How to Make a Switch by Chip and Dan Heath:

• Direct the Rider (the rational side of the mind)

1. Follow the bright spots. Investigate what's working and clone it.
2. Script the critical moves. Don't think big picture, think in terms of specific behaviors.
3. Point to the destination. Change is easier when you know where you are're going and why it's worth it.

• Motivate the Elephant (the emotional side of the mind)

1. Find the feeling. Knowing something isn't enough to cause change. Make people feel something.
2. Shrink the change. Break down the change until it no longer spooks the Elephant.
3. Grow your people. Cultivate a sense of identity and instill the growth mindset.

• Shape the Path

1. Tweak the environment. When the situation changes, the behavior changes. So change the situation.
2. Build habits. When behavior is habitual, it's "free"--it doesn't tax the Rider. Look for ways to encourage habits.
3. Rally the herd. Behavior is contagioius. Help it spread.

The Ideas of Will Power:

• Willpower is actually three powers--I will, I won't, and I want--that help us to be a better version of ourselves.
• Willpower is a biological instinct, like stress, that evolved to help to protect ourselves from ourselves.
• Self-control is like a muscle. It gets tired from use, but regular exercise makes it stronger.
• When we turn willpower challenges into measures of moral worth, being good gives us permission to be bad. For better self-control, forget virtue, and focus on goals and values.
• Our brains mistake the promise of reward for a guarantee of happiness, so we chase satisfaction from things that do not deliver.
• Feeling bad leads to giving in, and dropping guilt makes you stronger.
• Our inability to clearly see the future clearly leads us to temptation and procrastination.
• Self-control is influenced by social proof, making both willpower and temptation contagious. 
• Trying to suppress thoughts, emotions, and cravings backfires and makes you more likely to think, feel, or do the thing you most want to avoid. 

Source: The Willpower Instinct. How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It (2012) by Kelly McGonigal, Ph. D.

Criteria That Make Analogies Function So Effectively:

1. Use the familiar to explain something less familiar.
2. Highlight similarities and obscure differences.
3. Identify useful abstractions.
4. Tell a coherent story.
5. Resonate emotionally.

Source: Shortcut. How Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell Our Greatest Ideas (2014) by John Pollack.

Matti Bergstrom's Bipolar Generator of the Brain:

1. Input (stimulus) from the senses goes in two directions.
• Through the cortex- which converts the stimulus into an organized form of information. (information generator)
• Through the "random generator" that is the brain stem and limbic system. The output generated is unstructured.
2. When the field of electrical activity from the random generator encounters the patterns produced by the information genrator, the result is a "possiblity cloud." The possibility cloud contains "mutations" of the information and these mutations engage in a kind of Darwinian fight for survival with the habitual forms of the information. The strongest signals in the total context of signals competing in the brain at the moment will couple together and survive.

Determiners of Attention Which Are Important in Everyday Life and in Advertising:

1. The intensity of stimulation (loudness, softness, brightness, dullness).
2. Size.
3. Quality of stimulation.
4. Repetition.
5. Suddeness of stimulus presentation.
6. Cessation of stimulus presentation.
7. Movement.
8. A familiar item in unfamiliar surroundings.
9. An unfamiliar item.
10. An item of basic interest to the individual because of inborn or learned attitudes or needs.

Virginia Statir's Three Basic Ways to Behave in a Relationship:

1. The self does not count.
2. The other person doesn't count.
3. Both the self and the other person counts.

Seven Phases of Thinking:

1. Words- we let words (together with members and other symbols) mean things.
2. Thing-making- we make mental pictures of things when we interpret sensations.
3. Qualifications- we notice the qualities of things: how things are alike and how they differ.
4. Classification- we mentally sort things into classes, types, or families.
5. Structure-analysis- we observe how things are made: break structural wholes into component parts.
6. Operation analysis- we notice how things happen: in what successive stages.
7. Analogy- we see how seemingly unconnected situations are like, forming parallel relations in different "worlds of thoughts."

Interference with Learning:

• Proactive- material learned earlier, interferes with present learning. (old causes)
• Retroactive- new material becomes confused with what you already know. (new causes)
• Active- noise, etc.

Nine Stages of Early Development of Grammar:

1. Object indentification- "that car," "it ball"
2. Repetition or increase- "more milk"
3. Negation- "not shoe"
4. Nonexistence- "all gone cookie"
5. Possession- "my book"
6. Attribution- "pretty dress"
7. Agent-action- "Adam do"
8. Agent-object- "Mommy shoe"
9. Agent-object- "see hand"

Context Effects Can Take The Form Of:

• Concurrent stimulation within the same sensory system as the affected or target stimulus.
• Concurrent events in systems other than that of the target stimulus.
• The residues of previous stimulation within a system.
• The residues of previous effects in other systems.

Marshall Haith Summed Up The Behavior of Newborns in a Set of Rules:

• If you are awake and the light is not too bright, open your eyes.
• If it is dark, search for something to look at.
• If it is light, search for the edges of some object, using broad sweeping movements.
• If you find an edge, which distinguishes an object from its background, keep your gaze directed in that area.

Weber's Law:

1. Definition: For each sensory systems there is a specific, unchanging ratio between the intensity of the original stimulus and the amount the stimulus intensity has to be increased in order for the person to experience a just noticeable difference in the sensation.
2. The ratios.
• Weight: 1 to 50. For instance if you are carrying a 50 pound weight, you will have to add a pound before you notice the difference.
• Auditory: 1 to 10.
• Skin pressure: 1 to 7.
• Odor intensity: 1 to 4.
• Saltiness of liquid: 1 to 3.
• Visual: 1 to 60.

Edward Bradford Titchener's:

1. Three stages of attention.
• Primary attention, dependent mainly upon the nature and force of the stimulus, expecially its intensity, suddeness, repetition, movement, novelty, and familiarity.
• Secondary attention, dependent maily upon the individual's own ideas and effort. 
• Derived attention, dependent mainly upon his purpose and interest.
2. Classification of reactions.
• Reflexes and instincts, attributed to inherited neural mechanisms.
• Voluntary actions, attributed to acquired neural connections. 

Walter Bowers Pillsbury's:

1. Three types of attention.
• Involuntary or spontaneous attention as a reaction to a powerful sudden stimilus, often accompanied by a feeling of surprise.
• Involuntary attention, a response directed toward immediate purposes arising usually from inherited or acquired needs or traits and accompanied by a pleasant feeling of interest. 
• Voluntary attention, motivated by long-term aims and followed by sustained efforts to overcome obstacles, such as conflict with nonvoluntary attention based on immediate impulses and needs.
2. Basic factors in memory.
• Mature and intensity of stimuli and the conditions of each sense organ affected.
• Attention and emotional reactions, which depend upon the purposive activity of the individual as he reorganizes and reproduces past experiences.
• The strength of connections and integrating mechanisms in the nervous system.
3. Four adjustments to emotional stress and conflicts.
• Direct or indirect attack.
• Defense.
• Escape.
• Surrender.

El Thorndike's Four Groups of Instincts:

1. Food-getting (acquiring, hoarding, eating).
2. Self-protecting actions.
3. Reactions to other people (gregariousness, rivarly, kindness).
4. Unlearned physical movements (as in vocalization) and unlearned mental activities (those motivated by curiosity). 

William McDougall's:

1. Four Levels of Reactions.
1. Reactions modifiable by pain and pleasure.
2. Reactions modifiable by rewards bestowed and punishments imposed by society.
3. Reactions redirected by the individual in anticipation of social praise or blame, the most effective sanctions conducive to moral conduct.
4. Reactions initiated by the individual as he strives to carry out ethical convictions. 
2. Society should help each person to advance through four successful stages.
   1. The stage of indistinctive dominating impulses and actions.
   2. The stage of modified instinctive impulses and actions, a development resulting from social influences such as rewards and punishments.
   3. The stage of increased self-control and self-expression motivated by the individual's expectations of future social rewards (such as praise) and punishments (such as blame).
   4. The final stage during which the individual does what he believes to be right regardless of consequences.

About emotions:

1. A pleasant or unpleasant emotion depends on.
• Intensity of the emotion-inducing stimulus.
• Its quality.
• Its sequence and time of presentation.
2. Four time sequences of emotions.
• Emotions may begin suddenly and decline rapidly.
• Emotions may develop gradually to a peak of intensity, then decline rapidly.
• Emotions may develop and disappear but recur repeatedly.
• Emotions may alternate if its pleasant with an opposite emotion that is unpleasant. 
3. The emotional stairsteps.
• Wonder - joy
• Communion compassion service
• Risking and acting
• Renewal of desire
• Imagination and dreams
• Renewal of feeling- pain and pleasure
• Mindfulness - doing nothing
• Guilt and shame barrier
• Compulsion - drivenness
• Fatigue
• Monotony
• Chronic boredom
• Depression
• Despair
• Apathy
• Victim stance
• Illness
• Suicide

Mental steps to distress:

1. Expectations
2. Perceptions
3. Worry
4. Uncertainty
5. The images of worry.
6. Rumination
7. Self-deception

On boredom.

1. Elements.
• Monotony
• Captivity
• Situational
• Bilocation
• Time warps
• Disengagement
• Stimulus hunger
• The extremes
• Frustration
2. Characteristics.
• Numbing
• Eclipse of fantasy and imagination
• Creativity curtailed
• Feeling is blunted
• Sensory compensation
• Disinclination to action
• The loss of freedom
• Resignation, resentment, and rage

Talcott Parson's Four Elements of Social Behavior:

1. The actor.
2. His goal, unconscious or conscious.
3. Uncontrollable conditions of his actions.
4. The means and methods he can control.

The Study of Pliancy:

1. An act that causes guilt won't be repeated, and if its repeated the guilt is reduced with each repetition.
2. The concept of the worldview: A worldview is a person's worth to others and his expectations of how they will treat him, and an idea as to whether it is deserved.
3. The concept of habits.
• Habits come in clusters, and clusters has a motive and a worldview.
• When a habit is stymied, another habit replaces that habit form the same cluster family.
• Doing a habit strengthens its corresponding worldview.
• When trying to break a habit, there is an urge to go back to the habit.
• The meaning of the act is equivalent to that of the habit. 
4. Every choice has a worldview.
5. We must always choose between worldviews that we already entertain.

Source: The Pliant Animal (1981) by George H Weinberg.

Solving Puzzles the Superintelligent Way:

• Consider the context of a puzzle first.
• Look for uncommon ways of using puzzle's components.
• If logic and persistence don't yield an answer, go out and smell the roses for awhile.
• Keep at it.
• If something has always been done one way, look for another way.
• Work only within those restrictions that are explicitly stated. All others are irrelevant.
• If you can't find the solution by looking at the forest, look at the trees.
• When you're watching a magician, don't concentrate only on the rabbit. Something important may be going on somewhere else. 
• Assume that nothing is what it seems to be. 

Divergency is composed of:

1. Fluency - the number of responses.
• Ideational fluency - rapid listing of meaningful words.
• Associative fluency - synonyms.
• Expressional fluency - putting words into organized phrases and sentences.
2. Flexibility - the variety of response categories.
3. Originality - the uniqueness of responses.
4. Elaboration

Body Zones:

1. Definition: A space around our body that we try to defend and call our own. It is inherited.
2. The zones.
• Intimate distance. Contact to 18 inches. Family or close friends.
• Personal distance.
• Close- 1 1/2 to 2 1/3 feet. 
• Far- 2 1/2 to 4 feet (talking to people).
• Social distance. 
• Close- 4 to 7 feet. 
• Far- ? to 12 feet (business contact)
• Public distance.
• Close- 12 to 25 feet. 
• Far- 25 feet and so on (public speaking)

Janet's Nine Levels of Consciousness for Living Organisms:

1. Reflex.
2. Simple.
3. Response to other people.
4. Elementary intelligence.
5. Language.
6. Deliberate belief.
7. Rational-energetic.
8. Experimental.
9. Progressive.

Grades of mind:

• Mind sleeps in stone.
• Dreams in the plant.
• Awakes in the animal.
• Becomes conscious in man.

Good Reasons:

• Sense perception.
• Logic.
• Intuition.
• Self-awareness.
• Memory.
• Authority.
• Consensus gentuim.
• Revelation.
• Faith. 

Kinds of explanations:

• The definition
• Paraphrasing
• Stating the rules
• Analyzing
• Demonstrating
• Reasoning
• Using universals

Categories of talk:

• Group prejudgement (lowest reliability)
• Insufficient information
• Stereotyped information
• Personal information
• Systematically arranged information
• Meaningful information
• Information of proven revelance ( highest reliability)

When influencing someone never threaten the other person's:

• Sense of importance.
• Sense of competence.
• Sense of being likable.

Yeat's Four Aspects of Man:

1. Will - a man's purpose or basic aim.
2. Mask - the way he appears to the world.
3. Creative mind- his mode of self-expression.
4. Body of fate - his fate, what the 'stars' intend for him.

Three dimensions of attitudes:

1. Directional
2. Intensity
3. Salience

Color and mental states:

• Manic-depressives tend to show preferences for red, orange and other "warm" colors.
• Schizophrenia tend to be more at ease with colors such as blue and green.

Dominant feelings of self:

• Self-confidence
• Self-respect
• Self-satisfaction
• Self-development
• Self-esteem
• Self-worth
• Self-love

Primal therapy's four stages:

1. "Blissful" pre-birth.
2. The feeling of a crushing or closing-in occurs during the initial stages of contraction.
3. The struggle for survival is associated with the baby's passage through the birth canal.
4. Separation of the baby from the mother--the culmination of the traumatic experience of birth.

Uses of short-term memory:

• Serves as a sort of temporary scratch pad allowing us to retain intermediate results while we think and solve problems.
• Holds whatever goals or plans we are following of the moment.
• Maintains our current picture of the world around us, indicating what objects are out there and where they are located.
• Keeps track of the topics and references that have been recently mentioned in conversation.

Five assumptions of early psychology:

1. People's consciousness is real and should be studied.
2. People using their minds can discover their problems and what  is needed for change.
3. People make real choices and are not simply respondents to the environment.
4. People's choices affect their outlook.
5. Buy a sequence of controllable acts, and by an accumulation of the right ones, a person can produce real change in his mental state.

Source: The Pliant Animal (1981) by George H Weinberg.

The four humours:

1. The warrior
2. The recluse
3. The ruler
4. The philosopher

Dr. Daly King's three classes of man:

1. Intellectual Man - dominated by the cerebral system.
2. Emotional Man - automatic (basal - gangliar) system.
3. Practical Man - spinal-cord system.

Dr. E. Spranger categorized man into six classes:

1. Theoretical - interested in the discovery of truth and in abstract principles.
2. Economic - practical and utilitarian.
3. Aesthetic - form and harmony.
4. Social - love of people.
5. Political - power and authority.
6. Religious - mysticism.

Francis Galton divided people into:

• Verbalizer, who thinks by name or sound.
• Visualizers, who thinks by form, image or outline.

David Mahoney's street-smart secrets for success:

• Invest in people.
• Beware the experts.
• Be a good assistant.
• Recognize fear and greed.
• Avoid the seven deadly sins.
• Think like the other guy.
• Strive to be centered.

Warner Severin's and James Tankard, Junior's Four rings of selective defenses:

1. Selective exposure (outermost ring)
2. Selective attention
3. Selective perception
4. Selective retention (innermost ring)

The Psychology of Everyday Things:

1. Seven stages of action.
1. Forming the goal.
2. Forming the intention to achieve the goal.
3. Specifying an action.
4. Executing the action.
5. Perceiving the state of the world.
6. Interpreting the state of the world.
7. Evaluating the outcome.
2. Types of slips.
• Capture errors. 
• Description errors.
• Data-driven errors - sensory data causing an error.
• Associative activation errors - internal thoughts causing an error.
• Loss-of-activation error - forgetting the goal, but the action continues.
• Mode errors - errors that occur when devices have different modes of operation, and the action for one mode has different meanings in other modes.

Source: The Psychology of Everyday Things (2008) by Donald A. Norman.

Dr. Jack Solomon's Six Principles of Semiotics:

1. Definition of semiotics: the study of signs and their relationship to people.
2. The Six Principles.
1. Always questions that "common-sense" view of things, because "common sense" is really  "communal sense."
2. The "common sense" viewpoint is usually motivated by a cultural interests that manipulates our consciousness for ideological reasons.
3. Cultures tend to conceal their ideologies behind the view of "nature" defining what they do as "natural" and condemning contrary cultural practices as a "unnatural."
4. In evaluating any system of cultural practices, one must take into account the interests behind it.
5. We don't perceive the world directly but view it through the filter of a semiotic code or mythic frame. 
6. A sign is a sort of cultural barometer, marking the dynamic movement of social history.

Source: The Signs of Our Time. Semiotics, the Hidden Messages of Environments, Objects, and Cultural Images (1988) by Jack Solomon.

Family perspective of personality:

1. Looks to family interactions as source of problems in a person's mind.
2. Family therapy assumes that family unit must be treated if patient is to improve.
3. Terms.
• Marital Schism - war between the parents, children drawn into battles.
• Marital skew - one parent dominates. "Strong" member is disturbed and "weak" member covers up. 
• Schizophrenogemic parent - not psychotic, that induces psychosis in child.
• Double bind communication - conflicting messages

Functions of attitudes:

• Understanding the world.
• Needs satisfaction.
• Ego defense (prejudice).
• Values expression.

Gerald Wilde's Risk Homeostasis Theory:
When something is made safer, people will somehow reassert the original level of danger, because the people using them will feel safer and thus use the object to its safety limit.


Dr. Kevin Leman's Birth Order Theory of Personality:

• Birth order influences a person's personality when he or she is a child.
• There are three basic birth orders: "first born", "middle born", and "last born." Each order has a distinctive personality of its own.
• Spacing can create more than one "family." A gap of five or more years can create another sub family within the main family with its own birth orders.
• If there's a sequence of one type of gender (for example four boys) for a while, then the opposite gender appears, that opposite gender get special treatment and the children immediately above or below feels pressured.
• Sometimes physical characteristics can determine birth order. A weak first born could be treated as a baby.
• A parent has a tendency to over identify with the child in the same birth order position he or she shares.

Source: The Birth Order Book: Why You Are the Way You Are (1986) by Dr. Kevin Leman. 

Arthur Deikman's two modes of human organization:

1. Active
• A manipulative orientation toward one's environment.
• Physiological emphasis upon the striate muscle system and the sympathetic nervous system.
• Psychological emphasis upon focal attention, EEG predominance of beta-wave emissions, object-based logic, heightened boundary perception, dominance of formal over sensory characteristics, and preference for shapes and meanings rather than colors and textures.
• Phenomenological emphasis upon a state of striving directed toward achieving personal goals.
• Future orientation.
2. Receptive
• An orientation towards the maximum intake of one's environment.
• Physiological emphasis upon the sensory-perceptual system and the parasympathetic nervous system.
• Psychological emphasis upon diffuse deployment of tension,  paralogical thought processes, decreased boundary perception, dominance of sensory over formal characteristics, and EEG predominance of alpha waves.
• The maximum functioning during infancy, with subsequent dominance by the active mode as a result of the progressive development of striving activity.
• "Here and now" orientation.

Source: The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, Volume 7 (1975) by Transpersonal Institute.

Three healthy strategies you can use to handle envy and comparisons:

1. Sometimes you need to take your envious feelings seriously and ask yourself, "Is this a wake-up call?"
2. Sometimes you need to let go of the longing for what you don't have a truly accept what is.
3. Sometimes you need to find way to be patient and receptive in situations that aren't clear yet or that simply require more time.

THINK about the words you use:

• T- Is it true?
• H- Will it help?
• I- Is it inspiring?
• N- Is it necessary?
• K- Is it kind? 
  

Source: Ten. Laws of Love Set in Stone (2008) by J. John.