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Archive for October, 2009

Things we don’t know

October 19th, 2009
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picture of puzzled faceIt’s hardly news to admit that I don’t know everything, and I bet you don’t either. It’s probably not news to say that psychologists don’t know everything either. So it is with some amusement that I ran across this collection of 150 word posts by a group of world-leading psychologists about things they don’t know. The group of posts are part of a celebration of 150 issues of the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest. (Congratulations BPS!)

Here’s a sample post. This one is by Paul Rozin on Time management.

I generally believe that we learn from experience. However, a recent study I did with Karlene Hanko repeats a finding from Kahneman and Snell, that people are very poor at predicting how their liking will change for a new product (in our case, two new foods and two new body products) after using it for a week. We predicted that the parents of our college undergraduates would be better than their children at predicting their hedonic trajectory, but 25 more years of self experience did nothing for them. Nor for me. Every night, I bring home a pile of work to do in the evening and early morning. I have been doing this for over 50 years. I always think I will actually get through all or most of it, and I almost never get even half done. But I keep expecting to accomplish it all. What a fool I am.

Coaching moment: Take a few minutes to think about stuff that you know, and stuff that you don’t. What’s something you don’t know? What does that mean to you? (Whatever it means, it’s part of who you are.)

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The Right to be Yourself

October 18th, 2009
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Sentient Developments has a thought provoking post called Cognitive liberty and right to one’s mind that talks about cognitive liberty, neurodiversity, and the right to control one’s own mind. Author George Dvorsky states that, while there may be compelling reasons why treatment might be appropriate (like for people engaged in criminally harmful behavior), it may be undesirable to “cure” those who are neurologically different (because of Aspergers or autism, for example). From the article:

Cognitive liberty is not just about the right to modify one’s mind, emotional balance and psychological framework (for example, through anti-depressants, cognitive enhancers, psychotropic substances, etc.), it’s also very much about the right to not have one’s mind altered against their will. In this sense, cognitive liberty is very closely tied to freedom of speech. A strong argument can be made that we have an equal right to freedom of thought and the sustained integrity of our subjective experiences.

Coaching moment: Your mind is a big part of what makes you unique in the world. You may choose to alter your mind by learning, drugs, television, or many other means. This is your choice. However, I doubt that many people would be supportive of a nationwide drug program to make us all the same (as if that were possible, which I also doubt).

This reminds me of a short story by Kurt Vonnegut called Harrison Bergeron. It starts out:

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. …

The future will not be so kind as Vonnegut. We will need all forms of our diversity to tackle some of our own global problems and creations. We are better served by learning how to listen and learn from each other. Each of us is unique. Together we are still different. That is our strength if we allow for it.

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