will make us happy. What does the guy next door or a colleague at work know about how we should spend our money? Imagine you are going on a 5 minute speed date with a stranger. Either: a photograph of them with an autobiography.Or: the rating of a previous speed dater (who is a stranger to you). Which one do you think will better predict how much you’ll enjoy the speed date? If you are like most of the participants in an experiment by Gilbert et al. (2010) then you’ll go for number 1. We’re all different, right? In the experiment, though, the ratings of a previous speed dater were the best predictor of how much people enjoyed their speed date. Here’s one that’s even weirder. First of all, let’s give you a couple of options to choose from. Perhaps you’re a bit more wary now?
Internal Time: The Science of Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You're So Tired by Maria Popova Debunking the social stigma around late risers, or what Einstein has to do with teens’ risk for smoking. “Six hours’ sleep for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool,” Napoleon famously prescribed. (He would have scoffed at Einstein, then, who was known to require ten hours of sleep for optimal performance.) In fact, each of us possesses a different chronotype — an internal timing type best defined by your midpoint of sleep, or midsleep, which you can calculate by dividing your average sleep duration by two and adding the resulting number to your average bedtime on free days, meaning days when your sleep and waking times are not dictated by the demands of your work or school schedule. The distribution of midsleep in Central Europe. This myth that early risers are good people and that late risers are lazy has its reasons and merits in rural societies but becomes questionable in a modern 24/7 society. The scissors of sleep. Chronotypes vary with age: Share on Tumblr
Top 10 Secrets of Effective Liars As I've written earlier , human beings have an innate skill at dishonesty. And with good reason: being able to manipulate the expectations of those around us is a key survival trait for social animals like ourselves. Indeed, a 1999 study by psychologist Robert Feldman at the University of Massachusetts showed that the most popular kids were also the most effective liars. #1 Have a reason . #2 Lay your groundwork . #3 Tell the truth, misleadingly . #4 Know your target . #5 Keep your facts straight . #6 Stay focused . #7: Watch your signals . #8: Turn up the pressure . #9: Counterattack . #10: Bargain .
What The Eyes Reveal: 10 Messages My Pupils are Sending You The dilation and constriction of the pupils reveals how hard we’re thinking, how excited or disgusted we are and more… Our pupils, the black holes which let light into the eyes, don’t just help us see, they also signal what’s going on in our minds. Here are 10 pieces of psychological research which show how changes in pupil size reveal many aspects of thought. 1. Look into my eyes and ask me to name the cigar-smoking founder of psychoanalysis and you won’t see much change in my pupil size. But ask me to explain the laws of cricket and watch my pupils expand. That’s because research has shown that the harder your brain works, the more your pupils dilate. 2. Keep watching my eyes closely and you’ll spot the point when explaining the laws of cricket gets too much. Poock (1973) reported that when participants’ minds were loaded to 125% of their capacity, their pupils constricted. It’ll be trying to explain a googly that will do it. 3. 4. Their pupils widened at first for all three. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Seasonal Affective Disorder: Shining a light in your ear 'can brighten your winter mood' By Lauren Paxman Updated: 13:31 GMT, 9 November 2011 As the nights get longer, those who suffer from the winter blues will be planning ways to escape to the sunshine. But there may be a much simpler way of cheering yourself up... simply shining a bright light into your ear canal. Up to one in four Britons suffer from seasonal affective disorder, with seven per cent of the population having full-blown SAD. Ear's an idea: The effects of seasonal affective disorder could be combated by channeling light to the brain down the ear duct It is caused by the brain not receiving enough daylight which is needed to trigger serotonin, a hormone that regulates mood. Two clinical trials, run by Valkee - who make a device that can shine light into your ear - and the University of Oulu in Finland, have found that carefully targeted light can help prevent the condition. Juuso Nissilä, Valkee's co-founder and chief scientist said: 'We presented earlier that the human brain is sensitive to light.
Psychology | Watch Free Documentaries Online - Part 2 As our troops in Afghanistan prepare to come home, more and more British soldiers are haunted by the trauma of over a decade of war. This Panorama special investigates the true personal cost which, until now, has remained largely hidden. The Ministry of Defence only releases the number of suicides of serving soldiers and does not track what happens to its veterans. Over the course of a year, reporter Toby Harnden set out to discover how many soldiers, both former and serving, took their own lives in 2012. He... Can you think of 100 different uses for a sock? As soon as the rifle touched Sgt Rodriguez's shoulder, he knew he was going to be a sniper. It is a feeling we all know, the moment when a light goes on in your head. Helen has Dissociative Identity Disorder, a rare condition more commonly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is one of the most feared and misunderstood of all neurological medical conditions.
Self-report study A self-report study is a type of survey, questionnaire, or poll in which respondents read the question and select a response by themselves without researcher interference. A self-report is any method which involves asking a participant about their feelings, attitudes, beliefs and so on. Examples of self-reports are questionnaires and interviews; self-reports are often used as a way of gaining participants' responses in observational studies and experiments. Self-report studies have validity problems. Patients may exaggerate symptoms in order to make their situation seem worse, or they may under-report the severity or frequency of symptoms in order to minimize their problems. Patients might also simply be mistaken or misremember the material covered by the survey. Questionnaires and interviews[edit] Questionnaires are a type of self-report method which consist of a set of questions usually in a highly structured written form. Open and closed questions[edit] Rating scales[edit] Validity[edit]