Viktor Frankl on Our Search for Meaning

in Psychology | May 17th, 2010

Vik­tor Fran­kl, a trained Aus­tri­an psy­chi­a­trist, spent five long years in Nazi con­cen­tra­tion camps dur­ing World War II, even­tu­al­ly end­ing up in Auschwitz. Dur­ing this time, he helped fel­low pris­on­ers cope with their ordeal and worked out a new approach to psy­chol­o­gy called Logother­a­py. This the­o­ry embod­ied Fran­kl’s belief that we’re all fun­da­men­tal­ly dri­ven by a “search for mean­ing.” It’s what makes us human, and we can con­tin­ue this search even in the worst of sit­u­a­tions. Not even the Nazis could take that away.  This belief sus­tained Fran­kl dur­ing his impris­on­ment, some­thing he wrote about in his epic work of sur­vival lit­er­a­ture called Man’s Search for Mean­ing. (It’s a must read.) The grainy footage above was record­ed at a con­fer­ence held in Toron­to (prob­a­bly dur­ing the 1960s). It gives you a quick intro­duc­tion to a man who, despite per­son­al­ly con­fronting the worst human­i­ty had to offer, still believed in our core good­ness and pos­si­bil­i­ties.

via TED Best of the Web

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Piano Stairs

in Psychology, Science | May 11th, 2010

How can you change behav­ior for the bet­ter? It’s sim­ple. Make it fun. The next thing you know, peo­ple will climb stairs instead of ride the esca­la­tor. And they’ll prop­er­ly throw their trash away too (the sub­ject of anoth­er engag­ing video)…

Thanks Adol­fo for the great finds.

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When the Dalai Lama Meets the Neuroscientists

in Psychology, Religion, Science | February 21st, 2010

More and more, the Dalai Lama has been devel­op­ing an inter­est in what mod­ern sci­ence has to say about human emo­tion — or, more par­tic­u­lar­ly, how neu­ro­science makes sense of med­i­ta­tion and com­pas­sion. Part­ly as a result, Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty has launched The Cen­ter for Com­pas­sion and Altru­ism Research and Edu­ca­tion, which is delv­ing deep­er into these ques­tions. The clip above fea­tures Daniel Gole­man, the best­selling sci­ence jour­nal­ist (Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence and Destruc­tive Emo­tions), talk­ing about the Dalai Lama’s work on this front. You can find the full con­ver­sa­tion with Gole­man at Bigthink.com, a good resource for thought-pro­vok­ing video.

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Why You Share

in Life, Media, Psychology | February 10th, 2010

A team of researchers from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia spent a good six months study­ing The New York Times list of most-e-mailed arti­cles, hop­ing to fig­ure out what arti­cles get shared, and why. And here’s what they essen­tial­ly found:

Peo­ple pre­ferred e‑mailing arti­cles with pos­i­tive rather than neg­a­tive themes, and they liked to send long arti­cles on intel­lec­tu­al­ly chal­leng­ing top­ics… Per­haps most of all, read­ers want­ed to share arti­cles that inspired awe, an emo­tion that the researchers inves­ti­gat­ed after notic­ing how many sci­ence arti­cles made the list.

This goes a long way toward explain­ing why 3.4 mil­lion peo­ple have watched The Known Uni­verse since mid Decem­ber. And, as Bill Rankin right­ly sug­gest­ed to me, it says some­thing good about online cul­ture, and what makes Open Cul­ture work as a site. Each day, we try to give you a lit­tle awe and chal­lenge. And for our next post: 10,000 Galax­ies in 3D.

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Sapolsky Breaks Down Depression

in Psychology, Science, Stanford | December 17th, 2009

Robert Sapol­sky, a Stan­ford biol­o­gist, is cur­rent­ly one of the most pub­licly acces­si­ble sci­ence writ­ers in the coun­try, per­haps best known for his book on stress, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. In the lec­ture above, Sapol­sky takes a hard look at depres­sion. The top­ic is a lit­tle heavy. I’ll grant that. But, it’s also impor­tant. As Sapol­sky is quick to point out, depres­sion is per­va­sive and get­ting worse. Cur­rent­ly, it’s the 4th great­est cause of dis­abil­i­ty world­wide, and it will soon become the 2nd. For Sapol­sky, depres­sion is deeply bio­log­i­cal; it is root­ed in biol­o­gy, just like, say, dia­betes. Here, you will see how depres­sion changes the body. When depressed, our brains func­tion dif­fer­ent­ly while sleep­ing, our stress response goes way up 24/7, our bio­chem­istry lev­els change, etc. Giv­en the per­va­sive­ness of depres­sion, this video is well worth a watch.

Also don’t miss Sapol­sky’s amaz­ing Stan­ford course, Intro­duc­tion to Human Biol­o­gy. It’s equal­ly worth your time. It’s housed in our col­lec­tion of 750 Free Cours­es Online.

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Freud in One Yale Hour

in Psychology, Yale | August 20th, 2009

Freudi­an­ism may no longer be in vogue. But, even so, Sig­mund Freud remains one of the most enve­lope-push­ing thinkers of the past cen­tu­ry, some­one still worth get­ting to know. In this lec­ture, Yale psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Paul Bloom offers a primer on Freud and Freudi­an thought. The lec­ture is part of a larg­er free course (20 lec­tures in total) called “Intro­duc­tion to Psy­chol­o­gy.” You can access the course via the Yale Open Course web site, YouTube and iTune­sU.

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Pico Iyer on “The Joy of Less”

in Life, Psychology | June 9th, 2009

Pico Iyer, the British-born essay­ist, has a nice real­i­ty check in today’s New York Times, and it’s now the most emailed arti­cle of the day. Here are a few key pas­sages:

“I’m not sure how much out­ward details or accom­plish­ments ever real­ly make us hap­py deep down. The mil­lion­aires I know seem des­per­ate to become mul­ti­mil­lion­aires, and spend more time with their lawyers and their bankers than with their friends (whose moti­va­tions they are no longer sure of). And I remem­ber how, in the cor­po­rate world, I always knew there was some high­er posi­tion I could attain, which meant that, like Zeno’s arrow, I was guar­an­teed nev­er to arrive and always to remain dis­sat­is­fied…”

“…my two-room apart­ment in nowhere Japan seems more abun­dant than the big house that burned down [in San­ta Bar­bara, CA]. I have time to read the new John le Carre, while nib­bling at sweet tan­ger­ines in the sun. When a Sig­ur Ros album comes out, it fills my days and nights, resplen­dent. And then it seems that hap­pi­ness, like peace or pas­sion, comes most freely when it isn’t pur­sued.”

On a relat­ed note, you might want to check out this piece in the The Atlantic, What Makes Us Hap­py?, which takes a look at Har­vard’s long effort to answer that ques­tion.

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Malcolm Gladwell: What We Can Learn from Spaghetti Sauce

in Psychology, TED Talks | January 21st, 2009

Speak­ing at the TED con­fer­ence in 2007, Mal­colm Glad­well (author of The Tip­ping Point, Blink, and now Out­liers: The Sto­ry of Suc­cess) intro­duces you to the food indus­try’s pur­suit of the per­fect spaghet­ti sauce, which ulti­mate­ly tells you some­thing essen­tial about human choice and hap­pi­ness.

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