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How to set clear objectives
How to follow up after a meeting
How to manage time effectively
These pathways, which rely on the neurotransmitter dopamine, are often referred to as the reward system, but they are also involved in motivation, attention, decision making, and other complex functions. In their studies, Wang and Volkow found that both drug addicts and obese people are less sensitive to dopamine’s rewarding effects. Being relatively numb to the pleasure and motivation signal may make them more likely to chase after a stronger thrill: more food or a bump of cocaine. Excessive stimulation further desensitizes dopaminergic neurons, and the compulsion snowballs.
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Today it is difficult to regard overeating as a sin, considering the overwhelming evidence of the powerful role of physiology in appetite. Physician Gene-Jack Wang has studied the brains of overeaters since 1999, when he and colleague Nora Volkow originally observed that obesity and d...
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Probing the underpinnings of vengeful behavior, a German group led by neuropsychologist Ulrike Krämer allowed people who had been provoked during an experiment to punish their antagonist with a blast of extremely annoying noise. While the subjects pondered how loud to set the volume, the dorsal s...
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The sin of pride turned on its head, envy is the most social of the moral failures, sparked by the excruciating awareness of someone else’s supreme talent, stunning looks, or extremely expensive car. For that reason, it is also the least fun of the deadly sins; feeling jealous provide...
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In some of his experiments, Wang asks his volunteers to come hungry. He then torments them, asking them to describe their favorite food in detail while he heats it up in a microwave so that its aroma wafts through the room. When they go into a positron-emission tomography (PET) scanner, Wang sees...
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“Compared with guilt or embarrassment, pride might be processed more automatically.”
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“Many of these sins you could think of as virtues taken to the extreme. From the perspective of natural selection, you want the organism to eat, to procreate, so you make them rewarding. But there’s a potential for that process to go beyond the bounds.”
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If lechery is all-consuming, how do we ever manage to control it? As with other powerful impulses, we try to shut down arousal by calling upon the right superior frontal gyrus and right anterior cingulate gyrus, according to research led by Mario Beauregard. He and others propose that these brain...
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“We have this primitive brain that says, ‘Do it! Do it!’” Denson says. Similarly, people asked to imagine themselves engaging in aggressive behavior actively suppress activity in the prefrontal cortex, where social information is processed. By deliberately inhibiting our natural social response, ...
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These responses are so unique and distinctive that, in the context of an experiment, it is possible to determine whether a man is aroused just by looking at an fMRI brain scan. “These are huge effects,” Safron says. “You’re looking at the difference between something that elicits intense desire a...
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Early theologians saw pride as the fundamental sin—the “queen of them all,” according to Pope Gregory the Great, who codified the list of seven deadly sins in the sixth century. Indeed, psychologists say that arrogance is second nature in Western society. Most of us perceive ...
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Despite the enormous pool of potential research subjects, greed has not yet been systematically investigated in brain research. However, neuroscience does offer insight into a related phenomenon, the indignant outrage of the cheated.
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“Our brain evolved for us to eat in excess, in order to survive. This kind of excess is built into the brain.”
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Righteous humility has traditionally been depicted as the virtue that opposes pride, but the work of Keenan and others calls that into question. He is using TMS to disrupt deliberate self-deprecation—the type of unctuous, ingratiating behavior that seems humble but is actually disguised arrogance...
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Our hatred of unfairness runs deep, even trumping rational self-interest. In the lab, researchers frequently use the “ultimatum game” to test our responses to injustice. One of two partners is given a sum of money and told that he must offer some amount of his own choosing to his partner. If the ...
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Only one imaging study (conducted by Takahashi’s group in Japan) has probed the neural basis of envy. Volunteers in fMRI machines were asked to read three scenarios. In the first, “student A” was portrayed as similar to, but better than, the volunteer in every respect. “Student B” was depicted as...
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In the annals of sin, weaknesses of the flesh—lust, gluttony, sloth—are considered second-tier offenses, less odious than the “spiritual” sins of envy and pride.
That’s good news, since these yearnings are notoriously difficult to suppres...
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Mere laziness seems out of place among the deadly sins. It helps to know that this moral failing was originally conceived of as acedia, a term that suggested alienation and tedium, tinged with self-contempt. Acedia afflicted jaded monks who had grown weary of the cloiste...
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When Lieberman increased the money being offered, he found that accepting a share that was larger but still unfair—say, $8 out of $23—was linked with increased activity in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and downregulation of the anterior insula, changes that are often seen during the regulat...
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Using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), in which a magnetic field applied to the scalp temporarily scrambles the signal in small areas of the brain, he was able to briefly shut off the medial prefrontal cortex in volunteers. With TMS switched on, his subjects’ normal, healthy arrogance mel...
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It may not have been the original sin, but rage is certainly primordial: Much of the brain circuitry active during anger is very basic and very fast. In humans, anger also enlists the conflict-detecting dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, which immediately alerts other regions of the brain to pay a...
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On the other hand, indulging in schadenfreude—delight in someone else’s downfall—can be downright bliss. Aquinas termed this “morose delectation” and condemned it as a failure to resist a passion. Indeed, Takahashi found that rejoicing in a rival’s defeat brings pleasure just as surely as envy do...
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A scientific exploration of the 7 deadly sins 🤷♀️
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