“…any hypothesis that pretends to discover the ultimate original qualities of human nature ought at first to be rejected as presumptuous and chimerical.”  David Hume  1739

Our fundamental conscious nature is experience:  Not behavioral response whether or not well intentioned and no matter how perceptive.

The innervation of the system develops energies in the intrafusal muscle spindles that, when detected by spindle receptors, serves to experience the innervation.  The experience, when enhanced  by efferent impulse activity from configured synaptic activity, constitutes conscious experience.

photo credit: flickr user intiendes

We’re building a culture of sharing, powered by social media. Most of it is beautiful: Sharing an experience with others helps us enjoy it more, and feel we’re enjoying it together with… (with whom, that’s another question). It’s like that piece of chocolate cake that tastes so much better when shared with a loved one.

But when does the joy of sharing become compulsion to share? Do you ever feel your experience is not complete and fulfilling unless you can share it (at least a twitpic, a facebook post, a quick check-in)? There are arguments about not being able to live fully in the moment, when attention is divided between taking it in and sharing it on social media. But that’s not what this post is about. I’m thinking now about the TMI phenomenon that sometimes results from the compulsion to share.

I see people sharing too much detail, personal detail, embarrassing, even incriminating detail, detail that could get them in trouble with their bosses, or lower their credibility online. I remember seeing tweets or status updates about boobs and bras and waxing, and things I don’t really want to know or imagine about people. Why do they share? Is the behavior driven by a compulsion to share?

I’m really interested in understanding the psychology of this compulsion.

The compulsion to share is, probably, one of the reasons why many companies ban social media in the workplace. If people are compelled to share every little detail about their lives, and often make questionable decisions about the content they share, it is probable that sensitive information can be leaked this way.

Could it be true that people make more conscious, rational decisions about what to share in face-to-face conversations than in social media? Could it be that some of the sharing we do in social media is driven by impulses we find a bit hard to resist?

What is your experience? Do you feel the impulse to share on social media? Do you feel your experience is incomplete, without the sharing? And how do you deal with the impulse? Do you keep it in check? Give in? Have you ever shared information on impulse that you later regretted?

Help me understand.

photo credit: flickr user intiendes

We’re building a culture of sharing, powered by social media. Most of it is beautiful: Sharing an experience with others helps us enjoy it more, and feel we’re enjoying it together with… (with whom, that’s another question). It’s like that piece of chocolate cake that tastes so much better when shared with a loved one.

But when does the joy of sharing become compulsion to share? Do you ever feel your experience is not complete and fulfilling unless you can share it (at least a twitpic, a facebook post, a quick check-in)? There are arguments about not being able to live fully in the moment, when attention is divided between taking it in and sharing it on social media. But that’s not what this post is about. I’m thinking now about the TMI phenomenon that sometimes results from the compulsion to share.

I see people sharing too much detail, personal detail, embarrassing, even incriminating detail, detail that could get them in trouble with their bosses, or lower their credibility online. I remember seeing tweets or status updates about boobs and bras and waxing, and things I don’t really want to know or imagine about people. Why do they share? Is the behavior driven by a compulsion to share?

I’m really interested in understanding the psychology of this compulsion.

The compulsion to share is, probably, one of the reasons why many companies ban social media in the workplace. If people are compelled to share every little detail about their lives, and often make questionable decisions about the content they share, it is probable that sensitive information can be leaked this way.

Could it be true that people make more conscious, rational decisions about what to share in face-to-face conversations than in social media? Could it be that some of the sharing we do in social media is driven by impulses we find a bit hard to resist?

What is your experience? Do you feel the impulse to share on social media? Do you feel your experience is incomplete, without the sharing? And how do you deal with the impulse? Do you keep it in check? Give in? Have you ever shared information on impulse that you later regretted?

Help me understand.

The transduction of energies to afferent nerve impulse activity innervates the system. 

Conscious experience is the detection by spindle receptors of energies developed in intrafusal muscle spindles. 

Energies developed in spindles are enhanced by efferent impulse activity from configured synaptic activity. 

Behavior is initiated or inhibited by the energies developed in intrafusal muscle spindles and detected and transduced by spindle receptors. 

The behavior that distinguishes the human species is language. 

Agreement on the association of the sound (or sight) of vocalization with the initiation endows the behavior with meaning. 

The meaning of a word or phrase is the experience with which it is associated.

Dolphins are pretty smart. Their brain-to-body ratio is in fact second only to humans, and the cerebral folds that allow a more dense collection of grey matter are probably more wrinkly than a humans. It shouldn’t come as a particular surprise that dolphins even pass things on culturally (something that’s been discussed here before) -

In one recent case, a dolphin rescued from the wild was taught to tail-walk while recuperating for three weeks in a dolphinarium in Australia…After she was released, scientists were astonished to see the trick spreading among wild dolphins who had learnt it from the former captive…There are many similar examples, such as the way dolphins living off Western Australia learnt to hold sponges over their snouts to protect themselves when searching for spiny fish on the ocean floor.

Behavior is not just culturally expressed, it is both novel and conscious:

A dolphin’s ability to invent novel behaviours was put to the test in a famous experiment by the renowned dolphin expert Karen Pryor. Two rough-toothed dolphins were rewarded whenever they came up with a new behaviour. It took just a few trials for both dolphins to realise what was required. A similar trial was set up with humans. The humans took about as long to realise what they were being trained to do as did the dolphins. For both the dolphins and the humans, there was a period of frustration (even anger, in the humans) before they “caught on”. Once they figured it out, the humans expressed great relief, whereas the dolphins raced around the tank excitedly, displaying more and more novel behaviours.

Go watch some videos of them doing awesome things. Because awesome dolphins are awesome.

[Photo source]

Different authors define Psychology in different ways but in 1990, Feldman defines Psychology as the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes. Scientific because it uses the steps in a scientific method in its quest to understand why a person behaves in a certain manner. It is systematic and empirical and it is dependent upon measurements. A scientific method generally follows the ff. steps:

1.) Identification of the Problem

2.) Formulation of Hypothesis

3.) Gathering of Data

4.) Interpretation and Analysis of Data

5: Generalization of Conclusion

Behavior includes everything that we do – thinking, feeling, writing, reading, imagining, etc.

Kinds of Behavior

a. Overt -> behavior that is observable by others and can be seen readily (ex. Laughing, shouting, talking, etc.)

b. Covert -> behavior that is internal therefore not observable and cannot be seen. This comes in the forms of feelings, thoughts, and motives (ex. Happy, angry, imaginations, etc.)

Sigmund Freud, a Psychoanalyst classified behavior according to a person’s awareness of his behavior, to wit:

a. Conscious Behavior -> any behavior that the person is aware of (ex. walking, eating, etc.)

b. Unconscious Behavior -> any behavior that the person is not aware of (ex. mannerisms, shaking of the legs while sitting, biting your fingers, playing, with your pen while listening to your teacher’s discussion, etc.)

According to Freud, our unconscious is bigger than the conscious. Dreams and “slip of the tongue” phenomenon are some ways of releasing the unconscious.