David DiSalvo

Your Brain: Capable of Greatness, Hard-wired for Survival

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(Edi­tor’s Note: This is an excerpt from David DiS­alvo’s new book What makes  your brain hap­py and why you should do the oppo­site.)

A new prod­uct is about to hit the mar­ket, and I think you’ll want to take notice. It’s called the “Super Novum.” Shaped like a slight­ly over­large motor­cy­cle hel­met, the user places it on her head and push­es just one but­ton to get things start­ed. She doesn’t know it yet, but she has just giv­en her brain an amaz­ing advan­tage over all the oth­er brains walk­ing around out there. Some of the fea­tures she’ll expe­ri­ence include great­ly reduced selec­tive attention—no more miss­ing the details! [Read more…] about Your Brain: Capa­ble of Great­ness, Hard-wired for Survival

What makes your brain happy and why you should do the opposite

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(Edi­tor’s Note: This is an excerpt from David DiS­alvo’s new book What makes  your brain hap­py and why you should do the oppo­site.)

Tak­ing a posi­tion in any argument—large or small—is slip­pery busi­ness for our brains. We can have every inten­tion of hon­est­ly pur­su­ing an answer, yet still fool our­selves into think­ing our method is objec­tive when it is, in fact, any­thing but. Cog­ni­tive sci­ence has helped deci­pher this enig­ma with research on the the­o­ret­i­cal men­tal struc­tures our brains use to orga­nize infor­ma­tion, called schema­ta. [Read more…] about What makes your brain hap­py and why you should do the opposite

What to Do and Not to Do to Boost Self-Control

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More and more research sug­gests that our brains have dif­fi­cul­ty dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing between observ­ing an action and actu­al­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in it. Empa­thy, for exam­ple, seems to hinge in part on our abil­i­ty to “take on” anoth­er’s emo­tions through vic­ar­i­ous expe­ri­ence. I always think of this when watch­ing a come­di­an fall flat. I can feel the embar­rass­ment as if I’m stand­ing there on stage look­ing at a room full of blank stares.

A study in the jour­nal Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence inves­ti­gat­ed this dynam­ic, but from a dif­fer­ent angle: researchers want­ed to know if observ­ing some­one else exert self-con­trol boosts or reduces one’s own self-con­trol. [Read more…] about What to Do and Not to Do to Boost Self-Control

Did You See the Gorilla? An Interview with Psychologist Daniel Simons

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If you’ve spent any time on YouTube over the last few years (and you know you have), you’ve like­ly seen the video of the invis­i­ble goril­la exper­i­ment (if you’ve some­how missed it, catch your­self up here). The researchers who con­duct­ed that study, Dan Simons and Chris Chabris, didn’t real­ize that they were about to cre­ate an instant classic—a psy­chol­o­gy study men­tioned along­side the greats, and known well out­side the slim con­fines of psych wonks. Mil­gram taught us about our sheep­ish obe­di­ence to author­i­ty; Mis­chel used marsh­mal­lows to teach us about delayed grat­i­fi­ca­tion; and Simons and Chabris used a faux goril­la to teach us that we are not the mas­ters of atten­tion we think we are.

The duo’s new book [Read more…] about Did You See the Goril­la? An Inter­view with Psy­chol­o­gist Daniel Simons

Can You Outsmart Your Genes? An Interview with Author Richard Nisbett

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While the debate over intel­li­gence rages on many fronts, the bat­tle over the impor­tance of hered­i­ty rages loud­est. It’s easy to see why. If the camp that argues intel­li­gence is 75 to 85 per­cent genet­i­cal­ly deter­mined is cor­rect, then we’re faced with some tough ques­tions about the role of edu­ca­tion. If intel­li­gence is improved very lit­tle by schools, and if the IQ of the major­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion will remain rel­a­tive­ly unchanged no mat­ter how well schools per­form, then should school reform real­ly be a priority?

More to the point, if our genes large­ly deter­mine our IQ, which in turn under­lies our per­for­mance through­out our lives, then what is the role of school? For some in this debate the answer to that ques­tion is sim­ply, “to be the best you can be.” But that seems lit­tle com­fort for those who aspire to “be” more than what their IQ cat­e­go­ry pre­dicts they will.

Those on the oth­er side of this debate ques­tion whether hered­i­ty plays as big a role as the strong hered­i­tar­i­ans claim. And for the role it does play, they ques­tion whether hered­itabil­i­ty implies immutabil­i­ty. Hered­i­ty of height, for exam­ple, is about 90 per­cent, and yet aver­age height in sev­er­al pop­u­la­tions around the world has been steadi­ly increas­ing due to non-genet­ic influ­ences, like nutri­tion. If such a strong hered­i­tary trait can be rad­i­cal­ly altered by envi­ron­men­tal factors–and height is but one exam­ple of this–then why is intel­li­gence different?

It is not, argues the camp that might best be described as intel­li­gence opti­mists. For them, the pes­simism that col­ors the strong hered­i­tar­i­an posi­tion isn’t only dis­cour­ag­ing, it’s dan­ger­ous. Too much is hang­ing in the bal­ance for pes­simism about the poten­tial of our chil­dren to prevail.

Richard NisbettRichard Nis­bett is a cham­pi­on of the intel­li­gence opti­mist camp, and with his lat­est book, Intel­li­gence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cul­tures Count, he has emerged as the most per­sua­sive voice mar­shalling evi­dence to dis­prove the hered­i­ty-is-des­tiny argu­ment. Intel­lec­tu­al advance­ment, Nis­bett argues, is not the result of hard­wired genet­ic codes, but the province of con­trol­lable fac­tors like schools and social environments–and as such, improv­ing these fac­tors is cru­cial­ly impor­tant. [Read more…] about Can You Out­smart Your Genes? An Inter­view with Author Richard Nisbett