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Wired for Love: A Neuroscientist's Journey Through Romance, Loss, and the Essence of Human Connection
By Stephanie Cacioppo.
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dreams-of-mutiny · 2 years
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Keep in mind, however, that we can all slip in and out of loneliness. Feeling lonely at any particular moment simply means that you are human. The need for meaningful social connection, and the pain we feel without it, are defining characteristics of our species. Loneliness becomes an issue of serious concern only when it settles in long enough to create a persistent, self-reinforcing loop of negative thoughts, sensations, and behaviors.
There are extremes within any population, but on average, at least among young adults, those who feel lonely actually spend no more time alone than do those who feel more connected. They are no more or less physically attractive than average, and they do not differ, on average, from the non-lonely in terms of height, weight, age, education, or intelligence. Most important, when we look at the broad continuum (rather than just the extremes) of people who feel lonely, we find that they have the capacity to be just as socially adept as anyone else. Feeling lonely does not mean that we have deficient social skills.
Real relief from loneliness requires the cooperation of at least one other person, and yet the more chronic our loneliness becomes, the less equipped we may be to entice such cooperation.
― John T. Cacioppo
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queerographies · 2 months
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[Scrivimi addosso][Sara Manuela Cacioppo]
Clicca qui per acquistare il libro Titolo: Scrivimi addossoScritto da: Sara Manuela CacioppoEdito da: AffioriAnno: 2023Pagine: 240ISBN: 9791255790396 Tre ritratti, tre personalità, tre esistenze che si incontrano. Flora, Margherita e Viola sono le protagoniste di questa narrazione, delicata e al tempo stesso forte e avvincente: le relazioni disfunzionali, i pregiudizi covati sin dall’infanzia,…
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notolux · 11 months
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"To grow into adulthood for a social species, including humans, is not to become autonomous and solitary, it's to become the one on whom others can depend. Whether we know it or not, our brain and biology have been shaped to favour this outcome."
- John Cacioppo on Loneliness
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providencereiki · 1 year
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Dating Through Gottman Principles
Dating Through Gottman Principles
Imagine everybody dating through Gottman Principles. What would it feel like to be, and connect with people, safely as authentic selves? Dating through Gottman Principles offers opportunities for connection, comfort, and a chance to get to know each other slowly and safely. I support the author’s perspective of dating through Gottman principles which include meeting in real life soon after…
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georgecacioppo · 2 years
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Leading through innovation: George Cacioppo shares how to get your team on board with new ideas.
According to George Cacioppo, changes in a company can be challenging, and leaders often struggle to get their teams on board with new ideas. Cacioppo shares his top tips for getting your team on board with innovative organizational changes.
Get Your Team's Input
When you recognize that something within your organization needs a change, it's wise to get input from your team on how to approach the issue. When you realize their information is valuable, getting them on board with changes down the line can be more accessible. Before developing a solution to a problem, organize a team meeting, recommends George Cacioppo. Let your employees know the issue you're seeing, and ask them for their suggestions on how the problem could be improved. If possible, work to incorporate some of their ideas into the solution to help increase buy-in from the group.
Lead By Example
According to George Cacioppo, you must lead by example when implementing changes to your organization. Resist the urge to bond with your team by commiserating over the changes happening in your company. At the same time, it's essential to understand what your employees are saying and hear where they're struggling, giving in and complaining can make it harder for them to adapt to change.
Hear Their Concerns
As mentioned above, according to George Cacioppo, when employees express their discomfort with change, it's important not to join in on the complaints–but it's also important to ask questions and understand their concerns. Depending on the types of complaints you're hearing, you'll need to decide whether it's appropriate to explain the change in policy or procedure to employees or whether it makes more sense to stay silent. You don't want to become a constant sounding board for complaints, but you want to clarify that you're there for your employees when there's an issue.
A few months after a policy change, it's wise to hold a meeting where employees can ask questions and address their concerns. This can be especially helpful if you feel like employees are constantly coming to you with problems–you can ask them to kindly hold their fears until the meeting when you can chat as a team.
Admit When There's a Problem
There's no doubt about it: sometimes, changes create problems that need to be fixed. It's ok to tell your employees when you've realized a new policy isn't working out quite as you'd hoped. Let them know why further changes are needed and give them plenty of time to adjust to any additional developments in your organization. If you're unsure how to solve a problem, invite employees to brainstorm with you–their knowledge of the ins and outs of your company can prove invaluable when it comes to innovative change, according to George Cacioppo.
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nost4lgica · 5 months
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To confess your loneliness is to confess your failure as a human being. To confess would only cause others to pity and avoid you, afraid that what you have is catching. Your condition is caused by a lack of human relationship, and yet to admit to it only drives your possible rescuers farther away.
So you attempt to hide your loneliness in public, to behave, in fact, as though you have too many friends already, and thus you hope to attract people who will unwittingly save you. But it never works that way. Your condition is written all over your face, in the hunch of your shoulders, in the hollowness of your laugh. You fool no one. Believe me in this; I've tried all the tricks of the lonely man.
David Marusek, Counting Heads
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You and dawn are lonely. Lonely and on the street. The bakery is closed, the vendors gone, the doors shut. There are no cats in the street, which is heaped with trash. The solitary tree stands at the door of the building to greet the dawn bringing news of an eternity of no interest to anyone at this superfluous hour. You and dawn are two lonely strangers who have met against their will, without congeniality or curiosity. You know not where you are walking but retrace old footsteps until dawn pours out its kohl blue and departs. You confess that you have erred.
Mahmoud Darwish, In The Presence Of Absence
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وجلس حزني تجاهي تأملني قليلاً ثم أجهش الحزن
بالبكاء وبقيت صامتة.
And my sorrow sat next to me, stared at me for a while, then it burst into tears and I remained silent.
Ghada el-Samman, unknown
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The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.
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TRAVIS (V.O.)
Loneliness has followed me all my life. The life of loneliness pursues me wherever I go: in bars, cars, coffee shops, theaters, stores, sidewalks. There is no escape. I am God's lonely man.
Taxi Driver (1976)
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Vincent Van Gogh, Sorrowing Old Man (At Eternity’s Gate)
It is possible to be wild and kind at the same time. It is possible to be both alone and be loved. I have known this to be true. In others. In me. To be loved. And to also still be alone.
Anis Mojgani, In The Pockets Of Small Gods
I have been trying, for some time now, to find dignity in my loneliness. I have been finding this hard to do.
Maggie Nelson, Bluets
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The interaction between a genetic bias and life circumstances that constitutes loneliness is generally beyond our control. However, once it is triggered, the defensive form of thinking that loneliness generates-a lonely social cognition-can make every social mole­ hill look like a mountain. When we are lonely we not only react more intensely to the negatives; we also experience less of a sooth­ ing uplift from the positives. Even when we succeed in eliciting nur­turing support from a friend or a loved one, if we are feeling lonely we tend to perceive the exchange as less fulfilling than we had hoped it would be.
John T. Cacioppo & William Patrick, Loneliness: Human Nature and The Need For Social Connection
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Lindsay C. Gabson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
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hicapacity · 2 months
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Takotsubo szindróma. Hallottál már erről? Úgy is hívják, hogy a "meghasadt szív szindróma". 1990-ben írták le először Japánban. A lényege, hogy az extrém stresszt, például a szeretett személy hirtelen elvesztését átélő emberek szívizmai meggyengülnek, ami halálhoz is vezethet. Az orvosok leírták, hogy ezekben az esetekben az áldozat szívkamrája torz alakot vesz fel: minden látható fizikai behatás nélkül a szó szoros értelmében "összetörik" a szíve.
Az embernek nem csak élelemre, vízre és hajlékra van szüksége a túléléshez. De emberi társaságra is.
Az ember szociális állat. Az evolúciónk során úgy fejlődtünk, hogy csoportosan nézzünk szembe a külvilág fenyegetéseivel - és ha egyedül maradunk, arra a szervezetünk úgy reagál, hogy telepumpál minket stresszhormonokal és hiperéberré válunk. Ha belegondolunk, az ősi időkben, a vadonban ez rövid távon életmentő lehetett, de manapság, hosszú távon ez kimondottan ártalmas.
Nagyon rosszul reagálunk arra, ha elszakítanak bennünket a társainktól, a csoportunktól. Rettenetesen szenvedünk az izolációtól, a magánytól. Neurológiai kísérletek igazolták: az elszigeteltség, az elhagyatottság élménye ugyanazon agyterületeket, idegsejteket aktiválja, amelyek a fizikai fájdalomért felelősek. Éppúgy fáj, mint ahogy fáj, ha megszúrnak egy tűvel. Egy agyi képalkotó eljárással (fMRI) végzett kutatás szerint például azok az emberek, akiket elutasítottak, ugyanolyan reakciót (rándulás) adtak, mint akinek egy pofont adtak - és az agy ugyanazon régiói aktiválódtak közben. A lélek és a test, a fizikai és az érzelmi fájdalom egyáltalán nem egymástól független és elszigetelt.
És itt jutunk el oda, hogy megmagyarázzuk azt is, hogy miért jár olyan gyakran együtt a magány és a függőség. Az olyan tudatmódosító szerek, mint az alkohol vagy a heroin, esetleg az olyan agyzsibbasztó tevékenységek, mint a videójáték vagy a sorozatnézés - ezek mind fájdalomcsillapító hatással járnak. Legalábbis rövid távon. Ezért fordulnak olyan sokan hozzájuk azok, akik a magány fájdalmától szenvednek.
De vajon miért olyan könnyű ezekhez a hosszú távon önpusztítóvá váló viselkedésekhez fordulni - és miért olyan nehéz a nyilvánvaló egészséges alternatívát megtalálni: a biztonságos kötődést, a tartalmas emberi kapcsolatokat? Nos, az abszurd és paradox helyzet az, hogy senki sem képes nehezebben kapcsolódni, mint akinek legnagyobb szüksége van rá: a magányos ember.
Tudományos vizsgálatok igazolták ugyanis azt is, hogy a magányos emberek jóval gyakrabban és nagyobb stresszt tapasztalnak meg. És még hétköznapi helyzetekre is reagálhatnak úgy, hogy az agyuk küzdj-vagy-menekülj üzemmódba kapcsol. Ami, paradox módon, tovább mélyíti az egyén magányát és elszigeteltségét: neurológiai vizsgálatok szerint a magányos emberek agya kétszer gyorsabban talál fenyegetőnek egy szociális helyzetet.
A magány még több magányt termel.
Persze mi emberek különbözünk abban, hogy mennyire vagyunk magányosak, és mennyire vagyunk képesek elviselni az elszigeteltséget. Vajon a magányosságért mennyiben felelősek a gének, és mennyiben a külső körülmények? John Cacioppo, a magányosság egyik legismertebb kutatója szerint a géneknek van némi szerepe. Ugyanakkor "nem a magányosság az, ami öröklődik, hanem az elszigetelődés fájdalmassága," jelentette ki.
A magány több, mint egyedüllét: egyedül is érezhetjük magunkat tökéletesen kapcsolódva más emberekhez, és emberek között is érezhetjük magunkat reménytelenül elszigeteltnek. Hasonló következtetésre juthatunk, ha a függőség genetikai hátterét nézzük. Egyetértek Máté Gáborral, aki szerint nem a függőség az, ami öröklődik: hanem egyfajta érzékenység. Ami a megfelelő körülmények között kiszolgáltatottabbá tesz bennünket bizonyos traumatikus élményekre.
Az is az élet egy nagy paradoxona, hogy végső soron a magány is az emberi kapcsolatban gyökerezik: illetve az emberi kapcsolatban szerzett sérülésben.
Az emberi kapcsolódás ugyanis az élet forrása - és egyben hatalmas fenyegetés is. Hiszen ha egyszer igazán feltárulkoztunk valaki előtt, és sérülékenynek mutatkoztunk - de úgy éreztük, hogy az illető visszaélt a bizalmunkkal, az borzasztó és tartós sebeket tud ejteni. És mikor másként ejthetne nagyobb sebeket, mint a szülő-gyermek kapcsolatban, amikor az ember a legkiszolgáltatottabb?
Ezért vannak sokan azok, akik egész életükben képtelenek igazán elmélyült, biztonságos kötődésre másokkal. És sajnos, amennyiben nem dolgozzák fel ezeket a sérüléseket, arra vannak ítéltetve, hogy folyamatosan újraéljék a őseredeti elutasítást és csalódást: a bennük élő belső gyermek bizalmatlansága és a gyanakvása tönkreteszi minden emberi kapcsolatukat. Szinte ők maguk siettetik az elkerülhetetlennek hitt végzetet, amiben újra eljátszhatják az elhagyott, elárult áldozat szerepét. Esetleg ideje korán lelépnek, mert rettegnek attól, hogy elköteleződjenek - és újra érzelmileg kiszolgáltatottá váljanak. Így további sérüléseket fognak osztogatni másoknak.
A szeretet bizalom nélkül még nem szeretet - írja Thich Nhat Hahn. Szeretni anélkül, hogy tudnánk, hogy kell szeretni, sérülést okoz. Ahhoz, hogy megtanulj szeretni, először meg kell tanulnod bízni. Főleg magadban. És ehhez pedig meg kell ismerned magad.
Adnak valamit az írásaim? Kérlek, akkor Te is adj valamit: támogasd a munkám, minden adomány iszonyúan okat jelent: https://drogriporter.hu/tamogass/
Olvassátok el Hallowell Szétszórtság című könyvét, meg a Megfeneklett tehetségek c. könyvet. Utóbbinak a bevezető fejezete már önmagában nagyon sok mindent képes helyrerakni.
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By: Rob Henderson
Published: Nov 19, 2023
Many have discovered an argument hack. They don’t need to argue that something is false. They just need to show that it’s associated with low status. The converse is also true: You don’t need to argue that something is true. You just need to show that it’s associated with high status. And when low status people express the truth, it sometimes becomes high status to lie.
In the 1980s, the psychologists Richard E. Petty and John T. Cacioppo developed the “Elaboration Likelihood Model” to describe how persuasion works. “Elaboration” here means the extent to which a person carefully thinks about the information. When people’s motivation and ability to engage in careful thinking is present, the “elaboration likelihood” is high. This means people are likely to pay attention to the relevant information and draw conclusions based on the merits of the arguments or the message. When elaboration likelihood is high, a person is willing to expend their cognitive resources to update their views.
Two paths to persuasion
The idea is that there are two paths, or two “routes,” to persuading others. The first type, termed the “central” route, comes from careful and thoughtful consideration of the messages we hear. When the central route is engaged, we actively evaluate the information presented, and try to discern whether or not it’s true.
When the “peripheral” route is engaged, we pay more attention to cues apart from the actual information or content or the message. For example, we might evaluate someone’s argument based on how attractive they are or where they were educated, without considering the actual merits of their message.
When we accept a message through the peripheral route, we tend to be more passive than when we accept a message through the central route. Unfortunately, the peripheral route is more prevalent because we are exposed to an increasingly large amount of information.
The renowned psychologists Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor have characterized humans as “cognitive misers.” They write, “People are limited in their capacity to process information, so they take shortcuts whenever they can.”
We are lazy creatures who try to expend as little mental energy as possible.
And people are typically less motivated to scrutinize a message if the source is considered to be an expert. We interpret the message through the peripheral route.
This is one reason why media outlets often appoint experts who mirror their political values. These experts lend credibility to the views the outlet espouses. Interestingly, though, expertise appears to influence persuasion only if the individual is identified as an expert before they communicate their message. Research has found that when a person is told the source is an expert after listening to the message, this new information does not increase the person’s likelihood of believing the message.
It works the other way, too. If a person is told that a source is not an expert before the message, the person tends to be more skeptical of the message. If told the source is not an expert after the message, this has no effect on a person’s likelihood of believing the message.
This suggests that knowing a source is an expert reduces our motivation to engage in central processing. We let our guards down.
As motivation and/or ability to process arguments is decreased, peripheral cues become more important for persuasion. Which might not bode well.
However, when we update our beliefs by weighing the actual merits of an argument (central route), our updated beliefs tend to endure and are more robust against counterpersuasion, compared to when we update our beliefs through peripheral processing. If we come to believe something through careful and thoughtful consideration, that belief is more resilient to change.
This means we can be more easily manipulated through the peripheral route. If we are convinced of something via the peripheral route, a manipulator will be more successful at using the peripheral route once again to alter our initial belief.
Social consequences of our beliefs
But why does this matter? Because by understanding how and why we come to hold our beliefs, we can better understand ourselves and guard against manipulation.
The founders of the elaboration likelihood model wrote that, “Ultimately, we suspect that attitudes are seen as correct or proper to the extent that they are viewed as beneficial for the physical or psychological well-being of the person.”
In his book The Social Leap, the evolutionary psychologist William von Hippel writes, “a substantial reason we evolved such large brains is to navigate our social world… A great deal of the value that exists in the social world is created by consensus rather than discovered in an objective sense… our cognitive machinery evolved to be only partially constrained by objective reality.” Our social brains process information not only by examining the facts, but also considering the social consequences of what happens to our reputations if we believe something.
Indeed, in his influential theory of social comparison processes, the eminent psychologist Leon Festinger suggested that people evaluate the “correctness” of their opinions by comparing them to the opinions of others. When we see others hold the same beliefs as us, our own confidence in those beliefs increases. Which is one reason why people are more likely to proselytize beliefs that cannot be verified through empirical means.
In short, people have a mechanism in their minds. It stops them from saying something that could lower their status, even if it’s true. And it propels them to say something that could increase their status, even if it’s false. Sometimes, local norms can push against this tendency. Certain communities (e.g., scientists) can obtain status among their peers for expressing truths. But if the norm is relaxed, people might default to seeking status over truth if status confers the greater reward.
Furthermore, knowing that we could lose status if we don’t believe in something causes us to be more likely to believe in it to guard against that loss. Considerations of what happens to our own reputation guides our beliefs, leading us to adopt a popular view to preserve or enhance our social positions. We implicitly ask ourselves, “What are the social consequences of holding (or not holding) this belief?”
But our reputation isn’t the only thing that matters when considering what to believe. Equally important is the reputation of others. Returning to the peripheral route of persuasion, we decide whether to believe something not only if lots of people believe it, but also if the proponent of the belief is a prestigious person. If lots of people believe something, our likelihood of believing it increases. And if a high-status person believes something, we are more prone to believing it, too.
Prestigious role models
This starts when we are children. In her recent book Cognitive Gadgets, the Oxford psychologist Cecilia Hayes writes, “children show prestige bias; they are more likely to copy a model that adults regard as being higher social status- for example, their head-teacher rather than an equally familiar person of the same age and gender.” Hayes cites a 2013 study by Nicola McGuigan who found that five-year-old children are “selective copiers.” Results showed that kids were more likely to imitate their head-teacher rather than an equally familiar person of the same age and gender. Young children are more likely to imitate a person that adults regard as being higher status.
People in general favor mimicking prestigious people compared to ordinary people. This is why elites have an outsized effect on culture, and why it is important to scrutinize their ideas and opinions. As a descriptive observation, the opinions of my friend who works at McDonald’s have less effect on society than the opinions of my friend who works at McKinsey. If you have any kind of prominence, you unavoidably become a model that others, including children, are more likely to emulate.
Indeed, the Canadian anthropologist Jerome Barkow posits that people across the world view media figures as more prestigious than respected members of their local communities. People on screen appear to be attractive, wealthy, popular, and powerful. Barkow writes, “All over the world, children are learning not from members of their own community but from media figures whom they perceive as prestigious… local prestige is debased.” As this phenomenon continues to grow, the opinions and actions of the globally-prestigious carry even more influence.
Of course, people don’t copy others with high-status solely because they hope that mimicking them will boost their own status. We tend to believe that prestigious people are more competent; prominence is a heuristic for skill.
In a recent paper about prestige-based social learning, researchers Ángel V. Jiménez and Alex Mesoudi wrote that assessing competence directly “may be noisy and costly. Instead, social learners can use short-cuts either by making inferences from the appearance, personality, material possessions, etc. of the models.”
For instance, a military friend of mine used to be a tutor for rich high school students. He himself is not as wealthy as them, and disclosed to me that he paid $200 to replace his old earphones for AirPods. This was so that the kids and their families would believe he is in the same social position as them, and therefore qualified to teach.
Prestige paradox
Which brings us to a question: Who is most susceptible to manipulation via peripheral persuasion? It might seem intuitive to believe that people with less education are more manipulable. But research suggests this may not be true.
High-status people are more preoccupied with how others view them. Which means that educated and/or affluent people may be especially prone to peripheral, as opposed to central, methods of persuasion.
Indeed, the psychology professor Keith Stanovich, discussing his research on “myside bias,” has written, “if you are a person of high intelligence… you will be less likely than the average person to realize you have derived your beliefs from the social groups you belong to and because they fit with your temperament and your innate psychological propensities.”
Students and graduates of top universities are more prone to myside bias. They are more likely to “evaluate evidence, generate evidence, and test hypotheses in a manner biased toward their own prior beliefs, opinions, and attitudes.”
This is not unique to our own time. William Shirer, the American journalist and author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, described his experiences as a war correspondent in Nazi Germany. Shirer wrote, “Often in a German home or office or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a restaurant, beer hall, or café, I would meet with outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious they were parroting nonsense they heard on the radio or read in the newspapers. Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but one was met with such incredulity, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty.”
Likewise, in a fascinating study on the collapse of the Soviet Union, researchers have found that university-educated people were two to three times more likely than high school graduates to say they supported the Communist Party. White-collar professional workers were likewise two to three times more supportive of communist ideology, relative to farm laborers and semi-skilled workers.
Educational divides within the US today are consistent with these historical patterns. The Democratic political analyst David Shor has observed that, “Highly educated people tend to have more ideologically coherent and extreme views than working-class ones. We see this in issue polling and ideological self-identification. College-educated voters are way less likely to identify as moderate.”
One possibility for this is that regardless of time or place, affluent members of society are more likely to say the right things to either preserve status or gain more of it. A series of studies by researchers at the University of Queensland found that, “relative to lower-class individuals, upper-class individuals have a greater desire for wealth and status… it is those who have more to start with (i.e., upper-class individuals) who also strive to acquire more wealth and status.”
A more recent set of studies led by Cameron Anderson at the University of Berkeley found that social class, measured in terms of education and income, was positively associated with the desire for social status. People who had more education and money were more likely to agree with statements like “I enjoy having influence over other people’s decision making” and “It would please me to have a position of prestige and social standing.”
Social status loss aversion
Who feels most in danger of losing their reputations, though? Turns out, those same exact people. A survey by the Cato Institute in collaboration with YouGov asked a nationally representative sample of 2,000 Americans various questions about self-censorship.
They found that highly educated people are the most concerned about losing their jobs or missing out on job opportunities because of their political views. Twenty-five percent of those with a high school education or less are afraid of getting fired or hurting their employment prospects because of their political views, compared with 34 percent of college graduates and an astounding 44 percent of people with a postgraduate degree.
Results from a recent paper titled ‘Keeping Your Mouth Shut: Spiraling Self-Censorship in the United States’ by the political scientists James L. Gibson and Joseph L. Sutherland is consistent with the findings from Cato/Yougov. They find that self-censorship has skyrocketed. In the 1950s, at the height of McCarthyism, 13.4 percent of Americans reported that “felt less free to speak their mind than they used to.” In 1987, the figure had reached 20 percent. By 2019, 40 percent of Americans reported that they did not feel free to speak their minds. This isn’t a partisan issue, either. Gibson and Sutherland report that, “The percentage of Democrats who are worried about speaking their mind is just about identical to the percentage of Republicans who self-censor: 39 and 40 percent, respectively.”
The increase is especially pronounced among the educated class. The researchers report, “It is also noteworthy and perhaps unexpected that those who engage in self-censorship are not those with limited political resources… self-censorship is most common among those with the highest levels of education… This finding suggests a social learning process, with those with more education being more cognizant of social norms that discourage the expression of one’s views.”
Highly-educated people appear to be the most likely to express things they don’t necessarily believe for fear of losing their jobs or their reputation. Within the upper class, the true believers set the pace, and those who are loss-averse about their social positions go along with it.
Interestingly, there is suggestive evidence indicating that education is negatively associated with one’s sense of power. That is, the more education someone has, the more likely they are to agree with statements like, “Even if I voice them, my views have little sway” and “My ideas and opinions are often ignored.” Granted, the correlation is quite small (r = -.15). Still, the finding is significant and in the opposite direction of what most people would expect.
Research by Caitlin Drummond and Baruch Fischhoff at Carnegie Mellon University found that people with more education, science education, and science literacy are more polarized in their views about scientific issues depending on their political identity. For example, the people who are most concerned about climate change? College-educated Democrats. The people who are least concerned? College-educated Republicans. In contrast, less educated Democrats and Republicans are not so different from one another in their views about climate change.
Likewise, in an article titled “Academic and Political Elitism,” the sociologist Musa Al-Gharbi has summarized related research, writing, “compared to the general public, cognitively sophisticated voters are much more likely to form their positions on issues based on partisan cues of what they are ‘supposed’ to think in virtue of their identity as Democrats, Republicans, etc.”
High education and low opinions
It’s also useful to understand how highly educated people view others and their social relationships. Consider a paper titled ‘Seeing the Best or Worst in Others: A Measure of Generalized Other-Perceptions’ led by Richard Rau at the University of Münster. Rau and his colleagues were interested in how various factors influence people’s perceptions of others.
In the study, participants looked at social network profiles of people they did not know. They also viewed short video sequences of unfamiliar people describing a neutral personal experience like traveling to work. Researchers then asked participants to evaluate the people in the social media profiles and videos. Participants were asked how much they agreed with statements like “I like this person,” and “This person is cold-hearted.” Then participants responded to various demographic and personality questions about themselves.
Some findings weren’t so surprising. The researchers found, for example, that people who scored highly on the personality traits of openness and agreeableness tended to hold more favorable views of others.
More sobering, though, is that higher education was consistently related to less positive views of other people. In their paper they write, “to understand people’s feelings, behaviors, and social relationships, it is of key importance to know which general view they hold about others… the better people are educated, the less positive their other-perceptions are.”
So affluent people care the most about status, believe they have little power, are afraid of losing their jobs and reputation, and have less favorable views of others.
In short, opinions can confer status regardless of their truth value. And the individuals most likely to express certain opinions in order to preserve or enhance their status are also those who are already on the upper rungs of the social ladder.
There may be unpleasant consequences for this misguided use of intellect and time on the part of highly educated and affluent people. If the most fortunate members of society spend more time speaking in hushed tones, or live in fear of expressing themselves, or are more involved in culture wars, that is less time they could spend using their mental and economic resources to solve serious problems.
Smart people are usually better at finding the truth. But they’re also better at knowing which way the ideological winds are blowing, and thereby producing and accepting absurdities.
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Explains why so many well-off college students with AirPods, a standard order at Starbucks and an Amazon account pretend to want communism, yet can't survive 5 minutes without Wi-Fi or TikTok.
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amarena-amarezza · 11 months
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Buonanotte a tutti con Aldo che ha finalmente raggiunto il livello Giovanni Cacioppo
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vague-humanoid · 1 month
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this is the org Aaron was in
an article eon their work
They call themselves “Serve the People.”
They are Akronites and Clevelanders of all ages with some also members of similar organizations — Food Not Bombs, the Panther Solidarity Organization, Wake Food Bank and the Akron Minority Council. They formed last summer after Black Lives Matter and other protests began dying down because they wanted to keep humanitarian momentum going, said spokesman Nickolas Cacioppo.
“We kind of formed "Serve the People" as an umbrella organization that was non-hierarchical, decentralized participation and super democratic, consensus-based decision making,” Cacioppo said. “Zero hierarchy.”
Serve the People delivers food and supplies, like blankets, batteries and propane, and cleans- up trash around homeless encampments. With some camps near railroad tracks adjacent to the Towpath Trail, the clean ups benefit trail users as well, Cacioppo said.
Serve the People prefers to refer to those it helps as “houseless,” Cacioppo said. Focusing on the houseless population is a way to enable the group, with limited resources, to serve myriad populations they said have been abandoned by society.
“They’re more likely to be Black and Brown folks, are more likely to be queer folks; they're more likely to be women,” he said. “They're more likely to be sex workers. They're more likely to be people suffering from mental and physical abilities. They're more likely to be poor people, or people who have been evicted, people who have been incarcerated and recently freed. Houseless is a kind of catch-all for a bunch of different sorts of oppressed identities and oppressed people.”
Cacioppo ​said much of what drives Serve the People is empathy.
“We have a pretty diverse collective, so, you know, we understand firsthand the struggle of living in poverty, living on the streets,” he said. “We just want to do what we can to kind of lift each other up and lift the groups that we serve.”
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thefringespod · 4 months
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Welcome back, dear wanderers! Episode 14 is live RIGHT NOW
This episode features @totcoc0a, @just-jessie-d, Ollie Bannerman, and Corrinidae Cacioppo who all did SUCH a fantastic job words truly cannot express it
If you want to get access to early episodes and creator commentaries, please check us out on patreon! You can find the show at patreon.com/PineTreePods (it also will feature early access to @forgedbondspod once the show is started)
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asdfniel · 7 months
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Leonarda, the Soap Maker Serial Killer
Italy’s first female serial killer is Leonarda Cianciulli. She’s a baby born from a rape on April 18, 1894. Later on, she became pregnant 17 times but lost 13 of the children either to miscarriage or illness before they reached ten years of age. She eventually went to see a fortune teller, a travelling Romani woman, who did nothing to quell her fears of a curse.
“In your right hand I see prison,” the fortune teller told her. “In your left a criminal asylum.”
Labouring under the curse she felt was put on her by her mother, and the Romani fortune teller’s prediction, Leonarda Cianciulli became highly superstitious. When her son, Giuseppe, told her in late 1939, that he was going to join the Italian Army, Cianciulli turned to the one thing that she believed would keep her son safe – human sacrifice.
Three victims are Virginia Cacioppo, Faustina Setti and Clementian Soavi who are all killed using an axe. Their dead bodies were used by Leonarda in making cakes, cookies and soap which are distributed to the unsuspecting public.
Some items used for the murder are displayed in a museum in Rome.
I/N:
Content idea from Best True Crime Podcast, photos from Google Images.
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zadigo · 10 months
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Guarda "Giovanni Cacioppo - No Vax" su YouTube
youtube
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ina-nis · 8 months
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In a lecture on loneliness by Cacioppo, there was a line that stuck with me that basically said, it's not about socializing, it's about socializing with who you *want* to. I feel the same with mattering. I don't need *anyone* to care, I need *this* person to care. If this is how it works, then... this really sucks for many reasons, lol
That's absolutely true! This is also why I feel like so much advice, tips and tricks on how to "overcome" these issues fall short or straight up don't work.
Found this when browsing r/AVPD earlier today:
I have so many friends now, it has made no difference The first time hanging out with these people was great but now Its just wrong, I have this one friend I meet a few months ago and I've gone to several events with and I just feel numb around them, god I just feel numb to it all, I don't know weather I mask so hard that I ruin any social interaction I'm in, or if this is just what all social interactions feel like to me now, people really like me I think, but it all just feels so wrong
And the first comment read as the following (emphasis mine):
Even if it feels wrong, still go out and try to hang out with your friends. I’d bet you’re probably just mentally limiting yourself and letting those pervasive AVPD thoughts get into your head. With enough positive reinforcement from being social and getting closer with your friends, you should start to make some progress. Don’t give up now when you’ve just gotten started.
Over and over and over again I hear and read several different versions of the same approach, of the same "mindset" (as if this was a matter of mindset), which completely overlook the fact that they're only seeing one part of the problem: "you".
"You" got yourself covered, "you" can do all these things and improve, now what about the "other"?
I was out there and socializing, shooting my shots, all me. What about the others? Because only me wanting a friend, and only me wanting a deep connection and only me wanting a partner is not going to make it happen so...
All those things always fail because it's only "you", I guess.
I don't know about others but I feel like this is one of the fundamental differences between AvPD and other disorders: you may do all the right things, you may be able to socialize properly and regularly, you may make several friends and have many peers, and you're still essentially disconnected from them or only connected superficially, and that drains you and erode those relationships over time.
Maybe what hurts most is that people just... let go of you. As if your presence were not worth the stress for them, because you're "too unstable" or "too clingy" or "you look cold and like you don't want to be there" or "you're too quiet" and so on.
They don't fight for you, they don't fight to keep connected with you, they might care about you but it just doesn't work out, right?
They move onto other people and things. And you hold onto that pain. Every. Single. Time.
You don't fight either. It feels so damn one-sided anyway.
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realityhop · 2 years
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““Independence,” the biologist Lynn Margulis reminds us, “is a political, not a scientific term.” And yet independence is the rallying point for our culture. [...] Whether on the level of civic engagement or more intimate connection, the march toward atomization continues.”
— Cacioppo/Patrick, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection (2008)
"Maybe we should stop writing, and you should stop reading.  But we won’t stop, and we hope you won’t, either, because we’d rather slip back into the cultural drama in which we, American psychologists in the fall of 2014, are explaining how people cope with their existential predicament; and you, intelligent knowledge seekers that you are, are engaged in the meaningful pursuit of insight into the human condition and how it drives human behavior. Take all the cultural trappings away and we are all just generic creatures barraged by a continuous stream of sensations, emotions, and events, buffeted by occasional waves of existential dread, until those experiences abruptly end.  But in a world infused with meaning, we are so much more than that.  Still, it is not enough to be equipped with our scheme of things.  We humans feel fully secure only if we consider ourselves valuable contributors to that world we believe in. [...] Schizophrenics like Pat are unable or unwilling to partake of a shared cultural belief system. ... Clinical observations verify that schizophrenics suffer from an overriding fear of, or persistent ruminations about, death. [...] And regardless of the cause, depressed people no longer confidently subscribe to their cultural scheme of things or believe themselves to be valuable members of their culture. ... we suspect that severely depressed people ..have probably completely abandoned their cultural scheme of things."
— Solomon/Greenberg/Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life (2015)
"[W]hat happens between different cultures (and between individuals, as it were) cannot be reduced to the simple fact that there are several cultures existing side by side as equals.  Let’s not be deceived about one basic fact: there is no place beyond cultures that could grant us an unrestrained and unbiased overview, just as there is no place beyond my own self, as it were.  Or to put it in other words: we can escape our own culture just as little as we can escape our own identity or our own idiosyncratic way of being and living in the world.  And so it is only logical and consistent to beware of imposing specific culture-bound methods upon the other.  The ‘recognition of the alien’ in the person’s suffering, in the uniqueness of the individual person, and in the influence of the cultural horizon, all of this could act as a counterbalance to that, which a psychiatry, which is not person-oriented, so urgently needs in order to escape from getting trapped in a pitfall of generalised statements, oversized treatment packages, mechanical rules and policies, and culture-bound, mostly unreflected stereotypes and prejudices. [...] It seems that the psychotic individual can hardly sustain or tolerate the dialectical tension situated between the opposite poles of fusion with the object and loss of contact with the object or loneliness, that is: possessing the object (cathexis) and letting go of the object (recognition); self-love and object-love; love and destructiveness."
— Joachim Küchenhoff, Understanding Psychosis: A Psychoanalytic Approach (2012/2018)
"Melting and union are Dionysian; separation and individuation, Apollonian.  Every boy who leaves his mother to become a man is turning the Apollonian against the Dionysian. [...] There is a magnetics of eroticism in the west, due to the hardness of western personality: eroticism is an electric forcefield between masks.  The modern pursuit of self-realization has not led to sexual happiness, because assertions of selfhood merely release the amoral chaos of libido.  Freedom is the most overrated modern idea, originating in the Romantic rebellion against bourgeois society.  But only in society can one be an individual.  Nature is waiting at society’s gates to dissolve us in her chthonian bosom."
— Camille Paglia, "Sex and Violence, or Nature and Art" in Sexual Personae (1990)
"Dionysus is still largely in exile.  To embrace Dionysus fully is to embrace the dark, cthonic, forever uncivilized mammalian energies of savagery, death and destruction that live alongside love and innocence at the heart of every process of transformation and renewal- via madness or otherwise. [...] Psychiatry mainly serves to subdue those powerful Dionysian emotions as King Pentheus did in Euripides’ – “The Bacchae,” when he announced to Dionysus that he was going- “To lock you in an iron cage.”  Dionysus always lives outside the walls of the city state.  He calls his followers outside to be free again of the constraints of that civilized social structure.  It went very badly for the King when Dionysus hypnotized him and led him outside the city gates."
— Michael Cornwall, "Jung’s First Dream, The Mad God Dionysus and a Madness Sanctuary called Diabasis" (2012)
"Locke’s political theory served Americans well in the war of independence.  It has been less useful when applied in foreign policy, where it promotes the belief that freedom is a condition that comes about simply through the removal of tyranny. .. Freedom is not, as Locke imagined, a primordial human condition: where it exists it is the result of generations of institution building.  Yet in America an idea of natural freedom became the basis of a civil religion that claimed universal authority. [...] It would be better to accept that harmony will never be reached.  Better yet, give up the demand for harmony and welcome the varieties of human experience."
— John N. Gray, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (2007)
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