From Observation to Insight

I just thought I’d tell you something interesting I learned in psychology class a long time ago. Some of you may already know this, and some of you might not. 

But there’s this interesting thing that our brain does. Consider this: 
You’re watching someone else pick up a cup. Our brain observes the person picking up the cup. There is firing in specific locations in the brain that allow you to pick up that cup, right? Well, when you watch someone pick up a cup, your brain actually fires in the exact same exact way that the person picking up the cup does ! So it’s like you’re also picking up the cup, but you’re not! 

Your brain ‘mirrors’ that other person’s brain. The neurons associated are called ‘mirror neurons’. They believe this might be linked with empathy.

They can have diminished ability to think and concentrate, and/or feelings of worthlessness;
then have  inflated self-esteem or grandiosity, decreased need for sleep, more talkative than usual, flight of ideas or racing thoughts, and/or an increase in goal-directed activity.

Scientists find the correlation between creativity and bipolar disorder and/or depression interesting. On a test study, people with bipolar disorder and/or depression had much more ideas on the creative portion of the test than those without the disorders.

Some people comment that it’s the result of a fight between ’ the mind and the heart’.
Some people are able to control their manic depression and/or depression with exercise, meditation, art, etc; to utilize creativity or control their emotions.

Some famous people with this case are:
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. There are probably more that are not listed.

Evidence also suggests that creative people share personality traits with bipolar people, but are not necessarily bipolar, and sometimes misdiagnosed.

I remember once, someone and I got into a conversation. I told him a wanted to be a physicist and an engineer. He suggested to me that I try the Myers Briggs/ Carl Jung test, and maybe even read up on books about it. He found it surprising how freakishly accurate the test really is. The test allows for personality change, it takes your opinions, the way you think, into consideration as well.

There are 16 distinctive personality types; and your type occurs from a variation of the 4 letters, with two different outcomes for each of the four categories.

1. Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I).

2. Sensing (S) or Intuition (N).

3.Thinking (T) or Feeling (F).

4.Judging (J) or Perceiving (P).

He used to want to be a physicist,  a doctor, etc; basically all of the job choices his personality type was known for, he had tried out, until he decided his job. He was surprised that all of his choices had been on his personality type. It does give you suggestions as to what jobs your type would be better at, but it doesn’t have to be followed. The book also explains typical interactions between other types; which types would be better friends; you get the idea.

And most people assume that the first two outcomes are just simply being introverted or extraverted.

Well, that’s what I assumed too, but it’s not true; and he told me why:

It’s not actually introversion or extraversion. (Now I can’t remember exactly what he said. )

But he said something along the lines of, it’s actually how fast the signalling goes past your brain stem to different areas of your brain. It’s how fast your react to things.
Do you sit there and ponder it for awhile? Do you think about how you act? Or do you actually just act right upon instinct?

That is an example of what it really means. It has to do with your brain’s ability to respond to stimuli it’s given.

And it happens that people with E tend to have a faster response to stimuli than those that have I. But faster or slower responses to stimuli doesn’t mean ’ I respond faster so I’m smarter than you’, it just explains the differences between the way people act, and how their perception works.

It did make a bit of sense once I thought about it. It’s interesting stuff.

And I did take the test, and I did also look up what jobs my type would be good at; and guess what was creepy? The jobs that I have pondered at in the past were all on there. And it explained how I act, and how I see things to the dot.

I find it odd that there are words for certain things, such as feminism, etc. The fact that the word exists affects our psychology, does it not?

If words such as that didn’t exist, we wouldn’t see ourselves as separate would we? Yet, maybe we would still see ourselves as separate with, or without, the word.

Words like that are only given the power we give them though. Many ’ bad words’ , or ’ incorrect terms’ that people use used to literally mean something else; but since people used them with a negative intent, they’re offensive now. But if they weren’t used offensively, they would just be words.

Do you get what I’m saying?
Obviously, I would never go out of my way to say those words, because I’m a nice person. But…