Quackwatch 10 Ways Our Minds Warp Time How time perception is warped by life-threatening situations, eye movements, tiredness, hypnosis, age, the emotions and more… The mind does funny things to our experience of time. Just ask French cave expert Michel Siffre. In 1962 Siffre went to live in a cave that was completely isolated from mechanical clocks and natural light. When he tried to measure out two minutes by counting up to 120 at one-second intervals, it took him 5 minutes. But you don’t have to hide out in a cave for a couple of months to warp time, it happens to us all the time. 1. People often report that time seems to slow down in life-threatening situations, like skydiving. But are we really processing more information in these seconds when time seems to stretch? To test this, Stetson et al. (2007) had people staring at a special chronometer while free-falling 50 metres into a net. 2. We’ve all experienced the fact that time seems to fly when we’re having fun. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Time is relative
How Often Should We Trust Our Intuition? By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on January 5, 2011 For many, our gut response helps us make the call when confronted with a difficult decision. A new study exploring the decision-making process finds the abiliity to make hunch decisions varies considerably: Intuition can either be a useful ally or it can lead to costly and dangerous mistakes. Research findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest the trustworthiness of our intuition is really influenced by what is happening physically in our bodies. “We often talk about intuition coming from the body — following our gut instincts and trusting our hearts,” said Barnaby D. To investigate how different bodily reactions can influence decision-making, Dunn and his co-authors asked study participants to try to learn how to win at a card game they had never played before. Source: Association for Psychological Science
Inumbr Creates Temporary Disposable Phone Numbers - Telephony - Lifehacker @imdante: Yup, this is what annoys me so much about google voice (GV). With GV you don't have to put up with that extension nonsense, but the caller does still have to record his name/greeting. The majority of people calling my GV number mistake that for an answering machine, and then get very confused when if cuts them off after 5 seconds and starts ringing again. I've had moderate success with giving out instruction while giving out my number (This is a GV number so it'll ask for your name first...) but it seems silly that I have to write out a paragraph of explanation just to use my GV number. So yeah, no solutions here, just complaints unfortunately. @imdante: I'm sad i missed the chance @beala: you can turn that feature off in the settings section of google voice @dirtysteak: Yup, but you clearly didn't read my whiny post closely enough! "I think you can turn this off, but it's actually very convenient for me so I'm torn between convenience for me and annoying/confusing the caller."
Transcending the Matrix Control System Rosenhan experiment Rosenhan's study was done in two parts. The first part involved the use of healthy associates or "pseudopatients" (three women and five men, including Rosenhan himself) who briefly feigned auditory hallucinations in an attempt to gain admission to 12 different psychiatric hospitals in five different states in various locations in the United States. All were admitted and diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. After admission, the pseudopatients acted normally and told staff that they felt fine and had no longer experienced any additional hallucinations. All were forced to admit to having a mental illness and agree to take antipsychotic drugs as a condition of their release. The average time that the patients spent in the hospital was 19 days. The study concluded "it is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals" and also illustrated the dangers of dehumanization and labeling in psychiatric institutions. The pseudopatient experiment[edit] Notes
Journaling Before Exam Can Relieve Test Anxiety By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on January 14, 2011 Right or wrong, in our current educational, professional and vocational environments test performance is critical. For students prone to test-taking anxiety, the stakes are high. New research finds that students were able to improve their high-stakes test scores by nearly one grade point after they were given 10 minutes to write about what was causing them fear. The writing exercise allowed students to unload their anxieties before taking the test and accordingly freed up brainpower needed to complete the test successfully — brainpower that is normally occupied by worries about the test, explained the study’s senior author, Dr. Beilock is an expert on “choking under pressure” — when talented people perform below their skill level during a particularly challenging experience. To test those ideas, researchers recruited 20 college students and gave them two short math tests.
Does 9 Just Sound Cheap? We have all heard of calculating prodigies, those rare souls able to perform astounding feats with numbers. For many of these individuals, numbers have colors, flavors, sounds, or other qualities alien to the rest of us. Mental calculator Salo Finkelstein detested the number zero and adored 226. At least since the 19th century, retailers have been using prices like 99 cents (rather than an even $1.00) or $295 (rather than $300). New research by Keith Coulter and Robin Coulter, to be published in , implies that certain numbers just sound bigger than others. Coulter and Coulter begin by citing decades of research claiming that sounds pronounced with the front of the mouth (long a, e, and i; fricatives like f, s, and z) trigger associations with smallness. One explanation: Three, with a long e, sounds small, and two, with a back-of-the-mouth vowel, sounds large. That doesn't prove the sounds were responsible. "Nine" has a long i, so it's one of the small-sounding digits.
For those who want to know: Reliable information on health, energy, media, war, elections, 9/11, more 7 Helpful Tips To Immediately Increase Your Confidence Your rating: None Average: 3.7 (6 votes) 1.) Ask yourself, “What’s the worst that could happen?” Too often, we place excess importance on potential problems. 2.) 3.) 4.) 5.) 6.) 7.) Author's Bio: This article is based on the book, “Unstoppable Confidence” by Kent Sayre. False Memories from Simply Observing Others By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on September 15, 2010 Have you ever wondered if you really did something, or did you just remember the event because you watched someone else perform the action? If so, don’t feel bad. Interestingly, the insight came as a team of psychologists were studying imagination, a recognized method by which false memories can be created. In an experiment, psychologists found that people who had watched a video of someone else doing a simple action — shaking a bottle or shuffling a deck of cards, for example — often remembered doing the action themselves two weeks later. “We were stunned,” says Gerald Echterhoff, of Jacobs University Bremen. In each experiment, participants performed several simple actions. Two weeks later, they were asked which actions they had done. The results are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Source: Association for Psychological Science
The Battle for Your Mind: Brainwashing Techniques Authoritarian followers Mind Control Subliminals By Dick Sutphen Summary of Contents The Birth of Conversion The Three Brain Phases How Revivalist Preachers Work Voice Roll Technique Six Conversion Techniques 1. keeping agreements 2.physical and mental fatigue 3. increase the tension 4. Uncertainty. 5. Jargon 6. No humor Stockholm SyndromeDecognition Process Step One is ALERTNESS REDUCTION Step Two is PROGRAMED CONFUSION Step Three is THOUGHT STOPPINGTrue Believers & Mass Movements Persuasion Techniques YES SET TRUISMS SUGGESTION Imbedded Commands INTERSPERSAL TECHNIQUE Visualisation SHOCK AND CONFUSIONSubliminal Programming Mass Misuse Vibrato Extra Low Frequencies The Neurophone Summary of Contents The Birth of Conversion/Brainwashing in Christian Revivalism in 1735. I'm Dick Sutphen and this tape is a studio-recorded, expanded version of a talk I delivered at the World Congress of Professional Hypnotists Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Birth of Conversion Charles J. Alright.
Dreams: Night School The Dream Robbers What happens when a rat stops dreaming ? In 2004, researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison decided to find out. Their method was simple, if a bit devilish. Step 1: Strand a rat in a tub of water. In this uncomfortable position, the rat is able to rest and eventually fall asleep. Step 2: After several mostly dreamless nights, the creature is subjected to a virtual decathlon of physical ordeals designed to test its survival behaviors. The dream-deprived rats flubbed each of the tasks. The surprise came during Step 3. What Dreams Are Made Of Dreaming is so basic to human existence, it's astonishing we don't understand it better. Later came the idea that dreams are the cognitive echoes of our efforts to work out conflicting emotions. "There's nothing closer to a consensus on the purpose and function of dreaming than there's ever been," says Deirdre Barrett, a Harvard psychologist and editor of the forthcoming . A Theater of Threats Dreams may do the same thing.
Memory Improved 20% by Nature Walk New study finds that short-term memory is improved 20% by walking in nature, or even just by looking at an image of a natural scene. I’m sitting in front of the computer and I’ve been working too hard for too long without a break. My brain feels like it’s filling with wet cardboard. In fact what I’m doing isn’t writing any more, it’s just typing. I go to the kitchen, stand there for a moment, can’t remember what I’ve come in for, feel foolish, then eat a biscuit. It doesn’t help. Time for a walk. Most of us are aware that a quick walk around the block does wonders for the mind. Communing with nature Marc G. The results showed that people’s performance on the test improved by almost 20% after wandering amongst the trees. In the second study participants weren’t even allowed to leave the lab but instead some stared at pictures of natural scenes while others looked at urban environments. Attention Restoration Theory Trees and fields: the ultimate cognitive enhancers? [Image credit: l'etrusco]