On Universal Beauty

Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? Is it just a cultural construct? 

Denis Dutton's provocative theory on beauty -- that art, music and other beautiful things are a core part of human nature with deep evolutionary origins.

On Being Wrong

Most of us will do anything to avoid being wrong. But what if we're wrong about that? "Wrongologist" Kathryn Schulz makes a compelling case for not just admitting but embracing our fallibility.

On the Purpose Instinct

Even Scientists Believe in Magic
On 19/03/2013 by Matthew Hutson in Psyched!

We're biased to see a purpose behind things.

Extracts:

“In a 2012 Gallup poll, only 15 percent of Americans said humans evolved without God’s guidance. (...) Why are those nonscientific beliefs so persistent? It could be human nature: New research suggests even top scientists are not immune to such magical intuitions.

Over the years, a number of psychologists have suggested that we are promiscuously teleological. Telos is Greek for end or purpose, and teleology is the belief that an object was created or an event occurred to fulfill some purpose. You believe there’s not just a how but a why to its origin, that there’s a mind with intentions behind it. (…)

The default nature of teleological reasoning was revealed in a 2009 paper. Deborah Kelemen and Evelyn Rosset asked Boston University students to judge whether certain inaccurate teleological sentences were true. For example, “Mosses form around rocks to stop soil erosion,” and, “The sun makes light so that plants can photosynthesize.” Subjects mistakenly said they were true in 52 percent of cases. And when given a time limit of 3.2 seconds per sentence, the error rate was even higher, at 61 percent, suggesting that when we don’t have time to correct ourselves, our natural reaction is to assume things were created for a particular function. (…)

So Kelemen tested professional physical scientists. In the first experiment, 80 scholars in chemistry, geoscience, and physics from universities including Harvard, Brown, and MIT were given a test similar to the one in the 2009 paper. They judged the accuracy of sentences such as “Trees produce oxygen so that animals can breathe,” with or without time pressure. Without the pressure they fell into the teleological trap in 15 percent of cases. When rushed, they erred 29 percent of the time. The scientists performed better than the 2009 subjects, but again, a bias was revealed. (…)

Our “tenacious teleological tendencies” influence more than our explanations of evolution and moss and photosynthesis. It guides how we find meaning in life (…). The sense that certain things were “meant to be” or even that “everything happens for a reason” is encouraged by the intuitive assumption that a mind is guiding all the events in our lives. (…) Even the most skeptical and well-educated of us can feel we were put here on Earth for a reason, or that stepping in dog poo on the way to an interview is just so typical—of course that had to happen to you." 

On the Human

Great book opening!

"Straw Dogs - Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals" 

by John Gray

On Loving What You Do

The author of the indelible "Fahrenheit 451" and his contagious love for books.
What an endearing man!

On Self-Deception

Living a Lie

On 02/02/2013 by Kat McGowan, on Psychology Today

Fooling yourself can have devastating consequences, especially in the domains of money, career, sexual identity and relationships.

Extracts:

“Yes, you are just a little bit smarter than most people. Funnier, too. And while we’re at it, more appealing. Your strengths are writ large, and your flaws are, well, minimal. Your successes are hard-earned. Failures? Most are the result of sheer bad luck.

Almost all of us engage in self-deception, little denials or rationalizations that remove unpleasant evidence of our warts. Episodes of self-enhancement are absolutely normal. In fact, slightly overrating ourselves seems to be psychologically healthy. Self-deception alleviates stress, benefits relationships, and makes us more resilient by sheltering the ego from the storms of reality. (…)

A little bit of self-deceit can be good for you. But when it comes to the core challenges of adult life—career, money, sexual identity and marriage—fooling yourself can have devastating consequences.

In each of these domains—think of them as the four horsemen of self-deception—we face situations that require us to make difficult decisions in the face of doubt and uncertainty. The result is anxiety and a strong temptation to hide from the truth. “People keep secrets from themselves because to acknowledge the information would be extremely anxiety-producing,” says New York City psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Gail Saltz. Self-deception and worry reinforce each other, making it harder and harder to face the facts.”

On Life-Choice Evangelists

This column will change your life: life-choice evangelists

On 09/03/2013, by Oliver Burkeman, the Guardian

'Their real motivation, you suspect, isn't their certainty that marriage, or parenthood, would be best for you. Rather, it's that they worry that it's not best for them'

Extracts:

“You almost certainly know at least one infuriating person who is what I'll call, for want of a better term, a life-choice evangelist. As the label suggests, LCEs are driven by the anxious insistence that whatever major decisions they've made – to get married, to have or not have kids, to sacrifice fulfilling work for a higher salary, or vice versa – are best for everyone. If he's married, an LCE will seem unable to comprehend why anyone wouldn't choose to be; if she's single and you're not, she'll drop hints that you should envy her freedom. Contradict an LCE, by suggesting an alternative life path, and you'll witness a face flicker of confusion, as if you might not be speaking English. (…)

The LCEs' real motivation, you suspect, isn't their certainty that marriage, or parenthood, or leaving the city for the country, would be best for you. Rather, it's that they worry, perhaps subconsciously, that it's not best for them: their efforts to persuade are an attempt to reassure themselves. A study soon to be published in Psychological Science strongly suggests that's so. The Stanford researcher Kristin Laurin and her colleagues found that people think more highly of those with the same relationship status as them – even when it shouldn't matter, as when hiring someone for a job, or deciding which politician to vote for. (…)

The truly telling detail, though, was that the effect was more marked the more permanent people believed their own status to be. It wasn't the most happily coupled-up people who thought coupledom was best; it was those who thought their position least likely to change who most strongly felt it was preferable for all. "Perceiving an unchangeable situation as undesirable can lead to feelings of being 'trapped'," the researchers write. One way to avoid that "is to represent one's current situation as an ideal – not just for oneself, but universally." If marriage is best for everyone, the logic goes, it must be best for me.”