Science of the SpiritS


People 2

Reincarnation: Are some birthmarks past-life wounds?

Reincarnation
© edgarcayce.org
A birthmark may be defined as "a benign irregularity on the skin which can be caused by overgrowth of blood vessels, melanocytes, smooth muscles, fat fibroblasts or keratinocytes."

Every culture has its own beliefs about birthmarks. Some regard them as good luck, others consider them to be bad luck.

In the Philippines, a birthmark (or balat) indicates bad luck or misfortune. It is blamed when an anticipated journey or task does not push through.

Most birthmarks are benign or harmless. But a few birthmarks could have something to do with what happened to a person in a previous life, whether one believes in reincarnation or not.

Comment: For more information on Dr. Stevenson's work on reincarnation, see:


Arrow Down

Being in a group can lower your IQ

meeting
Meetings really can make people more stupid, research confirms.

People trying to solve problems in a group lost around 15% of their IQ.

The drop seems to come from the subtle social signals that people send and receive in groups.

Women are particularly vulnerable to an IQ drop from being in a group, the researchers found.

The study had people working in a group after they had received feedback about an earlier IQ test.

Comment: This study only seems to be comparing what their score was against another person. What they fail to mention is that in the study each person took their own test, as opposed to the group working on one single test. In other words this became a competitive situation where being in a group meant that there was pressure to perform against someone. Had it been a cooperative situation where they all focused their abilities on one problem instead separate ones they might have had a better result. See also: Social sensitivity trumps IQ in group intelligence


Music

Links found between Big 5 personality traits and taste in music

musica
People who like easy-listening music are likely to be talkative and energetic, while opera lovers are more insightful and imaginative, according to scientists.

Two major studies conducted by psychologists from Cambridge and top US universities have found your personality type can be accurately predicted from your musical tastes - and vice versa.

Those with extrovert personalities for instance - who are more comfortable making small talk than introverts - showed a preference for music categorised as "uncomplicated, relaxing, and acoustic."

Finding correlations in this field has been hampered in the past by respondents tending to be younger - and therefore more likely to share a narrow band of tastes - and because respondents used their own definitions of the genres they enjoy.

But in these worldwide, online studies of more than 20,000 respondents, more than half those surveyed were over 22, and they were presented with 25 unfamiliar musical excerpts pre-categorised by musicologists.

The surveys differentiated personality types on the "big five" model used by scientists for 50 years: openness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism and conscientiousness.

Comment: The full paper is available on researchgate.net.

Oh, by the way, that leaves little doubt that the choice of songs you listen online is used to know your personality and send you suitable advertising messages and especially refine your digital profile. Stored somewhere in some NSA servers?


People 2

Two relationship patterns that are most harmful to couples

distressed couple
People who expect their partners to read their minds are harming their relationships, research finds.

It occurs when there are problems in the relationship and one person disengages and does not communicate their problems to the other.

It often happens when that person is anxious about the relationship and feels neglected.

Anger and negative communication often result from expecting the other person to be a mind-reader.

Dr Keith Sanford, who led the study, explained:
"You're worried about how much your partner loves you, and that's associated with neglect.

You feel sad, hurt and vulnerable."

Comment: See also:


Family

The Pygmalion Effect: How expectations influence performance

pygmalion effect

The Pygmalion Effect is a powerful secret weapon. Without even realizing it, we can nudge others towards success. In this article, discover how expectations can influence performance for better or worse.


How Expectations Influence Performance

Many people believe that their pets or children are of unusual intelligence or can understand everything they say. Some people have stories of abnormal feats. In the late 19th century, one man claimed that about his horse and appeared to have evidence. William Von Osten was a teacher and horse trainer. He believed that animals could learn to read or count. Von Osten's initial attempts with dogs and a bear were unsuccessful, but when he began working with an unusual horse, he changed our understanding of psychology. Known as Clever Hans, the animal could answer questions, with 90% accuracy, by tapping his hoof. He could add, subtract, multiply, divide, and tell the time and the date.

Clever Hans could also read and understand questions written or asked in German. Crowds flocked to see the horse, and the scientific community soon grew interested. Researchers studied the horse, looking for signs of trickery. Yet they found none. The horse could answer questions asked by anyone, even if Von Osten was absent. This indicated that no signaling was at play. For a while, the world believed the horse was truly clever.

Then psychologist Oskar Pfungst turned his attention to Clever Hans. Assisted by a team of researchers, he uncovered two anomalies. When blinkered or behind a screen, the horse could not answer questions. Likewise, he could respond only if the questioner knew the answer. From these observations, Pfungst deduced that Clever Hans was not making any mental calculations. Nor did he understand numbers or language in the human sense. Although Von Osten had intended no trickery, the act was false.

Instead, Clever Hans had learned to detect subtle, yet consistent nonverbal cues. When someone asked a question, Clever Hans responded to their body language with a degree of accuracy many poker players would envy. For example, when someone asked Clever Hans to make a calculation, he would begin tapping his hoof. Once he reached the correct answer, the questioner would show involuntary signs. Pfungst found that many people tilted their head at this point. Clever Hans would recognize this behavior and stop. When blinkered or when the questioner did not know the answer, the horse didn't have a clue. When he couldn't see the cues, he had no answer.

Book 2

The Spaces Between Us: The unconscious rules of personal space

space
© China Daily CDIC / Reuters
The distance you keep from others is an elaborate, instinctive dance.

President Trump has a signature handshake. It hit the world stage at the United Nations meeting last year when he grabbed Emmanuel Macron's hand and appeared to aggressively pull the French president closer. Ever since, he's shown a consistent tendency to loom into other people's personal space, or pull them toward him.

Everyone has a personal space, an instinctive protective zone. We're always jostling to maintain our own space and to navigate around others', and the honeycomb of abutting spaces forms the scaffold of our social world. Violating it as a means of social communication, a means of bullying, is common behavior. But we usually don't do it in a calculated way. The rules of personal space run deep under the surface of consciousness. We act and react in an elaborate, animal dance, and only extreme examples-like the Trump handshake-catch our conscious attention.

Bulb

By starting small, responsibility is the antidote to tyranny

The timeless wisdom of The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

barbed wire fence
Life is filled with suffering. That suffering can be magnified and multiplied by an endless stream of malevolence. I am discovering this firsthand as my mother lies in a hospital bed beside me, a victim of violent assault. It's the act of evil committed upon the innocent that shatters us the most; no one is immune. The arbitrary nature of evil cannot be denied. It is self-evident, and there is no shortage of examples. Having acknowledged this fact, the question that each and every one of us should ask ourselves is: how should one walk in the face of such evil?

While I sat beside my unconscious mother, I read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, a mammoth Nobel prize-winning book written by a Russian dissident who suffered at the hands of a brutal Communist regime. Solzhenitsyn was a soldier who had served in the Second World War. While fighting against the German army, he witnessed firsthand the atrocities committed by the Red Army against German and East European civilians.

Comment:


Chart Bar

Black children commit suicide at twice the rate of whites - white teens at twice the rate of blacks

sad depressed
© RAWPIXEL.COM/SHUTTERSTOCK
Suicide rates for children ages 5 to 12 are roughly twice as high for black children as for white children, according to new data. But for adolescents ages 13 to 17, the pattern flips, with white kids having higher suicide rates, researchers report online May 21 in JAMA Pediatrics.

The new study is based on an analysis of suicide rates among children ages 5 to 17 from 2001 to 2015. Suicide was relatively rare among young children, the scientists found, but rates for both black and white kids in the United States increased with age.

"We really need to understand what are the risk and protective factors for not only suicide, but suicidal behavior in young people of color," says study coauthor Jeff Bridge, an epidemiologist at the Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Most studies investigating psychological or social risk factors for suicide in young people are of predominantly white youth, he says.

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SOTT Focus: The Truth Perspective: Free Will Is Not An Illusion: Why Materialists Are Wrong To Deny Their Own Freedom

choices doors free will
The great free will debate has raged for generations. But now we live in a world where the establishment intellectuals either deny freedom's existence completely, or tacitly accept it but can't adequately explain it. One poll showed that more than 40% of Americans didn't believe in free will. Given how fundamental free will is to everything about our lives - from our interactions with loved ones to our intellectual and career activities, and our legal systems - this is a scary thought.

Materialists will often cite finger-tapping experiments as evidence that free will doesn't exist. The brain shows signs of activity before subjects are consciously aware that they are going to move their fingers. But as Jordan Peterson and others have pointed out, this is not the only (or the best) interpretation of the data.

Today on the Truth Perspective, we take a look at Professor Peterson's recent defense of free will and share our thoughts on what free will is and isn't, and why it makes no sense to deny a certain type of freedom of will.

Tune in this Saturday, May 26, at noon Eastern Standard Time, and find out if you're a completely controlled automaton, an unlimited divine being, or just a regular part of creation with some degree of freedom and a whole lot of limitations.

Running Time: 01:40:17

Download: MP3


Cardboard Box

Does clutter cause anxiety & stress?

clutter
Clutter in our home or office certainly does cause stress, according to an article in Psychology Today. Psychologist Sherrie Bourg Carter lists the following 8 reasons that stress may ensue from a cluttered environment:
  1. Clutter bombards our minds with excessive stimuli (visual, olfactory, tactile), causing our senses to work overtime on stimuli that aren't necessary or important.
  2. Clutter distracts us by drawing our attention away from what our focus should be on.
  3. Clutter makes it more difficult to relax, both physically and mentally.
  4. Clutter constantly signals to our brains that our work is never done.
  5. Clutter makes us anxious because we're never sure what it's going to take to get through to the bottom of the pile.
  6. Clutter creates feelings of guilt ("I should be more organized") and embarrassment, especially when others unexpectedly drop by our homes or work spaces.
  7. Clutter inhibits creativity and productivity by invading the open spaces that allow most people to think, brainstorm, and problem solve.
  8. Clutter frustrates us by preventing us from locating what we need quickly (e.g. files and paperwork lost in the "pile" or keys swallowed up by the clutter).

Comment: Cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?