在我看来，人工智能的瓶颈其实是心理学。对于人类的感知、认知、记忆、意识，激励，情感，个性，社会，失序等等概念的认识，还在不断的发展中，远远没有达到定量描述的精确程度。大多数的研究，只是相关性的报道：某种因素与某种现象高度相关。心理学的流派林林总总，都是想强调某一因素弱化其他因素，最要命的就是没有什么 operational definition. 而弗洛伊德式的过去决定未来的因果论调，容易给人一种听天由命的无力感。令人耳目一新的， 是阿德勒的决定权在当下的我的思路。这才是心理学乃至一切宗教科学的出路！
卡尔马克思就说了，
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.
进入正题，这本 Zimbardo领衔主编的书（第七版），有三个出版社：
| 书名 | 出版社 | 时间 | 价格 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Psychology: Core Concepts | Pearson | 2013.12 | $10~80 |
| 普通心理学核心概念 | 清华大学 | 2014.11 | 75 RMB |
| 津巴多心理学 | 中国人民大学 | 2016.6 | 119 RMB |
我手头有后两个版本，即原版引进和翻译版。翻译者为清华大学心理系老师钱静。出于文化和词汇的差异，翻译总是免不了丢失或扭曲原文的意思。但这本书的翻译质量真是有待提高。我的方法是快速通读中文版，找到感兴趣和重要的地方，阅读原文加深理解。
首先把书名翻译成津巴多心理学就不准确，因为书中介绍的是心理学的许多概念，津巴多本人的研究成果只是很小的一部分。翻译成这个名字纯粹是为了区分度的商业策略。
当然，心理学本身这个词的翻译就有问题。我们的所有想法都发生在大脑，而不是发生在心里。所谓follow your heart，其实是follow your intuition. Literally, psychology means the study of the mind.
From my perspective, many new terminologies should be left untranslated, because the translation into a familiar language gives you an illusion of competence. You thought you understand the meaning, but you don’t. You are misled by the translation.
1 Mind, behavior, and psychological science
3 ways of doing psychology:
- experimental research
- teachers
- applied psychologists, such as industrial and organizational (I/O, personnel selection and tailor the work environment), sports (plan effective practice sessions, enhance motivation, learn to control emotions under pressure)
Psychology is a board field with many specialties, but fundamentally it is the science of:
- behavior process
- mental process
6 main viewpoints dominate modern psychology:
- biological. Two emerging fields are neuroscience and evolutionary psychology (favor individuals with the most adaptive mental and physical characteristics)
- cognitive: a combination of structuralism (introspect basic element of consciousness: sensation, perception, memory, attention, emotion, thinking, learning, and language) and functionalism (understand mental processes in terms of their adaptive purpose and function, such as learned habit). Information processing is the structure, cognition is the function.
- behavioral: only focus on environmental stimuli and response. only behavior could be reliably observed and measured.
- whole-person: psychodynamic (Freud. unconscious needs), humanistic (Maslow, Carl Rogers. positive side of human nature: human ability, growth, potential and free will. Self-concept and self-esteem), personal trait and temperament (4 body fluids, big five: OCEAN)
- developmental: nature and nurture are both importance forces. People change in predictable ways as the influences of heredity and environment unfold over time. Human thinks and act differently at different times of their lives.
- sociocultural: social and cultural situation may have a huge influence on behavior. Such as deadline, Stanford Prison Experiment(proposed by Zimbardo). Cultural differences.
17th-century philosopher Descartes(day-cart) proposed the first radical new concept that eventually led to modern psychology: a distinction between the spiritual mind and the physical body. It challenged the pseudoscientific “common sense” that attributed certain behaviors to mysterious spiritual forces.
Pseudo-psychology is based on hope, confirmation bias, anecdote and human gullibility. Psychologists, like all other scientists, use the scientific method to test their ideas empirically. A theory is not just assumptions, it has the power to explain the facts and the ability to be tested.
The Scientific method is not appropriate for answering questions that can’t be put to an objective, empirical tests:
- Ethics
- values: which culture has the best attitude toward work and leisure?
- morality: is abortion morally right or wrong?
- preferences: is rap music better than blues?
- aesthetics
- existential issues: what’ the meaning of life
- religion: does god exist?
- law
2 biopsychology, neuroscience, and human nature
evolution has fundamentally shaped psychological processes because it favors genetic variations that produce adaptive behavior.
left brain vs right brain ?
split-brian study: left brain for logical, right brain for emotional.
Scientific finding: people rarely fitneatly intoone of 2 dichotomous categories. News media tend to simplify the issues and business made fortunes by selling the idea.
People are different because of different combinations of nature and nurture — not because they use opposite sides of the brain.
3 sensation and perception
The brain senses the world indirectly because the sense organs convert stimulation into the language of the nervous system: neural messages.
Our sensory impressions of the world involve neural representations of stimuli — not the actual stimuli themselves.
we define Perception as a mental process that elaborates and assigns meaning to the incoming sensory patterns. thus, perception creates an interpretation of sensation.
Gestalt psychology: the brain is innately wired not just stimuli but also patterns in stimulation.
4 learning and human nurture
behavior learning focuses solely on observable stimuli and responses and disregarded subjective mental processes:
- classical conditioning: Ivan Pavlov’s dog salivation experiment
- operant conditioning: reinforcer and punishment after the response, the schedule of reinforcement must be carefully designed to foster a desirable habit. fixed/variable radio/interval schedule.
Punishment is difficult to use effectively:
- It must be administered consistently,
- the lure of rewards make the possibility of punishment seem worth the price,
- punishment triggers escape or aggression (two rats may attach each other),
- makes the learner fearful or apprehensive, which inhibits learning new and more desirable responses. unable to escape punishment, the organism may give up its attempt and surrender to an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness: learned helplessness. This may produce depression.
- punishment fails to teach learners what to do differently.
- punishment is often applied unequally
- often damages the relationship between the Punisher and the punished
So punishment should be swift, consistent, limited in duration and intensity, clearly target the behavior and be a logical consequence of the behavior, limited to the situation in which the response occurred, not give mixed message. and the most effective punishment is usually negative punishment such as loss of privileges.
Premack principle: use a more preferred activity as a reward.
observational learning: learn from watching other’s behavioral response
cognitive-behavioral therapy: learn more about how airplanes works, gradual exposure to the experience of flying
5 memory
Daniel Schacter, 7 sins of memory:
- transience: fading (Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve, interference (old dog has to learn new tricks)
- absent-mindedness
- blocking
- misattribution
- suggestibility
- bias
- unwanted persistence
These sins may have surviving advantages, such as preventing us from a flood of unwanted and distracting memories, quick response to dangerous situations.
6 thinking and intelligence
intelligence and creativity are distinct abilities. Highly creative persons may have only average IQ scores. The personality traits of creative people:
- independence. loners. resist social pressures to conform to conventional ways of thinking, at least in their area of creative interest. It means a risky decision to go against the expectations of the crowd.
- intense interest in a problem. External motivators (money, Nobel Prize) may be attractive, but their main motivators are internal. Otherwise, they could not sustain the long-term interest necessary for an original contribution.
- willingness to restructure the problem. Not only grapple with problems but often question the way a problem is presented. They are always changing and redefining the assignments given by their instructors.
If you are at the beginning of your college career, the best advice is to explore as many fields as you can to find out where your passions lie. You are much more likely to work long and hard on something you love.
Binet and Simon’s School Abilities Test:
- an estimate of current performance, not a measure of innate intelligence
- identify children who need special help, not to label them as bright or dull
- emphasize that training and opportunity could affect intelligence, pinpoint areas of performance that education can help
- construct the test to observe children, not to a particular theory of intelligence
Gardner’s multiple intelligences
- linguistic
- logical mathematical
- spatial
- musical
- bodily-kinesthetic
- naturalistic
- interpersonal
- intrapersonal
The last two are emotional intelligence, which enable to read other people’s emotional states and aware of their own emotional response.
7 development over the lifespan
8 states of consciousness
9 motivation and emotion
10 personality: theories of the whole person
11 social psychology
In loving relationships, Robert Sternberg proposed triangular theory of love that love has 3 components:
- Passion
- intimacy
- commitment
Recently, research focuses more on the process:
- both partners must see it as rewarding and equitable. Over the long run, both must feel that they are getting something out of the relationship, not just giving. The rewards involve adventure, status, laughter, mental stimulation, material goods, nurturance, love, social support
- communication between partners must be open, ongoing, and mutually validating. 5 times more positive interaction than negative ones. including exchanges of smiles, loving touches, laughter and compliments
- every relationship experiences an occasional communication breakdown, the partners must know how to deal with conflicts effectively
- each partner must take responsibility for his or her own identity, self-esteem, and commitment to the relationship — rather than expect the partner to engage in mind reading or self-sacrifice.
