Tag Archives: communication

First Impressions Rule

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When faced with making a first impression, make it count! Please!

When faced with making a first impression, make it count! Please!

“Imagine you have a new colleague at work and your impression of that person is not very favorable. A few weeks later, you meet your colleague at a party and you realize he is actually a very nice guy. Although you know your first impression was wrong, your gut response to your new colleague will be influenced by your new experience only in contexts that are similar to the party. However, your first impression will still dominate in all other contexts.” – Bertram Gawronski, Canada Research Chair at The University of Western Ontario

First impressions are difficult to overcome – ‘you never get a second chance to make a first impression’.  A study reported in Journal of Experimental Psychology, bears this out. They were able to scientifically demonstrate this thinking error. They were able to show rather conclusively that a first impression tends to apply to all contexts (the rule) whereas contradictory evidence tends to apply only to certain contexts (exceptions to the rule).

First impressions can be changed. It’s not easy, though:

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Rumor Brain Game

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How much do you trust your senses?

How much do you trust your senses?

Remember the game you played as a kid where someone came up with a story and whispered it to his/her neighbor; then the person receiving the story would in turn whisper the story to the next person; and so on and on around a circle or group of people until it came to the last person. In every case, the story told by the first person was materially different from that told by the last person to hear it. That’s because each person would introduce an error (in some cases many errors) into the story. The more complex the initial story, the wilder the outcome story.

According to researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization at the University of Gottingen and the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Gottingen, this chaotic messaging system is exactly how the cerebral cortex of our brains communicates. Further, they discovered that the information each neuron receives is lost rather quickly after receiving it. And, there appears to be no error correction system. In effect, the cortex is dealing only with occasional quick snapshots rather than a continuous input of sensory data and those snapshots are distorted by the cortex’s chaotic communication system. This could explain sensory illusions…

Approximately one bit of information disappears per active neuron per second. “This extraordinarily high deletion rate came as a huge surprise to us”, says Wolf. It appears that information is lost in the brain as quickly as it can be “delivered” from the senses. (Out Of Mind In A Matter Of Seconds, Medical News Today, 25 Jan 2011 – 3:00 PST)

My interpretation of the data is that we are mostly NOT sensing our world. We are taking short snapshots of it – the rest we make up!

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Sex of Ideas

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Matt Ridley presents what I believe is a compelling argument for global connectedness, understanding, and cooperation. Especially as the global population of humanity grows, we no longer can afford the “luxury” of isolationism, war, and religious bigotry. At a level beyond, yet including the physical, sex makes great sense. Beyond pleasurable, it’s necessary. I really like Matt’s idea about the sex of ideas and how that specific sexual revolution has led humanity to where it is today – and will lead us into a hopefully brighter future. Yes, maybe it’s time for more sex!

Posture Makes a Difference

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Open or closed body posture makes a difference.

Open or closed body posture makes a difference.

NLP trainers have known for some time and common sense tells you that posture plays an important role in determining whether people act as though they are really in charge. Research from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University confirms that “posture expansiveness,” or positioning yourself in a way that opens up the body to take up more space, creates a sense of power that produces behavioral changes in a person independent of their actual rank or hierarchical role in an organization. Indeed, these study findings demonstrate that posture may be more significant to a person’s psychological manifestations of power than their title or rank.

“Going into the research we figured role would make a big difference, but shockingly the effect of posture dominated the effect of role in each and every study,” Kellogg PhD candidate Li Huang said.

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Your Brain’s Got Rhythm

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Two [neuronal] groups can only communicate efficiently with each other when their rhythms are coordinated, or synchronized.

Two [neuronal] groups can only communicate efficiently with each other when their rhythms are coordinated, or synchronized.

Scientific American, one of my favorite mags, included an article on brain rhythm. It makes perfect sense to me that our inner communication system should rely upon specific rhythms – which may explain why we like music so much – especially music with a strong beat. Here are some outtakes with my comments:

In an attempt to understand what makes us tick, researchers have been probing various regions of the brain, such as the premotor cortex, which helps make movement possible, and the auditory cortex, responsible for processing what we hear. But neuroscientists now say communication between regions – as opposed to within the areas themselves – may be the key that has eluded analysis until now, in part, because of technological obstacles.

Earl Miller, a professor of neuroscience at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, says that today’s faster computers and more advanced electronics may provide scientists with the tools they need to unlock the brain’s mysteries.

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