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June 5, 2014

How Does Psychological Distance Effect Us?

Two Guys on Your Head

By: Rebecca McInroy

The idea of distance conjures up many images in our minds. We might be thinking of how wonderful it will be when we are retired and have time to spend with our loved ones, do some traveling, or play 18 holes of golf on a weekday. Or perhaps when we think of distance, we think of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and how far away the conflicts are from us.

For Art Markman and Robert Duke, how we process distance is particularly important, because it clues researchers in to how we think and make decisions as a result of distance.

May 29, 2014

Theory of Mind

Two Guys on Your Head

By: Rebecca McInroy

Who knows what? Essentially, this is the basis of the complex concept of Theory of Mind, which is very misleadingly labeled. No, it’s not a theory that explains how mind works, as you might assume by the term, Theory of Mind. It’s a process within our minds that allows us to separate and distinguish between what we know ourselves and what we know that other people know, or don’t know. It’s a skill that is critical for accomplishing effective social interaction in the world. A better term might be Theory of Other’s Minds.

Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke do a wonderful job of explaining and dissecting this important skill in this week’s episode of Two Guys on Your Head. Have a listen and get smarter.

May 22, 2014

Online Dating

Two Guys on Your Head

By: Rebecca McInroy

In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke take us through the ins-and-outs of dating.

May 1, 2014

The Persistence of False Beliefs

Two Guys on Your Head

By: Rebecca McInroy

Our world these days is heavily laden with a constant flow of information moving through our minds.  It’s unavoidable.  How do we determine what of that steady information stream we will choose to believe?  Once we’ve made that choice, what if we later find out that the information was false?  How do we shed false beliefs?  It’s a very biologically expensive thing to demand from our brains to change our beliefs.

On this week’s show, the good doctors, Art Markman and Bob Duke, discuss with Rebecca and analyze the process of belief formation and why our false beliefs are so persistently insistent that we reconsider them. In short form, our beliefs inherently require a certain amount of faith in the validity of the evidence that we recognize as support for those beliefs.  An idea creates an imprint in our minds of the thought patterns that we use to justify our commitment to accepting a belief as true or false, whatever the case may be.

If we learn information later that challenges the validity of our belief, or if we downright learn that the belief was, in fact, false, we are then required to use our biological energy to create a new thought pattern imprint over the old one.  It’s energy expensive.

The easiest way to view the world and the variety of differing beliefs or opinions in it is to identify ourselves with the people who share our beliefs.  We tend to divide the world into two categories – 1) the people who share our beliefs, and 2) the idiots.  While this may conserve energy, which it does (and we are instinctively programmed to conserve our energy,) the more energy expensive option of considering and learning to appreciate differing beliefs or opinions is more socially appropriate.  You’ll have more friends if you are open to accepting differing beliefs, essentially.

Our current and rapidly developing technology-loaded existence can be very isolating.  Society, these days, doesn’t require much confrontation with differing beliefs that will challenge our own, so we have to manually inject such exposure into our lives.  In the non-stop stream of constant information flowing, try examining something outside your usual path.  If you identify as a Democrat, watch Fox News. If you’re a Republican, watch the Colbert Report.  You might find something interesting.

April 24, 2014

What’s The Difference Between Shame and Guilt?

Two Guys on Your Head

By: Rebecca McInroy

When we feel guilt and shame after we’ve done something we know is wrong our heart may pound and we may feel sad, we might want to cry. Physiologically our response to both shame and guilt is the same, but cognitively the way we interpret these two emotions has consequences we may not realize.

In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke deconstruct the various dimensions of these two emotions

If we feel shameful after we’ve done something wrong we may want to hide away. We may feel that there is something fundamentally wrong with us and therefore atoning for our bad behavior is not possible.

Moreover, when we don’t feel we don’t have control over our actions and that rather it is our circumstance that “made us do it” we are more likely to repeat our transgression.

Guilt, on the other hand, can be a productive emotion in that when we feel we’ve done something wrong we can make up for it by confessing, apologizing or dealing with the behavior. It is the behavior that is bad but we are not bad people.

Yet there are still fundamental questions about the way we interpret the world through these two lenses.

The 18th century politician and philosopher Edmund Burke stated: “Guilt was never a rational thing; it distorts all the faculties of the human mind, it perverts them, it leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason, it puts him into confusion.”

Coming up in a Views and Brews this fall we’ll continue to tackle the topic of guilt and shame with Two Guys on Your Head Live. We’ll ask: is there a difference in the way we interpret shame we can hide vs. shame we cannot hide? What happens when we feel guilty but cannot atone? How does shame and guilt relate to morality, reason and the way we process behavior daily?

 

April 18, 2014

Why Can Being On Hold Be So Frustrating

Two Guys on Your Head

By: Rebecca McInroy

Whether it’s the blah music or the never ending labyrinth of a phone tree, we’ve all experienced the frustrations of being on hold. Even when we are only on hold for a minute or so our blood pressure can rise when an automated voice answers the phone. Why is being on hold so annoying? In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head Dr. Art Markman and Bob Duke take us through the good, the bad, and the ugly of on hold messaging.

April 10, 2014

How to Navigate Road Rage

Two Guys on Your Head

By: Rebecca McInroy

Oh, the woes of modern life in a metropolitan city center. What’s going on in our brains when we encounter that familiar feeling of intense frustration while driving in traffic that we comically refer to as ROAD RAGE? The Two Guys on Your Head will break it down in this week’s episode of the show.

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