For those interested in positive psychology, there is a must-attend conference November 24-25 in San Francisco "Happiness and It's Causes." In spite of obvious jokes about a happiness conference in San Francisco, this event brings an extraordinary line-up of people taking a wide-ranging look at positive emotions and mental states. While semantically, the word 'happiness' has some issues in sounding sort of new age---the Declaration of Independence notwithstanding---you can see from the stellar list of neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists, and neuropsychologists that the hard sciences as well as soft are playing a major role in looking at positive experience. (Even economists are getting into measures of quality of life these days.) The study of positive experience, aka positive psychology, was started on the premise that we shouldn't always focus on the pathologies of human existence and that we should start to learn more about what drives and nurtures positive emotions, … [Read more...]
Internet Addiction: A Sign of the Times?
The question of 'Internet Addiction' is big in China. Parents are more worried than ever about their child's performance--most have only one child to bear the brunt of all that parental pressure--and those same parents are facing a digital divide between themselves and the new generation. China has its own set of pressures and changes. But the concerns of parents for their children are the same on both sides of the world. Here are some things I believe about our world today: * Things are changing very fast * New things frighten people * Frightened people are on the look out for other scary things * If you want to get someone's attention, make it scary (or sexy, or preferably both.) What does this have to do with the topic of Internet addiction? A lot. The speed of technological change and the introduction of technology into everyday lives are proceeding at a breakneck pace. Change is happening so fast, that generational differences for the comfort and use of … [Read more...]
Fake News – Learning Less but Believing More?
A study out of Ohio state reports that "fake" news, such as Jon Stewart or The Colbert Report, doesn't inform or teach viewers as much about political issues and cadidates as does watching news on television networks like CNN and NBC. I never thought learning was the issue when reports started coming out saying that many young people were getting their news from Jon Stewart. In fact, in my current research, Comedy Central comes in about third in viewer's choice of an information source. I interpret this as a matter of trust, not education. We all know that Jon Stewart's primary goal is to be funny and entertain us. This certainty means we can process what we receive from him in that context. Within that context, he has no reason to lie, distort, or otherwise reframe current events. On the other hand, television news is presented as truth, without any signposts to clue us in to the economic pressues that drive content choice and framing of a given network, producer, … [Read more...]
