Author: Ivan

How shared hatred helps you make friends

Markham Heid via Medium:

Sharing negative attitudes with someone — and, in particular, sharing negative opinions about other people — seems to be among the quickest and most effective ways for two strangers to form a bond. If you want to cozy up to someone, there may be no better way to do it than to gossip about the people you both hate.

Bosson verified and refined her conclusions in several follow-up experiments. Regardless of gender or race, disliking the same thing about a person can help strangers bond more effectively than if they share the same positive opinions. The stronger the shared dislike, the closer the resulting bond is likely to be.

Mau dekat dengan orang lain dengan cepat? Bergosip aja.

Malicious compliance

Pernah dengar istilah “malicious compliance” sebelumnya? Mungkin banyak yang tidak familiar dengan istilah ini tapi saya yakin kebanyakan orang pernah melakukannya. Atau bahkan sering.

Menurut Wikipedia, Malicious compliance adalah…

is the behaviour of intentionally inflicting harm by strictly following the orders of a superior knowing that compliance with the orders will not have the intended result. The term usually implies the following of an order in such a way that ignores the order’s intent but follows it to the letter.

Secara sederhana, malicious compliance adalah perilaku atau perbuatan yang dengan sengaja mengikuti sebuah aturan atau perintah seseorang (biasanya atasan atau orang yang lebih tua atau bisa juga dari siapapun) dengan tujuan agar terjadi hasil yang tidak diinginkan kepada orang yang membuat perintah tersebut.

Sebagai contoh, Anda disuruh melakukan sesuatu hal oleh seseorang, namun Anda tahu kalau Anda mengikuti perintah orang tersebut sesuai dengan instruksi maka pada akhirnya akan terjadi sesuatu yang buruk, kerusakan, dll. Tapi karena Anda ingin memberi “pelajaran” ke orang itu (namun tetap terlihat sebagai orang yang penurut) maka Anda (sengaja) tidak mengoreksi atau memberi peringatan sebelumnya ke orang itu. Akhirnya, Anda melakukan sesuai dengan permintaan dan seperti yang sudah Anda duga sebelumnya… terjadi sesuatu yang buruk.

New research finds there is no “right thing” to say when you want to be supportive

Menurut sebuah riset, keberadaan kita pada saat ingin memberi dukungan kepada seseorang itu sudah cukup. Tidak perlu mengeluarkan komentar atau kata-kata motivasi karena hal itu justru berpotensi memperburuk situasi. Tidak ada kata-kata yang tepat, cukup ada/hadir saja.

Research Digest:

Shawna Tanner at Wayne State University and her colleagues propose that in all likelihood trying too hard to say the right thing could actually lead you to make “clumsy statements that do more harm than good”. They advise that as long as your friend or relative sees you as supportive, then your “mere presence and sympathy is likely enough”.

The Problem With Online Reviews

The Problem With Online Reviews:

There are moments when we should realise that leaving a review to is not what everyone should be able to do. Why? Because we are irrational and emotional animals.

Why do we still use reviews then?

If so many things are wrong with current review systems, why do we still use them? It’s a form of communication, and we need it as social proof when buying, reading or consuming something. But unfortunately, it is an undeveloped form of communication which contains some human flaws.

A placebo can work even when you know it’s a placebo

For some medical complaints, open-label placebos work just as well as deceptive ones.

Harvard Health Blog:

..there is a documented “placebo effect,” which means that some people actually respond to a placebo even though it shouldn’t have an effect on the body. This has been thought to be largely due to their beliefs or expectations that they are getting the real treatment and not the fake one. But what if people were told, up-front, that they were getting a placebo and not an active medication? It stands to reason the placebo would have no effect. Right?

Wrong.

“People can still get a placebo response, even though they know they are on a placebo,” he adds. “You don’t need deception or concealment for many conditions to get a significant and meaningful placebo effect.”

Does being bored make us more creative?

Fermat’s Library:

Contrary to popular wisdom, boredom is not the result of having nothing to do. It is very hard to co me up with a situation where a person’s options are so limited that he or she literally can do nothing. Rather, boredom stems from a situation where none of the possible things that a person can realistically do appeal to the person in question. This renders the person inactive, and generally unhappy. Thus, boredom is the result of having nothing to do that one likes, rather than nothing to do per se.

Tambahan video menarik dari Veritasium:

Bullshit asymmetry principle

Bullshit asymmetry principle atau yang juga dikenal dengan Brandolini’s law adalah sebuah prinsip yang menyatakan bahwa:

Jumlah energi yang dibutuhkan untuk membantah atau menyanggah omong kosong jauh lebih besar daripada energi untuk membuat omong kosong itu sendiri.

Salah satu alasan kenapa banyak orang yang malas atau menghindari berdebat dengan orang-orang yang percaya atau menyebar omong kosong atau hoax adalah karena alasan ini. Lebih gampang bikin hoax-nya dibanding membantahnya. Hanya butuh beberapa detik saja untuk membuat sebuah pernyataan sederhana yang terdengar agak masuk akal tetapi fake atau tidak akurat, namun butuh waktu yang lebih lama untuk menjelaskannya alasan kenapa hal tersebut keliru/menyesatkan.

Mengapa (otak) kita lebih tertarik dengan berita buruk

Mikkel Reincke Kristensen via Medium:

when you go to a news site at any given time, chances are that you will see a scary headline, some problems around the world, gossip and then the occasional good news. And the problem does not lie with the news site. It lies with us, or more specifically, our brain.

It turns out that our brains crave sensational news, and bad news hit just the right spot. News media just want clicks, and if it turns out that bad news gives those clicks, they are naturally going to report those, primarily.

In our brain we have 2 almond-shaped groups called the amygdala in each temporal lobe. Back in the old days, where humans lived in the wild and had to focus on survival, this part of our brain served as observing and sensing danger to us. If a stick cracked in the forest while you were gathering berries, this part of our brain would make us consider the fact that it could be a deadly predator. Even though it might just be a hedgehog or the wind, the amygdala made sure that we were alert.

Today, day to day survival is hardly a problem anymore, and the amygdala serves a different purpose. It instead warns us about probabilistic danger. If Ebola has killed 200 people on the other side of the world, well should it come to you it would be problematic. As a result of the amygdalas influence, we notice and focus on the bad news to a much higher degree that the good news.

Intinya adalah, kalau dulunya bagian otak yang merespon situasi berbahaya sangat berguna dalam bertahan hidup, sekarang bagian otak tersebut berfungsi menjadi pemberi peringatan. Sehingga, ketika ada berita buruk maka otak kita akan lebih terfokus ke masalah tersebut dibanding kepada berita lain yang jauh lebih baik/positif.

People like you more than you know

Scientific American:

“We don’t know what other people are thinking, and so we substitute our own thoughts about ourselves for what other people think,” Cooney explains. “We’re basically projecting what we think of our own performance, and assume that’s what other people think of us.”

People tend to be harder on themselves than they are on new acquaintances. After a conversation, you can look back on everything you said wrong and mentally correct it, or remember instances when you were funnier, kinder or more eloquent. You don’t have the same mental catalog for someone you’ve just met, so you may “take them more at face value and be much more charitable,” Cooney says.

That’s a potential problem, since underselling yourself socially may promote sadness and anxiety, or cause you to miss out on valuable personal interactions, Cooney says.