NLPhilia Blog

This article at the Mind Hacks Blog summarizes some research being done in the area of how we decide to trust (or mistrust) a person based on the shape of their face. It starts with an article at the Boston Globe, with an accompanying graphic illustration of the pertinent facial characteristics:

behavioral scientists have also begun to unravel the inner workings of trust. Their aim is to decode the subtle signals that we send out and pick up, the cues that, often without our knowledge, shape our sense of someone’s reliability. Researchers have discovered that surprisingly small factors – where we meet someone, whether their posture mimics ours, even the slope of their eyebrows or the thickness of their chin – can matter as much or more than what they say about themselves. We size up someone’s trustworthiness within milliseconds of meeting them, and while we can revise our first impression, there are powerful psychological tendencies that often prevent us from doing so – tendencies that apply even more strongly if we’ve grown close.

Here’s something else I found interesting:

Another set of cues, and a particularly powerful one, is body language. Mimicry, in particular, seems to put us at our ease. Recent work by Tanya Chartrand, a psychology professor at Duke, and work by Jeremy Bailenson and Nick Yee, media scholars at Stanford, have shown that if a person, or even a computer-animated figure, mimics our movements while talking to us, we will find our interlocutor significantly more persuasive and honest.

Cute, eh? Go read the Globe article; it’s great.

If you love academic writing, or even more detail, here’s a PDF of a Princeton University study on the subject.

An August 19 article in The Guardian, written by psychotherapist Andrew Feldmár, talks about the benefits of using hallucinogenic drugs alongside conventional treatment:

After three LSD sessions, a patient emerged from what was labelled chronic psychotic depression (she had attempted suicide three times, had been hospitalised, and given several courses of ECT, major antipsychotics and antidepressants), and was able to hold a job, derive pleasure from her days, and look forward to cultivating a varied garden of delights. She moved from cursing me for not letting her die to blessing me for the surprising freedom that opened up for her as a result of her LSD experiences. Psychotherapy, without LSD, would not have been enough, I’m afraid.

I’ve been curious about such methods ever since reading Aldous Huxley‘s book, The Doors of Perception. (Not curious enough to try the stuff, though.) I’m wondering what it is, exactly, that helps the mentally ill get better so much faster with such drugs than without them. If we could determine that, we could determine how to duplicate the results more safely and consistently… perhaps even without the drugs.

Go read Psychedelic Drugs Could Heal Thousands.

(Thanks, BoingBoing, for the pointer.)

While reading this NLP Connections thread I was reminded of my early reading of Transactional Analysis. Books like I’m OK, You’re OK, Games People Play, and Beyond Games and Scripts really piqued my interest in psychology and therapeutic interaction.

(I know Richard likes to poke fun at TA, but what I really think he pokes fun of is how people can’t tell metaphor or model from reality.)

Anyway, in the above-linked thread, one of the participants mentioned something I hadn’t seen before: The Karpman Drama Triangle. I thought you might like it too. Here’s the link to an article on the topic: The Three Faces of Victim.

Over at the Art of Manliness blog (yes, I read it, and it’s very good!) there’s an article about how your life’s soundtrack influences your life, and how making targeted changes to it can make targeted life changes. (Richard has been touting that for ages.)

OK, it’s not that general. That wouldn’t be suitably manly, I think. It’s specific to exercise. We’re good at extrapolating from a good idea, though.

Go give 52 Workout Songs To Help You Get Bigger, Stronger, and Faster a serious read.

If you aren’t a member of NLP Connections, you’re missing a great thread on forgiveness.

I’m just sayin’.

The July 6, 2008 issue of New York Times Magazine has an incredibly powerful article on suicidal ideation:

…in 2005, approximately 32,000 Americans committed suicide, or nearly twice the number of those killed by homicide.

I’ve heard that 98-99% of people have contemplated it in their lifetimes. If you do client work, or even if you don’t but you like helping people, the article is worth reading. I especially appreciated this rather NLPish angle:

The bigger problem with this mental-illness rubric is that it puts emphasis on the less-knowable aspect of the act, the psychological “why,” and tends to obscure any examination of the more pedestrian “how,” the basic mechanics involved. But if we want to unravel posthumously the thought processes of the lost with an eye to saving lives in the future, the “how” may be the best place to look.

I found the part about the “British coal-gas story” enlightening. This story, and others like it, show that a key aspect of suicide prevention is simply this: “put more time between the person and his ability to act”.

I may have quoted too much for “fair use” already. I hope the NYT won’t mind, as the message is a massively important one. If you ever find yourself between a person ans his suicide attempt, I’ll ask you to remember this, one more quote from the article:

“I’ll tell you what I can’t get out of my head,” [Kevin Hines] told me in his San Francisco living room. “It’s watching my hands come off that railing and thinking to myself, My God, what have I just done? Because I know that almost everyone else who’s gone off that bridge, they had that exact same thought at that moment. All of a sudden, they didn’t want to die, but it was too late…”

Here’s a link to the printer-friendly version of the article and here’s a link to the regular page.

If you are, do you look good? If you aren’t, would you look good if you were?

I rarely watch TV, and when I do you can be damn sure it isn’t Lifetime TV. But I was flipping through the channel guide at my S/O’s house the other day when the name of a show caught my eye: How to Look Good Naked. Being male — er, curious — I checked it out, and I must say I was impressed.

This is not your typical makeover show. Yes, the ladies get new clothes, makeup, and hairstyle, but think about it: none of that makes them look good naked.

No diets, no exercise, no plastic surgery. No changes in their bodies at all. And by the end of the show, these self-loathing ladies are confidently posing nude for a photographer and strutting — in front of an audience — down a catwalk in their underwear. And loving it. Loving it.

How do they do it? You’ll have to watch the show:

• How To Look Good Naked in the USA with Carson Kressley
• How To Look Good Naked in the UK with Gok Wan

Once again, we find Milton Erickson was ahead of his time:

A new study adds an unexpected method to the list of ways to spur memories about our past: body position. That’s right: just holding your body in the right position means you’ll have faster, more accurate access to certain memories. If you stand as if holding a golf club, you’re quicker to remember an event that happened while you were golfing than if you position your body in a non-golfing pose.

Cognitive Daily: Body position affects memory for events

Dustin Wax over at Lifehack.org has written another spot-on article, this time on the five rules for breaking the rules:

• Break the rules as a last resort;
• Rule-breaking gains its power from the strength of rules, not their weakness;
• For every broken rule there are a dozen unbroken ones;
• For every broken rule, there is a reason;and
• Accept the consequences.

I must admit that I’ve followed these rules quite a bit in my life, and it’s worked consistently well for me.

How to Break All the Rules (Lifehack.org)

…but, apparently, not always. Not when we limit our own choices. From the Freakonomics Blog:

Standard economic theory implies that we maximize our happiness if we have more choices. Yet we limit our choices — impose self-control mechanisms — voluntarily in order to improve our well-being.

Read the rest of Manipulating Yourself for Your Own Good.