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thinkahol *

The Empathy Ceiling: The Rich Are Different - And Not In a Good Way, Studies Suggest | ... - 0 views

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    Psychologist and social scientist Dacher Keltner says the rich really are different, and not in a good way: Their life experience makes them less empathetic, less altruistic, and generally more selfish.
thinkahol *

Study finds 'magic mushrooms' may improve personality long-term | The Raw Story - 0 views

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    A new study suggests that a single dose of psilocybin -- the active ingredient in "Magic Mushrooms" -- can result in improved personality traits over the long term. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine found that individuals who received the drug once in a clinical setting reported a greater sense of "openness" that often lasted 14 months or longer, according to study published this week in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. The study defined openness as a personality trait that "encompasses aesthetic appreciation and sensitivity, imagination and fantasy, and broad-minded tolerance of others' viewpoints and values." It is one of five main personality traits that are shared among all cultures worldwide. Of the 51 participants, 30 had personality changes that left them feeling more open. Other personality traits (extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness and conscientiousness) were not impacted. Only the participants who said they had a "complete mystical experience" while on the drug registered an increased sense of openness. "The mystical experience has certain qualities," lead author Katherine MacLean said. "The primary one is that you feel a certain kind of connectedness and unity with everything and everyone." Because personality traits are generally considered to remain stable throughout a persons lifetime, researchers are excited about therapeutic implications of the study. "[T]his study shows that psilocybin actually changes one domain of personality that is strongly related to traits such as imagination, feeling, abstract ideas and aesthetics, and is considered a core construct underlying creativity in general," study author Roland R. Griffiths told USA Today. "And the changes we see appear to be long-term."     
thinkahol *

Does sexual equality change porn? - Pornography - Salon.com - 0 views

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    In what may feel like a flashback to the porn wars of the '60s, a new study investigates the link between a country's relative gender equality and the degree of female "empowerment" in the X-rated entertainment it consumes. Researchers at the University of Hawaii focused on three countries in particular: Norway, the United States and Japan, which are respectively ranked 1st, 15th and (yikes) 54th on the United Nations' Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). To simplify their analysis, their library of smut was limited to explicit photographs of women "from mainstream pornographic magazines and Internet websites, as well as from the portfolios of the most popular porn stars from each nation." Then they set out to evaluate each image on both a disempowerment and an empowerment scale, using respective measures like whether the woman is "bound and dominated" by "leashes, collars, gags, or handcuffs" or "whether she has a natural looking body." Their hypothesis was that societies with greater gender equity will consume pornography that has more representations of "empowered women" and less of "disempowered women." It turned out the former was true, but, contradictory as it may sound, the latter was not. "While Norwegian pornography offers a wider variety of body types -- conforming less to a societal ideal that is disempowering to the average woman -- there are still many images that do not promote a healthy respect for women," the researchers explain. In other words, Norwegian porn showed more signs of female empowerment, but X-rated images in all three countries equally depicted women in demeaning positions and scenarios. This, the researchers surmise, "suggests that empowerment and disempowerment within pornography are potentially different constructs." So, gender equality is accompanied by sexual interest in a broader range of beauty types but not a decrease in porn's infantilization of females, use of dominating fetish gear on women or any of the other characteristics th
Robert Kamper

Power Of Imagination Is More Than Just A Metaphor - 1 views

  • The results showed that simply imagining a posture may have effects that are similar to actually assuming the pose.  The participants spent more time searching the display when they imagined themselves holding the monitor, compared to when they imagined themselves with their hands behind their backs. The researchers suggest that the slower rate of searching indicates a more thorough analysis of items closer to the hands. Previous research has shown that we spend more time looking at items close to our hands (items close to us are usually more important than those further away), but this is the first study suggesting that merely imagining something close to our hands will cause us to pay more attention to it.
nat bas

Mind - How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • The brain evolved to predict, and it does so by identifying patterns. When those patterns break down — as when a hiker stumbles across an easy chair sitting deep in the woods, as if dropped from the sky — the brain gropes for something, anything that makes sense. It may retreat to a familiar ritual, like checking equipment. But it may also turn its attention outward, the researchers argue, and notice, say, a pattern in animal tracks that was previously hidden. The urge to find a coherent pattern makes it more likely that the brain will find one.
  • “The fact that the group who read the absurd story identified more letter strings suggests that they were more motivated to look for patterns than the others,” Dr. Heine said. “And the fact that they were more accurate means, we think, that they’re forming new patterns they wouldn’t be able to form otherwise.”
  • Brain-imaging studies of people evaluating anomalies, or working out unsettling dilemmas, show that activity in an area called the anterior cingulate cortex spikes significantly. The more activation is recorded, the greater the motivation or ability to seek and correct errors in the real world, a recent study suggests
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  • For another, studies have found that people in the grip of the uncanny tend to see patterns where none exist — becoming more prone to conspiracy theories, for example. The urge for order satisfies itself, it seems, regardless of the quality of the evidence.
  • Still, the new research supports what many experimental artists, habitual travelers and other novel seekers have always insisted: at least some of the time, disorientation begets creative thinking.
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    A sense of the absurd sharpens your intellect: you find more meaning after you've been through something that makes no sense at all.
thinkahol *

Who knows you best? Not you, say psychologists - 0 views

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    Know thyself. That was Socrates' advice, and it squares with conventional wisdom. But a new article reviews the research and suggests an addendum to the philosopher's edict: Ask a friend.
thinkahol *

Connection to your future self impacts your financial decision-making | KurzweilAI - 0 views

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    How connected consumers feel (or don't feel) to their future selves impacts their spending and savings decisions, researchers at Columbia Business School and The University of Chicago Booth School of Business have determined. The researchers conducted a series of experiments that manipulated the degree to which subjects felt connected to their future selves. When discontinuity with the future self is anticipated, people behave more impatiently - speeding up the consumption of utility (in this case, gift cards) - more than when connectedness to the future self is expected. The researchers asked a group of college seniors - three weeks before graduation - to read a passage that described college graduation either as an event that would prompt a major change in their identities or as an event that would prompt only a relatively trivial change. Compared to students who read the passage describing graduation as a small change, those who read a description of the event as a major change were much more likely to make more impatient choices, choosing to receive a gift certificate worth $120 in the next week rather than wait a year for up to $240. Their work suggests that people can be motivated to hold onto their money, or make more prudent decisions by increasing their sense of connectedness to their future selves, the researchers said. Ref.: Daniel M. Bartels & Oleg Urminsky, On Intertemporal Selfishness: How the Perceived Instability of Identity Underlies Impatient Consumption, Journal of Consumer Research, 2011; [DOI: 10.1086/658339]
thinkahol *

The Blog : What's the Point of Transcendence? : Sam Harris - 0 views

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    I certainly didn't mean to suggest that transcendent experiences are "beyond the purview of science." On the contrary, I think they should be studied scientifically. And I don't believe that these experiences tell us anything about the cosmos (I called Deepak Chopra a "charlatan" for making unfounded claims of this sort). Nor do they tell us anything about history, or about the veracity of scripture. However, these experiences do have a lot to say about the nature of the human mind-not about its neurobiology, per se, but about its qualitative character (both actual and potential). So, to answer Jerry's question: yes, many things follow from these transcendent experiences. Here's a short list:
thinkahol *

Stoner alert: McDonald's gets you legally high | KurzweilAI - 0 views

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    Fats in foods like potato chips and french fries make them nearly irresistible because they trigger natural marijuana-like chemicals in the body called endocannabinoids, researchers at the University of California, Irvine, have found. The researchers discovered that when rats tasted something fatty, cells in their upper gut started producing endocannabinoids, while sugars and proteins did not have this effect. How fats create, like, a buzz It starts on the tongue, where fats in food generate a signal that travels first to your brain, and then through a nerve bundle called the vagus to your intestines. There, the signal stimulates the production of endocannabinoids, which initiates a surge in cell signaling that prompts you to totally pig out - probably by initiating the release of digestive chemicals linked to hunger and satiety that compel us to eat more. And that leads to obesity, diabetes and cancer, the researchers said. But they suggest it might be possible to curb this process by obstructing endocannabinoid activity: for example, by using drugs that "clog" cannabinoid receptors. The trick: bypassing the brain to avoid creating anxiety and depression (which happens when endocannabinoid signaling is blocked in the brain). I'm guessing McDonald's won't be adding that drug to their fries. Ref.: Daniele Piomelli, et al., An endocannabinoid signal in the gut controls dietary fat intake, PNAS, 2011; in press
thinkahol *

How your memories can be twisted under social pressure | KurzweilAI - 0 views

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    Listen up, Facebook and Twitter groupies: how easily can social pressure affect your memory? Very easily, researchers at the Weizmann Institute and University College London have proved, and they think they even know what part of the brain is responsible. The participants conformed to the group on these "planted" responses, giving incorrect answers nearly 70% of the time. Volunteers watched a documentary film in small groups. Three days later, they returned to the lab individually to take a memory test, answering questions about the film. They were also asked how confident they were in their answers. They were later invited back to the lab to retake the test. This time, the subjects were also given supposed answers of the others in their film-viewing group (along with social-media-style photos) while being scanned in a functional MRI (fMRI) that revealed their brain activity. Is most of what you know false? Planted among these were false answers to questions the volunteers had previously answered correctly and confidently. The participants conformed to the group on these "planted" responses, giving incorrect answers nearly 70% of the time. To determine if their memory of the film had actually undergone a change, the researchers invited the subjects back to the lab later to take the memory test once again, telling them that the answers they had previously been fed were not those of their fellow film watchers, but random computer generations. Some of the responses reverted back to the original, correct ones, but get this: despite finding out the scientists messed with their minds, close to half of their responses remained erroneous, implying that the subjects were relying on false memories implanted in the earlier session. An analysis of the fMRI data showed a strong co-activation and connectivity between two brain areas: the hippocampus and the amygdala. Social reinforcement could act on the amygdala to persuade our brains to replace a strong memory wi
thinkahol *

A Framing Memo for Occupy Wall Street - 0 views

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    It seems to me that the OWS movement is moral in nature, that occupiers want the country to change its moral focus. It is easy to find useful policies; hundreds have been suggested. It is harder to find a moral focus and stick to it. If the movement is to frame itself, it should be on the basis of its moral focus, not a particular agenda or list of policy demands. If the moral focus of America changes, new people will be elected and the policies will follow. Without a change of moral focus, the conservative worldview that has brought us to the present disastrous and dangerous moment will continue to prevail.
Kendy Frank

Why Online Marketing For Healthcare? - 0 views

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    Although the Internet has long been the go-to source for health and wellness information, most hospitals are notably absent in the online arena, often treating the web as an afterthought to traditional media. Here are seven key statistics that suggest that a smart web presence is more important than ever for every hospital and health system:
medeosunpharma

Best Ayurvedic Medicine Retailers in Ludhiana | Medeosun Pharma - 0 views

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    Himalaya's Purifying Neem Face Wash is a soap-free ,Best for acne-prone skin, Eliminates pimple, herbal formula that make your skin glowing. A natural blend of Neem and Turmeric bring together their antibacterial and antifungal properties to prevent all types of skins. Business is related to pharmaceutical wholesalers and retailers of allopathic medicine. We will do booking of lab tests also, free sample collection from home. For home delivery and order processing we will promote 7098383839 mobile no, For any complaints suggestions customer will call at 7887897905 Address : SCF 38, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar main market, Block E, near State Bank of India City : Ludhiana State : Punjab Pincode : 141003 Contact no. : 81466 60305 Visit us : https://goo.gl/maps/KdNPpe4bCMyX2Usr6
thinkahol *

Education: Learning difficulties | The Economist - 1 views

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    A PARADOX of education is that presenting information in a way that looks easy to learn often has the opposite effect. Numerous studies have demonstrated that when people are forced to think hard about what they are shown they remember it better, so it is worth looking at ways this can be done. And a piece of research about to be published in Cognition, by Daniel Oppenheimer, a psychologist at Princeton University, and his colleagues, suggests a simple one: make the text conveying the information harder to read.
Media Amel

Television as a source of information and its evaluation your communication skills - 0 views

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    People's views and knowledge about the subject can be as much influenced by media sources as anything else. This presents difficulties, as increasingly evidence is emerging to suggest that the profile of industrial relations presented by television in particular is not very representative.
Techno Shakti

Think Yourself A Better Picture: Experience the Benefits of HD Television (Without Actu... - 0 views

    • Techno Shakti
       
      According to New Scientist - the theory of auto suggestion to the human brain does have measurable impact.
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    A study on "framing" and how / if it influences user experience using HD Televisions. "
Robert Kamper

Pain is more intense when inflicted on purpose - The Harvard University Gazette - 0 views

  • The study’s authors suggest that intended and unintended harm cause different amounts of pain because they differ in meaning. “From decoding language to understanding gestures, the mind distills meaning from our social environment,” says Gray. “An intended harm has a very different meaning from an accidental harm.”
Robert Kamper

Stress May Cause The Brain To Become Disconnected - 3 views

  • The new paper by Hajszan and colleagues at Yale University suggests that in learned helplessness, an animal model for depression and PTSD, stress-related reductions in synapses in the hippocampus are directly related to the emergence of depression-like behavior.  These data help to make the case that stress-related changes in the structure of nerve cells may have important behavioral consequences,
Robert Kamper

Mind Hacks: The Straight Dope on Learning Styles - 0 views

  • a standard set of questions they would like answered: can you really divide people up into a particular set of categories? Are the tests for these categories reliable; if you take the test twice will you come out the same both times? Are the categories you are trying to use related to how people learn? If you use a theory of learning styles, do people learn better? Can you use learning styles to predict who will benefit most from particular styles of instruction? Does using a learning styles system - any system - for teaching have other effects on learners or teachings, such as making them more confident or making them expend more effort? These questions stem from the way academic psychologists systematically approach topics: we like to establish the truth of psychological claims. If someone comes to us with a theory about learning styles we want to know (a) if learning styles really exist, (b) if they really are associated with better learning and also (c) if, when learning styles are taken into account, learning is better because of something about the specific learing style theory rather than just being a side effect of an increase in teacher confidence, effort or somesuch.
  • Using a learning style theory is great, but you lose a lot of flexibility and potential for change if you start to believe that the theory is based on proven facts about the way the world is, rather than just being a useful set of habits and suggestions which might, sometimes, help guide us through the maze of teaching and learning.
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    The biased dope on learning styles
Robert Kamper

High Caffeine Intake Linked To Hallucination Proneness - 0 views

  • High Caffeine Intake Linked To Hallucination Proneness ScienceDaily (Jan. 14, 2009) — High caffeine consumption could be linked to a greater tendency to hallucinate, a new research study suggests
  • ‘High caffeine users’ – those who consumed more than the equivalent of seven cups of instant coffee a day - were three times more likely to have heard a person’s voice when there was no one there compared with ‘low caffeine users’ who consumed less than the equivalent of one cup of instant coffee a day.  With ninety per cent of North Americans consuming some of form caffeine every day, it is the world's most widely used drug.
  • “Our study shows an association between caffeine intake and hallucination-proneness in students. However, one interpretation may be that those students who were more prone to hallucinations used caffeine to help cope with their experiences. More work is needed to establish whether caffeine consumption, and nutrition in general, has an impact on those kinds of hallucination that cause distress.”
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  • Caffeine use can lead to a condition called caffeine intoxication. Symptoms include nervousness, irritability, anxiety, muscle twitching, insomnia, headaches, and heart palpitations. This is not commonly seen when daily caffeine intake is less than 250mg
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    science daily report on durham university study into relationship between caffeine intake and proneness to hallucinations
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