Leonard Mlodinow: Our inner weighing of evidence is not a careful math...

One thing that feeds into the way you experience the social world is your mood - and one thing that affects your mood is the weather.

Leonard Mlodinow

weather way world

Regression toward the mean. That is, in any series of random events an extraordinary event is most likely to be followed, due purely to chance, by a more ordinary one.

Leonard Mlodinow

events ordinary mean

When we are in the grasp of illusion - or, for that matter, whenever we have a new idea - instead of searching for ways to prove our ideas wrong, we usually attempt to prove them correct. Psychologists call this the confirmation bias, and it presents a major impediment of our ability to break free from the misinterpretation of randomness.

Leonard Mlodinow

matter way ideas

Nonverbal communication forms a social language that is in many ways richer and more fundamental than our words.

Leonard Mlodinow

our-words communication fundamentals

What I've learned, above all, is to keep marching forward because the best news is that since chance does play a role, one important factor in success is under our control: the number of at bats, the number of chances taken, the number of opportunities seized.

Leonard Mlodinow

taken play opportunity

Listeners instinctively detect that when we lower the usual pitch of our voice, we are sad, and when we raise it, we are angry or fearful.

Leonard Mlodinow

raises voice usual

A failure doesn't mean you are unworthy, nor does it preclude success on the next try.

Leonard Mlodinow

next trying mean

Science has revealed a universe that is vast, ancient, violent, strange, and beautiful, a universe of almost infinite variety and possibility one in which time can end in a black hole, and conscious beings can evolve from a soup of minerals.

Leonard Mlodinow

black soup beautiful

We believe that when we choose anything, judge a stranger and even fall in love, we understand the principal factors that influenced us. Very often nothing could be further from the truth. As a result, many of our most basic assumptions about ourselves, and society, are false.

Leonard Mlodinow

falling-in-love judging believe

We also use our imagination and take shortcuts to fill gaps in patterns of nonvisual data. As with visual input, we draw conclusions and make judgments based on uncertain and incomplete information, and we conclude, when we are done analyzing the patterns, that out picture is clear and accurate. But is it?

Leonard Mlodinow

patterns data imagination

Social rejection doesn't just cause emotional pain; it affects our physical being.

Leonard Mlodinow

rejection emotional pain

Subliminal is about how we misinterpret our behavior because were unaware of what our unconscious minds are doing.

Leonard Mlodinow

subliminal behavior mind

Says Bargh: "We all hold dear idea that we´re the captain of our own sould, and we´re in charge, and it´s a very scary feeling when we are not. In fact, that´s what psychosis is - the feeling of detachment from reality and that you are not in control, and that´s a very frightening feeling for anyone."

Leonard Mlodinow

psychosis reality ideas

Research suggests when it comes to understanding our feelings, we humans have an odd mix of low ability and high confidence.

Leonard Mlodinow

understanding research feelings

That's why successful people in every field are almost universally members of a certain set - the set of people who don't give up.

Leonard Mlodinow

dont-give-up giving-up successful

We judge people and initiatives by their results, and we expect events to happen for good, understandable reason. But our clear visions of inevitability are often only illusions.

Leonard Mlodinow

vision judging people

Nothing projects intelligence quite like confidence. When you believe in yourself, it shows, and research shows that believing in yourself improves your performance on cognitive tasks. Self-doubt, on the other hand, impairs your performance. What’s worse is that other people pick up on this doubt, which makes you appear less intelligent to them. If you want people to believe in you, you have to believe in yourself. If you’re really smart, you should n’t have to use big words to broadcast it. True intelligence speaks for itself, so you don’t have to show off your impressive vocabulary. In addition, you always run the chance of being wrong. Using a big word incorrectly makes you look, well, not so smart. So, if you want to appear more intelligent, stop studying the dictionary and just focus on communicating effectively. Related : 8 Great Tricks for Reading People's Body Language Communication expert Leonard Mlodinow makes the case that even if two people say exactly the same thing, the one who says it most expressively will be perceived as being smarter. If two speakers utter exactly the same words, but one speaks a little faster and louder and with fewer pauses and greater variation in volume, that speaker will be judged to be more energetic, knowledgeable, and intelligent.

Leonard Mlodinow

us

Our subliminal mental processes operate outside awareness because they arise in these portions of our mind that are inaccessible to our conscious self; their inaccessibility is due to the architecture of the brain rather than because they have been subject to Freudian motivational forces like repression.

Leonard Mlodinow

architecture self mind motivational

On the unconscious level, touch seems to impart a subliminal sense of caring and connection.

Leonard Mlodinow

connection sense touch caring

Non-human primates spend hours a day grooming each other. And with humans, touching is also important. It's a way to form bonds and connect in modern society. But you can also speed up the use of conscious purposes once you're aware of that, and it can be manipulated.

Leonard Mlodinow

day you society way