Tag Archives | Psychology

The End of Sleep

By on April 26, 2013 in News 0

You want the sheeple to wake up?  Jessa Gamble writes at Aeon:

Since stimulants have failed to offer a biological substitute for sleep, the new watchword of sleep innovators is ‘efficiency’, which means in effect reducing the number of hours of sleep needed for full functionality. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) – the research arm of the US military – leads the way in squeezing a full night’s sleep into fewer hours, by forcing sleep the moment head meets pillow, and by concentrating that sleep into only the most restorative stages. Soldiers on active duty need to function at their cognitive and physiological best, even when they are getting only a few hours sleep in a 24-hour cycle.

Nancy Wesensten, a psychologist for the Center for Military Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland, has a mission to find ways to sustain soldier operations for longer, fighting the effects of acute or chronic sleep deprivation.

… Read the rest

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A Sense Of Being Watched Is Hardwired Into Our Brains, Say Researchers

By on April 15, 2013 in News 0

brain sense of being watchedIf when in doubt, we tend to feel that eyes must be upon us, could this help explain much of our behavior? From belief in a god staring down at us, to paranoid fantasies, to reluctance to break social norms even when no one is actually paying attention? Via the Telegraph:

The feeling that others are watching us is an evolutionary mechanism designed to keep us alert, experts said.

Prof. Colin Clifford, a University of Sydney psychologist who led the research, explained: “A direct gaze can signal dominance or a threat, and if you perceive something as a threat you would not want to miss it. Simply assuming another person is looking at you may be the safest strategy.”

The researchers asked volunteers to determine in which direction a series of faces were looking. Even without being able to clearly see where the eyes were focused, the participants felt as if they were being watched.

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Babies Prefer Individuals Who Harm Those Who Aren’t Like Them

By on April 8, 2013 in News 0

via Association For Psychological Science

For some getting picked for the team is an affirmation of where they sit in the group. Never mind being the person picked to picked the other people. What about those who are picked last, sometimes with a grumble? Is it because they wear the same my little pony shirt? Is it because they keep repeating Sgt. Slaughter’s words from that one G.I. Joe episode, calling people scuzzbuckets?

Is it because they are fat, have braces, wear glasses, or any other such oddity? The short answer is no. The long answer is that kids can be naturally cruel, sort of. It appears it all depends on what is normal to them, and that these norms may begin to develop at a very early age.

In our social lives, we tend to gravitate toward people who have things in common with us, whether it’s growing up in the same town, disliking the same foods, or even sharing the same birthday.

… Read the rest

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Julian Jaynes and the Muting of the Gods

By on March 18, 2013 in News 20

Rachel Aviv writes at n+1:

Julian Jaynes, a psychologist at Princeton, had little patience for his colleagues, who spent hours in the lab doing “petty, petty humdrum things.” He dismissed their “objective aridity,” “cunning lingo,” and “valiant nonsense.” The field of psychology, he wrote, was little more than “bad poetry disguised as science.”

Jaynes published only one book, in 1976, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, which tells the story of how mankind learned to think. Critics described it as a bizarre and reckless masterpiece—the American Journal of Psychiatry called Jaynes “as startling as Freud in the Interpretation of Dreams.” Drawing on evidence from neurology, archaeology, art history, theology, and Greek poetry, Jaynes captured the experience of modern consciousness—“a whole kingdom where each of us reigns reclusively alone, questioning what we will, commanding what we can”—as sensitively and tragically as any great novelist.

… Read the rest

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Human Demonology: Occupy Daath, or The Missing Protagonist

By on March 17, 2013 in News 15

From P. Emerson at Modern Mythology:

…the Cop Show has only three characters–victim, criminal, and police person–but the first two fail to be fully human–only the pig is real. Oddly enough, human society in the eighties (as seen in the other media) sometimes appeared to consist of the same three cliche/archetypes. First the victims, the whining minorities bitching about “rights”–and who pray tell did not belong to a “minority” in the eighties? Shit, even cops complained about their “rights” being abused. Then the criminals: largely non-white (despite the obligatory & hallucinatory “integration” of the media), largely poor (or else obscenely rich, hence even more alien), largely perverse (i.e. the forbidden mirrors of “our” desires). - Hakim Bey – Boycott Cop Culture

Welcome to the apocalypse

Welcome to the apocalypse

Could we draw similar implications from the view of the US/Corporate empire being seen as the world’s police force? We all know the villain of this piece.… Read the rest

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Can a Sufficient Dose of Psilocybin Mushrooms Cure Someone of Atheism?

By on March 13, 2013 in News 268

In this edition of heroic doses we ask the burning philosophical question, can a sufficient dose of psilocybin mushrooms cure someone of atheism? Not a topic I’d considered personally at length until it happened to a friend of mine. Well, let’s face it, I’ve always thought something like this was possible. One thing that annoys me about a lot of hard science wired people’s attitude toward matters such as alien contact and inner godhead freak outs is that I see a lot of, well, if something’s in your head, we can’t quantify data on it, so it’s pointless. Horseshit. Behavior is a physical thing and it’s incredibly easy to study.

Take me for example. As a teenager, after ditching Christianity I can’t say I had much of an interest in spirituality at all. I was more into guitars, basketball, not getting laid, and other typical young guy crap. I will say that smoking weed maybe got me thinking about matters of the soul a bit more intently, but not seriously.… Read the rest

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The Mass Psychology of Torture

By on March 11, 2013 in News 30

William Mason writes at Counterpunch:

Torture has its gradations: from the most extreme forms (such as waterboarding) to the most subtle expressions (such as passive-aggressive obstructionism in relationships).

In its most heinous forms, torture consists of confining a helpless victim, who is subjected to physical pain and torment, emotional abuse, and various other degrading humiliations.  Prohibited by both international and domestic laws, the torture of suspected “terrorists” is nonetheless now widely condoned by most American citizens (or so it seems).

A kind of  “torture-of-the-week” riveted the audience of the popular TV series 24.  The disturbing film Dark Zero Thirty rationalized and depicted graphic torture—and was praised by critics and the public alike.  Why, so many observers have asked, do Americans today tolerate (or even approve) of the illegal torture so routinely administered by their own government?

Of course, Americans have long been desensitized to violence.  Everyday life is in itself brutalizing to any humane sensibility.  The average U.S.

… Read the rest

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The Underworld of the Periphery: Countercultures of the Future

By on March 6, 2013 in News 7

From Modern Mythology: 

Those that just don’t fit, the underclass or outcast, those of the periphery, the counter-culture — these are popular topics around here, and for good reason,

“Peripheries are often border zones where peoples or things are thrown into unexpected contact, hybrid spaces yielding new possibilities for social and cultural organization.”

Think of the musical genres, poetic innovations, and linguistic creoles of the Caribbean; or think of the social “margins” or the “queer periphery,” where disenfranchisement and stigmatization give rise to relatively free experimentation in social practices and cultural life. Though centers may seem more advanced or more privileged than peripheries, decisive change and innovation often begin at the fringes. Yet the very tendency toward difference and transformation out on the margins often meets with a violent reimposition of norms from the center: Soviet tanks rolling into Prague, or the Janjaweed and Sudanese military sweeping through Darfur, or the police descending on Stonewall.

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