Psychology
-
Recent Research Finds Humans Have Only Four Emotions
From The Atlantic: Conventional scientific wisdom recognizes six “classic” emotions: happy, surprised, afraid, disgusted, angry, and sad. But the [University of Glasgow] scientists studied people’s facial expressions, and the emotions they signal, by showing people computer-generated facial animations. They asked the observers to characterize the faces based on those six basic emotions, and found that anger… Continue reading
-
You Are What You Read
According to an article in Medical Daily, a study conducted last year found that readers will unknowingly be influenced by, or even adopt, certain characteristics of the fictional characters they’re reading about. Experts have dubbed this subconscious phenomenon ‘experience-taking,’ where people actually change their own behaviors and thoughts to match those of a fictional character that… Continue reading
-
The Awesome Power of Our Divided Brain
The following video from RSA explains how the hemispheric nature of our brains — which is poorly understood by most people — has profoundly affected human behavior, culture, and society. It’s part of a lecture given by renowned psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist, whose full talk can be seen here. I hope you enjoy. As always, feel… Continue reading
-
Reading Literature Makes You More Empathetic
So not only does reading the classics enrich you culturally, but it may very well better your capacity to understand people. That’s the conclusion of a study in the journal Science that gave tests of social perception to people who were randomly assigned to read excerpts from literary fiction, popular fiction or nonfiction. On average, people who read parts… Continue reading
-
The Rationality of Addiction
Drug addicts and substance abusers would hardly come to mind as rational or reasonable individuals. Yet an interesting new study discussed in the New York Times sheds light on the very complex nature of addiction, one that challenges the popular caricature of drug abusers as voracious consumers enslaved at all costs to a particular high.… Continue reading
-
Careful How You Speak of Mental Illness
The following excerpt is from a post on Brute Reason discussing the problems with using psychiatric terms in a colloquial and metaphorical sense. These words are used so casually that our conception of their meaning gradually shifts without our even noticing it. It’s like a boy-who-cried-wolf type of situation in that regard. If nine different friends… Continue reading
-
Why Even the Smartest People Fail at Reason
Why Even the Smartest People Fail at Reason Being reasonable isn’t easy. Heck, for all our intelligence, it doesn’t even come natural, as more and more studies are demonstrating: One provocative hypothesis is that the bias blind spot arises because of a mismatch between how we evaluate others and how we evaluate ourselves. When… Continue reading
About Me
Humanist | Bibliophile | Writer | Wiki Editor | World Citizen | Esquire (J.D. / LL.M.)