Six-week-long test of willpower. So not down for this, but my average needs to go up 0.1% (Taken with instagram)
Posts Tagged "psychology"
This 3-star review kind of solidifies why this book has a purpose. »
The basics of this book are fascinating. The Habit Loop consists of a cue, which calls a routine, which seeks a reward. That is whole book. There is little reason to read the rest of it unless you like a lot examples of this loop. Unfortunately, the book does not really explore the science of habits and absolutely, completely, ignores the research on behaviorism which explains the entire premise of the book. The science of behaviorism, while not popular, covers this material in a way that is actionable. Look at the “amazing” discovery of cue, routine, and reward and compare it the decades old behavioral idea of Antecedent, Behavior, and Consequence (the ABCs). Duhigg, identifies the habits as “That psychology was grounded in two basic rules: First, find a simple and obvious cue. Second, clearly define the rewards.” He then spends the next dozen pages with examples from commercials. If you understand the “ABCs” then the book holds little value (unless you like stories). Jump to the Appendix “A Reader’s Guide to Using These Ideas” and read it only. It covers everything discussed in the book but at least gives a hint about using the habit concept for change. The advice? Identify the routine, experiment with satisfying rewards, isolate the cue, and have a plan. That’s it. If it matters, my review is based on the Kindle edition.
The person seems to have a hate-on for repetition (e.g. repetitive stories of the same point) but I think the whole point that is being missed is repetition is how habits change and are formed. You can’t hear something once and integrate it into your life. You need to hear it multiple times, in various contexts, to learn how to integrate the core concept into all its variations.
Or maybe that’s just how it works for me. I don’t know.
(PS, add me on Good Reads)
shit-said-to-depressed-people:
SSTDP #5: “It’s all in your head.”
When people say this, they seem to imply that there is no disorder. That depression is imaginary. That your “simply depressed mood” is something you can fix by thinking about it differently. This statement implies that depression is wholly in your control, but it’s not. There are external factors beyond one’s control that can cause and worsen depression - factors like traumatic experiences (e.g. abuse), chronic stress, genetics, having illnesses, and even the season (for Seasonal Affective Disorder which is one type of depression).
Depression is a disorder of the brain that affects you both psychologically and physically. Feeling depressed isn’t the only symptom of clinical depression. Depression manifests itself physically too (feeling physically drained, having body aches). Furthermore, MRIs show that the brains of people with depression look different from healthy people without depression.
Lol I found this in the “psychology” tag.
Easier answer would be: “So’s everything, bro.”
Source: shit-said-to-depressed-peopleNeuroscience: Binge eating may lead to addiction-like behaviors »
April 24, 2012
A history of binge eating — consuming large amounts of food in a short period of time — may make an individual more likely to show other addiction-like behaviors, including substance abuse, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers. In the short term, this finding…
Sometimes I wonder if common sense and logic even exist.
Why it is important to teach children that life is not fair:
According to psychology, people who strongly believe the world is just (fair) are more likely to victim-blame (e.g. when it comes to bullying, abuse, assault, etc) and have the strongest desire for revenge (e.g. make others hurt, start conflicts if in a position of power, etc). This is all to maintain their sense of justice.
Life options
I hate abnormal psychology because the prevailing attitudes are all so wrong. And ignorant, and condescending, and unhelpful.
But maybe I do have a future in healthcare if I can fight to get rid of this crappy medical model and replace is with a more humanist or holistic one.
It just seems like a difficult fight. People don’t like to look at what they’re doing and admit it’s not working, yet I sit here screaming at all these news articles, these suffering people, HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THAT WHAT YOU’RE DOING ISN’T WORKING?!
It hurts to care.
"Brains don’t talk, they feel."
— My psych profPoll:
what’s your favourite kind of psychology?
"Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control,” she explains. “They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure."
—The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids — New York Magazine
“Giving kids the label of “smart” does not prevent them from underperforming. It might actually be causing it.” Truth.
Fascinating article.
“I am smart, the kids’ reasoning goes; I don’t need to put out effort. Expending effort becomes stigmatized—it’s public proof that you can’t cut it on your natural gifts.”
(via denyinghipster)
The Forgetting Pill: Can We Erase Painful Memories?
If you could take a pill that would erase any memory, would you take it? Traumatic memories can be painful, debilitating baggage, persisting for decades and often difficult to control. Previous therapies involved discussing traumatic memories in detail, but new models of the elastic and networked basis of memory have demonstrated that this isn’t effective. Jonah Lehrer writes in Wired:
Since the time of the ancient Greeks, people have imagined memories to be a stable form of information that persists reliably. The metaphors for this persistence have changed over time—Plato compared our recollections to impressions in a wax tablet, and the idea of a biological hard drive is popular today—but the basic model has not. Once a memory is formed, we assume that it will stay the same. This, in fact, is why we trust our recollections. They feel like indelible portraits of the past.
None of this is true. In the past decade, scientists have come to realize that our memories are not inert packets of data and they don’t remain constant. Even though every memory feels like an honest representation, that sense of authenticity is the biggest lie of all.
However, a “memory” is not a “thing”, in the usual sense of the word. It is an experience, in our brain, that we replay.
We have new understanding that the formation of memories is utterly dependent on biological processes, on proteins that help write new connections in our neural network. When we “re-fire” this network, we “recall” a memory. What if we could block the proteins that write the connections? Could we truly forget?
New research is getting close to just that. In rats, drugs can block the function of a key protein (PKMzeta) involved in strengthening memory synapses. The effect is preventing experiences from being reinforced. In a sense, one can forget that small neural web, and the memory that it encodes.
When we begin to view memory as relative, as dependent on a constant flux of neural networks, it calls into question what is “true”. And the ethics of taking a “forgetting” pill are just as murky. It turns out that our assumption that we can’t choose what to remember or forget is wrong, and soon we might have the power to make that choice. Would you?
For more, check out Jonah Lehrer’s full article, and this series on PKMzeta from Ed Yong.
(via Wired Magazine, image by Dwight Eschliman)
Immediately, I said “yes”. But then it’s like wait - how selective are these proteins? I need my memory to be in school. It’s the memories of everything else I’d want to get rid of. So I clicked through to the article to see if they answered that, and actually found a much more interesting and in-depth article than I expected.
(Answer to my original question: “The secret was the timing: If new proteins couldn’t be created during the act of remembering, then the original memory ceased to exist. The erasure was also exceedingly specific. The rats could still learn new associations, and they remained scared of other sounds associated with a shock but that hadn’t been played during the protein block. They forgot only what they’d been forced to remember while under the influence of the protein inhibitor.”)
(via thebonepalaceballet)
Source:
Whoops actually unfollowing you now bye
Sorry you’re just not ~~~~*****interesting******~~~~ enough to be ~^*~^&fascinated&^~*^~ by serial killers
The romanticizing of serial killer is something I’ve flipped shit about quite a while. You know who reblogs this shit? Edgy white chicks that’s fucking who. People who think mutilated animals & instagrammed pictures of thin white girls in neon shorts & Doc Martens are cool. Not going to lie, I’m sure some people (I know a few) are genuinely interested in the psychology of serial killers…most of them are just twits who think Manson is badass and can’t pronounce Jung.
You should come over here and ask the families of the Dahmer victims just how cool and interesting what he did was.
“You know who reblogs this shit? Edgy white chicks that’s fucking who.” Pretentious white chicks who think they’re ~hardcore~ that’s who.
A girl I used to follow went through a phase of posting serial killer stuff, so I hit up Wikipedia to try and find out what the appeal is. I read about half of Ted Bundy’s page and felt so disgusted for humanity that I’ve never looked into it any further.
I can sort of understand plain murder, but the torture that maniacs (of serial killer infamy as well as your “average joe” man-of-the-house) put people through…
Source: c0untessbathory"- But people are people, not trolls or archetypes.
- Yes, and our great task is to see people as people and not clouded by archetypes we carry about with us, looking for a peg to hang them on."
— Robertson Davies
Do some cultures have their own ways of going mad? »
In short, yes but no.
Ironically relevant.
“Depending on whom you ask, the notion that some cultures have their own ways of going crazy is either the ultimate in cultural sensitivity or the ultimate in Western condescension.”
