Leslie And Her Parents' Divorce

 

From Serenity: Craig A Hart

Lahore Book Shop

 

New York Library's Most Frequently Read Books

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/new-york-public-librarys-most-checked-out-books-say-a-lot-about-what-we-read-and-why/2020/01/11/c8578174-33d9-11ea-a053-dc6d944ba776_story.html

Trump

• Don’t Let Trump Make You Numb to What’s Unacceptable 
• https://wapo.st/2NRcg4Y Anonymous's book

All The President's Women

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/a-thorough-revolting-history-of-trumps-behavior-toward-women/2019/10/23/3dea9ac4-d00d-11e9-b29b-a528dc82154a_story.html

Grief Observed

Grief Observed by CS Lewis. This book is about the grief that a man observed in himself after his wife's death.

This book is available online. Check this link.

Quotes from this book: 

"The reason for the difference is only too plain. You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it? The same with people."

‘Because she is in God’s hands.’ But if so, she was in God’s hands all the time, and I have seen what they did to her here. Do they [in heaven] suddenly become gentler to us the moment we are out of the body? And if so, why? If God’s goodness is inconsistent with hurting us, then either God is not good or there is no God: for in the only life we know He hurts us beyond our worst fears and beyond all we can imagine. If it is consistent with hurting us, then He may hurt us after death as unendurably as before it. 

If H [Author's wife]. ‘is not’, then she never was. I mistook a cloud of atoms for a person. There aren’t, and never were, any people. Death only reveals the vacuity that was always there. What we call the living are simply those who have not yet been unmasked. All equally bankrupt, but some not yet declared. 

For a good wife contains so many persons in herself. What was H. not to me? She was my daughter and my mother, my pupil and my teacher, my subject and my sovereign; and always, holding all these in solution, my trusty comrade, friend, shipmate, fellow-soldier. My mistress; but at the same time all that any man friend (and I have good ones) has ever been to me. Perhaps more. If we had never fallen in love we should have none the less been always together, and created a scandal. That’s what I meant when I once praised her for her ‘masculine virtues’. But she soon put a stop to that by asking how I’d like to be praised for my feminine ones. This strikes a chord and seems quite similar to what Indian literature extols in a good wife - to be a good friend, mother, mistress to her husband.

There is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them. It is arrogance in us to call frankness, fairness, and chivalry ‘masculine’ when we see them in a woman; it is arrogance in them, to describe a man’s sensitiveness or tact or tenderness as ‘feminine’. But also what poor, warped fragments of humanity most mere men and mere women must be to make the implications of that arrogance plausible. Marriage heals this. Jointly the two become fully human. 

I wonder. How would another man or wife, who loved their spouse very much, grieve? How different would it be from this author's grief? What is so special about this grief? I came across this book while reading another book on Male Grief where the author mentioned that males grieve in a way that is very different from the way feminine people grieve. Males don't talk it out and cry over a friend's shoulder. Is CH Lewis an example of all those male folks who love their wives a lot? Is this the way most male folks, who loved their wives, feel after their wives' death?

I know of an elderly gentleman. From what I have heard of him and his wife I think he could grieve like CH Lewis were his [my contact's] wife to die. I can imagine one difference though. My contact is not a person who can express as Lewis does. He would be more like a toddler who lost his mom - with a lot of grief but unable to express or articulate.

On the whole I am not able to relate to the kind of grief that the author felt nor empathize with it.

Frisco And Slug

A friend quoted a passage

we are those who do not disconnect the values of their minds from the actions of their bodies

from my favorite book and when I was searching for the passage, I came across this blog today (http://www.friscoandslug.blogspot.com/ this blog is now private as on Jun 21, 2017). I was thrilled.

I have rarely come across anyone like the author who can shred to pieces some commonly held thoughts (like "money is the root of all evil" or that "Robin Hood was a nice man"). She can come up with a startling idea (as in the quote above) and go on to explain and subsequently convince the reader.

She is amazing.

Published on

4/5/11, 8:45 PM

India Standard Time

Social Psychology

Interesting articles on Cognitive Dissonance (CD):

• https://examinedexistence.com/cognitive-dissonance-examples-everyday-life/ - nice
• https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326738
• https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-mating-game/201612/how-cognitive-dissonance-relates-relationships: "people tend to dislike their victims more after they have victimized them. It’s even easier to hate our victims if we de-humanize them. Committing wartime atrocities when you like and value your victims causes immense dissonance."
• https://www.cleverism.com/understanding-cognitive-dissonance-and-why-it-occurs-in-most-people/: "The person actually sees signs that the partner has some negative traits, but since the person is in love, he or she convinces himself that they are temporary, or that the good traits of the partner overweigh these signs. This is the same reason why people stay in abusive relationships. For instance, a lady who gets hit by her lover after being in a relationship for a year experiences cognitive dissonance because she loves her partner but doesn’t love his behavior. To reduce the dissonance, she might overlook getting hurt and look at the positive traits of the partner. In so doing, the lady opts to stay with an abusive partner."
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elliot-aronson/todd-akin-cognitive-disso_b_1840432.html
• http://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-dissonance.html - nice article.
• http://theunboundedspirit.com/festingers-cognitive-dissonance-theory-and-research-examples/
• http://www.psych-it.com.au/Psychlopedia/article.asp?id=245
• http://www.psych-it.com.au/Psychlopedia/article.asp?id=369
• An interesting quote from an article (am not able to provide the link - it has been removed: "Because of this (CD), people who are deeply committed to a position will almost never be persuaded to change their minds, no matter how powerful opposing arguments may be." - an F trait as explained below. A Tamil saying goes "Whether he is just a stone or grass, he is a husband (and hence good)". The ability to cut your losses and leave is more a T(hinking) trait while throwing good money after bad money may be because of this CD. 
• Later a friend explained to me that what i thought was an F trait (unwilling to change their mind where necessary) was actually a J trait... I think both F and J  can get it, though through different routes.
• Book - Mistakes were made (but not by me) - by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson
• Book - The Social Animal by Ellot Aronson
• http://www.intropsych.com/ch15_social/cognitive_dissonance.html

Elliot Aronson calls the behavior arising out of CD as rationalizing as against being rational. I feel this is an F trait ("Feeling" as per MBTI) - to hold on to something where you have already invested a lot, despite the thing being not so good. A previous action conflicting with a person's beliefs results in his denying the action or minimizing the importance of the action or changing his beliefs so that the dissonance is reduced. Action, in this case, causes (change in) belief, which in turn determines further course of action. 

The interesting thing in this case is that CD causes a turn in future actions which are caused by change in attitude which were caused by dissonance. 

On Influence / Persuasion

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini
• http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/six-principles-influence.htm

Cognitive dissonance says that attitude depends on behavior while Cialdini postulates that that behavior depends on other factors (including attitude). The common thread between the two thoughts seems to be "Commitment and Consistency (CC)". Cognitive dissonance seems to indicate that CC is a result of action and perhaps results in continued action. While the influence / persuasion thought seems to indicate that CC results in continued action. 

Is CC a J (as in MBTI) trait?

On Obedience and Milgram's experiments: http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/ucce50/ag-labor/7article/article35.htm

On Conformity and Solomon Asch's Experiments: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments

A nice article on CD: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_is_it_so_hard_to_change_peoples_minds?utm_source=Greater+Good+Science+Center&utm_campaign=819ecda683-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_06_28&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5ae73e326e-819ecda683-51673647

On Henri Tajfel's Prejudice and Social Identity Theory: 

• http://www.simplypsychology.org/social-identity-theory.html
• http://identitythoughts.wordpress.com/2009/01/14/social-stereotypes-and-social-groups-henri-tajfel-in-red-book/ - categorization seems like an NT (as in MBTI) function
• https://explorable.com/intergroup-discrimination

On prejudice, hostile sexism and benevolent sexism: http://www.understandingprejudice.org/links/

Published on

8/1/14, 9:55 PM

India Standard Time

Course 101 for Aspiring Gurus

When you are on your way to become a guru (of any variety Zen, Osho, Baba etc etc. They come in multiple flavors and sizes but usually male) you have to know the subtleties of expression.

People get thrilled with nice explanations for what they are doing. Explanations that help them to overcome the feeling of guilt.

A good guru's primary job is the alleviation of guilt. Find what people are guilty/sad about and provide a neat explanation that removes that feeling while encouraging them to pursue the same activities with renewed vigor.

The other option of diverting the desciple's activities towards "better" things will usually result in failure. While this ideal may sound lofty, a good guru knows that you can almost never change the way a person behaves.

Let me explain this through a real life example.

Guruji comes from a religious family. She herself was not religious and she felt bad that she, an adult and a mother, was doing something wrong. She didn't explain all this to me. But I could sense it. 

So instead of advising her to do what her family expects her to do, I explained to her the evils of being religious and the goodness in being self centered (she felt guilty about being self centered). 

I gave her a nice book (http://calmisc.blogspot.com/2017/07/frisco-and-slug.html) to read on this subject. 

Now you can see what the effect was. Guruji has accepted me as her guru. (I will refrain from mentioning how she actively and joyously broke many dinner plates after I had had a few sessions with her.)

Fear, obligation and guilt are the things that an emotional blackmailer raises in a person to keep him under control (read the lovely book on Emotional Blackmail by Susan Forward ). 

The person being emotionally blackmailed hates it. And when you help remove those negative emotions, a person will accept you as a guru.

So when you telling a person to do something, are you commanding her to do what she was doing anyway or is she independently doing what you wanted her to do? Well while you started off with the former, because of the credibility established the latter will happen. This is the secret recipe of an Ellsworth Toohey.

Published on

4/6/11, 2:46 PM

India Standard Time

Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance

I found the book Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance by Robert Pirsig online. Here it is http://design.caltech.edu/Misc/pirsig.html.

Quotes from the book: 

"I try always to pick a book far over his (author's son) head and read it as a basis for questions and answers, rather than without interruption. I read a sentence or two, wait for him to come up with his usual barrage of questions, answer them, then read another sentence or two. 

Classics read well this way. They must be written this way. Sometimes we have spent a whole evening reading and talking and discovered we have only covered two or three pages. It’s a form of reading done a century ago—when Chautauquas were popular. Unless you’ve tried it you can’t imagine how pleasant it is to do it this way." Wow. What an amazing way to read.

Published on

12/6/11, 10:22 PM

India Standard Time

Games People Play

Quotes from this book (without permission)

1. "'If you are not stroked, your spinal cord will shrivel up.' Hence, after the period of close intimacy with the mother is over, the individual for the rest of his life is confronted with a dilemma upon whose horns his destiny and survival are continually being tossed. One born is the social, psychological and biological forces which stand in the way of continued physical intimacy in the infant style; the other is his perpetual striving for its attainment. Under most conditions he will compromise. He learns to do with more subtle, even symbolic, forms of handling, until the merest nod of recognition may serve the purpose to some extent, although his original craving for physical contact may remain unabated. This process of compromise may be called by various terms, such as sublimation; but whatever it is called, the result is a partial transformation of the infantile stimulus-hunger into something which may be termed recognition-hunger. As the complexities of compromise increase, each person becomes more and more individual in his quest for recognition, and it is these differentia which lend variety to social intercourse and which determine the individual's destiny. A movie actor may require hundreds of strokes each week from anonymous and undifferentiated admirers to keep his spinal cord from shriveling, while a scientist may keep physically and mentally healthy on one stroke a year from a respected master." WOWOWOW
2. "When one is a member of a social aggregation of two or more people, there are several options for structuring time. In order of complexity, these are: (1) Rituals (2) Pastimes (3) Games (4) Intimacy and (5) Activity, which may form a matrix for any of the others. The goal of each member of the aggregation is to obtain as many satisfactions as possible from his transactions with other members. The more accessible he is, the more satisfactions he can obtain. Most of the programming of his social operations is automatic. Since some of the 'satisfactions' obtained under this programming, such as self-destructive ones, are difficult to recognize in the usual sense of the word "satisfactions," it would be better to substitute some more non-committal terra, such as 'gains' or 'advantages.'"
3.  "Actually the Child is in many ways the most valuable part of the personality, and can contribute to the individual's life exactly what an actual child can contribute to family life: charm, pleasure and creativity. If the Child in the individual is confused and unhealthy, then the consequences may be unfortunate, but something can and should be done about it." 
4. "In the Child reside intuition, creativity and spontaneous drive and enjoyment. The Adult is necessary for survival. It processes data and computes the probabilities which are essential for dealing effectively with the outside world. It also experiences its own kinds of setbacks and gratifications. Crossing a busy highway, for example, requires the processing of a complex series of velocity data; action is suspended until the computations indicate a high degree of probability for reaching the other side safely. The gratifications offered by successful computations of this type afford some of the joys of skiing, flying, sailing, and other mobile sports. Another task of the Adult is to regulate the activities of the Parent and the Child, and to mediate objectively between them. The Parent has two main functions. First, it enables the individual to act effectively as the parent of actual children, thus promoting the survival of the human race. Its value in this respect is shown by the fact that in raising children, people orphaned in infancy seem to have a harder time than those from homes unbroken into adolescence. Secondly, it makes many responses automatic, which conserves a great deal of time and energy. Many things are done because "That's the way it's done." This frees the Adult from the necessity of making innumerable trivial decisions, so that it can devote itself to more important issues, leaving routine matters to the Parent."
5. "Besides structuring time and providing mutually acceptable stroking for the parties concerned, pastimes serve the additional function of being social-selection processes. While a pastime is in progress, the Child in each player is watchfully assessing the potentialities of the others involved. At the end of the party, each person will have selected certain players he would like to see more of, while others he will discard, regardless of how skillfully or pleasantly they each engaged in the pastime. The ones he selects are those who seem the most likely candidates for more complex relationships—that is, games. This sorting system, however well rationalized, is actually largely unconscious and intuitive." 
6. "A good hostess, of course, takes the situation in hand immediately and states the program: "We were just playing Projective 'PTA.' What do you think' Or: "Come now, you girls have been playing 'Wardrobe' long enough. Mr. J. here is a writer/politician/surgeon, and I'm sure he'd like to play 'Look Ma No Hands.' Wouldn't you, Mr. F?"
7. "Positions are taken and become fixed surprisingly early, from the second or even the first year to the seventh year of life—in any case long before the individual is competent or experienced enough to make such a serious commitment. It is not difficult to deduce from an individual's position the kind of childhood he must have had. Unless something or somebody intervenes, he spends the rest of his life stabilizing his position and dealing with situations that threaten it: by avoiding them, warding other certain elements or manipulating them provocatively so that they are transformed from threats into justifications. One reason pastimes are so stereotyped is that they serve such stereotyped purposes. But the gains they offer show why people play them so eagerly, and why they can be so pleasant if played with people who have constructive or benevolent positions to maintain." WOWOWOW
8. "A GAME is an ongoing series of complementary ulterior transactions progressing to a well-defined, predictable outcome. Descriptively it is a recurring set of transactions, often repetitious, superficially plausible, with a concealed motivation; or, more colloquially, a series of moves with a snare, or "gimmick." Games are clearly differentiated from procedures, rituals, and pastimes by two chief characteristics: (I) their ulterior quality and (2) the payoff. Procedures may be successful, rituals effective, and pastimes profitable, but all of them are by definition candid; they may involve contest, but not conflict, and the ending may be sensational, but it is not dramatic. Every game, on the other hand, is basically."
9. "An operation is a simple transaction or set of transactions undertaken for a specific, stated purpose. If someone frankly asks for reassurance and gets it, that is an operation. If someone asks for reassurance, and after it is given turns it in some way to the disadvantage of the giver, that is a game. Superficially, then, a game looks like a set of operations, but after the payoff it becomes apparent that these operations were really maneuvers; not honest requests but moves in the game."
10. "Hence at a social gathering, while a salesman is engaged in pastimes, particularly variants of "Balance Sheet," his congenial participation may conceal a series of skillful maneuvers designed to elicit the kind of information he is professionally interested in. There are dozens of trade journals devoted to improving commercial maneuvers, and which give accounts of outstanding players and games (interesting operators who make unusually big deals). Transactionally speaking, these are merely variants of Sports Illustrated, Chess World, and other sports magazines."
11. "As far as angular transactions are concerned—games which are consciously planned with professional precision under Adult control to yield the maximum gains—the big "con games" which flourished in the early 1900's are hard to surpass for detailed practical planning and psychological virtuosity. What we are concerned with here, however, are the unconscious games played by innocent people engaged in duplex transactions of which they are not fully aware, and which form the most important aspect of social life all over the world." 
12. "She and her husband had little in common besides their household worries and the children, so that their quarrels stood out as important events; it was mainly on these occasions that they had anything but the most casual conversations. At any rate, her married life had proved one thing to her that she had always maintained: that ail men were mean and tyrannical. As it turned out, this attitude was related to some daydreams of being sexually abused which had plagued her in earlier years."
13. "Transactional analysis is a branch of social psychiatry, and game analysis is a special aspect of transactional analysis."
14. "The antithesis to IWFY (If It Weren't For You) is permissiveness. As long as the husband is prohibitive, the game can proceed. If instead of saying "Don't you dare!" he says "Go ahead!" the underlying phobias are unmasked, and the wife can no longer turn on him."
15. "Child rearing may be regarded as an educational process in which the child is taught what games to play and how to play them. He is also taught procedures, rituals and pastimes appropriate to his position in the local social situation, but these are less significant. His knowledge of and skill in procedures, rituals and pastimes determine what opportunities will be available to him, other things being equal; but his games determine the use he will make of those opportunities, and the outcomes of situations for which he is eligible. As elements of his script, or unconscious life-plan, his favored games also determine his ultimate destiny (again with other things being equal): the payoffs on his marriage and career, and the circumstances surrounding his death. While conscientious parents devote a great deal of attention to teaching their children procedures, rituals and pastimes appropriate to their stations in life, and with equal care select schools, colleges and churches where their teachings will be reinforced, they tend to overlook the question of games, which form the basic structure for the emotional dynamics of each family, and which the children learn through significant experiences in everyday living from their earliest months." WOWOWOW
16. "If the Child ego state can be revived in the grown-up player, the psychological aptitude of this segment (the Adult aspect of the Child ego state) is so striking, and its skill in manipulating people so enviable, that it is colloquially called "The Professor" (of Psychiatry). Hence in psychotherapy groups which concentrate on game analysis, one of the more sophisticated procedures is the search for the little "Professor" in each patient, whose early adventures in setting up games between the ages of two and eight are listened to by everyone present with fascination and often, unless the games are tragic, with enjoyment and even hilarity, in which the patient himself may join with justifiable self-appreciation and smugness. Once he is able to do that, he is well on his way to relinquishing what may be an unfortunate behavior pattern which he is much better off without."
17. "Because there is so little opportunity for intimacy in daily life, and because some forms of intimacy (especially if intense) are psychologically impossible for most people, the bulk of the time in serious social life is taken up with playing games."
18. "Beyond their social function in structuring time satisfactorily, some games are urgently necessary for the maintenance of health in certain individuals. These people's psychic stability is so precarious, and their positions are so tenuously maintained, that to deprive them of their games may plunge them into irreversible despair and even psychosis. Such people will fight very hard against any antithetical moves. This is often observed in marital situations when the psychiatric improvement of one spouse (i-e., the abandonment of destructive games) leads to rapid deterioration in the other spouse, to whom the games were of paramount importance in maintaining equilibrium."
19. "On a larger scale, games are integral and dynamic components of the unconscious life-plan, or script, of each individual; they serve to fill in the time while he waits for the final fulfillment, simultaneously advancing the action. Since the last act of a script characteristically calls for either a miracle or a catastrophe, depending on whether the script is constructive or destructive, the corresponding games ate accordingly either constructive or destructive. In colloquial terms, an individual whose script is oriented toward "waiting for Santa Claus" is likely to be pleasant to deal with in such games as "Gee You're Wonderful, Mr. Murgatroyd," while someone with a tragic script oriented toward "waiting for rigor mortis to set in" may play such disagreeable games as 'Now I've Got You, You Son of a Bitch.'"
20. "These three variables [Flexibility, tenacity, intensity] converge to make games gentle or violent. In mentally disturbed people, there is often a noticeable progression in this respect, so that one can speak of stages. A paranoid schizophrenic may initially play a flexible, loose, easy game of first-stage "Ain't It Awful" and progress to an inflexible, tenacious, hard third stage. The stages in a game are distinguished as follows: (a) A First-Degree Game is one which is socially acceptable in the agent's circle. (b) A Second-Degree Game is one from which no permanent, irremediable damage arises, but which the players would rather conceal from the public. (c) A Third-Degree Game is one which is played for keeps, and which ends in the surgery, the courtroom or the morgue."
21. "People who play destructive games will come to the therapist far more frequently than people who play constructive ones. Therefore most of the games which are well understood are basically the destructive games."
22. "The transactions! object of the drinking, aside from the personal pleasures it brings, is to set up a situation where the Child can be severely scolded not only by the internal Parent but by any parental figures in the environment who are interested enough to oblige. Hence the therapy of this game should be concentrated not on the drinking but on the morning after, the self-indulgence in self-castigation. There is a type of heavy drinker, however, who does not have hangovers, and such people do not belong in the present category."
23. "An everyday form of "Corner" which is played by the whole family and is most likely to affect the character development of the younger children occurs with meddlesome "Parental" parents. The little boy or girl is urged to be more helpful around the house, but when he is, the parents find fault with what he does—a homely example of "damned if you do and damned if you don't." This "double-bind" may be called the Dilemma Type of 'Corner.'"
24. "Look How Hard I Tried: Third Degree: Even more sinister and spiteful is the sudden unheralded suicide because of serious illness. The ulcer progresses to cancer, and one day the wife, who has never been informed that anything serious is amiss, walks into' the bathroom and finds her husband lying there dead. The note says clearly enough, 'Look How Hard I Was Trying.' If something like this happens twice to the same woman, it is time for her to find out what she has been playing."
25. "Sweatheart: This is seen in its fullest flower in the early stages of marital group therapy, when the parties feel defensive; it can also be observed on social occasions. White makes a subtly derogatory remark about Mrs. White, disguised as an anecdote, and ends: "Isn't that right, sweetheart?" Mrs. White tends to agree for two ostensibly Adult reasons: (a) because the anecdote itself is, in the main, accurately reported, and to disagree about what is presented as a peripheral detail (but is really the essential point of the transaction) would seem pedantic; (b) because it would seem surly to disagree with a man who calls one "sweetheart" in public. The psychological reason for her agreement, however, is her depressive position. She married him precisely because she knew he would perform this service for her: exposing her deficiencies and thus saving her from the embarrassment of having to expose them herself. Her parents accommodated her the same way when she was little...In another antithetic form the wife, instead of agreeing, responds with a similar 'Sweetheart' type anecdote about the husband, saying in effect, 'You have a dirty face too, dear.' Sometimes the endearments are not actually pronounced, but a careful listener can hear them even when they are unspoken. This is 'Sweetheart' Silent Type."
26. "Thus a man who had held some responsible positions in the foreign service of his country told an audience that another country was inferior because, among other things, the men wore jackets with sleeves that were too long. In his Adult ego state this man was quite competent. Only when playing a Parental game like "Blemish" would he mention such irrelevancies."
27. "Schlemiel: White destroys something of Black's and is forgiven by Black. As in most games, White, who makes the first move, wins either way. If Black shows his anger, White can feel justified in returning the resentment. If Black restrains himself, White can go on enjoying his opportunities. The real payoff in this game, however, is not the pleasure of destructiveness, which is merely an added bonus for White, but the fact that he obtains forgiveness... 
28. Anti-"Schlemiel" is played by not offering the demanded absolution. After White says, "I'm sorry," Black, instead of muttering "It's okay," says, "Tonight you can embarrass my wife, ruin the furniture and wreck the rug, but please don't say Tm sorry.'" Here Black switches from being a Forgiving Parent to being an objective Adult who takes the full responsibility for having invited White in the first place. The intensity of White's game will be revealed by his reaction, which may be quite explosive. One who plays anti-"Schlemiel" runs the risk of immediate reprisals or, at any rate, of making an enemy." WOWOWOW. "Children play "Schlemiel" in an abortive form in which they are not always sure of forgiveness but at least have the pleasure of making messes; as they learn to comport themselves socially, however, they may take advantage of their increasing sophistication to obtain the forgiveness which is the chief goal of the game as played in polite, grown-up social circles."
29. "Third-Degree "Rapo" is a vicious game which ends in murder, suicide or the courtroom. Here White leads Black into compromising physical contact and then claims that he has made a criminal assault or has done her irreparable damage. In its most cynical form White may actually allow him to complete the sexual act so that she gets that enjoyment before confronting him. The confrontation may be immediate, as in the illegitimate cry of rape, or it may be long delayed, as in suicide or homicide following a prolonged love affair. If she chooses to play it as a criminal assault, she may have no difficulty in finding mercenary or morbidly interested allies, such as the press, the police, counselors and relatives..."Badger Game," in which the woman seduces Black and then cries rape, at which point her husband takes charge and abuses Black for purposes of blackmail."
30. "The Stocking Game: This is a game of the "Rapo" family; in it the most obvious characteristic is the exhibitionism, which is hysterical in nature. A woman comes into a strange group and after a very short time raises her leg, exposing herself in a provocative way, and remarks, "Oh my, I have a run in my stocking." This is calculated to arouse the men sexually and to make the other women angry. Any confrontation of White is met, of course, with protestations of innocence or counter-accusations, hence the resemblance to classical "Rapo." What is significant is White's lack of adaptation. She seldom waits to find out what kind of people she is dealing with or how to time her maneuver. Hence it stands out as inappropriate and affects her relationships with her associates. In spite of some superficial "sophistication," she fails to understand what happens to her in life because her judgment of human nature is too cynical. The aim is to prove that other people have lascivious minds, and her Adult is conned by her Child and her Parent (usually a lascivious mother) into ignoring both her own provocative-ness and the good sense of many of the people she meets. Thus the game tends to be self-destructive. This is probably a phallic variant of a game whose content depends on the underlying disturbance. An "oral" variant may be exhibited by women with deeper pathology and well-developed breasts. Such women often sit with their hands behind their heads so as to thrust their breasts forward; they may draw additional attention to them by remarking about their size or some pathology such as an operation or a lump. Some types of squirming probably constitute an anal variant. The implication of this game is that the woman is sexually available. Thus it may be played in a more symbolic form by bereaved women who "exhibit" their widowhood insincerely. Antithesis. Along with the poor adaptation, these women show little tolerance for antithesis. If the game is ignored or countered by a sophisticated therapy group, for example, they may not return. Antithesis must be carefully distinguished in this game from reprisal, since the latter signifies that White has won. Women are more skillful at counter-moves in "Stocking Game" than men, who indeed have little incentive to break up this game. Antithesis, therefore, is best left to the discretion of the other women present."
31. "Cops And Robbers (C-R): Some burglars do their jobs without any waste motion. The "Cops and Robbers" burglar leaves his calling card in gratuitous acts of vandalism, such as spoiling valuable clothing with secretions and excretions. The straight bank robber, according to reports, takes every possible precaution to avoid violence; the C-R bank robber is only looking for an excuse to vent his anger. Like any professional, a straight criminal likes his jobs to be as clean as circumstances permit. The C-R criminal is compelled to blow off steam in the course of his work. The true professional is said never to operate until the fix is in; the player is willing to take on the law barehanded. Straight professionals are well aware, in their own way, of the game of C-R. If a gang member shows too much interest in the game, to the point of jeopardizing the job, and particularly if his need to be caught begins to show, they will take drastic measures to prevent a recurrence. Perhaps it is just because straight professionals are not playing C-R that they are so seldom caught, and hence so rarely studied sociologically, psychologically and psychiatrically; and this also applies to gamblers. Hence most of our clinical knowledge about criminals and gamblers refers to players rather than to straight professionals."

Additional reading:

1. http://www.cruxcatalyst.com/2012/10/19/know-thyself-understanding-ego-states/: Nice 10 minute video in  the link. 
2. Drama triangle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpEx6zjQfTY
3. Nice one on Gimmicks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58F2qYyAzME

Published on

7/13/15, 2:15 PM

India Standard Time

Brain And Psychology - Happiness, Sleep, Conditioning, Memory And Intelligence

Body Language: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/3MaJo0/:1DeP.Rmr@:Mz.hzh1Y/www.cracked.com/photoplasty_996_24-scientific-ways-to-influence-people-without-saying-word

This post has mostly quotes along with the sources.

http://www.brainline.org/multimedia/interactive_brain/the_human_brain.html?gclid=CIuu9Y-Foq8CFSsHRQodrhDEZw

Psychology

1. http://www.intropsych.com/ch01_psychology_and_science/specialities_within_psychology.html: Quote: "Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own special world to bring them up in, and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select-doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and yes, beggerman and thief." - Hmm, I don't seem to be able to agree with this? Read this: http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2016/04/creativity-and-precociousness.html
2. Read about Critical thinking and "Avoid jumping to conclusions"
3. Scientific models: 
4. Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence: http://www.intropsych.com/ch01_psychology_and_science/quack_science_syndrome.html
5. Quack watch: - this is not about duck brand of watches
1. http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/quackdef.html
2. http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/quacksell.html
3. www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/spotquack.html
4. Warning signs: 
5. Signs of a quack device: 
6. Spotting bandits: 
6. Correlation: - Quote from article "For purposes of making a prediction, the underlying reason for a correlation may not matter. As long as the correlation is stable -lasting into the future-one can use it to make predictions. One does not need an accurate cause-effect explanation to make a prediction."
7. How can differences between groups be valuable? - Quote from this article: "Sometimes differences between groups of people are interesting in themselves. Researchers who study abnormal psychology find it significant when a mental disorder occurs in only one culture, not others. This suggests that the disorder may involve a belief system or genetic or environmental condition peculiar to that culture. On the other hand, if a mental disorder (like schizophrenia or depression) occurs in every culture, that suggests it is due to genes or conditions common to all humans."
8. Open and closed questionnaires  - Quote from article: 
2. "Researchers distinguish between open and closed questionnaires (Schwarz, 1999). Closed questionnaires require a respondent to pick from a list of items. Open questionnaires ask people to come up with the items themselves. The two procedures produce dramatically different results. One study found that 61.5% of a sample endorsed "To think for themselves" as "the most important thing for children to prepare them for life," as long as that was one of the choices. If people were asked to come up with their own list, they mentioned it only 4.6% of the time." 
3. Type of scale used: "People may make different responses to a poll or survey depending upon the scale that is used. Schwarz (1999) gives the following example: What are some examples of how scales can influence results? When asked how successful they had been in life, 34% of a representative sample reported high success when the numeric value of the rating scale ranged from -5 to 5, whereas only 13% did so when the numeric values ranged from 0 to 10."
4. Wording of questions: 
5. Bias: Quote from this link - "Demand characteristics can involve any information that biases a person's response to research. Once a 14 year old student wrote to me asking for help with a science fair project. She wanted to test the ability of fellow students to detect and discriminate odors. I suggested that she explore the effects of demand characteristics by having people sit down in front of a table with fragrant objects like fruit and perfume bottles, then (after they put on a blindfold) asking them to identify completely different things that were not on the table. The student wrote back a month later and said the experiment produced interesting results. People's answers depended more on what they saw on the table before the experiment than on what they actually sniffed during the experiment, even though the student said nothing to them about the objects on the table."
6. Double blind design: 
9. Brain, Memory, Intelligence:
1. Intuition and analytical intelligence: Beautiful description (MBTI type)
2. Left and right hemispheres (read about the woman and me / it: . Apparently reading maps and emotions are both part of the right hemisphere. 
3. Types of intelligence: - Wonder why sculpture is classified under spatial intelligence instead of under Bodily-kinesthetic. Quote from this page: "major categories of intelligence that can be subdivided further. For example, a person who is good at one type of math might be poor at another. One might be a great essayist but a lousy poet, although both involve linguistic intelligence"
4. Unconscious thought process: 
5. Apparently Learning typically begins with the unconscious - this is exactly what I figured - meaning what we know best is what we learned unconsciously.
6. Linear and intuitive thinking: - Quote: "Analytic thinking characteristically proceeds a step at a time. Steps are explicit and usually can be accurately reported... Such thinking proceeds with relatively full awareness of the information and operations involved. It may involve careful and deductive reasoning, often using mathematics or logic and an explicit plan of attack. Or it may involve a step-by-step process of induction and experiment... Intuitive thinking characteristically does not advance in careful, well-planned steps. Indeed, it tends to involve maneuvers based seemingly on an implicit perception of the total problem. The thinker arrives at an answer, which may be right or wrong, with little if any awareness of the process by which he reached it." - again this seems to be in sync with my belief that F and N (as in MBTI) are kinda similar.
10. Sleep
1. REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep and Non Rem Sleep: Quote - "The weird stories are almost always REM dreams; the fragments of normal thought are almost always non-REM dreams. Non-REM dreams, by contrast, feel like ordinary thinking."
2. Dream recallers and non-recallers: Quote: "Research has confirmed that everybody dreams, usually four or five times a night. People who say they "never dream" actually have as many dreams as other people. They simply wake up more slowly and lose touch with the mental activity occurring during sleep."
3. Inaccurate reporting of insomnia: Quote: "A woman with a 25-year history of insomnia...entered [a sleep] laboratory. In four successive nights, "she fell asleep quickly, slept more than eight hours per night, and had normal architecture of sleep stages."..."Each morning, however, she reported that she 'didn't sleep a wink.' Patients consistently exaggerate their insomnia...[Webb] describes pseudo-insomnia (false insomnia) as a complaint of "no sleep" which turns out to be frequent awakenings in an otherwise-normal succession of sleep stages. During each awakening the individual evidently thinks, "I'm still awake; I haven't slept a wink," but such people average about six hours of genuine sleep per night in between their awakenings."
11. Conditioning
1. Hypnosis: Quote: "During hypnosis, a person is hypersuggestible or easily influenced. The hypnotized person is focused on the instructions given by another person. Hypnosis can sometimes enhance memory for long-forgotten events. However, hypnotized people are notorious for fabricating false memories that they later believe to be true."
2. D prime: Signal and noise estimation: Here and here
3. Classical conditioning: - Quote: "Different labels are used to describe the two modes: serial vs. parallel processing, intellectual vs. emotional processing, head vs. heart, analytic vs. intuitive thought, conscious vs. unconscious thought, and so forth. Classical conditioning comes down squarely on the "parallel, emotional, heart, intuitive, unconscious" side. The effects of classical conditioning are automatic. They tend to involve emotional processes rather than intellectual processes. They are involuntary rather than a result of will power.  This distinction proves to be important when discussing the applications of classical conditioning to psychotherapy. Almost by definition, people requesting therapy are facing an unpleasant emotional reaction they cannot control simply by wishing it away or exercising conscious effort. That is why they seek help. In almost every case, the unpleasant emotional reaction can be analyzed as a case of classical conditioning." The set of adjectives within quotes is exceedingly interesting (refer to MBTI). F, N heart all go together!!
4. Pavlov's dog - Reflex: Quote: "Pavlov's dog and Watson's fingertip illustrate the basic pattern found in all classical conditioning. An organism learns that a signal predicts the activation of a reflex. After learning this, the organism reacts to the signal with an anticipatory response similar to the reflex response."
5. Classic vs operant conditioning: - Quote: "If the reflex is activated by a signal, then one is talking about classical conditioning. If the animal is engaging in something like exploratory or strategic activity followed by payoff or a punishment, then one is talking about operant conditioning."
6. Human problems:  Quotes: "The list of possible human problems is never ending. Most can be defined in behavioral terms. In other words, most problems can be described in terms of some observable, measurable activity (behavior) that must be made either more frequent or less frequent. That is the essence of the behavioral approach: problems are defined as behaviors that can be made more frequent or less frequent, and the therapy consists of applying conditioning techniques to make the desired changes."
7. Shaping: Teaching a dog to catch a frisbee: 
8. Stopping a child from headbanging by electrical shock
12. Memory and intelligence (Shall we call it Part 2?): 
1. Poorly constructed MCQ
2. Memory as a construction
3. Various stages of storage
4. Memory storage and retrieval efficiency: "Human memory seems to work better, not worse, when a person adds elaborate encoding schemes, as long as they provide organization to aid memory retrieval."
5. Kinds of secondary memory
6. Declarative or procedural memory
7. Analytics vs holistic thinking: Excellent page. Quote - "Intelligence is paying careful skilled attention to the analysis of relations... Intelligence is an attentional/processing skill used in analyzing and mentally reconstructing relations. The distinguishing feature of this skill is breaking complex relations (or problems) into small steps that can be dealt with fully. The major components of the skill are extensive search and careful apprehension of all details relevant to the relation; thorough utilization of all available information including prior knowledge; accurate comparisons; and sequential, step-by-step analysis and construction.... Holistic people often excel in social situations requiring sensitivity, intuition and tact. Their ability to get a general feeling about a situation may open their minds to subtle nuances of complex situations. Using computer jargon, a holistic person might be regarded as a parallel processor. That would be the case if a correct response evolves out of widespread simultaneous activity instead of resulting from a controlled, step by step process." In effect, this is the difference between NF and T (as in MBTI). Note that I am not mentioning "NT". This is because N is not neutral to F and T. N goes more with F. NT is not a type of T as MBTI would have us believe. 
8. Effective and ineffective problem solvers
9. Learning to learn
10. Adaptive intelligence
13. What reinforcements work? Read this and this.  
14. Phobias as prepared learning: Read this and this. Excellent. Quote - "Animals commonly have built-in circuits to trigger avoidance of stimuli indicating danger. For example, a Central American bird called the motmot preys on snakes, but it must avoid the poisonous coral snake. Coral snakes have a distinctive color pattern consisting of red, yellow and black rings, so motmots are born with a fear of this pattern. Smith (1975) reared some motmots by hand, to insure they never saw a coral snake. She then exposed them to a series of models-wooden tubes painted rings or stripes of various colors. She reported: 'The motmots had no hesitation in pecking at plain red, yellow, green, blue or unpainted wooden models. However, the bird's initial reaction to the solid yellow and red ring model was one of avoidance: all flew up to the opposite corner of the cage and in many cases gave alarm notes.'" Read this also. 
15. Mating behavior: Quote - "Social status often has a direct impact on reproductive success. Less dominant animals may be excluded from mating entirely. "Tournaments" are common in many species. The winners get the healthiest, highest ranking mates. That does not prevent lower status animals from trying to reproduce, but they may not be successful. In animals as in humans, it is common for lower status males to "aim too high" and be rejected by desirable females. What happens if a low-status ram is sent, alone, into a flock of ewes? ...In New Zealand,...researchers have reversed the apparent infertility of some rams by including them in a group of other rams sent into a flock of ewes, instead of sending them into the flock by themselves, as is current practice. Apparently, a class structure is strong among sheep, and mating is related to dominance. A dominant ram mates best with a dominant ewe, a less dominant ram with a less dominant ewe, and so on, down to the least dominant sheep. However, when a lone ram is released among a flock of ewes , he will invariably attempt to mate with the ewe that is most obviously at the height of estrus. But she will probably reject him if he is not at the right dominance level"
16. Evolutionary psychology: Very interesting article here and here.
17. Animal consciousnesses: - Animals do not know words and do not think. They live in the moment. Animals seem to be P's. Does evolution cause P's to become J's. Apart from human beings (and ants as in the Ant and Grasshopper story?) J behavior is not prevalent among living species.
18. Animal information processing:
19. Intelligence of bees: The speed, the direction of their dance give indications about location, quantity of food.
20. Intelligence in chimpanzees: 
21. Happiness: Quote - "Perhaps such social variables as lack of respect and lack of trusted friends make [more unhappiness] than poverty." 
22. Entrepreneurs and success: Quote - "there is a subtle and possibly important difference between (1) seeking life activities which "play to your strengths," which is certainly natural if people want to feel competent, and (2) the enjoyment of mastering new skills described above as typical of successful entrepreneurs. These are not the same thing. If you merely seek situations that make you feel competent, you are likely to exercise old skills, and you are unlikely to advance. The people who succeeded as entrepreneurs were those who sought competency in new skills." WOWOWOW
23. Different kinds of patterns we may excel at
24. Cognitive dissonance (the link http://www.intropsych.com/ch09_motivation/festingers_theory_of_cognitive_dissonance.htm is not working as on 13th Dec 2015)): Quote - "Ben Franklin gave some peculiar advice that makes sense in the context of cognitive dissonance theory. Franklin said if you want someone to like you, get that person to do you a favor. This works because, once the person has put out time and energy to help you, the person must develop an attitude consistent with the behavior. So, to avoid dissonance, the person likes you... If you want to dislike someone, do them wrong. There is perhaps no surer way of infecting ourselves with virulent hatred toward a person than by doing him a grave injustice. Hoffer pointed out that, after the Nazis had started persecuting the Jews, it became easier for the average German citizen to hate the Jews. As a rule, cognitive dissonance theory predicts that attitudes and behaviors will remain "in sync." If you change your attitudes, then presumably your behavior will change. More surprisingly, if you change a person's behavior, the person will often change attitudes to match the behavior."
25. Motivation: Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, Sour grapes and forbidden fruit and Reverse psychology 
26. Maslow's Self actualizers: The definition is very interesting. Quote from here: "Maslow concluded: These moments (happiest, ecstatic moments of rapture) were of pure, positive happiness when all doubts, all fears, all inhibitions, all tensions, all weaknesses were left behind". This apparently was written in 1968. And it is uncannily similar to what John Galt says to Dagny Taggart as he is carrying her after she crash lands her plane into his gulch in Atlas Shrugged. "Can you bring about these experiences at will? No! Or almost entirely no! In general we are "Surprised by Joy"... Peaks come unexpectedly, suddenly they happen to us. You can't count on them. And hunting them is a little like hunting happiness. It's best not done directly. It comes as a by-product...for instance, of doing a fine job at a worthy task with which you identify."
27. Emotions
1. Emotion theory: Quote - "Emotions are not always subject to intellectual control. This is one reason psychotherapy often involves getting rid of bad emotional responses—something a person cannot necessarily do using willpower alone."
2. Where do emotions arise? Quote - "A 'weak' theory does not claim anything very controversial, while a 'strong' theory may claim a lot but is less likely to be true. Emotions arise in the brain. Emotion is not a response to changes in the body [as was originally supposed by James-Lange]."
3. Ekman's Facial Expressions
4. Tears and crying
5. Is stress always a result of negative emotions?
6. Left and right hemispheric differences in emotion: Left causes euphoria, right causes guilt, despair etc apparently. Quote - "In the bipolar disorder ("manic-depression") the system oscillates wildly between the two extremes... A person with a healthy, well-adjusted emotional life experiences the appropriate emotional response in situations of danger or situations of opportunity." from here.
7. Amgdyla in the brain is the place where emotions are centered.
28. Genes
1. Genes vs heridity: Quote - "What would have happened if Wayne Gretzky had grown up in Mexico instead of Canada? He might have been a very good athlete, but probably he would not have been a hockey player. What if Gretzky had grown up in Canada but under conditions of extreme poverty, so his caretakers could not afford to enroll him in the junior hockey league? What if another hockey player was already called The Great One and Gretzky was called Number Two? Such environmental factors might have altered the outcome of his career. Genes are important, but they do not determine what we become, they only provide a potential." This is interesting from the point of view of fatalism.
2. Heritability index: Quote - "Other things being equal, identical twins are strikingly more likely to make similar life choices or experience similar life events. The distinction between dizygotic (coming from 2 eggs) and monozygotic (identical, coming from single egg) twins is used to calculate a measure of "genetic influence" called a heritability index. The heritability index is the amount of statistical variability (in test scores or other measurements) accounted for by genes... In other words, the heritability index tells you how well you could predict a measurement obtained from one identical twin, given a measurement of the same varable obtained from the other twin. What does the heritability index tell us? The heritability index is what people are usually referring to when they make statements such as, "the genetic component of homosexuality is somewhere between 30% and 70%." The component referred to here is a statistical concept. It is like saying, 'the expected error in your prediction of sexual orientation is reduced by 30-70%, if you know the sexual orientation of the identical twin.'... High heritability indexes do not demonstrate that a behavior is "coded in the genes. A high heritability index merely indicates that, for the variable being measured, identical twins are much more similar than fraternal twins."
3. Odor: Quote - "Possibly the earliest and most primitive form of communication between mother and infant is based on odor. Michael Russell of the University of California did a series of studies that showed that babies only a month and a half old could distinguish the odor of breast pads worn by their mothers from those worn by nursing strangers. Porter also showed in follow-up research that 16 of 20 mothers were able to distinguish the odor of clothing worn by their own children from that of other children. "
4. Sound perception while still in the womb - this is amazingly similar to the story of Ashtakavakra
5. Infant information processing: 
6. Securely attached and anxiously attached infants
7. Shyness: Apparently this trait sticks to a person from toddlerhood. Quote - "Kagan and colleagues noted that most of their shy subjects were younger children in multi-child families, while many of the outgoing children were older children. The researchers speculated that older children might contribute to shyness in their younger brothers or sisters through such domineering tactics as grabbing away toys when the younger children were still vulnerable toddlers. However, Kagan and other researchers at Harvard were also aware of the emerging evidence relating the amygdala to emotional regulation. Kagan and Snidman proposed a theory of shyness that blamed it on an overactive amygdala. Obviously the two types of influence-biological and environmental-are intertwined. Biology affects learning, and vice versa. A child with an overactive amygdala might be more likely to develop learned avoidance behaviors, resulting in a shy child."
8. Socialization and sex roles
9. Parenting styles
10. Sensory-motor period: Quote - "Infants act as though a hidden object ceases to exist. To very young children—younger than about 6 months—"out of sight" is not only "out of mind" but also "out of existence." If a toy eagerly pursued by a 4 month old slips under a blanket, it is no longer pursued...even if it makes an obvious bump."
11. Pre-operational stage (18 months to 5 years): "Egocentric means self-centered or unable to take the viewpoint of someone else. If you face a child of three and ask the child to "raise the same hand I am raising" (then raise your right hand) the child will raise the left hand. Why? Evidently the child fails to reverse positions or take your place mentally. This changes a year or two later, when children start to realize other people can have a different perspective. Children of preschool age show the egocentric perspective in social behavior, as well... Little children will pester adults even after being told that the parent needs some time to concentrate on an important task like studying. The small child is not trying to be selfish; he or she simply fails to appreciate the mental perspective of the other person."
12. Piaget's experiments on children: Read about the Plowden report that talks about primary schooling, a report that was the result of Piaget's work.
13. Appearance and reality differences (3 and 6 year olds) - Read the book Cognitive Development by John Flavell
14. Summary of childhood
15. American teenagers
16. Persistence of personality: Quote - "William James wrote in 1887, "In most of us, by the age of 30, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again." Like most easy generalizations in psychology, this poses a challenge to researchers. Some would like to show that James is wrong: personality can change during adulthood. But research into personality change in adulthood largely supports James's conclusion."... "Jack Block, of the University of California at Berkeley, is known for the longest and most thorough study of personality change in adulthood. Block's sample was first studied when they were teenagers, again in their mid-30s, and again their mid-40s. Block used multiple, independent judges to assess personality. He took special care to prevent bias, concealing the identity of the subjects each time. Even so, the match between early and later personality assessments was striking...The most self-defeating adolescents were the most self-defeating adults; cheerful teenagers were cheerful 40-year-olds; those whose moods fluctuated when they were in junior high school were still experiencing mood swings in midlife." WOWOWOW While the link indicates a good amount of stability, especially in shyness and extraversion and introversion, till old age - it implies by absence that not everything remains same with age. I wonder what changes.
17. Age related changes in intelligence: Very interesting
18. Death: Quote - "death is total and irreversible cessation of brain function." - Half the world's living population of men and women would have to be considered dead as per this definition. Huh.
29. Suicide and Death
1. Suicide: Quotes: "Suicide appears to result from individual psychological factors more than family problems. The best predictor of suicide is a history of previous suicide attempts. Suicide has a moderate tendency to run in families. "A person from a family of someone who attempts suicide has a higher risk of suicidality than someone from a family with no suicide attempts"
2. Death and dying by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
3. Near death experiences
4. Unexpected death of loved ones
30. Personality and Trait
1. Traits vs types
2. Convergence of 5 basic traits
3. Genetic influences on personality: Quote - "The Freedmans decided to make behavioral comparisons between infants of differing ethnic backgrounds. They figured that newborn infants were still too young to be influenced by culture, so behavioral differences would probably be due to genetic differences. They located pregnant women of European or Chinese ancestry in the San Francisco area. The two groups were matched on such variables as years spent in the United States, quality of prenatal care, and income level. The babies of these mothers were tested soon after birth. Sure enough, there were big differences in temperament. The American babies cried loudly when angry and were hard to calm. The Chinese babies stopped crying almost immediately when picked up. The American babies turned their heads vigorously if a cloth was placed on the nose. (The Freedmans pointed out this was listed in American pediatric textbooks as the "normal" response.) However, the Chinese babies merely breathed through their mouths when their noses were covered."
4. Bouchards twin research
5. Defense mechanisms
6. Antisocial personality
7. Autistm
8. Types of developmental disorders
9. Psychology and Law
10. Computer generated profiles
11. Petuxant - Behavior modification system in prisons - very interesting.
31. Social psychology:
1. Conformity: J Curve
2. Factors of persuasion
3. Sleeper effect
4. Brainwashing
5. Cognitive dissonance (CD): Quote: "The existence of dissonance, being psychologically uncomfortable, will motivate the person to try to reduce the dissonance and achieve consonance...One of its [CD] greatest assets is that it makes predictions that often contradict common sense. ". Isn't that great? Read also this.
6. Attribution and emotion: See this also: Quote - "In general, people tend to make an "external" attribution of their own behavior and an "internal" attribution of other people's behavior. Often there is no evidence to justify this type of attribution, but it is very common, so this cognitive bias is called the fundamental attribution error" - I am amazed.
7. Biasing effects in person perception: After reading all this I believe there is so much weight in advertising and in the power of the word - that has a terrible impact probably overriding the impact of original content. See also the next bullet point. Where does content stand with packaging having so much weight?
8. What is beautiful is good
9. Self fulfilling prophecy
10. Confirmation bias
11. Aggression: Quote - "In primate societies of all different types, status-seeking leads to aggression. Animals are aggressive to others in order to dominate them, ward of romantic rivals, and keep a high position in a group hierarchy"
12. Zimbardo's prison study: Quote - "The Zimbardo prison study, like the Milgram study, was valuable in showing how easily ordinary people could slip into a brutal and aggressive pattern of behavior, especially if it was approved by an authority." Amazing, this explains the behavior of common German during Nazi Germany's time.
13. Modeling behavior: Quote - "the same principle was operating with helpful behavior as with aggressive behavior. People notice the behavior of a model. If they see helpful behavior by another person, they are more likely to show helpful behavior themselves. Although the principle is simple, the implications are profound. Random acts of kindness might rub off on other people. Kindly behavior is imitated. If this occurs on a large scale, everybody can benefit."
32. Sexual development
1. Read this and this
2. Menstruation: Quote - "Menstruation may be delayed in girls who are thin and exercise vigorously."
3. Adult sexual arousal
4. Kiss: Quote - "Sex is not usually accompanied by kissing unless emotional intimacy is desired. Martha Stein observed 64 call girls from a hidden vantage point, recording the details of 1,230 sexual encounters. She found that kissing was involved in only 36% of the encounters and that most of a prostitute's customers (87%) were not interested in romance or intimacy. They wanted quick sex. Kissing, seduction, and sweet talk were not part of the picture."
5. Orgasm: Read this, this and also this 
6. Friendship
7. Ideal friend: Quote - " An ideal friend is sincere, honest, loyal, truthful, trustworthy, and dependable. A person with these characteristics is predictable in a good way: steadfast and true...that some men who consider themselves unlucky in love suffer from a mismatching syndrome. They target women who are far more attractive and socially desirable than themselves. Naturally, these men are often rejected. They may make despairing comments about their luck, but the problem seems to be a lack of realistic judgment about their own attractiveness. Typically, these men are rated as not very attractive, but—perhaps with their goals influenced by the beautiful people in ads and magazines—they will not consider dating a woman who is rated as unattractive as themselves." Rather unfortunate that the adjectives listed above have so much of overlap with each other. Maybe a smaller list like HONEST, LOYAL, dependable may have been better.
8. Infatuation: Quote - "People sometimes act as though they think intensity of love predicts durability. That is not the case. Research suggests that intensity of feeling is negatively correlated with long-term success of a relationship. One group of researchers administered a 'love scale" measuring degree of passion to college couples. They found "the subjects with the very highest scores at the outset were the ones whose relationships tended not to last'"
9. Six types of love: 
10. Sex and aggression: Very interesting anecdote about Jerry and Kim in this link.
11. Successful long term relationships:
12. The four horsemen: Contempt being the worst.
33. Characteristics of a Good Theory: 1. They predict, 2. are parsimonious 3. provide ideas for future research 4. are falsifiable. Very nice.. Aren't the 1st and the last points kinda same?
34. Consciousness: Quote - "But in some cases consciousness may become aversive, for instance when we become aware that we are not living up to our own goals or expectations, or when we believe that other people perceive us negatively. In these cases we may engage in behaviors that help us escape from consciousness, for example through the use of alcohol or other psychoactive drug."
35. Growing and developing: Very interesting: Quote - "The inability of young children to view transitions also leads them to be egocentric — unable to readily see and understand other people’s view points. Developmental psychologists define the theory of mind as the ability to take another person’s viewpoint,and the ability to do so increases rapidly during the preoperational stage. In one demonstration of the development of theory of mind, a researcher shows a child a video of another child(let’s call her Anna) putting a ball in a red box. Then Anna leaves the room, and the video shows that while she is gone, a researcher moves the ball from the red box into a bluebox. As the video continues, Anna comes back in to the room.The child is then asked to point to the box where Anna will probably look to find her ball. Children who are younger than 4 years of age typically are unable to understand that Anna does not know that the ball has been moved, and they predict that she will look for it in the blue box. After 4 years of age,however,children have developed a theory of mind — they realize that different people can have different view points, and that (although she will be wrong) Anna will nevertheless think that the ball is still in the red box." Read also about the experiment on infant monkeys with 2 surrogate mothers - one of whom only provided milk and the other only provided comfort - the infants tended to spend much more time with the mother that provided comfort (but no milk). Jesus - this is too difficult to digest. Content (milk) seems less and less important to packaging (comfort). Read also the neat example on morality of a man stealing a life saving drug from a pharmacy in the same link. Other interesting stuff in the article 
1. Males tend to value principles of justice while females value caring and helping. (T vs F as in MBTI) - interesting. 
2. Demandingness and responsiveness of parents shown as a matrix. I wonder whether the same is true for teacher-student relationships.
3. How menopause is seen by women in US vis-a-vis India.
4. Second order conditioning, primary & secondary reinforcers
5. Explicit and implicit memory - recall and recognition memory probably is similar to K(nowledge) and C(omprehension), respectively.
6. Short term memory (STM), L(ong)TM and encoding, spacing effect (which basically means that cramming a lot of material in a short period of time is less effective than spacing the reading over a larger period of time -  just like a woman's way of eating 23 very small meals a day is better than a camel's way.)
7. Learning languages - impact of starting early vs starting later. Quote - "Language is more generative than it is imitative. Generativity refers to the fact that speakers of a language can compose sentences to represent new ideas that they have never before been exposed to."
8. Intelligence - Quotes are listed below:
1. "Virtually all psychologists now believe that there is a general intelligence factor that relates to abstract thinking and that includes the abilities to acquire knowledge, to reason abstractly, to adopt to novel situations and to benefit from instruction and experience.... Although the different types of questions [in an standardized IQ test] do correlate with each other, some items correlate more highly with each other than do other items; they form clusters or clumps of intelligences." WOWOWOW nice. And perhaps this leads also to difference between crystallized and fluid intelligence.
2. "Creativity and analytical intelligence are different (perhaps like induction and deduction, respectively). "The brain areas that are associated with convergent thinking, thinking that is directed towards finding the correct answer to a given problem [as in sudoku], are different from those associated with divergent thinking, the ability to generate many different ideas for or solutions to a given problem. Creativity needs expertise, imaginative thinking, risk taking, intrinsic interest, and working in a creative environment."
3. "The Wechsler Adult lntelligence Scale (WAIS) is the most widely used intelligence test for adults."
4. "studies have found that between 40% and 80% of the variability in IQ is due to genetics, meaning that overall genetics plays a bigger role than does environment in creating IQ differences among individuals... And the correlations between the IQs ofparents and their biological children (r=.42) is significantly greater than the correlation between parents and adopted children (r = .19)." WOWOWOW. 
5. "The fact that intelligence becomes more stable as we get older provides evidence that early environmental experiences matter more than later ones."
6. "Environmental factor also explain why there is a greater variance in the intelligence levels of children in lower income households than in higher income ones. This is because upper class households tend to provide a safe, nutritious and supporting environment for children, whereas these factors are more variable in lower income households. Poverty may lead to diets that are undernourishing or lacking in appropriate vitamins which slow down brain development and reduce intelligence."
7. "Education has a causal effect on IQ. Children's IQ tends to drop significantly during summer vacations."
8. "A child who has higher than average intelligence will be treated differently than a child who has lower than average intelligence, and these differences in behaviors will likely amplify initial differences. This means that modest genetic differences can be multiplied into big differences overtime."
9. Emotional IQ and emotion regulation: Quote - "Although measures of the ability to understand, experience, and manage emotions may not predict effective behaviors,another important aspect of emotional intelligence — emotion regulation— does. Emotion regulation refers to the ability to control and productively use one’s emotions. Research has found that people who are better able to override their impulses to seek immediate gratification and who are less impulsive also have higher cognitive and social intelligence...Because emotional intelligence seems so important, many school systems have designed programs to teach it to their students. However, the effectiveness of these programs has not been rigorously tested, and we do not yet know whether emotional intelligence can be taught, or if learning it would improve the quality of people’s lives." WOWOWOW
10. The most fundamental emotions, known as the basic emotions, are those of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise.
11. Happiness: Taken together, it has been estimated that our wealth, health, and life circumstances account for only 15% to 20% of life satisfaction scores. Clearly the main ingredient in happiness lies beyond, or perhaps beneath, external factors.
12. "MBTI is not useful because the scores / results change over time and because MBTI scores do not relate to other measures of personality or to behavior. They cannot be used to predict behavior" - interesting.
13. Id, Ego,and Superego: Quote - "Freud proposed that the mind is divided into three components: id, ego, and superego, and that the interactions and conflicts among the components create personality. According to Freudian theory, the id is the component of personality that forms the basis of our most primitive impulses. The id is entirely unconscious, and it drives our most important motivations, including the sexual drive (libido) and the aggressive or destructive drive. According to Freud, the id is driven by the pleasure principle — the desire for immediate gratification of our sexual and aggressive urges. The id is why we smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, view pornography, tell mean jokes about people, and engage in other fun or harmful behaviors, often at the cost of doing more productive activities. In stark contrast to the id, the superego represents our sense of morality and oughts. The superego tell us all the things that we shouldn’t do, or the duties and obligations of society. The superego strives for perfection, and when we fail to live up to its demands we feel guilty. In contrast to the id, which is about the pleasure principle, the function of the ego is based on the reality principle—the idea that we must delay gratification of our basic motivations until the appropriate time with the appropriate outlet. The ego is the largely conscious controller or decision-maker of personality. The ego serves as the intermediary between the desires of the id and the constraints of society contained in the superego."
14. Quotes from here: 
1. "Ability to rebound from failures explain achievement related behavior and perseverance." WOWOWOW This is perhaps what differentiates entrepreneurs from others...Clearly the main ingredient in happiness lies beyond, or perhaps beneath, external factors.
2. "Freedom, the ability to make up your mind and change your mind, is the friend of natural happiness but the enemy of synthetic happiness"
3. "Our level of happiness is not determined by our external circumstances. We all have a fairly stable happiness baseline. Genetics plays a major role in this. 50% of the people have a tendency to be optimistic and others to be pessimistic. Circumstances can veer us from our baseline but we revert to it soon. Lasting happiness comes doesn't not from changing our circumstances nor does it come from positive thinking but from a greater understanding of who we are." WOWOWOW "it has been estimated that our wealth, health, and life circumstances account for only 15% to 20% of life satisfaction scores." from here. 

Additional reading:

• Teaching  Men To Be Emotionally Honest: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/education/edlife/teaching-men-to-be-emotionally-honest.html
• http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2015/06/memory-and-control.html
• http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2015/07/stress-and-well-being.html
• http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2015/06/memory-and-control.html

Published on

7/3/15, 10:46 AM

India Standard Time