Blind men and an elephant
The story of the blind men and an elephant originated in the Indian subcontinent from where it has widely diffused. It has been used to illustrate a range of truths and fallacies; broadly, the parable implies that one's subjective experience can be true, but that such experience is inherently limited by its failure to account for other truths or a totality of truth. At various times the parable has provided insight into the relativism, opaqueness or inexpressible nature of truth, the behavior of experts in fields where there is a deficit or inaccessibility of information, the need for communication, and respect for different perspectives. It is a parable that has crossed between many religious traditions and is part of Jain, Buddhist, Sufi and Hindu lore. The blind men and the elephant (wall relief in Northeast Thailand) The story[edit] In various versions of the tale, a group of blind men (or men in the dark) touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Jain[edit] A king explains to them:
Milgram experiment
The experimenter (E) orders the teacher (T), the subject of the experiment, to give what the latter believes are painful electric shocks to a learner (L), who is actually an actor and confederate. The subject believes that for each wrong answer, the learner was receiving actual electric shocks, though in reality there were no such punishments. Being separated from the subject, the confederate set up a tape recorder integrated with the electro-shock generator, which played pre-recorded sounds for each shock level.[1] The experiments began in July 1961, three months after the start of the trial of German Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised his psychological study to answer the popular question at that particular time: "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? The experiment[edit] Milgram Experiment advertisement The subjects believed that for each wrong answer, the learner was receiving actual shocks.
Synesthesia
How someone with synesthesia might perceive (not "see") certain letters and numbers. Synesthetes see characters just as others do (in whichever color actually displayed), yet simultaneously perceive colors as associated to each one. Synesthesia (also spelled synæsthesia or synaesthesia; from the Ancient Greek σύν syn, "together", and αἴσθησις aisthēsis, "sensation") is a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.[1][2][3][4] People who report such experiences are known as synesthetes. Difficulties have been recognized in adequately defining synesthesia:[5][6] many different phenomena have been included in the term synesthesia ("union of the senses"), and in many cases the terminology seems to be inaccurate. A more accurate term may be ideasthesia. Characteristics[edit] There are two overall forms of synesthesia: projecting synesthesia and associative synesthesia.
Priming (psychology)
Priming can occur following perceptual, semantic, or conceptual stimulus repetition. For example, if a person reads a list of words including the word table, and is later asked to complete a word starting with tab, the probability that he or she will answer table is greater than if they are not primed. Another example is if people see an incomplete sketch they are unable to identify and they are shown more of the sketch until they recognize the picture, later they will identify the sketch at an earlier stage than was possible for them the first time.[4] The terms positive and negative priming refer to when priming affects the speed of processing. Negative priming is more difficult to explain. The difference between perceptual and conceptual primes is whether items with a similar form or items with a similar meaning are primed. Perceptual priming is based on the form of the stimulus and is enhanced by the match between the early and later stimuli.
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Model of personality types A chart with descriptions of each Myers–Briggs personality type and the four dichotomies central to the theory. In personality typology, the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is an introspective self-report questionnaire indicating differing psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. The MBTI was constructed by two Americans: Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers, who were inspired by the book Psychological Types by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. History[edit] Briggs began her research into personality in 1917. After the English translation of Carl Jung's book Psychological Types was published in 1923 (first published in German in 1921), Briggs recognized that Jung's theory was similar to, but went far beyond, her own. Myers' work attracted the attention of Henry Chauncey, head of the Educational Testing Service. Format and administration[edit] Also included is a composite of these called "strain".
