Psychoworld.sk – human psychology news

A politician can never fib flawlessly because their body language will always give them away, psychologists say.

No amount of coaching or media training can co-ordinate the hand gestures and facial expressions to fully cover up what a person knows not to be true.

The bite of the lip, a movement of the eyebrow or simply where they walk on the ceremonial carpet can betray what a politician really thinks and feels.

Researchers explained how to read the signs at a science meeting in Norwich.

The human brain is hard-wired to be susceptible to supernatural beliefs as a result of tens of thousands of years of evolution, a British psychologist said today.

Religion and other forms of magical thinking continue to thrive, in spite of a lack of evidence and the advance of science, because people are naturally biased to accept a role for the irrational in their daily lives, according to Bruce Hood, Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Bristol.

This evolved credulity suggests that it will be impossible to root out belief in ideas such as creationism and paranormal phenomena, even though they have been refuted by evidence and are held as a matter of faith alone.

People ultimately believe in them for the same reasons as they attach sentimental value to inanimate objects like wedding rings or teddy bears, and recoil from artefacts linked to evil, as if they are pervaded by a physical “essence”. Read more.

When it comes to brainpower they say you either use it or lose it. Now a study in mice suggests that the survival of newly formed adult brain cells depends on the amount of input they receive.

Fred Gage of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, and his colleagues infected genetically engineered mice with a virus that stops new brain cells from producing NMDA receptors – proteins that sit on the surface of brain cells and help them communicate with each other. The virus used infects only newly generated cells, leaving other cells untouched. More here.

The calls keep coming, five or six a day, from addicts desperate for help, and psychologist Maressa Hecht Orzack, an assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School, understands the misery on the other end of the line. She knows firsthand the pain of an addiction so severe it might have wrecked her career.

But Orzack mastered her obsession and now helps others do the same. Granted, when Orzack beat her habit over a decade ago, she had it relatively easy. She’d become hooked on computer solitaire, the trivial card game built into millions of desktop and laptop computers. Orzack believes it could have been much worse.

About 25 per cent of us will experience the effects of anxiety disorders at some point in our lives, with sometimes dire repercussions for friends, family and our own well-being. Yet little is known about the molecular mechanisms in the brain which contribute to stress-induced anxiety.

Fear memories are encoded as changes in neuronal connections called synapses, in a process known as plasticity. Dr Pawlak and his colleagues have recently shown that proteases (proteins that cut other proteins) play a critical role in this process and significantly contribute to fear and anxiety related to stress. Read more.

Abdul Rahim Halimyar, 48, runs the only psychology clinic in Kandahar. He sits in a barren room with concrete walls and listens to the noises wafting up from the ancient bazaar at the heart of the city.

He hears terrible stories from the people who climb the narrow staircase to his office. The market is quieter these days, as people flee the fighting in southern Afghanistan, and nearly every visitor to Dr. Halimyar’s clinic is suffering the effects of the renewed war.

Many of his visitors say they don’t understand why they feel anxious or depressed. But the reasons emerge as they describe how their lives have been destroyed by this year’s rising insurgency: dead relatives, smashed homes, harrowing escapes.

More.

Key words
Anglican Empiricism, Tabula rasa, Ideas, Sensation, Qualities, Reflection, Reason, Knowledge

Key terms in British Empiricism
Ideas: objects of human understanding.
Sensation: experience that causes ideas of qualities.
Qualities: the powers in things to create sensation.
Reflection: experience of our own thought processes.
Reason: that which processes the ideas of experience.
Knowledge: the perception of the consonance and dissonance between our ideas

Historical background
John Locke (1632-1704) was one of the greatest philosophers in Europe at the end of the seventeenth century. With the defeat and death of Charles I, there began a great experiment in governmental institutions including the abolishment of the monarchy, the House of Lords and the Anglican church, and the establishment of Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate in the 1650s.

The collapse of the Protectorate after the death of Cromwell was followed by the Restoration of Charles II — the return of the monarchy, the House of Lords and the Anglican Church. This period lasted from 1660 to 1688. It was marked by continued conflicts between King and Parliament and debates over religious toleration for Protestant dissenters and Catholics.

This period ends with the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in which James II was driven from England and replaced by William of Orange and his wife Mary. The final period during which Locke lived involved the consolidation of power by William and Mary, and the beginning of William’s efforts to oppose the domination of Europe by the France of Louis XIV, which later culminated in the military victories of John Churchill — the Duke of Marlborough.

Key words
Anglican Empiricism, Tabula rasa, Ideas, Sensation, Qualities, Reflection, Reason, Knowledge

Key words
Anglican Empiricism, Tabula rasa, Ideas, Sensation, Qualities, Reflection, Reason, Knowledge

Life
John Locke was born in Wrington, Somerset in 1632, the son of a country lawyer who served as a Captain of Horse in the Parliamentary army; both his parents died when he was young.

He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, and elected to a Studentship in 1659. He went on to study medicine, finally receiving a degree in 1674. He wasn’t, however, qualified to practise as a doctor, though he did so informally.

This thing however changed his life, for he operated successfully on Lord Shaftesbury, whose household he joined as advisor, medic, and friend. Shaftesbury, an influential politician, was able to put various government appointments Locke’s way.

However, Shaftesbury fell from favour, and Locke not only lost a powerful patron, but felt threatened enough to leave England for France. His anti-Royalist views certainly made him unpopular in some quarters, and his prudence was probably well founded.

Locke later left for the Netherlands, where he lived for five years, before finally returning to England on the accession of William and Mary. It was during his stay in the Netherlands that he wrote the Letter on Tolerance, and finished his two most important works, both published in 1690 after his return to England: An Essay on Human Understanding and Two Treatises on Government.

The new regime in England honoured Locke with various government posts. He settled at Oates in Essex, at the house of Damaris Masham, where he died in 1704 at the age of seventy-two, possibly as the result of a tiring journey made to London at the behest of King William.

Writings
Fundamental Constitution for the Government of Carolina, 1669.
A Letter Concerning Toleration, 1689.
Treatise on Civil Government, 1690.
Concerning Civil Government: Second Essay, 1690. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1690. Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and Raising the Value of Money , 1692 Further Considerations Concerning Raising the Value of Money, 1695.
Short Observations on a Printed Paper, 1695.
Reasonableness of Christianity, 1695

Key words
Anglican Empiricism, Tabula rasa, Ideas, Sensation, Qualities, Reflection, Reason, Knowledge

True or False? The only career option for a scientifically-trained psychologist is a faculty position in a college or university.

The answer is a resounding False!

In response to the concerns of many psychology graduate students about the lack information on careers outside of the university setting, we began inviting scientific psychologists with traditional training to tell us about their work in some relatively non-traditional places.

The Interesting Careers in Psychology series is a relatively small sampling of an infinite number of non-academic careers that are possible–those who have “taken a different path” relate their own experiences of how they got to where they are now and the valuable lessons they learned along the way to employment “beyond the lab.”

The following Interesting Careers in Psychology articles illustrate the various skill-sets and expertise that scientifically-trained psychologists possess which are also highly valued by employers outside of academe. The non-traditional career paths represented by these personal success stories illustrate the different types of unique contributions made by scientific psychologists in many different employment settings.

A new Interesting Careers article is published in almost every issue of Psychological Science Agenda (PSA) and will be posted to this site shortly after publication!

In his work, Descartes proposed a mechanism for automatic reaction in response to external events. According to his proposal, external motions affect the peripheral ends of the nerve fibrils, which in turn displace the central ends. As the central ends are displaced, the pattern of interfibrillar space is rearranged and the flow of animal spirits is thereby directed into the appropriate nerves. It was Descartes’ articulation of this mechanism for automatic, differentiated reaction that led to his generally being credited with the founding of reflex theory.
Although extended discussion of the metaphysical split between mind and body did not appear until Descartes’ Meditationes, his De homine outlined these views and provided the first articulation of the mind/body interactionism that was to elicit such pronounced reaction from later thinkers. In Descartes’ conception, the rational soul, an entity distinct from the body and making contact with the body at the pineal gland, might or might not become aware of the differential outflow of animal spirits brought about through the rearrangement of the interfibrillar spaces. When such awareness did occur, however, the result was conscious sensation — body affecting mind. In turn, in voluntary action, the soul might itself initiate a differential outflow of animal spirits. Mind, in other words, could also affect body.
Find more here.

Key words: “Cogito ergo sum” “I think, therefore I am” Racionalism, Cartesian dualism, Body and Mind, Discourse on Method, Clarity and Distinctness, Religion, Science and Scepticism, Hyperbolic Doubt, Arnold Geulinex, paralelism