From the category archives:

Psychology

10 Useful Things To Know When Dealing With Other People

by Stephen Mills September 8, 2010

Criticizing others makes you seem more intelligent and competent. People who criticize others are perceived as more intelligent and competent than people who don’t criticize. The downside is that people will like you less. Clifford Nass says you can be “clever and contemptible” or “kind and clueless” depending upon whether you criticize or praise.

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Deep Death Bed Thoughts

by Stephen Mills August 21, 2010

I’m thinking old age regret is going to suck. In order to avoid it, I find it useful to put myself on my death bed and imagine how I will feel. It’s easy to piss your precious life minutes away when you are young, or even when your not so young, but it is sometimes helpful to realize at some point you are done and will get none of them back.

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Why Television Commercials Increase Viewing Pleasure

by Stephen Mills July 5, 2010

As it turns out, interrupting the adaptation resets it. Interrupting something unpleasant, taking a break for example, resets the adaptation you have already made to the unpleasant experience and so you have to experience the initial unpleasantness all over again. Interrupting a pleasant experience also resets the adaptation and so you get to experience the initial pleasant experience all over again.

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Working Memory – Why It’s Important and How To Improve It

by Stephen Mills June 26, 2010

What if there was one feature of your brain that was critical to your ability to control your attention, to concentrate in the face of distractions, to multi-task, to your general reasoning ability, to your ability to learn and comprehend what you read, and to overall performance on measures of intelligence? Further, what if it is possible to improve the performance of that one feature and consequently improve all those other abilities that are dependent upon it? There has recently been some tantalizing new evidence that working memory is that key feature and that in can be improved with training.

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Your Brain On the Internet

by Stephen Mills June 20, 2010

Deep and reflective thinking seems to be disappearing and I think it is in large degree a result of changes brought about by Internet. If it is still there it is being overwhelmed by the shallows. Writers no longer write what they think, they write what they hope will rank in Google. Despite all the touted diversity of the Internet, obsession with Search Engine Optimization often takes priority over content. Google is funneling us into the narrow and boring land of the common.

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Would You Rather Be Right or Be At Peace?

by Stephen Mills June 1, 2010

Do you prefer stress or happiness? That may sound like a no-brainer, so let me ask it another way. Do you prefer being right or being at peace? So many of us are determined to be right, and we defend our positions with the skill of a lawyer and the stubbornness of a mule. If you’re good at this you may get to continue to be right for years and everyone will know it, but the cost is your peace of mind.

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Myths That Need Busting

by Stephen Mills May 30, 2010

Here are some common myths that are widely believed, but simply don’t stand up when put to the test. You may not agree that these are myths, but that’s normal. We tend to believe what we want to believe and what we intuitively feel should be true. I’d rather go with the evidence and the following are some beliefs that I am convinced are myths.

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10 Ways To Be More Persuasive

by Stephen Mills May 21, 2010

Everyone has a message. Everyone wants to be more persuasive. Whether you are an employee working for someone else, an owner of your own business, a student, a blogger, etc. you need to be heard. In that sense we are all marketers. The world is drowning in information and when you speak you need to make sure your message gets results.

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To Vent or Not To Vent

by Stephen Mills May 17, 2010

We all know that venting, letting off some steam and then moving on, helps us right? Venting anger is supposed to be cathartic. Punching a pillow, yelling at no one in particular, banging your damn it doll, etc. as a way to vent anger or frustration and “get it out of your system” in a supposedly harmless way.

Actually all of that is false. Decades of research have repeatedly shown that venting does not work. Venting increases aggressive feelings instead of decreasing them.

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Just Let It Go

by Stephen Mills May 13, 2010

Think about a person who in your mind has changed the world or who has done something great with their life. Now imagine that person had done something terrible, or something that they regretted deeply; something for which they were consumed with guilt. Now imagine that instead of doing whatever they had done for which you so greatly admire them, they had instead remained paralyzed by guilt or regret. Imagine what a tragedy that would have been!

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