Science of the SpiritS


Family

How big-hearted babies become selfish monsters - Our natural instinct for altruism is being destroyed by the demands of modern life

Tracy McVeigh
The Observer
Sun, 04 May 2014 00:19 UTC
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© Jamie Grill/GettyA baby being fed a homemade meal will need half as much as being weaned on ready-made food.
If you've been planning a shopping trip with the kids for bank holiday Monday, you might not want to read any further, because teaching your children consumerism is helping to turn them into selfish, immoral creatures without a streak of empathy, according to a new study. You may be making them just like stressed-out adults, whose potential as human beings is killed off as genuine altruism is suffocated by their greed and anxiety.

In a new book which suggests that social changes and the shift towards an ever more unequal society are making us cold-hearted and mean, psychotherapist Graham Music says we're more likely to be born big-hearted and kind but then pushed towards being selfish and cold than the other way around.

"We're losing empathy and compassion in dealing with other people in our society," said Music, a consultant child and adolescent psychotherapist at the Tavistock and Portman clinics in London. "There is a lot of evidence that the speed of life and the resultant anxiety have an enormous impact on how we deal with other people. We all know it anecdotally. You live in a dog-eat-dog world and it makes sense to be highly stressed and vigilant to cope with it. From that stress come some really fundamental shifts in behaviour, along with pretty poor outcomes in everything from health to life expectancy and happiness."
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Footprints

The slow death of the art of purposeless walking

Finlo Rohrer
BBC
Thu, 01 May 2014 13:33 UTC
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A number of recent books have lauded the connection between walking - just for its own sake - and thinking. But are people losing their love of the purposeless walk?

Walking is a luxury in the West. Very few people, particularly in cities, are obliged to do much of it at all. Cars, bicycles, buses, trams, and trains all beckon.

Instead, walking for any distance is usually a planned leisure activity. Or a health aid. Something to help people lose weight. Or keep their fitness. But there's something else people get from choosing to walk. A place to think.

Wordsworth was a walker. His work is inextricably bound up with tramping in the Lake District. Drinking in the stark beauty. Getting lost in his thoughts.
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Ambulance

SOTT Focus: Behind the Headlines: The 'Wetiko Virus' and Collective Psychosis: Interview With Paul Levy

Sott Editors
Sott.net
Sun, 04 May 2014 17:00 UTC
Sott Talk Radio logo
Born in 1956, Paul Levy graduated with degrees in art and economics and has had a lifelong intense interest in the work of C. G. Jung. As a result of an intense personal trauma in 1981, he began a process of spiritual awakening that led him on a 'shamanic descent' and a quest to understand the fundamental nature of reality.

Paul is the author of: The Madness of George Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis and Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil

In his books Paul explores and explains that we 'disown' our innermost, drarkest thoughts and feelings and project them outwards onto others and the world, a process he compares to the Native American Indian concept of "wetiko". Paul has stated that "there is a contagious psychospiritual disease of the soul, a parasite of the mind, that is currently being acted out en masse on the world stage via a collective psychosis of titanic proportions. This mind-virus covertly operates through the unconscious blind spots in the human psyche, rendering people oblivious to their own madness and compelling them to act against their own best interests."

Running Time: 01:48:00

Download: MP3

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Eye 2

Conservatives, evil and psychopathy: Is there a link?

Paul Rosenberg
Salon
Thu, 01 May 2014 11:12 UTC
conservative psychopaths
© Associated Press/Chris Carlson/J. Scott Applewhite/Mark J. Terrill/Fox News/SalonRush Limbaugh, Ted Cruz, Donald Sterling, Sean Hannity
You knew it was true. Now research proves it! The real motivation behind Rush, Sterling and defenses of awfulness

Let's start with what I said about Limbaugh simply being a good conservative when he rushed to Sterling's defense. That's not just a liberal canard. It's not just me trying to do to Limbaugh what Limbaugh does to liberals. It's what conservatives themselves have said repeatedly over the years. The defense of hierarchy is what conservatism is all about, as Corey Robin reminded us all with his recent book, The Reactionary Mind.

What's more, the differences between how liberals and conservatives think are reflected in a range of divergent cognitive processes, as summarized in a 2003 paper by John T. Jost and three co-authors, Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition that brought together findings drawn from 88 study samples in 12 countries:,
"The core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and justification of inequality and is motivated by needs that vary situationally and dispositionally to manage uncertainty and threat," Jost and his co-authors wrote in the abstract. These are not merely American phenomena, nor is there any reason to think they're particularly modern.
While Jost's paper revealed a complicated array of different factors involved, two in particular have been shown to explain the lion's share of intergroup prejudice: right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO). John Dean's book Conservatives Without Conscience focused on the combined workings of these two factors. While there is some overlap between the two, RWA is more predominant among followers, who would probably make up the main bulk of Limbaugh's audience, while SDO is more prominent in folks like Sterling.

SDO represents a generalized tendency to support groups' dominance, whether the groups are defined biologically (men over women, the old over the young) or culturally (race, ethnicity, religion, etc.).
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2 + 2 = 4

Is stress contagious? Scientists say 'yes'


RT.com
Thu, 01 May 2014 16:12 UTC
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© Reuters/Marcelo del Pozo
Merely observing another person in a stressful situation - even on television - can be enough to make our bodies release the stress hormone cortisol, causing us to be stressed ourselves, a team of German scientists has found.

The study was conducted by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig and Technische Universitat in Dresden, Germany.

Stressful situations were observed through a one-way mirror, but in some cases, even looking at a stressed stranger on a video was enough to put some people on edge. The research notes that in a society where stress is everywhere, emphatic stress is a phenomenon that cannot be ignored.

Comment: Stress is a part of everyone's life. One excellent way to help alleviate it is with the Eiriu Eolas meditation program. It instantly relaxes and rejuvenates!

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Blackbox

6 intriguing types of synesthesia: Tasting words, seeing sounds, hearing colours and more

Jeremy Dean
PsyBlog
Thu, 01 May 2014 15:52 UTC
One fantastic reminder of the varieties of consciousness is the phenomena of synesthesia: the cross-wiring of the brain's senses in a small proportion of the population.
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© Chris HaldermanSome of the most common and rarest forms of synesthesia.
Until recently, when experts explained that around 4% of people have the involuntary experience of, say, certain numbers evoking particular colours, they were met by disbelief.

Surely 'synesthetes' were making it up to feel special or perhaps unconsciously responding to the demands of the tests?

Now, of course, we know better: this cross-wiring of the brain's senses is real and it's experienced in all kinds of different ways.

Estimates place the number of varieties of synesthesia at between 50 and 150 but here are some of the most intriguing (that we know about).

As you read these, whether you're a synesthete or not, marvel at how different our experience of the world is at a very basic level.
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Sun

Overcoming the fear of failure - try this test, then these tips

Dr. Bill Knaus, Ed.D
Psychology Today
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 08:48 UTC
fear of failure
Everyone periodically feels uncomfortable about falling short of a standard, but some of us exaggerate the risk and anxiously avoid situations where we have no guarantee of success. Tragically, many who fail to deal with their fear of failure accomplish less, and regret the loss.

If you fall into this group, can you turn things around?

Fear of Failure Test

Try this test: Answer true to any items that generally describe you, and false to any items that generally do not.
  1. I'm afraid to fail. True False
  2. I play it too safe. True False
  3. I'm afraid of choking before a group. True False
  4. I worry about making mistakes. True False
  5. I'm afraid of disapproval. True False
  6. I worry about looking incompetent. True False
  7. I dread I won't do well enough. True False
  8. I lack confidence in my abilities. True False
  9. I feel anxious when uncertain. True False
  10. Others will evaluate me negatively. True False
Answer true to one or more of the items, and you have isolated an area, or areas, that you can profitably work to change.
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Post-It Note

Avoid procrastination: Think concrete

Jeremy Dean
PsyBlog
Wed, 30 Apr 2014 05:19 UTC
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© monsieurlamIs your to-do list as long as your arm?
New study finds procrastination is warded off by considering tasks in concrete terms.

Although procrastination is usually thought of as something to be avoided, this hasn't always been the case. Surveying the history of procrastination Dr Piers Steel finds that before the industrial revolution procrastination might have been seen in neutral terms (Steel, 2007; PDF).

Nowadays, though, for those living in technically advanced societies, procrastination has become a 'modern malady': everything must be done now or, even better, three weeks ago. For good or evil there are now endless to-do lists to work through, appointments that must be kept and commitments that have to be fulfilled. Such is modern life.

Whatever the cause many people certainly view their procrastination as a problem. Psychologists have found that college students consider themselves champion procrastinators with almost half considering it problematic. Adults are not far behind with some 15-20% self-identifying as 'chronic procrastinators'. Meanwhile the rest of us are guaranteed to procrastinate from time to time. So, perhaps psychology can offer some hope in the ongoing fight against procrastination.
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Cut

Never be manipulated again

Mark Goulston
Psychology Today
Tue, 22 Apr 2014 12:30 UTC
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© Sergey Nivens / Shutterstock.com
ma·nip·u·la·tive

[muh-nip-yuh-ley-tiv, -yuh-luh-tiv] adjective
  1. influencing or attempting to influence the behavior or emotions of others for one's own purposes: a manipulative boss
You're reading this because you have reached an "enough already" point in your life. Or someone really manipulated you into doing something you didn't want to do or into not doing something you wanted to do and you became so infuriated with them and yourself that you reached a "never again" moment. Isn't that true?

Instead of going into why do they do that, let's just leave that as, because they can get away doing it with you. This article is about why you have continued to let them do it, why you reached your last straw with them and more importantly how you can put an end to it and never be manipulated again.
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Info

How stress changes the brain

Bahar Gholipour
Live Science
Tue, 29 Apr 2014 03:00 UTC
Brain
© ShutterstockA person's recovery after a major stressful event may depend in part on their self-esteem, a new study finds.
How well a person recovers from traumatic events may depend on in part on their self-esteem, according to researchers who examined the effects of a major earthquake on the survivors' brains.

The researchers had conducted brain scans of university students for a study before the Great East Japan Earthquake struck in 2011. After the earthquake, they repeated the scans on 37 of the same people, and tracked stress-induced changes in their brains in the following months.

"Most importantly, what these findings show, is that the brain is dynamic - that it's responding to things that are going on in our environment, or things that are part of our personality," said Rajita Sinha, professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, who wasn't involved in the study.

In the brain scans taken immediately after the incident, the researchers found a decrease in the volume of two brain regions, the hippocampus and orbitofrontal cortex, compared with the scans taken before the incident.

One year later, the researchers repeated the scans and found that the hippocampus continued to shrink, and people's levels of depression and anxiety had not improved.

However, other changes in the brain had reversed, the researchers found: The volume of the orbitofrontal cortex had increased. Moreover, this increase was correlated with survivors' self-esteem scores soon after the earthquake, according to the study published today (April 29) in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.
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