A Neuroscientist Uncovers A Dark Secret Top 10 Thinking Traps Exposed Our minds set up many traps for us. Unless we’re aware of them, these traps can seriously hinder our ability to think rationally, leading us to bad reasoning and making stupid decisions. Features of our minds that are meant to help us may, eventually, get us into trouble. Here are the first 5 of the most harmful of these traps and how to avoid each one of them. 1. The Anchoring Trap: Over-Relying on First Thoughts “Is the population of Turkey greater than 35 million? Lesson: Your starting point can heavily bias your thinking: initial impressions, ideas, estimates or data “anchor” subsequent thoughts. This trap is particularly dangerous as it’s deliberately used in many occasions, such as by experienced salesmen, who will show you a higher-priced item first, “anchoring” that price in your mind, for example. What can you do about it? Always view a problem from different perspectives. 2. Consider the status quo as just another alternative. 3. Be OK with making mistakes. 4. 5.
P E R C E I V I N G R E A L I T Y The Top 10 Psychology Studies of 2010 The end of 2010 fast approaches, and I'm thrilled to have been asked by the editors of Psychology Today to write about the Top 10 psychology studies of the year. I've focused on studies that I personally feel stand out, not only as examples of great science, but even more importantly, as examples of how the science of psychology can improve our lives. Each study has a clear "take home" message, offering the reader an insight or a simple strategy they can use to reach their goals , strengthen their relationships, make better decisions, or become happier. 1) How to Break Bad Habits If you are trying to stop smoking , swearing, or chewing your nails, you have probably tried the strategy of distracting yourself - taking your mind off whatever it is you are trying not to do - to break the habit. That's because habit-behaviors happen automatically - often, without our awareness. J. 2) How to Make Everything Seem Easier J. 3) How To Manage Your Time Better M. 4) How to Be Happier J.
Revenge of the Introvert There are as many introverts as extraverts, but you'd never know it by looking around. Introverts would rather be entertained by what's going on in their heads than in seeking happiness. Their big challenge is not to feel like outsiders in their own culture. by Laurie Helgoe, Ph.D. After ten years as a psychologist practicing psychodynamic psychotherapy , I reclined on the couch of my own analyst feeling burdened by my chosen work. After a day of seeing patients, I was drained. Then I heard myself say: "I don't like being a therapist." Suddenly I felt free, loosed from expectations that never fit. As a card-carrying introvert , I am one of the many people whose personality confers on them a preference for the inner world of their own mind rather than the outer world of sociability. Over the past two decades, scientists have whittled down to five those clusters of cognitions, emotions, motivations, and behaviors that we mean by "personality" factors. Introversion in Action
An Essay by Einstein -- The World As I See It "How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving... "I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. "My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities.
Perception puzzles, Visual Perception, Optical illusions and Paradoxes This page illustrates that our visual perception cannot always be trusted. The components of an object can distort the perception of the complete object. Our mind is the final arbiter of truth. The Parthenon Optical illusions have been studied for millenia. Perpetually ascending staircase. The red squares are the same color in the upper part and in the lower part of the "X" The diagonal lines are parallel. There are no gray spots at the corners of the squares. Stairway between corners of a flat square. You can go from corner A to corner B by climbing the stairs or by going around a level plane. The rows of black and white squares are all parallel. Children's Activity Project Color the elephant with crayons or colored pencils making sure to stay within the lines. Click the image to display it in a new page for printing. Impossible triangle. The radiating lines influence our perception of the parallel lines. The center circles are both the same size. The Vertical lines are both the same length.
What Does Your Body Language Say About You? How To Read Signs and Recognize Gestures - Jinxi Boo - Jinxi Boo Art by LaetitziaAs we all know, communication is essential in society. Advancements in technology have transformed the way that we correspond with others in the modern world. Because of the constant buzz in our technological world, it's easy to forget how important communicating face-to-face is. When conversing old-school style, it's not only speech we verbalize that matters, but what our nonverbal gestures articulate as well. Body language is truly a language of its own. 10% from what the person actually says40% from the tone and speed of voice50% is from their body language. Lowering one's head can signal a lack of confidence. Pushing back one's shoulders can demonstrate power and courageOpen arms means one is comfortable with being approached and willing to talk/communicate
The Experience and Perception of Time What is ‘the perception of time’? The very expression ‘the perception of time’ invites objection. Insofar as time is something different from events, we do not perceive time as such, but changes or events in time. But, arguably, we do not perceive events only, but also their temporal relations. So, just as it is natural to say that we perceive spatial distances and other relations between objects (I see the dragonfly as hovering above the surface of the water), it seems natural to talk of perceiving one event following another (the thunderclap as following the flash of lightning), though even here there is a difficulty. For what we perceive, we perceive as present—as going on right now. Kinds of temporal experience There are a number of what Ernst Pöppel (1978) calls ‘elementary time experiences’, or fundamental aspects of our experience of time. Duration The inference model may be plausible enough when we are dealing with distant events, but rather less so for much more recent ones.
Color Survey Results « xkcd Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity. —Herman Melville, Billy Budd Orange, red? I WILL EAT YOUR HEART WITH A FUCKING SPOON IF YOU AKS ANY MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT COLORS —Anonymous, Color Survey Thank you so much for all the help on the color survey. First, a few basic discoveries: If you ask people to name colors long enough, they go totally crazy. Overall, the results were really cool and a lot of fun to analyze. Sex By a strange coincidence, the same night I first made the color survey public, the webcomic Doghouse Diaries put up this comic (which I altered slightly to fit in this blog, click for original): Basically, women were slightly more liberal with the modifiers, but otherwise they generally agreed (and some of the differences may be sampling noise). Okay, pretty flowery, certainly. Map
Allegory of the Cave Plato realizes that the general run of humankind can think, and speak, etc., without (so far as they acknowledge) any awareness of his realm of Forms. The allegory of the cave is supposed to explain this. In the allegory, Plato likens people untutored in the Theory of Forms to prisoners chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads. All they can see is the wall of the cave. From Great Dialogues of Plato (Warmington and Rouse, eds.) Here are some students’ illustrations of Plato’s Cave Go back to lecture on the Phaedo Go back to lecture on the “One Over Many” Argument Go to next lecture on Criticism of Forms Need a quick review of the Theory of Forms? Return to the PHIL 320 Home Page Copyright © 2006, S.
We Perform Best When No One Tells Us What To Do How can companies get the best possible performance out of their employees? Let them do whatever they want! And furthermore, don't offer incentives. Sound counter-intuitive? Not if you look at what research has shown regarding the economics of motivation. According to Dan Pink (lawyer, speech writer, author, and career analyst), the way to get the best original ideas out of people is to cut back on restrictions and rules regarding output, and stop offering incentives for work produced. "There is a disconnect between what science knows and what business does." He goes on to say, "Traditional notions of management work great if you want compliance, but if you want engagement, self-direction works best." So does this mean we should cut back on bonuses and perks for good performance? The whole idea of this experiment was to show the importance of using creativity problem-solving to come up with functional solutions.
The World of 100 There is no doubting the skill of designer Toby Ng. His designs have won him numerous accolades including the Red Dots Awards, International Design Awards, and the Hong Kong International Poster Triennial Awards among others. One of his projects, called World of 100 answers the question: If the world were a village of 100 people, what would its composition be? Toby Ng's website via [Brain Pickings] Views: 30077 Tags: Toby Ng, art, design, village of 100