Психология на английском
http://college4.nytimes.com/guests/articles/2005/01/16/1225468.xml
HOW do you get that 16-year-old to hunker down? Ethell Geller, a behavioral psychologist, has worked with adolescents for 30 years in her Manhattan practice. Borrowing from B.F. Skinner and Pavlov, she explains motivation as a connection between expectations and consequences.
Q. Where does motivation come from?
A. Ideally, one goes from a very primitive type of motivation, satisfying basic drives, to an externalized form, or bribery, to the most sophisticated form, which is inherent -- working for its own sake. Human beings must develop all three types of motivation to be fully functioning, satisfied, motivated adults.
Q. Why are some children stuck at Phase 2?
A. Volumes have been written on the topic of motivation and social learning theory. But simply put, the extent to which children feel that their efforts lead to meaningful rewards will determine how motivated they feel. If rewards come with little effort, the child becomes spoiled. On the other extreme, if effort meets with continuous failure, the child will experience helplessness and give up.
Q. What strategy do you recommend?
A. First, find out why a child isn't motivated. Ask, does she really not care? Or is she afraid of something else? Or is she involved in an immediate reward system, like TV or friends, that she considers more meaningful? Or is it a self-esteem issue or another type of disability?
Once the source of the problem has been identified, either therapy or behavioral management of the current reward system, or a combination of both, must be put in place.
Q. Like, fewer bribes?
A. Research shows that one of the best ways to motivate a child is to avoid punishment and exhibit parental approval as a reward.
But what I often do when faced with children who have low self-esteem or are unmotivated is ask them to make a list of the people and their qualities that they most admire. After they come up with their lists, show them that if they work toward the salient features on that list, they can come to respect themselves and be more motivated. Reassure them that normal people who work hard can accomplish what their heroes have.

MALCOLM GLADWELL has written a book about the power of first impressions, and every review, including this one, is going to begin with the reviewer's first impression of the book.
Mine was: Boffo.
Gladwell opens ''Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking'' with the story of a kouros, an ancient Greek statue of a youth that came on the art market and was about to be purchased by the Getty Museum in California. It was a magnificently preserved work, close to seven feet tall, and the asking price was just under $10 million.
The Getty did all the normal background checks to establish the authenticity of the piece. A geologist determined that the marble came from the ancient Cape Vathy quarry on the island of Thasos. It was covered with a thin layer of calcite, a substance that accumulates on statues over hundreds or perhaps thousands of years. After 14 months of investigation, the Getty staff concluded the thing was genuine, and went ahead with the purchase.
But an art historian named Federico Zeri was taken to see the statue, and in an instant he decided it was fake. Another art historian took a glimpse and sensed that while it had the form of a proper classical statue, it somehow lacked the spirit. A third felt a wave of ''intuitive repulsion'' when he first laid eyes on it.
Further investigations were made, and finally the whole scheme unraveled. It transpired that the statue had been sculptured by forgers in Rome in the early 1980's. The teams of analysts who did 14 months of research turned out to be wrong. The historians who relied on their initial hunches were right.
THERE is in all of our brains, Gladwell argues, a mighty backstage process, which works its will subconsciously. Through this process we have the capacity to sift huge amounts of information, blend data, isolate telling details and come to astonishingly rapid conclusions, even in the first two seconds of seeing something. '' 'Blink' is a book about those first two seconds,'' Gladwell writes.
Well, I'm impressed. Here we have a guy who has already written one of the best and most successful nonfiction books of the past few years, the ubiquitous ''Tipping Point.'' He's the author of dozens of unfailingly fascinating articles in The New Yorker. And he's opened his new book with a crisp anecdote that suggests each of us possesses a hidden power, which we could use to improve our lives if only we knew how to tap it more fully. That's the essential formula for self-help-book greatness.
I'm ready to be sucked in.
And indeed, ''Blink'' moves quickly through a series of delightful stories, all about the backstage mental process we call intuition. There is the story of the psychologist John Gottman, who since the 1980's has worked with more than 3,000 married couples in a small room, his ''love lab,'' near the University of Washington. He videotapes them having a conversation. Reviewing just an hour's worth of each tape, Gottman has been able to predict with 95 percent accuracy whether that couple will be married 15 years later. If he watches only 15 minutes of tape, his success rate is about 90 percent. Scientists in his lab have determined they can usually predict whether a marriage will work after watching just three minutes of newlywed conversation.
Gottman believes that each relationship has a DNA, or an essential nature. It's possible to take a very thin slice of that relationship, grasp its fundamental pattern and make a decent prediction of its destiny.
Gladwell says we are thin-slicing all the time -- when we go on a date, meet a prospective employee, judge any situation. We take a small portion of a person or problem and extrapolate amazingly well about the whole. A psychologist named Nalini Ambady gave students three 10-second soundless videotapes of a teacher lecturing. Then she asked the students to rate the teacher. Their ratings matched the ratings from students who had taken the teacher's course for an entire semester. Then she cut the videotape back to two seconds and showed it to a new group. The ratings still matched those of the students who'd sat through the entire term.
''We are innately suspicious of this kind of rapid cognition,'' Gladwell observes. We assume that long, methodical investigation yields more reliable conclusions than a snap judgment. But in fact, ''decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately.''
This book is only 277 pages long, but there are dozens of stories about thin-slicing. There's one about a Pentagon war game. There's one about New Coke, which seemed to test so well, but flopped in the marketplace. Gladwell shows how the New York City police officers who killed Amadou Diallo made a series of horrendous snap judgments.
Gladwell has us flying around the world and across disciplines at hectic speed, and he's always dazzling us with fascinating information and phenomena. Take priming, for example. Two Dutch scientists asked their subjects to play a demanding game of Trivial Pursuit. They asked one group to think beforehand about what it would be like to be a professor and the other group to think about what it would be like to be a soccer hooligan. The people who were in a professorial frame of mind did much better than the ''hooligans.''
One group of African-Americans was asked to take a test without identifying their race on the pretest questionnaire. Another group was asked their race and ''that simple act,'' Gladwell writes, ''was sufficient to prime them with all the negative stereotypes associated with African-Americans and academic achievement.'' The African-Americans who identified their race did much worse than the people who didn't. The number of questions they got right was cut in half.
MY first impression of ''Blink'' -- in blurb-speak -- was ''Fascinating! Eye-Opening! Important!'' Unfortunately, my brain, like yours, has more than just a thin-slicing side. It also has that thick-slicing side. The thick-slicing side wants more than a series of remarkable anecdotes. It wants a comprehensive theory of the whole. It wants to know how all the different bits of information fit together.
That thick-slicing part of my brain wasn't as happy with ''Blink,'' especially the second time through. Gladwell never tells us how the brain performs these amazing cognitive feats; we just get the scattered byproducts of the mysterious backstage process. (There have been books by people like Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner that go deeper into the brain chemistry of it.)
The thick-slicing side isn't even sure what this book is about. Is it about first impressions, or intuition, or that amorphous blending of ''what is'' with ''what could be'' that we call imagination? In some of his stories, it's regular people who are making snap judgments; in others, it's experts who have been through decades of formal training. In some experiments, the environment matters a great deal; in others, the setting is a psychologist's lab. In some, the snap judgments are based on methodical reasoning -- as with a scientist who has broken facial expressions into discrete parts; in others, the snap-judgment process is formless and instinctive. In some, priming is all-important; in others, priming is disregarded.
MOREOVER, the thick-slicing part of my brain is telling me that while it would be pleasing if we all had these supercomputers in our heads, Gladwell is overselling his case. Most of his heartwarming stories involve the lone intuitive rebel who ends up besting the formal, bureaucratic decision-making procedure. Though Gladwell describes several ways intuition can lead people astray, he doesn't really dwell on how often that happens. But I've learned from other books, notably David G. Myers's more methodical but less entertaining ''Intuition,'' that there is a great body of data suggesting that formal statistical analysis is a much, much better way of predicting everything from the outcome of a football game to the course of liver disease than the intuition even of experts.
The thick-slicing part of the brain reminds me that not long ago I read Michael Lewis's great book, ''Moneyball,'' about a baseball executive who used rigorous statistical analysis to clobber fuzzy-minded old pros who relied on their gut impressions. Now I'm reading ''Blink'' on how impressions can be as reliable as data. This part of my brain wants to know how I should reconcile Lewis with Gladwell. What is the relationship between self-conscious reason and backstage intuition? Which one is right more often?
For example, if I have to cast my vote for either George ''I go with my gut'' Bush or John ''I deliberate until the cows come home'' Kerry, how should I evaluate their rival cognitive styles? Most important, that thick-slicing part of my brain, which is blessed and burdened by self-consciousness, wants to know the meaning of what Gladwell is telling it. When he is talking about the cognitive powers of the brain, he's not just reviewing a cool piece of software. He's talking about us, the thinking process that is the essence of who you and I are.
I am perfectly willing to accept that the brain processes huge amounts of information on a subconscious level, thus freeing up conscious neurons for major tasks, like writing, gossiping or remembering humiliating moments from the distant past. I am willing to accept that we are all to some large extent strangers to ourselves, unaware of how we make the decisions that shape our lives.
But I am not willing to assume, as Gladwell sometimes seems to be doing, that our brains are like computers -- uniform pieces of hardware that can be tested and reverse-engineered by scientists or psychologists in a lab. Isn't it as possible that the backstage part of the brain might be more like a personality, some unique and nontechnological essence that cannot be adequately generalized about by scientists in white coats with clipboards?
''Blink'' is part of a wave of books on brain function that are sweeping over us as we learn more about the action inside our own heads. This literature is going to have a powerful effect on our culture, maybe as powerful as the effect Freudianism had on our grandparents' time (the last time somebody tried to explain the brain's backstage process).
WE should be a little wary of surrendering this field to the scientists. Philosophers ranging from Vico to Michael Oakeshott to Isaiah Berlin were writing about thin-slicing (which they called ''wisdom'') long before the scientists started picking apart our neurons, and long before psychologists started showing people snippets of videotape. And much of what they observe is more profound than anything you can capture with some ginned-up control group test in a psychology lab.
I'm sure Gladwell knows all this. Perhaps it's unfair to expect him to write a book that encompasses Isaiah Berlin and the ''love lab.'' It's just that in the general culture the psychiatrists and neuroscientists are eclipsing the philosophers, and that's horrible.
If you want to trust my snap judgment, buy this book: you'll be delighted. If you want to trust my more reflective second judgment, buy it: you'll be delighted but frustrated, troubled and left wanting more.
Or just go to the bookstore, look at the cover and let your neurons make up their own damn mind.
David Brooks is an Op-Ed columnist for The Times and the author of ''On Paradise Drive.''
Dr. Henry S. Lodge and Chris Crowley: Ski, Hug, Eat, Sleep
By LOIS SMITH BRADY
ASPEN, Colo.
ON an afternoon in December, Dr. Henry S. Lodge, Chris Crowley and some friends set out on cross-country skis into the Elk Mountains outside Aspen. They had two goals. One was to reach McNamara Hut, a wood A-frame with no electricity, for "dinner by headlamp." The other was to grow a little younger.
Dr. Lodge, an internist in his 40's and a member of the Columbia University Medical School faculty, and Mr. Crowley, a retired lawyer in his 70's, are the authors of "Younger Next Year: A Guide to Living Like 50 Until You're 80 and Beyond" (Workman Publishing Company, 2004). It reads like one long, exuberant New Year's resolution against being a couch potato, a loner, a pessimist, a TV addict or a prematurely old person. "It's a `Why To' book rather than a `How To' book," Dr. Lodge said.
If you want to feel younger this new year, the authors have these rules: exercise six days a week, seven if you can; spend less money than you make; don't eat junk food; and care, connect and commit to others.
Being with them puts you in touch with your caveman past, even with wolves and other mammals. In the book they say that nutrition, exercise and relationships set off biological responses in us that date back millions of years. When we feel depressed because we got more junk mail than holiday cards, it's because we survived by being members of a pack, not loners. Exercise, they say, affects our bodies the way hunting did our ancestors, promoting growth and muscle repair. Idleness sends a "decay" message.
After four hours of fighting decay on skis, the group arrived at McNamara Hut. Wearing a miner's headlamp, Mr. Crowley began cooking broccoli, brown rice and veal with a cream sauce, occasionally pausing to hug anyone who came near. "I introduced hugging to Davis, Polk," he said, referring to his old law firm in New York City. "I started hugging men. At first they started to shake and quiver, but now they all do it, except for the tax department."
Connecting with others is like a youth potion, Dr. Lodge added. If you are a 60-ish Wall Street banker who has been laid off, it would be healthier to get a job as a barista than to sit at home alone. It's also healthier to be a social climber than a hermit.
Everyone ate together at a picnic table, surrounded by wine bottles. Kevin Ward, who recently moved to Aspen from London, asked if using a machine that shakes your body counts as exercise. "We have this pernicious drive to look for the shortcut," Dr. Lodge said. "But in these areas — diet, exercise — no one has come up with a shortcut."
Plastic surgery? That's cheating, the authors say.
For dessert, melted chocolate bars and a bottle of Yukon Jack. Greg Poschman, a photographer from Aspen, took a sip. "It's like nail polish remover with honey!" he yelped.
Mr. Ward said, "You say that like it's a bad thing."
Eventually everyone climbed the stairs and wiggled into sleeping bags. "Cuddle up," whispered Hilary Cooper, a portrait painter from New York. "We're mammals. Don't talk. Cuddle up."
Virtual Sketch Artist, The
By JASCHA HOFFMAN
For years, crime witnesses have been asked to come down to the police station and describe crime suspects to sketch artists. Recently, though, psychologists have found that when witnesses try to describe a face, they often distort their memory of it. Could there be a better way?
Police stations in the English county of Kent say they believe they have found one. This spring, they will introduce EigenFIT, one of several new programs that present a witness with a screen full of various photorealistic portraits. The witness chooses the portrait that seems to bear a resemblance, however slight, to the person he or she remembers. The computer then uses the chosen photo to produce a new generation of potential suspects, which the witness will again narrow down. Once more, the computer clones and mutates the chosen faces, slowly closing in on the face in question.
In order to create fresh sets of faces with enough variation, EigenFIT borrows tricks from evolution's playbook, causing traits to appear in a variety of combinations. After dozens of cycles, the computer-generated faces can no longer be distinguished from one another, and the police are left with a single lifelike portrait that no human sketch artist could possibly have drawn.
There is one potential problem: our memory of faces can be hazy and coarse, but the software creates images of fine-grained detail. In order to reduce the chances of a mistake, researchers have toyed with letting witnesses blur out the features they simply don't remember.
Why Students Struggle When Pressure Is On
By BENEDICT CAREY
At schools across the land, students are engaged in that most secular December ritual: sweating midterm exams. And in a new study of math testing, psychologists are reporting that intense exam pressure is actually more likely to impair the performance of very good students than mediocre ones.
Rushed, worried about pleasing others, these students can lose their most valuable intellectual asset: short-term or working memory, the ability to keep numbers and thoughts in a kind of holding pattern while focusing on the problem at hand. Motivated students whose working memories are less powerful are less likely to fold under exam pressure, the study found.
The experiment, to be published in the February issue of Psychological Science, adds to a growing understanding of what impairs intellectual performance and in whom, said Dr. Randall Engle, chairman of the psychology department at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, who was not involved in the research.
"The finding makes very little sense on one level; the better kids should do better, right?" he said. "But we know from other work that this is what happens on some tasks: You put some extra intellectual load on people with these skills, and their performance just drops off."
In recent years, psychologists have refined the notion of short-term memory. Once thought to be a kind of intellectual breadbasket that could hold one, several or many numbers and words depending on its size, it is now described as more like a mental food processor that helps shape ingredients while keeping the mind focused on that task at hand.
People with strong working-memory skills tend to rate high on intellectual aptitude, experts say, because analytical skills and creative thinking depend on this short-term-focused processor.
In the study, Dr. Sian Beilock of Miami University of Ohio and Dr. Thomas Carr of Michigan State University tested the working-memory capacities of 93 Michigan undergraduates, and split them into two groups, a high-functioning working-memory group and a low one.
The students then took two other math tests, under vastly different conditions. One was called a practice test. In the other, the students were told they were part of a team that was depending on them to improve their score in order to win a monetary reward.
The results were striking: the group with high working memory scored about 10 percent better than the others on the low-pressure practice test, but the two groups' scores were about equal when the heat was on to perform. "The main finding is that the environment in which people take a test may diminish its validity," said Dr. Beilock.
Out in the world, or at least in the classroom, some students with good working-memory abilities clearly phase out the effects of the pressure and perform very well. But Dr. Beilock said the study showed how fragile this short-term intellectual machinery was when students were asked not only to concentrate an unwavering mental beam but to fend off dread of failure, a ticking clock and self-doubt.
The students with less working memory are less affected by the pressure because they are probably relying on less taxing techniques to handle problems, the researchers argue. These students may do more estimating than careful computation; they may see patterns in the problems and apply those; they may guess more often than their peers.
But one of the most effective ways to shield intellectual skills from the swirl of pressure, competition and grade fixation is to make the problem-solving strategies needed to perform well more automatic. "Once a skill has been trained up to a point, the differences in working memory become less important, and you're not as vulnerable," Dr. Engle said.
At schools across the land, they have a word for this technique: studying.