Science of the SpiritS


Bullseye

Why "positive thinking" won't help you out


thepowerofideas.ideapod.com
Fri, 12 May 2017 14:11 UTC
positivity is BS
© Life Hack
Have you ever been told to just "think positive" and your problems will go away?

Or that to achieve your goals in life, all you have to do is visualize it with positive intent?

It's a philosophy that's been popular for decades thanks to books like How to win Friends and Influence People and Think and Grow Rich.

But is it really helping us live more meaningful and fulfilling lives? Not exactly.

In fact, according to spiritual guru, Osho, it might just be one of the biggest "bullshit philosophies" there is.
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Newspaper

Boy claims he murdered in a past life, says deformation is punishment


Epoch Times
Wed, 17 May 2017 11:39 UTC
boy thinking
A little boy in Sri Lanka seemed to have memories of being his deceased uncle in a past life. He said he murdered his fiancée, and indeed that uncle had murdered his fiancée—a tightly guarded family secret his father said he could not have known.

Shortly before he died, a man named Ratran in Sri Lanka told his brother, Tileratne Hami, he would be reborn as his son. When a son was born to Hami 19 years later, that son was slightly deformed.
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Info

Dunning-Kruger effect - The illusion of competence

Kate Fehlhaber/Edited by Pam Weintraub
Aeon
Wed, 17 May 2017 20:56 UTC
Dunning-Kruger effect
© Photo courtesy WikipediaLook out! Head-on car crash in rural South Dakota in 1932. Eighty per cent of drivers rate themselves as above average.
One day in 1995, a large, heavy middle-aged man robbed two Pittsburgh banks in broad daylight. He didn't wear a mask or any sort of disguise. And he smiled at surveillance cameras before walking out of each bank. Later that night, police arrested a surprised McArthur Wheeler. When they showed him the surveillance tapes, Wheeler stared in disbelief. 'But I wore the juice,' he mumbled. Apparently, Wheeler thought that rubbing lemon juice on his skin would render him invisible to videotape cameras. After all, lemon juice is used as invisible ink so, as long as he didn't come near a heat source, he should have been completely invisible.

Police concluded that Wheeler was not crazy or on drugs - just incredibly mistaken.

The saga caught the eye of the psychologist David Dunning at Cornell University, who enlisted his graduate student, Justin Kruger, to see what was going on. They reasoned that, while almost everyone holds favourable views of their abilities in various social and intellectual domains, some people mistakenly assess their abilities as being much higher than they actually are. This 'illusion of confidence' is now called the 'Dunning-Kruger effect', and describes the cognitive bias to inflate self-assessment.

To investigate this phenomenon in the lab, Dunning and Kruger designed some clever experiments. In one study, they asked undergraduate students a series of questions about grammar, logic and jokes, and then asked each student to estimate his or her score overall, as well as their relative rank compared to the other students. Interestingly, students who scored the lowest in these cognitive tasks always overestimated how well they did - by a lot. Students who scored in the bottom quartile estimated that they had performed better than two-thirds of the other students!
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Info

The dark side of laughter

Lynne A Barker
The Conversation
Wed, 17 May 2017 13:26 UTC
laughing men
When you hear someone laugh behind you, you probably picture them on the phone or with a friend - smiling and experiencing a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. Chances are just the sound of the laughter could make you smile or even laugh along.

But imagine that the person laughing is just walking around alone in the street, or sitting behind you at a funeral.

Suddenly, it doesn't seem so inviting.

The truth is that laughter isn't always positive or healthy. According to science, it can be classified into different types, ranging from genuine and spontaneous to simulated (fake), stimulated (for example by tickling), induced (by drugs) or even pathological. But the actual neural basis of laughter is still not very well known - and what we do know about it largely comes from pathological clinical cases.

Laughter and the appreciation of humor are vital components of adaptive social, emotional and cognitive function. Surprisingly, they are not uniquely human.

Comment: For more on the benefits of laughter see: The Health & Wellness Show: Don't Panic, Lighten Up!

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People 2

The mental and psychological benefits of being in a bad mood

Joseph Paul Forgas
The Conversation
Wed, 17 May 2017 13:09 UTC
sad woman
© Shutterstock
Homo sapiens is a very moody species. Even though sadness and bad moods have always been part of the human experience, we now live in an age that ignores or devalues these feelings.

In our culture, normal human emotions like temporary sadness are often treated as disorders. Manipulative advertising, marketing and self-help industries claim happiness should be ours for the asking. Yet bad moods remain an essential part of the normal range of moods we regularly experience.

Despite the near-universal cult of happiness and unprecedented material wealth, happiness and life satisfaction in Western societies has not improved for decades.

It's time to re-assess the role of bad moods in our lives. We should recognize they are a normal, and even a useful and adaptive part of being human, helping us cope with many everyday situations and challenges.

Comment: See also:

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Books

Bookworms are kinder and more empathetic than those who only watch television, study finds

Tess Allen
Civilized
Sun, 14 May 2017 15:54 UTC
children reading
Spending most of your time with fictional people might actually make you nicer to real ones, new research suggests.

A study carried out by Kingston University London researchers found that people who regularly read - particularly fiction - tend to be kinder and more empathetic to their fellow human beings. Those who only watch television, on the other hand, are less compassionate and understanding with others.

Researchers questioned 123 people on their preferences regarding books, TV shows and plays, then quizzed them about the genres of entertainment they prefer to consume - comedy, romance, drama or non-fiction.

Participants were then tested on their interpersonal skills, with researchers asking them about how they behaved toward others, whether they considered other people's perspectives or feelings and whether they went out of their way to help others.

The findings showed that people who read more tended to have more positive social behaviours and empathy, while those who watched a lot of television demonstrated more antisocial behaviours.

Comment:

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Brain

Mindfulness training indirectly counters cognitive biases associated with prejudice

Jill Suttie
Greater Good
Mon, 15 May 2017 15:21 UTC
black white thinking
Today, prejudice against people who don't share our race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or political persuasion is creating an atmosphere of distrust and hostility that is dividing the United States. Citizens and researchers alike are desperate to understand where these divisions come from and how to heal them.

Some answers might be found in the scientific literature on mindfulness.

For those who don't know, mindfulness is a state of being—often practiced through meditation—that involves an increased awareness of our emotions, thoughts, and surroundings, accompanied by a sense of acceptance and non-judgment. Several studies have suggested that practicing mindfulness can reduce prejudice and bias.

For example, one study found that a brief loving-kindness meditation reduced prejudice toward homeless people, while another found that a brief mindfulness training decreased unconscious bias against black people and elderly people. In a third study by Adam Lueke and colleagues, white participants who received a brief mindfulness training demonstrated less biased behavior (not just attitudes) toward black participants in a trust game.
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Wine n Glass

Strangers to ourselves: Study finds getting drunk doesn't change one's personality as much as you think


RT
Mon, 15 May 2017 20:30 UTC
drunk
© Daniel Munoz / Reuters
US researchers got a group of test subjects tipsy and asked them and neutral observers to record how their personalities changed. While drinkers thought they turned nicer and more open-minded, outsiders said they became more sociable, but otherwise stayed the same.

"We were surprised to find such a discrepancy between drinkers' perceptions of their own alcohol-induced personalities and how observers perceived them," said Rachel Winograd of the University of Missouri, the lead author of the new study, which has been published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science. "Participants reported experiencing differences in all factors of the Five Factor Model of personality, but extraversion was the only factor robustly perceived to be different across participants in alcohol and sober conditions."

The 156 people recruited for the study were invited into the lab in friend groups of three or four, with half given enough vodka and Sprite to reach a blood alcohol of .09 - equivalent of five shots for a 90kg man - and the others just the lemonade as a placebo.

Once breathalyzed, the participants were given group activities such as puzzles and discussion questions, during which they displayed their personalities. They were also asked to describe their own 'drunk personality' throughout the experiment.
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Heart

15 myths about losing a beloved pet

Tom Gray
Psych Central
Tue, 17 May 2016 22:53 UTC
Pet loss
© Animal Rescue Foundation
"I didn't know anyone else felt as deeply as I do towards animals," a number of people have confided in me.

When it comes to your love of animals, you may not be as alone as you think! Some pet owners are extraordinarily attached and dedicated to their animal companions. So when their good (or best) friends die — or otherwise leave their lives — they are heartbroken and sometimes devastated.

Since more and more animal lovers are "coming out of the closet," fewer animal lovers are feeling as alone with their intense pet-related grief. More and more animal lovers are openly talking about their deep bonds with their furred, feathered, finned, and scaled friends. Peoples' attitudes towards pet loss have really changed in the last 40 years - especially in the last decade. Despite growing enlightenment, misperceptions about pet loss still persist. These myths hinder healthy mourning. Here are some of the myths followed by the realities.

Top Myths About Losing Your Pet

Myth 1. People who experience intense grief over the loss or anticipated loss of a pet are crazy, weird, or strange.

Reality: Individuals who say this, or believe this, are judgmental. Experiencing powerful feelings of distress over the loss of a loved animal companion is, usually, normal and healthy. People who have strong feelings about the loss of a pet have them because they are capable of intimate attachments and deep emotional bonding. This is something to be proud of, not something to put down.
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Snakes in Suits

How to deal with psychopaths & toxic people

Eric Barker
bakadesuyo.com
Tue, 18 Oct 2016 15:00 UTC
psychopaths
I know what some people are thinking: I'm never going to deal with psychopaths. This is just more sensational clickbait junk.

Wrong. The experts are betting you probably encounter a psychopath every day. In fact, a lot of what you think you know about psychopaths is very wrong.

Yes, psychopaths are more likely to be in jail than most people — but the majority of them aren't. There's a whole class of people who don't have a conscience or feel empathy, and in all likelihood you deal with at least one all the time.

And they probably make your life miserable. They're "subclinical psychopaths." With biology, you either have tuberculosis or you don't. Black and white. There's no "kinda." In psychology there's a lot of "kinda." People with subclinical psychological disorders are like this. Not bad enough to go to prison, but plenty bad enough to make your life awful.

The Machiavellian manipulators at work who do all kinds of nasty — but without leaving fingerprints. The bad boyfriends and girlfriends who drive you crazy — sometimes quite deliberately.

Comment: A Warning from the Ancestors - Psychopaths in Folklore and Fairy Tales
Mythology and folklore are really an early form of psychology. In a pre-scientific era - it was the only means by which average people could anchor their frustration and warnings to others regarding the Consciousness Parasites and other pathological predators within the material world - without having to rely exclusively on supernatural-religious concepts such as demons, succubi and so on. This was probably to avoid charges of witchcraft and blasphemy. So rather than deal with purely religious motifs - from around the Middle Ages on - the psychopath entered into the world of children's fairy tale.

Just about all European fairy tales from this period on are about psychopaths and psychopathic behaviour. How to recognise their traits, and deal with them. This is not by accident - a collective folk memory was generated in the guise of children's stories of wicked stepmothers, wolves disguised as kindly and familiar people turning out to be killers. This repository of pathological awareness was essentially the only option available to a mainly illiterate population of the time. A powerful method to warn others in such a way that would be passed on and without risking ridicule and censure - by application of a linguistic folk art to develop changes in the collective consciousness. Ultimately, this is what these fairy tales were attempting to achieve going forward - a warning of sorts. While also serving the function of an allegorical collective therapy session to heal past trauma within a community caused by psychopaths in the past.


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