Openness/ Intellect and the MBTI
As per the Big Five/FFM or the HEXACO model, Openness/Intellect appears to be an important personality dimension on which humans differ from each other. People high on this dimension are variously described as creative, imaginative, intellectual etc. We will be only focusing on this trait of the big five/HEXACO/FFM for the purpose of this post.
fancy logo/writing for use in MBTI articles (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
MBTI is based on Jung’s theory: People may be Extroverted or Introverted, based on whether they find stimulation in the outer world preferable or find the inner world more a focus of their attention; and are...
Source: The Mouse Trap - December 18, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: personality Big Five personality traits MBTI Source Type: podcasts
Welcoming the One Millionth Reader
I know its a bit premature (the blog visit count on my blog is only about 99,8000 yet and it will take another 2-3 days to hit that milestone) but I wanted to take this opportunity to thank all the ~1 million readers who have thought it worthwhile to visit my blog at least once. You know who who you are: thanks to the Moms and the Grandmoms (those readers who were the only ones to visit it in the early days) and thanks also to the Siblings and Cousins (those blogs which encouraged, accepted and sometimes generated a healthy sibling competition of sorts in the early days?).
Maker Faire 2008, San Mateo – a life size ve...
Source: The Mouse Trap - December 11, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: Blog blogs personal blogging Source Type: podcasts
Big Love: Loving from a Place of Authenticity and Courage
When I was offered a chance to review ‘Big Love’ I was skeptical- The title seemed too touchy feely. My specialty is reading, and sometimes reviewing, psychology books so I was not even sure it would make good match. Also I had never heard of Scott Stabile and the PR blurb seemed too good to be true. However, as they say don’t judge a book by its cover. The book is a memoir cum advice from hard learned life lessons, and though its not a psychology based book, I could not find any contradictions with what psychology tells us about life and love. The need for vulnerability, courage and authenticity is a...
Source: The Mouse Trap - November 20, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: Book review authenticity Love Source Type: podcasts
The Four Kinds of Happiness
I have written previously about four major goals that one pursues in life: to recap they are Happiness, Success, Meaning and Morality. I have increasingly come to regard them as forming a stage wise progression- one moves from Happiness to Success to Meaning to Morality.
Aristotle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Its important to clarify here that by Happiness I mean here pleasure or the Pleasant life, as contrasted with the Successful life, the Meaningful life or the Virtuous life. Refer the Life Orientation Profile by Paul TP Wong.
One can even say that initially as a child/ adolescent, one is primarily driven by pleasant life;...
Source: The Mouse Trap - September 20, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: happiness Life goals meaning Morality success Source Type: podcasts
The ABCD of Human Conundrum
The Human existence is fraught with many conundrums and dilemmas, the chief among them being how to live a good life and how to resolve the various contradictions in the service of that goal.
Conundrum novel cover (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
To start with, I noted in an earlier post that even infants are able to reason about the world and themselves and others using four cognitive frameworks: they see self and others as animals (biological reasoning system), as agents (psychological reasoning system) , as separated individuals (sociomoral reasoning system) and finally as impartial observers obeying physical laws(physical r...
Source: The Mouse Trap - September 9, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: positive psychology existentialism Source Type: podcasts
The Four Needs for Meaning
Roy Baumiester, has written about the four needs for meaning that all humans have and I find that a useful framework. He believes, and I concur, that all four needs need to be satisfied to a reasonable degree, if a person has to live well. Even if one need is thwarted, one would be forced to search for meaning in that part of his or her life.
Embed from Getty Images
These four needs are as follows:
Need for purpose (self-concordance?): We need to interpret events that happen to us and around us as leading to some goals or fulfillment. We cannot be doing random stuff, nor random stuff can happen to us; everything has...
Source: The Mouse Trap - September 9, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: meaning existentialism needs Source Type: podcasts
Infants Reasoning About the World
The world may appear to be a ‘blooming, buzzing, confusion’ to infants, but within a few months infants are able to indulge in sophisticated cognition. They develop folk physical/astronomical theory, folk psychological theory, folk moral theory and folk biological theory, pretty rapidly.
This post is about those cognitive frameworks that infants develop and which more or less persist in adulthood.
An infant (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It had been my contention, that Autistic children are predominantly governed by physicalist explanations and frameworks, while those prone to psychosis indulged more in mentalisti...
Source: The Mouse Trap - September 7, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: cognition infants reasoning Source Type: podcasts
Research Summaries: Can Adolescents Learn Self-control? Delay of Gratification in the Development of Control over Risk Taking
Today’s research summary is based on a paper by Angela Duckworth and colleagues, and examines the nature of self-control as assessed by risk-taking, sensation-seeking, future time perspective and delay of gratification in US adolescents.
Embed from Getty Images
Adolescents are known to indulge in risk taking activities like recreational drug use and various theories abound as to why adolescence is a particularly sensitive time.
As per one theory, there is a dopamine surge in reward centers of the brain during adolescence which leads to impulsive sensation seeking behavior. Traditionally, it is believed that th...
Source: The Mouse Trap - August 12, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: Research Summaries Angela Duckworth self-control Source Type: podcasts
Book Review: The Grit Guide for Teens
Every once in a while you stumble across a book that is very much relevant to your present circumstances and as if written with you in mind; The Girt Guide for Teens happens to be such a book that is proving really valuable to me in my current endeavor of championing positive education.
Some of you might know, that I am currently executing a long term positive education intervention in a school in Pune, which is structured around VIA character strengths. One of the strengths we are focusing on is Grit, the target audience is teenagers and this book has been God-send!
Along side Angela Duckowrth’s book, which I rev...
Source: The Mouse Trap - August 8, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: Book review grit Source Type: podcasts
Emotions as a Result of Approach and Avoidance
There is a powerful theory in psychology, proposed by Carver and Scheier, about how emotions arise as an indication of how we are progressing towards our goals. Today’s post will be elaborating and extending on that model.
Embed from Getty Images
Basically this cybernetic theory of emotions, is based on that fact that most of our actions are goal directed, we are either trying to archive a desired end state / goal; or we are trying to avoid an undesirable end-state or anti-goal. The same action or overt behavior may be motivated by different goal related orientation. For e.g., a student studying for a test may ...
Source: The Mouse Trap - August 6, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: emotion movement approach system avoidance system basic emotions Source Type: podcasts
Research Summaries: Domain-specific temporal discounting and temptation
Today’s paper co-authored by Angela Duckworth again straddles the two worlds of psychology and economics.
English: A comparison of the discount factor of hyperbolic discounting with that of exponential discounting. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Temporal discounting or time preference is the preference people show towards immediate short-term rewards over higher but later long-term gains. People are willing to accept much lower sums (of say money) now, than they would, for sure, receive at some time in the future. This preference is for sure sums and is distinct and different form uncertainty/risk avoidance.
Different pe...
Source: The Mouse Trap - August 1, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: Research Summaries Angela Duckworth liking wanting Source Type: podcasts
Research Summaries: Self-controlled children stay leaner in the transition to adolescence
This study was a prospective longitudinal study that looked at over 100 children in a school setting, and measured their self control and BMI while in grade 5 (mean age 10.5) and correlated it with their BMI when in grade 8.
Self-control was measured using a variety of methods. Students filled 2 self-report measures of self-control: The Impulsivity subscale of the Eysenck I6 Junior Questionnaire and The Brief Self-Control Scale. Parents as well as teachers also filled the informant version of Brief self-control scale. Apart from this Kirby Delay-Discounting Rate Monetary Choice Questionnaire was used to present hypothetica...
Source: The Mouse Trap - July 30, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: obesity Research Summaries Angela Duckworth self-control Source Type: podcasts
Book Reviews: Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
I have read quite a few books that fall into the ‘hard work triumphs intelligence’ camp, such as ‘Peak’ by Anders Ericsson, ‘Talent is overrated‘ by Geoff Colvin and ‘Outliers‘ by Malcolm Gladwell. And I am more than sympathetic to that viewpoint, however I have always believed in a more nuanced picture. The ability to work hard, is again, just part of the equation explaining outstanding achievements, there is more than enough room for other non-cognitive factors like passion, hope, purpose etc to impact performance.
English: Millstone grit (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
And tha...
Source: The Mouse Trap - July 28, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: Book review Angela Duckworth grit Source Type: podcasts
4 Answers to the Purpose of Life
People sometimes ask what is the purpose of life? Why should we exist or chose to continue existing? To them I typically pose a counter question, what purpose would *you* like to have for life and can you live your life ‘as if’ that is the purpose of life? See an example answer I provide here about the meaning/ purpose of life.
Embed from Getty Images
However, this post is not about such philosophical questions. Instead it builds on my previous posts about 4 major goals in life worth striving for. To recap the four major goals are 1) Happiness 2) Success 3) Morality 4) Meaning.
Sometimes you co...
Source: The Mouse Trap - July 28, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: happiness moral sense meaning Morality Source Type: podcasts
Research Summaries: Self-Control Protects Against Overweight Status in the Transition from Childhood to Adolescence
This study was a prospective longitudinal study that looked at nearly 850 children in a birth cohort, and measured their self control at age 9 and correlated it with their BMI at age 15.
Self-control at age 9 was operationalised using informant ratings by mother, father and teacher on the items related to self-control on the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS)questionnaire. Overweight status was established by classifying those with BMI z-scores falling above 85th percentile as overweight.
Other potential confounds like intelligence, pubertal status etc were also measured and used in the analysis.
The results showed tha...
Source: The Mouse Trap - July 28, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: Research Summaries Angela Duckworth self-control Source Type: podcasts
