Overview This blog is about where technology meets the behavioural sciences, so here we have a post describing how technology can be an adjunct to encourage adherence to a weight management intervention. In this example we show how to monitor progress of the 5:2 Fast Diet using the Goal Attainment Scale method together with actual weight […]
A recently published book I read – David Gelles (2015), “Mindful Work” – prompted me to post a Report I did back in 2011 covering MBSR as an intervention in the context of mindfulness and work engagement.
Want to wow your clients at your next workshop? Then read on for a workshop-on-workshops! You will learn how to facilitate a workshop that drives change and then walk away with a simple and reusable framework that emerged from DevOps project experience.
Daniel H. Pink’s (2009) book – Drive – examines human motivation through the ages. For our early ancestors roaming the savannahs, Motivation 1.0 was a simple matter of survival – for food, shelter, sex. As nomadism gave way to agriculture, the principle of minimising risk and maximising reward took on a more sophisticated form with […]
I recall a schoolboy coming home Through fields of cane To a house of tin and timber And in the sky A rain of falling cinders From time to time The waste memory-wastes So begins the single titled “Cattle and Cane” released by the Australian rock band “Go Betweens” in 1983.
At the time, Dan Gilbert’s (2006) “Stumbling on Happiness” was a revelation. Written for the popular science press, it recounted how poorly we approach one of life’s most enduring goals – the pursuit of happiness. In the psychological sciences, this is studied as affective forecasting. Many of our discretional decisions are based on a prediction […]
“Free Will, and Free Won’t” – so goes the title for chapter 9 of Jeffrey Schwartz’s (2002) book “The Mind & The Brain”. Research there suggests that volition may not just be the result of a conscious intent to do something but, and perhaps more likely, the direction of attention to not do something. Experimental […]
In his Philosophical Zombie thought experiment, David Chalmers (1996) proposed that one could conceive of an individual that is physically identical to you, right down to the molecular level, but does not have any phenomenally conscious state whatsoever. This is one phrasing of his “Hard Problem of Consciousness”, namely, why should physical processing give rise […]
The SCARF model describes five domains considered important in explaining, for a social setting, a key organising principle of the brain – minimise danger, maximise reward. Denoting status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness, SCARF brings to sharp relief the findings from social cognitive neuroscience that social needs are just as paramount as the physical.
The Frenchman Michel Foucault was one of the leading figures in twentieth century philosophy. His theories and constructs made a profound impact across many social movements and institutions including women’s liberation and psychiatry. A Foucaultian analysis surfaces deep insights into the political context in which the individual operates. The reality an individual experiences cannot be […]