What are some psychological facts that people don't know?

We don't see with our eyes

There are a lot of interesting psychological and behavioral facts that most of us are unaware of,  like the fact that we tend to over estimate our abilities check out the tapping experiment "Tappers and Listeners" ... An Excerpt From One Of My Favorite Communications Books and a Story I Tell Clients Often - Rassak Experience.

or the fact that we tend  to confirm whatever beliefs we happen to have in a phenomena known as the confirmation bias check out http://bit.ly/21wk53b. In other words different people could be looking at the same scientific solid results and come up with a totally different conclusions in support of believes that already have.

Yet to answer your question the fact that we don't see with our eyes is for me a psychological trick that never gets old, one of the good reference on brain effects is a book titled Brain rules http://bit.ly/1YXtNWH, in the book one of the experiments that proves that we perceive with our minds instead of seeing with our eyes is the wine experiment.

"a group of brain researchers in Europe. They descended upon ground zero of the wine-tasting world, the University of Bordeaux, and asked: “What if we dropped odorless, tasteless red dye into white wines, then gave it to 54 wine-tasting professionals?” With only visual sense altered, how would the enologists now describe their wine? Would their delicate palates see through the ruse, or would their noses be fooled?

The answer is “their noses would be fooled.” When the wine tasters encountered the altered whites, every one of them employed the vocabulary of the reds. The visual inputs seemed to trump their other highly trained senses".

Here is a reference to the wine experiment We do not see with our eyes. We see with our brains. Another interesting article on the same matter is this Eye/Brain Physiology and Why Humans Don't See Reality But a Translation of It

As a final thought i think a couple of years ago it was the age of the atom and nuclear power then it was the age of computers we now live in the age of the mind, the more we research about neuropsychology and cognitive behavior the more we will reveal the mysteries of the self and the universe that is the human mind.

we can talk more on
twitter : @fouad_khafaga

Creative thought and the creative process of linking ideas.

Written by: Fouad Khafaga
Twitter: @fouad_khafaga

Linking

One of the interesting things of the human ability is that we are able to connect and link ideas that in their own nature not necessarily relate-able, for example the evil spirits and the dark those are two independent ideas that does not in their foundation share a common aspect, yet we were able to link those two ideas to create tales, music & movies.

In a lot of the horror movies they use the concept of the haunted houses which are just the host of the two ideas evil spirits and darkness. The concept of merging ideas in this way was able to produce many creative applications in business, entertainment and human development field.

Here is an example

When seen from a distant chess players can sit still in the same place for hours, this in the first sight does not seem like a physical activity and in fact it’s far off from being a sport. However when asked about chess player say it’s a sport and it’s a bloody sport.

Idea 1A : chess                                                                                 Ideas 1b : martial arts

creative link : the book samurai chess

the writer made a creative link between the martial arts techniques and common philosophies like the art of sacrifices and the how to weaken the enemy physically and mental and applied such techniques to a chess board which resulted in what became a very interesting read and some revolutionary concepts.



Note: we can also make the same link through the book art of war by writing a book titled the art of chess war for example.

Our brain contains 86 billion neurons every new connection between two new neurons makes us smarter; following the same concept making new connection between thoughts that might seem either irrelevant or unrelated creates a new channel of creativity.

Consider thinking of cars body and human skin, seems like 2 far apart ideas yet BMW doesn’t think so they did introduce a concept car called Gina the this is what they can to say about the design of Gina :


“The GINA Light Visionary Model has an almost seamless outer skin, a flexible textile cover that stretches across a movable substructure. Individual functions are only revealed if and when

They are needed. With this model, BMW Group Design initiates a fundamental discourse about the characteristics that will affect the development of cars in future. It is therefore fundamentally different from concept cars, which reflect what is expected of them by implementing as many elements as possible in a future production model. In contrast, the GINA Light Visionary Model is a vision of future cars and serves as an object of research.”

Not just skin its seamless skin. The concept is available online on the BMW web site for more details and information about the concept car.

Another field that uses the linking technique in a creative manner is Guerrilla Marketing the idea is to link urban Guerrilla war techniques in the Marketing world. Here is how the founding father of Guerrilla techniques Jay Conrad Levinson defines his art:

“I’m referring to the soul and essence of guerrilla marketing which remain as always — achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods, such as investing energy instead of money”.

The original term was coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his 1984 book ‘Guerrilla Advertising’.
Guerrilla marketing is often ideal for small businesses that need to reach a large audience without investing a huge lump sum of money or if they simply have a tight budget on marketing and advertising. It also is used by big companies in grassroots campaigns to compliment on-going mass media campaigns. Individuals have also adopted this marketing style as a way to find a job or more work.

Now Guerrilla marketing and Guerrilla art can be seen all over the world creating high brand awareness and an amazing advertising impacts with low budget exactly like it was intended to be.

Comedians, writers & concept artists use the linking technique in their character creation process, they try to find two ideas that obviously doesn’t match and create a character around it, this provide them with a human cognitive paradox and depth of character.

 Like for example a military general who’s into cake baking and wedding decoration, a nun who owns a casino in Vegas or a doctor who is sick (HOUSE A.D.).

The linking technique is one of the most widely used creative techniques that can be observed in a Variety of fields.

Just what kind of a leader are you? (Expectations & knowledge skills)

I have developed a healthy addiction to MOOC’s they have a great impact on my understanding of marketing, markets , Human thought and Leadership.

In a MOOC offered by edx.org Titled “Leaders of learning” they introduced an interesting four models of leadership that I am about to share with you.

Hierarchical Individual Expectation:

Being a successful leader in a Hierarchical Individual learning environment means bringing the external requirements of a governing institution (Frequently state or federal government) into the work and practices of the organization.           

Knowledge & Skills:

•Manages successful superior subordinate relationships.

•Focuses the organization and its learners on clear performance targets

•Marshals the human and material resources of the organization in the service of those performance targets.

•Builds and sustains stable relationships with learners and their families based on high expectations.

Hierarchical Collective Expectations:

Being a successful leader in a Hierarchical Collective learning environment means leading according to the requirements of an external authorizing environment, while also encouraging and enforcing the norms, values, principles, and practices specific to the learning community.         

 

Knowledge & Skill Requirements:

A Hierarchical Collective learning environment typically values a leader who:

•Articulates and models the key values of the organization.

•Incorporates external requirements into the specific values and practices of the community.

•Builds and sustains stable relationships with learners and their families based on norms specific to this learning community.

Distributed  Individual Expectations:

Being a  successful  leader  in  a  Distributed  Individual  learning  environment  means  articulating  an  appealing  vision of  learning That  is  shaped  by  the  needs,  preferences,  and dispositions  of individual learners.

Knowledge & Skill Requirements:

A  Distributed Individual learning environment typically values a leader who:

•Responds to learner  needs  and  interests,  and  consider  how  they  will  change  over  time.

•Is unafraid to embark on new, entrepreneurial ventures.

•Builds and inspires a team of collaborators with diverse knowledge & skillsets.

•Mobilizes  human  and  material  resources  to  respond  to  learner  needs.

•Closely  monitors  learners’  engagement,  interest,  and  connections  to  the  learning  environment.

Distributed Collective Expectations:

Being a successful leader in a Distributed Collective learning environment means identifying and supporting the common values, beliefs, and goals that bind the learning community together. Often it means openness to sharing ownership of an educational vision with the community.    

Leadership Knowledge & Skills:

A Distributed Collective learning environment typical values a leader who:

•Inspires individuals and organizations with common interests to operate in networked relationships

•Recognizes shared community values and articulates them within the community and the larger world

•Identifies community members ‘resources, and motivates members to share them

•Brings resources from the external world into the community while maintaining community norms and standard.

Source: http://bit.ly/2085N5N

The Other Game Theory (Customer Motivation)

“If you study as much as you play games, you would’ve become a rocket scientist”

 I think this is an iconic statement that every gamer was told by his parents, just change the career path and the position based on the country and culture of the gamers’ family, yet it could be a worldwide iconic statement.

One of the reasons that made me believe in the commonalty and the universality of this statement is the vast amount of both time and effort that the gamer’s community invests in gaming.

According to Forbes magazine

"The 100 Biggest Gaming YouTube Channels Now Bring in 3.5 Billion Views a Month. That’s more than the number of all the people who have access to the internet combined which is 3.1 billion active internet users."

Over 59% of Americans play games this adds up to 150 million people in the U.S.  alone with the average age of 31. So what keeps gamers in general motivated? What makes them invest long hours in gaming?

Well Maslow might have the answer to these questions; Dr. Abraham Maslow is an American psychologist who described human needs in a pyramid hierarchy and the pyramid levels of motivation or needs is as follows:

• At the bottom of the pyramid are the Basic needs or Physiological needs of a human being.
• The second level of the pyramid is Safety Needs: Security, Order, and Stability.
• The third level of need is Love and Belonging.
• The fourth level is the Esteem
• Then on the top of the pyramid is the Need for Self-actualization.

Just as a thought I wanted to apply Maslow’s motivation theory or the pyramid hierarchy of needs into the gaming world and see if games satisfy the human needs as Maslow visualized them.

Level one the “survival”:

In the 80’s games like Mario, Street Fighter, Contra and Pac man came to being. The common factor being these games is that they are a survival task through satisfying a basic need like eating mushrooms or white dotes in the dark. In street fighter and contra the task was to survive against time or to literally maintain health in front of the opponent.

Level two “Security”:

This is an issue of debate on how the gaming industry has satisfied this level in Maslow’s pyramid of motivation and here are 3 of those points of views:

1- That the gamer himself is safe, not matter what kind of explosions, death threats or even actual killing the gamer is safe.

2- That the game allowed the character to level up increasing the characters power or equipment which provided a higher sense of security, for example in a game called “Earth Worm” the more points the character collects the better the weapon becomes and sometimes get a different stronger weapon all together, In another skating game named after the skater “Tony Hawks” the more points the character collects tony gets to own a new better skating board which means he will fall less and he will be safer and more  secure.

3-This theory suggests that the gaming industry replaced security for progress. In games like “Aladdin”, “resident Evil” and “Mutant Ninja turtles”. The character doesn’t get to advance or progress to the next level of the game until they kill all the enemies or clear all the danger from the level that is currently being played. In other words the character does not get to progress or advance until the area is both safe and secure.

Level 3 “belonging”:

 The gaming industry was able to satisfy this need in more than one way, one way is that the simple fact of being a video gamer your invited to join that inner circle of gamers, the feeling of if you enjoy video games you’re not alone there are other people, other group that shares the same passion as you.

Another way in which games enhance the sense of belonging especially in the age of high speed internet and fiber optics connection, the Internet opened up opportunities for play across local area networks and vast distances. The majority of games have some kind of social features - whether that’s multiplayer, co-op, or massive multiplayer online game (MMO).

Now the gamer is connect with his or her team in real time feed, some of the most obvious examples of this are games like Call of Duty, Far Cry & the racing game Need for Speed.

 

Level 4 “Esteem”:

 From stunning visuals to loud music and praising commentator’s one can easily tell that the gaming culture knows how to raise the gamers self esteem, from the arcade era of gaming up to date achievements, trophies, awards and high points are a big part of the game. This is from as simple as having a high score in the arcade game putting the name on the top list to now sharing the score on every social media platform.

 

Finally level 5  on the top of the pyramid self actualization:

This is actually a hard level to write about as the concept itself of self actualization is debatable even Maslow has modified his pyramid in an academic paper. Yet Maslow himself defined this level in his book motivation and personality as the desire to achieve the highest form of what one aspires to become.

For example, one individual may have the strong desire to become an ideal parent. In another, the desire may be expressed athletically. For others, it may be expressed in paintings, pictures, or inventions.

Gaming satisfy this need in a unique way in gaming the gamer not only gets to be whatever he or she aspires to be, the gamer gets to create both his character and his world in games like “SimCity”, “Spore”, and “Civilization”.

I would like to sum up by saying that all the games that were mentioned have other features and could simulate different motives to different people. Yet this article as part of the series just deals with Maslow’s pyramid and what could mirror his stages in the levels of gaming..

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