Posts Tagged ‘Psychology’
“The brain has corridors surpassing / Material place…”*
Our brains, Luiz Pessoa suggests, are much less like machines than they are like the murmurations of a flock of starlings or an orchestral symphony…
When thousands of starlings swoop and swirl in the evening sky, creating patterns called murmurations, no single bird is choreographing this aerial ballet. Each bird follows simple rules of interaction with its closest neighbours, yet out of these local interactions emerges a complex, coordinated dance that can respond swiftly to predators and environmental changes. This same principle of emergence – where sophisticated behaviours arise not from central control but from the interactions themselves – appears across nature and human society.
Consider how market prices emerge from countless individual trading decisions, none of which alone contains the ‘right’ price. Each trader acts on partial information and personal strategies, yet their collective interaction produces a dynamic system that integrates information from across the globe. Human language evolves through a similar process of emergence. No individual or committee decides that ‘LOL’ should enter common usage or that the meaning of ‘cool’ should expand beyond temperature (even in French-speaking countries). Instead, these changes result from millions of daily linguistic interactions, with new patterns of speech bubbling up from the collective behaviour of speakers.
These examples highlight a key characteristic of highly interconnected systems: the rich interplay of constituent parts generates properties that defy reductive analysis. This principle of emergence, evident across seemingly unrelated fields, provides a powerful lens for examining one of our era’s most elusive mysteries: how the brain works.
The core idea of emergence inspired me to develop the concept I call the entangled brain: the need to understand the brain as an interactionally complex system where functions emerge from distributed, overlapping networks of regions rather than being localised to specific areas. Though the framework described here is still a minority view in neuroscience, we’re witnessing a gradual paradigm transition (rather than a revolution), with increasing numbers of researchers acknowledging the limitations of more traditional ways of thinking…
Complexity, emergence, and consciousness: “The entangled brain” from @aeon.co. Read on for the provocative details.
* Emily Dickinson
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As we think about thinking, we might send amibivalent birthday greetings to Robert Yerkes; he was born on this date in 1876. A psychologist, ethnologist, and primatologist, he is best remembered as a principal developer of comparative (animal) psychology in the U.S. (his book The Dancing Mouse (1908), helped established the use of mice and rats as standard subjects for experiments in psychology) and for his work in intelligence testing.
But in his later life, Yerkes began to broadcast his support for eugenics. These views are broadly considered specious– based on outmoded/incorrect racialist theories— by modern academics.
“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain”*…
Your correspondent is off again, so (R)D will be on hiatus until Friday the 4th. In the meantime…
Dr. Sam Goldstein with an all-to-timely reminder…
Hate is often described as an emotion, but it is actually a learned behavior. Unlike fear, sadness, or love—emotions that are instinctive and universal—hate does not exist independently. It is shaped by fear, anger, stress, and social conditioning, developing over time rather than emerging naturally. Hate can be directed at people, ideas, or entire groups, influencing individuals and societies in ways that range from casual dislike to extreme violence. But if hate is learned, can it be unlearned? To break the cycle, we must understand how hate forms, how it manifests in our language and actions, and what we can do to replace it with something better.
The word “hate” has deep historical roots, originating from the Old English hatian, meaning “to despise” or “to wish evil upon.” It stems from the Proto-Germanic hatajan and the Proto-Indo-European kad, which means “to grieve” or “to suffer.” This connection suggests that hate was initially tied to pain, not necessarily hostility.
Over time, its meaning evolved. Today, people use “hate” casually—saying things like “I hate traffic” or “I hate Mondays”—to express mild annoyance. On social media, phrases like “haters gonna hate” trivialize the concept, making it seem inevitable and dismissing criticism as a product of jealousy or negativity.
But the same word is also used to describe serious moral opposition, such as “I hate injustice” or “I hate oppression.” In its most dangerous form, hate leads to profound social and political divisions, fueling discrimination, violence, and even war. While language shapes how we perceive hate, the real question is why it develops in the first place.
If hate isn’t an emotion, what is it? At its core, hate is a response to fear, stress, and anger. It is reinforced through experience, social pressure, and cultural narratives. Hate is not something we are born with—it is something we learn.
Fear plays a significant role. People often hate what they don’t understand or perceive as a threat. This is why xenophobia and racial prejudice exist. The unfamiliar makes people uncomfortable, and in that discomfort, hate is cultivated.
Stress and anger also fuel hate. When individuals feel powerless, overwhelmed, or frustrated, they search for something to blame. Hate becomes a means to direct negative emotions outward. This is evident in scapegoating, where specific groups are held responsible for economic hardship, crime, or societal decline.
The us vs. them mentality fuels hatred. Humans are inherently tribal, creating groups based on identity—race, nationality, religion, or ideology. This fosters the belief that our group is superior while viewing their group as the enemy. Hatred deepens this divide, making it easier to rationalize discrimination and violence.
Personal experience can turn resentment into hate. A betrayal, ongoing mistreatment, or a history of injustice can lead someone to develop deep-seated hostility. In many cases, what starts as personal pain becomes generalized toward an entire group, reinforcing division cycles.
Hate is also learned. From childhood, individuals absorb beliefs from family, media, and society. When a child grows up in an environment that demonizes certain groups, that perspective often becomes deeply ingrained. This is why racism, sexism, and religious intolerance persist across generations.
Finally, the internet has amplified hate like never before. Social media allows people to express extreme views without accountability. Hate spreads through online mobs, echo chambers, and misinformation, making it more difficult to challenge false narratives and prejudices.
Hate is destructive not just to its targets but also to those who hold it. It consumes energy, distorts reality, and fosters resentment. Research shows that people who cling to hate experience higher levels of stress, anxiety, and even physical health issues. Hate undermines mental and emotional well-being.
On a larger scale, hate causes social division. It tears families apart, fuels political and racial tensions, and makes it nearly impossible for societies to progress together. Hate-driven violence—including hate crimes, terrorism, and genocide—has tragically shaped history, demonstrating that unchecked hatred leads to devastating consequences. However, if hate is learned, it can also be unlearned. The cycle is not inevitable.
The first step in breaking free from hate is awareness. Recognizing that hate is not an emotion, but a response driven by fear, stress, and conditioning allows us to question the origins of our biases. Education plays a crucial role in this process. Exposure to diverse cultures, perspectives, and ideas challenges misconceptions and diminishes fear.
Challenging stereotypes is another powerful tool. Many forms of hate are based on false generalizations. Real-life interactions with people from different backgrounds help dissolve these misconceptions and build bridges instead of walls.
Empathy is the most potent antidote to hate. When we take the time to understand another person’s experiences, it becomes difficult to hold onto hostility. Compassion takes the place of resentment when we realize that those we dislike have struggles, dreams, and fears just like our own.
Letting go of hate requires emotional regulation. Practicing mindfulness, engaging in therapy, or using basic stress management techniques can help individuals break free from cycles of anger and resentment. Though challenging, forgiveness often serves as the key to moving forward.
Constructive dialogue is essential. Many people avoid discussions about complex topics because they fear conflict. But avoiding conversation only deepens the divide. Engaging in open, respectful discussions about race, politics, and ideology can break down barriers and create understanding.
We all share the responsibility of taking action against hate. This can be as simple as opposing discrimination when we see it or supporting organizations that work to dismantle hate. Every act of kindness, every moment of patience, and every attempt to understand another perspective contributes to a world with less hate.
Hate is neither an emotion nor an instinct—it is a habit, a behavior, a learned response. It represents a destructive way of thinking. Just like any habit, it can be changed. While it may feel powerful in the moment, hate ultimately weakens the person who harbors it. It isolates, consumes, and destroys. But we have a choice. Instead of hate, we can choose curiosity. Instead of division, we can select understanding. Instead of anger, we can opt for growth. The opposite of hate isn’t necessarily love—it’s the willingness to listen, learn, and let go. That is something every single one of us can strive for…
How to break a habit that isolates, consumes, and destroys: “Why Do We Hate?” from @drsamgoldstein.bsky.social in @psychologytoday.com.
(Image above: source)
* James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
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As we look beyond loathing, we might recall that it was on this date in 1492 that the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain (Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, the patrons of Columbis) issued and “executive order” commanding the expulsion of practising Jews from the Crowns of Castile and Aragon and its territories and possessions within four months, by July 31 of that year– the Alhambra Decree (AKA, the Edict of Expulsion). It had been strongly advocated by the Inquisitor General of Spain, Tomás de Torquemada, “the hammer of heretics, the light of Spain, the saviour of his country, the honor of his order,” per Spanish chronicler Sebastián de Olmedo. Subsequent history has been less kind. By virtue of his approval, even advocacy, of practices including torture and burning at the stake, his name has become synonymous with cruelty, religious intolerance, and fanaticism.
“We do not see our hand in what happens, and so we call certain events melancholy accidents”*…
Mariel Goddu suggests that humans have a superpower that makes us uniquely capable of controlling the world: our ability to understand cause and effect…
Causal understanding is the cognitive capacity that enables you to think about how things affect and influence each other. It is your concept of making, doing, generating and producing – of causing – that allows you to grasp how the Moon causes the tides, how a virus makes you sick, why tariffs change international trade, the social consequences of a faux pas, and the way each event in a story leads to what happens next. Causal understanding is the foundation of all thoughts why, how, because, and what if. When you plan for tomorrow, wonder how things could have turned out differently, or imagine something impossible (What would it be like to fly?), your causal understanding is at work.
In daily life, causal understanding imbues your observations of changes in the world with a kind of generativity and necessity. If you hear a sound, you assume something made it. If there’s a dent on the car, you know that something – or someone – must have done it. You know that the downpour will make you wet, so you push the umbrella handle to open it and avoid getting soaked. You watch as an acorn falls from a tree, producing ripples in a puddle.
The human power to view cause-and-effect as part of ‘objective reality’ (a philosophically fraught idea, but for now: the mind-independent world ‘out there’) is so basic, so automatic, that it’s difficult to imagine our experience without it. Just as it’s nearly impossible to see letters and words as mere shapes on a page or a screen (try it!), it is terrifically challenging to observe changes in the world as not involving causation. We do not see: a key disappearing into a keyhole; hands moving; door swinging open. We see someone unlocking the door.We don’t see the puddle, then the puddle with ripples-plus-acorn. We see the acorn making a splash.
Most people don’t realise that any of this is a cognitive achievement. But, in fact, it is highly unusual. No other animal thinks about causation in the hyper-objective, hyper-general way that we do. Only we – adult humans – see the world suffused with causality. As a result, we have unparalleled power to change and control it. Our causal understanding is a superpower.
The scientific story of how our causal minds develop features another superpower: human sociality. It’s our unique sensitivity to other people that lets us acquire our special causal understanding. The story also raises questions about ‘other minds’. If our causal understanding is the exception, rather than the rule, then how does the world show up for other animals? If we try to suspend the causal necessity that structures so much of our experience, what’s left over?
I’m going to suggest that what remains is our experience of doing – a value-laden, first-personal and inherently interactive perspective. It is in this involved, participatory ‘point of do’ – as opposed to a detached, objective point of view – that the seeds of higher cognition take root. Appreciating that our original perspective is action-oriented and goal-directed can also help us understand our own shortcomings – and how to change them…
Fascinating– and timely: “Suffused with causality,” from @marielgoddu.bsky.social in @aeon.co. Eminently worth reading in full.
* Stanley Cavell
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As we appreciate agency, we might send carefully-analyzed birthday greetings to Erich Fromm; he was born on this date in 1900. A social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist, he was an important member of the Frankfurt School of critical theory (who fled the Nazi regime and settled in the United States).
Fromm’s overriding interest was in the he connections between psychology and society. His first seminal work, Escape from Freedom (1941; known in Britain as The Fear of Freedom) is considered one of the founding works of political psychology. He wished to see the creation of a sane society meeting human needs with harmony between men and nations in a nuclear age, and helped organize the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) in 1957.
“I love to talk about nothing. It’s the only thing I know anything about.”*…
It took centuries for people to embrace the zero. Now, as Benjy Barnett explains, it’s helping neuroscientists understand how the brain perceives absences…
When I’m birdwatching, I have a particular experience all too frequently. Fellow birders will point to the tree canopy and ask if I can see a bird hidden among the leaves. I scan the treetops with binoculars but, to everyone’s annoyance, I see only the absence of a bird.
Our mental worlds are lively with such experiences of absence, yet it’s a mystery how the mind performs the trick of seeing nothing. How can the brain perceive something when there is no something to perceive?
For a neuroscientist interested in consciousness, this is an alluring question. Studying the neural basis of ‘nothing’ does, however, pose obvious challenges. Fortunately, there are other – more tangible – kinds of absences that help us get a handle on the hazy issue of nothingness in the brain. That’s why I spent much of my PhD studying how we perceive the number zero.
Zero has played an intriguing role in the development of our societies. Throughout human history, it has floundered in civilisations fearful of nothingness, and flourished in those that embraced it. But that’s not the only reason it’s so beguiling. In striking similarity to the perception of absence, zero’s representation as a number in the brain also remains unclear. If my brain has specialised mechanisms that have evolved to count the owls perched on a branch, how does this system abstract away from what’s visible, and signal that there are no owls to count?
The mystery shared between the perception of absences and the conception of zero may not be coincidental. When your brain recognises zero, it may be recruiting fundamental sensory mechanisms that govern when you can – and cannot – see something. If this is the case, theories of consciousness that emphasise the experience of absence may find a new use for zero, as a tool with which to explore the nature of consciousness itself…
[Barnett provides a fascinating history of the zero, of its uses, and of brain scientost’s attepts to understand the (not so masterful) human ability to perceive absence…]
… All of this returns us to zero. The question is, does the same underlying neural mechanism drive experiences of both zero and perceptual absence? If it does, this would show us that, when we’re engaged in mathematics using zero, we’re also invoking a more fundamental and automatic cognitive system – one that is, for instance, responsible for detecting an absence of birds when I’m birdwatching.
The brain systems used to extract positive numbers from the environment are relatively well understood. Parts of the parietal cortex have evolved to represent the number of ‘things’ in our environment while stripping away information of what those ‘things’ are. This system would simply indicate ‘four’ if I saw four owls, for example. It is thought to be central to learning the structure of our environment. If the neural systems that govern our ability to decide if we consciously see something or not were found to rely on this same mechanism, it would help theories like HOSS and PRM get a handle on how exactly this ability arises. Perhaps, just as this system learns the structure and regularities of our environment, it also learns the structure of our brain’s sensory activity to help determine when we have seen something. This is what PRM and HOSS already predict, but grounding the theories in established ideas about how the brain works may provide them with a stronger foothold in explaining the precise mechanisms that allow us to become aware of the world.
An intriguing hypothesis inspired by the ideas above is that, if the brain basis of zero relies on the kinds of absence-related neural mechanisms that the above frameworks take to be necessary for conscious experience, then for any organism to successfully employ the concept of zero, it might first need to be perceptually conscious. This would mean that understanding zero could act as a marker for consciousness. Given that even honeybees have been shown to enjoy a rudimentary concept of zero, this may seem – at least to some – far fetched. Nonetheless, it seems attractive to suggest that the similarities between numerical and perceptual absences could help reveal the neural basis of not only experiences of absence but conscious awareness more broadly. Jean-Paul Sartre testified that nothingness was at the heart of being, after all.
The evolution of the number zero helped unlock the secrets of the cosmos. It remains to be seen whether it can help to unpick the mysteries of the mind. For now, studying it has at least led to less disappointment about my birdwatching failures. Now I know that there’s great complexity in seeing nothing and that, more importantly, nothing really matters…
Noodling on nowt: “Why nothing matters,” from @benjyb.bsky.social in @aeon.co.
Apposite: Percival Everett‘s glorious novel, Dr. No.
* Oscar Wilde
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As we analyze our apprehension of absence, we might send empty bithday greetings to a man who ruled out the use of “0” in one specific case: Georg Ohm; he was born on this date in 1789. A mathematician and physicist, he demonstrated by experiment (in 1825) that there are no “perfect” electrical conductors– that’s to say, no conductors with 0 resistance.
Working with the new electrochemical cell, invented by Italian scientist Alessandro Volta, Ohm found that there is a direct proportionality between the potential difference (voltage) applied across a conductor and the resultant electric current— a relationship since known as Ohm’s law (V=iR). The SI unit of resistance is the ohm (symbol Ω).
“The violence of positivity does not deprive, it saturates; it does not exclude, it exhausts”*…
Scheduling note: your correspondent is hitting the road again, so regular service will be interrupted; it should resume on Friday the 7th…
Author and psychoanalyst Josh Cohen on Byung-Chul Han’s critiques of digital capitalism…
I came across Byung-Chul Han towards the end of the previous decade, while writing a book about the pleasures and discontents of inactivity. My first researches into our culture of overwork and perpetual stimulation soon turned up Han’s The Burnout Society, first published in German in 2010. Han’s descriptions of neoliberalism’s culture of exhaustion hit me with that rare but unmistakable alloy of gratitude and resentment aroused when someone else’s thinking gives precise and fully formed expression to one’s own fumbling intuitions.
At the heart of Han’s conception of a burnout society (Müdigkeitsgesellschaft) is a new paradigm of domination. The industrial society’s worker internalises the imperative to work harder in the form of superego guilt. Sigmund Freud’s superego, a hostile overseer persecuting us from within, comes into being when the infantile psyche internalises the forbidding parent. In other words, the superego has its origin in figures external to us, so that, when it tells us what to do, it is as though we are hearing an order from someone else. The achievement society of our time, Han argues, runs not on superego guilt but ego-ideal positivity – not from a ‘you must’ but a ‘you can’. The ego-ideal is that image of our own perfection once reflected to our infantile selves by our parents’ adoring gaze. It lives in us not as a persecutory other but as a kind of higher version of oneself, a voice of relentless encouragement to do and be more.
With this triumph of positivity, the roughness of the demanding boss gives way to the smoothness (a key Han term) of the relentlessly encouraging coach. On this view, depression is the definitive malaise of the achievement society: the effect of being always made to feel that we’re running hopelessly behind our own ego-ideal, exhausting ourselves in the process.
The figure of the achievement subject gives rise to some of Han’s most vivid evocations of psychic and bodily debilitation:
The exhausted, depressive achievement-subject grinds itself down … It is tired, exhausted by itself, and at war with itself. Entirely incapable of stepping outward, of standing outside itself, of relying on the Other, on the world, it locks its jaws on itself; paradoxically, this leads the self to hollow and empty out. It wears out in a rat race it runs against itself…
… Han’s critique of contemporary life centres on its fetish of transparency; the compulsion to self-exposure driven by social media and fleeting celebrity culture; the reduction of selfhood to a series of positive data-points; and the accompanying hostility to the opacity and strangeness of the human being…
… Under the rule of digital capitalism, time itself is severed from any ‘narrative or teleological tension’, that is, from any discernible purpose or meaning, and so, like the digital paintings in an immersive show, it ‘disintegrates into points which whizz around without any sense of direction.’ In such a regime of time, there is no possibility of Erfahrung, which depends on a sense of narrative continuum and duration. There is only the proliferation of its pale counterpart Erlebnis: the discrete event that ‘amuses rather than transforms’, as Han would later put it in The Palliative Society…
… Because power so often involves coercion, Han argues, there has been a tendency to see them as inextricable. But it is only when power is poor in mediation, felt as alien to our own lives and interests, that it resorts to threatened or actual violence. Whereas when power is at the ‘highest point of mediation’ – when it seems to speak from a recognition of its subjects’ needs and desires – it is more likely to receive those subjects’ willing consent. One could conceive of a power, therefore, that has no sanctions at its disposal, but which is nonetheless rendered absolute by its subjects’ full identification with it.
The less it relies on the threat of punitive measures to back it up, the more power maximises itself. ‘An absolute power,’ writes Han, ‘would be one that never became apparent, never pointed to itself, one that rather blended completely into what goes without saying.’ This is precisely what happens in digital capitalism’s burnout society, where the power of capital consists not in its power to oppress but in the voluntary surrender of its subjects to their own exploitation.
Han draws on the German-American theologian Paul Tillich’s conception of power as ipsocentric, that is, as Han puts it, centred around ‘a self whose intentionality consists of willing-itself’, cultivating and bolstering its own status. God is the ultimate embodiment of power because, in the words of G W F Hegel, ‘he is the power to be Himself’. This will to persist in one’s own existence, to cling to one’s own selfhood, is the basic premise of the Western mode of being. We can discern it at work in the empty narcissism of social media and the culture of self-display in which we’re all enjoined to participate. Self-exploitation is, in a sense, a twisted variant on the Cartesian cogito: I am seen therefore I am. In making myself perpetually visible, I may empty myself out, lose the last vestiges of my interiority. But, in cleaving to the bare bones of a self-image, some form of my existence survives.
The fundamental basis of this erosion of meaningful experience, argues Han, is felt at the level of temporality. The accelerated time of digital capitalism effectively abolishes the practice of ‘contemplative lingering’. Life is felt not as a temporal continuum but as a discontinuous pile-up of sensations crowding in on each other. One of the more egregious consequences of this new temporal regime is the atomisation of social relations, as other people are reduced to interchangeable specks in the same sensory pile-up. Trust between people, grounded in both the assumption of mutual continuity and reliability, and in a sense of knowing the other as singular and distinct, is inexorably corroded: ‘Social practices such as promising, fidelity or commitment, which are temporal practices in the sense that they commit to a future and thus limit the horizon of the future, thus founding duration, are losing all their importance.’…
Consumer culture, with its compulsion for novelty and perpetual stimulation, likewise erodes the bonds of shared experience that engender meaningful narratives. The fire around which human beings would once have gathered to hear stories has been displaced by the digital screen, ‘which separates people as individual consumers.’ Time, love, art, work, narrative; these are the key zones of experience hollowed out by the disintegrative logic of digital capitalism. Each is a rich store of transformative encounter, or Ehrfahrung, which the ‘non-time’ of the present has reduced to empty instances of Erlebnis…
How the “suffocating system” of digital capital creates hollowed-out lives: “The winter of civilization,” the thought of @byungchulhan.bsky.social in @aeon.co. Eminently worth reading in full.
* Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society
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As we analyze ambition, we might send careful birthday greeting to Charles Ponzi; he was born on this date in 1882. A con artist, he swindled his way across Canada and the U.S. in the early 1920s, promising clients a 50% profit within 45 days or 100% profit within 90 days, by buying discounted postal reply coupons in other countries and redeeming them at face value in the U.S. as a form of arbitrage. In reality, Ponzi was paying earlier investors using the investments of later investors. While this type of fraudulent investment scheme wasn’t invented by Ponzi, it became so identified with him that it now is referred to as a “Ponzi scheme“. The scam for which he’s known ran for over a year before it collapsed, costing his “investors” $20 million (over $300 million at current value).
Ponzi schemes have grown since Ponzi’s time (Bernie Madoff‘s version is estimated to have totalled around $65 billion) and are alive and well in the U.S.
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