Science of the SpiritS


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New study shows psychopaths have lower IQs

Megan Grant
Bustle
Tue, 24 Jan 2017 20:39 UTC
Psychopaths
© Off Guardian
It's long been believed that psychopaths possess the gift of brains. But new research suggests that this commonly-held belief about psychopaths might be wrong. Although psychopaths are often portrayed as preternaturally intelligent (especially in fiction), this may not actually be the case — a finding which drastically alters the image we've held for so many years.

In truth, over the years, the findings of the relationship between intelligence and psychopathy have been inconsistent; still, though, the stereotype persisted. Why? Because much of the research conducted on the matter was biased from the get-go, mainly focusing on people who were well-educated and from the upper and middle class. These kinds of samples are not necessarily representative of the general population.

The current study — authored by Olga Sanchez de Ribera, Nicholas Kavish, and Brian Boutwell at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory — was a meta-analysis of 97 previous studies involving over 9,000 participants in total. They found one small but interesting correlation: Those who scored higher for psychopathic traits often scored lower on measures of IQ. To further debunk the myth that psychopaths are smarter than most of us is the fact that there may be more variation in intelligence than we ever knew among psychopaths, who are sometimes divided into "primary" and "secondary" based on how inhibited they are.
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Nebula

The mysteries of hypnosis: Magic time?

Michael Prescott
Michael Prescott's Blog
Mon, 16 Jan 2017 21:18 UTC
hypnosis pocket watch
For a few years I've had a book sitting on my shelf called If This Be Magic: The Forgotten Power of Hypnotism, by Guy Lyon Playfair. Originally published in 1985, it was reissued by White Crow Books in 2011, and I probably bought it around that time. But somehow I never quite got around to reading it, possibly because I was a little put off by the prospect of plowing through a fairly long, rather dense book on hypnotism.

Recently, however, I did pick up the book at last, and I found it to be one of the more intriguing items in my parapsychological library. The subtitle notwithstanding, it's not really all about hypnotism. Perhaps a more accurate subtitle would be "The Forgotten Power of the Unconscious Mind." The book concerns itself with the still-unknown extent of psi abilities and their mediation by the right hemisphere of the brain — or, more accurately, the mental states loosely associated with the right cerebral hemisphere.

If This Be Magic does begin with a discussion of hypnotism and the related practice of mesmerism, tracing work in this area from its beginnings to modern times. Along the way, we learn that the (logical) left hemisphere of the brain seems to inhibit hypnotism, while the (intuitive) right hemisphere readily accepts it. Dr. David Pederson, president of the British Society of Medical and Dental Hypnosis, puts it succinctly: "When we hypnotize a patient, what we are doing is altering their mode of consciousness to the right hemisphere by inhibition of the left."
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Bulb

Emotional intelligence: How smart people handle difficult people

Dr. Travis Bradverry
Linked In
Tue, 24 Jan 2017 14:57 UTC
Toxic person
© firstsun.com
Difficult people defy logic. Some are blissfully unaware of the negative impact that they have on those around them, and others seem to derive satisfaction from creating chaos and pushing other people's buttons. Either way, they create unnecessary complexity, strife, and worst of all stress.

Studies have long shown that stress can have a lasting, negative impact on the brain. Exposure to even a few days of stress compromises the effectiveness of neurons in the hippocampus—an important brain area responsible for reasoning and memory. Weeks of stress cause reversible damage to neuronal dendrites (the small "arms" that brain cells use to communicate with each other), and months of stress can permanently destroy neurons. Stress is a formidable threat to your success—when stress gets out of control, your brain and your performance suffer.

Most sources of stress at work are easy to identify. If your non-profit is working to land a grant that your organization needs to function, you're bound to feel stress and likely know how to manage it. It's the unexpected sources of stress that take you by surprise and harm you the most.

Recent research from the Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology at Friedrich Schiller University in Germany found that exposure to stimuli that cause strong negative emotions—the same kind of exposure you get when dealing with difficult people—caused subjects' brains to have a massive stress response. Whether it's negativity, cruelty, the victim syndrome, or just plain craziness, difficult people drive your brain into a stressed-out state that should be avoided at all costs.
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Palette

7 Unconventional Signs You Are A Really Creative Person


Psy Blog
Mon, 23 Jan 2017 00:00 UTC
Creative mind
Being sarcastic, ignoring deadlines and these five other unusual things are all linked to higher creativity.

Comment: See also: Everyone is born creative, but it is educated out of us at school

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Family

Is Neoliberalism creating an epidemic of mental illness? Wrenching society apart

George Monbiot
The Guardian
Wed, 12 Oct 2016 17:49 UTC
What greater indictment of a system could there be than an epidemic of mental illness? Yet plagues of anxiety, stress, depression, social phobia, eating disorders, self-harm and loneliness now strike people down all over the world. The latest, catastrophic figures for children's mental health in England reflect a global crisis.

social isolation
© unknown
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Better Earth

Making it a habit to be a grateful human being

Jeremy Adam Smith
Uplift Connect
Mon, 16 Jan 2017 00:00 UTC
Being grateful
How You Can Tell if Someone is Grateful

I'm terrible at gratitude.

How bad am I? I'm so bad at gratitude that most days, I don't notice the sunlight on the leaves of the Berkeley oaks as I ride my bike down the street. I forget to be thankful for the guy who hand-brews that delicious cup of coffee I drink mid-way through every weekday morning. I don't even know the dude's name!

I usually take for granted that I have legs to walk on, eyes to see with, arms I can use to hug my son. I forget my son! Well, I don't actually forget about him, at least as a physical presence; I generally remember to pick him up from school and feed him dinner. But as I face the quotidian slings and arrows of parenthood, I forget all the time how much he's changed my life for the better.

Gratitude (and its sibling, appreciation) is the mental tool we use to remind ourselves of the good stuff. It's a lens that helps us to see the things that don't make it onto our lists of problems to be solved. It's a spotlight that we shine on the people who give us the good things in life. It's a bright red paintbrush we apply to otherwise-invisible blessings, like clean streets or health or enough food to eat.

Comment: See also: Can't keep your New Year's resolutions? Try being kind to yourself

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Question

Quantum theory and the afterlife: What happens when we die

Joe Martino
Collective Evolution
Sat, 14 Jan 2017 00:00 UTC
Soul body
© HinesSight - TypepadSoul/Body
The biggest question so many of us have in life, one that we have been seeking to answer for years: what happens when we die? Even modern day science seeks to answer this question. Where does human consciousness come from and what is its origin? Is it simply a product of the brain, or if the brain itself is a receiver of consciousness. If consciousness is not a product of the brain, it would mean that our physical bodies are not necessary for its continuation; that awareness can exist outside our bodies.

Asking these questions is fundamental to understanding the true nature of our reality, and with quantum physics gaining more popularity, questions regarding consciousness and its relationship to human physicality become increasingly relevant.

Max Planck, the theoretical physicist credited with originating quantum theory — a feat that won him the Physics Nobel Prize in 1918 — offers perhaps the best explanation for why understanding consciousness is so essential:
"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness."
Eugene Wigner, also a theoretical physicist and mathematician, stated that it's not possible to "formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness."

Comment: See also: Researchers claim that humans have souls which can live on after death

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People 2

Whether our speech is fast or slow, we say about the same

David Orenstein
Medical Xpress
Tue, 17 Jan 2017 00:00 UTC
couple communicating
© Brown UniversityA new study finds that whether we talk fast or slow we all communicate about the same amount of information in a given time.
The purpose of speech is communication, not speed—so perhaps some new research findings, while counterintuitive, should come as no surprise. Whether we speak quickly or slowly, the new study suggests, we end up conveying information at about the same rate, because faster speech packs less information in each utterance.

The study suggests we tend to converse within a narrow channel of communication data so that we do not provide too much or too little information at a given time, said Uriel Cohen Priva, author of the study in the March issue of Cognition and assistant professor in the Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences at Brown University.

"It seems the constraints on how much information per second we should transmit are fairly strict, or stricter than we thought they were," Cohen Priva said.
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People 2

Listening with your eyes: One in five people may 'hear' visual movement or flashes of light

Hannah Devlin
The Guardian
Wed, 18 Jan 2017 03:10 UTC
brain, synesthesia
One in five people is affected by a synaesthesia-like phenomenon in which visual movements or flashes of light are "heard" as faint sounds, according to scientists.

The findings suggest that far more people than initially thought experience some form of sensory cross-wiring - which could explain the appeal of flashing musical baby toys and strobed lighting at raves.

Elliot Freeman, a cognitive neuroscientist at City University and the study's lead author, said: "A lot of us go around having senses that we do not even recognise."

More florid forms of synaesthesia, in which disparate sensory experiences are blended, are found in only about 2 - 4% of the population. To a synaesthete, the number seven might appear red, or the name Wesley might "taste" like boiled cabbage, for instance.

The latest work - only the second published on the phenomenon - suggests that many more of us experience a less intrusive version of the condition in which visual movements or flashes are accompanied by an internal soundtrack of hums, buzzes or swooshes. Since movements are very frequently accompanied by sounds in everyday life, the effect is likely to be barely discernible.

Comment:

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Brain

A scientific explanation for why people cling to their political beliefs

Justin Gardner
The Free Thought Project
Tue, 17 Jan 2017 21:21 UTC
political argument
We've all heard the phrase: "Let's not talk about politics."

A new scientific study shows why people readily abandon rationality for political beliefs. It also underscores how well Establishment forces have been able to push the populace into an 'us vs. them' mindset.

Researchers at the Brain and Creativity Institute used functional MRI - a revolutionary technique that maps the brain by coupling cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation - to find out what happens in the brain on politics.

"When people's political beliefs are challenged, their brains become active in areas that govern personal identity and emotional responses to threats, neuroscientists have found."

This would certainly explain how a hyper-partisan atmosphere breeds knee-jerk hostility, and agreement on anything becomes out of reach.
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