47 Mind-Blowing Psychology-Proven Facts You Should Know About Yourself I’ve decided to start a series called 100 Things You Should Know about People. As in: 100 things you should know if you are going to design an effective and persuasive website, web application or software application. Or maybe just 100 things that everyone should know about humans! The order that I’ll present these 100 things is going to be pretty random. Dr. <div class="slide-intro-bottom"><a href=" Einstein On Creative Thinking: Music and the Intuitive Art of Scientific Imagination "The greatest scientists are artists as well," said Albert Einstein (Calaprice, 2000, 245). As one of the greatest physicists of all time and a fine amateur pianist and violinist, he ought to have known! So what did Einstein mean and what does it tell us about the nature of creative thinking and how we should stimulate it? In our last post, we suggested that community singing might be a simple way to introduce creativity into one's life. For Einstein, insight did not come from logic or mathematics. But how, then, did art differ from science for Einstein? Einstein first described his intuitive thought processes at a physics conference in Kyoto in 1922, when he indicated that he used images to solve his problems and found words later (Pais, 1982). Anyone in science education reading this?! In other interviews, he attributed his scientific insight and intuition mainly to music. Wow! So much for Einstein's admission that he often had a feeling he was right without being able to explain it.
The Partner Paradox: Why Buddying Up to Achieve Goals May Backfire MY WIFE AND I go to spinning class a couple of mornings a week. It is something we like to do together, and I feel that I benefit from having a regular workout partner. Some days I am just lazy or I do not want to venture out in the predawn cold, but having a supportive partner motivates me. Or does she? Two psychological scientists have been exploring this novel idea in the laboratory. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. Honey, Help Me ExerciseFitzsimons and Finkel recruited a group of women in their 30s, all of whom were in a romantic relationship, for an online experiment. The idea was to see if thinking of a partner’s support depleted personal effort and commitment—and that is just what the scientists found. I’ll Do It LaterThe scientists wanted to double-check these findings, and they did so in an interesting way. It’s Time to Stand Up for Science
Science and religion: God didn't make man; man made gods - latimes.com Before John Lennon imagined “living life in peace,” he conjured “no heaven … / no hell below us …/ and no religion too.” No religion: What was Lennon summoning? For starters, a world without “divine” messengers, like Osama bin Laden, sparking violence. A world where mistakes, like the avoidable loss of life in Hurricane Katrina, would be rectified rather than chalked up to “God’s will.” Where politicians no longer compete to prove who believes more strongly in the irrational and untenable. Where critical thinking is an ideal. In recent years scientists specializing in the mind have begun to unravel religion’s “DNA.” Like our physiological DNA, the psychological mechanisms behind faith evolved over the eons through natural selection. For example, we are born with a powerful need for attachment, identified as long ago as the 1940s by psychiatrist John Bowlby and expanded on by psychologist Mary Ainsworth. We can be better as a species if we recognize religion as a man-made construct. J.
Not Interested in Having a Good Time? By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on August 14, 2009 A new study suggests a decreased desire for pleasure may be a key predisposing factor for major depression. The research is in contrast to the long-held notion that those suffering from depression lack the ability to enjoy rewards, rather than the desire to seek them. Vanderbilt psychologists Michael Treadway and David Zald led the study published by current edition of the online journal PLoS One. “This initial study shows that decreased reward processing, which is a core symptom of depression, is specifically related to a reduced willingness to work for a reward,” Treadway, a graduate student in psychology, said. Decreased motivation to seek and experience pleasurable experiences, known as anhedonia, is a primary symptom of major depressive disorder. Anhedonia is less responsive to many antidepressants and often persists after other symptoms of depression subside. Source: Vanderbilt University
Stanley Milgram & The Shock Heard Around the World Next to Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment, Stanley Milgram’s obedience studies are arguably the most famous, influential and controversial of psychology experiments. The obedience studies started in 1961 at Yale University when Milgram was just a 27-year-old assistant professor. Muzafer Sherif, also a pioneer in social psychology who conducted experiments at a summer camp to test intergroup conflict, remarked that: “Milgram’s obedience experiment is the single greatest contribution to human knowledge ever made by the field of social psychology, perhaps psychology in general.” At the time, before Sherif and Milgram’s experiments, researchers believed that individuals who inflicted harm on others, particularly the horrific acts of the Holocaust, were somehow different from the “normal” public. But Milgram believed otherwise. Why Milgram Conducted the Obedience Experiments Stanley Milgram was born to Jewish parents in 1933 in New York City. Alexandra Milgram also writes:
The little-known roots of the cognitive revolution Many psychologists rightly credit the likes of George A. Miller, PhD, Noam Chomsky, PhD, and Allen Newell, PhD, with kick-starting cognitive sciences in the academic world. But few are aware that earlier psychologists laid its groundwork during behaviorism's heyday. And fewer still know that one of its more pre-eminent forebears, Otto Selz, PhD, was killed by the Nazi regime at the height of his career. Selz, a Jewish German psychologist born in 1881 in Munich, studied philosophy at the influential University of Wurzburg in central Germany. Behaviorism—the reigning approach to experimental psychology of its day—couldn't bring much to the discussion. Selz began to lay the foundation for cognitive research in a series of experiments he and his colleagues conducted from 1910 to 1915. Based on these statements, Selz concluded that their minds were doing more than simply associating words and images they'd heard in conjunction before. Finding no favor That was not the case.
Why being relaxed makes us spend too much money The typical casino is an intentionally unpleasant place. The ceiling is low and the sight lines are hidden, producing a claustrophobic effect. The lights are dim and the air is filled with the clatter of randomness, as slot machines spit out coins and sound effects. The floor is a labyrinth of drunk gamblers and card tables, making it all but impossible to navigate. (There are also no clocks, so people have no idea what time it is.) Why are casinos so uncomfortable? In recent years, however, the design of high-end casinos has undergone a dramatic shift. The redesign of the casino had a profound effect on revenues: in 1999, the Bellagio set the record for gaming income in Vegas. There's now some interesting evidence to explain the Bellagio phenomenon. The research was straightforward. Here is where the data gets interesting: those who felt more relaxed spent more money. Why does relaxation turn us into spendthrifts? And this returns us to casinos. PS. Source: Wired.com
Culture of Shock In 1961 Stanley Milgram embarked on a research program that would change psychology forever. Fueled by a desire to understand how ordinary Germans had managed to participate in the horrors of the Holocaust, Milgram decided to investigate when and why people obey authority. To do so, he developed an ingenious experimental paradigm that revealed the surprising degree to which ordinary individuals are willing to inflict pain on others. Half a century later Milgram’s obedience studies still resonate. They showed that it does not take a disturbed personality to harm others. Healthy, well-adjusted people are willing to administer lethal electric shocks to another person when told to do so by an authority figure. Select an option below: Customer Sign In *You must have purchased this issue or have a qualifying subscription to access this content
Made to Disorder - October 28 Made to DisorderWhen mental disorders are a cultural product. Your therapist is probably giving you multiple personality disorder. Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris by Asti Hustvedt. 372 pages. W.W. Norton & Company. $26.95. Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case by Debbie Nathan. 320 pages. Oh sure, he’s going to deny it. And maybe by the end of it you will remember seeing your father drink the blood of a newborn baby. Oh, and that will be $250, sweetie. Back in the 1980s, multiple personality disorder was a thing. At the base of this disorder was abuse. But there was also something else at the base of this disorder. If you remove any details that reveal time or place, stories of fragile, impressionable young girls who go into psychiatric treatment for mysterious ailments begin to sound oddly similar. We learn how to be mad, the same way we learn how to be male or female, or how we learn how to participate in society.