deepstash
Beta
Deepstash brings you key ideas from the most inspiring articles like this one:
Read more efficiently
Save what inspires you
Remember anything
Cracking the Popularity Code
4
Key Ideas
Save all ideas
There are two types of popularity
- In childhood, our popularity is defined by how much others like us. The most popular kids help others, cooperate and lead quietly. This type of popularity predicts desirable long-term outcomes.
- The second type of popularity emerges in our adolescence and reflects our "status" more than our "likability." The markers are visibility, influence, dominance, and power.
82 SAVES
554 READS
Individuals that pursue status
Throughout adulthood, we can pursue greater likability or greater status. This decision is complicated by the growing number of platforms (TV, social media) designed to help us gain status.
Research finds that unlike the positive outcomes associated with high likability, those who care more about their status grow up to have difficulties with their interpersonal relationships later on.
74 SAVES
402 READS
Our desire for status has taken a toll
Our life goals now reflect a desire to own more stuff, get more power, and feel more visible and influential. It is very different from our desire to foster community and cooperation a few decades ago.
Our children also feel that the number of their social media followers is a worthy accomplishment. But the more we seek these online markers of status, the more we feel disconnected.
79 SAVES
309 READS
Focus on becoming likeable
Studies reveal that likeable people are granted privileges that become self-perpetuating. Those who are liked are invited to join others more often, and in turn, offered extra opportunities to learn skills. These skills lead to even greater likability and more learning occasions.
Once people realize that status is linked with negative outcomes, it will be easier to return to a focus on likability.
83 SAVES
414 READS
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
3
Key Ideas
A Good Sense Of Humor
- Humor has many practical uses, like diffusing a difficult situation, masking one’s nervousness, coping with failure and softening the criticism doled out to someone.
- Humor works ...
The Perfect Formula Of Funny
According to philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, humor is derived from a sudden unmatching or unexpected outcome of an event, which had in our minds a specific expectation. This causes a mild ‘violation’ in our minds, which creates the humor.
Non-Words
In a series of experiments, it was found that the greater the ‘violation of the expected outcome’ the greater the humor feels. It also found that certain non-words, which are a combination of letter strings (like digifin, or artorts) but have no dictionary meaning, are the most consistent in their funniness rating.
Non-words with low entropy(the extent of them being unexpected) seem to offer more surprise, and therefore, get a higher humor rating.
6
Key Ideas
About Consciousness
Consciousness is everything you experience - taste, pain, love, feeling. Where these experiences come from is a mystery.
Many modern analytic philosophers of mind either d...
Searching For Physical Footprints
What is it about brain matter that gives rise to consciousness? In particular, the neuronal correlates of consciousness (NCC) - the minimal neuronal mechanisms jointly sufficient for any conscious experience.
Consider this question: What must happen in your brain for you to experience a toothache?
Neuronal Correlates of Consciousness (NCC)
The whole brain can be considered an NCC because it generates experience continually.
- When parts of the cerebellum, the "little brain" underneath the back of the brain, are lost to a stroke or otherwise, patients may lose the ability to play the piano, for example. But they never lose any aspect of their consciousness. This is because the cerebellum is almost wholly a feed-forward circuit. There are no complex feedback loops.
- The spinal cord and the cerebellum are not enough to create consciousness. Available evidence suggests neocortical tissue in generating feelings.
- The next stages of processing are the broad set of cortical regions, collectively known as the posterior hot zone, that gives rise to conscious perception. In clinical sources of causal evidence, stimulating the posterior hot zone can trigger a diversity of distinct sensations and feelings.
- It appears that almost all conscious experiences have their origin in the posterior cortex. But it does not explain the crucial difference between the posterior regions and much of the prefrontal cortex, which does not directly contribute to subjective content.
3
Key Ideas
Early theories about dreaming
Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung put forth some of the most well-known theories of dreaming.
- Freud's theory was that dreaming allows us to sort through unreso...
The relationship our dreams have with our memories
Recent studies suggest we employ the same neurophysiological mechanisms while dreaming that we use to construct and recall memories while we are awake.
Studies also found that vivid, bizarre and emotionally intense dreams are linked to parts of the amygdala and hippocampus. The amygdala plays a key role in processing and memory of emotional reactions. The hippocampus is implicated in important memory functions, such as the consolidation of information from short-term to long-term memory.
Dreams help us process emotions
Dreams seem to help us to process emotions by constructing memories of them. The experience in our dreams may not be real, but the emotions we experience are real.
Our dream stories try to strip emotion out of some experiences by creating a memory of it. This mechanism seems to fulfil an important role because it helps us process our emotions.