(emotional congruency being the thing I talked about in my last substantive post, for anyone reading this in the future who didn't also see the previous one)

In one of those strange 'the universe is paying attention to me' moments, two of the people I read recently posted on topics that touch on the need for emotional congruency. One about how when ( Read more... )

A while back I read this post. Short version: When people get into verbal fights, their styles can be roughly split into truth-shouters, who say the truths that they would normally hold back or find themselves unable to express, versus cutlery-loaders, who say all kinds of things that may or may not be true in order to blow off steam and get a ( Read more... )

(Long time, no post, etc. Maybe one of these days I'll go into detail about what I've been up for the last semester or so. Also, the key insight that led to this post is due to my friend N ( Read more... )

Some time back I read the seminal book on transactional analysis (TA), Games People Play by Eric Berne, on the recommendation of someone on Livejournal. While it was hobbled by a 1960's understanding of mental illness, there were a couple of ideas in the book that I thought were brilliant:

* Its description of 'strokes', as in attention that other ( Read more... )

Some video game companies are interested in tracking gamers' emotional states while playing and using it as feedback in the game

Neurofeedback involves being shown your brainwaves on a screen and learning to control them. It's been used to successfully treat anxiety disorders, depresion, and addition, according to my psychologist, even though they ( Read more... )

This exam being Perception and Cognition ( Read more... )

So many a year ago a bunch of psychologists were doing experiments on operant learning in animals. At one point they performed the following experiment: The basic setup is a rat or bird in a cage. Sticking out of one of the walls is a lever. Now, in some versions of the experiment, the lever causes food to be released every time it's pressed. The ( Read more... )

The other day I had my friend over, who also happens to be the GM for our roleplaying group. While he was over we discussed various people and their behaviours, and why it was they behaved that way. Noting that most of the people in our social groups are quite intelligent and rational (more T than F, in Type-speak), there isn't much space for ( Read more... )