How People are Fooled by Evidence Rationality is the crowning achievement of our species. The ability to use evidence is true the cornerstone of science, medicine, and our legal system. We use rational methods, too, in daily life – we assess an applicant’s resume, a child’s IQ, or the mileage of a used car to predict the likelihood of good performance later on. There is a line of psychological research that studies precisely this, by measuring how accurate we are at making probability judgments. Imagine, for example, that you are in a library (assuming people still do such things), and you’ve become lost. Book 1: Piers Anthony’s Blue Adept: The Apprentice Adept Book 2: J. You’re not sure how to categorize Book 1, so it’s not good evidence for either Science Fiction or Fantasy. Here’s where things get interesting. Researchers Whitman and Woodward recently demonstrated this effect in a controlled laboratory setting. Changing how information is displayed may be something we do without realizing it.
The Benefits of Daydreaming A new study suggests that a daydreaming is an indicator of a well-equipped brain Does your mind wander? During a class or meeting, do you find yourself staring out the window and thinking about what you’ll do tomorrow or next week? Well, psychological research is beginning to reveal that daydreaming is a strong indicator of an active and well-equipped brain. A new study, published in Psychological Science by researchers from the University of Wisconsin and the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science, suggests that a wandering mind correlates with higher degrees of what is referred to as working memory. For example, imagine that, when leaving a friend ‘s house, you promise to call when you get home safely. In the study, the researchers sought to examine the relationship between people’s working memory capacity and their tendency to daydream. Surprisingly, there was a correlation between mind wandering during the first task and high scores on the working memory test.
Why Daydreaming Makes You Smarter and More Creative Editors’ Note: Portions of this post appeared in similar form in an October, 2011, post by Jonah Lehrer for Wired.com, in an August, 2008, column by Lehrer for the Boston Globe, and in his previously published book “Imagine.” We regret the duplication of material. Humans are a daydreaming species. At first glance, such data seems like a confirmation of our inherent laziness. In recent years, however, psychologists and neuroscientists have redeemed this mental state, revealing the ways in which mind-wandering is an essential cognitive tool. Virginia Woolf, in her novel “To The Lighthouse,” eloquently describes this form of thinking as it unfolds inside the mind of a character named Lily: Certainly she was losing consciousness of outer things. A daydream is that fountain spurting, spilling strange new thoughts into the stream of consciousness. Subjects were then randomly assigned to one of four different conditions. What does this mean? Editors’ Notes: Photograph by Peter Marlow/Magnum.
The Overjustification Effect The Misconception: There is nothing better in the world than getting paid to do what you love. The Truth: Getting paid for doing what you already enjoy will sometimes cause your love for the task to wane because you attribute your motivation as coming from the reward, not your internal feelings. Office Space – Courtesy Twentieth Century Fox Money isn’t everything. Money can’t buy happiness. Don’t live someone else’s dream. Maxims like these often find their way into your social media; they arrive in your electronic mailbox at the ends of dense chains of forwards. Money, fame, and prestige – they dangle just outside your reach it seems, encouraging you to lean farther and farther over the edge, to study longer and longer, to work harder and harder. If only science had something concrete to say about the whole thing, you know? The researchers discovered money is indeed a major factor in day-to-day happiness. If you find that hard to believe, you aren’t alone. Time Magazine in 1971
The Learning Brain Gets Bigger--Then Smaller With age and enough experience, we all become connoisseurs of a sort. After years of hearing a favorite song, you might notice a subtle effect that’s lost on greener ears. Perhaps you’re a keen judge of character after a long stint working in sales. Whatever your hard-learned skill is, your ability to hear, see, feel, or taste with more nuance than a less practiced friend is written in your brain. One classical line of work has tackled these questions by mapping out changes in brain organization following intense and prolonged sensory experience. But don’t adopt that slogan quite yet. If you were to look at the side of someone’s brain, focusing on the thin sliver of auditory cortex, it would seem fairly uniform, with only a few blood vessels to provide some bearing. One of the great neuroscience findings of the past several decades is that the ‘state lines’ of the auditory map (as well as many other sensory maps) are redrawn after training. So what does change? Are you a scientist?
The Limits of Intelligence Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the Spanish Nobel-winning biologist who mapped the neural anatomy of insects in the decades before World War I, likened the minute circuitry of their vision-processing neurons to an exquisite pocket watch. He likened that of mammals, by comparison, to a hollow-chested grandfather clock. Indeed, it is humbling to think that a honeybee, with its milligram-size brain, can perform tasks such as navigating mazes and landscapes on a par with mammals. A honeybee may be limited by having comparatively few neurons, but it surely seems to squeeze everything it can out of them. At the other extreme, an elephant, with its five-million-fold larger brain, suffers the inefficiencies of a sprawling Mesopotamian empire. We humans may not occupy the dimensional extremes of elephants or honeybees, but what few people realize is that the laws of physics place tough constraints on our mental faculties as well. Sign up for Scientific American’s free newsletters.
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. 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 lowering of the eyes can convey fear, guilt or submissionLowered eyebrows and squinted eyes illustrate an attempt at understanding what is being said or going onA lack of confidence or apprehensiveness can be displayed when you don't look another person in the eyesOne tends to blink more often if nervous or trying to evaluate someone else
15 Powerful Things Happy People Do Differently What are the differences between happy people and unhappy people? Of course, it should be very obvious: happy people are happy while unhappy people are unhappy, right? Well, that is correct. 1. Well, I can tell you for sure that those people who are really happy, fear less and love a lot more. 2. Happy people understand that you can’t really change a situation by resisting it, but you can definitely change it by accepting that it is there and by understanding that there might be a reason for its existence. 3. Really happy people know that it’s not healthy to hold on to anger. “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” ~ Buddha 4. They trust themselves and the people around them. 5. They do the things they do because of the meaning it brings into their lives and because it gives their lives a sense of purpose. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. These people don’t really care about being realistic. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.