Why We're All Addicted to Texts, Twitter and Google

Do you ever feel like you are addicted to email or twitter or texting? Do you find it impossible to ignore your email if you see that there are messages in your inbox? Do you think that if you could ignore your incoming email or messages you might actually be able to get something done at work? You are right!

The culprit is dopamine — Dopamine was "discovered" in 1958 by Arvid Carlsson and Nils-Ake Hillarp at the National Heart Institute of Sweden. Dopamine is created in various parts of the brain and is critical in all sorts of brain functions, including thinking, moving, sleeping, mood, attention, motivation, seeking and reward.

Pleasure vs. seeking — You may have heard that dopamine controls the "pleasure" systems of the brain: that dopamine makes you feel enjoyment, pleasure, and therefore motivates you to seek out certain behaviors, such as food, sex, and drugs. Recent research is changing this view. Instead of dopamine causing you to experience pleasure, the latest research shows that dopamine causes seeking behavior. Dopamine causes you to want, desire, seek out, and search. It increases your general level of arousal and your goal-directed behavior. From an evolutionary stand-point this is critical. The dopamine seeking system keeps you motivated to move through your world, learn, and survive. It's not just about physical needs such as food, or sex, but also about abstract concepts. Dopamine makes you curious about ideas and fuels your searching for information. Research shows that it is the opioidsystem (separate from dopamine) that makes us feel pleasure.

Wanting vs. liking — According to researcher Kent Berridge, these two systems, the "wanting" (dopamine) and the "liking" (opioid) are complementary. The wanting system propels you to action and the liking system makes you feel satisfied and therefore pause your seeking. If your seeking isn't turned off at least for a little while, then you start to run in an endless loop. The dopamine system is stronger than the opioid system. You tend to seek more than you are satisfied. Evolution again — seeking is more likely to keep you alive than sitting around in a satisfied stupor. 

Dopamine loops — With the internet, twitter, and texting you now have almost instant gratification of your desire to seek. Want to talk to someone right away? Send a text and they respond in a few seconds. Want to look up some information? Just type your request into google. Want to see what your colleagues are up to? Go to Linked In. It's easy to get in a dopamine induced loop. Dopamine starts you seeking, then you get rewarded for the seeking which makes you seek more. It becomes harder and harder to stop looking at email, stop texting, or stop checking your cell phone to see if you have a message or a new text.

More, more, more — Interestingly brain scan research shows that the brain has more activity when people are ANTICIPATING a reward than getting one. Research on rats shows that if you destroy dopamine neurons, rats can walk, chew, and swallow, but will starve to death even when food is right next to them. They have lost the anticipation and desire to go get the food. Although wanting and liking are related, research also shows that the dopamine system doesn't have satiety built in. It is possible for the dopamine system to keep saying "more more more", causing you to keep seeking even when you have found the information. How many times have you searched for something on google, found the answer, and yet realize a half hour later that you are still online looking for more information?

Unpredictability is key — Dopamine is also stimulated by unpredictability. When something happens that is not exactly predictable, that stimulates the dopamine system. Our emails and twitters and texts show up, but you don't know exactly when they will, or who they will be from. It's unpredictable. This is exactly what stimulates the dopamine system. (For those of you reading this who are "old school" psychologists, you may remember "variable reinforcement schedules". Dopamine is involved in variable reinforcement schedules. Another reason these schedules are so powerful).

Pavlovian cues — The dopamine system is especially sensitive to "cues" that a reward is coming. If there is a small, specific cue that signifies that something is going to happen, that sets off our dopamine system. So when there is a sound when a text message or email arrives, or a visual cue, that enhances the addictive effect.

140 characters is even more addictive — And the dopamine system is most powerfully stimulated when the information coming in is small so that it doesn't full satisfy. A short text or twitter (can only be 140 characters!) is ideally suited to send your dopamine system raging.

Not without costs — This constant stimulation of the dopamine system can be exhausting. And the constant switching of attention makes it hard to get anything accomplished. Can you do anything to get out of a dopamine loop? Or prevent getting in one in the first place?

Turn off the cues — One of the most important things you can do to prevent or stop a dopamine loop, and be more productive is to turn off the cues. Adjust the settings on your cell phone and on your laptop, desktop or tablet so that you don't receive the automatic notifications. Automatic notifications are touted as wonderful features of hardware, software, and apps. But they are actually causing you to be like a rat in a cage. If you want to get work done you need to turn off as many auditory and visual cues as possible. It's the best way to prevent and break the dopamine loops.

What do you think? How do you deal with dopamine loops? Are you willing to turn off your cues?

Here's the research reference:

Kent C. Berridge and Terry E. Robinson, What is the role of dopamine in reward: hedonic impact, reward learning, or incentive salience?: Brain Research Reviews, 28, 1998. 309–369.

This article has been taken from Psychologytoday

10 privacy settings every Facebook user must know

Though there are several security threats in using social networking sites, still people are amazingly crazy about it. These days FACEBOOK has become the most demanding site for almost every age people. By using Facebook privacy policy one can fine-tune the privacy of the photos, their status updates, and other stuffs. Even you can block people you don’t wanna be in touch with. Facebook’s privacy policy covers almost all the little issues of your account that matters to you. Facebook has its own default privacy settings for its users. But these are not just enough for every user & one may opt to make changes to it. To make you more secure here is my tips:

1. Profile editing: Editing the profile of your Facebook account is the most important thing, where you must know how to manage your personal information like your date of birth, your address, your contact number and stuff. These are the things which are needed to be made private. These issues are essential just to keep yourself away from strangers. So, in your privacy setting, select “friends” in place of public. This is a kind of primary precaution. Here you can also make your profile visible to some selected people & even you can restrict some particular people from viewing your profile contents.

2. Remove yourself from Facebook & Google search results: Most of us want keep our personal life secret due to various reasons. This above mentioned setting is very much useful to them. To make yourself unavailable in the Facebook search you have to go through the following path.

Privacy setting -> How you connect

There are several options available. You can manage them according to your wish. Some people enjoy when they find themselves searching in some search engines like Google, yahoo, Bing etc. But the fact is, sometimes it puts you in some kind of serious problems. So it is always a better option to make you unavailable in the search engines. This can be done by removing yourself from the index of the search engines. Do this by simply deselecting the box of Public search result. The path for this is given below.

Privacy setting ->Apps & websites-> Edit setting ->Public search-> Edit setting

3. Avoid the notorious photo tagging: Many times people get their relationships in some kind of problems just thanks  to the photos of Facebook they are tagged in. Here you may blame their trust on themselves but still this factor is harmful. Though there are several ways to overcome these factors but the simplest way is to avoid showing compromising photos to friends. The path is as follows.

                               Privacy setting -> custom->only me

Remember, this will block all people from viewing any images or videos that you’ve been tagged in. Many Facebook users want their friends to see the photos they’ve been tagged in though. 

4. Protect your personal album& existing photos: You should make your existing photos and albums private. You will never want to share your private photos with all the people, neither even with friends in some cases. So it’s an essential step to make those things private or available to only friends. You can even set privacy per album, which is great.

5. Restrict your apps to use your information: It’s important to understand what of your information applications can access. The more restrictive you make your profile settings, the less information that’s available to applications.

6. Make your contact private: Many people use Facebook for their professional as well as personal use.  When someone start approving friend requests from the people that he doesn’t have strong relationships with, then it becomes more important to limit the visibility of contact details immediately.

7. Avoid frustrating posts on your timeline: Sometimes what happens, after a long time when you come back to your room and check your Facebook account, hoping that there will be a funny comment on your wall to cheer you up, or a picture comment telling you how pretty you are or see a friend request?  But what you see is just weird. Another thing what happens; you just saw a post of your friend showing something exceptional or may be vulgar and when you tried to hide it just posted on your timeline. Try to avoid these types of issues.

8. Keep your friends’ list private: Some of us want to show others that they have huge number of friends or how famous they are but some just don’t. Those who don’t like to show their friend to others have a justified reason behind it. Because sometime what happens, one of your friend just opens your friend list and send friend request to someone anonymously, it may be your girlfriend’s name. To protect your friend list, the path is as follows,

Go to find friends -> Manage friend list -> Edit

9. Instant personalization: This is a service that lets third-party websites to personalize your experience, which is nice, but it also allows access to your personal data which is harmful.

It also let you see relevant information about your friends when you arrive on the partner websites. It is similar to how News feed surfaces the people and things you care about. Instant personalization helps you find friends and interesting content on other websites. They've partnered with a few companies, like Pandora, Bing, Yelp, Rotten Tomatoes, Clicker, Scribd, Docs &TripAdvisor, to make these sites more fun and useful the moment you arrive. They impress you by immediately playing the music you like or displaying friends' reviews or stuff.

10.  Enabling “HTTPS” or Secure browsing: Here you can set up secure browsing or login alerts. Secure browsing browse Facebook securely when possible. And it sends you a mail when you are logged in from a new computer or new computer device. When someone hacks into your account or data no privacy setting in this world can help or protect you. While enabling https service, you can make thing harder for someone connected to the same network to hack your password or data. “HTTPS” is useful to online security on all web services not just Facebook.

These are the important privacy policies that matters a lot while using Facebook. Keep these factors in mind while browsing FB and be secure.

Amazing:Virgin births discovered in wild snakes

A form of virgin birth has been found in wild vertebrates for the first time.

Researchers in the US caught pregnant females from two snake species and genetically analysed the litters.

That proved the North American pit vipers reproduced without a male, a phenomenon called facultative parthenogenesis that has previously been found only in captive species.

Scientists say the findings could change our understanding of animal reproduction and vertebrate evolution.

Continue reading the main story

It was thought to be extremely rare for a normally sexual species to reproduce asexually.

First identified in domestic chickens, such "virgin births" have been reported in recent years in a few snake, shark, lizard and bird species.

Crucially though, all such virgin births have occurred in captivity, to females kept away from males.

Virgin births in vertebrates in general have been viewed as "evolutionary novelties", said Warren Booth, from the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, US.

Professor Booth is lead author of a paper published in the Royal Society's Biological Letters that challenges this label.

He and his collaborators investigated virgin births in wild populations of two geographically separated and long-studied species of snake.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

The frequency is what really shocked us”

Dr Warren BoothUniversity of Tulsa

They captured pregnant copperhead and cottonmouth female pit-vipers from the field, where males were present.

The snakes gave birth, allowing the scientists to study the physical and genetic characteristics of the litters.

Of the 22 copperheads, the scientists found one female that must have had a virgin birth.

Another single virgin birth occurred within the 37 cottonmouth litters.

"I think the frequency is what really shocked us," said Prof Booth.

"That's between 2.5 and 5% of litters produced in these populations may be resulting from parthenogenesis.

"That's quite remarkable for something that has been considered an evolutionary novelty," he said.

Sex or no sex

A virgin birth, or parthenogenesis, is when an egg grows and develops without being fertilised by sperm.

It results in offspring that only have their mother's genetic material; no fatherly contribution is required.

This is not uncommon in invertebrates such as aphids, bees and ants.

It also happens in a few all-female species of lizard; geckos and whiptails for example. But here it occurs across a generation; all females reproduce asexually via a process called obligate parthenogenesis.

But asexual reproduction by a normally sexual vertebrate species is still rare, having been reported in under 0.1% of species.

It was only in the mid-1990s that virgin births began to be documented in captive snakes, followed by a captive giant lizard in 2006 and a captive shark in 2007.

All-female species, such as some whiptail lizards, reproduce asexually

To date this now includes around 10 species of snakes including a couple of boas, and a python, four species of shark, and several monitor lizards, including the endangered Komodo dragon.

Recently the zebra finch and Chinese painted quail were added to the list. All were kept in isolation in unnatural conditions and away from any males.

So to find asexual reproduction in two species of snake in the wild on their first attempt was "astounding", according to Prof Booth and his collaborators.

Virgin births should no longer be viewed as "some rare curiosity outside the mainstream of evolution," he said.

Evolutionary dead-end?

It remains unclear whether the female snakes actively select to reproduce this way, or whether the virgin births are triggered by some other factor, such as a virus or bacterial infection.

"Any answer is pure speculation at this point," says Prof Booth.

In captivity, two sharks, and three snakes, have been shown to have had multiple virgin births, producing more than one litter via facultative parthenogenesis.

As yet, it also remains unclear whether the offspring of these wild virgin births can themselves go on to have normal, or virgin births of their own.

In captive snakes studied so far, offspring have so far not been proved viable, that is capable of surviving and reproducing.

Cottonmouth pit vipers are capable of virgin births in the wild

However, earlier this year Prof Booth and colleagues reported that a checkered gartersnake that has had consecutive virgin births, appears to have produced viable male offspring.

Parthenogenicly born copperheads and cottonmouths are also currently being raised and "in the next two to three years we will know if they are indeed viable," said Prof Booth.

"If they cannot survive and reproduce, then this is a reproductive dead-end.

"However, if they are healthy and can reproduce, that opens an entirely new avenue for research," he said.

Being able to switch from sexual to asexual reproduction could be advantageous; in the absence of males a female could still give birth and start a new, albeit inbred, population.

Her genes could still be passed on via her fertile male offspring.

Scientists believe that facultative parthenogenesis is more common in some lineages such as reptiles and sharks.

However it is unlikely that similar virgin births will be found among placental mammals, which include all the mammals aside from the platypus and echidnas.

That is because mammals require a process called genomic imprinting to reproduce, where a set of genes from one parent dominates over the other. The interaction between the two sets of parental genes is required for embryos to develop normally.

==============================================================================

Single sex

• Watch the miraculous offspring of a lone dragon
• Marvel at an aphid creating clone daughters
• See the lesbian legacy of the whiptail lizards

These news has been taken from BBC

Words Have Power

      Words cannot change reality, but they can change how people perceive reality. Words create filters through which people view the world around them. A single word can make the difference between liking a person and disliking that person. If a friend describes the person you are about to meet for the first time as untrustworthy, you will be predisposed to view that person as untrustworthy, regardless of the person's actual level of trustworthiness. The single word "untrustworthy" creates a filter, or primacy effect, that predisposes you to view the person you are about to meet as untrustworthy. Thereafter, you will tend to view everything that person says or does as untrustworthy.

Overcoming negative primacy is difficult but not impossible. The more times you meet the "untrustworthy" person and do not experience instances of untrustworthiness, the more likely you are to view the "untrustworthy" person as trustworthy, thus overriding negative primacy. However, you are less likely to meet an untrustworthy person a second time because you perceive that person as untrustworthy, thereby reducing the probability of overcoming negative primacy.

Conversely, if before meeting a person for the first time, a friend tells you that the person you are about to meet is friendly, then you will likely view that person as friendly, regardless of the person's degree of friendliness. If you meet the "friendly" person several times and do not experience friendliness, then you will tend to excuse away the unfriendly behavior. Such excuses might include: "He must be having a bad day," "I must have caught her at a bad time," or "Everybody has a bad day once in awhile." An unfriendly person initially described as friendly gains an advantage from positive primacy because people tend to allow the unfriendly person multiple opportunities to demonstrate friendliness despite numerous displays of unfriendly behavior.

In today's busy world, people typically do not consult multiple news sources to get a balanced view of world events; therefore, people tend to perceive world events through the filter created by a single newspaper, television newscast, or radio report. Media has the power to influence the way in which people view world events. If a media outlet, especially a reputable one, introduces a bias into the news story, the readers or listeners will tend to view the event through the biased filter established by the media report. The filter created by the biased news report will remain in place until the readers are exposed to other more balanced news reports; however, this is unlikely to occur because people generally do not consult multiple news sources.

I took advantage of the primacy effect at an early age. I was infatuated with Paula. She was the second prettiest girl I had seen since I crossed the threshold of puberty. I wanted to spend time with her. I devised a plan to meet her without subjecting myself to social humiliation. Beth was Paula's closest friend. I knew if I told Beth that I thought Paula was cute, had a good sense of humor, and that I wanted to take her out on a date, the message would be conveyed to Paula in a matter of minutes. I knew Paula would be faced with two options. If she was predisposed to like me then the next time she saw me, she would have a favorable opinion of me because she would see me as a person who liked her. If she did not like me, then she would avoid me at all cost because she would know my intentions to ask her out on a date. The next day at school, I saw Paula walking down the hallway. Our eyes met. She smiled. I had my answer. The primacy effect predisposed her to like me before I spoke my first word to her.

In my early days as an investigator, I fell victim to the primacy effect. I interviewed a suspect who I thought kidnapped a 4 year-old girl. Before talking to the suspect, I had already made up my mind that he was the kidnapper. Consequently, everything the suspect said or did, I viewed as indications of guilt, despite ample evidence to the contrary. The more pressure I put on the suspect, the more nervous he became not because he was guilty but because I did not believe him and he thought he would go to prison for something he did not do. The more nervous the suspect became, the more I thought he kidnapped the young girl and the more pressure I applied. Needless to say, the interview spiraled out of control. In the end, I was embarrassed when the real kidnapper was caught. I suspect that negative primacy is at the root of many false confessions. 

If the word "interrogation" were used instead of the word "interview," the likelihood increases that investigators would assume that the person being questioned is guilty. Interviewers view interrogations as adversarial and, at some point prior to interrogations, they either consciously or unconsciously form the opinion that the interviewee is guilty to some degree. If this were not the case, then the interviewers would be conducting interviews not interrogations. 

The interview/interrogation paradigm creates two negative primacy filters. The first negative primacy filter is that the interrogation will be confrontational. If interviewers go into the interrogation with the preconceived notion that the suspect will be confrontational, then the interrogation will likely become confrontational because the interviewers will tend to interpret anything the suspect says or does through the filter of confrontation. Interviewers begin interrogations with a heightened sensitivity to confrontation; therefore, the slightest provocation by the suspect triggers responses that are more aggressive because interviewers anticipate confrontations. The same actions that interviewers perceive as aggressive during interrogations would probably be judged as less aggressive or neutral during interviews because interviewers perceive interviews as non-confrontational. The second negative filter is that interviewers will likely view the interviewees as guilty before the interrogations commence and perceive everything the interviewees say or do as support of their guilt and discount or excuse away any evidence that does not support their preconceived notion of guilt.

An alternative approach to the interview/interrogation paradigm places the inquiry process on a resistance continuum. At one end of the continuum, interviewees offer information without resistance. At the other end, interviewees are reluctant to provide information or fall silent. This concept allows investigators to glide back and forth along the resistance continuum using a succession of specialized interviewing techniques to overcome varying degrees of resistance. Interviewers need only focus on the appropriate selection of interviewing techniques to overcome resist¬ance from witnesses and suspects alike. As the interviewee's resistance increases or decreases, the interviewer adjusts the intensity of the inquiry by selecting the suitable interviewing technique to overcome the interviewee's resistance.

One way to minimize the primacy effect is to develop competing hypotheses. Developing competing hypotheses reduces the primacy effect. A competing hypothesis is an educated guess that supposes a different outcome based on the same or similar set of circumstances. For example, when I speak to someone my initial hypothesis is that the person is telling the truth. A competing hypothesis posits the person is lying. During the conversation, I seek evidence to support the initial hypothesis or the competing hypothesis. Rarely does all the evidence support the initial hypothesis or the competing hypothesis because honest people often say and do things that make them look dishonest and, conversely, dishonest people often say and do things that make them look honest. In the end, however, the weight of the evidence should support one hypothesis over the other.

The next time you conduct an interview, meet a new colleague or buy a new product think about how you came to form your opinion about that person or product. Chances are high that your opinions were formed by primacy. New employees can enhance or hurt their career opportunities depending on the first impressions they make on their employers or coworkers. The acceptance of employees who transfer from one office to another office often depends on the reputation that precedes their arrival. The new brand of tube of tooth paste you bought has to be good because 3 out of 4 dentists recommend that particular brand. Words have power. Choose them wisely.

Psychologytoday.com

Apple Wins: Proves Samsung Infringed Patents As Jury Awards $1B+ In Damages

             Apple has won most of its case against Samsung. The jury found in Apple’s favor on an overwhelming majority of claims. Samsung was found to have infringed six of seven Apple patents. Conversely, the jury found against Samsung on almost all claims, including arguments that Apple’s patents were invalid.

The jury also found that Samsung’s infringement was “willful” in several cases and awarded Apple more than $1 billion in damages. By the same token Samsung mostly drew a blank on its claims and was awarded $0 damages.

The Korean handset maker will certainly appeal. But the outlook for success on appeal is limited. The verdict vindicates Apple’s contention that Samsung “shamelessly copied” the iPhone. It’s a major victory for Apple. It’s a humiliating defeat for Samsung’s legal counsel.

It will take a little while to fully digest the outcome and analyze what it will mean for Samsung’s handsets, for Android more broadly and for the industry as a whole. Some people will lament the outcome as striking a blow against competition. By contrast others will argue that the decision now forces Apple’s competitors to genuinely “innovate.”

I expected a positive outcome for Apple but not one quite this lopsided. Samsung was almost entirely shut out, although some of its devices were deemed not to have infringed Apple patents. Apple failed to prove that Samsung’s patents were invalid and it failed on antitrust claims against Samsung. The Galaxy Tab was also found not to have infringed the iPad’s design. Otherwise it was a massive legal victory for Cupertino in a very important and closely watched case.

There will now be extensive analysis of what the case means. Each aspect of the verdict will likely be dissected and discussed. We’ll also offer our thoughts later as we reflect on the outcome. With just over two days of deliberation the jury appears to have reached its verdict much more quickly than expected given the complexity of the claims and issues.

Below is how the reading of the verdict unfolded in more or less real time. I wasn’t present in the courtroom but relied on Twitter, CNET and TheVerge’s live in-courtroom reporting.

The verdict as it unfolded:

The jury found that Samsung did infringe at least some of Apple’s patents. The verdict is being read right now.

More Samsung infringement found, including the Galaxy 10.1. However not all Samsung devices found to be infringing.

The verdict is moving claim by patent claim through each patent and set of Samsung devices allegedly infringing. This is so far a victory for Apple. Most of the verdict is going its way.

More infringement found on Apple’s “381 patent.” No Samsung devices spared on this one.

This is turning out to be the mixed verdict I predicted earlier, but mostly positive for Apple. Samsung’s claims have yet to be read however.

Galaxy S/S 4G smartphone found to be infringing. Samsung is taking a major hit here, though some devices escaping.

So far 7 patent claims have been addressed. In almost every case some Samsung infringement has been found.

Willful infringement? The jury says “yes” for most of the Samsung devices. This has big damages implications.

All of Apple’s patents were found to be valid by the jury. Samsung had claimed that some were invalid. That defense failed apparently.

So far about 75 percent of what Apple claimed has been vindicated by this jury. The court is still going through the individual claims and questions in Apple’s case. The jury has yet to get to Samsung’s claims.

Apple is losing on some of its “trade dress claims.” No on to damages.

The jury has awarded $1.05 billion in damages to Apple. That’s less important to Apple than the idea that its claims were vindicated and that Samsung may have to change some of its designs.

Now Samsung’s claims against Apple are being addressed. So far the jury is finding “no” or against Samsung. Samsung has lost so far on all of its claims against Apple. Apple did not prove Samsung’s patents were invalid however.

Apple did not prove antitrust violations against Samsung. So it didn’t succeed across the board. But Samsung won almost nothing. If it were a baseball game the score would be Apple 10, Samsung 1.

The complete story has been taken from MarketingLand.Com