The Formula for Success and Happiness
Successful people are not necessarily happy and happy people are not necessarily successful. There are always trade-offs involved in life and depending on our priorities, we may want to become better at being more successful or happier, or lead lives that are more moral or more meaningful. I’m not [...]Rating: 10.0/10 (1 vote cast) (Source: The Mouse Trap)
Source: The Mouse Trap - September 11, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: psychology Source Type: podcasts
Love- in All its Glorious Forms
Love for a child, is not the same as love for a friend, which is not the same as love for a partner- we all instinctively realize this fact– yet we also admit that there must be something common in our interactions with these people that enables us to label that experience as love, and that [...]Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast) (Source: The Mouse Trap)
Source: The Mouse Trap - August 31, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: love Positive psychology Source Type: podcasts
Depression : Symptoms and Subtypes
Depression is one of the most common mental illness; as a matter of fact it has been said to be the common cold of mental disorders- almost everyone gets it one time or the other. ~57 million people, in India itself, are estimated to suffer from depression. However, depression thought currently [...]Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast) (Source: The Mouse Trap)
Source: The Mouse Trap - August 30, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: depression ABCD model Source Type: podcasts
Psychological Haikus (#Psyckus)
5 months back, in a poetic mood, I had penned a few Psychological Haikus that explain or comment on the major research themes of some researchers in positive psychology and allied fields. I had hoped that the #Psycku trend would have picked up, with others pitching in, or at least I myself would [...]Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast) (Source: The Mouse Trap)
Source: The Mouse Trap - August 24, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: positive psychology #Psycku researchers Source Type: podcasts
The Four Needs Theory: Building on McClelland
McClelland had formulated a theory of three basic needs: Need for achievement, need for affiliation and need for power. He had related this to work context, though these needs are generally applicable. While the need for achievement is all about accomplishments, be it in comparison to other [...]Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast) (Source: The Mouse Trap)
Source: The Mouse Trap - August 24, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: motivation personality motives needs Source Type: podcasts
Personality and Goals
Goals, that people strive for, make an important part of a person’s personality- be it the daily strivings or the personal projects. However, this post is not about goals at that level of personality.
Goals can be classified as approach goals or avoidance goals based on whether one wants to achieve [...]Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast) (Source: The Mouse Trap)
Source: The Mouse Trap - August 21, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: motivation personality goals Source Type: podcasts
Basic Needs: The Maslow-Erikson Mashup
There is some evidence that ontogeny parallels phylogeny as far as cognitive development is concerned. What this means is that the same stages or steps that a species has evolved through also recur when the embryo develops into a fully functioning adult. In other words, developmental stages and states follow the same sequence as evolutionary stages. This may be because the environment is structured in such a way that some stages can only make sense when preceding stages have been already encountered.
To illustrate, if pain was the first sensation that animals could first sense and feel; then probably it will be the first e...
Source: The Mouse Trap - August 7, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: personality erikson Maslow's hierarchy of needs Source Type: podcasts
Academic Excellence Due to Efforts or Intelligence: Curious? Read on
There has been a long standing debate in intellectual circles: what leads to superior performance? Is it due to talent or intelligence or is it due to efforts and hard work? Reams of books have been written on the subject including some of my favorites: ‘Talent is overrated’, ‘Outliers’ etc.
Applied to the classroom the question becomes why did Tom get an A or aced the JEE/GRE , was it because he is smarter that Harry or was it because he studied more and better? Answers to questions like these have profound implications for how children learn and grow- believing that effort matters more (a grow...
Source: The Mouse Trap - July 8, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: education #PosEd character strengths curiosity deliberate practice efforts grit Intelligence Positive Education talent Source Type: podcasts
What Good (and Bad) are Positive Emotions?
There is a seminal article by Barbara Fredrickson titled ‘What good are positive emotions?’ which introduces the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. As per this theory, while negative emotions are associated with specific action tendencies, positive emotions broaden the thought-action repertoire available at that moment and help build physical, social and intellectual resources over the long run.
To take an example, joy is associated with creativity, and more loose associations, etc, all involving a move away from rigidity and fixedness to flexibility and fluency in thinking ; joy is also associate...
Source: The Mouse Trap - June 17, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: emotion adaptations emotions evolution play Source Type: podcasts
The Neural Substrates of Personality
Personality is the study of individual differences, mostly in humans, though some work in animal personality too has happened. While evolution has designed for some universal adaptations, that lead to say human universals, evolution has also maintained some variations which leads to individual differences.
Personality traits are stable and consistent patterns of responding in terms of emotions, behavior, cognition and motivation across different situations. Various methods, both theoretical and empirical, have been used to arrive at the most parsimonious collection of traits; some of these methods include lexical studies t...
Source: The Mouse Trap - June 13, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: personality Big Five Big Five personality traits HEXACO neural substrates Source Type: podcasts
The Pursuit of Happiness
Would we be more happy if we pursued happiness vigorously? Or would we be more happier if we let life flow as it happens and enjoy the journey rather than focusing on a destination where we would be happy? From an abundance of positive psychology research we know that instead of thinking about and planning for being happy in the future, say when we get that coveted promotion, its better to enjoy the process and journey and be present in the moment.
However, many positive psychologists, including myself, do place a high premium on doing things or making choices according to the principle of whether that will lead to more h...
Source: The Mouse Trap - May 31, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: happiness time scarcity Source Type: podcasts
The Pursuit of Happiness
Would we be more happy if we pursued happiness vigorously? Or would we be more happier if we let life flow as it happens and enjoy the journey rather than focusing on a destination where we would be happy? From an abundance of positive psychology research we know that instead of thinking about and planning for being happy in the future, say when we get that coveted promotion, its better to enjoy the process and journey and be present in the moment.
However, many positive psychologists, including myself, do place a high premium on doing things or making choices according to the principle of whether that will lead to more h...
Source: The Mouse Trap - May 31, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: happiness time scarcity Source Type: podcasts
