Christine Stapleton, over at the Psychology Central blog, hypothesizes from various undisclosed data that 88 percent of the US population either will suffer from a major depression, has alcoholism, or is “profoundly affected” by someone who is suffering from alcoholism or depression. Problem is, those numbers don’t seem to be based in reality. 1. There [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Mind Challenges’
The Modified Coin-Flip
One implication of our limited consciousness is that our brains rely substantially on emotion in making decisions. Kathryn Goetzke’s recent post at PsychCentral provides a simple tool that builds on this insight. You should take a look: it’s easy, since it involves flipping a coin (with an important twist). I won’t copy what she wrote: [...]
Beware Cause and Effect
I feel like the bourgeois gentleman in the Moliere play – for more than 40 years, I’ve been using “heuristics,” and I didn’t even know it. More than that, I didn’t know how risky they could be. Heuristics are experiential rules of thumb used for “problem-solving, learning, and discovery.” We can’t operate without them. Research [...]
The Practical, Creative Optimism of “ChangeThis!” (1)
06 Mar 2010 at 05:00
TBilich
Creativity, Life-Long Learning, Mind Challenges, Mind Tools, Positive Psychology
One of my favorite websites is ChangeThis, which serves as a forum for collecting and disseminating powerful PowerPoint presentations that seek to persuade and inform. These manifestos address a vast array of issues, and many are written by some of today’s leading authors and opinion-makers. ChangeThis professes to be staffed with optimists – those who [...]
“Be Sad and Succeed”? Not Really
I like Scientific American. It is an educational read. But I take issue with one of its recent headlines: Be Sad and Succeed! I’m interested in the studies mentioned, but this title cannot state a medically defensible conclusion.