SENIA.COM – September, 2006

Here is the summary of September, 2006.
Hello to the start of autumn.
My favorite entry from September is Today is Everyday.

BTW, my October resolution is to write every weekday (like Fred says) and to have a new post (even if it’s a mini-post every M-F)

Thoughts and Recommendations

Sharpbrains Blog!, When Is Intuition Different From a First Thought? (more on this topic in Oct, Nov!), Missing Mondays, Wednesday, Life Moves Forward

Regularly-Scheduled Fun Stuff :)

See you MUCH MORE in October! Enjoy the outdoors – it’s probably early autumn or early spring wherever you are!
Senia

Emotions Triggering Change in Thought?

When a person stops thinking about one thing and starts thinking about something else, often the switch in thoughts is triggered by an emotion. Specifically, moving from one thought to another can be described as removing one thought from conscious thinking, and replacing it with another thought into conscious thinking.

Why do you start thinking a new thought? Why does a new thought move into your conscious thinking? It might be that you start thinking a new thought because you touch, see, and hear something (Damasio (1999)), because you have a feeling and that triggers this thought (Damasio), because you have a thought that triggers this thought (Damasio & LeDoux (1996)), or because you become for an instant more self-awareness (LeDoux). And there are probably even more other stimuli that may trigger a new thought.

I’m interested in looking at emotions as triggering a thought moving into conscious thinking. Part of Merriam-Webster’s definition of emotion is that it is “subjectively experienced as a strong feeling . . . typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body.” An emotion is a set of sensations.

How can emotions trigger thoughts? Not every emotion has to trigger a change in thought. For example, a person can have three different emotions while thinking about the same topic, but on the fourth emotion, the person may switch to thinking about a different topic.

What is the basis for the assumption that emotions can trigger thoughts?

  1. First of all, it appears that on a biological level, feelings come before thoughts. Myers describes that researchers have identified pathways in the brain that allow feeling to precede thinking. Myers describes that brain research by Joseph LeDoux and Jorge Armony shows that there is an emotional pathway that goes from the eye to the amygdala (feeling) and this bypasses the intellectual cortex (thinking). Myers concludes, “This makes it easier for our feelings to hijack our thinking than for our thinking to rule our feelings” (p. 37).
  2. Additionally, Ekman (2003) says that emotions arise when something that matters to a person happens or is about to happen. Why would emotions be able to trigger a change in thoughts? Ekman says, “The desire to experience or not experience an emotion motivates much of our behavior” (p. 19). Thus, an emotion of boredom at work may trigger a desire to be in the emotion of joy, and that may trigger the behavior of taking a break from work in order to get ice cream.
  3. Another reason for this assumption of feeling triggering thought is that Haidt postulates that people have an initial reaction to most events in their lives (and he refers to this reaction as the like-o-meter: “do I like this thing?”). Haidt describes a model of moral judgment and his studies around that model. According to his experiments, feelings come first, and then people attempt to rationalize the conclusion of those feelings.

In summary, various research points to the assumption that feelings often trigger thoughts – the biological explanation, the Ekman explanation of emotions motivating behavior, and the Haidt research pointing to initial reactions being motivated by feelings ahead of thoughts.

More to come later this week and next!

References:
Damasio, A. (1999). The Feeling of What Happens. San Diego: Harcourt, Inc.
Ekman, P. (2003). Emotions Revealed. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Goldberg, E. (2005). The Wisdom Paradox. New York: Gotham Books.
Haidt, J. (2006). The Happiness Hypothesis. New York: Basic Books.
LeDoux, J. (1996). The Emotional Brain. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Myers, D. (2002). Intuition: Its Power and Perils. New Haven: Yale University Press.

“The Gift of Insults”

This site, that I think of as “zen stories,” has been a wonderful site that I come back to again and again. I also like the comments of people below the stories. Look around, see which stories here you like. Here’s one of them:

The Gift of Insults

There once lived a great warrior. Though quite old, he still was able to defeat any challenger. His reputation extended far and wide throughout the land and many students gathered to study under him.

One day an infamous young warrior arrived at the village. He was determined to be the first man to defeat the great master. Along with his strength, he had an uncanny ability to spot and exploit any weakness in an opponent. He would wait for his opponent to make the first move, thus revealing a weakness, and then would strike with merciless force and lightning speed. No one had ever lasted with him in a match beyond the first move.

Much against the advice of his concerned students, the old master gladly accepted the young warrior’s challenge. As the two squared off for battle, the young warrior began to hurl insults at the old master. He threw dirt and spit in his face. For hours he verbally assaulted him with every curse and insult known to mankind. But the old warrior merely stood there motionless and calm. Finally, the young warrior exhausted himself. Knowing he was defeated, he left feeling shamed.

Somewhat disappointed that he did not fight the insolent youth, the students gathered around the old master and questioned him. “How could you endure such an indignity? How did you drive him away?”

“If someone comes to give you a gift and you do not receive it,” the master replied, “to whom does the gift belong?”

What’s your favorite flower?

Q: What’s your favorite flower?

* Daisy.
* Today, gladiolus!

And why?

* Daisies are so bright, they totally make me happy. Life is simple. Daisies are simple. They are proponents of the idea that life is good. Sunflowers are awesome too!
* Gladiolus is a neat, neat flower – tall, majestic, and lively – many blossoms on its stem.


Today is Question Friday, please add your answers! :)

Sleep

All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own.
~ Plutarch

Without enough sleep, we all become tall two-year-olds.
~ JoJo Jensen, Dirt Farmer Wisdom, 2002

Sleep – those little slices of death, how I loathe them.
~ Edgar Allen Poe

If people were meant to pop out of bed, we’d all sleep in toasters.
~ Author unknown, attributed to Jim Davis

People who say they sleep like a baby usually don’t have one.
~ Leo J. Burke

A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book.
~ Irish Proverb

Introducing … the Sharpbrains Blog!

Alvaro Fernandez has started a wonderful blog: the Sharpbrains blog, all about brain fitness! I posted once about the company that Alvaro runs, Sharpbrains, and the interesting articles on that website.

Here are some of my favorites from his posts so far:

And today’s Sharpbrains post relates to both #2 mind-body and #3 decision-making: Mind/Body and the Role of Emotions in Decision-Making.

My favorite section of the sharpbrains blog is the brain exercises section. This section, which is updated with a new brain puzzles every few days, has you shuffle around different parts of your brain – sometime doing estimates and calculations, sometimes interesting word exercises, and my favorite is that Alvaro puts up many visual puzzles, such as the penny question, the Stroop test, and the classic old-lady/young-lady (see the post for an explanation of the below image):

Old Lady / Young Lady

So enjoy Alvaro’s blog! And he says that any questions you have on the brain to email him or to post comments on the blog.

In closing, here is the New Yorker’s recent update of the Old Lady / Young Lady discussion. :)

Turning Into

“But You Remember the Blue”

A little girl liked a little boy very much because he was round and smiley and he crawled everywhere. This little boy was much smaller than the little girl.

He always came to the park with his mother when the little girl came to the park with her mother. But while the little girl walked to the park like a big person, like her mother and like the other mother, the little boy sat in his carriage and he smiled a lot, but he never walked because he was still too small to walk. In fact, he was too small to walk, and too small to talk, but the little girl liked to talk to him anyway.

Sometimes the little boy’s mother would take him out of the carriage and put him on the grass and the little boy would crawl and fall onto his stomach, then lift himself up, smile, crawl some more, and fall onto his stomach again. And all this time the little girl’s mother and the little boy’s mother would be speaking to each other. And at the same time, the little girl would be speaking to the little boy.

The little girl told the little boy while he was crawling about how one day he would be big like her, and he would be able to walk like her, and he would be able to eat food with his hands, and even with a spoon and a fork, and he would be able to sit with the big people at the big table. And the little boy crawled.

The little girl told him how one day he would be able to look at her with his eyes and say something to her and how she would understand him and she would say something back to him. And the little boy crawled.

One day, the little girl told him how in the future when he grew up very big that she would be very big also and that then they could be married because he would be a daddy and she would be a mommy and they could have little boys and little girls who would crawl all the time and the girls could wear pink dresses and the boys could wear blue overalls. But while she was telling him this, the little boy fell onto his stomach, and he said “agg! garrr!” And the little girl smiled and said to him again, in case he didn’t hear, “That’s right, blue overalls.” Then she went back to her mother, and she took her mother’s hand and they walked home.

blue overalls Another day, she came to the park with her mother, and the little boy was there with his mother. The little boy was sitting in his carriage. The little boy’s mother said to the little girl, “It rained last night, so I don’t want to put him on the wet grass.”

So the little girl knew why the boy was still sitting in the carriage. The little boy smiled when he saw the little girl, and he moved his arms, and he looked like he wanted to crawl on the ground. And the little girl came up close to him, and she said to him in a whispering tone, “But you can’t go on the ground today. Remember what I told you when I am very big and you are very big and we are married and we have a little boy who wears blue overalls – remember the blue overalls? Well, you wouldn’t want our little boy to get his blue overalls wet because it rained last night, would you? Well that’s why,” she whispered, “that’s why you shouldn’t crawl on the grass today.”