след лемминга

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В 1956 году вышла книга Альфреда Бестера «Тигр! Тигр!», в которой автор ввел понятие «джантирования» – телепортации, перемещения в пространстве усилием воли. Герои Бестера джантировали на различные расстояния, и на момент событий, происходящих в книге, делать это уже умели практически все. Но первый в мире Бестера случай джантирования произошел исключительно благодаря попаданию Чарльза Джанте (по имени которого и было впоследствии названо явление) в заведомо безвыходную ситуацию, грозившую ему неминуемой смертью. Оказавшись перед выбором – умереть или извлечь себя из закрытого пространства силой мысли, Джанте преодолел общеизвестный барьер невозможного и поднялся «уровнем выше», став первым в мире джантирующим человеком. Дальнейшее – изучение явления, описание его параметров и обучение желающих, которыми, разумеется, оказались абсолютно все – стало уже делом техники.

К сожалению, телепортация, или джант, все еще остается за рамками даже теоретических возможностей человека. Но описанием его возникновения Бестер с гениальной точностью воспроизвел схему, с которой на том или ином этапе приходится сталкиваться каждому из нас. Все мы временами оказываемся в кризисе – ситуации, воспринимаемой психикой как «смертельно опасную». И возникает вопрос, что же делать дальше.

Кризис создает невыносимость, требующую разрешения – или ведущую к «смерти», то есть погружению в депрессию, страдания и мрак. Внутри существующих рамок подобное погружение неотвратимо, но потом начинается рывок, основанный на все тех же трех вещах – энергии, знании «ландшафта» (то есть представлении о том, как в принципе выглядит возможный результат) и расстоянии – количестве перемен, необходимых для перехода на качественно новый уровень. Он не должен быть слишком далек от старого, но непременно включает в себя то, что раньше было невозможным.

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"Yes, “people in a group do, individually, become less likely to help. It’s the volunteer dilemma: ‘If there are 7 billion people who could save the world, why should it be me?’ ” Krueger [Brown psychology professor Joachim Krueger] says. But drill down, and the picture grows more complex. In situations where there’s a clear threat—when someone is trying to extinguish a raging car fire, rather than merely struggling to change a flat tire—the bystander effect actually diminishes. “It’s counterintuitive,” says Krueger. “As the costs of a behavior become higher, you should be less likely to help.” Why that’s not so lies deep in our lizard brains. We know danger when we see it, and when we do, it induces higher levels of arousal and, therefore, more propensity to help. Even more heartening, when the costs of intervention are physical—a punch in the face or being run over by an oncoming train, instead of merely being late for work—“the bystander effect goes away,” Krueger says. And if the perpetrators are still on scene, the bystander effect can turn positive."

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Q. - How much of your final salary will you need in retirement?

A. - The common answer was 75 percent. But when we asked how they came up with this figure, the most common refrain turned out to be that that’s what they thought they should answer. And when we probed further and asked where they got this advice, we found that most people heard this from the financial industry. Sort of like two months salary for an engagement ring and one-third of your income for housing, 75 percent was the rule of thumb that they had heard from financial advisors

Q. - How do you want to live in retirement? Where do you want to live? What activities you want to engage in?

A. - And similar questions geared to assess the quality of life that people expected in retirement. We then took these answers and itemized them, pricing out their retirement based on the things that people said they’d want to do and have in their retirement. Using these calculations, we found that these people (who told us that they will need 75% of their salary) would actually need 135 percent of their final income to live in the way that they want to in retirement.

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When I got to Kidscape I realised that other children had been bullied worse than me. My favourite thing [on the Zap day] was doing role plays about the things we could say to the bullies. I have used all the tactics we were taught but the one I found most useful was fogging, where you let an insult get swallowed up in fog and don’t get upset. For example, if someone says calls me “four eyes” I just tell them that I only have two eyes and one pair of glasses and then walk off. They don’t really have an answer.

[…]

My tip is: don’t change you, just change the way you react.

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By collecting diary entries from 238 people at seven companies, the authors generated 12,000 person-days of data on moods and activities at work. The striking conclusion is that a sense of incremental progress is vastly more important to happiness than either a grand mission or financial incentives – though 95% of the bosses didn’t realise it. Small wins “had a surprisingly strong positive effect, and small losses a surprisingly strong negative one.” Which chimes with recent research among US entrepreneurs by the business scholar Saras Sarasvathy: whatever they tell you on TV’s Dragons’ Den, the successful ones rarely made long-range business plans, and scorned market research. They went for quick wins – a few sales, then a few more – instead. Their philosophy was “ready, fire, aim”.

Breaking big challenges down into chunks isn’t original advice, of course. What Amabile and Kramer’s findings emphasise is how disproportionate the relationship is between the size of an achievement and the happiness it delivers. A breakthrough accomplishment that’s a thousand times bigger than a “small win” doesn’t make you feel a thousand times better, or happier for a thousand times longer – and won’t outweigh the effects of countless small setbacks you’ll encounter en route.

The challenge, on a personal level, is remembering to notice the smaller things you’ve achieved.

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One out of every 25 business leaders could be psychopathic, a study claims.

The study, conducted by the New York psychologist Paul Babiak, suggests that they disguise the condition by hiding behind their high status, playing up their charm and by manipulating others.

“Part of the problem is that the very things we’re looking for in our leaders, the psychopath can easily mimic.

“Their natural tendency is to be charming. Take that charm and couch it in the right business language and it sounds like charismatic leadership.”

“The higher the psychopathy, the better they looked – lots of charisma and they talk a good line.

“But if you look at their actual performance and ratings as a team player and productively, it’s dismal. Looked good, performed badly.

“You have to think of psychopaths as having at their disposal a very large repertoire of behaviours. So they can use charm, manipulation, intimidation, whatever is required.

“What this allows them to do is use words to manipulate and con and to interact with you without the baggage of feeling your pain.”

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"In one recent experiment, by the Harvard Business School researchers Ryan Buell and Michael Norton, people using a flight-search site actually preferred waiting 60 seconds over getting instant results, provided they got to look at what appeared to be a running tally of the tasks being executed. This may also be why some voice-recognition customer service lines use prerecorded “typing” sound effects, to make it seem as if your details are being laboriously entered. Sadly, the notion that cashpoints use a similarly fake “whirring” sound when dispensing money appears to be a myth – but a pleasing one that, consequently, I intend to help promulgate."

"Одну из основных техник, которые мы используем в переговорах, можно условно назвать power and perception — «сила и восприятие». Суть ее в следующем: та сторона, которая с виду кажется наиболее сильной, совершенно необязательно таковой является. У так называемой слабой стороны могут оказаться свои сильные стороны, нивелирующие ее невыгодное, на первый взгляд, положение. Так называемая «сила слабости». Когда дело доходит до переговоров, люди обычно считают, что сила на стороне тех, у кого есть деньги. И это типичный пример стандартного, стереотипного и неверного мышления. Пример: допустим, корпорация Microsoft хочет приобрести небольшую контору, специализирующуюся на программном обеспечении. С одной стороны, Microsoft выглядит сильной и уверенной организацией, но с другой — им непременно нужно приобрести небольшую компанию. Они боятся конкуренции, а значит, опасаются, что в перспективе эта контора может уложить их на обе лопатки. Юноша, ведущий переговоры от лица программистов, априорно считает себя слабой стороной, что в корне неправильно, потому что все козыри у него на руках. Ему совершенно необязательно соглашаться на первое предложение Microsoft, он может подождать, он может, в конце концов, получить больший гешефт от конкурентов Microsoft, и так далее."

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The dismal performance of these pundits inspired Tetlock to turn his small case study into an epic experimental project. He picked a few hundred political experts – people who made their living “commenting or offering advice on political and economic trends” – and began asking them to make predictions about future events. He had a long list of pertinent questions. Would George Bush be re-elected? Would there be a peaceful end to apartheid in South Africa? Would Quebec secede from Canada? Would the dot-com bubble burst? In each case, the pundits were asked to rate the probability of several possible outcomes. Tetlock then interrogated the pundits about their thought process, so that he could better understand how they made up their minds.

After Tetlock tallied up the data, the predictive failures of the pundits became obvious. Although they were paid for their keen insights into world affairs, they often performed worse than random chance. Most of Tetlock’s questions had three possible answers; the pundits, on average, selected the right answer less than 33 percent of the time. In other words, a dart-throwing chimp would have beaten the vast majority of professionals. These results are summarized in his excellent Expert Political Judgment.

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Her [Dr Daniela Schiller, who researches memories which evoke fear] work investigates the evolved, adaptive similarity between the brains of humans and rats, with a view to finding ways to eradicate overwhelming psychological pain without drugs.

The memories of both man and rat are influenced by a process known as the “reconsolidation period” which comes into play when memories of past experiences are recalled. During reconsolidation, memories are modified and updated with any new, relevant information that the individual becomes aware of.

Lab rats and humans have a minimum six-hour reconsolidation window after memory recall during which the memory is re-embedded with any new, useful information. Research has shown that rats that have learned, via painful experience, to be afraid of a particular stimulus, can be re-educated during the reconsolidation window and their fear extinguished. The old memory can be re-written and the emotion of fear turned into ambivalence or even into a feeling of safety. By contrast, rats that were given extinction training after the six-hour reconsolidation period retained a fear of the stimulus.

Schiller decided to see if the same could work in humans. She showed participants a yellow square with no stimulus attached and then a blue square accompanied by an electric shock to the wrist. On day one the volunteers learned to associate blue squares with shocks. On day two, to reactivate the memory and open up the reconsolidation window, they were shown the blue square once without the shock .

Participants who were subsequently given extinction training (repeatedly showing the blue square without an electric shock) in the 10 minutes immediately after the reactivation of the memory did not show any fear of the blue square (measured by how much they were sweating) the next day. Participants given extinction training outside the reconsolidation window, however, continued to sweat whenever they were shown the blue square.

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