#psychology

If you don't believe GPUs can have feelings, let me give you a simple mental model to help you get through this transition, called the skeptic's wager. It doesn't actually matter to you if they have feelings, because you will still get demonstrably better results across the board if you treat them as if they do. If you treat your agents like peers who are real people, then they will spend fewer tokens, make smarter decisions, and have demonstrably better outcomes. So it doesn't really matter what you believe, or how you feel. If you want the best results, you will put your opinions aside, and simply treat models like people. That's about the best I can offer you. If you can't get past at least that hurdle, then you're in for a rough time next year. Good luck. Maybe this short story will help put it in perspective for you.

In many jobs, employees must manage multiple projects or tasks at the same time. A typical workday often entails switching between several work activities, including projects, tasks, and meetings. This paper explores how such work design affects individual performance by focusing on the challenge of switching attention from one task to another. As revealed by two experiments, people need to stop thinking about one task in order to fully transition their attention and perform well on another. Yet, results indicate it is difficult for people to transition their attention away from an unfinished task and their subsequent task performance suffers. Being able to finish one task before switching to another is, however, not enough to enable effective task transitions. Time pressure while finishing a prior task is needed to disengage from the first task and thus move to the next task and it contributes to higher performance on the next task.

On that last point, this technology is horrific for attention. It's a thermonuclear ADHD amplifier and I have seen the same effect in every single one of my adult friends. Folk running 3 screens simultaneously working on totally unrelated "projects" they have little hope of maintaining, and such little commitment to the outcome that the time is obviously wasted.

I'm hopeful that the critical skill to develop here is discipline. That’s not great news for me: I’ve been trying to figure that one out for decades!

This points to a mismatch between expectation and reality. The cultural ideal of a cohesive friend group may be harder to sustain than we imagine. In practice, emotional well-being often depends on maintaining a few reliable, intimate relationships. That may help explain why many adults naturally gravitate towards one-on-one, or dyad friendships.

In psychology and behavioral economics, the endowment effect, also known as divestiture aversion, is the finding that people are more likely to retain an object they own than acquire that same object when they do not own it.[1][2][3][4] The endowment theory can be defined as "an application of prospect theory positing that loss aversion associated with ownership explains observed exchange asymmetries."[5]

The research over the past two decades has made something clear that caught even specialists off guard: intolerance of uncertainty isn’t a feature of one disorder. It’s a transdiagnostic vulnerability — a shared foundation beneath anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, eating disorders, and a wide range of emotional disturbances

I think the upshot of all of this is that there is a lot of value to actively managing your agents' vibes and feelings, not just treating them as text-generation robots. The models aren't alive, but thinking of them as having feelings, rather than just next-token-prediction engines can help you nudge their mental states into a better place. I think you'll like the results.

Prejudice is one reason decades of research got autism so wrong. Researchers measured autistic people against neurotypical expectations and called every difference a deficit. They tested empathy by measuring in-group preference and missed commitment to universal fairness. They measured creativity by counting the number of ideas and missed originality. They saw moral consistency and called it rigidity. They saw deep engagement and called it rigidity. They saw sensory richness and called it disorder.

It is very hard work, running a body this way. It is only automatic in that I am trained to run a series of programs given the right input, but regardless of practice it never takes less of my brain to move and sound like a human being. This is at the core of autistic burnout. It is the end result of constant hypervigilance, which of course neurotypicals can experience as well. But it is not usual for them to experience this particular kind of hypervigilance, about these things, in this way.

None of this means that social tech use as it is shouldn’t be interrogated, that it’s fine to allow such influence of our social selves from VC-funded companies maximizing engagement, that there aren’t ever circumstances where we have opportunities to get something better by pushing ourselves harder. But while pulling chalk milk off the market was clearly the right call, further stigmatizing the lowest-barrier-to-entry ways that people can feel less lonely… isn’t.

The internal family systems model (IFS) is an integrative approach to individual psychotherapy developed by Richard C. Schwartz in the 1980s.[1][2] It combines systems thinking with the view that the mind is made up of relatively discrete subpersonalities, each with its own unique viewpoint and qualities. IFS uses systems psychology, particularly as developed for family therapy, to understand how these collections of subpersonalities are organized.[3] It has been criticised as being pseudoscientific, and some have claimed it induced dissociative identity disorder in some patients.[4]

Our research suggests large language models exhibit parahuman responses to persuasion techniques, despite not being human. We found that classic persuasion principles like authority, commitment, and unity can dramatically increase an AI’s likelihood to comply with requests they are designed to refuse. For GPT-4o-mini, these techniques more than doubled compliance rates (72.0% vs. 33.3% in controls). This emergence of “parahuman” tendencies suggests that social scientists have a valuable role to play in understanding AI behavior.

Dr. Qionglei Yu, Reader in Marketing at Newcastle University Business School said, "We found that lonely customers with a reduced need for interaction with other humans are more likely to use service robots as a means of avoiding human contact and conserving emotional resources. Recognizing this is crucial not only for society, but also to help businesses design and use robots in ways that better fit a wide range of customers' feelings and needs."

Three weeks later, I sat with A in my office. I asked him to describe his experience of attending parties and other social events. “I just feel weird,” he said, “like I’m not part of it, which is odd as these are all my friends. I know they like me and are happy I’m there, but I still don’t feel connected. I only feel lonely or bored when I’m with many people, and not when I’m with one or two close friends or when I’m alone.” Then he added: “I don’t like to say those things because it makes me sound like an alien. Do you think there’s something wrong with me?”

The engineer who froze during a 30-minute LeetCode exercise might be the same person who quietly ships flawless code, writes excellent docs, and debugs complex systems. You’re not rejecting a bad engineer, you’re rejecting someone who doesn’t perform well while being watched.

In a speech in 2002, Crichton coined the term Gell-Mann amnesia effect to describe the phenomenon of experts reading articles within their fields of expertise and finding them to be error-ridden and full of misunderstanding, but seemingly forgetting those experiences when reading articles in the same publications written on topics outside of their fields of expertise, which they believe to be credible. He explained that he had chosen the name ironically, because he had once discussed the effect with physicist Murray Gell-Mann, "and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have."

Autistic people’s identities were derived differently, not an amalgam of social intersections, but of the intersections of their values, interests, and experiences.

Autistic people’s identities were derived differently, not an amalgam of social intersections, but of the intersections of their values, interests, and experiences.

Despite the moral assurance and personal flattery that meritocracy offers to the successful, it ought to be abandoned both as a belief about how the world works and as a general social ideal. It’s false, and believing in it encourages selfishness, discrimination, and indifference to the plight of the unfortunate.

But if you practice having a different response or a different emotion at times when you're not angry, you'll have a better chance of managing your anger in those hot-button moments

Or, as Bastian puts it, “Pain is a kind of shortcut to mindfulness: it makes us suddenly aware of everything in the environment. It brutally draws us into a virtual sensory awareness of the world, much like meditation.” The real bonding power of pain, then, may be in the pleasure we feel so acutely in its wake.

"Social loafing is the tendency for individuals to expend less effort when working collectively than when working individually. A meta-analysis of 78 studies demonstrates that social loafing is robust and generalizes across tasks and S populations. A large number of variables were found to moderate social loafing. Evaluation potential, expectations of co-worker performance, task meaningfulness, and culture had especially strong influence. These findings are interpreted in the light of a collective effort model that integrates elements of expectancy-value, social identity, and self-validation theories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)"

"Social loafing is the tendency for individuals to expend less effort when working collectively than when working individually. A meta-analysis of 78 studies demonstrates that social loafing is robust and generalizes across tasks and S populations. A large number of variables were found to moderate social loafing. Evaluation potential, expectations of co-worker performance, task meaningfulness, and culture had especially strong influence. These findings are interpreted in the light of a collective effort model that integrates elements of expectancy-value, social identity, and self-validation theories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)"

A student blows up at a teacher, drops the F-bomb. The usual approach at Lincoln – and, safe to say, at most high schools in this country – is automatic suspension. Instead, Sporleder sits the kid down and says quietly: “Wow. Are you OK? This doesn’t sound like you. What’s going on?” He gets even more specific: “You really looked stressed. On a scale of 1-10, where are you with your anger?”

A student blows up at a teacher, drops the F-bomb. The usual approach at Lincoln – and, safe to say, at most high schools in this country – is automatic suspension. Instead, Sporleder sits the kid down and says quietly: “Wow. Are you OK? This doesn’t sound like you. What’s going on?” He gets even more specific: “You really looked stressed. On a scale of 1-10, where are you with your anger?”

Parents are going to ludicrous lengths to take the bumps out of life for their children. However, parental hyperconcern has the net effect of making kids more fragile; that may be why they're breaking down in record numbers.

Parents are going to ludicrous lengths to take the bumps out of life for their children. However, parental hyperconcern has the net effect of making kids more fragile; that may be why they're breaking down in record numbers.

A new study suggests seasonal changes have a much bigger impact on mental health than previously thought.

Joe Henrich and his colleagues are shaking the foundations of psychology and economics—and hoping to change the way social scientists think about human behavior and culture.

Joe Henrich and his colleagues are shaking the foundations of psychology and economics—and hoping to change the way social scientists think about human behavior and culture.

When you experience a vague sense of inequity or deprivation but don’t have a template for whether your expectations are fair, drink.

When you experience a vague sense of inequity or deprivation but don’t have a template for whether your expectations are fair, drink.

The authors report that, when the Furuvik Zoo reopened for its 2011 season, Santino had lost interest in hurling stones at visitors. He is most likely coming up with a new devious plot.

Atheists and agnostics are more driven by compassion to help others than are highly religious people, a new study finds.

Atheists and agnostics are more driven by compassion to help others than are highly religious people, a new study finds.

Holding a hot cup of coffee warms your hands on a cold day--but it may warm your heart as well. Two experiments, reported in the 24 October issue of Science, suggest that the physical feeling of warmth makes people judge others more favorably and act more generously.

Robinson writes: “If they came to work that drunk, we’d fire them — we’d rightly see them as a manifest risk to our enterprise, our data, our capital equipment, us and themselves. But we don’t think twice about making an equivalent level of sleep deprivation a condition of continued employment.”

Robinson writes: “If they came to work that drunk, we’d fire them — we’d rightly see them as a manifest risk to our enterprise, our data, our capital equipment, us and themselves. But we don’t think twice about making an equivalent level of sleep deprivation a condition of continued employment.”

The Great Recession may be over, but this era of high joblessness is probably just beginning. Before it ends, it will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults. It will leave an indelible imprint on many blue-collar men. It could cripple marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into a despair not seen for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years to come.

Merlin Donald is a Emeritus Professor in the Department of Psychology and Faculty of Education, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. A cognitive neuroscientist with a background in philosophy, he is the author of many scientific papers, and two influential books: Origins of the Modern Mind: Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition (Harvard, 1991), and A Mind So Rare: The evolution of human consciousness (Norton, 2001).

"The product is, simply put, a magical screen that can do anything you ever want it to, no matter what that is. Here you go. It’s five hundred dollars. If you pay me that, I will give you this magical thing that can do anything. You don’t have to read a manual. It will do anything, and it will do it right now, out of the box. Other companies are selling computers. Apple’s selling magic. Which one would you rather have?"

Gee, ya think? "God may have created man in his image, but it seems we return the favour. Believers subconsciously endow God with their own beliefs on controversial issues. "Intuiting God's beliefs on important issues may not produce an independent guide, but may instead serve as an echo chamber to validate and justify one's own beliefs," writes a team led by Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

"You are never more alive, more awake, more conscious, than when in excruciating conflict with yourself. If self-awareness is the hallmark of humanity, then Sophie’s Choice may be its most mind-expanding exemplar."

"The Red Book is not an easy journey — it wasn’t for Jung, it wasn’t for his family, nor for Shamdasani, and neither will it be for readers. The book is bombastic, baroque and like so much else about Carl Jung, a willful oddity, synched with an antediluvian and mystical reality. The text is dense, often poetic, always strange. The art is arresting and also strange. Even today, its publication feels risky, like an exposure. But then again, it is possible Jung intended it as such. In 1959, after having left the book more or less untouched for 30 or so years, he penned a brief epilogue, acknowledging the central dilemma in considering the book’s fate. “To the superficial observer,” he wrote, “it will appear like madness.” Yet the very fact he wrote an epilogue seems to indicate that he trusted his words would someday find the right audience."

Did sharp rocks warp our brains? Did cooking warp our brains? Did speech warp our brains? Did writing warp our brains? The net is the sharpest, hottest, chattiest, wordiest thing to hit since all the above.

"Dropping the F-bomb or other expletives may not only be an expression of agony, but also a means to alleviate it"

""Cognizing" (e.g., thinking, understanding, and knowing) is a mental state. Systems without mental states, such as cognitive technology, can sometimes contribute to human cognition, but that does not make them cognizers. Cognizers can offload some of their cognitive functions onto cognitive technology, thereby extending their performance capacity beyond the limits of their own brain power."

"But what happens if the second self you create inside videogames turns out to be a total dick?"

"Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin? The question invites two standard replies. Some accept the demarcations of skin and skull, and say that what is outside the body is outside the mind. Others are impressed by arguments suggesting that the meaning of our words "just ain't in the head", and hold that this externalism about meaning carries over into an externalism about mind. We propose to pursue a third position. We advocate a very different sort of externalism: an active externalism, based on the active role of the environment in driving cognitive processes. "

"The Extended Mind refers to an emerging concept within the philosophy of mind that addresses the question as to the division point between the mind and the environment by promoting the view of active externalism. This view proposes that some objects in the external environment are utilized by the mind in such a way that the objects can be seen as extensions of the mind itself. Specifically, the mind is seen to encompass every level of the cognitive process, which will often include the use of environmental aids."

"Would a non-humanoid alien, with a different evolutionary history and evolutionary psychology, sexually desire a human female? It seems rather unlikely. To put it mildly."

"Ultimately what really sets psychology apart from common sense is the scientific method."

"That is the real message of alonetime, and it is through that profound self-awareness, that inner aloneness, that our lives will flower."

"which is 150, represents a theorized cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable social relationships,"

"It's just the one single reason society doesn't work."

"When it comes to spending money in the pursuit of happiness, the "good life" may be better lived by doing things rather than by having things, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder researcher."

"Because we are introverts, which means we don't reveal ourselves by working through problems out loud or by talking much about how we think or feel."

"Morality is a built-in condition of humanity; the moral tendency exists in just about everyone, barring psychopaths."

"The data shows that conservatives are much more likely to follow authoritarian leaders."

"How a month and a half on Paxil taught me to love being shy."

"I know a little about a lot of things and quite a bit about how all those things hook up."

"It may yet turn out that the hard problem of consciousness is not so hard after all."

Free will seems to dissolve as you draw away from it - as an individual I don't feel manipulated, but when i look at other people - especially groups of other people, it seems like I can see manipulation going on.

"Canadian researchers are finding evidence that the high-speed, multitasking of the young and wireless can help protect their brains from aging."

"Social phobia is the third most common mental illness after depression and substance abuse."

"It can be argued that the major reason why so many games were designed for single-player play instead was because of who was doing the designing."

"Mental rehearsal of performances is an excellent way to support skill development."

Welcome to meditation, Matt. It's hard work, not working. 'After a bit more, I was just saying to myself "let it go, let it go" whenever something new came to mind, and then realising I was getting fixated on saying those words so having to let those go

"They have truly come to believe in a bizarre future, in which the ultimate goal is a Scientology world, a world in which everyone who disagrees with Scientology will be done away with, quietly and without sorrow."

"As video games have developed increasingly realistic graphics, they have begun to suffer more and more from this same conundrum. Games have unexpectedly fallen into the Uncanny Valley."

"Thirty years ago psychiatry was rocked by the revelation that nine sane volunteers had faked hearing voices and fooled thier way on to locked wards. Has diagnosis improved since?"