It’s a beautiful sunny day. You’re driving effortlessly along an empty highway. Twenty minutes go by and you hardly remember looking at the road!
An hour later some menacing clouds roll in.Rush-hour traffic is picking up. A storm hits. You pass an accident on the side of the road. Your concentration is being pushed to the max. You feel your anxiety increase and you keep both hands tight on the steering wheel, eyes watching all mirrors and especially the car infront of you. When the storm final passes and the roads clear up, you breath a sigh of relief.
Something in your brain was different in these two situations, but what? At first the driving was effortless, almost entirely automatic, but during the storm it took effort. What changed? [click here to keep reading…]
Understanding human behavior is valuable.
Robert Sapolsky strongly expresses this sentiment in the first class of his Human Behavioral Biology course, taught at Stanford University in 2010 (it is available for free online and I have begun to summarize it).
It is a sentiment I share.
In the very first class, Sapolsky takes the time to emphasize to his students the value and usefulness of behavioral biology applied to humans. It helps us with things like:
- Serving on a jury: “What was the cause of the behavior? Is this person morally responsible for what they did?”
- Voting (and politics in general): “Should we spend the money on that? Is it really a problem? Is it solvable?”
- Dealing with depression in the family: “What is causing it? What can he do about it? Is this her own fault? How do we deal with it?”
Understanding where human behavior comes from, how our behavior in our day-to-day lives happens, is useful info that everyone needs to know!
Thoughts? Is it worthwhile to spend the time to learn about human behavioral biology?
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On December 8, 2002, at Aula Magna, Stockholm University, Daniel Kahneman was presented the Nobel Prize in Economics for his brilliant and pioneering work in behavioral economics and psychology. This work was largely performed alongside his long-time research partner Amos Tversky, who died before the Nobel Prize was awarded.
Kahneman is widely regarded as the world’s most influential psychologist and one of the first to pick apart how we make decisions, and specifically how we make wrong decisions. I figured his Nobel Prize speech would be pretty interesting, and it didn’t disappoint!
Check out his Nobel Prize speech here.
(Summary coming soon!)
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A key part of mastering ourselves is being aware of our thoughts as they happen.
The concept of mindfulness plays a key role in Buddhist meditation and has been practiced for thousands of years. Of course, just because a thing is ancient doesn’t mean it’s valuable.
Meditation – in the non-mystical, secular sense – seems to be an exception. Modern scientific research has shed some light on the psychology of mindfulness as well as its many benefits to the human brain and body.
Practicing mindfulness has been shown to elevate positive emotions ((Brown et al. (2009); Davidson et al. (2003); Fredrickson et al. (2008); Davidson, Kabat-Zinn, Schumacher, et al. (2003); Shao & Skarlicki (2009).)), increase empathy ((Shapiro et al. (1998).)), reduce chronic pain and depression ((Kabat-Zinn (1982), (2003); Hofmann et al. (2010).)), reduce stress and anxiety ((Chiesa & Serretti (2009); Shapiro et al. (1998); Chang et al. (2004); Kabat-Zinn (2003).)), improve immune system functioning ((Davidson et al. (2003).)), and produce a wide range of other positive effects ((Chiesa & Serretti (2010); Grossman et al. (2004); Kabat-Zinn (2003).)). ((See also How To Be Happy, which is where I was initially introduced to the scientific literature on the benefits of mindfulness.)) [click here to keep reading…]
