Why sleep deprivation can make you unethical - Post Leadership Posted at 10:21 AM ET, 05/13/2011 May 13, 2011 02:21 PM EDT TheWashingtonPost New research shows that sleep deprivation has worse effects than just the occasional mistake or error—and can cost organizations just as much, if not more. In a forthcoming paper in the Academy of Management Journal, highlighted recently in the Financial Times, Michael Christian of the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and Aleksander Ellis of the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management studied sleep-deprived nurses and students who’d pulled all-nighters in a sleep lab. How does this happen? And why does this matter for leaders? The numbers the two professors cite in their paper are startling. Christian and Ellis show that sleep deprivation has worse effects than just the occasional mistake or error—rude behavior and deviance can cost organizations just as much, if not more. More from On Leadership: Mandatory training, sans eye-rolling? Engineering gender parity
40 Questions Everyone is Afraid to Ask Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers. -Voltaire …because asking the right questions is the answer. Please share your thoughts with us in the comments section below. Also, check out our sister site, Thought Questions, for more photo-illustrated questions like these; and check out The Book of Questions if you’re interested in reading even more thought-provoking questions.Title photo by: Colin Kinner For all other photo credits please refer to ThoughtQuestions.com Related 40 Photo-Illustrated Questions to Refocus Your Mind Asking the right questions is the answer... February 23, 2012 In "Happiness" 40 Questions that Will Quiet Your Mind Judge a person by their questions, rather than their answers … because asking the right questions is the answer. August 5, 2015 25 Questions that Provoke Thought If the question makes you think, it’s worth asking. January 4, 2010 In "Hacks"
An On-Off Switch for Anxiety With the flick of a precisely placed light switch, mice can be induced to cower in a corner in fear or bravely explore their environment. The study highlights the power of optogenetics technology—which allows neuroscientists to control genetically engineered neurons with light—to explore the functions of complex neural wiring and to control behavior. In the study, Karl Deisseroth and collaborators at Stanford University identified a specific circuit in the amygdala, a part of the brain that is central to fear, aggression, and other basic emotions, that appears to regulate anxiety in rodents. They hope the findings, published today in the journal Nature, will shed light on the biological basis for human anxiety disorders and point toward new targets for treatment. “We want to conceptualize psychiatric disease as real physical entities with physical substrates,” says Deisseroth.
The Ten Most Revealing Psych Experiments Psychology is the study of the human mind and mental processes in relation to human behaviors - human nature. Due to its subject matter, psychology is not considered a 'hard' science, even though psychologists do experiment and publish their findings in respected journals. Some of the experiments psychologists have conducted over the years reveal things about the way we humans think and behave that we might not want to embrace, but which can at least help keep us humble. That's something. 1. 'Lord of the Flies': Social Identity Theory The Robbers Cave Experiment is a classic social psychology experiment conducted with two groups of 11-year old boys at a state park in Oklahoma, and demonstrates just how easily an exclusive group identity is adopted and how quickly the group can degenerate into prejudice and antagonism toward outsiders. Researcher Muzafer Sherif actually conducted a series of 3 experiments. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Turns out that it's all about framing.
Neuroscientists reveal magicians' secrets - Technology & science - Science - LiveScience NEW YORK — There is a place for magic in science. Five years ago, on a trip to Las Vegas, neuroscientists Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde realized that a partnership was in order with a profession that has an older and more intuitive understanding of how the human brain works. Magicians, it seems, have an advantage over neuroscientists. "Scientists have only studied cognitive illusions for a few decades. Magicians have studied them for hundreds, if not thousands, of years," Martinez-Conde told the audience during a recent presentation here at the New York Academy of Sciences. [ Video: Your Brain on Magic ] She and Macknik, her husband, use illusions as a tool to study how the brain works. After their epiphany in Las Vegas, where they were preparing for a conference on consciousness, the duo, who both direct laboratories at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Arizona, teamed up with magicians to learn just how they harness the foibles of our brains. Most popular
Simplicity Organization makes a system of many appear fewer. The home is usually the first battleground that comes to mind when facing the daily challenge of managing complexity. Stuff just seems to multiply. There are three consistent strategies for achieving simplicity in the living realm: 1) buy a bigger house, 2) put everything you don’t really need into storage, or 3) organize your existing assets in a systematic fashion. These typical solutions have mixed results. Concealing the magnitude of clutter, either through spreading it out or hiding it, is an unnuanced approach that is guaranteed to work by the first Law of reduce. However, in the long term an effective scheme for organization is necessary to achieve definitive success in taming complexity.
Is Willpower a Limited Resource Which Can be Cultivated with Exercise? Picture: Robbin Cresswell (PD) “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” – Aiwass New developments in biological science suggest your willpower is drawn from a limited supply of chemicals which accumulate in the brain over time. According to Wired willpower is: a measurable form of mental energy that runs out as you use it, much like the gas in your car.Roy Baumeister, a psychologist at Florida State University, calls this “ego depletion,” and he proved its existence by sitting students next to a plate of fresh-baked chocolate-chip cookies. If willpower is thought of as a chemical produced by the brain using specific ingredients (such as glucose) it provides a number of insights into its practical use: As Tierney explains, “People with the best self-control aren’t the ones who use it all day long. For the moment these findings are probably best used as an insightful metaphor as opposed to concrete reality. The focus upon glucose is in my opinion a red herring.
Anger Can Make Us More Rational | The Emotion Machine A recent study in Cognition and Emotion found that anger can sometimes make us more critical thinkers by inhibiting our confirmation bias. Instead of only searching for information that supports our beliefs, anger can create a “moving against” tendency that motivates us to seek alternative information that opposes our assumptions. The study had participants do two different experiments (which they thought were unrelated). In the next experiment, each participant was asked to evaluate their opinions on hands-free mobile kits. By the end of the experiment, those who were primed to be angry were more likely to shift from their original opinions. A similar study was also conducted in 2008 regarding the election between Obama and McCain. I often like to emphasize on this blog how “negative” emotions can serve a positive function, and this research is one good example of that.