La morte dell'individualità L’idea che siamo individui dal pensiero libero ha plasmato la società occidentale per secoli. I dati però ci mostrano che ciò che domina realmente è il pensiero di gruppo. Per gran parte della nostra storia ci è stato insegnato che la verità e la morale vengono da Dio e dal Re, e che il libero arbitrio è solo una questione teologica. Nel 1700 ciò ha iniziato a cambiare e si è fatta strada, nei sistemi di credenze delle alte sfere, l’idea che gli esseri umani sono individui liberi con una libertà di scelta razionale. Nel corso del tempo i concetti di razionalità e individualità hanno profondamente modellato i governi e le culture dell’Occidente. Ma fino a che punto siamo individui con libertà di pensiero ? Una recente ricerca sta iniziando a scoprire il grado in cui ci comportiamo come individui indipendenti. Per sviluppare questa nuova scienza sono stati studiati dei veri e propri laboratori viventi. La logica dietro a tutto questo è semplice.
Lasting Relationships Rely On 2 Traits Gottman wanted to know more about how the masters created that culture of love and intimacy, and how the disasters squashed it. In a follow-up study in 1990, he designed a lab on the University of Washington campus to look like a beautiful bed-and-breakfast retreat. He invited 130 newlywed couples to spend the day at this retreat and watched them as they did what couples normally do on vacation: cook, clean, listen to music, eat, chat, and hang out. And Gottman made a crucial discovery in this study—one that gets at the heart of why some relationships thrive while others languish. Throughout the day, partners would make requests for connection, what Gottman calls “bids.” The wife now has a choice. People who turned toward their partners in the study responded by engaging the bidder, showing interest and support in the bid. These bidding interactions had profound effects on marital well-being.
Money Makes You Less Rational Than You Think Kinja is in read-only mode. We are working to restore service. Two year ago, Berkeley researchers showed that people who drive expensive vehicles are four times more likely to cut off drivers of lower status vehicles. This supports my theory that Lexus drivers are the worst. if I get cut off, its almost always by a Lexus. Flagged In my experience people in luxury brands tend to drive without regard for other drivers, usually driving erratically (very slow then very fast, similar to people that are texting; swerving around without checking lanes, never signalling, drifting out into the middle of an intersection during a red light then not going when the light turns green; generally like self-important pricks) people in expensive sporty looking cars tend to drive more aggressively, cutting people off, etc.
Future - How human culture influences our genetics You shouldn't be able to drink milk. Your ancestors couldn't. It is only in the last 9,000 years that human adults have gained that ability without becoming ill. It turns out that cultures with a history of dairy farming and milk drinking have a much higher frequency of lactose tolerance – and its associated gene – than those who don't. Drinking milk is just one of example of the way that traditions and cultural practices can influence the path of our evolution. Another example of how culture influences our genes is the relationship between yam farming and malaria resistance. But there are some people who seem to have a natural defense force. Here's what's interesting: those communities that farm yams have much higher rates of the sickle-cell gene than nearby communities with different agricultural practices. So while it's sickle-cell disease that's protective against malaria, it was a uniquely human behavior – yam farming – that allowed evolution to act.
Hive minds: Time to drop the fiction of individuality - opinion - 08 April 2014 FOR most of Western history, truth and morality came from God and king, and free will was a theological question. This began to change in the 1700s, and the idea that humans were individuals with the freedom of rational choice soon wormed its way into the belief systems of the upper echelons of society. Over time, the concepts of rationality and individualism profoundly shaped the governments and culture of the West. But to what extent are we freethinking individuals? Recent research is beginning to uncover the degree to which we act as independent individuals. RationalWiki The Psychology of Trust in Life, Learning, and Love by Maria Popova The science of why tit-for-tat isn’t the best strategy for cooperation and why you should hear out your hunches. “When you trust people to help you, they often do,” Amanda Palmer asserted in her beautiful meditation on the art of asking without shame. But what does it really mean to “trust,” and perhaps more importantly, how can we live with the potential heartbreak that lurks in the gap between “often” and “always”? That’s precisely what psychologist David DeSteno, director of Northeastern University’s Social Emotions Lab, explores in The Truth About Trust: How It Determines Success in Life, Love, Learning, and More (public library). DeSteno, who has previously studied the osmosis of good and evil in all of us and the psychology of compassion and resilience, argues that matters of trust occupy an enormous amount of our mental energies and influence, directly or indirectly, practically every aspect of our everyday lives. The short answer is that we have to.
New evidence shows how chronic stress predisposes brain to mental disorders (Medical Xpress)—University of California, Berkeley, researchers have shown that chronic stress generates long-term changes in the brain that may explain why people suffering chronic stress are prone to mental problems such as anxiety and mood disorders later in life. Their findings could lead to new therapies to reduce the risk of developing mental illness after stressful events. Doctors know that people with stress-related illnesses, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), have abnormalities in the brain, including differences in the amount of gray matter versus white matter. How chronic stress creates these long-lasting changes in brain structure is a mystery that researchers are only now beginning to unravel. "We studied only one part of the brain, the hippocampus, but our findings could provide insight into how white matter is changing in conditions such as schizophrenia, autism, depression, suicide, ADHD and PTSD," she said. Does stress affect brain connectivity?
Your memory rewrites the past and edits it with new experiences, study finds - Science - News In the study, How your Memory Rewrites the Past, researchers looked at the exact point in time when incorrectly recalled information was implanted into an existing memory. The team found that memory rewrites the past with current information, updating recollections with new experiences. This form of editing happens in the hippocampus, working as the memory’s version of a film editor or special effects team. It does this to help us survive and adapt within constantly changing environments, and to encourage us to focus on things that are important in the present. Their results raise questions over the reliability of eyewitness court testimony, the team concluded. In the study, researchers at Northwestern University, in Chicago, asked 17 male and female participants to study 168 object locations on a computer screen with different backgrounds, such as an underwater ocean scene or an aerial view of farmland. "Our memory is not like a video camera," Ms Bridge added.
Empathic people are natural targets for sociopaths - protect yourself -- Science of the Spirit © Fotolia Olly The empathy trap: therapists and counselors almost by definition are empathic, to facilitate clients' recovery - but this quality can mean those carers are targets for sociopaths, aided by what Dr Jane & Tim McGregor call "apaths". The first UK article on this cruel sport shows how to identify and thus avoid it. People targeted by a sociopath often respond with self-deprecating comments like "I was stupid", "what was I thinking" of "I should've listened to my gut instinct". But being involved with a sociopath is like being brainwashed. On initial contact, a sociopath will often test other people's empathy, so questions geared towards discovering if you are highly empathic or not should ring alarm bells. Sociopaths make up 25% of the prison population, committing over twice as many aggressive acts as other criminals. But not all sociopaths are found in prison. Exposure to and interaction with a sociopath in childhood can leave lifelong scars. Everyday sociopaths The apath.
30 traits of an Empath (How to know if you're an Empath) By: Christel Broederlow What is an empath? Being an empath is when you are affected by other people’s energies, and have an innate ability to intuitively feel and perceive others. Your life is unconsciously influenced by others’ desires, wishes, thoughts, and moods. Being an empath is much more than being highly sensitive and it’s not just limited to emotions. Empaths are often quiet achievers. However, they can be the exact opposite: reclusive and apparently unresponsive at the best of times. Empaths have a tendency to openly feel what is outside of them more so than what is inside of them. Empaths are more inclined to pick up another’s feelings and project it back without realizing its origin in the first place. Without a doubt, this emotional withholding can be detrimental to one’s health, for the longer one’s thoughts and/or emotions aren’t released, the more power they build. Empaths are sensitive to TV, videos, movies, news and broadcasts. Here are the listeners of life. 1. 2. 3.
First evidence of common brain code for space, time, distance -- ScienceDaily A new Dartmouth study provides the first evidence that people use the same brain circuitry to figure out space, time and social distances. The findings, which help reveal how our brains organize information and create our perspective of the world, appear in the Journal of Neuroscience. The researchers looked at whether there is an overlap, or a common mechanism, in the brain areas used to represent time, space and social distances. "The results showed that the same brain patterns that decide whether something is physically near to us versus far away also decide whether we are thinking about the near or distant future or seeing a friend versus an acquaintance," said senior author Thalia Wheatley, an associate professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences. "There are interesting implications for this," she said.
How to Cope with Uncomfortable Uncertainty Joy is not the only experience that people try to avoid, to their detriment. Many people cannot tolerate the feeling of uncertainty, and according to mounting evidence, this fear affects mood and health. Intolerance of uncertainty is linked with mental disorders such as anxiety and depression, researchers confirmed in a paper in the June 2013 issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychology; their results also revealed a strong link to panic disorder. People with this fear try to feel more certain with strategies such as excessive checking, planning and reassurance seeking, worry and rumination, and avoidance of unfamiliar situations. Perhaps unsurprisingly, intolerance of uncertainty has been found to be related to obsessive-compulsive disorder and hoarding—although many more people experience subtle symptoms that disrupt quality of life without meeting the diagnostic criteria for a mental disorder.
m.fastcompany If you Google “morning routine,” you’ll receive more than 24 million search results, and for good reason: Early risers seem to get more done and live happier lives. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs understand the benefits of having an early-morning routine: Starbucks’s Howard Schultz, GE’s Jeff Immelt, and Xerox’s Ursula Burns are just some of the early birds famous for rising before 6 a.m. to get ahead on their work. But a morning routine is only half of a productive day; the other is the evening routine that precedes it. Here are seven evening routines of famous and successful creatives, and how you can apply them to your own life. Swedish Director Ingmar Bergman Read Before Bed “Do you know what moviemaking is? One study by the University of Sussex found that just six minutes of reading a day is enough to reduce stress by 68%--an excellent excuse to start curling up with a good book before you turn in for the evening. Composer Ludwig Van Beethoven Went To Bed Early