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Cognitive
Does Priming Influence Behavior of Even the “Bad Boys”?
December 18, 2013
Priming is the idea that subtle cues and reminders can powerfully influence behavior. You hear about it in studies where women reminded of their gender perform less well on math problems. You may be skeptical of the power of priming on your own behavior. And certainly on the behavior of the hardened criminal. Alas, you may as well get used to it because even the behavior of those in maximum security prisons is influenced by priming. Researchers asked 182 inmates from a maximum-security prison...
December 18, 2013
Priming is the idea that subtle cues and reminders can powerfully influence behavior. You hear about it in studies where women reminded of their gender perform less well on math problems. You may be skeptical of the power of priming on your own behavior. And certainly on the behavior of the hardened criminal. Alas, you may as well get used to it because even the behavior of those in maximum security prisons is influenced by priming. Researchers asked 182 inmates from a maximum-security prison...
Do You Want To Make Your Juror “Think Fast”?
December 17, 2013
A new research review says thinking fast can improve our mood, and increase risk-taking, confidence and problem-solving. The author discusses the experiences of running, skiing, driving over the speed limit as all having the capacity to excite, elate and energize us. But we do not have to be moving fast in order to improve our moods. All that is required is for our thinking to shift into a rapid pace and our mood improves. It isn’t always clear whether we want relatively ‘happy’ or ‘sad’...
December 17, 2013
A new research review says thinking fast can improve our mood, and increase risk-taking, confidence and problem-solving. The author discusses the experiences of running, skiing, driving over the speed limit as all having the capacity to excite, elate and energize us. But we do not have to be moving fast in order to improve our moods. All that is required is for our thinking to shift into a rapid pace and our mood improves. It isn’t always clear whether we want relatively ‘happy’ or ‘sad’...
Empathy: Paving the Road to Preferential Treatment with Good Intentions
December 16, 2013
How do empathy, accountability and fairness interact to result in preferential treatment (but with the best of intentions)? You know we are looking at this with an eye toward litigation implications and it isn’t even that much of a stretch. The researchers are looking at the workplace supervisor/supervisee relationship to assess how knowing that an employee is having a rough time might result in differing (i.e., preferential) treatment to a “needy employee”. What they find is that when someone...
December 16, 2013
How do empathy, accountability and fairness interact to result in preferential treatment (but with the best of intentions)? You know we are looking at this with an eye toward litigation implications and it isn’t even that much of a stretch. The researchers are looking at the workplace supervisor/supervisee relationship to assess how knowing that an employee is having a rough time might result in differing (i.e., preferential) treatment to a “needy employee”. What they find is that when someone...
How Influenced Are We By Images of Brain Scans? Maybe Not As Much As We Used To Be?
December 16, 2013
While visions of brain scans dance in our head, we may not be as impressed by them as we were a few years ago. Or maybe we never were all that impressed? Just how impressed were we—and how impressed are we now? These are questions to which we have yet to find clear answers. Here are some pieces of that puzzle though. From "'Brain Porn' Not So Seductive After All?" (NPR): There's something deeply compelling about "seeing" the mind at work with the help of relatively new neuroscientific tools,...
December 16, 2013
While visions of brain scans dance in our head, we may not be as impressed by them as we were a few years ago. Or maybe we never were all that impressed? Just how impressed were we—and how impressed are we now? These are questions to which we have yet to find clear answers. Here are some pieces of that puzzle though. From "'Brain Porn' Not So Seductive After All?" (NPR): There's something deeply compelling about "seeing" the mind at work with the help of relatively new neuroscientific tools,...
Law Firm Managing Partners Expect A Bad Year — For Everyone Else
December 12, 2013
At a roulette wheel in Vegas, you know the odds. The folks with all their money on red have a less than 50 percent chance of winning (47.37 percent, to get technical). There will be highs and there will be lows, but over the long haul, those poor saps swizzling their comped drinks will come out on the losing end. On the other hand, you put all your money on black because the guy on your flight told you to. Intellectually, you recognize you have the same odds of pulling out a victory as the overmatched...
December 12, 2013
At a roulette wheel in Vegas, you know the odds. The folks with all their money on red have a less than 50 percent chance of winning (47.37 percent, to get technical). There will be highs and there will be lows, but over the long haul, those poor saps swizzling their comped drinks will come out on the losing end. On the other hand, you put all your money on black because the guy on your flight told you to. Intellectually, you recognize you have the same odds of pulling out a victory as the overmatched...
Bringing Oxytocin into the Room
December 11, 2013
"We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.” ~ Anais Nin ~ While people in conflict commonly make reference to the facts, behaviors, feelings, personalities, or events surrounding their conflicts, for the most part they ignore the deeper reality that these experiences are all processed and regulated by their nervous systems, and are therefore initiated, resolved, transformed, and transcended by their brains. Yet only recently have mediators begun to consider how our brains...
December 11, 2013
"We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.” ~ Anais Nin ~ While people in conflict commonly make reference to the facts, behaviors, feelings, personalities, or events surrounding their conflicts, for the most part they ignore the deeper reality that these experiences are all processed and regulated by their nervous systems, and are therefore initiated, resolved, transformed, and transcended by their brains. Yet only recently have mediators begun to consider how our brains...
EDGE: Imagining Conflict Resolution
November 28, 2013
"The advantage of neuroscience is being able to look under the hood and see the mechanisms that actually create the thoughts and the behaviors that create and perpetuate conflict. Seems like it ought to be useful. That's the question that I'm asking myself right now, can science in general, or neuroscience in particular, be used to understand what drives conflict, what prevents reconciliation, why some interventions work for some people some of the time, and how to make and evaluate better ones."
November 28, 2013
"The advantage of neuroscience is being able to look under the hood and see the mechanisms that actually create the thoughts and the behaviors that create and perpetuate conflict. Seems like it ought to be useful. That's the question that I'm asking myself right now, can science in general, or neuroscience in particular, be used to understand what drives conflict, what prevents reconciliation, why some interventions work for some people some of the time, and how to make and evaluate better ones."
The Scientific Study of Positive Emotion
November 28, 2013
What I'm really interested in is the science of human emotion. In particular, what's captivated my field and my interest the most is trying to understand positive emotions. Not only the ways in which perhaps we think they're beneficial for us or confer some sort of adaptive value, but actually the ways in which they may signal dysfunction and may not actually, in all circumstances and in all intensities, be good for us. I thought I'd first start briefly with a tale of positive emotion. It's a really...
November 28, 2013
What I'm really interested in is the science of human emotion. In particular, what's captivated my field and my interest the most is trying to understand positive emotions. Not only the ways in which perhaps we think they're beneficial for us or confer some sort of adaptive value, but actually the ways in which they may signal dysfunction and may not actually, in all circumstances and in all intensities, be good for us. I thought I'd first start briefly with a tale of positive emotion. It's a really...
Neuroscientists Develop Equation for Predicting Future Disasters
November 7, 2013
A team of neuroscientists has published a paper claiming it has developed a mathematical calculation that could potentially predict the tipping point of any massive event -- from a market crash to a brain seizure. Neuroscientists are used to working on systems of nodes, whereby one neuron in the brain ignites a stream of connected activity when activated -- a web-like chain reaction that unfolds in seemingly unpredictable ways. Of course, these can be predicted if you have the right information....
November 7, 2013
A team of neuroscientists has published a paper claiming it has developed a mathematical calculation that could potentially predict the tipping point of any massive event -- from a market crash to a brain seizure. Neuroscientists are used to working on systems of nodes, whereby one neuron in the brain ignites a stream of connected activity when activated -- a web-like chain reaction that unfolds in seemingly unpredictable ways. Of course, these can be predicted if you have the right information....
Forget Dated Ideas About Left and Right Hemispheres
October 30, 2013
Excerpt from "A New Map of How We Think: Top Brain/Bottom Brain" (Wall Street Journal), an article extracted from a forthcoming...
October 30, 2013
Excerpt from "A New Map of How We Think: Top Brain/Bottom Brain" (Wall Street Journal), an article extracted from a forthcoming...
