#psycholoy

[schoolpsychlife]

American Psychological Association

Monitor on Psychology, Dec. 2017

[neurotectura]

Aggressive Behaviour and Environmental Overload

Aggressive Behaviour and Environmental Overload

[quotidian-oblivion]

I don't need therapy.

...Do I?

How do you even determine whether someone needs therapy or not? Like- how does that happen? Psychologically?

[monkeywiki]

thinking about how my psychology 101 teacher in high-school was decent (she was a lesbian and treated me well in my transition) until we started learning about . Personality disorders she would repetitively use this anecdote about individuals with bpd. Actually it was fucked up enough she made us do an activity where we had to decide what career paths were accurate for personality disorders (like there were "wrong" answers) and avpd's career path was "not working" lol but regardless she used this anecdote about her ex girlfriend having bpd to claim all people with bpd were bad and I was like uhh . I may be a highschooler but my bf (now fiance) has bpd and uh like shouldn't we stick to discussing how it impacts the individual and how it starts and how to heal not stereotyping ppl as bad bcus of an experience with your ex and she was basically like "well no I know more than you" anyway my . Fiance has a double bachelor's in psychology and sociology now and I'm 24 and that was a bad teacher lol

[lexicon-decepticon]

Avuncular (adj.)

In my psychology class, my professor mentioned how the conductors of a certain study had selected a particular man for a role in the study because he was avuncular. Expecting us to be unfamiliar with the word, my professor followed up by defining the word: “relating to or like an uncle.” I think it’s pretty cool that you can almost see “uncle” in the word, and can definitely hear "uncle” when it’s said aloud.

[acti-veg]

So many vegans I know have this problem it's so weird because I love Quorn's vegan nuggets and I love burgers so I tried their burgers (before I went vegan) and the taste and texture made me feel so sick because it was so realistically red-meaty so now I just stick with lentil patties but like? It's so strange how pretty much everyone I know is fine with some mock meats while others make them feel physically ill

It’s a real thing for sure, it turns out disgust is an emotion heavily informed and influenced by morality, which means that even if you logically you know that thee meat isn’t real, your brain still associates it with an animal, even if that connection is a false one. What’s odd is that it only seems to happens with specific mock meats for specific people, and they’re usually different ones.

 I think it is even more interesting when it happens to meat eaters, like I’ve known many people refuse to eat black pudding (a common dish where I’m from, which is made of congealed blood) but will happily eat a rare steak, both of which contain blood. Or when some meat eaters won’t eat a fish unless the head is cut off, or are repulsed by the sight of a whole roasted pig and won’t buy a cut from them, but will happily eat bacon if its pre-packaged. It seems that whatever makes that connection happen, again even if it is a false one in the case of faux meats, is completely different for everyone. Then there are those people who have so much cognitive dissonance that they never make that connection at all regardless of how obvious it is. Melanie Joy writes very perceptively about this issue in her book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows, I’d thoroughly recommend checking it out. 

[thehipperelement]

Musicians May Be The Key To The Cybersecurity Talent Shortage

Companies scrambling to find cybersecurity talent may want to look toward more creative candidates.

This is a cool article about the unexpected connection between talent in music and talent in tech.

My Dad and I were both musicians “on the side”. He is a doctor, and we have often noticed how many doctors had some sort of musical skills. When I took music in university, many musicians were also good at mathematics. These might seem like weird combinations of “creative” and “analytical” thinking, but it’s not as weird as you might think.

According to the linked article, the connection might be related to learning systems, rather than rules.

The connection between music and tech (or medicine) — as the article says — might be an ability to see the “big picture” of things. The patterns. The structure. The reason why the parts exist.

While many people just learn things by repeating what they have seen, the great people learn the underlying architecture of these things so they can improvise and be creative within that structure.

From the article:

“Michael Belton, vice president of research and development at the cybersecurity company Optiv, has a theory why. "You’re talking about languages," says Belton, "Mathematics and languages are intertwined." A musician who’s able to adeptly compose a song has a grasp of musical language. They’re able to apply the concepts they learned to manipulate something new. And this skill is exactly what security professionals do. "If you’re trying to write an exploit," Belton says, "you’re stepping back and thinking, ‘Here’s a piece of software and here’s what it does.’"

It might not be obvious how this is related to the types of stuff I normally write about (design, UX, products, etc.). But psychologically, this is much bigger than music and cybersecurity. 

And I wouldn’t call it an “ability”. It’s more of a perspective.

In music, or math, or tech, or design... you can either learn things as if they are rules, or you can learn things as if they are examples of bigger structures. The thing is, music is really boring if you only learn to execute the music in front of you, so everybody approaches music as if the rules were made to be broken.

The real fun happens when you write your own music or interpret the notes in your own way. That’s the difference between a symphony pianist and someone playing Billy Joel’s greatest hits on a cruise ship.

When you do an A/B test and the red links beat the blue links, you can either decide that red links are better than blue links as a rule, or you can decide that red links were better than blue links this time, based on the elements of the rest of the design around them.

If you’re new to UX then the difference might not be that obvious. But after 10 years of using one of those perspectives, the difference is huge.

You will either become good at following rules (boring), or you will have learned how to experiment with the patterns of the past (innovation).

People that learn rules will be totally confused if blue links ever beat red links but people who are learning patterns or systems will realize that the relationship between the background color and the link color matters more than the actual color of the links themselves.

In technology, however, it is easy to forget that you’re allowed to write your own music... it’s easy to focus on making things “right” instead of innovating.

The linked article takes a more practical approach to this subject, talking about hiring tech talent. It even points out that “technical competence” is actually less important than the way job candidates think. (It amazes me that this is news to anyone, but I digress...)

But more importantly, as the article tries to say: the key is to understand how your ideas fit into the big picture. Not just whether they look like the other shit that’s popular right now.

[theindianhypnosisacademy-blog]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAqn0VRjvXc)