Digital Gems

Our beliefs can help us navigate the world around us. However, when our beliefs do not line up with reality, they can cause harm to ourselves and others. Also, these beliefs can become so deeply ingrained that they become very challenging to unlearn, even when presented with new information. This phenomenon is called belief perseverance. When we cling to false beliefs Our beliefs about ourselves, others, and how the world works come from many places. In part, formal instruction and education inform our belief systems. The ideas we hold about ourselves and others also come from our experiences interacting with the world and secondary sources like the media. Belief perseverance happens when a person holds onto a belief even when presented with evidence that this belief is false. There are three types of belief perseverance. First, self-impressions, which are beliefs about yourself, such as “beliefs about your athletic skills, musical talents, ability to get along with others, or even body image.” The second involves social impressions, which are beliefs about specific other people, such as “beliefs about your best friend, mother, or least favorite teacher.” Finally, the third type is called naive theories — these are beliefs about how the world works, including beliefs about the causes of war or poverty, stereotypes about teenagers, lawyers or other cultures, and any other social theories. A common way researchers study belief perseverance is through the debriefing method. For example, the first study of belief perseverance involved an experiment that asked participants to complete a task. Once the task was complete, researchers gave the participants feedback on their performance. Either they completed the job successfully, or they failed. However, after sharing the initial feedback, researchers told the participants that the feedback was fake. Logically, if researchers asked the participants how they would do on the task a second time, they would ignore their initial false results in their self-assessment. However, that’s not what happened. The researchers report: “Participants who received fake success feedback continued to believe that they were pretty good at this task, whereas those who received fake failure feedback continued to believe that they were pretty bad at it.” Again, this is despite being told the feedback they initially received was wrong! Multiple similar studies that followed found the same results. So, why do we stick to beliefs even after being told they are not true? Researchers have offered several propositions. First, psychologists Corey Guenther and Mark D. Alicke suggest that our brains tend to stay “stuck” on the initial feedback we receive. An important source of cognitive biases relevant to belief perseverance is that people’s brains are wired to seek coherence and order. When that coherence is disrupted, we sometimes seek information that better aligns with our existing beliefs. This is a form of confirmation bias. Or, we interpret the new information in a way that works with our belief structures. For example, illusory correlations mean that we tend to remember times when we were successful more than when we failed/performed poorly. The availability heuristic also shows that we tend to assess our beliefs based on the most available memories in our minds. In the debriefing example, it appears that participants relied on their most recent memories about how they performed in the past to predict how they would perform in the future, despite being debriefed on the experiment. The impact of belief perseverance When our belief systems align with reality, belief perseverance can help us predict outcomes and feel some sense of control over our social environment. However, if we cling to false beliefs, we risk causing harm to ourselves and those around us. Researchers Morgan Slusher and Craig Anderson give multiple examples of how clinging to false beliefs results in adverse effects: People with negative belief perseverance about their social abilities may avoid interpersonal interactions and develop problems such as loneliness and shyness. Employees with a belief perseverance in their superior skills may fail to request the needed assistance when faced with a given challenge. Dangerous decisions may be made because of a belief in perseverance in one’s ability to manage risk. Using the example of the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger and the deaths of seven crew members, they write: “The expertise for the proper decision was available but ignored (several engineers on the project strongly recommended against a launch attempt in the abnormally cold weather).” Giving people the correct information about their beliefs may even backfire. For instance, a study with participants expressing their concerns of the side effects of flu shots found that they became even less eager to accept them after being told that the vaccination was completely safe. In other words, they used the updated information reinforcing the idea that they already had before, distrusting the vaccine even more as a result. How to manage belief perseverance You would think that belief perseverance can be managed by explaining that other factors that may have influenced a person’s success or failure that are outside of their control, giving a person new information that contradicts their beliefs, such as sharing news articles or research about a given topic. Or maybe by asking a person to be more open-minded and aware of their environment to see if new observations change their minds, or by interacting with others and using the experiences to challenge their beliefs. However, research shows that these four methods fail to reduce belief perseverance, though they seem the most logical ways to address it. The only way to somehow manage belief perseverance is to become aware of it. So, congratulations – you have completed the first step! The next step is to increase your self-awareness about your beliefs and where they come from. If you want to increase your self-awareness and challenge your beliefs about yourself and others, consider trying this short exercise, with only five questions: What beliefs do I have about myself and my abilities? What assumptions do I hold about other people? Where did these beliefs come from? (e.g., childhood experiences, feedback from authority figures, interactions with friends) Are the beliefs I hold about myself and others accurate? What experiences have I had that counter these beliefs? Remember that our minds are prone to cognitive biases that may discord the way we consider these questions. Our need for coherence, combined with cognitive biases, make it very difficult to unlearn our false beliefs. Trusted friends or colleagues can help jog your memory to moderate the availability bias, the confirmation bias, and stay clear of illusory correlations. Remember: when left unaddressed, belief perseverance has serious consequences for ourselves and others. Awareness and self-reflection are the best ways to address this phenomenon. Questioning our false beliefs can help us all grow and better achieve our goals. The post Belief perseverance: why we cling on to old ideas appeared first on Ness Labs.

New Things Under the Sun is a living literature review; as the state of the academic literature evolves, so do we. Here are three recent updates. Proximity, who you know, and knowledge transfer: Facebook edition The article Why proximity matters: who you know is about why cities seem to do a disproportionate amount of innovating. The article argues that an important reason is that proximity facilitates meeting new people, especially people who work on topics different from our own. These social ties are a channel through which new ideas and knowledge flows. The article goes on to argue that, once you know someone, it’s no longer very important that you remain geographically close. Distance matters for who you know, but isn’t so important for keeping those channels of information working, once a relationship has been formed. The article looks at a few lines of evidence on this. Diemer and Regan (2022) is a new article that tackles the same issue with a novel measure of “who you know.” Below is the new material I’ve added to my article, to bring in Diemer and Regan’s new work. The discussion picks up right after describing some evidence from Agrawal, Cockburn, and McHale that inventors who worked together in the past continue to cite each other work at an elevated level after they move far away from each other. While professional connections are probably the most likely to be useful for inventing, they are not the only kind of connection people have. If I make friends with people at a party, these friendships might also be a vehicle for the transmission of useful information. Diemer and Regan (2022) begins to address this gap with a novel measure of friendships: Facebook data. They have an index based on the number of friendships between Facebook users in different US counties, over a one-month snapshot in April 2016. Unfortunately, this measure of informal ties isn’t as granular as what Agrawal, Cockburn and McHale were able to come up with. If you’re an inventor with a patent, this Facebook dataset doesn’t tell the authors who your friends are and where they live; instead, it tells them something like, on average, how strong are friendship linkages between people in your county and other counties. Still, its one of the first large-scale datasets that lets us look at these kinds of social ties. Diemer and Regan want to see if these informal ties facilitate the transfer of ideas and knowledge by once again looking at patent citations. But this is challenging, because there are a whole host of possible confounding variables. To take one example, suppose: you’re more likely to be friends with people in your industry everyone in your industry lives in the same set of counties you’re also more likely to cite patents that belong to your industry That would create a correlation between friendly counties and citations, but it would be driven by the fact that these counties share a common industry, not informal knowledge exchange between friends. Diemer and Regan approach this by leveraging the massive scale of patenting data to really tighten down the comparison groups. Their main idea (which they borrowed from a 2006 paper by Peter Thompson) is to take advantage of the fact that about 40% of patent citations are added by the patent examiner, not the inventor. Instead of using cross-county friendships to predict whether patent x cites patent y, which would suffer from the kinds of problems discussed above, they use cross-county friendships to predict whether a given citation was added by the inventor, instead of the examiner. The idea is that both the patent examiner and the inventor will want to add relevant patent citations (for example, if both patents belong to the same industry, as discussed above). But a key difference is that only the inventor can add citations that the inventor knows about, and one way the inventor learns about patents is through their informal ties. So if patent x cites patent y, no matter who added the citation, we know x and y are probably technologically related, or there wouldn’t be a citation between them. But that doesn’t mean the inventor learned anything from patent y (or was even aware of it). But if patents from friendly counties are systematically more likely to be added by inventors, instead of otherwise equally relevant citations added by examiners, that’s evidence that friendship is facilitating knowledge transfer. Diemer and Regan actually look at three predictors of who added the citation: cross-county friendships, geographic distance between counties, and the presence of a professional network tie between the cited and citing patent (for example, is the patent by a former co-inventor or once-removed co-inventor). And at first glance, it does look like geographic distance matters: it turns out that if there is a citation crossing two counties, the citation is more likely to have been added by the inventor if the counties are close to each other. But when you combine all three measures, it turns out the effect of distance is entirely mediated by the other two factors. In other words, once you take into account who you know, distance doesn’t matter. Distance only appears to matter (in isolation) because we have more nearby professional ties and friendships, and we are more likely to cite patents linked to us by professional ties and friendships. Consistent with Agrawal, Cockburn, and McHale’s finding that 80% of excess citations from movers comes from people who are professionally connected, Diemer and Regan find professional network connections are a much stronger predictor of who added the citation than friendliness of counties, though both matter. Lastly, as with Agrawal, Cockburn, and McHale, when patent citations flow between more technologically dissimilar patents, the predictive power of how friendly two counties are looms larger. That’s consistent with friendships being especially useful for learning about things outside your normal professional network. But the bottom line is this - distance only matters, in this paper, because it affects who you know. Read the whole thing Even more knowledge transfer: reading edition Let’s stick with the theme of knowledge transfer for a moment. The article Free Knowledge and Innovation looked at three studies that document improving access to knowledge - via the Carnegie libraries, patent depository libraries, or wikipedia - has a measurable impact on innovation. Of these three studies, one by Furman, Nagler, and Watzinger looked at the impact of getting a local patent depository library, by comparing patent rates in nearby regions to the patent rate in other regions that were qualified to get a library but did not (for plausibly random factors). When I first wrote about it, the study was a working paper. It’s now been published and the new published version includes a new analysis that strengthens the case that increased access to patents leads to more knowledge transfer, and more patents. Below is some discussion of this new analysis. Furman, Nagler, and Watzinger … also look at the words in patents. After all, a lot of what we learn from patents we learn by reading the words. Furman, Nagler, and Watzinger try to tease out evidence that inventors learn by reading patents by breaking patents down into four categories: Patents that feature globally new words; words that never appeared before in any other patent Patents that feature regionally new words; words new to any patents of inventors who reside within 15 miles of the patent library or its control, but not new in the wider world Patents that feature regionally learned words; words that aren’t necessarily new to the patents of inventors who live within 15 miles of the library, but which were not used on any patents before the library showed up Patents that feature regionally familiar words; those that were already present in patents of inventors residing within 15 miles of the library, even prior to its opening. To take an example, the word “internet” first appeared in the title of patent 5309437, which was filed in 1990 by inventors residing in Maine and New Hampshire. So patent 5309437 features a global new word (Furman, Nagler, and Watzinger actually look at more than just the patent title, but this is just to illustrate the idea). I live in Des Moines, Iowa, where a patent depository library opened in the late 1980s. The first patent (title) mentioning the word “internet” with a Des Moines based inventor was filed in 2011. We would say that patent features a regionally new word, since no other Des Moines patents had the word “internet” in their title prior to 2011 but patents outside Des Moines did. If, in 2012, another Des Moines based-inventor later used the word “internet” in their patent we would classify that patent as a regionally learned word, since the word “internet” did not appear before our patent library was founded. Finally, a Des Moines based patent without the word “internet” or any other words that are new to the local patent corpus since we got our library would be classified as a familiar words patent. We would expect patent libraries to be especially helpful with regionally new and regionally learned words. These are signals that inventors in, say, Des Moines, are reading about patents from outside Des Moines and adopting new ideas they learn from them. And indeed, when you break patents down in this way, you see more patents of precisely the type you would expect, if people are reading patents and using what they learn to invent new things. From Furman, Nagler, and Watzinger (2021) On the other hand, we wouldn’t necessarily expect patent libraries to be as much help for globally new words, since those words are not found in any library - they are completely new to the world of patenting. Nor would we expect them to be much help for regionally familiar words, since those pertain to knowledge that was already available before the ...

To readers of New Things Under the Sun, Back in August, I wrote: This project began as something I did in my spare time, until November 2021, when Emergent Ventures generously took a chance and gave me a grant that let me spend 25% of my work time on this project. Going forward, I am working with an organization that will provide funding for me to work on it closer to 50% of my time, while keeping the site free. I’ll have more to say on that when everything is finalized. That day is here! Institute for Progress - About I’m pleased to announce that the Institute for Progress has named me a senior fellow and is partnering with New Things Under the Sun. Institute for Progress (IFP) is a new nonpartisan think tank, founded by Caleb Watney and Alec Stapp, with a mission to accelerate scientific, technological, and industrial progress. You can read their (great, in my view) launch document here. Obviously I’m biased, but I think New Things Under the Sun is an important public good. That said, it’s a weird thing and doesn’t neatly fall into a traditional academic role. It’s not the kind of academic research you publish in peer-reviewed journals and get tenure for; neither is it teaching to tuition-paying students. Iowa State University has been quite willing to let me work on this weird project, for which I’m grateful, but I’ve always thought the project would probably best be served, in the long-run, with external support. That’s what the partnership with IFP provides. To be clear; I’m still an assistant teaching professor at Iowa State University. But now a larger part of my time will be carved out for building and maintaining New Things Under the Sun. And even though I’m partnering with IFP, I remain the sole writer of New Things Under the Sun and I retain complete editorial control. The main differences will be more frequent updates to New Things Under the Sun, as well as an updated design to the newsletter and website. Thanks to IFP support, for 2022, I’m targeting about three posts per month, at least on average. My rough goal is that two of those will be new articles, and the third will be a bundle of updates to existing articles (look for just such a bundle in your inbox today). At the same time, I’m very much aligned with the goals of IFP. As a senior fellow, I plan to do additional work specifically for them, helping them ground science policy proposals in rigorous evidence. That will influence the kinds of topics I prioritize writing about in New Things Under the Sun, since it will influence the kinds of things I read and think about. I view this as a feature, not a bug though. One of the goals of New Things Under the Sun has always been to try and highlight academic work that is relevant for understanding how the world works. That’s why posts are written around advancing a specific claim, rather than as a tour of thematically connected papers. It’s my hope that being in dialogue with people trying to find concrete ways to accelerate scientific and technological progress will keep me focused on the ways research can shed light on the world we actually live in. Cheers all, Matt

Ten charts that illustrate a record year for the U.S. housing market, including the highest home prices and lowest supply of all time.

Why some same-gender relationship households have higher median incomes than opposite-gender relationship households.

A new analysis by the Census found that the median gay married couple had a household income of $121K compared with $93K among their lesbian counterparts, highlighting wage gaps in same-gender families.

The Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR), America's largest grocery retailer, today announced its 2022 Food Trends Report, which predicts emerging food trends, consumer behaviors and popular items for the year ahead. This fourth-annual report centers on the continued dominance of at-home meals, powered by convenience, affordability, social gatherings, and the desire for sustainable and nutrient-rich food items. Kroger's 2022 Food Trends Report is thoughtfully curated by Kroger's food experts – from Our Brands product developers to culinary specialists. The report contains 10 top trends that will influence consumer food purchases in 2022, while uncovering the "why" behind the trends. Overall, the trends can be broken down into emerging flavors, food item premiumization, and behavior shifts, all of which paint a picture of what consumers are sourcing and the ways in which they are preparing food in 2022. The findings show that consumers continue to have an increased passion for home-prepared meals, an

Young people in the U.S are finding it increasingly difficult to buy a home of their own

The wealth of the 10 richest men in the world more than doubled from approximately $700B to $1.5T between Mar. 2020 and Nov. 2021, while the incomes of approximately 99% of the world fell and more than 160M people into poverty.

Welcome to this edition of our Tools for Thought series, where we interview founders on a mission to help us think better, be more productive, and more creative. Martin Schneider and Moritz Wallawitsch are the founders of RemNote, a powerful note-taking tool that features flashcards, PDF management, backlinks, and much more. Their goal is to build the go-to app to help you learn, stay organized, and think. In this interview, we talked about the difference between storing knowledge in your head and storing knowledge in your external brain, the power of spaced repetition, the importance of long-term personal knowledge management, how to foster concept-driven thinking by breaking ideas into “mind-sized bites”, and more. Enjoy the read, and when you’re done, go give RemNote a try: Moritz and Martin are also offering one month of free Pro features to all Ness Labs readers! Hi Moritz and Martin, thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. Let’s start with a bit of a philosophical question… Why do you think long-term personal knowledge management is important? Thanks for having us! Let me focus on each part of the phrase “long-term personal knowledge management.” First, “long-term” — the goal of any knowledge-management system should be long-term focused! Taking effective notes or learning something properly is hard work, and it’s only worth it if you become more effective in your work and become more likely to achieve your goals. If you’re learning for a class, for example, your notes should prepare you for your career or future project goals (not just your short-term assessments). If you’re organizing knowledge on the job, your notes should help you accomplish your future goals more effectively — solving problems, being creative, etc. While this may seem obvious, it’s pretty challenging to do in practice — our current tools just aren’t good enough. Too much information is filed away, never to resurface. In fact, most people I talk to still use paper and pencil for every note they take and study by cramming. So for us, the “long-term” focus is a core part of any learning or thinking tool and is strongly emphasized in RemNote. Second, the term “knowledge-management” — when done properly, I think that note-taking and long-term personal knowledge management are effectively superpowers that can dramatically expand our ability to be more effective problem solvers, thinkers, and creators. Human beings have the unique ability to manipulate and understand complex symbolic information. We leverage these capabilities to write, speak, draw diagrams, connect ideas, and more. No other animal can do this! It’s really remarkable. However, this native capacity is significantly limited if it is not leveraged properly. It’s only in the past few decades that we’ve begun to explore how to best use knowledge-management tools and processes to unblock and augment our learning and symbolic manipulation capabilities.  Finally, “personal” — there are already great products designed to help groups and teams work together more effectively. These tools solve an important problem, but the most important input to any team are the skills, creativity, etc. of the people on the team. We need to build tools that enable individuals to individually optimize their own thinking and learning so that we can collectively become better and more creative problem solvers. Furthermore, individuals’ systematic and ongoing development of knowledge will also grow society’s knowledge and accelerate innovation, progress, and solve more complex problems. As David Deutsch once said, all evils are caused by insufficient knowledge. We are in an age of technological acceleration and constant innovation, in which professionals are forced to keep up to date with the latest technology and build on top of existing knowledge. It’s important that we have tools that enable individuals to match the pace of their learning with the pace of knowledge growth. You mentioned our current tools aren’t enough… What gap exactly inspired you to start RemNote? RemNote originated from a place of personal frustration. In 2017, I (Martin) was at MIT, studying Computer Science. I have always loved to learn and to conduct research but struggled with two persistent challenges. First, classes felt artificially constrained by the four month time span of a semester. I would work hard to master course content, but would then forget what I learned a few months later. Second, I was frustrated with how hard it was to keep my thoughts, research, and projects organized. I needed a tool to streamline my thinking, connect ideas, and optimize my learning for the long term. Fortunately, these problems weren’t novel. I started to experiment with a variety of proven learning techniques and tools designed to address these challenges. I used Anki to explore spaced repetition, explored mnemonics through the USA Memory Championship, tried Evernote for my poor-man’s Zettelkasten, and more. I continued to search for an “all in one” thinking and learning tool and workflow but couldn’t find it. Soon, I realized that my workarounds and hacky automation scripts would never be sufficient for the fast, clean, and highly customizable “extension of my brain” that I wanted. I started to write RemNote’s initial code version in 2017. For three years, RemNote was a personal project. I worked on it a few hours a week while taking classes, working on other projects, and doing research. I think it’s critical for tool designers to personally and deeply engage with real problems as they design. This happened organically through this “side project” setup where I could implement an idea and directly assess and reflect on impact a few weeks later in my studies, research, and projects. It wasn’t until 2020 that I began to seriously wonder if others might find the tool useful as well. I released RemNote’s initial version online, teamed up with Moritz, and we’ve been hard at work refining, improving, and scaling the tool ever since!  We still feel that there’s a big gap around effective learning and thinking tools, and believe that we’ve only scratched the surface. We have a full team around the product now, and it’s really exciting to know that we can make a real dent here.  That’s exciting! And what exactly makes RemNote different? RemNote is different in both philosophy and focus. Every aspect of the tool is designed to support learning and long-term knowledge growth. We aim to make it easy for you to learn something once and then remember and leverage it forever. There are two sides to this: storing knowledge in your head and storing knowledge in your external brain. For “getting knowledge into your head”, we support the entire learning pipeline. You might start with organizing and capturing raw source materials using our PDF Annotator and Web Clipper. Leveraging our bullet-point editor, you can break down ideas hierarchically into notes, flashcards, and concepts. Next, you can use RemNote’s deeply integrated spaced repetition algorithms to practice and internalize what you’ve learned. Finally, you can use our knowledge-organization features (transclusion, linking, etc.) to structure and compound knowledge over time. The learning and idea generation processes all happen in one tool, with maximum speed and minimal friction. But, you don’t need to memorize or internalize everything! That’s where RemNote’s approach to knowledge management and long-term knowledge growth comes in. For example, I don’t need to memorize my friends’ phone numbers. I rely on my phone’s memory for this task. RemNote serves as a customizable and highly personalizable external brain for many types of knowledge — we want you to be able to organize and structure your rough ideas, long-term plans, Zettelkasten notes, scratch notes, and more. Our challenge is doing this in a way that enables super-fast access and organization, and we’ve tackled this with a unique mix of structure, linking, and transclusion features that we can talk about later. We have experimented a lot with figuring out how to help you organize knowledge in a way that scales effectively. Our concept-driven knowledge structure enables you to break down and organize ideas to keep your notes organized and automatically find insights even as your knowledge grows. For example, I have about 200K Rems and about 40K flashcards, collected over the last four years — and we have quite a few users with even bigger Knowledge Bases.  We want you to have 100% confidence that anything you put into RemNote won’t get lost, disorganized or unused. I think we’re a good part of the way there, and we are committed to continuing to innovate on top of our unique knowledge structure to get the remaining few percent. Information getting lost or unused is actually a major challenge with most note-taking tools. How is knowledge structured in RemNote? Everything in RemNote is a node in a graph — a “Rem”. This is true for bullets, flashcards, PDFs, documents, etc. We think our “everything is a Rem” approach is simple but very powerful. First, it enables easy linking and integrations with different kinds and types of media. For example, highlights made in our PDF Annotation tool can be directly linked or transcluded anywhere in your Knowledge Base using the exact same mechanism that you’d use to reference any other idea. A recent update allows you to capture web links and also reference, transclude, and organize them just as if they were another bullet in your graph (which they are). Second, this principle enables concept-driven thinking. When learning, a core goal should be to break ideas into “mind-sized bites” that you can then link back together. In RemNote, you can use the bullet hierarchy to break down ideas into “concepts”. These concepts can have definitions (which can be turned into flashcards), and can then be linked or transcluded to re-use and apply your ideas elsewhere. Third, thi...

Are you more of a glass half full or half empty kind of person? Those who develop the ability to see the world from a positive point of view can reap significant benefits including improved health, lower stress levels, increased career success, and even a longer lifespan. This is the surprising power of learned optimism. Learned optimism is the concept that a positive mindset can be cultivated, even in those with pessimistic tendencies. Heavily influenced by psychologist Martin Seligman, learned optimism is part of the positive psychology movement. By learning how to cultivate positivity in everyday life, you can improve your productivity and your mental health. The 3 P’s of pessimism Even though optimists and pessimists are faced with the exact same events, pessimists may be more likely to predict negative outcomes. Whereas an optimist might bounce back when things go wrong, pessimists can be dissuaded from trying again due to nagging doubts and perceived stress. This is due to a different outlook on permanence, pervasiveness, and personalisation. Permanence. Whereas an optimist believes that the darker days will pass, a pessimist may ruminate during a negative time in their life and see the darkness as permanent. When knocked down, the optimist can get back up and try again, because they know that life will get better. The pessimist will lack this motivation, because they have no belief that their circumstances will improve.  Pervasiveness. An optimist might experience a failure at work yet still be able to see that they have been successful in other areas, such as their personal life. The pervasiveness of pessimism leads a pessimist to believe that failure at work is evidence of, or will lead to, failure in all other aspects of life. It is therefore no surprise that this all-encompassing pessimism can lead to increased stress and an increased risk of mental health disease. Personalisation. An optimist has learned to attribute success in life to their own efforts and abilities. They are also much better at finding an external force or situation to blame when things go wrong. Conversely, a pessimist will see their successes as being due to something external to them, and disappointments as being solely their own responsibility. With negative personalisation beliefs, the cycle of pessimism continues. Conversely,  These are known as the “3 P’s of pessimism” as formulated by Martin Seligman, who is considered the father of positive psychology. Martin Seligman has been studying psychology since the 1960s, authoring more than 20 self-help books and publishing 250 articles. His research has illuminated the power of positive psychology to fight the 3 P’s of pessimism by practising learned optimism. The benefits of learned optimism For decades, researchers have explored the benefits of learned optimism. Seligman’s book Learned Optimism explores the power of optimism in enhancing quality of life, as well as constructive tips on breaking negative habits and nurturing a more positive internal dialogue. Some of the benefits of nurturing such a positive internal dialogue can seem surprising. First, learned optimism leads to higher motivation. According to psychologists Charles Carver and Michael Scheier: “Optimism is a cognitive construct (…) that also relates to motivation.” With more motivation to succeed, optimists exert more effort to guarantee achievement, in contrast with pessimists who are more likely to give up. But it does not stop there. Carver and Scheier’s research found that optimism can predict good health, better career success and superior social relations. All of these outcomes reflected the motivation an individual had to pursue their goals. Even the better social connections of optimists are likely due to their sustained effort to maintain professional and personal relationships. Dr Heather Rasmussen and colleagues also found that optimism was a significant predictor of health outcomes. An optimist is likely to live longer, have superior immune function, and complain of fewer physical symptoms including pain. Furthermore, in those who had a positive outlook, better health outcomes were also observed in those undergoing treatment for cancer or cardiovascular disease, as well as during pregnancy. Not limited to physical health outcomes, the cultivation of positive thinking can also improve markers of mental health. An optimists’ expectation of positive outcomes leads to upbeat feelings. Conversely, when pessimists expect a poor outcome, it can cause negative feelings including anxiety, anger, or sadness. In one study, a group of children were identified as having risk factors for depression. Some of these children were taught the skills required to develop a more optimistic outlook. After two years, those who had not received the training in optimism were more likely to have developed moderate to severe depression. Receiving training in learned optimism could therefore protect against poor mental health. In another study of twins, “pessimism contributed independently to the prediction of depression and [poor] life satisfaction.” A negative mindset also increased the likelihood of hostility and cynicism.  Finally, Professor Antony Manstead of Cardiff University and his colleagues noted that there is a relationship between learned optimism and lower stress levels. Optimism is strongly associated with the presence of active coping mechanisms and positive reinterpretation of a stressful situation. Optimists also tend to be better at acknowledging the source of stress without becoming emotionally fixated on it. The mechanisms of coping associated with learned optimism therefore counteract stress. Learned optimism can contribute to higher motivation, good physical and mental health, better career success, superior social relations, lower stress levels, which all taken together translate to a longer life span. So how can you go about learning optimism? How to learn optimism It is clear from the literature that learned optimism has far-reaching benefits for holistic living. Pessimism is a mindset that can feel pervasive and persistent, but it is possible to break the cycle with optimistic models and approaches that can increase self-belief and your drive to succeed: Carver, Scheier and Segerstrom confirm that anyone can learn optimism. Furthermore, optimists’ behaviours are almost always beneficial and therefore provide excellent models of living for those wishing to reap the benefits of positive thinking. The good news is: it doesn’t have to be hard. Martin Seligman has developed a simple ABCDE approach to go from learned helplessness to learned optimism. Let’s use the hypothetical example of fearing you will fail a professional exam to explain each step of Seligman’s method. It can be helpful to grab a pen and paper while you go through these steps. Adversity. Start by describing a recent experience of adversity. Be as specific and factual as possible in your description. Using our hypothetical example, you could write that you are procrastinating and having difficulty doing any preparation for an upcoming exam. Belief. Then, write down all the thoughts running through your mind while thinking about this adverse experience. Record the exact sentences, for example: “I’m not good enough to pass this exam” or “I’m not cut out for this job” — don’t try to be positive at this stage, the goal is to capture the essence of your pessimism so you can change your outlook in the next steps. Consequence. Now, consider the impact of these beliefs on your feelings and on your behaviour. For example: “These beliefs made me feel overwhelmed with anxiety” or “These beliefs made me procrastinate” — and don’t judge yourself, these consequences are perfectly natural given the negative beliefs they are based on. Disputation. It’s time to put your beliefs into perspective. You can either find a piece of evidence that disproves the negative belief (“This belief is inaccurate because I have already succeeded at such stressful exams in the past”) or an alternative view of the belief (“Another way to see this is that I care a lot about this job, and this is why this exam is making me feel anxious”). Energisation: Use the newfound energy from the disputation step to cultivate a more positive outlook on the challenge you are facing. Consider the progress you have made, and how this exercise has helped you better manage your negative beliefs. It is important to note that optimism and pessimism are not binary, absolute concepts. In his research paper “The Neural Basis of Optimism and Pessimism”, David Hecht of University College London’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience explains that positive and negative expectations of life are part of a continuum. Optimism in one part of your life, such as your career, can be contrasted by pessimism in another area, such as physical health. In addition, absolute optimism should not become a goal. While pessimism can lead to avoidance behaviours and even low mood, over-optimism can lead to reckless, risk-taking behaviours. Hecht notes that to live successfully, a fine balance must be found between the two states of expectation. This balance can be cultivated. To begin developing optimism, take time for self-reflection using the ABCDE method. Consider your natural response to difficult or stressful situations, as well as your motivation to return to better days. Even if your glass seems half-empty today, you can learn optimism to improve your expectation of the future and your drive to achieve it. The post Learned optimism: how to cultivate a talent for positive thinking appeared first on Ness Labs.

The history and origin of meditation is fascinating and well worth exploring whether it already works for you, or you may be new to the concept.

The pandemic has only accelerated a decline in US birth rates, even as immigration has plummeted.

The Chinese government’s fight to control housing prices and insulate the economy is bound up with some very fundamental human impulses—and decisions made decades ago.

The platform’s highest-paid celebrities collectively hauled in $55.5 million in 2021, a 200% increase from a year ago, thanks to TV, movies, merchandise and ads.

The average podcast in the top 10 is more than seven years old.

Zola surveyed 3,309 couples to figure out what they want from their 2022 weddings and how they're making it happen.

This paper analyzes the heterogeneous effects of monetary policy on workers with differ- ing levels of labor force attachment. Exploiting variation in labor market tightness across metropolitan areas,...

What is something we only become capable of doing after age eleven, that helps us solve complex problems and write poetry, but needs to be yielded carefully? That’s abstract thinking, a powerful tool for creativity and innovation which anyone can learn how to use better. The difference between concrete and abstract thinking Concrete thinking is closely related to experiences that can be directly observed. It involves everyday, tangible facts and physical objects. On the other hand, abstract thinking is a higher-order reasoning skill. It deals with conceptual ideas, patterns, and theories. For instance, thinking about the Statue of Liberty is a concrete thought, but thinking about what it represents — the idea of liberty — is an abstract thought. Listing the names of everyone on the team who are working on a specific project is concrete thinking, but questioning whether this is the best team for the project is abstract thinking. Another way to put it is that concrete thinking asks how whereas abstract thinking asks why. In the words of researchers from Tel-Aviv University: “Focusing on the means required to achieve a specific goal ultimately entails transforming an abstract idea into a concrete action and thus primes a concretizing mindset; likewise, focusing on the purpose of an action primes an abstracting mindset.”  According to famous psychologist Jean Piaget, it is not until around eleven years old that children become able to think abstractly and to use metacognition. Before that age, we are only able to think logically about objects we can physically manipulate. Our ability to think abstractly keeps on expanding as we grow up, but most people take this ability for granted, and very few proactively practice their abstract reasoning skills. Three concrete ways to practice abstract thinking It is possible to improve your abstract reasoning skills. Reframe the question. Go from “how?” to “why?” in order to take a step-back and tap into your abstract reasoning skills. For example, if you feel stuck trying to write a blog post, ask yourself: why am I writing this, who is this for, what exactly am I trying to achieve? This higher-order approach may help you discover a fresh angle to tackle your project. Look for patterns. Instead of looking at each concrete element in isolation, practice networked thinking to uncover abstract patterns and underlying dynamics in the relationship between those elements. Don’t be afraid to use your imagination. Sometimes patterns can be hard to detect, but the simple process of looking for them will help you improve your abstract reasoning skills. Take inspiration from abstract thinkers. Philosophers, artists, and scientists are great abstract thinkers. Like a philosopher, examine the nature of ideas such as success, reality, or community. Like a poet, go from concrete thinking to abstract thinking by using metaphors, simile, analogies, and symbolism. Like a scientist, formulate a theory by going from the particular to the general. Is the concrete event you are currently observing an occurrence of a wider phenomenon? Could you test your hypothesis? Abstract thinking is essential in order to solve complex problems, come up with innovative ideas, and collaborate with other people. It allows us to analyse situations, understand new concepts, formulate theories, and to put things in perspective. Without abstract thinking, we would not be able to grasp concepts such as friendship, hope, democracy, imagination, success, wisdom, happiness, or even love. However, while it’s a powerful tool to add to your thinking toolbox, it should not be the only tool, and it should be used wisely. A balancing game As with any powerful tool, abstract thinking can be a double-edged sword. First, abstract thinking without concrete thinking amounts to imagination without execution. Creativity requires an ambidextrous mindset which balances exploration and exploitation. Once you have figured out why an idea needs to see the light of day, you need to think about how you will make it happen. In other words, you need to go from abstract thinking to concrete thinking. It can also be dangerous for your mental health to always default to abstract thinking, especially when thinking about past events. Psychology researchers explain that “abstract rumination is characteristic of depressed individuals, as is the tendency to experience post-decisional regret.” It is particularly true of thinking about traumatic events, where concrete thinking has been found to be much more helpful than abstract thinking. Despite these caveats, abstract thinking skills are particularly helpful in situations that require thinking outside the box, uncovering hidden patterns, and generating innovative ideas. Just make sure you are balancing it with concrete thinking and monitoring your thought patterns so abstract thinking doesn’t turn into abstract rumination. The post The art and science of abstract thinking appeared first on Ness Labs.

Genetic epidemiologists have found evidence suggesting that the omicron variant did not emerge from the delta variant.

This report describes how children and adolescents were more likely to receive a new diabetes diagnosis after infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Researchers found a link between mild Covid infections impaired hippocampal neurogenesis, decreased oligodendrocytes and myelin loss in mice one week after infections persisting until at least seven weeks leading them to conclude that even those with mild symptoms in the acute phase may experience lasting cognitive dysfunction.

The country Turkey has changed its name to Türkiye (pronounced as Turkey but with a soft "e" on the end), which is what Turks have called their country since 1923. Many other countries have done this over the years. For example Swaziland officially became Eswatini in 2018, the Netherlands dropped the use of Holland in 2020,the Czech Republic became Czechia in 2013, Rhodesia became Zimbabwe in 1980, Sri Lanka dropped all references to Ceylon in 2011, and Burma became Myanmar in 1989.

Escape a creative rut by taking intentional breaks.

Most people feel that, within the constraints they need to navigate, they are in control of their decisions. But we often automatically follow a train of thought or an external cue without noticing the selective factors in our attention. This phenomenon is called the attentional bias, and it affects many of the decisions we make. When our unconscious takes the lead The attentional bias can be defined as our tendency to focus on certain elements while ignoring others. Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, explains: “Attentional bias can be understood as failure to look for evidence against an initial possibility, or as failure to consider alternative possibilities.” Our attention can be biased by external events as well as internal thoughts and emotions. For instance, being hungry may make you pay more attention to food, and holding certain beliefs will skew your thinking towards decisions that are aligned with these beliefs. A famous example of attentional bias based on external events is found in cigarette smokers. Research using eye-tracking technology shows that, due to their brain’s altered reward system, pay more attention to smoking cues in their environment. That’s partly why ​​a staggering 75% of quitters return to smoking within a year. We tend to pay more attention to salient information, whether it’s relevant or not. In an experiment, Dr. Jan Smedslund, Professor Emeritus and Specialist in Clinical Psychology, asked a group of nurses to look through a hundred cards representing what they were told were excerpts from the files of a hundred patients.  For each patient, the card indicated whether the symptom was present or absent, and whether the disease was then found to be present or absent. Some patients had symptoms but no disease, others did not have symptoms but had the disease, some others did not have any symptoms nor the disease, etc. The nurses were asked to figure out whether there was a relationship between a particular symptom and a particular disease. Now, let’s have a look at the table below, which shows the repartition of the cases: Disease present Disease absent Symptom present 37 17 Symptom absent 33 13 Based on this table, Pr. Jonathan Baron points out that it is possible to determine that “a given patient has about a 70% chance of having the disease, whether this patient has the symptom or not.” In other words, “the symptom is useless in determining who has the disease and who does not, in this group of patients.” And yet, after going through the cards, 85% of the nurses concluded that there was a relationship between the symptom and the disease. Dr. Jan Smedslund concludes that “they tend to depend exclusively on the frequency of true positive cases in judging relationships.” Pr. Jonathan Baron adds that “many other experiments have supported [the] general conclusion that subjects tend to ignore part of the table. (…) People who have the chance do not inquire about the half of the table to which they do not attend.” But attentional bias can arise from within our minds as well. In a similar experiment, researchers Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross asked participants the following question: “Does God answer prayers?” Potential answers can be explored with a similar table: Prayer No prayer Manifestation Yes No No manifestation No No Again, people who pray will be more likely to answer “yes” to this question, justifying it by saying “​​many times I’ve asked God for something, and He’s given it to me”, and ignoring the other possibilities. Pr. Jonathan Baron explains: “If you think that God answers your prayers, it stands to reason that some piece of good fortune is a result of prayer.” However, he doesn’t think attentional bias is a fixed trait. He adds: “Further thinking might involve looking for alternative possibilities (such as the possibility that the good fortune would have occurred anyway) and looking for evidence that might distinguish these possibilities from our favored possibility (what happens when you do not pray). Attentional bias can therefore be correctable by actively open-minded thinking.” How to manage the attentional bias While it is impossible to completely get rid of the attentional bias, being aware of the existence of these unconscious processes that act like an invisible puppeteer behind our choices is a first step in reducing their impact on our decision-making. By applying metacognitive strategies to the management of your attention, you can take back control of some of your train of thoughts. Pay attention to your attention. Whenever you feel your attention being automatically pulled into a specific direction, ask yourself why this is the case. Is it a particularly salient piece of information, a cue that is linked to a past or current addiction, an answer that perfectly aligns with your existing values and beliefs? Go beyond the most obvious answer. If you find the answer to a question completely obvious, chances are some of your thinking is based on heuristics that may not be the only way to approach the problem at hand. Are there any alternative explanations? Did you fail to consider a different point of view? What answer would someone with different pre-existing beliefs give to the same question? You can take notes while you brainstorm, and list all of the alternative explanations you come up with. If you are in a work environment, this exercise also works well as a team. Cultivate open-mindedness. None of the previous metacognitive strategies will work if your tunnel vision prevents you from honestly considering the unconscious processes that guide your decisions, and if you are unable to consider alternative ways of thinking. Being open minded is not something you just decide to become. It can be cultivated by asking good questions, reading books outside of your usual interests, and connecting with people who think differently. Proactively managing your attentional bias requires a bit of effort, but it will make you a better thinker, leading to better decisions and a higher sense of self-awareness. It’s worth giving it a try! The post Attentional bias: the invisible puppeteer behind our decisions appeared first on Ness Labs.

A new search engine needs an index of the web. And many sites don’t welcome any web crawler that isn’t Google or Bing.

Ichthyosaur about 10 metres long and dating back 180m years discovered at Rutland Water

In her new book, “The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change,” Pauline Boss considers what it means to reach “emotional closure” in a state of unnamable grief or ambiguous loss. Boss teases out how one can mourn something that cannot always be described. The pandemic has been rife with “ambiguous loss,” A sense of “frozen grief” pervades great swathes of the global community. Boss believes that by rethinking and lending language to the nature of loss, we might get closer to understanding it.

TikTok is preparing to launch a new service that will turn its viral food videos into meals you can actually order and enjoy. THey plan to open 300 locations that will start delivering in 2022 and more than 1,000 restaurants by the end of the year.