Psychology 01 (Nov 08 - Jan 14)

[winston]

The Cash Value of the American Mind by Alexander Green


Although the economy is on the mend and the stock market has taken a big bounce off the bottom, tough times remain for many Americans.

Unemployment is high. Bankruptcies and foreclosures are near record levels. Repo lots are overflowing. Worry and stress are on the rise in many households.

Some of these folks might want to visit psychologist William James, even though he's been dead for a hundred years.

James (1842-1910) was an author, philosopher, scientist, Harvard professor and giant in American intellectual history.

He trained as a medical doctor but never practiced medicine. He broke new ground as a physiologist and psychologist. He studied religion and psychic phenomena and wrote three classic books, including The Varieties of Religious Experience, the acknowledged inspiration for the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, one of the world's most effective treatment programs.

Although his name is not widely recognized outside academia today, James made major contributions to psychology, philosophy, literature, teaching and religious studies. He coined numerous words and phrases including pluralism, time-line, stream of consciousness, live option and moral equivalent of war.

Historian Jacques Barzun writes that James' book Principles of Psychology is "an American masterpiece which, quite like Moby d**k, ought to be read from beginning to end at least once by every person professing to be educated. It a masterpiece in the classic and total sense."

What do so many find inspiring about James? In part, it was his life itself, his legendary zest for living. James loved to travel, hike and mountain-climb. He served as a naturalist and accompanied Louis Agassiz on his expedition to explore the upper reaches of the Amazon.

He churned out articles, books and hundreds of public lectures while carrying a full teaching load at Harvard. When he died from heart failure in his late 60s, his contemporaries said he had literally worn himself out.

Despite James's many accomplishments, his life was not without its setbacks. He suffered from ailments of the eyes, skin, stomach and back. He was diagnosed with neurasthenia and depression. He contracted smallpox in Brazil. Three siblings, including novelist Henry James and diarist Alice James, were afflicted with invalidism. His beloved sister Alice died of breast cancer at 44.

However, James believed that we are meant to spend our lives being curious, active, and fully engaged.

He was also one of the first to try to reconcile science and religion. In particular, he was interested in human spiritual experience, a realm that is difficult to capture by logic or observation, and nearly impossible to nail down scientifically.

Yet he found a way. James is the father of the distinctly American philosophy known as Pragmatism, the doctrine that truth reveals itself in practice, regardless of its origins. Something is true if it doesn't contradict known facts and it works.

James thought a belief should be judged by its results. He was more interested in the fruits of an idea than its roots and advised people to look for a truth's "cash value," arguing that a belief is true if it allows you to live a fuller, richer life.

He was particularly interested in showing men and women how to convert misery and unhappiness into growth. As you can see from some of his remarks, the approach is nothing if not pragmatic:

Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or being.

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.

Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.

Compared with what we ought to be, we are half awake.

Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.

James taught that we can change our lives by altering our attitudes of mind. He called pessimism "a disease" and said it could be cured by substitution. You can change, for example, "I have to exercise today" to "I get to exercise today." "I get to visit my grandmother" can be substituted for "I have to visit my grandmother." The shift is a subtle one, but powerful.

The essence of a belief is the establishment of a habit, a willingness to act. That begins with a change of mind. The best motivation is always an inspiriting attitude.

As a pioneering psychologist, James's primary interest was how the mind can bring about life-changing effects. Yes, we can always grouse about circumstances. But it is not what fate does to us that matters. What matters is what we do with what fate hands us.

"All that the human heart wants," declared James, "is its chance."


Source: Spiritual Wealth

[winston]

4 Psychological Traps That Are Killing Your Portfolio


Meet Behavioral Finance

If the market is efficient, why do bubbles happen? Why do mechanical investment strategies suddenly fail? Why do strategies like value averaging work in an efficient market? These are some of the questions that interest behavioral finance people. They have put forth a number of explanations that boil down to:

a) Although the market is usually efficient as it can be, investors' inability to see the future means it suffers periods of confusion, and

b) the human element of the market precludes a perfectly efficient market and exacerbates any surprises. How? Read on.


Numbers-Only Investing

Markets become volatile when investors pour in money based purely on a few figures from the financials and the analysts’ predictions without knowing about the companies those numbers represent.

This is called anchoring and it refers to focusing on one detail at the expense of all the others. Imagine betting on a boxing match and choosing the fighter purely by who has thrown the most punches in their last five fights.

You may come out all right by picking the statistically busier fighter, but the fighter with the least punches may have won five by first-round knockouts. Clearly, any metric can become meaningless when it is taken out of context.


Believing the Past Equals the Future

When investors start believing that the past equals the future, they are acting as if there is no uncertainty in the market. Unfortunately, uncertainty never vanishes.


Self-Serving Bias

Along the same vein as overconfidence is the self-serving bias. This is when investors are quick to take credit for portfolio gains, but just as quick to blame losses on outside factors like market forces or the Bank of China.


Pseudo-Certainty Effect

This 50-cent phrase is an observation about investors' perceptions of risk. Investors will limit their risk exposure if they think their portfolio/investing returns will be positive – essentially protecting the lead – but they will seek more and more risk if it looks like they are heading for a loss.


The Bottom Line

This is only small sample of a whole list that includes overreaction, under-reaction, conformation bias, gambler’s fallacy, clustering illusion, positive outcome bias, and on and on.

Although academics study these phenomena for their own sake, investors should also pay attention to behavioral finance. That way you can look in the mirror and ask yourself, “Am I doing that?”


http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/4-Psyc ... 8.html?x=0

[winston]

Do We Have Free Will? Computer Says No
Source: Mind Control 101

Your subconscious makes decisions for you up to 6 seconds before you "think" you do. In fact, a scientist watching an MRI of your brain can tell you what choice your going to make 6 seconds before you consciously make the choice:

So what does this say about our free will?

Well, it means that perhaps who we are is dictated less by the choices we make, and more by the information we take in.

http://www.mindpowernews.com/NoFreeWill.htm

[winston]

[winston]

How to Tell If Someone Is Lying By Stuart Wolpert / Source: UCLA Newsroom

When someone is acting suspiciously at an airport, subway station or other public space, how can law enforcement officers determine whether he's up to no good?

Geiselman and his colleagues have identified several indicators that a person is being deceptive. The more reliable red flags that indicate deceit, Geiselman said, include:

When questioned, deceptive people generally want to say as little as possible. Geiselman initially thought they would tell an elaborate story, but the vast majority give only the bare-bones. Studies with college students, as well as prisoners, show this. Geiselman's investigative interviewing techniques are designed to get people to talk.

• Although deceptive people do not say much, they tend to spontaneously give a justification for what little they are saying, without being prompted.

• They tend to repeat questions before answering them, perhaps to give themselves time to concoct an answer.

• They often monitor the listener's reaction to what they are saying. "They try to read you to see if you are buying their story," Geiselman said.

• They often initially slow down their speech because they have to create their story and monitor your reaction, and when they have it straight "will spew it out faster," Geiselman said.

Truthful people are not bothered if they speak slowly, but deceptive people often think slowing their speech down may look suspicious. "Truthful people will not dramatically alter their speech rate within a single sentence," he said.

• They tend to use sentence fragments more frequently than truthful people; often, they will start an answer, back up and not complete the sentence.

• They are more likely to press their lips when asked a sensitive question and are more likely to play with their hair or engage in other "grooming" behaviors. Gesturing toward one's self with the hands tends to be a sign of deception; gesturing outwardly is not.

• Truthful people, if challenged about details, will often deny that they are lying and explain even more, while deceptive people generally will not provide more specifics.

• When asked a difficult question, truthful people will often look away because the question requires concentration, while dishonest people will look away only briefly, if at all, unless it is a question that should require intense concentration.

If dishonest people try to mask these normal reactions to lying, they would be even more obvious, Geiselman said. Among the techniques he teaches to enable detectives to tell the truth from lies are:

Have people tell their story backwards, starting at the end and systematically working their way back. Instruct them to be as complete and detailed as they can. This technique, part of a "cognitive interview" Geiselman co-developed with Ronald Fisher, a former UCLA psychologist now at Florida International University, "increases the cognitive load to push them over the edge." A deceptive person, even a "professional liar," is "under a heavy cognitive load" as he tries to stick to his story while monitoring your reaction.

• Ask open-ended questions to get them to provide as many details and as much complete information as possible ("Can you tell me more about...?" "Tell me exactly..."). First ask general questions, and only then get more specific.

• Don't interrupt, let them talk and use silent pauses to encourage them to talk.

http://www.mindpowernews.com/Lying.htm

[winston]

* Why Extroverts Are Happier Than Introverts *

Extroverts are the cheeriest personality type, and a new study finds that the root of their happiness may be in their memories.

People who are extroverted remember the past in a more positive light than other personality types, researchers report in the June issue of the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

This rose-tinged viewpoint explains much of the happiness gap between extroverts and people who are neurotic, a personality trait marked by anxiety and irritability.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/why ... h0cm92ZXJ0

[winston]

Mind Control Tactics: 3 Simple Ways To Make People Fulfill Your Desires
By Michael Lee

Mind control tactics often go by many names. Some call them hypnotism. Others brand them as persuasive manipulation. But whatever you call these tactics, one thing’s for sure: they can help you get more out of your life.

However, not everybody takes mind control tactics seriously. To most, they are just self-help mumbo jumbo that has no bearing in real life. But that is where they’re wrong. These techniques are in fact very useful in everyday situations.

Can you imagine being able to turn the tide during company meetings, or getting your sisters or brothers to cooperate with you for once? If you’re ready to learn more, read on!


Mind Control Tactic # 1: Reward and Punishment.

If you want to get people to do what you want, you must know what they like and what they don’t like. Use this knowledge to your advantage through the reward and punishment system.

Mothers are quite adept at this tactic. If they want their kid to do better in school, for example, they’ll tell their kid that a present awaits them if they show significant improvement in academics. If they get failing grades, there is a corresponding punishment usually in the form of grounding or taking away of toys.


Mind Control Tactic # 2: Guilt is a Universal Weakness.

This involves making use of a person’s conscience. This works quite well for most people. If, for example, you want your sister to help you with your assignment, you can tell her that you’ll most certainly fail the subject without her help. No one wants to be burdened with their conscience.

Of course, the degree of your guilt-inducing story will depend on the kind of person you’re dealing with. If your sister doesn’t really care about your grades, you might need to come up with a more potent story - like your mom being tired all the time and needing all the help she can get keeping the family straight.


Mind Control Tactic # 3: Use the Favor Bank.

Mind control techniques are disguised in many ways. One of their disguises is the favor bank where you do someone a favor with plans of soliciting help from that same person sometime in the future.

People who owe you a favor won’t be able to ignore your wishes that easily. This is one of the reasons why it’s so important not to burn bridges. Who knows when you might need their help?


Mind control tactics come in different shapes and sizes. They’re not something to be forced and is more effective when you don’t appear too desperate.


http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/mind ... ur_desires

[winston]

Mentalism Secrets And Tricks: How To Use Mentalism To Get Into Someone’s Mind
By Michael lee

There’s a form of magic that is more amazing than simply making bunnies jump out of magician hats or making your assistant levitate. And it’s even based on science. It’s called mentalism. Serious mentalism secrets and tricks involve reading minds, understanding behavior and predicting outcomes.

Intriguing, isn't it? As mysterious as these mentalism secrets and tricks are, they are not at all out of reach. By reading this article, you are already halfway to mastering the wonder that is mentalism.

Using mind reading techniques, you'll be able to find out how your boss is going to react, what your friends are hiding or even increase your chances of getting someone's number without a sweat. Ready to find out more? Read on!


1) Train Yourself To Be Confident.

Confidence is the backbone of all mentalism secrets and tricks. If you're seriously depleted in the ego department, then you stand no chance of ever achieving your dream of becoming a mentalist. But I'm not here to be a downer. Rather, I'm here to help you build your confidence.

Start by learning to appreciate what makes you "you." Love the way you talk, the way you look, the way your voice sounds, and the way you articulate yourself. Know your strengths and fortify them. Look into the mirror everyday and smile at yourself.

Instead of picking on what you don't like about yourself, try focusing your energies on what you do like. The more confident you are, the more other people will believe you.


2) Act Like You Know Their Secret.

One of the most effective mentalism secrets and tricks involve acting like you have information on other people. Sometimes, you don't even have to say anything. All it takes is a knowing look, eyes that say I know what you did or a smile that says I know what you've been up to.

By directing all these signals to a person, you make him feel cornered. In some cases, you make a person feel like you belong to one group with one secret. A person who is cornered is less careful with his words and will most likely let something slip.

A person who feels that you are now also privy to the secret will not be able to help talking to you about it. It’s a win-win situation for you both.


3) Learn To Pick Up Subconscious Cues.

Body language and facial expression can give you more insight than verbal explanation. After all, people can always lie about themselves; but faking reaction is a lot more difficult than that.

So how do you interpret these non-verbal cues? For starters, you need to become more observant, not only of others but of yourself. When you tell someone a blatant lie, does your posture change? Does your back stiffen or does your throat feel constricted?

Chances are, whatever your body is going through is similar to what other people might experience when they tell a lie. Experiment with yourself first and observe how other people react.


Mentalism secrets and tricks have been in existence for hundreds of years. Until now, they have remained quite reliable. Now that you possess the knowledge of these mind reading techniques, the rest is up to you.

http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/ment ... one_s_mind

[winston]

Learn How To Become A Mentalist: How To Read Minds In 3 Simple Steps
By Michael Lee

People who know how to read minds are the envy of everybody. They can amaze anyone and instantly become the life of the party. They can also use their skills to make sound decisions, anticipate reactions and make life generally more pleasant for themselves. The good news is… you too can learn how to become a mentalist.

You don’t have to go through too much hullabaloo to develop mind reading tricks and skills. Just by reading these tips below, you can learn how to become a mentalist in no time.


1) Ask the right questions.

If you want to know how to read minds, you can start by asking the right questions. These questions won’t give you what you want to know directly. However, you would be able to figure out more or less where a person stands.

For example, you want to know whether a person is pro-environment or pro-capitalism. Ask them a question that tackles both concepts. Ask about what he thinks of animals in a zoo and animals in the wilderness. Or you can also ask whether they recycle or not. If you want to learn how to become a mentalist, you have to know how to do your detective work subtly.


2) Look for clues.

There’s always a clue to every mystery. If you want to learn how to become a mentalist, you have to start recognizing clues for what they are and connect them all together.

Let’s say you’re a wife who wants to go out with your husband tonight. Look at his face, the way he carries himself and his overall appearance. Does he look haggard? Has he brought home a suitcase filled with documents? Judging by the clues presented to you, you can already deduce how your spouse is going to react to your plans.


3) Follow the routine.

You may not notice it, but most people tend to be predictable. They usually follow the same routine day in and day out.

Betty, for example, likes to stop by the department store after work. If you have worked with Betty or have known her for quite some time, you should already be familiar with her after work excursions.

And yet when you tell her that you know she’s going to head to the mall after work, she’s still undeniably surprised at how you can read her mind!

Why don’t you try observing your own habits and see just how predictable some of your actions are? Doing this will definitely improve your awareness of other people’s actions as well.

Congratulations! You have just learned how to become a mentalist. It’s not really hard work and can be a really fun experience.


http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/lear ... steps.html

[winston]

How To Be A Mind Reader: 3 Mind Reading Tricks To Decode Anyone’s Thoughts Or Feelings By Michael Lee

Wouldn’t it be great if you know how to be a mind reader? That would be a very handy skill indeed, and one that would really stand out in your resume. Think of all the complicated situations you could avoid. Think of all the opportunities you can grab just from knowing what the other person is thinking.

With all these benefits, who wouldn’t want to learn how to be a mind reader? So what are you waiting for? Learn the tricks of the trade using these simple tactics!


Mind Reading Trick # 1: See Through Hesitation.

If you want to learn how to be a mind reader, you need to be 100% aware of your target’s every move - be it a slight shift of the eyes or a two-second pause before answering. These quick nuances often reveal the most of what a person is really thinking.

Unfortunately, a lot of people tend to ignore these signals. For example, people who are not totally enthusiastic about an idea will generally show a moment’s hesitation. A silent, awkward moment is a form of hesitation.

So is the biting of the lip or the scratching of the head. When a person murmurs, “I don’t know,” that also means you need to come up with another idea.


Mind Reading Trick # 2: Watch Out For Close Contact.

On the other hand, a person who maintains close contact with you is very much in agreement with what you’re saying.

Say you’re pitching an idea for an anti-smoking campaign. If a person likes what you have to say, he will generally lean forward to show his interest. If you two are sitting or standing next to each other, his torso will likely be turned towards you. This also applies to the rest of his body, whether it’s his legs or his knees.

If you want to learn how to be a mind reader, you have to be comfortable interpreting these signs of interest. You will also have to accept when a person’s body language shows you otherwise.


Mind Reading Trick # 3: Observe Facial Expressions.

A person’s face shows a lot of emotions. If you want to learn how to be a mind reader, you’re going to have to understand what certain facial expressions mean.

One eyebrow raised usually means that a person is skeptical. Pursing of the mouth means that you are not doing okay so far. A nod or a series of nods means that the person agrees with you.

By keeping your eyes on a person’s facial expressions, you’ll have a more concrete idea of what they have in mind.


Learning how to be a mind reader comes with a lot of advantages. This skill helps you communicate better with your friends, family and co-workers.

http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/how_ ... r_feelings