The Dark Side of Oxytocin, the Hormone of Love - Ethnocentrism

Yes, you knew there had to be a catch. As oxytocin comes into sharper focus, its social radius of action turns out to have definite limits. The love and trust it promotes are not toward the world in general, just toward a person’s in-group. Oxytocin turns out to be the hormone of the clan, not of universal brotherhood. Psychologists trying to specify its role have now concluded it is the agent of ethnocentrism. A principal author of the new take on oxytocin is Carsten K. In a report published last year in Science, based on experiments in which subjects distributed money, he and colleagues showed that doses of oxytocin made people more likely to favor the in-group at the expense of an out-group. These nationalities were chosen because of a 2005 poll that showed that 51 percent of Dutch citizens held unfavorable opinions about Muslims, and other surveys that Germans, although seen by the Dutch as less threatening, were nevertheless regarded as “aggressive, arrogant and cold.” In Dr. Dr.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/science/11hormone.html?_r=2&emc=eta1

The Psychopath: The Mask of Sanity THE PSYCHOPATH - The Mask of Sanity Special Research Project of the Quantum Future School Imagine - if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken. And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools.

BrainMind.net When hallucinations follow depth electrode or cortical stimulation, much of the material experienced is very dream-like (Gloor 1990, 1992; Halgren et al., 1978; Malh et al., 1964; Penfield & Perot 1963) and consists of recent perceptions, ideas, feelings, and other emotions which are similarly illusionary and dream-like. Indeed, the right amygdala, hippocampus, and the right hemisphere in general (Broughton, 1982; Goldstein et al., 1972; Hodoba, 1986; Humphrey & Zangwill, 1961; Kerr & Foulkes, 1978; Meyer et al. 1987) also appear to be involved in the production of deam imagery as well as REM sleep (chapter 10). For example stimulation of the amygdala triggers and increases ponto-geniculo-occipital paradoxical activity during sleep (Calvo, et al. 1987), which in turn is associated with REM and dreaming. The Right Hemisphere & Dreams. Forgotten Dreams. Most individuals, however, have difficulty recalling their dreams.

The Place of "Cognitive Dissonance" in Narcissistic Victim Syndrome Understanding Cognitive Dissonance in relation to narcissistic abuse: Stockholm syndrome involves the victim paradoxically forming a positive relationship with their oppressor; this is called “Trauma Bonding”. When victims of narcissistic are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, they are often seen by outsiders as somehow having participated in some bizarre way that seems to support their abuse. However, to understand how the trauma bonding occurs, it is especially relevant to understand what is involved in the decision-making and problem-solving process of the victim. This theory is known as Cognitive Dissonance. If therapists are to understand the behaviour of clients who have been victims of narcissistic abuse, then it is crucial for them to appreciate why the victim combines the two unhealthy conditions of Stockholm Syndrome and Cognitive Dissonance as part of their survival strategy.

10 Practical Uses For Psychological Research in Everyday Life People love to give each other advice. The web is full to bursting with all types of pseudo-psychological advice about life. The problem is, how much of this is based on real scientific evidence? Well, here on PsyBlog we’ve got the scientific evidence. So here’s my top 10 list of what you can learn practically from the psychological research discussed here recently. Psychopaths vs. Sadists: Brain Science, Public Fascination Psychopathic serial killers are a source of infinite public fascination. If best-selling novels, hit TV series and popular films are any indication, you’d think real-life Hannibal Lecters were constantly running amok in the U.S. Thankfully, such offenders are far less prevalent in reality than they are in entertainment — but the disproportionate damage done by violent and even nonviolent psychopaths not surprisingly attracts intense scientific interest as well. On May 11, in fact, the New York Times explored whether psychopaths can be diagnosed as young as age 9.

10 Brilliant Social Psychology Studies Ten of the most influential social psychology experiments. “I have been primarily interested in how and why ordinary people do unusual things, things that seem alien to their natures.Why do good people sometimes act evil?Why do smart people sometimes do dumb or irrational things?” –Philip Zimbardo Like eminent social psychologist Professor Philip Zimbardo (author of The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil), I’m also obsessed with why we do dumb or irrational things. The answer quite often is because of other people – something social psychologists have comprehensively shown.

Brain Abnormalities Found in Narcissists Narcissistic Personality Disorder Basics The American Psychiatric Association categorizes narcissistic personality disorder with a group of conditions called Cluster B personality disorders. All of these disorders produce behaviors or thought processes that rely to a dysfunctional degree on emotional excess or drama. People affected by NPD do such things as focus their lives around self-centered pursuits, greet criticism with outsized or excessive emotional displays, manipulate others for their own purposes, redirect other people’s attention toward themselves, make unsupported boasts or exaggerations, expect others to treat them as superiors or “betters,” and develop heavily involved fantasies centered on unfounded notions of their own abilities or achievements. Unusual Brain Thinness In the study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, a team of German researchers used modern brain scanning technology to examine the brain structure of 34 volunteers.

The Ten Most Revealing Psych Experiments Psychology is the study of the human mind and mental processes in relation to human behaviors - human nature. Due to its subject matter, psychology is not considered a 'hard' science, even though psychologists do experiment and publish their findings in respected journals. Some of the experiments psychologists have conducted over the years reveal things about the way we humans think and behave that we might not want to embrace, but which can at least help keep us humble.

Soulmates In Hell: WORDS YOU SHOULD KNOW: DOSING Dosing is a form of love bombing that takes place long after the honeymoon phase, and during the abuse phase of the relationship, but before the discard. The narcissist seeks to keep you hooked as long as possible because you still have usefulness to the narcissist, for instance, as a part of the narcissist's harem, to prop up his image outside the home, as arm candy, as a source of money, as an unpaid baby sitter, or simply as a person the narcissist enjoys abusing. The narcissist doses you by giving you small amounts of the “three A's”...attention, appreciation, and affection in order to keep your hope up that the good times you experienced at the beginning will return for good. It differs from the love bombing phase in that it's motive is different...to prolong your involvement and agony...and because of it's limited nature.

The Limits of Intelligence Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the Spanish Nobel-winning biologist who mapped the neural anatomy of insects in the decades before World War I, likened the minute circuitry of their vision-processing neurons to an exquisite pocket watch. He likened that of mammals, by comparison, to a hollow-chested grandfather clock. Indeed, it is humbling to think that a honeybee, with its milligram-size brain, can perform tasks such as navigating mazes and landscapes on a par with mammals. A honeybee may be limited by having comparatively few neurons, but it surely seems to squeeze everything it can out of them. At the other extreme, an elephant, with its five-million-fold larger brain, suffers the inefficiencies of a sprawling Mesopotamian empire.

Narcissistic Hoovering is a Timeless Control Tactic To a narcissist, hoovering is a timeless tactic for controlling a target, validating that control, and periodically checking an ex’s queue-status. And when I say “timeless”, I mean TIMELESS as in time is of NO consequence…time is NOT of the essence…time never runs out…and there’s no time like now to hoover “whomever I want because, well, I want to and because I have all the time in the world!” Now, while the average person reading this (who knows nothing about narcissism in relationships) might ask What the fuck is she talking about?, I’m willing to bet that all my experienced comrades here know where I’m going with this. If you don’t, bear with me and you will in a minute.

The Split Brain Experiments Lists of Nobel Prizes and Laureates The Split Brain Experiments Play the Split Brain Experiments About the game Anatomy Of A Psychopath : The Neurobiological Basis Of Evil Editor’s Note: This is the first part of “Mind’s Matter”, a new series of articles by Dr. Jonathan Pararajasingham, exploring the Neurobiological basis of behaviour. “We serial killers are your sons, we are your husbands, we are everywhere.” – Ted Bundy One of the most controversial areas of research in neuroscience involves the search for biophysical causes of sadistic thought and behaviour. But there now seems to be enough complementary evidence to at least begin piecing together a coherent materialistic description of the psychopathic mind. A number of potential genetic and pathophysiological causes of violence and aggression have been investigated over recent years.