Progress-focused

If we define progress as development in the direction of a better situation then from this definition it follows that progress is something good. Much research has suggested that the feeling of making progress is good for us in various ways. Roughly it can be said that the perception of progress is associated with more positive emotions, more motivation, and better performance. You would say that choosing progress is always easy. But it isn't. 

In my previous post I mentioned recent criticism of research into mindset. As I wrote in that post I view it as a good thing that the concept of mindset is criticized. For knowledge to develop anything can and should be criticized. Part of the criticism doesn't convince me, and part of it I find interesting and seems justified (for example some of the points made by Brown and Bates). The article on Buzzfeed which I mentioned contains interesting points but is also a bit one-sided. The impression is given that mindset theory is based only on a few studies and that theses studies' findings are questionable.

Often, it is not so easy to determine whether something is true or false. There are often multiple sides to issues and sometimes a great deal of knowledge is required to be able to come to a good judgment. Even experts can have radically different views on such issues. But it also often happens that the distinction between false and true can be unambiguously made.

I define irrational beliefs as beliefs which are incoherent or logically inconsistent and which are in conflict with what we know about reality (in conflict with available evidence, that is). Nobody is free from irrational beliefs. Our way of interpreting reality is not and never will be perfect. We are afflicted with systematic biases in how we perceive reality. Furthermore, through our upbringing and culture, we all inevitably have, without us being aware of it, adapted beliefs which are outdated. That we have irrational beliefs does not mean we must acquiesce in that fact. Critically reflecting on your own beliefs is a good thing. It enables you to develop your view on the world and to make it more realistic. For several reasons that can be hard. In this post I described four factors which impede the process of changing our of beliefs: (1) the confirmation bias, (2) self-fulfilling prophecies, (3) labeling oneself based on one's beliefs, and (4) social pressure. Then, in ...

How can it be that we sometimes keep holding on to certain beliefs of which we could know, and perhaps deep inside do know, that they are not true? Think about things like magical thinking, superstition and views which logically can't be true and things we have proven to be untrue? In a new article, Believing What We Do Not Believe: Acquiescence to Superstitious Beliefs and Other Powerful Intuitions , Jane Risen looks at this question from the perspective of dual process models such as Kahneman's model distinguishing system 1 and 2 thinking.

I came across an intriguing bit in Richard Nisbett's book Mindware which was about what he called the leftward drift. This leftward drift refers to the fact that the number of college and university students who self-identify as liberal or far left in their political orientation increase as they move through college. At the same time, the number of students who call themselves conservative or far left decreases. In other words, college makes many students drift to the left in their political views.

Is there such a things as civilization? Or is what we call civilization an illusion and would we be wiser to return to our natural state?  A central theme in the discourse about progress was the difference between the views of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and the French philosopher (from Swiss origin) Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778). Hobbes view people as naturally cruel and violent, in other words as bad. In his book Leviathan , he explained that the solution for this problem is a monarchy or other form of government which represents the will of the people and has the monopoly on violence.  He saw civilization as a way of curbing people's badness.

A while ago I wrote about the importance of combining hope and critical thinking . Hope without critical thinking is naïveté; critical thinking without hope is cynicism; lack of both is apathy, is argued in that post. That combination is not only important in general in life but also, and especially when we read about approaches or methods which are claimed to be able to improve our life or our work. One of the reasons for me to think about this topic is that I received an interesting mail by David Creelman  which I will summarize below. David started saying that scientific rigor is important because it discredits cherished false beliefs and snake-oil solutions. He went on to say that also more serious concepts and approaches like work engagement, the innovator's dilemma, and the growth mindset come in for criticism. He said: "I feel it's only a matter of time before someone writes a harsh critique of the growth mindset." He then pointed out that there is a risk...

As you may know , how we think about our own qualities has a big impact on how we feel, how we behave, how we learn and how we perform. Thinking our abilities (such as our intelligence) are fixed (this is called a fixed mindset) makes us less challenge seeking and less persistent and also more defensive. Also our performance is lower over time. A growth mindset, thinking that our qualities can be developed through effort, leads to more challenge seeking, persistence, openness, learning and performance over time. Thinking about others' qualities as fixed also has consequences such as being quicker to stereotype and label people, to be less open to new information about people, and to punish them quicker when they have done something wrong. In a chapter in a new book , Carol Dweck mentions two lesser known finding with respect to mindsets.