Geeko friendly's List: Psychology

• • Same thing. People mix music with emotions
• it's hard to think about a great film without also being influenced by that film's score.
• We know, for example, that the right kind of music can make us suspicious of an otherwise innocent-seeming character, or evoke feelings of delight watching a benign scene, or even cause false memories for images that weren't even present in the movie. But little research has considered how viewers respond to music played in other parts of a film. Surely what we see in one scene affects how we perceive the next scene. How about music?
• Here, the results are just for music clips played before the character was seen.
• The results were similar when music was played after the clip.
• Additional analysis by the researchers suggests that the music played before the scene had a more powerful effect on perceived emotion than music played afterwards, but both clearly have an important effect.

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• Personal knowledge management
• Reflection. Continuous improvement on how the individual operates.
• Information literacy. Understanding what information is important and how to find unknown information.
• Organizational skills. Personal librarianship? Personal categorization and taxonomies.
• observational 'cultural anthropology' skills
• Communication skills. Perception, intuition, expression, visualization, and interpretation.
• Understanding of complex adaptive systems.
• innovation,
• pattern recognition,
• Collaboration skills. Coordination, synchronization, experimentation, cooperation, and design.
• Personal wiki
• weblogs (with a Web feed)

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• Politicians do not usually give themselves away so tellingly, and many of us would like to know whether they mean what they are saying. So how are we to know when they are lying?
• Software programs that analyse a person's speech, voice or facial expressions are building upon the work of researchers like Ekman to help us discover when the truth is being stretched, and even by how much.
• Skillicorn has been watching out for verbal "spin".
• He has developed an algorithm that evaluates word usage within the text of a conversation or speech to determine when a person "presents themselves or their content in a way that does not necessarily reflect what they know to be true".
• The algorithm counts usage of first person nouns - "I" tends to indicate less spin than "we", for example. It also searches out phrases that offer qualifications or clarifications of more general statements, since speeches that contain few such amendments tend to be high on spin.
• In general though, Obama's speeches contain considerably higher spin than either McCain
• or Clinton.
• So the analysis appears to back up McCain's claim that he is a "straight talker".
• "When you see these crises come along, the spin goes up," Skillicorn says. "Obama is very good at using stirring rhetoric to deal with the issues. And it seems to work if you look at what happens in the polls afterwards."
• McCain does not seem as adept at using spin to his advantage, and his "straight talk" can make his speeches fall flat from a motivational point of view
• "John McCain's voice analysis profile looks like that of someone who is clinically depressed"
• McCain's voice changes little in pitch as he speaks, and so conveys very little emotion or impact. Whether he is addressing positive prospects or discussing sad facts, his voice always sounds the same.
• Additionally, McCain's voice and facial movements often do not match up
• "Someday soon, computers may be able read us better than any psychologist. I imagine that will be a pretty scary day for politicians."

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• now dubbed the less-hostile-sounding Future Attribute Screening Technologies (FAST)
• Last year, New Scientist revealed that the US Department of Homeland Security is developing a system designed to detect "hostile thoughts" in people walking through border posts, airports and public places. The DHS says recent tests prove it works.
• sensors could spot people up to no good from their pulse rate, breathing, skin temperature, or fleeting facial expressions
• "We're still very early on in this research, but it is looking very promising," says DHS science spokesman John Verrico. "We are running at about 78% accuracy on mal-intent detection, and 80% on deception."
• Questions remain, however, as to how secure the system is. The machines could reveal health conditions like heart murmurs and breathing problems as well as stress levels - which would be an invasion of privacy.

  • hmm, interesting
• But Verrico says FAST has been through stringent privacy controls (pdf) and that the data is never matched to a name. It is only used to make decisions about whether to question someone, and then discarded.
• The trial technology was installed in a trailer because it is planned to be easily transportable, so that FAST trucks can appear at any sports or music event as required. They look set to become as regular a sight at such events as mobile toilets and catering trucks
• But is going to make a real difference? Or will bad guys learn to play the system and render it another piece of what expert Bruce Schneier dubs "security theatre".
  
    Given that the FAST approach is not much different to the long established - and long established as unreliable - polygraph, that certainly seems plausible.

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• Have you ever wanted to know when politicians are lying? A startup called RealScoop thinks it can nail it down for you in real-time with the help of voice analysis technology that it claims is used widely in law enforcement and fraud prevention.

  • the "real-scope" thing is supposedly crap
• Dubbed the Believability Meter, RealScoop’s analysis technology analyzes over 100 vocal elements of the human voice and performs over 1,000 calculations per second to find out if a politician or celebrity is telling the truth.

• Because it’s starting to look like one of the most significant societal changes we’ll have to deal with in the near future is that it may soon become nearly impossible to tell lies. Or, more specifically, to tell lies without a really really good chance of getting caught.
• the accuracy of brain-scanning lie-detectors will become radically better within
   the next few years.
• Technologies based on MRI will almost certainly become accurate enough that we should start using them in court. Whether or not we will is a different question, although having done jury duty a couple of times I’m absolutely convinced that, overall, justice would be much better served than with our current system where the skill (or ineptitude) of the lawyer ends up being far more influential on the verdict than the evidence available in the case.

  • RA

• The Department of Defense certainly believes this is possible - they’ve called for the development of lie detectors that can be used without the subject knowing they are being assessed. (The Department of Homeland Security is also getting in on the act.) And if they’re successful, I’d personally rather have this technology available to the general public than to have it solely controlled by a group of military elites. Not that I’m skeptical of their trustworthiness or anything. <cough><eyeroll><cough>

   

  There is also work being done on algorithms that can detect potential lies purely based on word-choice in written correspondences, and obviously voice-stress analysis is eventually going to get much more sophisticated as well.

   

  Finally, there is some very interesting research going on to detect lies by analyzing the speaker’s face - both via the recognition of microexpressions and with the aid of infrared photography.

  • ways in which this will potentailly be implemented
• Finally, even if many of these technologies don’t all work perfectly, they really don’t have to. As long as people believe that the chance of getting caught in a lie is a significant probability, they will adjust their truthfulness accordingly.

  • very true
• Of course it’s going to be an arms-race, just like everything else. There will be technologies developed that can counteract various lie-detection systems, there will be legislative hurdles put in place to prevent the use of these systems, etc., etc. But ultimately I have to believe that the baseline for how easy it is to tell an untruth will be changed significantly. Which, in turn, could dramatically affect the way that we deal with each other. Can we survive without the little white lies we use as social lubrication? The small untruths (like the foma in Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle) that we need to keep us happy?

  • RA
• Even though we may not have the technology yet to accurately and consistently detect when someone is lying, we will eventually be able to look back at the video/audio that is being captured today and determine, after the fact, whether or not the speaker was being truthful.
• certain peoples - I’m thinking specifically of politicians both foreign and domestic - should be made aware that anything they say in public will eventually be subject to retroactive truth-checking… Because it seems to me that someone needs to start recording all the Presidential debates NOW with a nice array of infrared and high-definition cameras. And they need to do it in a public fashion so that every one of these candidates is very aware of it and of why it is being done.

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• trained musicians really do think differently than the rest of us.
• Vanderbilt University psychologists have found that professionally trained musicians more effectively use a creative technique called divergent thinking, and also use both the left and the right sides of their frontal cortex more heavily than the average person.
• We were interested in how individuals who are naturally creative look at problems that are best solved by thinking 'out of the box',"
• One possible explanation the researchers offer for the musicians' elevated use of both brain hemispheres is that many musicians must be able to use both hands independently to play their instruments.

  • !
• they have to be very good at simultaneously reading the musical symbols, which are like left-hemisphere-based language, and integrating the written music with their own interpretation, which has been linked to the right hemisphere."
• divergent thinking, which is the ability to come up with new solutions to open-ended, multifaceted problems. Highly creative individuals often display more divergent thinking than their less creative counterparts.
• To conduct the study, the researchers recruited 20 classical music students from the Vanderbilt Blair School of Music and 20 non-musicians from a Vanderbilt introductory psychology course. The musicians each had at least eight years of training. The instruments they played included the piano, woodwind, string and percussion instruments. The groups were matched based on age, gender, education, sex, high school grades and SAT scores.

  • how they conducted the experment
• trained musicians had greater activity in both sides of their frontal lobes. Because we equated musicians and non-musicians in terms of their performance, this finding was not simply due to the musicians inventing more uses; there seems to be a qualitative difference in how they think about this information
• The researchers also found that, overall, the musicians had higher IQ scores than the non-musicians, supporting recent studies that intensive musical training is associated with an elevated IQ score.

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• How do you create a Results-Only-Work-Environment (ROWE) for yourself or a company — and increase profits — by tweaking your surroundings?
• Thanks to a sophisticated office structure, the headquarters of Interpolis insurance in the Dutch town of Tilburg has freed up 51 percent of their working areas, cut 33 percent of construction and equipment costs, and reduced office usage expenses by 21 percent.
• he man behind this revolutionary and visionary concept of the 7000 square metre and “Tivoli” project was Gijs Nooteboom of the consulting firm Veldhoen + Company. In an interview, he explains to me why the Interpolis concept represents all future office building, the reasons why we will spend more time working from home and on travel and why offices are basically old-fashioned but still needed:
• The man behind this revolutionary and visionary concept of the 7000 square metre and “Tivoli” project was Gijs Nooteboom of the consulting firm Veldhoen + Company. In an interview, he explains to me why the Interpolis concept represents all future office building, the reasons why we will spend more time working from home and on travel and why offices are basically old-fashioned but still needed:
• What are the new tasks of the management ? No longer to check whether someone is there, but to define the output and control it. It takes months to incorporate this culture into a company.

  • !

• A considerable effort. What are the benefits for the company?

   

  Nooteboom: The company requires 50% less square meters. All cleaning and other maintenance costs will be reduced accordingly. In addition, Interpolis increased 20 percent in productivity through flexibility and sick leave, by nine percent 10 years ago, now dropped to two and a half percent. Thirdly, it is good for image and culture of the company - Interpolis receives 90,000 visitors a year. The office is marketing tool number one.
• freedom of choice: What to do when and where? You can freely decide on work time and place more or less, depending on the function. Secondly, it is now festive to come into the office. It is an open and transparent work space designed for meetings and exchange
• During the telephone call one will be able to see the image of each other, exchange data, show presentations and work together on documents. Therefore there will be less business travel than today.
• The concept of the office is basically old-fashioned, but we still need it. It will be used almost solely for meetings in the future. More and more companies will let their employees work from the home or while traveling.
• First, I want positive emotional associations with each object within my visual field. Limiting associations is often better than careful selection.

  • !!!
• The greenhouse you see is essentially a private rain forest with automatic ion generators and timed water systems. It is entirely self-contained with eight sun roofs and no openings. This is the morning oxygenation chamber where I have breakfast. I love it.
• Second, I limit misbehavior by limiting options. Notice that I have no shelves. This discourages accumulating papers and encourages both elimination and immediate digital note-taking. When in doubt, I take a digital photograph of documents (I prefer this to a scanner, which consumes real estate).

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• In 1988, Jaime Lerner announced his candidacy for mayor of Curitiba with only 12 days remaining before the election

• As Mayor, Lerner employed unorthodox solutions to Curitiba's geographic challenges. Like many cities, Curitiba is bordered by floodplain. While wealthier cities in the United States such as New Orleans and Sacramento, have chosen to build expensive, and expensive-to-maintain levee systems to build on floodplain. In contrast, Curitiba purchased the floodplain and made parks. The city now ranks among the world leaders in per-capita park area. Curitiba had the problem of its status as a third-world city, unable to afford the tractors and petroleum to mow these parks. The innovative response was "municipal sheep" who keep the parks' vegetation under control and whose wool funds children's programs.

   

  When Lerner became mayor, Curitiba had some barrios impossible to service by municipal waste removal. The "streets" were too narrow. Rather than abandon these people, or raze these slums, Lerner began a program that traded bags of groceries and transit passes for bags of trash. The slums got much cleaner.
• Similarly Curitiba has a nearby bay that was a dumping ground, and would be extremely costly to clean up. Lerner began a program that paid fishermen for any garbage they retrieved (by the pound). This way, they can fish even when it's not the season for fish to be running and can supplement their income. The savings to Curitiba is in the millions.
• This is one of the few transit systems that is not subsidized. It also has increasing ridership even though per-capita auto ownership is rising in Curitiba.

  • !

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• Much is known about color physics and color physiology, but very little about color psychology
• The red effect extends only to males and only to perceptions of attractiveness.
• the meaning of a color depends on its context. For example, Elliot and others have shown that seeing red in competition situations, such as written examinations or sporting events, leads to worse performance.
• The current findings have clear implications for the dating game, the fashion industry, product design and marketing.

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• there are at least two possible explanations for this strange anomaly.
• The second explanation has to do with black and white television and film. It's possible that the boom in black and white film and television during the first half of the last century either affected the form of people's dreams at that time, or affected their beliefs about the form dreams generally take.
• Several awkward questions are left unanswered by this study. It's not clear if the older participants really are experiencing more black and white dreams or if it's their memories or beliefs about dreams that is influencing their reports. Related to this, we don't know if early exposure to black and white media has really affected the form of the older participants' dreams or simply their beliefs about dreams.

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• • difficulty identifying feelings and distinguishing between feelings and the bodily sensations of emotional arousal
   
  • difficulty describing feelings to other people
   
  • constricted imaginal processes, as evidenced by a paucity of fantasies
   
  • a stimulus-bound, externally oriented cognitive style.
• few dreams or fantasies due to restricted imagination; and concrete, realistic, logical thinking, often to the exclusion of emotional responses to problems. Those who have alexithymia also report very logical and realistic dreams, such as going to the store or eating a meal.^[14] Clinical experience suggests it is the structural features of dreams more than the ability to recall them that best characterizes alexithymia.^[1]
• a cognitive disturbance becomes apparent as the patients tends to recount trivial, chronologically ordered actions, reactions, and events of daily life with monotonous detail.^[18][19] In general, these individuals lack imagination, intuition, empathy, and drive-fulfillment fantasy, especially in relation to objects. Instead, they seem oriented toward things and even treat themselves as robots.
• these individuals avoid emotionally close relationships, or that if they do form relationships with others they tend to position themselves as either dependent, dominant, or impersonal, "such that the relationship remains superficial.
• two interpersonal problems are significantly and stably related to alexithymia: cold/distant and non-assertive social functioning
• Due to the inherent difficulties identifying and describing emotional states in self and others, alexithymia also negatively affects relationship satisfaction between couples.
• Research indicates that alexithymia overlaps with Asperger syndrome
• They also pointed to studies that revealed impaired Theory of Mind skill in alexithymia, neuroanatomical evidence pointing to a shared aetiology and similar social skills deficits.^[35] The exact nature of the overlap is uncertain.
• Alexithymia is correlated with certain personality disorders,^[37] substance use disorders,^[38][39] some anxiety disorders.^[40], and sexual disorders,^[41] as well as certain physical illnesses, such as hypertension,^[42] inflammatory bowel disease,^[43] and functional dyspepsia.^[44]
• An inability to modulate emotions is a possibility in explaining why some alexithymics are prone to discharge tension arising from unpleasant emotional states through impulsive acts or compulsive behaviors such as binge eating,^[46] substance abuse,^[47] perverse sexual behavior, or the self-starvation of anorexia nervosa.
• Alexithymics also show a limited ability to experience positive emotions leading Krystal (1988) and Sifneos (1987) to describe many of these individuals as anhedonic.^[2]
• According to French psychoanalyst Joyce McDougall all infants are born unable to identify, organize, and speak about their emotional experiences (the word infans is from the Latin "not speaking"), and are "by reason of their immaturity inevitably alexithymic".^[48] Based on this fact McDougall writes, "Might it not be supposed that the alexithymic part of an adult personality is an extremely arrested and infantile psychic structure?"^[48]
• It is unclear what causes alexithymia.
• Joyce McDougall objected to the strong focus by clinicians on neurophysiological at the expense of psychological explanations for the genesis and operation of alexithymia, and introduced the alternative term 'disaffectation' to stand for psychogenic alexithymia.^[53] For McDougall, the disaffected individual had at some point "experienced overwhelming emotion that threatened to attack their sense of integrity and identity," to which they applied psychological defenses to pulverize and eject all emotional representations from consciousness.
• The parent's ability to reflect self-awareness to the child is another important factor. If the adult is incapable of recognizing and distinguishing emotional expressions in the child, it can influence the child's capacity to understand emotional expressions.

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• Criers do show calming effects such as slower breathing, but they also experience a lot of unpleasant stress and arousal, including increased heart rate and sweating. What is interesting is that bodily calming usually lasts longer than the unpleasant arousal. The calming effects may occur later and overcome the stress reaction, which would account for why people tend to remember mostly the pleasant side of crying.
  
• Research has shown that the effects of crying also depend on who is shedding the tears. For example, individuals with anxiety or mood disorders are least likely to experience the positive effects of crying. In addition, the researchers report that people who lack insight into their emotional lives (a condition known as alexithymia) actually feel worse after crying. The authors suggest that for these individuals, their lack of emotional insight may prevent the kind of cognitive change required for a sad experience to be transformed into something positive.

  • !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

• Combining the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud, Bernays was one of the first to attempt to manipulate public opinion using the subconscious.

   

  He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and dangerous as a result of the 'herd instinct' that Trotter had described. Adam Curtis's award-winning 2002 documentary for the BBC, The Century of the Self, pinpoints Bernays as the originator of modern public relations, and Bernays was named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century by Life magazine.^[1]
• "If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway", he said. In order to promote sales of bacon, for example, he conducted a survey of physicians and reported their recommendation that people eat heavy breakfasts. He sent the results of the survey to 5,000 physicians, along with publicity touting bacon and eggs as a heavy breakfast.

• "If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway", he said. In order to promote sales of bacon, for example, he conducted a survey of physicians and reported their recommendation that people eat heavy breakfasts. He sent the results of the survey to 5,000 physicians, along with publicity touting bacon and eggs as a heavy breakfast.

   

  Bernays also drew upon his uncle Sigmund's psychoanalytic ideas for the benefit of commerce in order to promote, by indirection, commodities as diverse as cigarettes, soap and books.

• As is evident from the description of his campaign to publicize the Dodge cars, Bernays had a particular gift for the marketing strategy called the "tie-up" or "tie-in" -- in which one venue or opportunity or occasion for promoting a consumer product, for example, radio advertising, is linked to another, say, newspaper advertising, and even, at times, to a third, say a department store exhibition salesroom featuring the item, and possibly even a fourth, such as an important holiday, for example Thrift Week.

   

  In addition to famous corporate clients, such as Procter & Gamble, the American Tobacco Company, Cartier Inc., Best Foods, CBS, the United Fruit Company, General Electric, Dodge Motors, the fluoridationists of the Public Health Service, Knox-Gelatin, and innumerable other big names, Bernays also worked on behalf of many non-profit institutions and organizations.
• In the 1920s, working for the American Tobacco Company, he sent a group of young models to march in the New York City parade. He then told the press that a group of women's rights marchers would light "Torches of Freedom". On his signal, the models lit Lucky Strike cigarettes in front of the eager photographers. The New York Times (1 April 1929) printed: "Group of Girls Puff at Cigarettes as a Gesture of 'Freedom'". This helped to break the taboo against women smoking in public.
• Bernays used his uncle Sigmund Freud's ideas to help convince the public, among other things, that bacon and eggs was the true all-American breakfast.
• Bernays helped the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) and other special interest groups to convince the American public that water fluoridation was safe and beneficial to human health. This was achieved by using the American Dental Association in a highly successful media campaign.
• In the 1930s, his Dixie Cup campaign was designed to convince consumers that only disposable cups were sanitary.
• Beyond his contributions to these famous and powerful clients, Bernays revolutionized public relations by combining traditional press agentry with the techniques of psychology and sociology to create what one writer has called "the science of ballyhoo.
• Bernay's most extreme political propaganda activities were said to be conducted on behalf of the multinational corporation United Fruit Company (today's Chiquita Brands International) and the U.S. government to facilitate the successful overthrow (see Operation PBSUCCESS) of the democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman.

• Bernays defined the profession of "counsel on public relations" as a "practicing social scientist" whose "competence is like that of the industrial engineer, the management engineer, or the investment counselor in their respective fields." To assist clients, PR counselors used "understanding of the behavioral sciences and applying them—sociology, social psychology, anthropology, history, etc." In Propaganda, his most important book, Bernays argued that the scientific manipulation of public opinion was necessary to overcome chaos and conflict in society.

   

  Bernays' celebration of propaganda helped define public relations, but it did not win the industry many friends. In a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter described Bernays and Ivy Lee as "professional poisoners of the public mind, exploiters of foolishness, fanaticism and self-interest." And history showed the flaw in Bernays' identification of the "manipulation of the masses" as a natural and necessary feature of a democratic society. The fascist rise to power in Germany demonstrated that propaganda could be used to subvert democracy as easily as it could be used to "resolve conflict."

• In his 1965 autobiography, Bernays recalls a dinner at his home in 1933 where

   

   

  Karl von Weigand, foreign correspondent of the Hearst newspapers, an old hand at interpreting Europe and just returned from Germany, was telling us about Goebbels and his propaganda plans to consolidate Nazi power. Goebbels had shown Weigand his propaganda library, the best Weigand had ever seen. Goebbels, said Weigand, was using my book Crystallizing Public Opinion as a basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me. ... Obviously the attack on the Jews of Germany was no emotional outburst of the Nazis, but a deliberate, planned campaign.

   

   

  It is impossible to fundamentally grasp the social, political, economic and cultural developments of the past 100 years without some understanding of Bernays and his professional heirs in the public relations industry. As a result his legacy remains a highly contested one, as evidenced by the 2002 BBC documentary The Century of the Self, where he is described as "undemocratic". PR is a 20th-century phenomenon, and Bernays -- widely eulogized as the "father of public relations" at the time of his death in 1995 -- played a major role in defining the industry's philosophy and methods.

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• • Callous unconcern for the feelings of others and lack of the capacity for empathy.
   
  • Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules, and obligations.
   
  • Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, though having no difficulty in establishing them.
   
  • Very low tolerance to frustration and a low threshold for discharge of aggression, including violence.
   
  • Incapacity to experience guilt and to profit from experience, particularly punishment.
   
  • Markedly prone to blame others or to offer plausible rationalizations for the behavior bringing the subject into conflict.
   
  • Persistent irritability.

• Maslow used Einstein's writings and accomplishments to exemplify the characteristics of the self actualized person. He realized that all the individuals he studied had similar personality traits. All were “reality centered,” able to differentiate what was fraudulent from what was genuine. They were also “problem centered,” meaning that they treated life’s difficulties as problems that demanded solutions. These individuals also were comfortable being alone and had healthy personal relationships. They had only a few close friends and family rather than a large number of shallow relationships.
• Consequently, Maslow argued, the way in which essential needs are fulfilled is just as important as the needs themselves. Together, these define the human experience.
• Consequently, Maslow argued, the way in which essential needs are fulfilled is just as important as the needs themselves. Together, these define the human experience.
• Consequently, Maslow argued, the way in which essential needs are fulfilled is just as important as the needs themselves. Together, these define the human experience.

  • to zastopim kot prve izkusnje z necim
• To the extent a person finds cooperative social fulfillment, he establishes meaningful relationships with other people and the larger world. In other words, he establishes meaningful connections to an external reality—an essential component of self-actualization.
• To the extent a person finds cooperative social fulfillment, he establishes meaningful relationships with other people and the larger world. In other words, he establishes meaningful connections to an external reality—an essential component of self-actualization.
• In contrast, to the extent that vital needs find selfish and competitive fulfillment, a person acquires hostile emotions and limited external relationships—his awareness remains internal and limited.
• From them he generalized that, among other characteristics, self-actualizing people tend to focus on problems outside themselves; have a clear sense of what is true and what is phony; are spontaneous and creative; and are not bound too strictly by social conventions.
• Beyond the routine of needs fulfillment, Maslow envisioned moments of extraordinary experience, known as Peak experiences, which are profound moments of love, understanding, happiness, or rapture, during which a person feels more whole, alive, self-sufficient and yet a part of the world, more aware of truth, justice, harmony, goodness, and so on. Self-actualizing people have many such peak experiences.

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• The lower four layers of the pyramid contain what Maslow called "deficiency needs" or "d-needs": physiological (including sexuality), security of position, friendship and love, and esteem. With the exception of the lowest (physiological) needs, if these "deficiency needs" are not met, the body gives no physical indication but the individual feels anxious and tense.
• The urge to have sex is so powerful that it can drain psychic energy away from other necessary goals. Therefore every culture has to invest great efforts in rechanneling and restraining it, and many complex social institutions exist only in order to regulate this urge. The saying that "love makes the world go round" is a polite reference to the fact that most of our deeds are impelled, either directly or indirectly, by sexual needs.
• Most people have a need for a stable self-respect and self-esteem. Maslow noted two versions of esteem needs, a lower one and a higher one. The lower one is the need for the respect of others, the need for status, recognition, fame, prestige, and attention. The higher one is the need for self-respect, the need for strength, competence, mastery, self-confidence, independence and freedom. The latter one ranks higher because it rests more on inner competence won through experience. Deprivation of these needs can lead to an inferiority complex, weakness and helplessness.

  • jajks...lower one
• “What a man can be, he must be”
• As mentioned before, in order to reach a clear understanding of this level of need one must first not only achieve the previous needs, physiological, safety, love, and esteem, but master these needs.
• Maslow was a professor of Dr. Wayne Dyer. Dyer suggests that Maslow taught him two ways of understanding self-actualization: 1) To be free of the good opinion of others. 2) To do things not simply for the outcome but because it's the reason you are here on earth.^[8]
• A self-actualized person “can accept their own human nature in the stoic style, with all its shortcomings, with all its discrepancies from the ideal image without feeling real concern”^[9]. This means that a self-actualized person can clearly see human nature in all its good and evil without the distortion from false social norms.
• Maslow uses basic animal acceptance to prove this point. He states that self-actualized people tend to be good and lusty animals, hearty in their appetites and enjoying them mightily without regret or shame
• This involves a basic acceptance of nature and the way things are rather than trying to change things (for example: disgust with body functions or having a food aversion) to suit one's neuroses. This doesn’t mean these people lack morals, guilt, shame, or anxiety; it means that they have the ability to remove all unnecessary forms of these processes.
• Most people, when thinking of problems in their life, focus on what affects them and their own problems and issues; this applies particularly to insecure people. Self-actualized persons focus not on themselves, but for some greater good. These people attack problems as a “task they must do” and are concerned with “the good of mankind in general”

  • !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• The self-actualized can be solitary, with no human contact, and do no harm to themselves. In fact most of the self-actualized like “solitude and privacy to a definitely greater degree than the average person"^[11]. This gives them a level of detachment and an ability to remain calm and aloof even in situations where a personal problem or misfortune arises.

  • NE SE JEBAAAAAAT:)
• Maslow found that those who are self-actualized are very strong ethically. They have definite moral standards and do not experience the daily chaos of discerning right and wrong like most common people.^[12] When dealing with means and ends they have the ability to clearly distinguish between the two.
• Also, Maslow found that they enjoy the means to an end: unlike most people who just see it as a means and want to finish it as soon as possible. For example, driving to a destination annoys most people but a self-actualized person would enjoy the drive, the experience of travel. It is also in their ability to take the most trivial and mundane activities or objects and turn them into a game or perhaps a dance.^[13]
• Maslow discovered that most self-actualized people do not have the same sense of humor as the average person. For example: they do not laugh at hostile humor (hurting someone to laugh), superiority humor (laughing at someone’s short comings), or authority-rebellion humor (laughing at unfunny, smutty jokes)^[13]
• A self-actualizing person’s sense of humor relates to philosophy and finding humor in humans who forget their place in the universe or when they act foolishly. It doesn’t attack people, rather states a message that happens to be funny. Self-actualized people don’t merely tell jokes to laugh, but to send a message or educate; “akin to parables or fables”^[13].
• The self-actualized person also has basic human imperfections such as wasteful habits, vanity, pride, partiality to their family and friends, and temper outbursts. Maslow also discovers that, in the view of normal society, self-actualizing persons can appear quite ruthless. He attributes this to their strength and this makes it possible to make cold calculated decisions based on logic.
• For example a man who found his life-long, trusted friend was actually dishonest would end the friendship abruptly without any regret or any other emotional pangs^[15] (Maslow 229). This may seem brutal to the common man, but it just exemplifies the strength of the self-actualized person at work.

  • Tarik, who else
• Studies of psychologically healthy people indicate that they are, as a defining characteristic, attracted to the mysterious, to the unknown, to the chaotic, unorganized, and unexplained. This seems to be a Per se attractiveness; these areas are in themselves and of their own right interesting. The contrasting reaction to the well known is one of boredom.

  • hahaha
• It may be found valid to extrapolate from the psychopathological. The compulsive-obsessive neurotic (and neurotic in general), Goldstein's brain-injured soldiers, Maier's fixated rats (285), all show (at the clinical level of observation) a compulsive and anxious clinging to the familiar and a dread of the unfamiliar, the anarchic, the unexpected, the un-domesticated. On the other hand, there are some phenomena that may turn out to nullify this possibility. Among these are forced unconventionality, a chronic rebellion against any authority whatsoever, Bohemianism, the desire to shock and to startle, all of which may be found in certain neurotic individuals, as well as in those in the process of deacculturation.

  • shit kaj tocno pa to pomeni?...doesnt sound very good at all
• I have seen a few cases in which it seemed clear to me that the pathology (boredom, loss of zest in life, self-dislike, general depression of the bodily functions, steady deterioration of the intellectual life, of tastes, etc.)8 were produced in intelligent people leading stupid lives in stupid jobs.
• I have at least one case in which the appropriate cognitive therapy (resuming parttime studies, getting a position that was more intellectually demanding, insight) removed the symptoms.
• The needs to know and to understand are seen in late infancy and childhood, perhaps even more strongly than in adulthood. Furthermore this seems to be a spontaneous product of maturation rather than of learning, however defined. Children do not have to be taught to be curious. But they may be taught, as by institutionalization, not to be curious
• Finally, the gratification of the cognitive impulses is subjectively satisfying and yields end-experience. Though this aspect of insight and understanding has been neglected in favor of achieved results, learning, etc., it nevertheless remains true that insight is usually a bright, happy, emotional spot in any person's life, perhaps even a high spot in the life span.
• Maslow also states that even though these are examples of how the quest for knowledge is separate from basic needs he warns that these “two hierarchies are interrelated rather than sharply separated” (Maslow 97). This means that this level of need as well as the next and highest level are not strict, separate, levels but closely related to others and this is possibly the reason that these two levels of need are left out of most textbooks.
• Comparisons have been drawn^{[by whom?]} between Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the final stages of Taoism and Zen Buddhism. The comparisons deal directly with the higher needs, starting with the self-actualization need. Maslow regards self-actualizing people as largely free from the power of society’s rules and making decisions based upon their beliefs not the accepted norms of society. In Taoism and Buddhism people free themselves of worldly possessions, thus freeing themselves from societal pressures and power.
• The self-actualized person most likely^{[original research?]} will not have the same freedom from society as the Zen Buddhist or Taoist, but all three beliefs find their “perfect” being as one who is independent and makes decisions based upon nature and not the external authority of society or man.
• little evidence for the ranking of needs Maslow described, or even for the existence of a definite hierarchy at all.

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• Dr Michael Nicholls, a neuroscientist and co-author of the study, said: “Clearly, the eyes not only allow us to see the world around us but they also present a window to the working of our mind.”

   

  The findings, published in the journal Current Biology, were based on the testing of 12 right-handed men who were placed in a darkened room.

   

  Each individual were asked to list every number between one and 40 in as random a fashion as possible.

   

  Each eye was mapped in detail and each tiny movement recorded and measured.
• If the eye moved a fraction to the left and slightly down, the next number they picked was likely to be smaller, whereas if it moved to the right and up, the number would be higher.
• The scientists were able to make their predictions correctly 60 per cent of the time , according to the research.

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• process whereby a behavior, that can function both to produce pleasure and to provide escape from internal discomfort, [and] is employed in a pattern characterized by (1) failure to control the behavior (powerlessness) and (2) continuation of the behavior despite significant negative consequences (unmanageability