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The Dark Side of Self-Control

The Dark Side of Self-Control
Why do people drink too much, eat too much, smoke cigarettes, take drugs , or have sex with people they've just met? What's to blame for all this bad behavior? Most people would say that, while these self-destructive acts can have many root causes, they all have one obvious thing in common: they are all examples of failures of self-control . Each of us has desires that we know we shouldn't give in to, but when faced with temptation, some of us lack the willpower to resist it. A recent paper by psychologists Catherine Rawn and Kathleen Vohs, however, argues that if you really think about it, something about that simple answer doesn't quite make sense. In fact, it turns out that sometimes it's having willpower that really gets you into trouble. Think back to the time you took your very first sip of beer. Just getting past those first horrible experiences actually requires a lot of self-control. The short answer is, we do it in order to achieve some goal.

List of thought processes Nature of thought[edit] Thought (or thinking) can be described as all of the following: An activity taking place in a: brain – organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals (only a few invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, adult sea squirts and starfish do not have a brain). Types of thoughts[edit] Content of thoughts[edit] Types of thought (thinking)[edit] Listed below are types of thought, also known as thinking processes. Animal thought[edit] See Animal cognition Human thought[edit] Human thought Classifications of thought[edit] Williams' Taxonomy Creative processes[edit] Creative processes – Decision-making[edit] Decision-making Erroneous thinking[edit] see Error for some examples, see also Human error) Emotional intelligence (emotionally based thinking)[edit] Emotional intelligence – Problem solving[edit] Problem solving Reasoning[edit] Reasoning – Machine thought[edit] Machine thought (outline) Organizational thought[edit] Organizations[edit] Lists

Microwave Rules of Thumb - Microwave Encyclopedia - Microwaves101.com Updated March 25, 2014 The origin of the phrase "rule of thumb" is debatable; some say it was once a man's right to beat his wife with a stick no wider in diameter than his thumb. Sadly, in some countries today women have to deal with even worse treatment. What we mean by a microwave rule-of-thumb could be an inexact but notable relationship of one or more design parameters with performance, or it could just be an easy way to remember something that other lesser people often mix up. Obviously, you must use some discretion when you apply these rules, exact results can vary widely depending on influences you haven't considered, such as the phase of the moon. Microwave rules of thumb have been handed down to new-hires by microwave old farts for the last century. We will keep compiling microwave rules of thumb on this page, in no particular order, and we don't guarantee that we will reorder the rules in the future.

Halo Effect The idea that global evaluations about a person bleed over into judgements about their specific traits. The ‘halo effect’ is a classic finding in social psychology. It is the idea that global evaluations about a person (e.g. she is likeable) bleed over into judgements about their specific traits (e.g. she is intelligent). Hollywood stars demonstrate the halo effect perfectly. Because they are often attractive and likeable we naturally assume they are also intelligent, friendly, display good judgement and so on. In the same way politicians use the ‘halo effect’ to their advantage by trying to appear warm and friendly, while saying little of any substance. But you would think we could pick up these sorts of mistaken judgements by simply introspecting and, in a manner of speaking, retrace our thought processes back to the original mistake. Likeability of lecturers Nisbett and Wilson wanted to examine the way student participants made judgements about a lecturer (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977).

Me, Myself and My Stranger: Understanding the Neuroscience of Selfhood Where are you right now? Maybe you are at home, the office or a coffee shop—but such responses provide only a partial answer to the question at hand. Asked another way, what is the location of your "self" as you read this sentence? Like most people, you probably have a strong sense that your conscious self is housed within your physical body, regardless of your surroundings. But sometimes this spatial self-location goes awry. A new paper offers examples of rare bodily illusions that are not confined to a single limb, nor are they complete out-of-body experiences—they are somewhere in between. "These reports could be interesting for us to better understand how the brain produces ownership of the entire body—a sense that we have a body in the first place," says Henrik Ehrsson, a neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden who was not involved in the new study. Patient 1 was a 55-year-old man who had suffered from epilepsy since he was 14 years old.

Poor Man's Polygraph Part 5 Poor Man's Polygraph Part 5 Parallel Lie People tend to tell the truth except when the truth prevents them from achieving a desired outcome. The next time you purchase a product or service use the Poor Man's Polygraph to give yourself a degree of confidence that you are not being cheated. The Poor Man's Polygraph provides indicators of deception, not proof of deception. The Parallel Lie technique is the last part in the five part series presenting the Poor Man's Polygraph. INVESTIGATOR : Did you rob the bank? SUSPECT : No. INVESTIGATOR : Believe it or not people have lied to me in the past to get out of trouble. SUSPECT : Because there was no way I could have been at the bank that day because I was at a friend's house. INVESTIGATOR : I didn't ask you if you if you could have been at the bank that day. SUSPECT : You don't have to believe me. INVESTIGATOR : Well, I don't believe you. The Parallel Lie provides an additional indicator of veracity. SUSPECT : Ah...no. Example 1: Example 2:

Quarter-wave Tricks - Microwave Encyclopedia - Microwaves101.com Updated December 31, 2011 Click here to go to our page on basic concepts of microwaves Click here to learn about a rule of thumb for measuring the length of cables Click here to go to our page on the Smith Chart Click here to go to our page on Schiffman phase shifters Click here to go to our page on Lange couplers How do you turn a short circuit into an open circuit, or a capacitor into an inductor? Here is a clickable index to our material on quarterwave transformers: What's so special about a quarter-wavelength? Multi-section transformers Maximally flat transformers (new for November 2008!) Constructive interference of two equal VSWRs (featuring more wisdom from Wally!) How to use constructive interference when designing with PIN diodes Quarter-wave coupled lines (coming soon) Referring to a Smith chart, if you are already at a matched impedance condition, any length of transmission line at the system characteristic impedance Z0 does nothing to your input match. Quarter-wave stubs Radial stubs

How to Read Someone’s Mind | Reading someone's mind Reading someone’s mind through telepathy has a long and legendary history. But if you want to have this ability too, you may have to rethink what mind reading is. If you envision closing your eyes and having someone from across a stage project their thoughts into yours, so that you can “hear what they’re thinking,” you are out of luck. People claim to be able to do this but they don’t teach their methods to anyone. Cold Reading is actually a set of techniques developed to give the appearance of reading someone’s mind. Sounds pretty cool, huh? The next step is to profile your subject. You may know next to nothing about the person in front of you, and you don’t need to—they will give you the secrets about themselves without realizing they are, if you ask questions about them in such a way that they appear to be statements. telepathy Most of the time, your subjects will supply more information than necessary from these question-statements.

How to Live With an Unknowable Mind We know surprisingly little about our own personalities, attitudes and even self-esteem. How do we live with that? How do you imagine your own mind? I sometimes picture mine as a difficult and contrary child; the kind that throws a stone at you for no reason and can’t explain itself. Or while at the beach it sits silent, looking miserable. One reason minds can be frustrating is that we only have access to part of them, by definition the conscious part. Except we don’t know it’s doing things we haven’t asked it to, because we can’t interrogate it. This is quite a different view of the mind than Freud had. The idea that large parts of our minds can’t be accessed is fine for basic processes like movement, seeing or hearing. Other parts would be extremely interesting to know about. Here are three examples of areas in which our self-knowledge is relatively low: 1. You’d be pretty sure that you could describe your personality to someone else, right? Don’t be so sure. 2. 3. Road to self-knowledge

Experts rethink good study habits Ask someone for tips on proper study skills, and you’re likely going to get an answer that ranges from “study in a quiet, sealed room” to “drink a sip of water each time you need to remember a fact.” But from folksy suggestions to ideas based in actual science, study skills are just about how well you train your brain to absorb information. The New York Times reports that scientists have determined a few simple techniques that can enable a student to absorb more information. Many of these new findings contradict commonly-accepted study habits. Retaining information is all in how the brain operates. Nate Kornell is a psychologist atWilliams Collegewho has studied how the brain absorbs information. Finally, if a person crams for a test, he or she is much more likely to completely forget the information over the long term. For further reading: Forget what you know about good study habits

IEEE 802.16 IEEE 802.16 is a series of wireless broadband standards written by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The IEEE Standards Board established a working group in 1999 to develop standards for broadband for wireless metropolitan area networks. The Workgroup is a unit of the IEEE 802 local area network and metropolitan area network standards committee. Although the 802.16 family of standards is officially called WirelessMAN in IEEE, it has been commercialized under the name "WiMAX" (from "Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access") by the WiMAX Forum industry alliance. The 802.16e-2005 amendment version was announced as being deployed around the world in 2009.[1] The version IEEE 802.16-2009 was amended by IEEE 802.16j-2009. Standards[edit] Projects publish draft and proposed standards with the letter "P" prefixed, which gets dropped and replaced by a dash and year when the standards are ratified and published. Projects[edit] 802.16e-2005 Technology[edit] PHY[edit]

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