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Category: psychology

Partisan Innumeracy

Partisan Innumeracy

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In his memoir, China in Ten Words, writer Yu Hua recalled an event following the end of the cultural revolution. Literature had been banned for many years but the memory of its joys had lingered in much of the population. Hua’s formative years had been during the intellectually desiccated period. Emerging from a time when being seen with any book other than officially sanctioned volumes of or about Chairman Mao could have grave consequences, he and many others craved stories…

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General and specific-domain contributions to creativity

General and specific-domain contributions to creativity

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From this article in Europe’s Journal of Psychology (2016). “The general objective of this study was to reexamine two views of creativity, one positing that there is a general creative capacity or talent and the other that creativity is domain-specific.  […] Multiple regressions uncovered particular relationships consistent with the view that creativity has both general and domain-specific contributions. Limitations, such as the focus on one domain, and future directions are discussed.” Also see comments.

COVID-19 (Average) vs Other Causes of Death (Actual) in the U.S. – Animated Data Graph

COVID-19 (Average) vs Other Causes of Death (Actual) in the U.S. – Animated Data Graph

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Source: Covid vs. US Daily Average Cause of Death, Robert Martin on 8 Apr 2020 For those still saying influenza is a much bigger killer than COVID-19 (SARS-COV-2), the numbers don’t support that argument, especially considering there are many deaths that strongly appear to be due to COVID-19 that are not reported as such because the deceased are not tested. The animation conveys the speed with which an exponentially increasing infection rate overtakes other, relatively linear rates of expansion.

What is Lost During Online Meetings?

What is Lost During Online Meetings?

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Norm Friesen, Professor of Educational Technology at Boise State University reports on his research into the differences in how we experience web-based versus face-to-face (F2F) meetings. The main finding are Lack of eye contact Looking askance Feeling watched Squelching / talking over others Each of these factors results from limitations imposed by communications technologies. We manage to work with or around them but they can contribute to a sense of web-based meetings being somehow not-quite-right or not as comfortable as…

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How the Black Death Radically Changed the Course of History

How the Black Death Radically Changed the Course of History

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link.medium.com/YRFzoB3Xr5 This article is relevant to our recent discussions and Zak Stein’s (see Edward’s recent post) suggestion that great destabilizing events open gaps in which new structures can supplant older, disintegrating systems–with the inherent risks and opportunities.

The Cognitive Bias Codex

The Cognitive Bias Codex

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Many (all?) cognitive biases are built-in features of the human attention-sensation-perception-memory-cognition chain of sense making processes. It would not be surprising to learn many of these biases have effects that are relevant to questions regarding how natural selection shaped humans for particular embodied functions in a particular environment. Much has been said and written about how the pre-modern environment evolution calibrated us to function within is in many respects quite different from our modern environment.

Living in the future’s past

Living in the future’s past

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I watched a good documentary last night titled, Living in the Future’s Past, a project organized, produced, and narrated by Jeff Bridges. It’s available through your Albuquerque Public Library account’s access to Hoopla Digital, Amazon Prime video, and other services. It lays out the modern dilemma of having a pre-neolithic brain in a Neolithic era and posits several questions that align closely with the theme of our current discussion . The film has commentary from diverse scientific experts, including Daniel…

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The Neural Basis of Human prosocial behavior

The Neural Basis of Human prosocial behavior

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A new Frontiers in Science ebook here. The blurb: With the rise of laboratory and field experimental economics, the famous prisoner’s dilemma, public good, dictator, ultimatum, and trust games have become the classical paradigms of studying prosocial behavior. Due to the increasing use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) with human subjects playing economic games, the neural basis of prosocial behavior has been uncovered by a large amount of neural…

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New frontiers in heart rate variability and social coherence research

New frontiers in heart rate variability and social coherence research

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Article subtitled “Techniques, technologies, and implications for improving group dynamics and outcomes.” It’s part of this Frontiers in Science ebook. In the introductory chapter here’s what the ebook’s editors had to say about it: “In closing, McCraty is a well-known person throughout the HRV community, having been a proponent of HRV Biofeedback for decades. His experience in the field can be traced to the very roots of awareness of the power and plain excitement of HRV engagement. Among his many…

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Cracking the code of rapid social transformation

Cracking the code of rapid social transformation

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If interested sign up for this free one-hour presentation on Wednesday, January 15. The blurb: Terry Patten and other activist leaders facing the grim implications of climate chaos are seeing surprising glimpses of evolutionary emergence in culture around the world. Are we capable of making a huge, visible difference? How could each of us live differently to actually make it happen? Which cutting-edge communities and collectives are emerging to catalyze rapid social transformation? Questions Terry will address include: What is our…

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