ביסוס מדעי – התועלות של החיבור

michael laitman

8 שנים ago

תפיסת האושר

– When researchers asked Harvard students: “What’s the best thing that happened to you in the last month?” – they all talked about experiences with other people.
1.3[1] Miller, C. (2012, December 31). Crossroads: Labor Pains of a New Worldview | FULL MOVIE. Retrieved June 24, 2014, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n1p9P5ee3c#t=1823

– After a month of Harvard researchers tracking a group of women with questions about their day, findings showed that the subjects couldn’t tell what it was that made them happy or unhappy altogether.
2.1[1] Weiss, J., & Brown, P. (1977). Self-insight error in the explanation of mood.Unpublished manuscript, Harvard University.

– Behavioral-decision researchers and psychologists have shown over and over again that in reality, we systematically fail to predict or choose what maximizes our happiness.
2.1[2] Wilson, T. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2005). Affective forecasting knowing what to want. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(3), 131-134.

– Scientists have analyzed many studies looking at what determines our happiness and brought it down to 3 things: Genes, life circumstances, and intentional activities and practices.
2.2[1] Lyubomirsky, S., & Della Porta, M. D. (2010). Boosting happiness, buttressing resilience. Handbook of adult resilience, 450-464.

– Research shows that positivity expands our visual perspective, our creativity, our ability to see how various things are connected to better solve problems, arrive at win-win solutions in negotiations, and even transcend differences to see our common humanity with other people.
2.3[2] Fredrickson, B. L. (1998). What good are positive emotions?. Review of general psychology, 2(3), 300.
2.3[3] Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American psychologist,56(3), 218.

– The effects of positivity have been shown through randomized controlled studies, where scientists induce positive emotions in their subjects by showing them beautiful pictures, having them listen to pleasant music or even giving them a bag of candy, and then testing all kinds of things.
2.3[4] Fredrickson, B. L., & Branigan, C. (2005). Positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and thought‐action repertoires. Cognition & Emotion, 19(3), 313-332.

– Happiness researchers have actually measured the time it takes us to fall back to our baseline level of happiness from the moment we start enjoying something.
2.4[3] Clark, A. E., Diener, E., Georgellis, Y., & Lucas, R. E. (2008). Lags And Leads in Life Satisfaction: a Test of the Baseline Hypothesis*. The Economic Journal,118(529), F222-F243.

– A study by Phil Brickman tracked 14 lottery winners and it turned out their happiness lasted for about three months.
2.4[4] Brickman, P., Coates, D., & Janoff-Bulman, R. (1978). Lottery winners and accident victims: Is happiness relative?. Journal of personality and social psychology, 36(8), 917.

– When we’re in a state of “Flow,” we’re not doing what we’re doing to get a different reward, rather, we experience an “intrinsic motivation” where the action itself is rewarding to us.
2.4[6] Keller, J., & Bless, H. (2008). Flow and regulatory compatibility: An experimental approach to the flow model of intrinsic motivation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(2), 196-209.

אושר והצלחה

– The happier you are the more successful you become.
A meta-analysis of 225 longitudinal studies found that happy people make more money, they’re more productive, they're better leaders, better negotiators, they cope better with stress and trauma, they’re more resilient, they have stronger immune systems, they live longer, they have fulfilling marriages, and they’re kinder to others.
1.3[2] Lyubomirsky, S., King, L., & Diener, E. (2005). The benefits of frequent positive affect: does happiness lead to success?. Psychological bulletin,131(6), 803.

– Happier, positively charged people are 37% more successful in sales, 3 times more creative, 31% more productive, 19% more accurate, and 10 times more engaged.
1.3[3] Achor, S. (2011). The happiness advantage: The seven principles of positive psychology that fuel success and performance at work. Random House.

– Kids do better on tests when they’re first asked to think of a positive memory.
2.3[6] Bryan, T., & Bryan, J. (1991). Positive mood and math performance. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 24(8), 490-494.
2.3[7] Staw, B. M., & Barsade, S. G. (1993). Affect and managerial performance: A test of the sadder-but-wiser vs. happier-and-smarter hypotheses. Administrative Science Quarterly, 304-331.

– Physicians actually did a better job integrating data of medical cases after they were given a bag of candy.
2.3[8] Isen, A. M., Rosenzweig, A. S., & Young, M. J. (1991). The influence of positive affect on clinical problem solving. Medical Decision Making, 11(3), 221-227.

חיבור ואושר

– There are 3 main characteristics to the state of “Positivity Resonance”: shared positive emotions, a sense of mutual care and bio-behavioral synchrony.
2.5[2] Fredrickson, B. (2013). Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Think, Do, Feel, and Become.

– Strangers “clicked” better when their behavioral synchrony was higher.
2.5[3] Vacharkulksemsuk, T., & Fredrickson, B. L. (2012). Strangers in sync: Achieving embodied rapport through shared movements. Journal of experimental social psychology, 48(1), 399-402.

– Princeton Neuroscientist Uri Hasson showed that when someone is telling a story or expressing emotions in a group, the brains of both speaker and listeners show a neural synchrony in conversation, which is like an overall, widespread synchrony across the brain.
2.5[5] Stephens, G. J., Silbert, L. J., & Hasson, U. (2010). Speaker–listener neural coupling underlies successful communication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(32), 14425-14430.

– When people were given $128 to donate to different charities, their MRI brain scans showed that more reward mechanisms in their brains sparked up than when a person receives money for his or herself.
3.2[1] Moll, J., Krueger, F., Zahn, R., Pardini, M., de Oliveira-Souza, R., & Grafman, J. (2006). Human fronto–mesolimbic networks guide decisions about charitable donation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103(42), 15623-15628.

– Spending money on others leads to greater happiness than spending money on one’s self.
3.2[2] Dunn, E. W., Aknin, L. B., & Norton, M. I. (2008). Spending money on others promotes happiness. Science, 319(5870), 1687-1688.

– Dr. George Vaillant summarized the outcome of his 60 years of studying 800 men and women in what makes humans flourish, saying, “The only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people,”.
3.7[1] Vaillant, G. (2002). Aging well: Surprising guideposts to a happier life. Scribe Publications.

– Positively connected people are happier and thus more productive.
3.7[2] Oswald, A. J., Proto, E., & Sgroi, D. (2009). Happiness and productivity (No. 4645). IZA discussion papers.

– When over a thousand highly successful professionals approaching retirement were interviewed, they were asked what motivated them most throughout their careers and overwhelmingly, they placed work friendships above financial gain and individual status.
3.7[6] Holahan, C. K., Sears, R. R., & Cronbach, L. J. (1995). The gifted group in later maturity (Vol. 6). Stanford University Press.

– Jane dutton explains that “any point of contact with another person can potentially be a high quality connection.
3.7[7] Dutton, J. E. (2003). Energize your workplace: How to create and sustain high-quality connections at work (Vol. 50, p. 2). John Wiley & Sons.

– For 32 years, doctors were collecting data from more than 12,000 citizens, and were able to show that our happiness depends not just on our own actions, thoughts and behaviors, but on the actions, thoughts and behaviors of the people to whom we’re directly connected, and on the people to whom they are connected, and so forth.
6.2[11] Christakis, N. A., & Fowler, J. H. (2007). The spread of obesity in a large social network over 32 years. New England journal of medicine, 357(4), 370-379.

– Social influence is all pervasive, social contagion happens without our awareness, and any change we wish to make must be supported by our environment.
6.2[12] Christakis, N. A., & Fowler, J. H. (2009). Connected: The surprising power of our social networks and how they shape our lives. Hachette Digital, Inc..

חיבור ובריאות

– Loneliness is as harmful as smoking 15 cigarettes a day or being an alcoholic, and is twice as deadly as obesity.
3.4[1] Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., & Layton, J. B. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: a meta-analytic review. PLoS medicine, 7(7), e1000316.

– 3.4[2] Cacioppo, J. (2014, February 16). AAAS 2014: Loneliness is a major health risk for older adults. Retrieved December 23, 2014, from http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2014/02/16/aaas-2014-loneliness-major-health-risk-older-adults

– If you have Positive Social Relations (and therefore higher levels of oxytocin), your wounds will heal better, you will experience higher pain relief, and your digestive system will work better.
3.4[3] Gouin, J. P., Carter, C. S., Pournajafi-Nazarloo, H., Glaser, R., Malarkey, W. B., Loving, T. J., … & Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K. (2010). Marital behavior, oxytocin, vasopressin, and wound healing. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 35(7), 1082-1090.
3.4[4] Heinrichs, M., Baumgartner, T., Kirschbaum, C., & Ehlert, U. (2003). Social support and oxytocin interact to suppress cortisol and subjective responses to psychosocial stress. Biological psychiatry, 54(12), 1389-1398.
3.4[5] Uvnas-Moberg, K., & Petersson, M. (2005). Oxytocin, a mediator of anti-stress, well-being, social interaction, growth and healing. Z Psychosom Med Psychother, 51(1), 57-80.
3.4[6] Yang, J. (1994). Intrathecal administration of oxytocin induces analgesia in low back pain involving the endogenous opiate peptide system. Spine, 19(8), 867-871.
3.4[7] Ohlsson, B., Björgell, O., Ekberg, O., & Darwiche, G. (2006). The oxytocin/vasopressin receptor antagonist atosiban delays the gastric emptying of a semisolid meal compared to saline in human. BMC gastroenterology, 6(1), 11.

– In a meta-analysis of 148 studies and over 308K (308,849) participants, it was found that there is a 50% increased likelihood of survival for participants that had stronger social relationships.
3.4[8] Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., & Layton, J. B. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: a meta-analytic review. PLoS medicine, 7(7), e1000316.

– An examination of 1,138 elderly folks (mean age of 79.6 SD=7.5) found that an increase of social activity was associated with a decrease in the rate of decline in global cognitive function.
3.4[9] James, B. D., Wilson, R. S., Barnes, L. L., & Bennett, D. A. (2011). Late-life social activity and cognitive decline in old age. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 17(06), 998-1005.

– Positive social interactions in the workplace have shown to increase employee health.
3.4[10] Heaphy, E. D., & Dutton, J. E. (2008). Positive social interactions and the human body at work: Linking organizations and physiology. Academy of Management Review, 33(1), 137-162.
*This fact is also in the “Connection & The Workplace” Section

– 972 medical students took personality tests and when they had their health status checked 30 years later, they found that students classified as "loners" had sixteen times more cancer than students who vented their emotions to friends.
3.4[11] Shaffer, J. W., Graves, P. L., Swank, R. T., & Pearson, T. A. (1987). Clustering of personality traits in youth and the subsequent development of cancer among physicians. Journal of behavioral medicine, 10(5), 441-447.

– Suicide, alcoholism and mental illness rates are much higher among people living alone, and loneliness is becoming an epidemic worldwide.
3.4[12] Killeen, Colin. "Loneliness: an epidemic in modern society." Journal of Advanced Nursing 28.4 (1998): 762-770.
3.4[13] Cacioppo, J. (2009, May 3). Epidemic of Loneliness. Retrieved December 23, 2014, from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/connections/200905/epidemic-loneliness

– If you have Positive Social Relations, you will have greater sexual arousal.
3.4[15] Bancroft, J. (2005). The endocrinology of sexual arousal. Journal of endocrinology, 186(3), 411-427.

– If you have Positive Social Relations, you will have a higher likelihood of bringing about an orgasm.
3.4[16] Marazziti, D., Dell'Osso, B., Baroni, S., Mungai, F., Catena, M., Rucci, P., … & Dell'Osso, L. (2006). A relationship between oxytocin and anxiety of romantic attachment. Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health, 2(1), 28.

חיבור ולמידה

– “Interaction and student cognitive engagement are critical for constructing new understanding and knowledge.”
Intro[1] Zhu, E. (2006). Interaction and cognitive engagement: An analysis of four asynchronous online discussions. Instructional Science, 34(6), 451-480.

– “Online discussions do improve students’ perceived learning.”
Intro[2] Wu, D., & Hiltz, S. R. (2004). Predicting learning from asynchronous online discussions. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 8(2), 139-152.

– Dopamine (that runs in our system when we're happy) doesn’t just make us feel good, it also turns on all the learning centers in our brains, allowing us to adapt better to any circumstance.
1.3[4] Wise, R. A. (2004). Dopamine, learning and motivation. Nature reviews neuroscience, 5(6), 483-494.

– Archaeologists believe that as humans began to live in larger groups, the social interactions became more complex, and that required greater mental capacity, which ultimately led to a bigger brain.
2.7[4] Reader, S. M., & Laland, K. N. (2002). Social intelligence, innovation, and enhanced brain size in primates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99(7), 4436-4441.

– “The average student cooperating performed about 2/3 of a SD above the average person within a competitive or individualistic setting “
3.9[2] Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1989). Cooperation and competition: Theory and research. Interaction Book Company.

– Professor David Baker founded a mass online game in which players decoded an AIDS protein in 3 weeks, that scientists were unable to decode for 15 years.
5.4[2] Khatib, F., DiMaio, F., Cooper, S., Kazmierczyk, M., Gilski, M., Krzywda, S., … & Foldit Void Crushers Group. (2011). Crystal structure of a monomeric retroviral protease solved by protein folding game players. Nature structural & molecular biology, 18(10), 1175-1177.

– Rob McEwen, the founder of Goldcorp, shared all of his company’s geological data on the web for the first ever crowdsourced goldmine challenge, in which participants found him $3.4B worth of gold.
5.4[3] Tapscott, D., & Williams, A. (2007, February 1). Innovation in the Age of Mass Collaboration. Retrieved January 7, 2015, from http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2007-02-01/innovation-in-the-age-of-mass-collaborationbusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice

– It took 85,000 people only 6 months to map Mars, at a faster rate than the images were coming in, and their work was “practically indistinguishable from the markings of a fully-trained Ph.D”.
5.4[4] Brown, D., & Webster, G. (2009, November 17). Retrieved January 7, 2015, from http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/nov/HQ_09-268_Be_a_Martian.html

– The Asch experiment suggests that at first, the subject believes the others are wrong but still goes along with them, then later, he starts questioning his own sense of judgment, and finally, the subject’s actual perception of what’s right or wrong begins to be distorted by the group.
6.2[1] Asch, S. E. (1951). Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgments. Groups, leadership, and men, 222-236.
6.2[2] Asch, S. E. (1955). Opinions and social pressure. Readings about the social animal, 17-26.
6.2[3] Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological monographs: General and applied, 70(9), 1-70.
6.2[4] Milgram, S. (1961). Nationality and conformity. Scientific American.
6.2[5]Pasupathi, M. (1999). Age differences in response to conformity pressure for emotional and nonemotional material. Psychology and Aging, 14(1), 170.
6.2[6] Cooper, H. M. (1979). Statistically combining independent studies: A meta-analysis of sex differences in conformity research. Journal of personality and social psychology, 37(1), 131.
6.2[7] Eagly, A. H. (1978). Sex differences in influenceability. Psychological Bulletin,85(1), 86.
6.2[8] Eagly, A. H., & Carli, L. L. (1981). Sex of researchers and sex-typed communications as determinants of sex differences in influenceability: a meta-analysis of social influence studies. Psychological Bulletin, 90(1), 1.
6.2[9] Bond, R., & Smith, P. B. (1996). Culture and conformity: A meta-analysis of studies using Asch's (1952b, 1956) line judgment task. Psychological bulletin,119(1), 111.

חיבור וסביבת העבודה

– Positively connected people receive higher job performance assessments from their supervisors.
3.7[3] Cropanzano, R., & Wright, T. A. (1999). A 5-year study of change in the relationship between well-being and job performance. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 51(4), 252.

– Positively connected people have more prestigious jobs.
3.7[4] Roberts, B. W., Caspi, A., & Moffitt, T. E. (2003). Work experiences and personality development in young adulthood. Journal of personality and social psychology, 84(3), 582.

– Positively connected people earn higher incomes.
3.7[5] Diener, E., Nickerson, C., Lucas, R. E., & Sandvik, E. (2002). Dispositional affect and job outcomes. Social Indicators Research, 59(3), 229-259.

– An experiment conducted by Professor Dan Ariely shows that acknowledgement and good relations in the workplace are good for business.
3.8[1] Ariely, D., Kamenica, E., & Prelec, D. (2008). Man's search for meaning: The case of Legos. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 67(3), 671-677.

– When organizations successfully engage their customers and their employees, they experience a 240% boost in performance-related business outcomes compared to an organization with neither engaged employees nor engaged customers.
3.8[2] Gallup. (2013). State of the American workplace. Washington, DC.

– Employees can work for longer hours with increased focus and under more difficult conditions when they have a foundation of positive social interactions.
3.8[3] Heaphy, E. D., & Dutton, J. E. (2008). Positive social interactions and the human body at work: Linking organizations and physiology. Academy of Management Review, 33(1), 137-162.

– A study of over 357 employees and 93 managers in 60 business units at a financial service company found that the greatest predictor of a team’s achievement was how the members felt about one another.
3.8[4] Campion, M. A., Papper, E. M., & Medsker, G. J. (1996). Relations between work team characteristics and effectiveness: A replication and extension.Personnel psychology, 49(2), 429-452.

– US corporations lose 360 billion dollars annually due to lost productivity from employees who are dissatisfied with their boss.
3.8[5] The High Cost of Disengaged Employees. (2005, April 15). Retrieved December 28, 2014, from http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/247/the-high-cost-of-disengaged-employees.aspx

– MIT researchers spent an entire year following 2,600 IBM employees, and they found that the more socially connected the IBM employees were, they better they performed, and that every added email between one worker to another was worth $948 in revenue.
3.8[6] Wu, L., Lin, C. Y., Aral, S., & Brynjolfsson, E. (2009, February). Value of social network–a large-scale analysis on network structure impact to financial revenue of information technology consultants. In The Winter Conference on Business Intelligence.

– In a meta-analysis of all the studies conducted on the Social Interdependence Theory, it was found that the average person who cooperated in their setting performed about 2/3 of a SD above the average person within a competitive or individualistic setting.
3.9[2] Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1989). Cooperation and competition: Theory and research. Interaction Book Company.

– Cooperative study (as opposed to competitive or individualistic study) results in: willingness to take on difficult tasks and persist despite difficulties; higher level reasoning, critical thinking and metacognitive thought; positive attitudes towards the tasks being completed and greater motivation to complete the task.
3.9[3] Gabbert, B., Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1986). Cooperative learning, group-to-individual transfer, process gain, and the acquisition of cognitive reasoning strategies. The Journal of Psychology, 120(3), 265-278.

– Once teamwork procedures have been mastered, teams outperform individuals working alone in almost every single task.
3.9[4] Ortiz, A. E., Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1996). The effect of positive goal and resource interdependence on individual performance. The Journal of Social Psychology, 136(2), 243-249.

– For random people to succeed in collaboration, participants need to get to know and trust each other, communicate accurately and unambiguously, accept and support each other, and resolve conflicts constructively.
3.9[5] Johnson, D. W. (1972). Reaching Out: Interpersonal Effectiveness and Self-Actualization.

– Positive Social Relations give a 240% boost in business performance.
5.4[1] Gallup. (2013). State of the American workplace. Washington, DC.

– prosocial bonuses in the form of donations to charity lead to happier and more satisfied employees at an Australian bank.
prosocial bonuses in the form of expenditures on teammates lead to better performance in both sports teams in Canada and pharmaceutical sales teams in Belgium. These results suggest that a minor adjustment to employee bonuses – shifting the focus from the self to others – can produce measurable benefits for employees and organizations
Anik L, Aknin LB, Norton MI, Dunn EW, Quoidbach J (2013) Prosocial Bonuses Increase Employee Satisfaction and Team Performance. PLoS ONE 8(9): e75509. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0075509

Connection and Relationships/Marriage

http://www.businessinsider.com/lasting-relationships-rely-on-traits-2015-11

Cooperation Rooted in our Nature

– Cooperation is central to human social behaviour. We propose that cooperation is intuitive because cooperative heuristics are developed in daily life where cooperation is typically advantageous. Our results provide convergent evidence that intuition supports cooperation in social dilemmas, and that reflection can undermine these cooperative impulses.
Rand, D. G., Greene, J. D., & Nowak, M. A. (2012). Spontaneous giving and calculated greed. Nature, 489(7416), 427-430.

שונות

– The very process of writing in itself encourages reflection which helps promote higher level learning such as analysis, synthesis, evaluation as well as clear and precise thinking.
Intro[3] Newman, D. R., Johnson, C., Webb, B., & Cochrane, C. (1997). Evaluating the quality of learning in computer supported co‐operative learning. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 48(6), 484-495.]

– Dieting, in the U.S., is a 50 Trillion Dollar scam.
1.4[1] Mann, T., Tomiyama, A. J., Westling, E., Lew, A. M., Samuels, B., & Chatman, J. (2007). Medicare's search for effective obesity treatments: diets are not the answer. American Psychologist, 62(3), 220.

– From 1967 to 2000, for every 1 study on well-being, satisfaction, joy, productivity, etc., you get 21 studies on depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, neurosis and so forth.
1.4[2] Myers, D. G., & Diener, E. (1997). The science of happiness. Futurist, 31(5), 27.

– In a study, a camera was locked on the subject’s eye to track its movement, and it showed that positivity created a wider scope of what people were scanning for in their environment. In other words, we actually see more when we are positive.
2.3[5] Isaacowitz, D. M., Wadlinger, H. A., Goren, D., & Wilson, H. R. (2006). Selective preference in visual fixation away from negative images in old age? An eye-tracking study. Psychology and aging, 21(1), 40.

– Longitudinal studies have shown that positive emotions play a considerable role in building psychological resilience, and generally expanding your range of thoughts and actions to choose from in different situations.
2.3[9] Fredrickson, B. L., Tugade, M. M., Waugh, C. E., & Larkin, G. R. (2003). What good are positive emotions in crisis? A prospective study of resilience and emotions following the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11th, 2001. Journal of personality and social psychology, 84(2), 365.

– A Harvard research shows that 47% of the time you’re doing something, you’re thinking about something else.
2.3[10] Killingsworth, M. A., & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science, 330(6006), 932-932.

– Trying to forcefully “be positive” is shown to be corrosive to our cardiovascular system.
2.3[11] Steptoe, A., Wardle, J., & Marmot, M. (2005). Positive affect and health-related neuroendocrine, cardiovascular, and inflammatory processes. Proceedings of the National academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102(18), 6508-6512.

– “In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst, it’s is a real tragedy.”
2.4[2] Wilde, O. (1893). Lady Windermere's fan: a play about a good woman. E. Mathews and J. Lane.

– Hhypnotherapist, Milton Erikson would make a twisted path in the snow to observe others following in his footsteps, instead of following the straight road they knew lay beneath the snow.
2.8[1] Erickson, M. H., Rossi, E. L., & Rossi, S. I. (1976). Hypnotic realities: The induction of clinical hypnosis and forms of indirect suggestion. Irvington.

– Neurons that fire together wire together, which basically means that if you respond to a social situation (or any situation) in a way that you know is wrong, in a way that you feel you can’t control, it simply means that you are addicted to that emotional state, that you have a set path of neurons linking that certain incident to your automatic response.
2.8[2] Keysers, C., & Perrett, D. I. (2004). Demystifying social cognition: a Hebbian perspective. Trends in cognitive sciences, 8(11), 501-507.
2.8[3] Boahen, K. (2005). Neuromorphic microchips. Scientific American, 292(5), 56-63.
Neuro ties CAN be broken, so if you practice something over and over again, you’re rewiring your brain.
2.8[4] Johansen-Berg, H. (2007). Structural plasticity: rewiring the brain. Current biology, 17(4), R141-R144.

– Within a month about 10,000 neural connections are made.
2.8[5] Goleman, D. (2007). Social intelligence. Random house.

– Over about 4 months, the pathways of neural connections become locked in.
2.8[6] Allman, J. M., Hakeem, A., Erwin, J. M., Nimchinsky, E., & Hof, P. (2001). The anterior cingulate cortex. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences,935(1), 107-117.

– In a study of children aged 5-10 the sole ambition in life for over 40% of the participants was wealth and fame.
3.2[3] Perry, K. (2014, August 5). One in five children just want to be rich when they grow up. Retrieved December 23, 2014, from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11014591/One-in-five-children-just-want-to-be-rich-when-they-grow-up.html

– About 50% of scientific data is unexpected, including the discovery of mirror neurons, penicillin, and even the microwave.
3.6[1] Dunbar, K., & Fugelsang, J. (2005). Causal thinking in science: How scientists and students interpret the unexpected.
3.6[2] Patel, Tanu. (2011). Mirror Neurons: Recognition, Interaction, Understanding. Berkeley Scientific Journal, 14(2). our_bsj_11711. Retrieved from: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6kv8t54t
3.6[3] Fleming, A. (1929). On the antibacterial action of cultures of a penicillium, with special reference to their use in the isolation of B. influenzae. British journal of experimental pathology, 10(3), 226.
3.6[4] Microwave oven. (n.d.). Retrieved December 23, 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_oven

– two-thirds of the neurons in the amygdala, which has a major role in our decision making and emotional reactions, are designed to respond to bad news.
4.1[1] Hanson, R. (2010, October 26). Confronting the Negativity Bias. Retrieved December 29, 2014, from http://www.rickhanson.net/how-your-brain-makes-you-easily-intimidated/

– The average American child watches 200,000 violent acts and 16,000 murders on television by the time they’re 18.
4.2[1] Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Children, violence, and the media: a report for parents and policy makers. September 14, 1999. Accessed 14 November 2014. Previously available at: http://judiciary.senate.gov/oldsite/mediavio.htm.

– Teenagers are going on shooting sprees.
4.2[2] List of school shootings in the United States. (n.d.). Retrieved December 30, 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States

– Bullying is turning into an epidemic at schools.
4.2[3] School Bullying Statistics. (n.d.). Retrieved January 5, 2015, from http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/school-bullying-statistics.html

– There are approximately 240 billion friendships on facebook.
5.2[1] Facebook Statistics. (n.d.). Retrieved January 5, 2015, from http://www.statisticbrain.com/facebook-statistics/

– Twitter has almost 600 million active users, and about 9100 tweets a second.
5.2[2] Twitter Statistics. (n.d.). Retrieved January 5, 2015, from http://www.statisticbrain.com/twitter-statistics/

– Every person is connected to every other person in the world in just under 5 degrees of separation.
5.2[3] Markoff, J., & Sengupta, S. (2011). Separating you and me? 4.74 degrees. The New York Times, 21.

– It takes 9 countries to manufacture a pair of jeans.
5.2[4] Mansour, J. (2008, November 25). Blue jeans provide microcosm of globalized economy. http://knowledgenetwork.thunderbird.edu/research/2008/11/25/blue-jeans-illustrate-need-for-global-mindset/ Retrieved March 7,2012.

– The 50 most threatening global risks are linked together by 529 connections.
5.2[5] WEF. (2013). Global risks report. World economic forum. Retrieved 07 02, 2014, from http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GlobalRisks_Report_2013.pdf

– We have lost 52% of wildlife since 1970.
5.3[1] McLellan, R. (2014). Living planet report 2014. WWF–World Wide Fund for Nature.

– By 2020, the number one leading cause for disease in developed countries will be depression.
5.3[2] Mental Health: A Call to Action by World Health Ministers. WHO, 2001.

– Only 5% of the various tips and tools for happiness and success actually work for people in the long run.
6.1[1]Scherer, K. (2008, April 21). NZ Herald. Retrieved January 8, 2015, from http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10504853

– Subjects’ brain scans show that their idea of what’s pleasurable (in this case, wine) can be created and altered by social influence.
6.2[10] Plassmann, H., O'Doherty, J., Shiv, B., & Rangel, A. (2008). Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(3), 1050-1054.

הגדרות

– “Positive affectivity” is the technical term for a positive emotion.
2.3[1] Watson, D. (2002). Positive affectivity. Handbook of positive psychology, 106-119.

– “Hedonic Adaptation” basically means that we’re like “pleasure addicts” – we adjust to the pleasure we get very quickly and so we keep treading a hedonic treadmill.
2.4[1] Appley, M. H.: 1971, (ed.) Adaptation-Level Theory (New York, Academic Press).

– State of “Flow” is when we are so involved in the present activity that we seem to experience timelessness.
Hungarian psychology professor, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the father of the “flow model” explains it through the balance between challenge and skill, where you enter the flow channel when both your challenge and skill levels are matched and high.
2.4[5] Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Csikzentmihaly, M. (1991). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience (Vol. 41). New York: HarperPerennial.

– “Positivity Resonance” is what happens between two or more individuals when they share positive emotions in ways that amplify the level of positivity they had to begin with.
2.5[1] Fredrickson, B. L. (2013). Positive emotions broaden and build. Advances in experimental social psychology, 47, 1-53.

– Oxytocin is referred to as “the love hormone,” and is linked to happy feelings and other positive effects such as lowering stress, relieving pain, reducing social fears and more.
2.5[4] Feldman, R., Gordon, I., & Zagoory-Sharon, O. (2010). The cross-generation transmission of oxytocin in humans. Hormones and Behavior, 58(4), 669-676.

– Social intelligence is the capacity to effectively negotiate complex social relationships, with your boss or colleague, or even your spouse.
2.7[1] Humphrey, N. (2003). The inner eye: Social intelligence in evolution.
2.7[2] Goleman, D. (2007). Social intelligence. Random house.
2.7[3] Thorndike, E. L. (1920). Intelligence and its uses. Harper's magazine.

– Social Pain is the feeling we get when we are insulted or rejected, and it was found to activate the same regions of the brain as physical pain.
3.4[14] Eisenberger, N. I., & Lieberman, M. D. (2004). Why rejection hurts: a common neural alarm system for physical and social pain. Trends in cognitive sciences,8(7), 294-300.

– Social Interdependence Theory is a cross of theory, research and practice, formulated in 1949 by Morton Deutsch with over 750 research studies on the topic. The premise of the theory is the relative merits of cooperative, competitive and individualistic efforts and under what condition each is appropriate.
3.9[1] Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (2005). New developments in social interdependence theory. Genetic, social, and general psychology monographs,131(4), 285-358.