Four reasons art is made – and how they shape the art world

November 11, 2023

There is something very strange about the art world, which, I think, has to do with art stemming from four different motivations that often come into tension with each other. More specifically, I suspect that art is created mainly for four reasons: 1) Urge: many artists seem to have a compulsion to create (sometimes, to create oddly specific things). They make art to satisfy this urge. In this category, I would also include art that is mainly motivated by helping the artist ach...

Human universals: 6 remarkable things I think are true of nearly all adults

October 20, 2023

Some remarkable things I suspect are true of nearly all adults: 1) We each hold some beliefs that are almost totally non-responsive to evidence involving some combination of our identity (who we are), our group, the nature of reality (e.g., God), or the nature of what’s good. Examples: • Many have an unshakable belief that they are good even as they harm the world (or believe they’re insufficient even though they’re altruistic and productive) • Most have an unshakable belief that t...

Four forces that tend to promote or impede ethical behavior

December 9, 2022

In my view, there are "four forces" behind why humans avoid unethical behavior. I think understanding these forces can be useful when seeking to explain people's actions (especially when someone does something truly terrible). Ethical force 1: Emotion The vast majority of us experience empathy and compassion. We tend to feel happy when seeing others happy and feel bad when we see others suffering. These feelings guide our ethical behavior at an interpersonal level, causing proso...

The Four States of Distress: how should you comfort a friend or loved one in need?

June 1, 2020

(co-authored with Kat Woods) When a friend or loved one has something bad happen to them, what should you do to help them feel better? This question can be difficult to answer because it seems that at different times people want different things: empathy, problem-solving, optimism, distraction, and so on. See for instance this study where people give divergent answers about what they want from a friend after something bad happens. We propose that there are four general states that a perso...

Psychological Outliers

January 29, 2018

It's easy to underestimate how remarkably different our psychological experiences can be. "Psychological outliers" may be much more common than you think because there are so many ways a person can be an outlier. If you are a psychological outlier in some way, you may assume others are more similar than they really are (much the way that synesthetes, who experience a combination of different sensory inputs in their brains, often grow up believing that everyone has synesthesia). That means you m...

Break Your Downward Emotional Spiral

July 16, 2012

Your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors can form a vicious feedback loop, sending you into a downward emotional spiral. You get a bad review from your boss, and start to feel upset. This negative emotion brings on thoughts about when you've made mistakes at your job, and you feel even worse. You now start imagining your boss firing you, and your mood sinks into despair. Let's dissect what's going on here. An event triggers an upsetting thought, and the thought causes negative emotion. With you...

Finding Our False Beliefs

September 7, 2011

By definition, we believe that each of our beliefs is true. And yet, simultaneously, we must admit that some of our beliefs must be wrong. We can't possibly have gotten absolutely everything right. This becomes especially obvious when we consider the huge number of beliefs we have, the complexity of the world we live in, and the number of people who disagree with us. The trouble though is that we don't know which of our many beliefs are wrong. If we knew that, we should have stopped believing th...

Fighting Against Your Counterproductive Inclinations

August 8, 2011

Sometimes, in a given situation, what we feel like doing is precisely the opposite of what would be best for us. Our natural inclinations about what action is helpful in a given circumstance can lead us in entirely the wrong direction. Consider, for example, what happens when you feel tired. The obvious and natural thing to do is to lie down. This works well when there is time to sleep or nap. But what if you are feeling tired and should leave your house in 10 minutes? While lying down is wha...

The Interplay Between Your Reason and Emotions

July 31, 2011

It can sometimes be useful to think of yourself as consisting of multiple systems. You have an emotional system that constantly processes your sensory input and thoughts, and produces emotions like fear, anger, happiness and contempt based on this input. You also have a reasoning system, which is what you use when you are reasoning, planning, analyzing and consciously predicting. But the operations of these two systems are not independent. In fact, they each have the power to alter the operation...

Still Living with the Emotions of our Ancestors

July 27, 2011

According to evolutionary theory, emotions evolved because they were helpful for survival. Anxiety alerts us to potential danger and makes us wary. Anger motivates us to fight and shows our allies that we need help. Jealousy motivates us to keep our mates to ourselves to help maximize the number of our offspring that survive to child-bearing age. But the environment we live in today is obviously very different from the environment of our distant ancestors for whom these emotions were optimized. ...