What Motivates You?

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Writers are mostly self-employed (excluding journalists and the like), so self-motivation can be a problem.  There are a number of theories on the motivation in the workplace, but I’m going to look at the cognitive-choice theory.

According to this theory, there are three factors which affect motivation in work.  Here they are:

Valence

This is the value of the outcome that the particular activity will give.  If you work at a diner for a salary, the outcome is money in your hands.  If you’re a paramedic, the outcome can be saving people’s lives.  Every person attaches different values to different things (i.e. money can be very important for one fellow, but not at all important for another).

Instrumentality

This is the possibility that the activity will lead to more desired outcomes.  So if you’re a waiter at the diner, and you see that the manager is getting old, being a waiter as an additional outcome of giving you further beneficial outcomes (i.e. getting more money, working less).  Or, if you’re an accountant, working as a clerk gives you experience which could open doors for you later, i.e. more desired outcomes springing from the first (in addition to your salary).

Expectancy

This is how attainable the outcome is.  If you’re a freelance writer and a magazine offers you a lot of money to write a 8000 word article on a subject you’ve never heard of in two days, the attainability of the lot of money falls, and so does your motivation to accept the offer.  If you are offered a job as an announcer and public speaking scares you, then it is not very attainable.

These three factors form a combined measurement of motivation.  I.e. if the valence, instrumentality and the expectancy is high, you’ll go for it.  If all of them are low, probably not.  But when they have different values, say working on an oil rig, which gives you a lot of money but doesn’t have a lot of possibilities for future desired outcomes, each person will decide differently.  Everyone assigns different values to different things.  If the valence is high enough, some people might go for it even though the other two are close to naught.

When writing and having to motivate yourself, it might be helpful to look at these three things and ask yourself which is lacking (and then maybe you can push it up a bit).  

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The Consequences of Fear

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Fear is, if I can paraphrase Roosevelt here, something to be feared.  Fear kicks in when our body thinks we are in danger, resulting in a switch to a heightened mode in which small motor functions are decreased and bigger motor functions are increased.  The implications?

1)  If you are facing down a bear, you will probably not be able to tie your own shoelaces (even if you could normally), not fit the key in the lock or fold an origami crane.  Why?  That is fairly obvious.  It’s not really important at that point.

2)  If a guy is pointing an AK-47 at you, you will probably be able to run a lot faster than you normally would have, as well as react faster and lift heavier objects.  Why?  Because these actions are necessary for your survival.

3)  When you’re in danger, your sense of pain will mostly disappear, meaning that you won’t notice if you injure yourself (as was the case with a man who clenched his jaw so hard that he broke a few teeth without realising it).  Why?  Because pain is the body’s way of telling you to stop what you’re doing, as it could be doing you harm.  So in a situation where your life is in immediate danger, possibly doing you harm takes second boat.

Interestingly, the normal fight or flight reaction has recently gotten a new addition, freeze.  This happens when the threat is not immediate, therefore your body hopes to avoid it entirely.

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Schooling

What are schools teaching children?  Useful skills?  Important knowledge?  Maybe.

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Peter Gray, a research professor of Psychology at Boston College, mentions that school is not as useful as one may think.  As Peter Gray mentions, school is a place where children are forced to learn things.

First, forcing people to learn will – in most cases – make them associate learning with something bad.  Then they will supposedly spend a long time avoiding learning.  But apparently most people grow out of this frame of mind.

Second, children are principally, through use of tests with correct and incorrect answers, to figure out what the teacher wants them to say and then say it, as opposed to critical thinking and understanding the subject thoroughly.

This is just a very quick look at this, for more info, read the Psychology Today article here.

Now take a moment and consider that.  Now, imagine a world without any schooling whatsoever.

Maybe after a few years, people will start to realise that they have to learn something or the human race will die out, but at first, in this age, I imagine that not a lot of things will get done.

Within in this paradox we live.  Schooling inhibits critical thinking and discourages learning, while no schooling would certainly lead to disaster and increased levels of worker-class people (thus slowing down technological development).

To combat this, a lot of teachers try to introduce critical thinking into their lessons and stimulate discussion, though it’s not always possible.

Meanwhile, Fairhaven School has another approach:  Let the children do whateverthey want.

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A Core Concept of Psychology

Psychology is a huge subject with a lot of different fields of study (like social psychology, personality psychology etc.).  However, there is a basic concept that is relatively easy and can help a lot in your psycho-analysis of people.

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People leak.

People, in most cases, reveal their thoughts by doing things they are sometimes not even aware of.  Say, lying.  People who lie often touch their ears, nose or mouth after or during a lie.  Mostly, they aren’t even aware that they’re doing it.  You can also get an idea of the person’s state of mind and feeling of social hierarchy by what he or she is doing.  If you feel threatened, you will make yourself smaller by holding your limbs closer to your body.  Also, you’ll likely lower your chin or raise your shoulders and put objects between you and your supposed opponent (even something as small as a glass).  You are doing this to protect yourself if the situation comes to a fight (even if it is a situation which would never go there, your body still reacts in this way to a perceived “danger”).

If you’re feeling superior, you will be relaxed (i.e. leaning back, with relaxed shoulders and loose muscles etc.) and likely you will expose your throat to show that you are not afraid.

There is a whole range of studies on this very subject, including micro-expressions and other body language things.  However, the main point to remember is that minor behaviour is very often key clues in what a person is thinking.  Look especially at the eyes, the face and the extremities (i.e. feet and hands).  You can figure out what a person is thinking not by what you know, but by what he's telling you.

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The Trolley Problem

Copyright Nintendo

There is a school of thought called ethics, which deals in moral standards and such of human beings.  Within this basis, there is a thought experiment called the Trolley Problem.  Herewith the experiment from Wikipedia:

Suppose that a judge or magistrate is faced with rioters demanding that a culprit be found for a certain crime and threatening otherwise to take their own bloody revenge on a particular section of the community. The real culprit being unknown, the judge sees himself as able to prevent the bloodshed only by framing some innocent person and having him executed. Beside this example is placed another in which a pilot whose aeroplane is about to crash is deciding whether to steer from a more to a less inhabited area. To make the parallel as close as possible it may rather be supposed that he is the driver of a runaway tram which he can only steer from one narrow track on to another; five men are working on one track and one man on the other; anyone on the track he enters is bound to be killed. In the case of the riots the mob have five hostages, so that in both the exchange is supposed to be one man's life for the lives of five.

There are a few variations (ranging from pushing a villain in front of the trolley to stop it and having the one person be your own mother), but they are all based off this one.

What makes this so interesting is that it is a dilemma in total.  There is no right answer.  Either you kill one person or you kill five people.  Regardless, you kill someone.

So the question is, do you choose the lesser of two evils, or do you stand back and watch it happen.  Someone said once, all that is needed for the world to end up in chaos (or evil, or something of the sort) is for good men to stand by and do nothing.

There is a movie called Unthinkable that deals with another dilemma called the ticking time bomb.  In the thought experiment, a hypothetic terrorist has planted a bomb which will kill thousands of people and he has been captured.  The question is, can he be tortured so that thousands of lives can be spared?  I.e. can you commit evil to prevent greater evil?

In the movie,

SPOILERS HERE

the specialist interrogator eventually calls in the terrorist’s small children and threatens to torture them in order to get the location of the bomb.  In the end, the FBI agent calls the torture off, even though the possibility of a last bomb is probable.  Thus, she chooses to avoid committing an evil to prevent a greater evil.

SPOILERS END

In this moral dilemma, what would you do?  No matter how many times I think about it, I don’t know how to solve the trolley problem, because I can’t sacrifice the one person.  What is the right answer?  Is there one?

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Us vs Them

Copyright Masaya. Source

Grouping occurs when similarities or differences are noted.

One study showed that people are more likely to go sit next to someone with the same haircolour as them if they come into a room full of people looking for a seat.

The human nervous system works by appraising things and then deciding if they are a threat or not (or at least, one theory suggests that).  When looking at something, you automatically categorise it as either the same as you or different.  First, human or not human.  If human, then it is categorised as either the same or different.  If you look at survival way back when, people different from you will probably be out to kill you, since they will likely be part of a different tribe.

There was a study done where a class of children were treated differently according to their eye colour.  The blue eyes were often rewarded while the rest were treated worse.  The children were under 10 years.  Very soon, the kids with the different coloured eyes formed a group and those with the blue eyes grouped and already formed a strong Us vs Them mindset.

Even children as young as that form groups according to circumstances.  There is a natural tendency to treat people who differ from you differently.  Ergo, the birth of racism.

In the end, there are two main things that can happen within a community if two different cultures are mixed together.  Either the minority will be consumed and converted by the majority, or the two cultures will essentially segregate and deal mainly with their own kind (okay, three, the two cultures can combine and form a new culture, which is probably the best solution).

How many times are you grouping every day?  How many times do you classify someone as part of “Us” or a part of “Them” without realising it?

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The Mob Mask

"Kill the pig.  Cut her throat.  Bash her in."  Source

In 2001, a woman contemplated jumping off a bridge.  During these moments, traffic was held up and motorists started yelling for her to jump.  She did.

Horrible, no?  Well what if I told you that, were you there, you might have yelled “Jump!” with them?

During Halloween (in USA anyway), people like to dress up.  They put on costumes and, for one night, shed their identity to become someone else.  But with costumes come an interesting twist.  While wearing the costume, you make yourself more anonymous.  By increasing your anonymity, you lower your inhibitions.

An experiment let children play games while either in costume or not.  Some of the games were competitive and not aggressive, with others were, such as extracting a beanbag from a tube.  During the time they wore costumes, the children played the more aggressive games twice as much as they did when they were unmasked.

Putting on a mask is not the only way to achieve this kind of anonymity.  When people gather in groups, something happens to the individuals.  Deindividuation.  What this means is that people start to lose sense of who they are, and what they stand for.  Your own right and wrong dissolves and is replaced by the group’s right and wrong.  You are essentially putting on the mask of the group, and shedding your identity and replacing it with ‘member of <group>’.

Three factors contribute to this effect.  First, anonymity.  If the entire group is wearing masks or standing in darkness, the effect becomes that much more devastating.  In another experiment, a group of kids with Halloween costumes are told to take only one piece of candy, and then the researcher left them alone.  Sometimes they were asked for their names.  When identified, being in a group increased the likelihood of them breaking the rules a little (from 10 to 20 per cent), while the incognito kids had a big jump in breaking rules when they were in a group (from 20 to 60 per cent).

Second is group size.  The bigger the group, the more anonymous the individual, the greater the effect.  Third is arousal.  Listening to a moving speech, chanting, singing or other ritual-like activities can stir this in you.  Anything that grabs your attention and holds it.  The pressure builds and builds until you lose your sense of self and merge with the group.

Being in a mob is like being possessed by something other than your own mind.  Afterwards, people will be ashamed or even horrified by what they did, as if they didn’t choose it.  (In a sense, they didn’t.)

I don’t know if I would have yelled at that woman to jump.  I certainly hope not.  But mob psychology is a powerful thing.  Terrifying, in fact.

Two books that contain good examples of this phenomenon are Xenocide by Orson Scott Card and Lord of the Flies by William Golding.  I got most of my information here.

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Branch Out

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I remember that Livia Blackburne once explained in an interview that there are two paths of thinking, the deliberate path and I think the spontaneous path.  The deliberate path is when you focus your mind on something (i.e. sitting in front of the blank page) and the spontaneous is when you don’t focus on anything specific (i.e. performing an automated skill like showering).

In the same manner, there are also two approaches to thinking called convergent and divergent thinking (whether there is a link with the paths, I don’t know, but probably).

Convergent thinking limits options, i.e. taking available options and whittling them down to one.  E.g. Choosing a colour for a wall from a catalogue.  You cut out any colours you don’t want until you find one that you do.  All your thoughts converge on one location.

Divergent thinking expands options.  E.g. Choosing what to do with your wall.  You churn out the maximum number of possibilities.  All your thoughts move away from one location (you could paint it, or draw on it, or plaster it with pages from the Lord of the Rings).

As you might have guessed, creativity is divergent thinking.  Thinking outside the box.  Though the convergent path is important in some instances, thinking of a story is not one of them.

It is very easy to fall into convergent thinking.  The problem is that you are only using available ideas instead of creating new ones.  To be a divergent thinker, you must put your mind to it.

However, there are a lot of times when we get stuck in convergent thinking (which is possibly one of the causes of the so called “writer’s block”).  If you’re in there, try branching out.

By branching out, I mean change your medium.  Write poetry (like a lot of novelists do).  Change from novel to short story for one tale.  Paint.  Write the storyboard for an indie RPG.  Knit.  Whittle wood.

Branching out forces your perspective to shift and your mind to start thinking divergently (because you have no or little ideas to limit).

Paint, even if you can’t.

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Why Willpower Wanes

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Ever wonder why sometimes you cannot avoid giving into temptations?  Or why shops always put the candy/chocolate near the checkout?

Willpower is like a mental muscle.  It tires and it grows.  In simple terms, willpower depletes with use and gets stronger the more you use it.

Ergo, if you are tempted multiple times throughout the day, you will most likely give in eventually.  More importantly, if you spent the day resisting temptations and then come to another, you’ll have a hard time resisting it.

Let’s say you spend the first half of the day at home and there is leftover cake that you wanted to save for later.  But you really want to eat it now.  Therefore, every time you walk past, you’ll be depleting some willpower by resisting the temptation.  Now, say you go to work for the other half of the day (after having successfully not eaten the cake) and your boss is away, leaving you alone.  It is Friday and it’s half an hour before your normal leaving time.  No one will notice that you’re gone.  Because of your depleted willpower, you give in and go home.  However, if the cake hadn’t been at your house, you would probably have been able to resist the temptation to leave work early.

Now, more interestingly, making decisions also drains willpower.  Or rather, excluding options (by choosing others) take willpower because people don’t like losing options.  Regardless, this affects how people make decisions.  Like, say, the supermarket candy.  They put it at the checkout, after people made a lot of decisions, thereby lowering their ability to resist taking a chocolate.

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Let Your Nose Do the Leading

Memory and sensory perception go hand in hand.  If you think of something that had happened to you in the past, you’ll likely recall the sensory experience, i.e. sights, sounds and smells.  Though we are primarily visual-based beings, the sense that is most connected to memory is the sense of smell.

Apparently, the olfactory system detects an odour in your nose, then sends the signal to your olfactory bulbs which then sends it to the rest of the brain, but first the limbic system and in particular the amygdala—the part of the brain involved most in emotion.

A study done showed that the amygdala lighted up more when a nostalgic smell was presented to a participant than when they presented the object as a visual.  I.e. the smell made the participants more nostalgic that the sight.

Let me give you a clearer example.  I don’t like soup.  Especially not chicken soup.  Every time I smell it, I feel sick.  I can’t remember whether I was given this soup when I was sick or if I just made that connection after watching too much television.  Regardless, I can make this connection even before realising what it is I’m smelling.  I.e. I smell something and start to feel sick.  What is that? I might ask.  Chicken soup.

There will be certain smells that you will associate with certain things, be it Old Spice with your father or ginger bread cookies with your grandma’s kitchen.  And nothing will succeed more in bringing back the memories and feelings than smelling that thing again.

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Neuron See, Neuron Do

You have the ability to read minds (sort of).

How, you ask?  Well, I’ll get to that later.  First, let me tell you a story.

In the early 1990s, there was a group of researchers.  They were in the process of doing a few studies on macaque monkeys to monitor their brain activity (via implanted electrodes) when they performed various motor functions.  One of these was the clutching of food.

One day, one of the researchers was busy in the lab checking the screens for the neuron activity.  He was hungry though, so he picked up the sandwich he had brought with him.  But before he could take a bite, he made an interesting discovery.  The monkeys’ neurons had fired when they had watched him pick up the food.  The same neurons that fired when they themselves picked up food.

Copyright Shift

Mirror neurons.  These little fellows are a select group of neurons that fires both when you perform an action and when you watch someone else perform the action.

Through this effect, we (and apparently monkeys) are able to feel what other people feel.  We simulate the same situation in our head if we see someone else perform an action.  But more than just the physical aspect, we feel the intention and emotional aspects as well.  Better known as empathy.

Empathy allows us to feel the same as another person.  When you see someone smile, your mirror neurons for smiling fires and you also feel the feeling that you connect to smiling, i.e. being happy.

Studies done also concluded that we can judge intentions via mirror neurons.  For example, we are able to discern between someone picking up a cup with the purpose of drinking from it and someone picking up a cup to clear the table, as opposed to just having a feeling for clutching cup.  Therefore, you can, by watching someone’s actions, get a feeling of what they’re thinking, i.e. mind reading.

As a last note, I have often observed in myself that I change into to what I am exposed to, to an extent.  For example, I’m currently reading Frankenstein by Mary Shelly, which is a pretty old book.  If I read it just before writing, my style, or voice if you will, changes to fit in with Shelly’s.  I find myself using old sentence structures and words that had fallen from use (i.e. I almost used the *cough*adverb*cough* gaily, which has so many other connotations these days that it is not in use in the way of happy any more).

So I’m wondering, do mirror neurons have the same effect during reading as it does during observing?  And that poses another question.  Do our mirror neurons for smiling fire when we read about someone smiling?

Perhaps, if the writer is good enough, we see the image of a smile so clearly that we are, in fact, observing it.

(Source of info and more thorough explanation here)

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How We Justify Choice

Copyright SEGA

We rationalize.  Say, a man stole something.  His conscience will haunt him, but he will try to counter it with a rationalization.  Moreover for smaller things.  Say, you’re on a diet.  You see a piece of cake.  If you are inclined to eat it, your mind will come up with all sorts of rationalizations to explain why you can make an exception.

In the same way, we rationalize when we find ourselves in bad situations we can’t get out of.  The human mind defends itself in this way.  When you can’t fight against it, why bother?  You’ll fight only if you believe that you have a way out (incidentally, if there is a way out, you’ll want the better situation even more, making you fight harder for it).

If you take an example, divorce rates.  In the early 1900s, I’d bet there wasn’t even close to the amount of divorces as there is now.  (7% in 1900 and 50% in 1998)  Why?  Because divorce was not much of an option back then.  But more than that, how many old couples are unhappy in their marriages?  I can’t get statistics about that, but I’d wager it isn’t much.  Young couples?  Plenty.  Why?  Because they now have a way out.

There was a study done (can’t find it now) where people were given a choice of painting they could take home.  To one group was said that they could exchange their paintings the following week if they wanted to, while the other was told that their choice was final.  The next week, both groups were told that they could exchange their paintings.  The second group that had believed their choice was final ended up exchanging less than the first group.

When you made your choice and know there is no way out, your mind will rationalize that it was the best pick anyway.

Another example is the phrase, “Fake it ‘til you make it”.  If you pretend to be something, you will eventually become it.  Why?  You guessed it, you rationalize.  If you pretend to be an accountant for two years with no specific purpose, your mind will be asking, “Why am I doing all this if I don’t like it?”  Not wanting to look stupid, it then concludes that you do like it.  Unless you have a very strong dislike for it or another reason as to why you’re pretending that can be used to rationalize, you will begin to like it.

And finally, an example from Abe Lincoln.  Apparently, he had an enemy at one point who he wanted to make a friend (who needs more enemies, I suppose).  To do that, he called up the man and asked him a favour (to borrow a book, I think).  The man was so flattered that he lent Lincoln the book.  His mind was whirring in the “Why did I do a favour for Lincoln if he’s my enemy?” area, and concluded that Lincoln is his friend and so started a long and bountiful friendship.

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Deception Perception

Police and other law-related officials have a long history in detecting lies (especially on television and so on).  How does it work?  Is it as easy as they make it look?  In short, no.  But read on to see what I mean.

Firstly, the most important part of detecting deception is that you can’t.  You can only suspect.  To start, you need a baseline, i.e. an idea of how the person acts under normal circumstances.  After that, you can then compare his or her behaviour when he/she is being asked a question to the baseline.

There are a few things that stand out as indicating deception.

Expressions

When the expression doesn’t fit the words, deception is taking place, obviously.  Therefore, to detect a lie, you have to make sure you know what every expression looks like exactly.  For example, most people can’t fake a smile completely.  If only the mouth smiles, and the eyes do not scrunch up (and make crow’s feet), the smile is not genuine.

Also, there is a whole department called micro expressions (popularised by Lie to me) that can also guide you.  A micro expression is a very quick display of an actual emotion (people have no control over this) which can reveal another emotion as the one that follows it, indicating deception.

Choice of words

Apparently, people use words like “actually” and “never” in ways that can indicate that something’s up.  When you use the word “actually”, you are comparing two things, so if the question raised no second option, there is likely deception going on.  E.g. “Is your car blue?” could be legitimately answered with “Actually, it’s red.”  But if the question is “What colour is your car?” and the answer is “Actually, it’s red,” it indicates that the answerer was comparing it to another colour, possibly the real colour.

The word “never” is often a way of avoiding the issue.  “Did you steal the car?” could be answered with “I would never steal a car.”  The answerer might be avoiding the answer and never really give a straight denial.

Body Language

People who are lying often try to minimize the space they take up (by keeping their extremities close to themselves) and thus appear less dangerous—a survival instinct that kicks in for the same reason that a polygraph works (lying is directly connected with danger and the person is nervous).

When someone is lying, they tend to touch their facial features—the nose, ears, mouth and eyes.  They also subconsciously place objects between themselves and the questioner or turn away from him, also an instinct to protect themselves.

The most important factor to consider when “detecting lies”, is that most of these signs could mean anything.  Someone touching his nose could have hay fever and his nose is itching.  Someone sitting scrunched might be cold.  It’s important to take note of the context and work from a baseline, preferably in the same environment.

I got most of my information here.

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The Myers-Briggs Personality Types

The Myers-Briggs Type indicator was originally derived by Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers.  In turn, they used Carl Jung’s writings in the 1921 book Psychological Types.

These days, it is used to determine what kind of psychological preferences someone has.  It was originally used to determine what types of jobs women in World War II could do best and most comfortably, but this was later rebuffed and now it is used only as an indicator for personality.

There are 16 types, denominated by a combination of four letters:

Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I), Sensing (S) or Intuition (N), Thinking (T) or Feeling (F), and Judgement (J) or Perception (P).

Every person is dominant on one side of the four scales and the combination of dominant traits then determines the personality type.

Extraversion or Introversion

People who lean to extraversion focuses on the outside world; things, people, actions.  Those who lean to introversion channels their focus inward, reflecting, ideas and beliefs.

Sensing or Intuition

Those with dominance in sensing prefer to deal with facts, details and things that are certain; they trust information gotten from their 5 senses.  Those who lean toward intuition like to add meaning to information and find things that aren’t obvious; they listen to their inner voice and trust insight.

Thinking or Feeling

Those who prefer thinking make decisions by using objective logic and an analytical approach, while those who prefer feeling look to their values, the needs of themselves and the other people and beliefs.

Judgement or Perception

Those who prefer judgement want their lives to be stable and decided while those who prefer perception want flexibility and new options.

Each in combination forms a unique personality type.  A free test is available here.

I find it useful to divide my characters into personality types if I struggle to differentiate between them.  I use it as a base to work from, giving me a clearer image of who this person is.

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The Human Nervous System: Is it a Bear or a Tree Stump?

The feeling of dread in your stomach.  The sweaty hands.  What does it mean and why does it happen?

The human body has two systems that regulate a whole lot of important things.  They are the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.

The sympathetic nervous system is in charge of preparing your body for stress and maximum efficiency.  Say for example, you walk in a forest and suddenly a bear jumps out in front of you.  Your pupils dilate and your heart rate increases, along with your blood pressure.  Also, your lungs expand and blood is diverted from your skin and digestive organs to the brain and skeletal muscles.  All this is in order to prepare you for either the fight or flight reaction.

The parasympathetic nervous system calms you down again.  When the bear in the forest turns out to be a tree stump, you relax and your parasympathetic nervous system kicks in.  Your pupils limit the amount of light coming in and your heart rate and blood pressure returns to normal.  Your muscles relax and the blood flow is returned to its previous setup.

These two systems basically work together to ensure that your body is regulated optimally so that you are ready for whatever you are facing, whether it be a bear or a tree stump.

To ensure that you remain safe, the sympathetic nervous system kicks in even before you’re sure of what you’re facing, just in case.  You see a dark shape looming in front of you and your mind automatically calls down a memory of what a bear might look like and your sympathetic nervous system reacts accordingly, so that you might be ready.

The downside in all this is that the body often overreacts, specifically in this age, where the most danger one faces is cutting one’s hand on paper.  Even though we live in relatively safe environments (in contrast to our ancestors) our bodies still react as though we’re in constant danger.

Because of this, every new thing we face, be it a tree stump or a publishing deal, will send our bodies into overdrive, preparing to fight for survival.  This pushes many people to stay in their safe environments, never trying anything new.  They trust their bodies to tell them what is dangerous, while the sympathetic nervous system is still living in the Stone Age, unable to see when we’re not in danger.

While your body can prepare you for danger, it can also lead you into a life of no growth.  Think before you listen to your sympathetic nervous system.  Don’t just run.

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Memory Loss

I’ve often wondered (until I actually went and found out) why it was that whenever a hero lost his memory, his ninja training remained fully intact, as well as his car racing abilities and his perfect tomato slicing skills. (Think Jason Bourne)

Well, here is the answer:

Our long term memories are divided into two big parts, namely declarative and non-declarative memory.

Declarative memory is basically a database of facts and information.  Names, places, events etc.  To recall declarative memory, we have to think consciously about it.

For interest’s (and length’s) sake, declarative memory is further divided into semantic and episodic memory.  Semantic memory is straight facts and events, such as, what the name of your country is.  Episodic memory deals with events that are directly related to time.  I.e. what you were doing when you heard about the tsunami in Japan.

Which brings us to non-declarative memory.  This is the memory that deals with motor-skills and actions.  For example, how to speak.  You might have heard of muscle memory before.  It’s when you can’t consciously remember how to do something, but your body still knows how.  Say, if you haven’t driven a car in a while, and you get back behind the wheel, you’ll take a few moments to figure it out, but the position and circumstances in which you find yourself will allow your muscles to ‘remember’ what to do.

Back to our ninja hero who lost his memory.  It is entirely possible (perhaps even likely, I don’t know) for a patient to lose only his declarative memory.  Therefore, all his motor skills and muscle memory of how to do things will remain untouched and still ready to be used in case of emergency.

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Id, Ego and Superego

After I read the post Nevets made on his blog, I decided to spring into action.  So today, I’m going to jump into a random non-writing related topic.  (Okay, so it’s not ENTIRELY non-writing related, as it can be applied to characters, but I thought it best to ease you guys into the idea.  Also, it’s not really random, since psychology has always interested me.)

Side Note : If you are confused as to why I am doing this, read Nevets’s post here.

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This specific approach to explaining personalities – there are quite a few theories – is based on work that Sigmund Freud, the Hemingway of psychoanalysis, did.  There are a whole lot of things surrounding it, but I’ll talk to you about the id, ego and superego.

According to Freud, every human psyche can be divided into three parts, the id, ego and superego.  The id and superego is basically in an eternal battle with the ego as mediator.

The id is primal instinct.  Your uncontrolled and selfish desires.

The superego is societal norms and repercussions as well as conscience.  It takes the consequences of your actions into account, stopping you from doing things simply because you want to.

Your ego then mediates between the two.  You could say that the id and superego both plead their cases to the ego and then the ego makes a decision.

To explain, here is a scenario.

You are homeless and very hungry.  An old lady with a bag of apples walks past you.  If you were controlled by your id, you would jump up, grab the bag of apples from the lady, and start eating.  If you were controlled by your superego, you would sit there and do nothing.  However, you are controlled by your ego, which takes into consideration both things: 1) You’re hungry and the lady has food, and 2) It’s not right to take other people’s things.  It finds a middle ground, and prods you to ask the lady for an apple.

If you are hungry enough and you know the lady won’t give you anything because you look scruffy, your id might ‘take over’ per se, making you grab the apples and run.  However, your superego will still have its go, making you feel guilty afterwards.

In conclusion, the ego must find a way to satisfy the primal desires of the id in a way that is acceptable for the societal rules as specified by the superego.  This is only present in humans.  Other animals are ruled solely by their id.

Note: I have taken this information from my Psychology 101 course, so it might not be 100% accurate.

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