Internal Time: The Science of Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You’re So Tired by Maria Popova Debunking the social stigma around late risers, or what Einstein has to do with teens’ risk for smoking. “Six hours’ sleep for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool,” Napoleon famously prescribed. In fact, each of us possesses a different chronotype — an internal timing type best defined by your midpoint of sleep, or midsleep, which you can calculate by dividing your average sleep duration by two and adding the resulting number to your average bedtime on free days, meaning days when your sleep and waking times are not dictated by the demands of your work or school schedule. The distribution of midsleep in Central Europe. Roenneberg traces the evolutionary roots of different sleep cycles and argues that while earlier chronotypes might have had a social advantage in agrarian and industrial societies, today’s world of time-shift work and constant connectivity has invalidated such advantages but left behind the social stigma around later chronotypes. (Thanks, Jalees.)
Think You're Thinking? 6 Reasons to Think Again 1. I base my decisions on facts. A special shout-out to Nobel Prize winners Daniel Kahneman and the late Amos Twersky for giving us the “availability heuristic,” which explains the quick and ready answers and facts that pop in our heads which, alas, have nothing to do with thinking and are the ones we’re most likely to rely on when we make a choice or decision. The bottom line is that this mental shortcut —which highlights the most recent, most often repeated, and most mentally available “facts”—results in our overestimating the importance of certain bits of information and lures us into thinking that good things as well as bad ones are more probable than they actually are. This kind of fast “connect the dots” thinking was valuable in human evolutionary history when dangers and perils—as well as rewards— were largely physical and required fast responses. Quick quiz here: The animal most likely to kill an American? 2. Not true, either. 3. Probably not. 4. 5. 6. The upshot of all this?
Who Connects Best Online, and Why Diego Cervo / Shutterstock Psychologists have long been interested in the concept of attachment, which has its origins in our childhood experiences, primarily with those who raised us. Being raised in a family where nurturance is combined equally with structure creates what are called secure parent-child (or caregiver-child) attachments. The secure child, in turn, is likely to grow into an adult who is unafraid to venture into the world and who is also capable of forming and sustaining relationships. But what happens if something goes awry? Anxiety and Avoidance in Real-World Relationships There are two variations on so-called insecure attachment styles that can emerge from developmental years that are characterized by a great deal of rejection, ambivalence, or abuse. They are described well in an article published by R. Where Do You Fall? Answer each item as it describes you as follows: 0 = Not at all / 1 = Describes me a little / 3 = Describes me a lot ___ I often feel unlovable.
3 More Things You Didn't Realize About How Your Brain Works We all pride ourselves on making considered, well-thought-out decisions, and avoiding snap judgments based on little or no information. But despite our insistent belief in our “reasoning,” the fact is that a lot of the time, we’re doing nothing of the kind. Human beings are actually hardwired to make snap judgments, or to engage in what Daniel Kahneman has called “fast” thinking—much of it taking place outside of our conscious awareness. (For more on this topic, see my earlier post.) 1. Did you know that if you just ask people to think about a library, they’re more likely to lower their voices to a whisper? Even objects in a room can cue behavior, as another experiment by Bargh and his colleagues demonstrated. 2. The problem is that unless we know to look for those shortcuts or biases in thinking, we’re absolutely clueless about the fact they're in play. 3. You take an immediate shine to Jack or Jill because you’re certain that he or she is open and honest. Copyright© Peg Streep 2014
Darwin’s Battle with Anxiety by Maria Popova A posthumous diagnosis of the paralyzing mental malady that afflicted one of humanity’s greatest minds. Charles Darwin was undoubtedly among the most significant thinkers humanity has ever produced. But he was also a man of peculiar mental habits, from his stringent daily routine to his despairingly despondent moods to his obsessive list of the pros and cons of marriage. Those, it turns out, may have been simply Darwin’s best adaptation strategy for controlling a malady that dominated his life, the same one that afflicted Vincent van Gogh — a chronic anxiety, which rendered him among the legions of great minds evidencing the relationship between creativity and mental illness. Stossel writes: Observers going back to Aristotle have noted that nervous dyspepsia and intellectual accomplishment often go hand in hand. For 25 years extreme spasmodic daily & nightly flatulence: occasional vomiting, on two occasions prolonged during months. Stossel chronicles Darwin’s descent:
Comment le langage est-il venu ? Rencontre avec Jean-Marie Hombert et Gérard Lenclud Un nouveau scénario vient expliquer l’apparition du langage. Jean-Marie Hombert est linguiste, Gérard Lenclud anthropologue. Ils sont les auteurs de Comment le langage est venu à l’homme (Fayard, 2014), un ouvrage qui compile des siècles de débats, d’hypothèses et de spéculations sur les origines du langage. Le langage serait-il le propre de l’humain ? Gérard Lenclud – Tout dépend, évidemment, de la définition que l’on donne du langage. Jean-Marie Hombert – Lorsque l’on parle de l’origine du langage humain, le mot « origine » renvoie à l’idée d’un commencement absolu. Quels sont les prérequis définissant le langage ? J. Selon vous, le langage est donc apparu graduellement. G.L. – Le terme de trace est équivoque. J. Il y a 120 000 ans commence la dernière glaciation. Peut-on penser que le langage ait été inventé une fois, ou plusieurs ? J. G.L. – Inutile de dire que, dans ces conditions, l’idée d’identifier une langue-mère est parfaitement illusoire. J.
Were we happier in the stone age? We are far more powerful than our ancestors, but are we much happier? Historians seldom stop to ponder this question, yet ultimately, isn't it what history is all about? Our understanding and our judgment of, say, the worldwide spread of monotheistic religion surely depends on whether we conclude that it raised or lowered global happiness levels. And if the spread of monotheism had no noticeable impact on global happiness, what difference did it make? With the rise of individualism and the decline of collectivist ideologies, happiness is arguably becoming our supreme value. Most governments still focus on achieving economic growth, but when asked what is so good about growth, even diehard capitalists almost invariably turn to happiness. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we could somehow scientifically prove that higher standards of living did not translate into greater happiness. The Whig view of history But this progressive view is highly controversial. Paradise lost Paradise now
7 Survival Tips That Could Save Your Life. #2 Is Awesome! Have you ever wondered how to filter water, keep away the mosquitos or how to make a solar microwave? These tips might save your life one day. 1. Need some light in a pinch and a candle alone won’t cut it? 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. For a visual preview of all of the tips in this list, watch the video! Credits: HouseholdHacker Scientists Are Beginning To Figure Out Why Conservatives Are…Conservative Scientists are using eye-tracking devices to detect automatic response differences between liberals and conservatives.University of Nebraska-Lincoln You could be forgiven for not having browsed yet through the latest issue of the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences. If you care about politics, though, you'll find a punchline therein that is pretty extraordinary. Click here to read more from Mooney on the science of why people don't believe in science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences employs a rather unique practice called "Open Peer Commentary": An article of major significance is published, a large number of fellow scholars comment on it, and then the original author responds to all of them. That's a big deal. It is a "virtually inescapable conclusion" that the "cognitive-motivational styles of leftists and rightists are quite different." The authors go on to speculate that this ultimately reflects an evolutionary imperative. That's pretty extraordinary, when you think about it.
Evidence That Friends Really Are The Family We Choose Sister from another mister. Brother from another mother. The family you choose. When it comes to describing your friends, those turns of phrase may be a lot more accurate than you think. Genetics researchers at the University of California, San Diego and Yale University have found that friends can share a lot of the same genes — the same amount of genes, in fact, as are shared by fourth cousins. “In a lot of genetics research, the assumption is that we are interacting with lots of people who are not related to us, so genes aren’t going to matter,” said study researcher James Fowler, Ph.D., a medical genetics professor at UCSD. Besides providing geneticists with a whole new set of human relationships to examine (beyond blood relatives), the findings could “completely change our theory of evolution,” Fowler told The Huffington Post. Say for instance, that you’re an ancient human who was born with a genetic mutation that allowed you to speak, Fowler explained.