Author of quotes: Daniel Kahneman. Page 2

Those who avoid the sin of intellectual laziness can be called "involved". They are attentive, intellectually active, less likely to be satisfied with superficially attractive answers, more skeptical about their intuitions. Psychologist Kate Stanovich would call them more rational.

Intelligence is not just the ability to reason, but to find in memory the necessary material and, if necessary, to pay attention.

If people believe in the truth of any proposition, they are willing to believe, even untenable arguments in support of it.

People are too opinionated, too prone to trust your own instincts. Apparently a lot of abhorrent mental effort, and try to avoid them in any way possible.

Astonishing experiments, conducted by psychologist Roy Baumeister and his colleagues clearly show that all kinds of arbitrary effort - cognitive, emotional, or physical - use at least part of the General reserve of mental energy. In the experiments of Baumeister the tasks were performed not simultaneously but sequentially. It was noted that the effort of will or self-control is tiring: if you force yourself to do something, then to the next job, the desire to control themselves is hampered or reduced. This phenomenon is called ego depletion.

If too much to worry about as you get worse you will cope with the task, because short-term memory will be overloaded with useless worrying thoughts. The conclusion is simple: for self-control requires attention and effort.

Fortunately, mental work is not always unpleasant; people often have made significant efforts over long periods of time without using will power. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi did more than others for the study of such natural attention, and proposed the name "flow" has firmly entered the language. Experienced the feeling of flow describe it as "a state of deep, relaxed concentration, where one loses the sense of time itself, and their own problems," and the joy experienced in this state are so compelling that Csikszentmihalyi has called it an "optimal experience." A variety of classes - from painting to racing - produces a state of flow, and for some authors even writing a book becomes an optimal experience. The well stream separates the two forms of effort: concentration on the task and systematic control of attention. Riding a motorcycle at 150 miles per hour or a game of chess, of course, require a lot of effort. However, to hold the attention of these all-consuming tasks in a state of flux self-control is not needed, so to perform them frees up additional resources.

To maintain a coherent chain of reasoning - even leisurely - needed discipline. If you measure how many times an hour writing I check emails or climb into the refrigerator, it is possible to conclude that I don't want to do writing activities and that I needed more self-control.

Frequent switching between tasks and mental work at high speed, probably not too attractive, and it, people avoid. That is why the law of least tension is the law.

One of the important discoveries made in recent decades by specialists in cognitive psychology, is that switching between tasks takes effort, especially if it must be done for a limited time.

The pupils are a sort of electric meter in the apartment showing how much you are currently using the mental energy, and the resemblance is not superficial.

The pupil proved to be a good marker of physical arousal that accompanies mental effort, and therefore it could be used in studies of the mind.

The pupils are a good indicator of mental effort. Pupils dilate when the subjects peremezhaya two-digit numbers, and the more complex the task, the greater the extension.

At the end of the article are two very striking pictures of comely women, one of which she seems much more beautiful than the other. The only difference is that more attractive pictures of the pupils from the woman advanced, and on the other narrowed. Hess writes about the belladonna, which was used for pupil dilation for cosmetic purposes, and the shoppers in the Bazaar, wear dark glasses to hide from the traders interested.