Self-Motivation
David Goggins
Former Navy Seal
Career Development
Bryan Cranston
Actor
Critical Thinking
Liv Boeree
International Poker Champion
Emotional Intelligence
Amaryllis Fox
Former CIA Clandestine Operative
Management
Chris Hadfield
Retired Canadian Astronaut & Author
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- A former clandestine operative reveals a CIA method for reading an adversary's mind.
- Game theory exposes the two best tactics for winning a negotiation.
- If you're not a subscriber yet, join Big Think Edge today. Boost your analytical intelligence with our 7-day free trial.
This week, Big Think Edge is releasing three videos about getting inside the heads of people you need to understand better. Jamie Notter clears up what many people don't understand about millennials, Amaryllis Fox shares a great CIA technique for predicting an adversary's behavior, and Kevin Zollman puts you on top in negotiations.
Preparing for the millennial takeover: Understand the four trends that shaped a generation, with Jamie Notter
Maybe you're a millennial. Maybe you've been baffled by them. In either case, there's no denying the friction that often arises in the workplace between millennials and those who came before them. The insights of Jamie Notter, author of When Millennials Take Over, should resolve confusion and friction on all sides. Why are millennials the way they are? Notter's astute, eye-opening analysis of the world millennials know explains everything.
Available September 3 in Become a Better Manager
Win with red teaming: A case study in strategic empathy from inside the CIA, with Amaryllis Fox
To win in a conflict, it's imperative to see your adversary clearly. It's not always easy to do, especially when dealing with entrenched opposing mindsets, and in the 1980s the CIA developed "red teaming" to address this. Former clandestine CIA operative Amaryllis Fox explains how a "red cell" of CIA operatives were charged with getting inside the minds of Soviet leadership as deeply as possible, non-judgmentally assuming both their tactical and emotional perspectives. It proved to be an invaluable means of predicting their behavior. Stepping outside yourself to spend some time in an opponent's skin, explains Fox, is not only a great way to accomplish your goals — it's also a powerful personal-growth experience. Learn how to do it this week, at Big Think Edge.
"THE TRUTH IS, YOU ACTUALLY ARE FAR BETTER EQUIPPED TO GO AFTER THE PRAGMATIC, STRATEGIC WIN WHEN YOU KNOW HOW TO EXERCISE EMPATHY, AND CLIMB INTO THE PERSPECTIVE OF ANOTHER PERSON, PARTICULARLY YOUR ADVERSARY."
– AMARYLLIS FOX
Available September 4 in Boost Your Emotional Intelligence
The science of strategic thinking: Improve negotiation outcomes with 2 central principles from game theory, with Kevin Zollman
Game theorist and author of The Game Theorist's Guide to Parenting Kevin Zollman talks about how game theory tries to explain negotiations. It identifies simple principles that underlie what seems on the surface to be complex interaction. Two of these principles just happen to be the ones that typically determine whether you or the other person is going to win. Hint: They both involve positioning yourself to seem like the person who has the least to lose. Time to level-up your negotiating skills. Start your 7-day free trial of Big Think Edge to watch this lesson.
Available September 4 in Boost Your Analytical Intelligence
Big Think Edge releases Deep Dives!
This week marks a brand-new offering on the Big Think Edge platform: Deep Dives! Big Think Edge Deep Dives are four-step educational experiences that are made up of articles, videos, and activities. We'll be releasing three Deep Dives every week so there's more than ever to learn on Big Think Edge.
Our first three Deep Dives explain why Donald Trump, the "Disruptor in Chief", might be onto something when it comes to so-called dark emotional intelligence in negotiations; we look at how to welcome Gen Z into your strong intergenerational team; and you'll also learn how to use practical framework for making life's toughest decisions.
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Why is everyone so selfish? Science explains
The coronavirus pandemic has brought out the perception of selfishness among many.
July 05, 2020
Credit: Adobe Stock, Olivier Le Moal.
Personal Growth
- Selfish behavior has been analyzed by philosophers and psychologists for centuries.
- New research shows people may be wired for altruistic behavior and get more benefits from it.
- Crisis times tend to increase self-centered acts.
<p>Why do so many people seem so selfish these days, putting their needs first? The coronavirus has not only decimated our population and placed lives on anxious hold, it has also been a test of character. A test that, by and large, we appear to be failing. People are at each other's throats over wearing masks, the true facts of the pandemic, blatant racism and old monuments, all the while appearing to be driven by pure selfishness to others – a feeling coming from all sides of the political spectrum. Where does this selfish behavior come from, exacerbated by a series of crises?</p><p>For starters, it is to some extent, natural to be self-oriented. After all, what else do we know? We are at the center of our own worlds, always looking to bolster the ego. Self-interest is the most fundamental human motivation, <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/hobmoral/" target="_blank">argued</a> English philosopher <strong>Thomas Hobbes</strong> all the way back in the 1600s. But acting out of self-interest is not necessarily the only thing on our minds. As research <a href="https://www.livescience.com/53533-women-prefer-altruism-over-looks.html" target="_blank">has shown</a>, human behavior can be motivated as much by altruism and moral considerations. So at what point does healthy self-care and the right amount of self-love become selfishness, a trait we judge negatively? </p>
<p><span style="background-color: initial;">Psychologists, like <strong>F. Diane Barth</strong>, <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-couch/201602/what-s-the-best-way-deal-rude-and-selfish-people" target="_blank">define selfishness</a> as having two primary pillars: "</span><span style="background-color: initial;">Being concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself" and "Having no regard for the needs or feelings of others." Of course, most of us probably live somewhere on a sliding scale of selfless to selfish moments. Still, in the public consciousness being selfish is erroneously associated with becoming more successful, even though the facts don't necessarily bear that out.</span></p><p>A 2020 <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2018-47966-001" target="_blank">study</a> published in the <em>Journal of Personality and Social Psychology </em>looked to figure out if people who prioritize self-oriented behavior did better in life. The team led by <strong>Kimmo Eriksson</strong> of Stockholm University compared such factors as the yearly income and number of biological children. They analyzed a large sample of responses by 5,294 Americans to the public opinion General Social Survey (GSS) between the years of 2002 and 2014, as well as European responses to the European Social Survey (ESS). The scientists identified the more selfish people by their answers to various survey questions. Overall, while the researchers found that in public perception, 68% of the people believed selfishness was a common trait of those who made more money, in reality, people with selfless attitudes and behavior had higher incomes and also more children. "Generosity pays," as states the title of their <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2018-47966-001" target="_blank">study</a>.</p>
Paul Krugman on the Virtues of Selfishness
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-media_id="7ZtAkm6C" data-player_id="FvQKszTI" data-rm-shortcode-id="828936bf6953080e9018307354c0c02b"> <div id="botr_7ZtAkm6C_FvQKszTI_div" class="jwplayer-media" data-jwplayer-video-src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/7ZtAkm6C-FvQKszTI.js"> <img src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/thumbs/7ZtAkm6C-1920.jpg" class="jwplayer-media-preview" /> </div> <script src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/7ZtAkm6C-FvQKszTI.js"></script> </div> The Nobel Prize-winning economist on the virtues of selfishness.<p><span style="background-color: initial;">What's more, altruistic behavior may be the default option in our brains, suggests <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26942832/" target="_blank">research</a> carried out in 2016/2017 by a team led by </span><span style="background-color: initial;"><strong>Leonardo Christov-Moore</strong> from UCLA. They found an area of the prefrontal cortex that can be specifically affected to make people less giving.</span></p><p>So if selflessness is rooted in the brain, why do some people have such a hard time caring about the needs of others? The answer might lie in emotional intelligence, as pointed out psychologist Lisa Marie Bobby in an <a href="https://www.oprahmag.com/life/relationships-love/a29416336/dealing-selfish-people/" target="_blank">interview</a>. "Emotional intelligence exists on a spectrum, and some individuals are higher in emotional intelligence than others," she shared. "One symptom of low emotional intelligence is the tendency to be self-absorbed, or exclusively concerned about what <em>you're</em> thinking, feeling, needing and wanting, instead of the thoughts, feelings, needs and desires of others."</p>
Evolution Is Moving Us Away from Selfishness. But Where Is It Taking ...
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-media_id="cyeqmYCb" data-player_id="FvQKszTI" data-rm-shortcode-id="6c5efecb56456e9acc25cf36935b1826"> <div id="botr_cyeqmYCb_FvQKszTI_div" class="jwplayer-media" data-jwplayer-video-src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/cyeqmYCb-FvQKszTI.js"> <img src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/thumbs/cyeqmYCb-1920.jpg" class="jwplayer-media-preview" /> </div> <script src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/cyeqmYCb-FvQKszTI.js"></script> </div><p><span style="background-color: initial;">Another unfortunate factor – </span><span style="background-color: initial;">many find it hard to detect selfishness in themselves. As a 2020 study from</span> Yale psychologists and economists at the University of Zurich found out, selfish people make adaptions to their memories to avoid feeling bad about their egotistical behavior. The research, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15602-4" target="_blank">published in the April 29 in the journal Nature Communications</a><span style="background-color: initial;">, revealed that people tend to remember themselves being better to others than they actually were.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"When people behave in ways that fall short of their personal standards, one way they maintain their moral self-image is by misremembering their ethical lapses," <a href="https://news.yale.edu/2020/04/29/memory-misfires-help-selfish-maintain-their-self-image" target="_blank">explained</a> <strong>Molly Crockett</strong>, assistant professor of psychology at Yale University and the study's senior author.</p><p>Fast-forward a few years from now, and certainly more than a few people will be remembering their actions of today with a very different slant from what actually happened. As it is, getting a better grasp on behavior that doesn't take others into consideration is everyone's personal responsibility. Where does one right end (let's say, the liberty not to wear masks) and the right of everyone else to good health begin? At what point does your right not to get infected outweigh the right of another to pursue economic prosperity? How much does my right to survive depend on the good will and cooperation from others? Answering these truthfully, without feeling attacked, can stem the tide of real and perceived selfishness that goes against our better natures and costs us lives and societal degradation. </p>
Exploring Morality and Selfishness in Modern Times
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-media_id="02eX1Cag" data-player_id="FvQKszTI" data-rm-shortcode-id="45cc6180db791f32683988fb52faff26"> <div id="botr_02eX1Cag_FvQKszTI_div" class="jwplayer-media" data-jwplayer-video-src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/02eX1Cag-FvQKszTI.js"> <img src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/thumbs/02eX1Cag-1920.jpg" class="jwplayer-media-preview" /> </div> <script src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/02eX1Cag-FvQKszTI.js"></script> </div> Philosopher Peter Singer discusses the state of global ethics.
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How Hemingway felt about fatherhood
Parenting could be a distraction from what mattered most to him: his writing.
July 05, 2020
Ernest Hemingway Holding His Son 1927 (Wikimedia Commons)
Culture & Religion
Ernest Hemingway was affectionately called “Papa," but what kind of dad was he?
<p>In my role as Associate Editor of the <a href="https://www.hemingwaysociety.org/hemingway-letters-project" target="_blank">Hemingway Letters Project</a>, I spend my time investigating the approximately 6,000 letters sent by Hemingway, 85% of which are now being published for the first time in a multivolume series. <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/literature/literary-texts/letters-ernest-hemingway-19321934-volume-5?format=HB&isbn=9780521897372" target="_blank">The latest volume</a> – the fifth – spans his letters from January 1932 through May 1934 and gives us an intimate look into Hemingway's daily life, not only as a writer and a sportsman, but also as a father.</p><p>During this period, Hemingway explored the emotional depths of fatherhood in his fiction. But his letters show that parenting could be a distraction from what mattered most to him: his writing. </p>
<h2>'No alibis' in the writing business</h2><p>Hemingway had three sons. His oldest, John – nicknamed "Bumby" – was born to Ernest and his first wife, Hadley, when Ernest was 24 years old. He had Patrick and Gregory with his second wife, Pauline.</p><p>Hemingway initially approached fatherhood with some ambivalence. In her 1933 memoir "<a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0608711.txt" target="_blank">The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas</a>," Gertrude Stein recalls that one evening Hemingway came to visit and "announced…with great bitterness" that he was "too young to be a father."</p><p>As the fifth volume of letters opens in January 1932, Hemingway is trying to finish "<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Death_in_the_Afternoon.html?id=Wn69QsdwDlQC" target="_blank">Death in the Afternoon</a>," his nonfiction account of bullfighting, in a household with a six-week-old baby, a three-year-old who ingests ant poison and nearly dies, a wife still recovering from a C-section, along with all the quotidian problems of home ownership, from a leaky roof to faulty wiring.</p><p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342233/original/file-20200616-23227-ywfum4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip" target="_blank"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342233/original/file-20200616-23227-ywfum4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip"></a></p><p>Ernest Hemingway and Pauline Pfeiffer Hemingway, with Gregory, Patrick and Bumby in Key West, 1933. (Princeton University Library, Author provided)</p><p>Hemingway explained to his mother-in-law, Mary Pfeiffer, that if his latest book fell short, he couldn't simply take readers aside and say, "But you ought to see what a big boy Gregory is…and you ought to see our wonderful water-work system and I go to church every Sunday and am a good father to my family or as good as I can be."</p><p>There are "no alibis" in the writing business, Hemingway continued, and "a man is a fool" to allow anything, even family, to interrupt his work. "Taking refuge in domestic successes," he added, "is merely a form of quitting."</p><p>For Hemingway, work didn't simply entail sitting at a desk and writing. It also included the various adventures he was famous for – the <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Hemingway-on-Fishing/Ernest-Hemingway/9781476716411" target="_blank">fishing</a>, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/hemingwayadventure/africa.html" target="_blank">hunting</a>, traveling and socializing with the people he met along the way. Though he would teach the boys to fish and shoot when they were older, when they were very young he didn't hesitate to leave them with nannies or extended family for long stretches of time.</p><p>This separation was <a href="https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/john-hemingway/strange-tribe/" target="_blank">particularly hard</a> on the youngest, Gregory, who, from a very young age, was left for months in the care of Ada Stern, a governess who lived up to her last name. Patrick sometimes joined his parents on their travels or stayed with other relatives. Bumby, the oldest, divided his time between his father and his mother in Paris. The children's lives were so peripatetic that at the Letters Project we maintain a spreadsheet to keep track of their whereabouts at any given time.</p>
<h2>'Papa' explores fathers and sons in his fiction</h2><p>However, it would not be accurate to say that Hemingway did not care about his children. In the latest volume of letters, three are addressed to Patrick, two of them decorated with circled dots, a Hemingway family tradition called "toosies," which represented kisses.</p><p><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342482/original/file-20200617-94044-1rk64fc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip"></p><p>In his letters to his kids, Hemingway would sometimes draw dots called 'toosies,' which represented kisses. (Princeton University Library, Author provided)</p><p>In Hemingway's fiction, we can see the depth of that paternal feeling, and in his letters, the domestic moments that inspired him.</p><p>In November 1932, with his two youngest sons ill with whooping cough and being cared for by their mother at their grandparents' home in Arkansas, Hemingway postponed a trip to New York to stay in Key West with Bumby.</p><p>"He is a good kid and a good companion," Hemingway wrote his editor, Maxwell Perkins, "but I do not want to drag him around the speakies [bars] too much."</p><p>That same month Hemingway worked on the story of a father and son traveling together that would become "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fathers_and_Sons_(short_story)" target="_blank">Fathers and Sons</a>" in the collection "<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Winner_Take_Nothing.html?id=Bc8C0Hb9B5YC" target="_blank">Winner Take Nothing</a>." It's one of the only stories in which Nick Adams – a semi-autobiographical recurring character – is portrayed as a parent, and the reflective, melancholy piece was written just three years after Hemingway's own father <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2926355?seq=1" target="_blank">had died by suicide</a>.</p><p>In the story, Nick is driving along a stretch of highway in the countryside with "his son asleep on the seat by his side" when he starts thinking about his father.</p><p>Nick recalls many details about him: his eyesight, good; his body odor, bad; his advice on hunting, wise; his advice about sex, unsound. He reflects on viewing his father's face after the undertaker had made "certain dashingly executed repairs of doubtful artistic merit."</p>
<p>Nick is surprised when his son starts to speak to him because he "had felt quite alone" even though "this boy had been with him." As if reading his father's thoughts, the boy wonders, "What was it like, Papa, when you were a little boy and used to hunt with the Indians?'"</p><p>Hemingway's letters show that another story in the collection, "<a href="http://crmsl.weebly.com/uploads/6/3/1/4/63143381/a_day%E2%80%99s_wait_by_ernest_hemingway.pdf" target="_blank">A Day's Wait</a>," was inspired by Bumby's bout with influenza in the fall of 1932. It is a seemingly lighthearted story about a young boy's misunderstanding of the differences between the centigrade and Fahrenheit scales of temperature. Like Bumby, the protagonist, "Schatz" – one of Bumby's other nicknames, a term of endearment in German – attends school in France but is staying with his father when he becomes ill. Schatz had learned at school that no one can survive a temperature of 44 Celsius, so, unbeknownst to his father, he spends the day waiting to die of his fever of 102 Fahrenheit.</p><p>But there is more to this story than the twist. "You don't have to stay in here with me, Papa, if it bothers you," the boy tells him. "It doesn't bother me," his father replies. He unwittingly leaves his son to believe, for an entire day, not only that the boy is going to die, but that his death is of no importance to his father.</p><p>In this slight story – one of those stories he told Perkins was written "absolutely as they happen" – we find an unexpected Hemingway hero in the form of a nine-year-old boy who bravely faces death alone.</p><p>Though he once wrote that he wanted "Winner Take Nothing" to make "a picture of the whole world," Hemingway also seemed to understand that no one ever truly knows the subjective experience of another, not even a father and son.</p><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/verna-kale-408674" target="_blank">Verna Kale</a>, Associate Editor, The Letters of Ernest Hemingway and Assistant Research Professor of English, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/pennsylvania-state-university-1258" target="_blank">Pennsylvania State University</a></em></p><p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com/" target="_blank">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-hemingway-felt-about-fatherhood-139801" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
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The biology of aliens: How much do we know?
Hollywood has created an idea of aliens that doesn't match the science.
July 05, 2020
Videos
- Ask someone what they think aliens look like and you'll probably get a description heavily informed by films and pop culture. The existence of life beyond our planet has yet to be confirmed, but there are clues as to the biology of extraterrestrials in science.
- "Don't give them claws," says biologist E.O. Wilson. "Claws are for carnivores and you've got to be an omnivore to be an E.T. There just isn't enough energy available in the next trophic level down to maintain big populations and stable populations that can evolve civilization."
- In this compilation, Wilson, theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, Bill Nye, and evolutionary biologist Jonathan B. Losos explain why aliens don't look like us and why Hollywood depictions are mostly inaccurate.
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