The 5 love languages

The 5 love languages, Gary Chapman, 2010.

Note: I book this book on 2011.8.19. But I didn’t finish it until today, 2 years after a failed relationship. Too many factors involved: parental death, losing job, career change.

There are 5 emotional love languages, 5 ways that people speak and understand emotional love. In the fields of linguistics, a language may have numerous dialects or variations.

The important thing is to speak the love language of your spouse. We tend to speak our primary love language but it may be a foreign language to your spouse. We have to identify and learn to speak our spouse’s primary love language.

Inside every child is an emotional tank waiting to be filled with love. A child will develop normally when he really feels loved, but misbehave when the love tank is empty. Their misbehave is because they were seeking love in all the wrong places and in all the wrong ways.

Be careful that people behave differently when their emotional love tanks are full.

1 words of affirmation

verbal compliments, or words of appreciation, are powerful communicators of love. such as:

• you look sharp in that suit.
• do you ever look hot in that dress.
• I really like how you’re always on time to pick me up at work
• thanks for …. I want you to know I don’t take that for granted.
• I love how you are so responsible. I feel like I can count on you.

what would happen to the emotional climate of a marriage if such words are a habit?

encouraging words. Encouragement requires empathy and seeing the world from your spouse’s perspective. It may not be your primary love language and may take a great effort for you to learn this second language.

kind words.love doesn’t keep a score of wrongs. love doesn’t bring up past failures. we can’t erase the past but can only confess it. We can ask for forgiveness and try to act differently in the future. I am amazed by how many individuals mess up every new day with yesterday. They pollute a potential wonderful day.

humble words. love makes requests, not demands. The way we express those desires, however, is all-important.

love is always a choice. That’s what makes it meaningful.

indirect way of affirmation. Say positive things about your spouse when she is not present. when you are given public honor for an accomplishment, share the credit with your spouse. try hand writting words.

2 quality time

focus attention

We are doing something together and giving our full attention to the other person. The important thing about the father rolling the ball to the 2-year-old is not the activity itself, but the emotions that are created between the father and his child.

When a couple plays tennis together, the important thing is not on the game but on the fact that they are spending time together. what happens on the emotional level is what matters. Our spending time together in a common pursuit communicates that we care about each other, that we enjoy being with each other, that we like to do things together.

quality conversation

sympathetic dialogue where 2 individuals are sharing their experiences, thoughts, feelings, and desires in a friendly, uninterrupted context. It means I will focus on drawing you out, listening sympathetically to what you have to say, ask questions to understand your thoughts, feelings and hopes.

… Now I realize that she didn’t want advice when she told me about her struggles at work. She wanted sympathy. She wanted me to listen, to give her attention, to let her know that I could understand the hurt, the stress, the pressure. She didn’t want advice; she just wanted to know that I understood.

My goal is to discover your thoughts and feelings. My objective is not to defend myself or to set you straight. It is to understand you.

learning to talk

Not only sympathetic listening but also self-revelation. She wants to feel close to her husband, but how can she feel close to someone whom she doesn’t know?

Self-revelation does not come easy for some of us. Many adults grew up in homes where the expressions of thoughts and feelings were not encouraged but condemned. request a toy, express anger, express disappointment are not allowed. By the time we reach adulthood, many of us have learned to deny our feelings.

thoughts are not a substitute for emotional feeling.

attitude is not a substitute for competence.

Write down your feelings 3 times a day and you will develop an awareness of your emotional nature. Remember, emotions themselves are neither good nor bad. They are simply our psychological responses to the events of life.

dead seas vs babbling brooks

These are 2 basic personality types. Dead sea is content not to talk. Babbling brook output whatever enters into the eye/ear gate to the mouth gate.

5 years after marriage, they wake up one morning and want to make a change. Dead sea can learn to talk and Babbling brooks can learn to listen. One way to learn new patterns is to establish a daily sharing time that each of you talks about 3 things that happened to you that day and how you feel about them. I call it minimum daily requirement for a healthy marriage.

quality activities

The emphasis is on being together, doing things together, giving each other undivided attention.

The emphasis is not no what you are doing but on why you are doing. The purpose is to experience something together, to walk away from it feeling “he cares about me. He was willing to do something with me that I enjoy, and he did it with a positive attitude.” That is love.

One by-product of quality activities is that they provide a memory bank to draw in the future.

to fall in love, do this

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/fashion/no-37-big-wedding-or-small.html?_r=0

exchange 36 questions in 45 minutes plus 4 minutes staring each other.

The idea is that mutual vulnerability fosters closeness. To quote the study’s authors, “One key pattern associated with the development of a close relationship among peers is sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personal self-disclosure.” Allowing oneself to be vulnerable with another person can be exceedingly difficult, so this exercise forces the issue.

3 receiving gifts

gifts are visual symbols of love.

The gift of presence. Physical presence in the time of crisis is the most powerful gift you can give if your spouse’s primary love language is receiving gifts.

If the physical presence of your spouse is important to you, I urge you to verbalize that to your spouse. Don’t expect them to read your mind.

A husband’s mother died and the wife’s supervisor only granted 2 hours off for the funeral, otherwise, she will lose the job. She said, my husband is more important than my job. …

4 acts of service

Mark and Mary had the same primary love language, but they were speaking different dialects. They were doing things for each other but not the most important things. When they were forced to think concretely, they easily identified their specific dialects.

3 observations:

1. what we do for each other before marriage is no indication of what we will do after marriage. Our actions are influenced by the model of our parents, our own personality, our perceptions of love, our emotions, needs and desires.
2. love is a choice and cannot be coerced.
3. only the mature lover will be able to hear. People tend to criticize their spouse most loudly in the area where they themselves have the deepest emotional need. Their criticism is an ineffective way of pleading for love. Criticism often needs clarification. Initiating such a conversation may eventually turn the criticism into a request rather than a demand.

doormat or lover?

manipulation by guilt (“if you were a good spouse, you would do this for me”).

coercion by fear (“you will do this or you will be sorry”).

We may allow ourselves to be used. But you are actually allow him ro her to develop inhuman habits.

learning the love language of acts of service will require some of us to reexamine our stereotypes of the roles of husbands and wives. Due to the sociological changes of the last decades, the number of stereotypes has multiplied. A willingness to examine and change stereotypes is necessary in order to express love more effectively. Remember, there are no rewards for maintaining stereotypes, but there are tremendous benefits to meeting the emotional needs of your spouse.

Simple? yes. Easy? No. Bob had to work hard at tearing down the stereotype with which he had lived for 35 years. It didn’t come easily. But it makes a tremendous difference in the emotional climate of a marriage.

10 love is a choice

Love doesn’t erase the past, but it makes the future different.

11 love makes the difference

We reason, if someone loves me, I must have significance.

When my spouse lovingly invests time, energy, and effort in me, I believe that I am significant. Without love, I may spend a lifetime in search of significance, self-worth, and security. I am now freed to develop my potential. I am more secure in my self-worth and can now turn my efforts outwards instead of being obsessed with my own needs. True love always liberates.

female quality time vs male acts of service

12 love the unlovely

put your faith in god. love the “enemy”. 6-month experiment. Do whatever you can without losing heart.

​

Psychology: Core Concepts

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:

1. behavior process
2. mental process

6 main viewpoints dominate modern psychology:

1. biological. Two emerging fields are neuroscience and evolutionary psychology (favor individuals with the most adaptive mental and physical characteristics)
2. 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.
3. behavioral: only focus on environmental stimuli and response. only behavior could be reliably observed and measured.
4. 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)
5. 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.
6. 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:

1. Ethics
2. values: which culture has the best attitude toward work and leisure?
3. morality: is abortion morally right or wrong?
4. preferences: is rap music better than blues?
5. aesthetics
6. existential issues: what’ the meaning of life
7. religion: does god exist?
8. 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:

1. classical conditioning: Ivan Pavlov’s dog salivation experiment
2. 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:

1. transience: fading (Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve, interference (old dog has to learn new tricks)
2. absent-mindedness
3. blocking
4. misattribution
5. suggestibility
6. bias
7. 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:

1. an estimate of current performance, not a measure of innate intelligence
2. identify children who need special help, not to label them as bright or dull
3. emphasize that training and opportunity could affect intelligence, pinpoint areas of performance that education can help
4. construct the test to observe children, not to a particular theory of intelligence

Gardner’s multiple intelligences

1. linguistic
2. logical mathematical
3. spatial
4. musical
5. bodily-kinesthetic
6. naturalistic
7. interpersonal
8. 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:

1. Passion
2. intimacy
3. 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.

12 psychological disorders

​

Asking the right questions

Asking the right questions — a guide to critical thinking, 11th, Browne, 2013

1 the benefit and manner of asking the right questions

Critical thinking is not needed in such a world:

1. We are allowed to make independent decision about religion, politics, and what we will and will not buy or believe.
2. Anyone trying to persuade us will always explain the disadvantage of what he or she wants us to do.
3. We can always quickly find a dependable expert when we are confused about one of the life’s important questions.
4. our minds are calm, engaged, reflective, and curious whenever faced with an important choice.

In the real world, we are assaulted on all sides by others who insist that we must do what they tell us we should do. They claim to possess a truth that we must accept. They say they want to help us. They will not leave us alone to form our own understanding of who we should become.

They tell us half-truths at best.

They often sound as if they know far more than they do. They sound certain about what they claim to be true. They give you what you want to hear.

Daniel Kahneman:

• fast thinking: typically controlled by emotions
• slow thinking: rational analysis

Critical thinking is about the critical questions in 3 dimensions:

1. awareness
2. ability to ask and answer
3. desire to actively use

Asking these critical questions is not just something you study in a book, it become part of who you are.

2 ways of thinking styles:

1. sponge: absorb everything
2. panning-for-gold: active interaction with knowledge, ask frequent questions and reflect on the answers

2 senses of critical thinking:

1. weak-sense: defend your current beliefs
2. evaluate all claims and beliefs, especially your own

You are entitled to your opinion and you quite understandably feel protective of them.

Critical thinking is not a solo practice, it is a social activity. So we need to consider how other people are likely to react to us. Many people are not eager to have their thinking questioned; often, they experience questioning as annoying and unfriendly.

argument = conclusion + reasons

How to keep the conversation going:

• make it clear to other people you want to learn
• give them assurances that you wish them well and any disagreement need not result in a verbal bloodbath.
• try to clarify your understanding of what the other person intends
• ask if there is any evidence that would cause them to change his mind
• try to present a model of caring and calm curiosity. As verbal heat turns up, remind yourselves that you are learners, not warriors
• make certain that your face and body suggest humility, rather than the demeanor of a know-it-all.
• create an environment that welcomes discussion and question-asking.

2 speed bumps interfering with your critical thinking

Being on the receiving end of critical questions, he may feel uncomfortable or even threatened. As a result, he may become angry or refuse to continue talking. Just become you see asking these questions are important to you and others doesn’t mean he sees the activity in a similar way.

Be aware of how our questions affect the people. If critical thinkers are not careful, they can damage or lose relationships due to the discomfort of those around them.

stereotypes get in the way of critical thinking because they attempt to short-circuit the difficult process of evaluation. As critical thinkers, we want to model curiosity and opens; stereotypes cut us off from careful consideration of what others are saying.

Halo effect: our tendency to associate a specific trait or quality with everything about that person.

belief perseverance: We enter all conversations with a huge amount of baggage. Your beliefs are valuable because they are yours. You have invested a lot of yourself in making those opinions part of who you are.

confirmation bias: our tendency to see only that evidence that confirms what we already believe as being good evidence. Our biggest bias may be that We are not biased, but those with whom we disagree are.

strong-sense critical thinking requires the recognition that judgments are tentative or contextual. We can never permit ourselves to be so sure of anything that we stop searching for an improved version.

availability heuristic: we naturally rely on the information we posses, instead of information we need to make a better decision.

recency effect: what’s immediately available as a basis for our thinking is often the most recent piece of information we have encountered.

egocentrism: we focus on what we know and what we know how to do that we often forget our audience.

wishful thinking: What we wish to be true, we simply declare is true. wishful thinking has staying power because of the frequency of our denial patterns. Quite unconsciously, we fight with the facts, trying to reinforce visions of the world that are rosy beyond the bounds of reality. magical thinking: somebody or some new ideas will make everything wonderful. We believe them not because of any evidence for their claim, but because we so much want to believe them.

All humans are born equal. This is a wishful thinking.

3 What are the issue and the conclusion

An issue is a question or controversy responsible for the conversation or discussion. It is the stimulus for what is being said.

• descriptive issue: those that raise questions about the accuracy of descriptions of the past, present, or future
• prescriptive issue: those that raise a question about what we should do or what is right or wrong, good or bad.
• When you identifying the issue, try to resist the idea that there is one and only one correct way to state the issue.

A conclusion is the message that the speaker or writer wishes you to accept. Conclusions are inferred and derived from reasoning. They are ideas that require other ideas to support them. Unsupported claims are mere opinions.

A fuzzy idea is about all you have. When we write or speak, we often think our meaning is crystal clear. Unfortunately, our audiences can’t hear our inner thoughts and our many hidden beliefs. They do not know our values or backgrounds. One of the greatest barriers to critical thinking is a failure to bridge the communication gap.

One quality that distinguishes mature writers from developing writers is the presence of a clear precise issue. If you dump a bunch of issues into a 5-page writting assignment, you may have tried to do too much.

Making your conclusion easily identifiable not only makes a reader’s task easier, but may also improve the logic of your writing. We should make a special effort to organize our thoughts and express them as explicitly as possible.

4 what are the reasons?

Reasons are beliefs, evidence, metaphors, analogies, and other statements offered to support or justify conclusions. They are the statements that form the basis for creating the credibility of a conclusion.

• You can’t determine the worth of a conclusion until you identify the reasons.
• reasons are explanations or rationales for why we should believe a particular conclusion
• evidence include the facts, research findings, examples from real life, statistics, appeals to experts and authorities, personal testimonials, and analogies. Different kinds of evidence are more appropriate in some situations than in others.
• There are many techniques to construct a reasoning structure. If some other technique works better for you, by all means use it.

5 what words or phrases are ambiguous

2 wrong assumptions:

1. assume you and the author mean the same thing. You need to begin your search by avoiding mind reading. You need to get into the habit of asking, “what do you mean by that?”
2. assume that terms have a single, obvious meaning. Many terms do not. Always ask, “could any of the words or phrases have a different meaning?”

e.g. human rights:

• Norwegian government: rights to be employed, receive free health care, obtain adequate housing
• American senator: freedoms of speech, religion, travel,peaceful assembly

The two versions of human rights are not necessarily consistent.

3 different approaches of definition:

• synonym
• example
• specific criteria

Synonym and example fail to tell you the specific properties that are crucial for an unambiguous understanding of the term. Useful definitions are those that specify criteria for usage — the more specific, the better.

Terms that trigger strong emotional reactions are called loaded terms. Their ability to move us outweighs their descriptive meaning. Such terms make trouble for critical thinking because they short-ciucuit thought and trick the mind by directly contacting its emotional circuits while bypassing the descriptive meaning circuits. The persuaders are often aware that some words carry heavy emotional baggage and try to take advantage of these probable emotions.

limits of your responsibility to clarify ambiguity

We suggest you ignore any reason containing ambiguity that makes it impossible to judge the acceptability of the reason.

It’s your responsibility as an active learner to ask questions that clarify ambiguity. But your responsibility stops at that point. You are not required to react to unclear ideas or options.

6 what are the value and descriptive assumptions

Hidden or unstated beliefs may be at least as significant in understanding the argument. Try to dig out the idea that is taken for granted.

change in the behaviors of its citizen: collective responsibility vs individual responsibility.

If you had been more reflective, you would never have accepted something. Remember, the visible surface of an argument will almost always be dressed in its best clothes because the presenter tries to trick you feel you make your own argument.

The invisible beliefs of critical thinkers are autonomy, curiosity and reasonableness.

Value assumptions. We all own a list of many good values such as flexibility, cooperation, and honesty. Most values are on everyone’s list. What makes a difference is the relative intensity with which you hold specific values.

A value assumption is an implicit/unstated preference for one value over another in a particular context. We use value preference and value priorities as synonyms.

typical value conflicts:

• loyalty vs honesty
• competition vs cooperation
• freedom of press vs national security
• order vs freedom of speech
• rationality vs spontaneity
• care (democrats) vs authority (republican)

7 Are there any fallacies in the reasoning

A fallacy is a reasoning trick that an author might use while trying to persuade you to accept a conclusion:

• use erroneous or incorrect assumptions
• distract us by making information seem relevant to the conclusion when it is not
• a reason itself depends on the conclusion’s already being true.

reasoning fallacies:

• Ad Hominem: An attack on the person, rather than directly addressing the person’s reasons
• Slippery Slope: assume a single proposed step will set off an uncontrollable chain of undesirable events, when resistances exist to prevent such a chain of events.
• search for perfect solution: attack a solution because it doesn’t completely solve all the problems
• appeal to popularity: justify a claim by appealing to sentiments that large groups of people have in common; falsely assumes that anything favored by a large group is desirable.
• appeal to questionable authority: an authority not in that specific area.
• appeal to emotions: use emotionally loaded language to distract audience from relevant reasons and evidence. Common emotions appealed to are fear, hope, patriotism, pity and sympathy.
• straw person: distorting our opponent’s point of veiw so that it is easy to attack.
• Either-or: assume only 2 alternatives when there are more than 2.
• Explaining by naming/labeling: Explaining is a demanding work that often tests the boundaries of what we know. It is frequently tempting to hide our ignorance of a complex sequence of causes by labeling the behavior. This trick our mind that we know the phenomenon and the cause. Such explanations oversimplify and prevent us from seeking more insightful understanding.
• planning fallacy: underestimate how long they will need to complete a task
• glittering generality: use vague, emotionally appealing words to divert our attention too much to the nature of the person and too little to the legitimate reasons.
• red herring: use a seemingly relevant topic B to replace topic A
• begging the question: conclusion is assumed in the reasoning

8,9 How good is the evidence

Always keep in the back of your mind that no evidence will be a slam dunk that gets the job done conclusively. You are looking for better evidence not perfect evidence.

When people react to simple requests for evidence with anger or withdrawal, they usually do so because they are embarrassed as they realize that, without evidence, they should have been less assertive about their beliefs.

Major kind of evidence:

1. intuition. Much intuition relies on unconscious processing that largely ignores relevant evidence and reflects strong biases. Use it with caution because it is private and others have no way to judge its dependability.
2. personal experience. It is vivid in our memory but may lead to hasty generalization.
3. case example. it has detailed catchy description, it is vivid and interesting. Because dramatic cases appeal to our emotions, they distract us from paying close attention to their value as evidence and from seeking other more relevant research evidence. The good thing is they demonstrate important possibilities and put a personal face on abstract statistics.
4. testimonials. The problems are selectivity, personal interest, omitted information and human factor. It is not very helpful as evidence.
5. appeal to authority. the primary source is better than the secondary source. Be careful that several factors can influence how evidence is reported: personal needs, prior expectations, general beliefs, attitudes, values, theories, and ideologies. We may check his track record.
6. personal observation: we tend to see/hear what we wish to see/hear, selecting and remembering those aspects of an experience that are most consistent with our prior experience and background. And the accuracy can be affected by poor attention, rapid movement of events observed and stressful environments.
7. research studies: research varied greatly in quality. Many claims never get retested. research finding do not prove conlusion but support conclusion at best. Researchers also have expectations, attitudes, values and emotions that bias the questions they ask and the way the conduct research. The need for financial gains, status, security and other factors can affect research outcomes and seleciton of which studies will be published. They have different definitional assumptions, different measures, ambiguous in the wording and gaming in surveys
8. analogies. They both stimulate insights and deceive us. the relevance of the similarities and the differences.

10 are there vival causes

e.g. the cause of the increase in the depression rate among elementary children:

• gentic
• prevalence of teasing among peer groups
• parental neglect
• too much TV news coverage of terrorism and wars
• lack of religion
• stress

A frequently made error is to look for a simple, single cause of an event. Actually, the cause is really the result of a combination of many contributory causes. It also varies for a particular individual.

we tend to see the cause of human behavior as coming from internal (their personal characteristics) rather than from external (situational forces).

Constructing the causes of past events largely relies on the memories of people but memories are often greatly distorted.

11 are the statistics deceptive

• Data and scope can be selective,
• mesurement method can be selective
• conclusion can be partial

12 what significant information is omitted

Almost any information that you encounter has a purpose: affect your thinking in some way to persuade you. It is wise to hesitate and to think about what the author may not have told you.

certainty of incomplete reasoning:

1. time and space limitation
2. most of us have a very limited attention span
3. the knowledge possessed by the person making the argument will always be incomplete
4. an outright attempt to deceive
5. persuaders have different values and beliefs. They try to extinguish your curiosity and to encourage you to rely on unreasonable emotional responses to shape your choices.

The Bourne Ultimatum

It’s funny how different things look, depending on where you sit.

13 what reasonable conclusions are possible

very few important questions can be answered with a simple “yes” or an absolute “no”.

Dichotomous thinking: think in black or white.

​