PSY100H1 Lecture 3: Psych lecture 3
psych lec 3 9/22/2015 1:34:00 AM
• Teacher expectations and children’s IQ (Rosenthal & Jacobson; the
Pygmalion effect)
• 1st graders gain in IQ = 27 vs. 12
• biases are influenced by our motivations, which can alter the info we pay
attention to, the information we dredge up from our memories, and the
meaning that we read into our experiences
• if you’re very hungry, and walking down the street you will notice
more the food trucks than the color of the cars driving by
• comes from a motivated place,
• can also come from an unmotivated place
• biases can come from a cold, cognitive process
o can also come from your motivations
o pay more attention to that belief
• biases shape our reality, largely unconsciously
o if we can motivate ourselves to shape our own reality and be
unaware of that whole process, we could be leading ourselves
on the garden path and not realize it
• what we can learn from our biases
• humility – we don’t see reality “as it is”. We should therefore be
open to other perspectives, which help us uncover our “blind spots”
o seeing as best we can from another perspective
o we learn that if we construct our own reality and are not
exactly aware of the process, we’re living inside something
we can’t see the outside of
o seeing as best we can what something looks like from another
direction, triangulating, crossing our perspectives with some
other perspectives
• empowerment – our perceptions of reality are constructed , and
we have quite a bit of control over that process (and we can gain
even more control when we learn how, and practice…)
o what are the things that happen in our own consciousness?
o and how can we control them?
• And the importance of attention itself……… Attention! Attention!
Attention!
• The uber-importance of attention
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• Attention is critically important
• Determines WHAT we experience (i.e. the subset of reality that we
choose to experience more vividly)
• HOW we experience it (i.e. our interpretation, construction, or
“story” creates the meaning of the event, which we then
experience. E.g. exciting challenge vs. overwhelming threat.
Opportunity for connection vs. possibility of being rejected and
humiliated)
• Thus, attention determines how we are affected by circumstances
• also dictates how well we are able to perform
• and, attention affects how effectively we can interact with the world
o e.g. how do you feel when you talk to someone who isn’t
really listening to you?
o E.g. imagine you’re going to have brain surgery someday
• Attention also affects quality of experience
• E.g. flow states
• Mihaly csikzrntmihalyi
• interviewed people from all walks of life to get descriptions of the
most awesome moments of their lives, the times when they felt
most fully alive
• skiing to solving equations to being intimate to painting to sitting in
a coffee shop
• amongst this entire diversity, found common core narrative
• no matter the domain, peak experiences are pretty much the same
• the critical factor is the amount of attention focused on the present
activity (i.e. the amount of ORDER in consciousness)
• The amount of order in their consciousness ( how much their
awareness was structured around the activity) dictates their
enjoyment
Fundamental Insight #3
• neurons build these associations with each other
• as we grow up, we interact with a world that structures us
• patterns in the world that end up manifesting as patterns of neural
activation
• we end up carrying around a whole host of patterns that essentially
replicate for us the patterns in the world
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find more resources at oneclass.com
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