Category: psychology
The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience.
The experiments were also controversial, and considered by some scientists to be unethical and physically or psychologically abusive. Psychologist Diana Baumrind considered the experiment “harmful because it may cause permanent psychological damage and cause people to be less trusting in the future.”
Three individuals were involved: the one running the experiment, the subject of the experiment (a volunteer), and a confederate pretending to be a volunteer. These three persons fill three distinct roles: the Experimenter (an authoritative role), the Teacher (a role intended to obey the orders of the Experimenter), and the Learner (the recipient of stimulus from the Teacher).
The subjects believed that for each wrong answer, the learner was receiving actual shocks. In reality, there were no shocks. After the confederate was separated from the subject, the confederate set up a tape recorder integrated with the electro-shock generator, which played pre-recorded sounds for each shock level. After a number of voltage level increases, the actor started to bang on the wall that separated him from the subject. After several times banging on the wall and complaining about his heart condition, all responses by the learner would cease.
At this point, many people indicated their desire to stop the experiment and check on the learner. Some test subjects paused at 135 volts and began to question the purpose of the experiment. Most continued after being assured that they would not be held responsible. A few subjects began to laugh nervously or exhibit other signs of extreme stress once they heard the screams of pain coming from the learner.
If at any time the subject indicated his desire to halt the experiment, he was given a succession of verbal prods by the experimenter, in this order:
Please continue.
The experiment requires that you continue.
It is absolutely essential that you continue.
You have no other choice, you must go on.
If the subject still wished to stop after all four successive verbal prods, the experiment was halted. Otherwise, it was halted after the subject had given the maximum 450-volt shock three times in succession.
Before conducting the experiment, Milgram polled fourteen Yale University senior-year psychology majors to predict the behavior of 100 hypothetical teachers. All of the poll respondents believed that only a very small fraction of teachers (the range was from zero to 3 out of 100, with an average of 1.2) would be prepared to inflict the maximum voltage.
In Milgram’s first set of experiments, 65 percent (26 of 40) of experiment participants administered the experiment’s final massive 450-volt shock, though many were very uncomfortable doing so; at some point, every participant paused and questioned the experiment; some said they would refund the money they were paid for participating in the experiment. Throughout the experiment, subjects displayed varying degrees of tension and stress. Subjects were sweating, trembling, stuttering, biting their lips, groaning, digging their fingernails into their skin, and some were even having nervous laughing fits or seizures.
Milgram summarized the experiment in his 1974 article, “The Perils of Obedience”, writing:
The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants’] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.
Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority. (read more) (watch film)
Stanley Milgram
- Labels: authority, control, power, psychology
Decisions are mostly intuitive, logical explanations
catch-up milliseconds later ~ Robert Sapolsky [ link ]
- Labels: bill, economy, neuro, psychology
âWe could try and introduce ourselves to them ..but all they might see is a sparse dusting of energy waves occurring in a vacuum ..with some probability of identity based on their backgrounds ..not ours.â
- Labels: aliens, bill, psychology
In 1975, Baruch Fischoff identified a major obstacle to forming new memories ..ourselves. He found that people frequently underestimate how surprised they are when events donât turn out the way they expect. He polled a group of students before and after the Watergate hearings. Respondents who felt Nixon would be exonerated (with say 80% confidence) .. overwhelmingly came back and said they werenât surprised by the verdict (and remember being just over 50% confident). When people learn the outcome of events, they unconsciously go back and adjust the estimate for what they thought would happen. This has the net-effect of revising memory so that it feels as if they â..knew it all alongâ, which diminishes the surprise-value of information [link]. More recently, neuroscientist Moshe Bar says that surprise is what gives ordinary events the informative-value necessary for transfer to long-term memory [link]. What we retain are mostly the novel bits of information we pick up along the way. They go on to form a âpool of scenariosâ, which we use to prepare for future events. So if we go around dismissing the surprise-value of information, we sabotage memory, lower our ability to deal with the unexpected ..and donât learn as much from experience. My friend Audrey likes to say that we can prevent future memory loss by making a conscious effort to do something out of the ordinary everyday ..increase our exposure to whatâs new ..or at least give ordinary events greater value than â..it’s just the same old story.â
- Labels: bill, neuro, psychology
Or there and back again: Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few neuroscientists would wish for: she had a stroke and witnessed the boundaries, set by the left cerebral cortex of the brain ..disappear. She experienced the âenormous and expansive universeâ where we live through the parallel portals of the right cerebral cortex, which was unaffected by the stroke. She returns to tell an astonishing tale.
- Labels: bill, neuro, psychology
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| Robert Sapolsky |
If an alien creature invaded earth by entering the brain of human beings, hijacking their nervous system and driving them to engage in high-risk ventures sure to lower their chances of survival .. youâd think some of us might notice something. Yet something disturbingly like this may be happening without notice. When mice get infected with toxoplasmosis, an alien bacterium, the toxoplasmum goes dormant inside the amygdala of their brain and reduces their fear of cats [link]. Cats eat the reckless mice and ingest the toxoplasmas where they wind up in the intestine mingling with others of their kind. Toxoplasmas reproduce sexually only in the gut of the cat, so suppressing the fear response in rats and mice is a sure way of gaining entrance into the cat intestine. Neuro-practitioners call this âadaptation by behavioral manipulationâ [link]. A parasite learns to manipulate host behaviors that enhance their own chances of survival. In other words, these alien bacteria learn to perform brain surgery in order to get rides to wild parties where they can exchange DNA and procreate!
Apparently these clever little creatures have found their way into people too. Nearly one third of all humans have dormant toxoplasmas sleeping inside their amygdala. Since people are pretty high up in the food chain ..the only real threat comes from themselves (or perhaps an unsuspecting bear or mountain lion). Chances are, infected individuals will start acting recklessly and wind up getting killed in a car accident involving excessive speed. So they only appear in the traffic section of the paper, or the actuarial tables of an insurance company. Otherwise, symptoms appear close enough to schizophrenia that they wind up in a psychiatric population and are never heard from again. I think I would call this a successful alien predation.
- Labels: aliens, bill, neuro, psychology
Dawn is breaking on the continent of Capella. Overhead, the star of Davriel is still visible in a purplish blue sky. A meteorite trail flashes by. Sallareä bows her head in homage to all she does not know. Sheâs unaware that, momentarily, what she does not know will be paying homage back. Flickering particles of crystal enter a sector of Sallareäâs narrative-space. Passing through the prisms of her senses, they arrive and get merged in the centers of perception. A message appears in the form of three-dimensional letters stretching from the ground to the heavens ..too high for her to make out what they say. In addition, they vanish and reappear each instant. This kind of apparition calls on her centers of continuity. Then, like constructing a Klimt from grains of sand ..an interpretation begins to form that is such a departure from conventional classification, she has to temporarily step outside herself. An entity that looks like a changing constellation of linked images begins to emerge ..unraveling faster than it can stay together as a singularity. Sallareä is surprised to learn that, whoever or whatever this presence may be, it seems OK with the circumstances of their existence and wants to know if they can join her narrative-space and play.
- Labels: aliens, bill, cosmos, psychology
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| Senator Russell Pearce |
I have a theory. People who rate themselves as highly âconsistent and uncompromisingâ on issues are slower to adapt to the unexpected and less likely to learn from their mistakes. To put it bluntly, âI think inflexibility leads to arrested developmentâ (take for example John Boehnerâs âHell, no!â anti-Obama strategy, or Senator Russell Pearceâs claim that all opposing views are âtreasonousâ). I talked to Dr. Thompson about my theory. Although he generally thinks theories are a dime a dozen, he knows Iâve been entertaining this one for a while now. Out of consideration, he says it merits looking into and suggests some âassessment toolsâ I could use to measure âwillingness to yieldâ on issues. I didnât think it would be hard getting people to admit to having an uncompromising nature and I have tests that measure how swiftly people handle unexpected events in a narrative. Now Iâm interested in getting started and seeing what the literature turns up. Perhaps itâs already been done. I mean, youâd think itâd be a factor in Alzheimerâs or something. If nothing turns up, the good doctor says heâll sign a research proposal and, who knows ..there might even be research money available. Iâm not counting on it though. But in the political atmosphere weâre in .. thereâs bound to be some interest in the subject.
- Labels: bill, politics, psychology, research
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| Sian Beilock |
- Labels: bill, psychology, research
In 1998, psychologist Arthur Graesser examined the real-time components of speech and reading comprehension. See [Einsteinâs Dreams]. Components of comprehension include things like âsyntax parsingâ, âsemantic processingâ, âunexpected event-handlingâ and âresolutionâ. They can be measured in milliseconds. Using an interactive computer-presentation, he recorded the time students spent at each component-step. Sort of like a reaction-time study. What he found was counterintuitive. Comprehension scores were actually higher for students who took longer to process the semantic and unexpected components of a narrative. Students who spent less time performing these tasks scored lower. On closer examination, he found that they were interpreting events way too fast to derive the most likely meaning. Neglecting these early steps also put them at greater risk of misunderstanding whatever happened next. What this tells me is that receptivity and a sense of wonder are far more important than coming to the most expedient conclusion when following what another person is saying.
- Labels: bill, communication, psychology
Notes from Cuzco, Peru ~ April 1977
On the slopes of the Andes, in a yurt overlooking a sage-green valley, Iâm participating in a peyote ceremony that has taken place here for over 1,000 years. Iâm collecting data for my senior thesis: âThe neurological basis of hallucinationsâ. However, none of my faculty advisers know Iâm here, and if they did ..they would probably deny any involvement. Iâm here because I want to experience, first hand, the psychological effects of a guided peyote session the way itâs practiced by South American Indians ..and not for purposes of recreation the way I used to. I have a theory that human nature follows a cycle; it fluctuates between the need for âorder and stabilityâ ..followed by the need for âexploration and rebellionâ against order and stability. I arrived at this theory from reading books by Aldous Huxley, as well as personal experience. Iâm hardly able to sustain a committed relationship for more than a few months. Anyway, I believe that early Indian cultures had less destructive ways to deal with this cycle that didnât involve excessive alcohol, domestic violence or broken homes. The peyote ceremony is, in a sense, a âguidedâ exploration into altered states of consciousness ..followed by a gentle period of âre-entryâ that allows participants to integrate their extra-ordinary experiences with the ordinary reality of everyday life. It satisfies the need for exploration in a way that is far less disruptive, and way more conducive, to the well being of the individual and the tribe.
Exploration: The session begins ..our Guide is waving a rope of burning incense …intended to awaken our senses. A drum beat softly repeats ..intended to strengthen our bond to the present. Tea is poured and cups ceremoniously passed between participants sitting cross-legged around a low bronze table. The simple act of sharing also helps bring us back to the present. I feel grounded and eagerly await whatever forms my altered perception may take. After experiencing several waves of nausea ..followed by tea .. images of early childhood begin to appear ..rising and falling .. over and over .. leaving me clutching at something for security (later I find my shirt lying bunched-up and wet on the floor beside me). Our Guide gently reminds us to watch these images flow until they vanish. Next, the blows of adolescence appear ..rising and falling ..leaving me feeling bruised and vulnerable until Iâm barely able to hold back my tears. Our Guide gently reminds us to watch these images flow until they vanish. Now I hear someone playing a flute. Sounds soothing. Now I feel alternating sensations of tea and mango splash down my throat. Sweet and refreshing. I pass the plate from one grinning face to another. Now Iâm grinning. Now it looks like Iâm sitting between two huge grinning masks ..suspended in space. One of them starts laughing ..then another ..and another ..until everyone is rocking with waves of laughter. I feel a grip loosening, and worries, stretching back as far as I can remember ..lift like fog. I feel euphoric. But it isnât long before the feeling of euphoria turns into panic. Iâm looking down and thereâs nothing there ..it’s like Iâm hanging over an abyss. Without the customary sense of worry, my psyche collapses like a house of cards. I scream and lose consciousness. When I awake, I recall lying with my head in the lap of one of the female assistants ..while she wipes my face with cool water. Iâm shaking.
Re-entry: Iâm listening to our Guide give instructions for re-entry (we were also given a copy of these to take with us). It went something like this: â..as you return, remember ..a river comes out of the mountains ..flowing and cohesive. Its power comes from yielding .. overcoming whatâs hardest with whatâs softest. As you return, remember ..follow the watercourse way ..choose harmony over quarreling. As you return, remember ..follow the watercourse way .. throw the portals of your tent open and pay homage to whatâs light in the world. As you return, remember ..follow the watercourse way .. the soft quality of your mind will overcome the hardness of the obstacles you face. Remember, follow the watercourse way â¦the watercourse way â¦the watercourse way ..â and I could hardly forget. I could still hear these words echoing in my head for weeks afterward while I finished writing my thesis and submitted it for a round of grueling final arguments. I think it helped. Either that or they just caved.
- Labels: awakening, bill, neuro, psychology, spiritual experience
I have a theory. An awful lot of what we find âattractiveâ is determined by what we see our peers paying attention to while weâre growing up. I mean during the formative years of 13 to 29. Experts in human development call this a âcohort groupâ. So, to express my theory another way: Our social perception is determined by the cohort group we belong to. For example, the cohort group that came of age after World War II (during the fifties) had greater respect for people in authority and admired commanding-looking leaders. They elected a war hero for president. Larger-than-life actors like Sophia Loren and John Wayne captured their imagination. They also valued conformity. Thatâs why affluent-looking crooners like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin sold millions of records. However, the cohort group that came of age during the Vietnam War (the sixties and seventies) had lost respect for heroes and people in authority. Their attention turned more toward realistic-looking actors like Mia Farrow and Jack Nicholson ..as well as less affluent-looking musicians like Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones (although theyâre certainly affluent now). I hear evidence of this almost everyday. People of my fatherâs generation tell me they donât find present-day actresses as appealing as the bombshells of the fifties. They say things like: âHollywood just doesnât make âem the way they used toâ and point to reasons like âToday actresses suffer from mediocrity and over-exposure.â However, from the perspective of someone in my cohort ..thatâs exactly what makes them appealing. What they call over-exposure ..I call peer-attention. And what they interpret as mediocre ..I see as realistic. Thatâs why I find actresses today equally, if not more attractive than actresses of the past. But hey, donât take my word for it ..the film industry banks on it. The target group for moviemakers used to be people between the ages of 13 and 25. Not anymore. It is now people in their forties. They are less likely to stay at home playing X-box ..and they prefer watching movies with actors from their own generation. Thatâs why now, more than ever .. the screen-life of an actress lasts well into their forties and fifties. Look at the successful careers of Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore. Which brings me back to my theory ..greater realism equals greater appeal to moviegoers of my generation. Either that or I could say: âHey, Hollywood must not have built âem to last in the fifties.â Or some such bull shyte.
- Labels: bill, psychology
The kind of focused attention ordinarily required in a classroom is not all that helpful overcoming obstacles outside the classroom. A wider focus of attention, which is usually associated with ADD, is actually more adaptive according to neuroscientists John Kounios and Mark Beeman [link]. And from what Iâve seen, I believe it ..! They found that when students are more receptive and open to distraction, they do better navigating a computer-simulated labyrinth than when they are focused and blocking out distractions (as seen on an fMRI). Students actually see and hear more .. finding their way faster by heuristic than by analytic reasoning. In other words, discovering relationships between vague and loosely connected information was more advantageous than step-by-step analysis.
I found the same thing to be true once while I was applying for a home loan. After obtaining the 1st mortgage ..I was looking for a bank to help me with the down-payment. After three banks turned me down because they considered this âriskyâ and âsomewhat irresponsibleâ ..I sat on the beach, got over the feeling that I was âriskyâ (and somewhat irresponsible) ..and pulled together the real reasons why. They had nothing to do with my ability to meet my obligations. It was not a personal failing on my part but a circumstance of the recession (i.e. time required to find a buyer for my prior home). When I put this and other reasons down in a letter-of-explanation ..the next bank understood intuitively and, with just a couple of questions ..they approved my application.
- Labels: bill, economy, neuro, psychology
âThe meaning of a sentence is derived from the original words by an active, interpretive process. The original sentence that is perceived is rapidly forgotten and memory is for the information (meaning) contained in the sentence.â [Link]
- Labels: bill, communication, neuro, psychology
Proceedings from the Symposium on Extraterrestrial Psychology
Dr. Latimer: Language is nothing more than a stream of symbols that signify nothing until we recognize something we might have either seen or heard before, and look up it’s meaning in our mental dictionary. In a plurality of worlds, without a common store of experience that comes from shared culture, efforts at communication may be an exercise in incomprehensible gestures. Verbal communication is the manipulation of symbols to which meaning is assigned by culture. An important point to keep in mind my friends is that the events experienced by members of a culture over time are what make up the narrative thread of that culture.
Dr. Zhavern: When we look into space, we donât see things as they are. What we see is a single narrative thread winding itâs way through the cosmos ..a cosmos that may be shared by narratives other than our own. However, to itâs participants ..each narrative looks like the only cosmic game in town. Like language, we skew space to resemble something weâve either seen, or heard before. Itâs the only way we can come to grips with it.
Dr. Orloff: I think human consciousness is a fragmented and unstable process. It creates rapid models of counterfactual worlds inside the brain for things it cannot observe ..but only infer. The brain keeps track of these different versions until only those that contribute to narrative coherence receive sufficient signal strength to survive while those leading nowhere dissolve into noise ..and disappear into non-narrative space .. in an instant.
Dr. Pangloss: I think consciousness is made up of searchlights, projected from different mental versions of the world we create. They eventually converge to form concentric circles in the brain that illuminate the focal points that contribute most to narrative events, and fade rapidly at the periphery with fewer contributing points until things go black somewhere around the edges of non-narrative space.
My feeble brain ( hasnât got a clue ): Are you saying that the narrative threads of extraterrestrials arenât likely to uncoil very closely to ours ..(?)
- Labels: bill, cosmos, neuro, psychology
âThe meaning of a sentence is derived from the original words by an active, interpretive process. The original sentence which is perceived is rapidly forgotten and the memory is then for the information (meaning) contained in the sentence.â ~ J. Sachs, 1967.
In the 1960âs, psychologists broke away from the long-standing traditions of behaviorism, and the field of cognitive psychology emerged. This act of secession was inspired by advances in fields such as neuroscience, cybernetics and linguistics. In the area of language development, psychologists adopted linguistic principles, introduced by Noam Chomsky, as a method for measuring verbal learning and behavior. These principles were more consistent with natural observations of language development. Chomskyâs model recognizes that language is expressed on at least two different levels ~ a âsurface structureâ, representing the audible/visible properties of a sentence (i.e. morphemes and syntax) ~ and a âdeep structureâ, representing the underlying semantic relationships conveyed by a sentence.
What they found is that the deep structure of a sentence is what people retain. Surface-structure is purged within milliseconds and no longer available for recall. The resulting memory is not a literal transcript of written or spoken language. It is more like a coded network of related concepts and ideas derived from the original sentence, as well as from the past experience of the listener. What we come away with is a feeling of resonance and familiarity, based largely on beliefs and experience ..and not necessarily the meaning intended by the speaker.
- Labels: bill, cognition, communication, language, psychology
Presented at seminar in language learning
- Labels: bill, language, psychology
Chomsky’s review of Skinnerâs Verbal Behavior has been hailed as the most influential document in the history of psychology. This is especially true in the field of language development.
Presented at seminar in language learning
- Labels: bill, language, psychology
âAnxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.â Arthur Somers Roche
Anxiety is a feeling of dread or apprehension that occurs for no apparent reason. It is distinguished from fear because it occurs in situations where there are no outward signs of eminent danger. It becomes debilitating when it grows out-of-proportion to ordinary events in life. Anxiety is deceptive. First it focuses attention, and then it clamps the brain into rigidity by obsessively replaying past traumas
The arousal/suppression cycle is a clinical model for anxiety. It says anxiety is a case of âgeneralized punishment conditioningâ, where the effects are felt in a wide range of circumstances. Feelings of arousal are adaptive in situations that present a challenge or adventure. Arousal ceases to be adaptive when it becomes a source of punishment in response to a challenge or adventure. According to the model, anxiety is a learned response. It is conditioned by the traumatic outcomes of past actions. It becomes debilitating when the feelings of trauma become overgeneralized and pervasive. Its effect is to suppress and inhibit a wider range of activity than what lead to the trauma in the first place.
âO.K.
Just a little pinprick.
There’ll be no more aaaaaaaaah!
But you may feel a little sick.
Can you stand up?
I do believe it’s working, good.
That’ll keep you going through the show
Come on it’s time to goâ
- Labels: bill, fear, psychology
The Illustrated Man is a 1951 book of eighteen science fiction short stories by Ray Bradbury that explores the nature of mankind. While none of the stories has a plot or character connection with the next, a recurring theme is the conflict of the cold mechanics of technology and the psychology of people.
The unrelated stories are tied together by the frame device of “the Illustrated Man”, a vagrant with a tattooed body whom the unnamed narrator meets. The man’s tattoos, allegedly created by a woman from the future, are animated and each tell a different tale.
(read more)
- Labels: cosmos, development, earth, energy, nature, psychology, therapy, universe
A model for the fabric of the mind has been tentatively settled-on. Itâs one that characterizes whatâs inside my head as a 3-dimensional network of delicately connected instances of prior experience and feeling. Under ordinary circumstances, incoming sensory and verbal events produce ripples that spread out over this fabric, like stones on a pond, activating network-connections until a clear mental representation is formed. However, when something goes wrong, and thereâs a disturbance in the fabric, activation may become ampâd, unfettered and diffuse ..compounding insubstantial phenomena until, what may have started out as a gentle hummingbird, for example .. becomes a ferocious beast. Sometimes I think itâs only a matter of degree between clarity and delusion ..especially when I consider how many times I mistook a perfectly innocent remark as hostility.
- Labels: bill, cognition, mental health, neuro, psychology
I wake up with badly congested information-channels ~ I see shifting patterns of different colors entering an open window ~ and watch the walls dissolve into orange dots before they reach the ceiling. I sit up and swing my feet over the edge of a pillowy sensation I comfortably rely on as my bed ~ but now the floor has dropped out of sight. I count the number of times this has happened and figure the odds of landing with both feet on the floor are in my favor. I decide to play it safe ~ take one step at a time ~ stopping frequently to make sure I am where Iâm accustomed to be, and not where I appear to be, because I know my senses are deceiving me. Downstairs, scattered waves of light travel in every direction ~ except through the channels of my visual receptors. I find something likely to be my CD player and punch it in the vicinity of the on/off switch. A punk rock CD, left in there from the night before, starts to blare. The light waves begin bouncing to the rhythm, and, like little drops of colored water ~ they enter into the proper channels and float down streams of sensory-energy ~ until they fall into pools of stored-memory ~ and form the image of what Iâm supposed to see. Like adjusting the focus of a camera lens ~ it all becomes clear. I drop to my knees and pay homage to the deities of music ~ then crank up the volume and go in the kitchen to prepare myself a thermos of coffee. Looks like itâs going to be a good day.
- Labels: bill, music, neuro, psychology
High above
on a switch back trail.
Drinking ice cold glacier ale.
Thereâs a half frozen lake
at twelve thousand feet
with smooth boulders to sit on
in a cathedral of jagged peaks.
The sky falls into shape
Water rises up
to fill the space
and lap the shore
rising and falling
always full
always finding
a level of itâs own.
In a place so simple and pure
shards of bitter memory
form on my tongue
I spit them out and think
Those are what make things taste
so complicated and unclean.
- Labels: bill, nature, poetry, psychology
- Labels: bill, buddhism, consciousness, cosmos, neuro, psychology
- Labels: bill, buddhism, neuro, psychology, zen