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missfay49 · 4 years ago

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Who is Orange?

Disclaimer: Please enjoy? Accept? Beware? This… Thing that started out as character analysis and turned into a deranged fanfic, because I experienced a literal revelation mid-way through free writing. I did not clean this up much because I’m still reeling from the theory implications myself. I cursed a lot.

What does Orange Side represent?

What do we know?

Orange is a “Dark Side”, defined as being one of the Sides hidden from C!Thomas.

The other Hidden Sides were Janus, Remus, and Virgil.

All the Hidden Sides were hidden due to a key aspect of their character that C!Thomas had to first acknowledge and then accept. Virgil required C!Thomas to acknowledge that he had heightened anxiety and accept that anxiety isn’t inherently wrong, just a different form of information that can be processed. Remus required C!Thomas to acknowledge that he had intrusive thoughts and accept that those thoughts don’t make him evil; they’re just thoughts. Janus required C!Thomas to acknowledge that he was capable of lying and accept that acting “selfishly” sometimes isn’t just okay, but actually critically important to managing stress.

What are the common themes here?

Confronting the reality about ourselves instead of pretending some traits don’t exist.

Understanding ourselves to be more complex than ‘good’ and ‘evil’.

Addressing mental health.

Orange Side is still hidden, but we can expect him to be something C!Thomas doesn’t want to (or isn’t ready to) acknowledge. Something that would be difficult to accept about oneself. All Hidden Sides fall under the jurisdiction of Janus, so let’s take another look at him.

In “Can Lying Be Good?” we get a lot of information about what Janus’ purpose is:

Roman: It you really don’t want to know something, he… can keep our mouths shut.

Logan: You don’t want to believe it. That’s where his power comes from. Things that you want to believe. Things that you wish were true. And things that you wish weren’t.

Deceit: What you don’t know can’t hurt you.

This all means that Orange Side is something that would cause C!Thomas distress to learn and something he subconsciously wishes weren’t true. This is not new information to most of you: the spin-off interpretations of Apathy and Pride are widely popular fandom theories, traits that are typically viewed as negative in large doses.

But the Hidden Sides being seen as something negative isn’t their only defining characteristic. They typically involve an aspect a mental health, involve societal expectations, and... what is it...

Janus is the umbrella over all the other Hidden Sides, sheltering and obscuring them from view. He is the gatekeeper in a very literal sense. What is he gatekeeping?

What is it? What is it what is it, why? What does he do? What seems bad but isn’t? What can he do? What issue is actually useful? What’s useful what’s useful WHATS USEFUL WHATS USEFUL?! WHY DOES IT HAVE TO USEFUL?

shitshitSHITSHISTHISTSTs

I KEPT ASKING MYSELF, WHAT’S USEFUL? WHAT TRAIT COULD IT BE THAT APPEARS BAD, BUT ISN’T BAD, IS ACTUALLY USEFUL. ANIEXTY WAS OKAY BECAUSE HE WAS JUST LOOKING OUT FOR US. LYING WAS OKAY BECAUSE HE JUST WANTED TO PUT C!THOMAS FIRST. INTRUSIVE CREATIVITY WAS OKAY BECAUSE DARK IDEAS OPEN UP NEW PATHS.

But the whole GODDAMN POINT is ACCEPTANCE!

You don’t HAVE to be useful to be accepted. You – yuo just BE. YOU BE!

PEOPLE don’t have to prove their Usefulness to you before you can treat them with respect. Our WORTH does not depend on what we PRODUCE. YE GODS, THE COGNITIVE DISSONANCE I JUST BROKE-

~~~

C!Thomas comes back from his self-care stay-cation. He’s ready to start production, he is rested and refreshed. BUT JUST LIKE EVERY PREVIOUS DILEMMA, it isn’t Good enough, Original enough, Fast enough. He’s done everything right, why is it still wrong? He’s accepted his anxiety, he’s accepted that things aren’t just black and white, he’s Accepted That It’s OKAY to have Dark Thoughts, he Has ACCEPTED SELF_CARE. Why Isn’t IT ENOUGH?!

“Fuck it.”

C!Thomas spins in his chair, looking at a man that looks just like him, but not quite.

“What?”

“Fuck it. Fuck them.”

“You sound like Remus,” Thomas jokes. He’s lying, of course. He’s nervous. The Side looks like a normal guy, but something about him is unsettling. The unidentified Side just presses his lips together, unimpressed.

“Um, ef w-who, exactly?” Thomas asks, but part of him already knows.

“All of them. Every person who isn’t you. Every person who expects something from you.”

“Now, you sound like Janus.” Thomas looks back at the computer screen, but the Side’s retort has him spinning around again.

“Janus is a short-sighted pseudo-rebellious minion of a capitalistic society, just like the rest of them.”

“Uh, excuse me?!”

“Isn’t it obvious? They’re all obsessed with Success. Whether they want to play by the rules, or manipulate them, or break them, whether it’s making money or pumping out good deeds, they’re still just trying to make you be successful within the framework of a system that prioritizes production over a human life.”

Thomas just stares for a moment before he can find his voice.

“Who are you?”

“Dude, seriously?” He waves his hands, palms up and presenting himself. “I’m Achilleus. I’m your motivation.”

~~~

Take a deep breath and follow me down the research black hole, where every topic I looked up was more and more terrifyingly appropriate:

Freedom

noun

the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.

Self-Determination

noun

the process by which a person controls their own life.

Autonomy

noun

(in Kantian moral philosophy) the capacity of an agent to act in accordance with objective morality rather than under the influence of desires.

Autonomic Nervous System (because i believe each Hidden Side is closer to the subconscious)

noun

the part of the nervous system responsible for control of the bodily functions not consciously directed, such as breathing, the heartbeat, and digestive processes.

Inherent Value

“inherent value in the case of animal ethics can be described as the value an animal possesses in its own right, as an end-in-itself” – Animal Rights – Inherent Value, by Saahil Papar

Intrinsic Value

“Intrinsic value has traditionally been thought to lie at the heart of ethics. Philosophers use a number of terms to refer to such value. The intrinsic value of something is said to be the value that that thing has “in itself,” or “for its own sake,” or “as such,” or “in its own right.”” – Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Value, by Michael J. Zimmerman and Ben Bradley

“Finally, his sense of respect for the intrinsic value of entities, including the non-sentient, is the Kantian notion of the inherent value of all Being. This is based on the notion that a universe without moral evaluators (e.g. humans) would still be morally valuable, and there is no reason not to regard Being as inherently morally good.” – Technology and the Trajectory of Myth, by David Grant, Lyria Bennett Moses

Motivation

“Another way to conceptualize motivation is through Self-Determination Theory … which is concerned with intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation happens when someone does something for its inherent satisfaction.” – Second Language Acquisition Myths: Applying Second Language Research to Classroom Teaching, by Steven Brown, Jenifer Larson-Hall

Capitalism

“The flowery language of the United States Declaration of Independence would have you believe that human life has an inherent value, one that includes inalienable rights such as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” But in America, a major indicator of value is actually placed on being a productive member of society, which typically means working a job that creates monetary revenue (especially if the end result is accumulated wealth and suffering was inherently involved in the process).” – The Diminished Value of Human Life in a Capitalistic Society, by Seren Sensei

Religion

“At the heart of the debate between Calvinism and Arminianism lay the insurmountable chasm between God’s sovereign election versus human self-determination.” – Sovereignty vs. Self-determination: Two Versions of Ephesians 1:3-14, by Reformed Theology

Mythology

“In Classical Greece, Achilles was widely admired as a paragon of male excellence and virtue. Later, during the height of the Roman Empire, his name became synonymous with uncontrollable rage and barbarism… He chooses kleos (glory) over life itself, and he owes his heroic identity to this kleos. He achieves the major goal of the hero: to have his identity put permanently on record through kleos…

“But is this really an accurate characterization of Achilles' pivotal decision? Is he really driven to sacrifice his life by an obsessive quest for honor and glory? One scene in the Iliad suggests the answer to both questions is no.

“When Achilles leaves the battlefield after his dispute with Agamemnon, the Trojans gain the upper hand on the Greeks. Desperate to convince their best warrior to return, Agamemnon sends an envoy of Achilles' closest friends to his tent to persuade him to reconsider his decision. During this scene, Achilles calmly informs his friends that he is no longer interested in giving up his life for the sake of heroic ideals. His exact words are below:

“The same honor waits for the coward and the brave. They both go down to Death, the fighter who shirks, the one who works to exhaustion (IX 386-388)…

“Not only does Achilles reject the envoy's offers of material reward, but he rejects the entire premise that glory is worth a man's life.” – making sense of a hero’s motivation, by Patrick Garvey

Achilles (/əˈkɪliːz/ ə-KIL-eez) or Achilleus (Ancient Greek: Ἀχιλλεύς, [a.kʰilˈleu̯s])

Achilles realizes his own inherent self-worth, thereby freeing himself from the expectations of others; societal or otherwise. Only once we are free can we find the balance between our own needs and the needs of others in a way that breeds neither anger nor resentment in either.

~~~

But that’s... that’s just... a theory. Huh.

#sanders sides theory #orange side #orange side theory #sanders sides #character thomas #cursing tw #swearing tw #dark sides #the others #janus sanders #virgil sanders #remus sanders #orange sanders #caps tw #name theory #long post #missfay #my writing

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tim-cahyanto-bct · 6 years ago

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Assessment #2 | Reflective Journaling

As per usual, I left this assignment up until the final dying days that we had available. Now in all fairness, this was due mostly to the fact that I did not even know about the existence of the assignment until today (Saturday 27th). However while I was racking my brain trying to think of something to write about, this very experience about being lost and confused had inspired me to write about our latest CT assignment - data objects. You may have read that last sentence and assumed the worst for the data objects assignment, however all is not lost as we somehow managed to claw our way into some form of success throughout these holidays. However, what I do want to write about was our experiences before then, where my faith and motivation for the data objects assignment was as fleeting as days left to do this reflective journaling. Experience So to begin with, our group was primarily made up of people who had no real group that related to their initial ideas. We had people with ideas to do with gaming, skateboarding, space etc. All in all, it was a real mixed bag of different people with different ideas. Our biggest issue off the bat was deciding upon and maintaining a data set. Believe it or not, it took until the very last week before the holidays for us to finally have a definitive data set which we were all working off, and even then we eventually changed it over the holidays anyway. A big reason for this hesitation and lack of progression, I think, comes down to the lack of any real motivation from the majority of our group.

I'll be the first to admit that this assignment wasn't something that I was really excited by, especially compared to "cards for play" which I actually enjoyed quite a bit. Upon first hearing about this brief I actually thought it would be something I would be really into. Having done sculpture in high school, I thought this would be quite similar to the projects that I did for that. However, I was somewhat disappointed that we were restrained by the limitations of hard data and the one-directional emphasis on altering physical objects, which eliminated most of my ideas that I was excited to try. Much of our group looked like as if they felt the same- lost and unmotivated.

It wasn't really until the last couple days where I think we realised how little time we had, and how we needed to actually make some form of progress. We all finally decided to choose and focus on a definitive data set we would all work on, and we came up with an object that we all liked the idea of. We wanted to make coasters and if we had time, cups to map deforestation data. I personally loved the idea, it would be both visual and interactive and I thought that it would be quite impactful. Even though we eventually changed ideas and data sets yet again, it was this point where we really progressed as a group. We finally had a direction to work towards together, and I think that was our pivotal turning point. We ended up using the holidays to knock out the rest of our project out. All of us, I think, happy with what we managed to achieve especially given how rocky our start was.

Observation

Our biggest problem of the lack of motivation was, in my opinion, because most of the group wanted to do their own thing. I know for me that our original data set of renewable energy was not at all interesting to me, however it was something that the majority of the group kind of just went with. As stated by Amabile, T. M. (1998), "people will be most creative when they feel motivated primarily by the interest, satisfaction, and challenge of the work itself-and not by external pressures" It was just bound to happen that we couldn't come up with anything, intrinsically, most of us were not motivated. Even the looming external motivation of our potentially horrible grades did not seem to phase us. Since we all originally had our own wildly different ideas in the beginning, I think it was hard for us to just completely ditch our old ideas and adapt to a new one which we didn't really care for. While other groups were already deep into prototyping and testing, we seemed to still be stuck up on what data we should even focus on. Alternating between objects with each conversation and data sets with each class, our ideas never seeming to stick.

A big reason that this happened in the first place, I believe, was because of a lack of leadership and effective communication. I say effective communication as opposed to just communication as we did communicate- quite a lot actually. However, with those ideas that we all came up with together, we never progressed it further. This for me highlights the completely nonexistent leadership shown by anyone in our group; me included. We had the ideas, but never did anything with them.

This unfortunate experience has allowed me to learn and realise how volatile team projects can be. For the most part, all our group needed to progress much sooner was someone to just gather everybody’s attentions and allow everyone to come to a mutual agreement about what we want to do, and how we should do it. That one simple action could have saved many wasted days.

Analysis

Ultimately, I think our problems arose from the absence of leadership.

After having participated in Outdoor Education which heavily emphasises the importance of strong leadership, especially in the often life endangering scenarios we would often find ourselves in, it quickly became quite obvious how our team had absolutely no direction during those first few weeks of the project. “The study concluded that leadership plays a positive role in the transformation success. This conclusion was supported by correlation results which revealed that there is a positive correlation between leadership and transformation success.” Kendi, B., & Kamaria, K. (2017). This study shows the direct and positive correlation between leadership and success. And on the contrary, how a lack of leadership can also be a contributor to a team’s failures. Additionally, the study conducted by Müller, R., Geraldi, J., & Turner, J. R. (2012) "found an impact of EQ [emotional intelligence] and MQ [managerial intelligence] on project success, but not so from IQ [intellectual intelligence]" From both these studies, we can conclude how effective leadership has a positive correlation to project success; however the latter study also shows how the most important traits are primarily emotional and managerial intelligence. For me, I interpret this study as showing us that effective leadership does not always have to do with outright intellect, but it's more about being able to practically assess the given situation to give the team some direction and focus. This was something I think anyone in our group could have easily done.

Additionally, Jung, D. I. (2001) writes how his study's "Results indicated that transformational leadership promoted higher levels of creativity measured by divergent thinking among group members" In this study, Jung compares transactional leadership to transformative leadership. Basically transformational leadership aims to intrinsically motivate followers to work towards a common goal while transactional leadership focuses on extrinsic motivation using things such as diminishing rewards or punishments. The study highlights the importance of intrinsic motivation over extrinsic motivation when it comes to, in this case, creativity; something a good leader should be able to help facilitate to achieve greater creativity and ultimately greater success. Although it is not solely up to the leader all the time, intrinsic motivation is something that fundamentally only us as individuals can achieve.

This experience with our latest Creative Technologies Studio project has highlighted to me the importance of effective leadership and communication. In the future, I think my aim in these group projects would be to focus more on the group itself rather than solely on the content of the projects. Having someone to steer the group in the correct way in a practical sense would have heavily benefited my latest group, and I have no doubt that it will continue to be necessary for future group projects too.

References Amabile, T. M. (1998). How to kill creativity (Vol. 87). Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing.

Kendi, B., & Kamaria, K. (2017). AN INVESTIGATION OF THE ROLE OF LEADERSHIP IN THE TRANSFORMATION PROCESS OF MICROFINANCE ORGANIZATIONS IN KENYA INTO DEPOSIT TAKING INSTITUTIONS. International Journal of Business Strategies, 1(2), 22-42. Müller, R., Geraldi, J., & Turner, J. R. (2012). Relationships between leadership and success in different types of project complexities. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 59(1), 77-90. Jung, D. I. (2001). Transformational and transactional leadership and their effects on creativity in groups. Creativity Research Journal, 13(2), 185-195.

#ctec502

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drakeramoraythedoctor · 3 years ago

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small business administration mentor options trading South Carolina However, believing you possess certain attributes to a specific degree and actually possessing those attributes to the proper degree are two completely different things.

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admissionsmadness · 3 years ago

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College Admissions Cheaters Often Win

The biggest myth that admissions offices present is that the review process is a science. Holistic review isn’t a precise thermometer that measures temperature accurately. In reality, it’s neither an art nor a science but a series of hunches and gut feelings.

Even supposedly objective criteria such as grades and AP scores can be gamed by savvy students, further calling into question whether reviewers can decipher what is authentic or not.

By cheating, I don’t have in mind falsifying resume credentials on an application or lying on an essay.

I see posts from time to time about admissions counselors who claim they can tell fraud or not, but can they really when they read applications in less than ten minutes and hundreds if not thousands of applications each cycle? They’re reading way too quickly to assess the claims you make at anything other than face value. Reviewers usually take the applicant’s word for it.

Some portals, such as the University of California, have shifted to students self-reporting their grades and SAT scores. Because that information is easily verified with an official transcript required for enrollment, very few students cheat on that portion of the application. I imagine for every thousand students who misrepresent themselves on an application, perhaps one is actually caught and “blacklisted” with their name circulated among elite institutions. Reviewers can’t detect fraud with any reliability, although they love to claim omnipotence on the subject to scare would-be deceivers.

By cheating, I have in mind the time-tested tradition of looking over your classmate’s shoulder. Donald McCabe with the Center for Academic Integrity conducted a longitudinal survey of 70,000 high school students from 2002 to 2015. Two-thirds of students admitted to cheating on a test or plagiarizing a paper, with 95 percent of respondents admitting to some form of cheating.

Because the penalties for academic dishonesty are so high, no student will ever publicly admit to fraud. On the contrary, people accused of cheating will deploy any means to denounce the charge and preserve their reputations, often committing themselves to further lying on top of the initial cheating. There are no incentives to come clean unless it’s to snitch on other cheaters and receive leniency.

Rutger Bregman in Humankind undermines the conventional narrative that humans are innately selfish and prone to evil. He argues that people are generally decent and aren’t intrinsically motivated to lie and cheat. We want to get along and feel included in our family and communities. Poor incentives within society nudge people toward bad behavior.

Our modern society inverts pro-social virtues such as honesty and integrity in favor of winning, even if that means fraud, deceit, or manipulation.

“Blaming the system” doesn’t excuse or absolve the cheater who deserves some form of punishment. “Everyone else is doing it” also isn’t an acceptable defense. We’re left with a situation where the unfortunate few who are caught pay steep penalties. As long as the admissions arms race persists, cheating will be a natural response, a problem most educators and admissions staff prefer to ignore. Consequently, cheating is a silent yet systemic social problem.

Many of my clients go on extensive rants about pervasive cheating in their classes (although, predictably, none ever admit to cheating themselves). Some even write college essays criticizing their underhanded classmates.

A group of students once pulled me aside at a high school visit when I worked for UT-Austin, begging me to do something about their unscrupulous valedictorian. Honest students resent their classmates who show up to class unprepared and swipe scantrons from a teacher’s desk or circulate answers among a group of cheaters. Traditional definitions of plagiarism are inadequate for the smartphone generation.

There is no part of the college application that a determined family can’t manipulate. One recommendation by Varsity Blues ringleader Rick Singer involved referring students to online schools where students could independently study AP classes. Earning high grades at less-rigorous high schools boosted the applicant’s overall GPA and class rank. Supplementing coursework isn’t explicitly illegal. Few if any artificially inflated GPAs will get detected by admissions counselors. Many students opt to take summer school classes at their primary campus to earn more grade points and free up space for more GPA-boosting AP classes.

In the past few years, I noticed a substantial uptick in students earning 4s and 5s on more than 15 AP exams, many of who self-studied. I asked a few how they managed to balance what seemed like an impossible course load for even the most ambitious students. Never implicating themselves, they admitted that on obscure corners of the internet, you could illicitly access AP question test banks provided by College Board intended for use explicitly by teachers to help their students prepare. Memorize the test bank and skim official preparation resources, and there is a decent chance you will pass, especially during the COVID period’s online exams reduced to less than an hour. Cheating is an efficient strategy for overworked and sleep-deprived students.

A Redditor laments in a mocking post, since deleted, about a cheating classmate who gained early admission to Harvard. “[Their cheating] coupled with all those posts about people faking passion and being admitted to schools that are like wE cAn TeLl WhEn yOu ArEn’t PassiOnate, should remind you that AOs AREN’T ALL-KNOWING JUDGES OF YOUR WORTH.”

Because most students know at least one cheater who will inevitably gain admission, cheaters’ successes undermine the entire higher education system’s integrity. The college admissions madness incentivizes everyone to cut corners, with few unwilling to face social exclusion by being labeled a snitch.

Another user responded to the disgruntled post that “[the saying] ‘cheaters never prosper’ is absolute bullshit.” They’re right.

Admissions counselors aren’t Saint Peter with an all-seeing God on their side that can pierce the hearts of any soul. They’re more like a Judge Judy that squawks a lot but doesn’t have any unique insights into human character. Cheaters often win, including electing to the presidency a man who cheats on his wives and lies about everything from recorded phone calls with world leaders down to his golf handicap.

Cheating Lessons

Professor James Lang argues in Cheating Lessons that academically dishonest climates are pervasive at all levels of education. He estimates at least two-thirds of all students will cheat at least once. A few become the habitual deceivers that appear in college essays or frustrated Reddit posts. Extrinsic rewards such as gaining admission to elite universities or earning a prestigious internship normalize dishonest behavior because the means justify the ends. Students are responding to incentives in their environment. Honesty requires more courage than surrendering to the pressures to take shortcuts.

Professor Mollie Galloway expands in a review of Lang’s book that cheating isn’t necessarily more pervasive than in previous generations. Still, dishonest behavior is less stigmatized and perceived as increasingly normal. “The [educational] culture encourages students, particularly those from upper-middle-class and affluent communities, to see cheating not as a compromising of their values but rather as a warranted and morally sound mechanism by which to attain the status they believe they are afforded.”

A few high schools cultivate a culture of cheating.

Administrations feel pressure to maximize their AP exams passed or SAT scores earned to recruit future cohorts of students. Schools receive accolades when their graduates earn prestigious scholarships or university spaces. There are subtle pressures for teachers to turn a blind eye or administrators to cover up academically dishonest behavior. Teachers who are committed to honesty fight a never-ending battle like trying to stop alcohol consumption during Prohibition. Alcoholics will find a way to drink, and students will find a way to cheat.

Institutions punishing cheaters and plagiarizers is so rare that, when it happens, the incident often makes national news.

Cheating at New York City’s most prestigious magnet school, Stuyvesant, didn’t end after they fired their principal, Stanley Teitel, for covering up a 66-student cheating ring in 2013. The New York Post reports five years later, “Cheating is most common among students in their third year, the most academically challenging because the grades count heavily on college applications, the December survey found. A whopping 97 percent of juniors said they had engaged in academic dishonesty, while 56 percent of freshman said they had already cheated after just four months in the school.” Stuyvesant is the second-largest feeder high school in the country for MIT, Princeton, and Harvard.

The Tragic Case of T.M. Landry

The most heartbreaking example of a culture of systematic cheating occurred at Louisiana’s T.M. Landry. Named for the husband-and-wife-founders and principals Tracey and Mike Landry, it is an unaccredited college preparatory school housed in an abandoned factory. When Landry seniors started gaining admission to Cornell, Stanford, Princeton, and Harvard, among many other elite universities, between 2013 and 2018, it seemed like a tremendous success story.

Landry enrolls mostly black students from rural Louisiana, a state with one of the nation’s lowest-performing education systems. Black families placed their trust in the Landrys, who promoted family and unity and an alternative education outside of white society’s norms. The Landrys announced their 100 percent four-year college acceptance rate, made famous by viral YouTube “decision reveal” videos viewed millions of times. Wealthy families and organizations donated hundreds of thousands of dollars, and white and Asian students began enrolling.

Educators and school administrators nationwide wondered how Landry students could overcome such long odds. A New York Times investigation revealed a culture of violence, abuse, and outright fraud. “Visitors and cameras paraded through what had become a Potemkin village.”

Because the school wasn’t accredited, they do not receive any government funding and consequently fall outside regulations and oversight. Class attendance was optional. It was, as one student described it, a “house built on water.”

Mike Landry humiliated and demanded absolute obedience from his students, resulting in a 2013 conviction for battery. He required students to begin class by saying “I love you” in different languages, including an invented language, Mike-a-nese, to him directly. “Love” in Mike-a-nese is the word “kneel.”

Students and families began speaking out following abuse allegations and substandard classroom instruction. Mr. Landry threatened to withhold transcripts if anyone left the school or blew the whistle. Students who chose to leave had their grades altered to ruin their future college prospects. He threatened students that elite university admissions officers had cameras in the school, so they better behave themselves.

T.M. Landry’s Ivy League success comes down to outright fraud. Mike Landry doctored transcripts to show outstanding grades for loyal students, even for advanced courses that they never took or weren’t offered at the school. The Landrys pressured students to report their family incomes as low as possible on the applications. Teachers recycled recommendation letters to laud students for extracurricular activities that didn’t exist. In some instances, teachers recycled recommendations from previous years for future students without changing the names.

The Landrys counseled students to “go deep” on their essays, which pressured students to exaggerate or fabricate hardships that play into racial stereotypes and poverty tropes. They were the kinds of hardship stories that elite universities eat up. The only genuine instruction that students received revolved around the ACT. It was the only admissions factor that T.M. Landry staff couldn’t easily manipulate. One graduate, Bryson Sassau, commented, “If it wasn’t on the ACT, I didn’t know it.”

T.M. Landry’s graduates had mixed results at their respective elite colleges. Some earned their degrees despite entering college with writing and math skills that were many grade levels below their college classmates. Others, especially those who spent the most time at T.M. Landry, floundered and dropped out.

Because their high school degrees weren’t accredited, some alumni had to earn their GED to enroll at local colleges and begin their studies again. Landry college prep destroyed dozens of families whose elementary-age children didn’t learn phonics. High school juniors tested in reading at a fourth-grade level.

Mike Landry defended himself by appealing to a culture that values credentials over character. “So what, we’re not accredited… Three years in a row, Harvard took us. Stanford has taken us.”

Taking a page out of the corporate public relations playbook, the Landrys employed the law firm Couhig Partners to respond to the Times’s allegations. Couhig based their 23-page report on five interviews that excluded the dozens of testimonies investigated by the Times. Predictably, their internal investigation minimizes the claims and amounts to “move along now, nothing to see here,” while noting that there might be areas for minor improvement.

In other words, the means justify the ends.

The tragedy of T.M. Landry embodies the admissions madness taken to its logical conclusion. The Landrys are a symptom of the admissions madness, not a cause.

Elite universities seek diverse, academically stellar students. High schools everywhere will respond to these incentives, and families want to send their children to schools with a noted track record of success. In the worst-case scenarios, school cultures cater their entire curriculum and deploy any measures to meet those expectations at the expense of genuine learning or even a safe learning environment.

Universities are to blame

T.M. Landry and Varsity Blues are two sides of the same coin. The former exploited an admissions system that values diversity, whereas the latter defrauded universities by leveraging extreme wealth and privilege. As with the Varsity Blues scandal, university administrators responded in horror, wondering how such a thing could occur. Yet, they’re the architects of a system that creates such perverse incentives that distort basic human decency. Look in the mirror!

It’s also ironic that, on the one hand, admissions officers claim to know the context and resources of a given high school, while on the other, the Landrys hoodwinked dozens of elite colleges over a series of application cycles. If universities can’t reliably catch a fraudulent high school, why would we believe they can consistently identify individual cheaters?

In Talking with Strangers, Malcolm Gladwell suggests that we’re generally trusting and tend to default to the truth. In UT admissions, senior staff trained us to presume what a student writes or reports on their resume is true. Admissions processes aren’t set up to identify fraud or look for subtle discrepancies in transcripts relative to a school’s profile.

I don’t believe the posturing of a former Stanford admissions counselor who posted a Reddit thread under the username “empowerly,” insinuating that applicants will get caught if they cheat. Given infinite time and resources, it’s theoretically possible to catch most cheaters most of the time. However, there simply isn’t enough time, sufficient information, or willpower to detect fraud in practice. Admissions gatekeepers are not the gods that they convey themselves to be publicly. Pretending to be all-powerful causes more harm than good and injects more anxiety into the system.

The immediate result of posts like that of the former Stanford counselor was to create a sense of paranoia among student Redditors. Dozens of comments wondered, “Will my ECs seem exaggerated? What if they contact my counselor?” The most honest response reads, “I presume you know that some students will take advantage of this information and lie better.”

Sentiments like /u/empowerly’s reinforce college admissions counselors’ omniscience that provides the architecture for T.M. Landry to deceive their students that universities watched them. We are reluctant to acknowledge cheating unless there is overwhelming evidence suggesting fraud occurred.

Educators are also averse to leveling claims of fraud against a student unless they’re highly certain. Their reputations and careers are at stake if they wrongly accuse a student. It isn’t surprising that the Landrys’ deceit succeeded for many admissions cycles. To their credit, at least some of their unwitting alumni earned life-transforming elite college degrees that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

Cheaters, whether they are aware of their dishonesty or not, often win.

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zandoct · 7 years ago

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Why Mass Effect Andromeda is Great

So I finished MEA the other day, and I loved it to pieces. Easily top 5 games of all time, and only ten good games have ever been made. So imagine my surprise when I, the Discourse Liker, logged on and discovered that this beautiful work of art hadn’t been received very well. Who let the critics get away with that? Anyway, I’m going to explain why I love the game and why it’s really good and even some things it did better than the original trilogy.

Spoilers for the new alien species ahead

The Magnificent Ten

One of the great strengths of MEA compared to its predecessors in the franchise is the small cast of intimately written characters that form the Tempest crew. The Tempest is approximately one half the size of Normandy SR-2 and smaller than the SR-1, which means that there aren’t any faceless, nameless crewmembers. Instead, you have what I call the Magnificent Ten, because I’m bad at naming things.

To me, keeping the crew small and tightly knit is a fantastic improvement over previous games. This gives more space for the interrelationships (i.e. the way characters interact with characters other than the player) and helps you feel like you have greater agency over the Tempest, as a home. Which is one of the major themes of the game. Come on now. For instance, Lexi’s character is explored by her interaction with Drack as much as it is with Ryder, or Kallo with Suvi.

Compare that to ME2, which had a brilliant but very large cast that hardly ever interacted with each other. As discussed in this video, the only way a player can have agency in RPGs is if the NPCs have agency, and a great way to achieve that is to explore their relationships outside of the player. Using the banter system from Bioware’s other major modern title Dragon Age is one great way of making a team a family. WHICH IS THE OTHER MAJOR THEME OF THE GAME.

A rigorous analysis of the characterisation of the Tempest crew would take an entire other essay, but I’ll just comment that I found the interplay of themes shared between the crew – especially their loyalty missions – to be one of the best expressions of theme, tone and allegory in any game I’ve played.

For instance, Cora’s arc is (partially) about how you deal with being rejected, and Peebee’s arc is about how you deal with rejecting others. Liam represents your own mistakes and Jaal represents the mistakes of others. Vetra represents letting go of a role and Drack represents stepping forward into a role. Obviously this is just my interpretation but the very fact the narrative can be interpreted in so many fascinating ways is testament to its… beauty.

The supporting cast outside of the Tempest family are also a diverse, fascinating bunch. The Angara are represented on Aya by Commander Evfra, Moshae Sjefa and Governor Paaran. They have an interesting chemistry and each represents an individual, subtle example of Angaran culture. This makes the introduction to Aya a little overwhelming, filled as it is with so many important characters and unknown conflicts. But it’s a great way to be immersed in your Ryder, who’s probably also blown away by one of the game’s major discoveries.

A significant problem some critics have with the game is that only two sapient species were introduced in this new galaxy. While it would have been cool to see one or two more, the intense focus on two cultures is more reflective of the how the game interrogates having a smaller crew.

Plot Course, Setting Course (or; The Process of Renewal)

Another key criticism of MEA is that it is very iterative of the original series: keep in mind though that the original series is also iterative in its own way, drawing inspiration from a number of sci-fi/fantasy sources (KOTOR I’m side-eyeing you big time)

I think it can be refreshing to examine the themes of the original series with a new perspective granted by the different events and characters of MEA. Fundamentally, stories are only compelling because of what it tells us about humanity. Yes, the ancient Prothean tech is reminiscent of the Remnant. But they have different goals, different culture and most importantly, their two commentators – Liara and Peebee, respectively – are affected by them in different ways. As William Faulkner said:

“The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.” What I mean by this is that the similarities between the Protheans and the Remnant are less important than the different effect they have on the player and our companions.

The same goes for the Reapers and Kett and their twisted idea of uplifting other species. The Kett’s semblance of Ur-fascism is part of what makes them thematically distinct from the Reapers, rather than their superficial aims. Throughout the series, the Reaper’s philosophy was vague and mainly gathered from piecemeal exposition of the supporting cast, especially Legion and Saren rather than the Reapers themselves. The Kett are also enigmatic for most of the game, but what you learn about them is more concrete than their all-powerful Milky Way counterparts.

A fantastic scene, demonstrating that there's a niche for moments with no dialogue in Bioware games.

Discussing ‘the Kett as fascists’ is worthy of its own article so I will only briefly explore it here. In 1995, Umberto Eco provided a great analysis of fascism, both past and future. He states that fascist ideologies can be extrinsically and intrinsically contradictory while also being equally valid under the umbrella of fascism, something he calls Syncretism. For instance, Nazism and Mussolini’s fascism disagree in their treatment of religion, but both are quite clearly forms of fascism. He goes on to describe the theoretical qualities of ‘ur-fascism’, a hypothetical social order that could potential arise from any of the aforementioned qualities. I propose that the Kett are best analysed from the perspective of these qualities:

1. Cult of Tradition. The Kett oppose developing their philosophy. For instance, The Archon is harshly scrutinised by the Primus for trying to develop a new strategy for exalting the Angara. “We will take Heleus the way we always have.” To Archie’s credit, he’s hardly a true progressive, just an example of syncretism in action, and he’s also more of a practical leader than an ideological one.

2. Fear of difference (or diversity). The Kett only wish to integrate the aspects of species they deem appropriate, in a carefully predetermined way. They do not allow actual species into their hierarchy and they do not tolerate unexpected diversity. Eco refers to this as “an appeal against the intruders” but this can equally apply as “an appeal against the conquered” – that strategy is just as common in human history as the former.

3. Irrationalism (or, action for action’s sake). The Archon is not compelled to justify his actions to the player, and instead simply acts. To criticise himself would be to generate difference, or imply that his ideals may be unworthy, and that is unacceptable.

It is difficult to consider the Reapers so politically, as their motivations are left more ambiguous. For instance, one cannot draw a comparison between the Reapers and the Citadel Council as easily as one can between the Kett and the Andromeda Initiative, who both arrived from beyond Heleus. The differences between the Kett and the Reapers, then, are subtle but still significant.

Me looking at the discourse surrounding Andromeda

It’s also worth keeping in mind the struggle Bioware faced in producing a game that incorporated the themes of the original series (discovering ancient things to lead into the future, the interaction between technology and humanity) while also doing something new. In fact, MEA very clearly is trying to revisit the concepts of the first game in a new and improved light, and I think from that perspective MEA excels.

But there is plenty new here, don’t forget that! They were damned if they didn’t incorporate enough of the original series and if they didn’t innovate enough, and I think this lies at the root of its lukewarm reception. That and the complaints about cinematics. WHICH ARE BASICALLY ON PAR WITH THE ORIGINAL SERIES SO SHUT YOUR MOUTHS

S.A.M., INTERFACE

Paragon and Renegade, eat your heart out

As you can probably tell, this essay has focused much more on narrative and metaphor than on gameplay, purely because I find gameplay the least compelling part of all games. However, most would agree that the combat of MEA is the most fun of the franchise and the difficulty is very well gauged. I also think the dialogue interface (no pun intended, hahahaha get rid) is a real improvement. The demise of Paragon/Renegade system is finally here, and the game is better for its loss. Every decision must be judged on its own merits and the tone of dialogue options is much easier to predict by having four consistent possibilities.

The psych profiles Lexi compiles are also a much cooler way for the game to express how your Ryder is developing than a coloured bar. It’s a shame that ‘persuade’ abilities are lost: a system similar to Dragon Age Inquisition, where perks in history, politics, academics etc can increase your character’s expertise and hence persuasiveness would have been nice. But MEA doesn’t give you an easy way out, and sometimes you have to make a decision knowing it’s the wrong one. That’s very cool.

Also, right lads, no listen right, they actually FIXED side quests in MEA. Don’t you dare look me in the eye and say the side quests were anything but trash in ME, ME2 and ME3. Don’t you dare. Other than the fetch quests, ME3 wasn’t too bad, but MEA gets them really right. I would have liked a bit more cinematic dialogue in some of them, but it’s SO much better than Shepard and co silently jogging around a heartless rock jungle, pressing buttons. Also, who are these folk who love ME2 but attack Dragon Age Inquisition? What the hell is going on?

We Made It (to a conclusion)

One of the key differences between the original series and MEA is the scale. MEA is about a small supercluster of the galaxy (a piece of a corner of the universe, as Suvi calls it) and the few factions that are influential there. In ME1-ME3, life as we know it is at risk on a galactic scale. There are hundreds of different factions and a broader cast. Which you prefer is a matter of personal taste, but the intensity and detail of MEA’s story is a refreshing change for the franchise. I’ve often felt the vast, vast lore of the original series is done a disservice by the main plot, which renders all of it largely futile because all that matters is defeating the Reapers. Both games are about survival, but Andromeda’s smaller stakes allow for a variety of factors – political, environmental, military, philosophical etc – to influence that survival. In the original series, the only thing that influences survival is resolving the reaper threat. The original series is about heroes of legend rising to the challenge of saving the galaxy from an ancient conflict. On the other hand, Andromeda is about an inexperienced, relatively ordinary group of people who are prematurely forced into difficult situations and have to make a home out of them. I know which one I’d rather believe in.* Let me know what you think, send an ask or reply or w/ever

*Just kidding I love every Mass Effect game. Righto, cheers

See ya

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marymosley · 4 years ago

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Should I Go to Law School?

Considering whether you should go to law school? With a persistent demand for legal services, going to law school might sound like a suitable option in today’s economy.

But like any path in life, law school isn’t the answer for everyone. For many, the reasons why people commit to law school aren’t always the right ones.

The important questions to ask are – what are your motives for going to law school? And would you consider working before law school to make sure it’s the right path for you?

We’re here to help you decide whether law school is the right path for you. Here are some important factors to consider and discuss before taking the plunge.

What’s your motivation for going to law school?

First, let’s talk about your motivations for heading to law school. What is it that makes you want to go?

Studies demonstrate that certain types of motivation are more likely to result in happiness and contentment than other kinds of motivations.

External motivators, such as money, power, acceptance, prestige, and admiration correlate inversely with happiness. So, if you’re thinking of going to law school because your parents want you to or because you’re hoping to make a ton of money, this is unlikely to the best motivator for you. Recent graduates can tell you that the student loan debt will make you think twice about all those external validators.

Intrinsic motivators that relate to personal growth, close relationships, and helping others correlate positively with happiness. So, if, for example, you dream of excelling in a career as a district attorney and helping others in the process, these are great motivators to join.

When it comes to deciding whether to go to law school or choosing a school, you should be very cautious about choosing a school based on its prestige and whether or not its considered a top law school or the type of law school that will get you into biglaw.

A healthier path is to choose a school that will support and nurture your personal goals and ensure that you up with a reasonable amount of law school debt, a great chance of passing the bar exam and an even better chance of enjoying the practice law. That’s even if it’s not the most prominent school you can attend.

Think about the reasons you’d like to go to law school and write them down. If they’re mainly external motivations, be careful. In the long run, these reasons for going are unlikely to bring you happiness and pursuing a legal education could be a mistake.

If the reasons are mainly intrinsic, great. Try and hold onto these motivations as you move forward, as these are the ones that will help you gain contentment and peace in your career. But be aware that these motivations can begin to slip away once you’ve taken the LSAT, gone through the law school application process and started to feel the stress of law schoo.

Remember, the world is full of unhappy lawyers, many of which have significant student loan debt. Chase the career path with the right motivations, and you can be one of the lucky ones, happy and content with your work choices.

The benefits of working before you go to law school

The path you take to attend law school is a personal one, but it usually becomes harder and more unrealistic the further away from undergrad level you get.

Once you start working, the concept of going back to study in the classroom can seem overwhelming and the idea of living a student lifestyle again can seem unappealing.

Sure, it’s hard heading back to school after earning money in the workforce for several years, but there are some advantages of working before law school instead of jumping straight into it from being an undergrad. Some of them you may not even realize until you head back to school. Here are a few of them.

You’ll grow savings and pay off debt

With a couple of years working under your belt, you have the chance to save some cash that will come in handy once you do head to law school. Having some money behind you can help you in various ways.

Maybe you can pay off some of your loans and credit cards you used from your years as an undergraduate. That will help soften the blow if you need to take out student loans for life at law school.

Or, you can use it to help you sort out a living situation for when you’re studying law in a new city.

You’ll learn how to budget

This work experience and money set aside can also help you learn how to budget. This will come in especially handy when you’re trying to figure out how to pay for law school and will need to be more stringent with your spending.

You’ll have time to consider whether law school is right for you

As you become used to working, it will likely become clearer to you whether starting a legal career at law school is for you or not. When you get used to working, the idea of leaving a career, a healthy salary, and 401k to study can become less and less attractive.

So, those who do decide to go likely have some very strong reasons for doing so, as it’s a lot to give up.

If after working, you have extrinsic reasons for leaving, you may need to give them a re-think. If the reasons you have for studying again are intrinsic, then this can demonstrate your passion for law school.

Spending some much-needed time away from the classroom and in the “real world” of working can help simplify your reasons and goals for going to law school. It also may make you appreciate the cost of law school and steer you toward one of the more affordable options. And a clear purpose is powerful in helping you move forward in your law career, even if your work is tiring and difficult.

Remember, no path to law school is the “right” or “ideal” way. Every method offers different advantages and disadvantages, you just need to make the right decision to work for you. While returning to school after life in the workforce can seem scary, or like you’re moving backward, remember that lots of the skills you’ve learned in your career will equip you well in law school.

Questions & Answers

If you’re deciding whether to go to law school, it’s likely that you still have plenty of questions.

Can I make a lot of money as a lawyer?

In short, yes you can. Lots of law students head to school striving for that big salary bonus legal job with a massive law firm straight after grad school, and yes some of them gain that.

However, it’s important to note that a lot don’t too. If you look at the statistics, there’s a peak at the $160,000 mark for new law grads. However, most starting salaries in the job market are a lot lower than that.

Realistically, the top legal schools and law firms only hire from around 15 to 20 of the most esteemed schools in the country, with a couple of local ones. Even if you’re from one of those schools, it’s likely you’ll need top grades in your class to snag a high-flying legal job. That means your chances of hitting the top salary as a recent grad in the legal industry is even lower.

So, yes, you can earn very well as a lawyer. But remember to take in all the considerations.

Is a law degree versatile?

The good news is that yes, a law degree is versatile. Law school graduates don’t always end up as lawyers. Lots end up working in various industries, such as in banking, finance, public, government, non-profit, or for international businesses.

However, if it’s your aim to work in any of these sectors, be aware that there’s probably a different graduate degree that will get you further in your field rather than following a legal profession. Plus, it’s likely to be a whole lot shorter and cheaper too.

Should I apply for law school if I don’t have anything better to do?

If the only reason you’re applying to law school is because you don’t have anything else to do, the simple answer is no. You shouldn’t apply for law school if you don’t have anything better to do.

This route is common for many college seniors or recent grads who feel stuck with what to do next in their life and career.

But if this is how you feel, it makes sense to spend a few years working, earning money, and exploring different careers and industries that excite you. Remember, law school will always be there for you if you still want to join later in life.

Should I apply for law school if I love “the law”?

If you ‘love the law’ then that’s great. However, it’s a pretty broad statement, so you should probably decide which aspect of the law interests you before choosing to go to law school. That way you can focus on your passions and help turn it into a career.

For example, if you’re obsessed with ‘Law and Order’, then law school could be great for you.

If the idea of negotiating terms of a credit agreement or filing motions appeals to you, then law school may not be the best option.

Will I get to make a difference?

Yes, there are plenty of lawyers out there that don’t use their work for the greater good. But thankfully, the world is full of lawyers who do their best to make the right choices and help people through their work.

Many lawyers strive to make an impact on social change through human rights groups or advocacy organizations. But while these public interest jobs are very rewarding, it’s important to be aware that they generally don’t pay too much.

That said, having an interest in these sorts of roles is a great reason to head to law school. Plus, plenty of law schools will help postpone the cost of law school for students that dream of working in the public interest by presenting loan repayment assistance programs to them.

Originally posted on Should I Go to Law School?

Biglaw Investor - Personal finances for the aspiring millionaire lawyer

Should I Go to Law School? published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/

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thejintro · 5 years ago

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14 Learning Techniques to try - which works best for you?

We live in a strange time. All the world’s information is available at the click of a button. It makes the myriad reams contained in the Library of Alexandria seem pitiful in comparison.

Nowadays, the struggle is not in finding information - it’s in finding high quality information. There’s so much noise out there, how does one find the signal?

As an aside, this is exactly what my startup, Future Builders is working on. #ShamelessPlug

In this post, I’ll briefly discuss a number of learning methodologies and techniques, to help you understand the methods of learning the resonate best. Let me know in the comments if I've missed any, and/or which techniques work best for you :)

Highlighting / Note Taking

A personal favourite of mine, and a very popular methodology… Highlighting sections as you read them, and especially taking notes as you read, turn the learning process from one of passive consumption to active participation. A word of wisdom though - if you’re as prolific with highlighting and taking notes directly on the page as I am, you’ll never be able to sell those books when you’re done with them!

The Feynman Technique

Another personal favourite, this technique can be summarised by the statement - ‘could you describe what you’ve learnt to a 5 year old?’

According to the technique, you should really try to find a 5 year old and explain the topic to them. The technique assumes you’ll note down any confusion and then go back to the topic anew, ensuring that you yourself are in fact able to allay that confusion in a future interaction with said 5 year old, repeating this process until you and your interlocutor understand the topic fully.

If you don’t have easy access to a preschooler, writing your own explanations and summaries of a topic can serve the same goal (more on this later!).

Reflecting and Questioning

This technique encourages you to take time after having learnt a topic to reflect on what you’ve learnt, to verbalise any questions you might have that remain unanswered, and to reflect on how the knowledge you’ve learned can be incorporated into your daily life. It ensures that the learning is solidified to some extent, but it’s easy for people to *think* they’ve done this technique in their head rather than on paper. In reality, doing this technique all in your head can often give illusory benefits if not performed with diligence.

Summarising and Systematising

While there is of course significant crossover with many of these methodologies, this technique seems to be one of the most popular amongst theorists. Once you’ve finished learning a topic, before moving on, are you able to summarise what you’ve learnt? Are you able to turn the topic into something like a mind map? Can you summarise the key arguments, and even the key weaknesses with those arguments, based on what you’ve learnt? It’s with this technique in mind that many people write blogs, create youtube videos and make podcasts about topics they’ve learnt - it’s done as much for the creator themselves to solidify their learning as it is for the audience to enjoy.

Tracking and Gamifying Your Learning

If you’re the sort of person that responds well to achievements, points, badges and #winning or gaining a #streak, this might be one for you to try.

It works particularly well when trying to develop new habits, traits and routines. It doesn’t really matter whether you use pen & paper, Google Docs or some fancy app really - it only matters that you’re diligent in tracking your progress. It involves setting daily/weekly/monthly goals for your learning and using this gamification technique to create extrinsic motivation to keep you on track, and to support your own intrinsic motivation for learning.

Discussion & Peer Review

Not dissimilar to the Feynman technique, this methodology suggests you discuss your learning with peers - ideally ones who are knowledgeable enough about the topic to ask insightful questions, to challenge what you say, and to help close any knowledge gaps that might be surfaced. Nowadays there’s a community for everything, and Reddit has a sub for every topic under the sun - expect to be challenged and peer-reviewed heavily in these online communities though… It’s often useful to practise this technique with supportive friends first.

Hire a Coach

Coaching is, in my humble opinion, one of the most undervalued learning techniques in the modern world. (Almost!) everyone thinks they can get along without needing to rely on a coach, but this is (usually!) an illusion. Good coaches can put rocket fuel on your learning trajectory by giving rapid, high quality feedback, helping you to avoid mistakes and pitfalls, and holding you to account on your progress.

Develop an Intrinsically Motivated, Deliberate Practise

Intrinsic motivation is hard, and takes time to work through. It requires you to find your internal motivation for learning - finding a reason for learning that’s *not* as a route or path to achieving something else, but one that justifies the effort for its own sake. Once you’ve succeeded in fully understanding your intrinsic motivation, you can turn your learning into a long-term, deliberate practise where the ‘goal’ is not to ‘get somewhere’, but to *become* the sort of person that learns consistently and deliberately. It’s a methodology that let’s go of the idea that there will ever be a time when you’re ‘finished’ with your learning. You’ll know if you’ve fully understood your intrinsic motivations, because this ‘impossibility of ever completing the journey’ would offer more motivation, not less.

Testing & Evaluating Yourself

Popular with Uni students the world over, this technique suggests learners create for themselves a series of test questions, essay challenges and questionnaires to test the retention of a specific topic. It requires some discipline to create these tests, and even more in reviewing the responses fairly and accurately, but this can be an incredibly effective technique when done well.

Active Recall

Another technique that’s popular with students, active recall is the process of moving knowledge from short term memory to long term memory. The best system for this is known as the spaced repetition algorithm, which is built in to products like Memrise and Anki.

In this technique, you note all of the important information that you’ve learned (it can be done during or after completion, it’s up to you), and create a system to help you recall that information - it might be by way of physical flash cards, with the question on one side and the answer on another, or it might be done via an app like Memrise.

The learner’s role would be to revisit these question prompts over time, ensuring that the knowledge is being retained in long term memory, revisiting and revising anything that’s shown to have fallen out of memory. Revisiting the cards periodically is an essential part of the technique - and this is why using an app is so useful, since it uses the spaced repetition algorithm to ensure that you’re repeating your efforts at the right intervals.

In terms of retention, active recall puts cramming - the ultimate technique favoured by uni students the world over - to shame.

Experiential Learning

Learning-by-doing has become very popular over recent decades. Coders, for example, are big proponents of this technique. It simply encourages the learner to get stuck in and use their new knowledge as quickly as possible - even if it’s not fully understood. It encourages ‘minimum viable education’, with a goal to practise and do as early as possible. It embraces failure as a way to solidify learning, and it assumes that the topic of learning is something that can be used in a practical environment.

Repeated Exposure

Especially useful for people who don’t retain knowledge easily, and also for those that want to go much deeper into a topic, often learning the same thing from different resources, and therefore slightly different perspectives, can help embed the learning much more deeply than single exposure could.

Just In Time Learning

Popular with corporations, just in time learning is a technique that says you should only ever learn enough to succeed in addressing whatever problem you’re currently facing, and nothing more. Has your boss asked you to add in more data visualisations for the next monthly report? You don’t need to quit your job and do an immersive Data Bootcamp - a short youtube video on how to use Tableau might be enough to do the trick.

This technique is also useful in roles that require breadth in a wide range of topics over depth in a single specialisation - like when trying to get a startup off the ground :)

Interleaving

Interleaving is all about learning multiple topics simultaneously. It’s especially useful for complex, broad topics that require integrated knowledge before mastery can be attained. Becoming a Doctor is one of these, where mastery of a wide-range of interrelated topics is essential. It’s probably the slowest of all the techniques, but it gives learners the ability to make connections across topics that can be incredibly valuable, creative and stimulating. That being said, progression can at times feel hard, slow and frustrating, especially in the early days!

In Summation

There are many ways to learn, but one thing’s for sure… Learning passively - in our mind at least - doesn’t really count as learning. It’s entertainment. Active learning - likes those above - is essential for real progress and mastery. As you can see from this list, there are lots of techniques that you can try and see which fits you best.

Let us know what you think in the comments - Is there anything we missed? Which are your favourite techniques for learning? And which don’t work so well for you? We look forward to continuing the conversation below :)

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onlinemarketingcourses · 6 years ago

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50 Must-Read Psychology Books

Reading is the supreme lifehack. Distilled knowledge that often took years to assemble can be consumed in just a few hours.

And the more you know about social psychology and human behavior, the better. Reading good psychology books lets you jump-start your education by absorbing what researchers, professors, and authors spent years putting together.

I can’t think of a single better way to empower yourself than that.

Note: While all of the books below will deal with the human mind, not all of them are purely scientific. Some books deal with persuasion, productivity, or creative work. With that caveat, let’s begin.

1. The Social Animal

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2cA6upp

In my humble opinion, the greatest general overview of social psychology ever written.

This book seems to be in such high demand that the Amazon prices are often outrageous.

The demand is warranted however, few books will give you as in-depth, interesting and just a generally well written overview of social psychology quite like Elliot Aronson’s classic.

A must-read if you can obtain it; I consider it the best presentation of social psychology 101 ever written.

2. Influence: Science and Practice

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bQeH5X

This is considered the gospel on the psychology of persuasion. Cialdini’s now infamous work deserves the amount of praise it gets.

Not only is the book easy to follow with tons of excellent examples (explained in laymen terms), Cialdini also spends the time to go into why these studies played out as they did.

Lastly, he addresses how to defend yourself from persuasion techniques that wish to harm you rather than ethically convince you (scammers, people selling faulty products knowingly, disingenuous attempt to persuade, etc.) A true classic.

3. Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2c0BOIt

Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed this book, but just be forewarned that this should be used as a compliment to the other more comprehensive entries on this list.

While the book is informative, the studies are grazed over pretty quickly, not much depth is given to any individual study. It does make for a great “rabbit hole” read.

This is where you find out about a study, look up more about it, find more related studies, and “go down the rabbit hole” searching for new material. A great starting point to getting your feet wet in a variety of persuasion related studies.

4. Thinking, Fast and Slow

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bPhvDp

Without a shadow of a doubt, one of my all time favorites.

Trying to go over what this book digs into would take me a whole post in itself, so allow me to just gush: This book is damn awesome, read it!

Seriously though, for behavioral research, there are few books that touch the scope and breadth that Dan Kahneman dives into with this masterpiece

Mr. Kahneman holds a Nobel Prize in economics as well, and this aspect shines through in the book’s many examples.

5. Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bXsFjy

The Heath brothers, Dan Heath and Chip Heath, put out some of my favorite material on the subject of persuasion.

Their book Switch aims to answer the question: “Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives?”

Specifically, why is it so hard to change things that have become commonplace. Their arguments are structured well, as is their other entry on this list, and incredibly readable; you can tell that a lot of effort was put into breaking the book down into appropriate sections and making it easy to pick up by anyone.

6. The Art of Choosing

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2cqQkdC

This is the quintessential read on how human beings make choices and what external influences affect those choices.

I first came across Sheena Iyengar’s work through finding out about her infamous “jam study” through an online publication.

Needless to say, I was fascinated by the idea that choice can actually overwhelm, causing people to delay choosing rather than benefit from the extra options offered. It’s a fantastic read and very enjoyable all the way through, I happen to consider Sheena a great writer as well as a great researcher.

7. Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2cA7D01

Human beings have zero understanding of intrinsic value. We are heavily influenced by contextual clues when we examine things like “price” and “cost.”

This has been shown via a number of studies, and this book offers a superb analysis of the literature.

You’ll be very surprised to see just how easily marketing departments can influence our perception of things with subtle tweaks to pricing, making this an important read for every consumer, which is all of us.

8. Stumbling on Happiness

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bPiTpu

Despite the title of this book, this isn’t a self-help book by any means. It’s more concerned with the process in the mind than on ways you can “be your best self.”

One commentor pointed out a quote that fits the book well: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”

It’s a fitting quote because the entire book reveals how your brain is essentially hard-wired into doing the exact opposite. Fortunately, Gilbert’s incorporation of research and insightful anecdotes make this one of the most enjoyable positive psychology books out there.

9. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2cqS8Dt

Again, a book that may seem like self-help, but really isn’t. Drive spends a majority of it’s time focusing on what gets us motivated in the workplace.

It examines the intrinsic and extrinsic motivators that allow us to keep pushing, and questions which methods of utilizing both (with intrinsic being far more important) are the most effective for both employees and employers.

The book is a really important read, and I love how Pink tackles the subject, but I couldn’t help but agree with the highest critical review: the book has some padding. If you don’t mind a few sections going on a bit longer than they should though, this book is a must read.

10. Predictably Irrational

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bMMbUB

Few books will make you question your own decisions quite like this one; Ariely shows how seemingly mundane or meaningless changes can greatly impact our behavior when we don’t realize what’s going on, which appears to be a majority of the time.

As a sample, check out his famous pricing study on the Economist, you’ll see how small changes can really play with our perception of things.

I would put this book squarely on the understanding your brain category in this list, but this book also has some fantastic insights on persuading others if you closely examine the given examples.

11. Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bWiRYK

I’ll avoid the entirely too awful pun of calling this book “fascinating”, but I will say that it is a captivating read. I have two main comments on Sally’s writing: the first is a slight critique, in that the book often tries to take more established ideas and make them sound entirely new.

The second is full of praise: it’s hard to title a book with the word “Fascinate” if it’s not a page-turner, and Sally’s writing will definitely hook you until the end.

She also leaves readers with an actual game-plan and candid examples when ideas are brought up, which I loved. I enjoyed Sally’s speaking and picked this book up when someone recommended to me, and now I’m recommending it to you because it’s an insightful look at persuasion.

12. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2c4NVGx

Definitely one of my favorite marketing books ever written , but it’s not something that can only be enjoyed by marketers.

This quote from Mark Twain is included in the book’s description: “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” The authors offer an explanation as to why these ideas can stay with us for so long.

I feel like we all find ourselves asking a similar question at times, as to why something caught on so quickly while something else that may have been superior faded away. Diving a little deeper than the answer of better marketing, this book aims to address the 6 ways certain ideas just stay with us while others slip away.

13. Numbers Rule Your World: The Hidden Influence of Probabilities and Statistics on Everything You Do

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2c4NJqL

This book is probably the most unique of all of the books on this list. I wouldn’t call it a book about persuading others, but it does address what could have been an incredibly boring topic for some readers, the application of statistics and how they affect you, and turned it into a really easy read.

I approached this book expecting to slowly crawl through it, but there are a ton of great examples and Fung does a fantastic job of using stories to get his points across.

Whether you’re a numbers guy (or gal) or just want to take a laymen’s look at statistics and their involvement in the current affairs of the world around you, you’ll enjoy this book thoroughly.

14. The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone (Especially Ourselves)

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bMMmPz

In case it hasn’t been made apparent so far, I’m a big fan of Dan Ariely’s work. There are some bold claims in this book: that perhaps honesty is but a choice between benefit from cheating and our psychological motivation. Fortunately, Ariely makes some compelling arguments to back up each point addressed.

As with Predictably Irrational, you’ll come away with a lot of questions, but in a good way: you’ll begin to re-think things that were formerly “obvious” in the context of what you just learned from Ariely. Many people have commented on how powerful the last two chapters are in particular: is there ever a context where cheating becomes socially acceptable? Ariely forces you to ask these and other meaningful questions, and the result is a powerful message with some great research & examples to comb through.

15. The Power of Habit (Why We Do What We Do)

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bXvfpV

This book came highly recommended, and I enjoyed it, but I have some thoughts. While the author does a great job of splitting up habits into appropriate sub-groups, and in showing how habits actually operate in the brain there is one shortcoming: the book doesn’t specifically show you how to change any habits.

Maybe my expectations were set for a different kind of book, but I found the lack of this aspect being addressed as a bit un-fulfilling.

All that said, the book is still a very easy read and a great look on how habits manifest in the brain.

16. Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2cqSFW0

This is another book that focuses more on serving up bite-sized analysis of multiple studies rather than diving deeply into a few. As such, it serves as a fantastic jumping-off point and one of those rabbit hole books that I mentioned above: you’ll find yourself following up on multiple experiments in order to learn more.

One fantastic thing that Roger Dooley has done is to break these studies up into separate categories, something that was failed at in the Yes! book above. With sections like Brainfluence Copywriting and Brainfluence Branding, you can tell what sort of studies you are about to get into.

In some instances, I found the sources to be somewhat lacking: links to other books instead of the actual studies, for instance. But don’t let that stop you from picking up what is an otherwise great read.

17. Neuromarketing: Understanding the Buy Buttons in Your Customer’s Brain

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2cqUceD

This is, frankly, one of the best beginner books for those interesting in neuromarketing or “brainy marketing” as it is so affectionately referred to. This means two things:

The book is a very easy read; studies are not cited in-depth and the content can be easily consumed

If you’re not new to this space, this book can seem a little simplistic

For instance, you could read my post on viral content and cover a whole section of this book on arousing emotions from buyers in a single blog post. But if you’ve never encountered this stuff before, this book, along with Influence, are must-haves for beginners. Those who have read a few of these books already can probably give this a pass.

18. The Branded Mind

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2cqU5js

This book is not an easy read. That being said, it is a rewarding read if you can make it through. Du Plessis makes the argument that emotions are not in conflict with rational behavior, and that they in fact can cause rational behavior.

As mentioned though, this books requires some patience: if you love pop-psy only, be prepared for a challenge, this book reads more like a college textbook than, “I’ll kill 5 minutes by reading this.”

If you’re willing to put in the effort, you’ll get a lot out of this book, this is definitely one of the most compelling & challenging books on the list.

19. The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2cqUgLv

I really enjoyed this book, it makes you think a lot about if having a ton of options at your disposal good for your well-being.

Schwartz argues that decision-making was a lot simpler years ago, and while the majority of the book focuses on a “buying angle,” the lessons here can be carried to many of life’s aspects.

An abundance of choices has a tendency to trick our brain into thinking a lot of choice is a good thing, when that is not necessarily the case. While Schwartz is very much an academic, the book reads quite fluidly and won’t trip you up with an abundance of scientific terms, although each point made is backed up quite eloquently.

20. Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bWkZQj

This is one of those amazing crosses between understanding marketing to utilize it for your entrepreneurial endeavors or to simply understand how brands try to persuade you.

Some of the examples aren’t so mind-blowing, like grocery stores using crates to make fruit seem “farm-fresh,” but others are really interesting.

I wish Lindstrom would have done a bit more analysis on each study, as he seems to just take each at face value. That being said, the studies cited are really interesting and very revealing in how easy it is for marketers to trick us.

21. The Compass of Pleasure

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2cr2pQb

The subtitle of this book is just too good:

How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good

If you’ve ever wanted to know why cigarettes are one of the most addictive substances of all time or how dopamine can turn your brain into a addict for pleasure, this is the book for you. I would forewarn that this isn’t really a book to help addiction, but for understanding the nature of addiction and the processes in the brain.

22. The Buying Brain

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2cr46gj

There is another book by Lindstrom called Buyology that often comes highly recommended when discussing books of this ilk. But I would say that you should skip that book and get this one instead.

Pradeep creates a great overview of the emerging neuromarketing space and does so with a lot of good concrete examples.

I enjoyed that specifically because many books have a problem of simply citing the research at hand: as a guy who regularly reads research papers, I appreciate the exposure to new research, but I could have just read it myself. This book avoids this problem by giving actionable steps for implementing.

23. The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bXG6Qt

You all know that I’m very interested in the psychology of language, and in particular, how psychology plays a role in storytelling.

This books digs into how language can reveal a lot about a person.Some archetypes that are focused on include gender, affluence, liars, sadness, introverts vs. extroverts, and a variety of others.

While the research in this book was excellent (and often collaborative), I wanted more. I felt like more examples could have been used in particular, but as for what’s there, it’s great.

24. Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bPszQX

If you head back up to #1 on this list, you’ll see that I’m an Elliot Aronson fan. If I could define this book in one word though, it would be: frightening.

Even more so than Ariely’s contributions, this book exposes how everyone is at risk of refusing to admit to their mistakes, even when the evidence is conclusive.

The research is accurate and cited appropriately, the book is still an easy, enjoyable read, and it’s from the guy who wrote my favorite social psych book of all time, with a talented co-author. What’s not to love.

25. Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bXFXN2

While this book specifically addresses social engineering, there are many psychological aspects that turn this into a very intriguing read on influence.

The book definitely has an antagonistic tone, but that’s because of the subject matter: people are referred to as “victims” and the activities are defined as “exploits” and “attacks,” because that’s what they are.

It’s kind of like watching those shows where a former thief shows the homeowners how easy it was to break into their house. Except with this book, manipulation is the subject at hand.

26. The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bQq79O

This book focuses on the findings from the legendary Stanford prison experiment. If that research has fascinated you in any way, you need to check this book out; it essentially offers an “inside look” at much of the data from the study, including things like transcripts.

It’s a compelling look at how even “normal” people fall into the roles of situations that many of us in the first world can hardly imagine happening, or would like to deny.

The last chapter is also quite intriguing for those familiar with the experiment: the author outlines a program intended to build resistance to mind-control strategies. Scary stuff, but a necessary read.

27. Obedience to Authority

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2cAfNpg

Another book that is a tell all about fascinating, provocative, even horrifying psychology study known as the Milgram experiment, named after the lead researcher.

If you are unfamiliar with the study, it was meant to test whether or not people would obey authority even when they were asked to do something that they knew was wrong.

It details many accounts of participants showing signs of severe distress, yet continuing on with the applied shocks as actors in another room, pretending to be other subjects, screamed cries of pain. This book is a necessary read in understanding the construct and inherit dangers in authority.

28. The Optimism Bias

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2cAggrE

Tali Sharot’s in-depth look is one of the better efforts to analyze the current research, along with Sharot’s own research, on optimism, memory, and their connections to our emotions and actions.

My single gripe with the book is that it is too long. I wouldn’t normally make a statement like this, but what I mean is that certain parts of the book feel a bit wordy, although given the topic and the tendency to pick apart certain aspects of research, it’s understandable.

I still feel like the content could have been more concise, but as for what’s there, it’s great. This is no pop-psy self-help book, this takes a look at some incredible research from a leading expert. Definitely worth picking up if you’re interested in neuroscience and studies on memory.

29. Mindfulness

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bMUpvQ

Author and professor Ellen Langer would posit that robotic, or mindless behavior, can lead to a lot of pain in life. I would agree, and the fact that so many other books on this list show just how susceptible we are to that sort of behavior, I’d say it’s a problem worth worrying about.

The aim of this book is therefore to be more mindful of our actions and to notice when automatic behavior begins to take over.

As a few disappointed reviewers have noted, this is not a self-help book; the focus is on the process of creating more mindfulness in your life, rather than the benefits of change.

30. Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bMT8Fa

While I did really enjoy this book, there is certainly some merit to the top critical review on Amazon: “This book is a rehash of other, better books.” That’s not to say that Sway isn’t an enjoyable read, it’s that it has predecessors that dive into concepts more deeply.

One of these is Influence, so at the very least, the book is in good company in terms of the things it talks about, it just did so much later and from a bite-sized perspective.

Again though, this book can serve as a fantastic starter read that helps you find a ton of other great studies to check out. The content is also quality stuff and will be new to you if you aren’t an avid reader of psychology books, so don’t be afraid to give this one a go.

31. Redirect

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2cr4NGB

Wilson’s focus on this book can be summed up in two large, overarching points:

Using the process of “story editing” to change our perception.

That what is true of culture is also true of individuals.

This book seeks to understand and to pass on knowledge, not to help you change your life.

This book, being all about subtlety and subtle changes, does a good job in giving relevant examples that make somewhat opaque descriptions a lot easier to relate to. This is an interesting book and one of few that strays into the positive psychology territory, definitely worth checking out.

32. Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bWruT2

I really liked one reviewers summary on this book: It’s like Myth Busters for the brain. Misconceptions like “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” are put to the test, and Medina does a great job of finding relevant research to put claims like that to bed.

Funny enough, this book often appears on leadership lists, despite not being an outright leadership or management book.

I’d say that it’s main two topics seem to hinge on productivity and relationship management, so it is easy to see why a business and leadership oriented crowd would enjoy this book. For everyone else, it is a very easy read and very much worth checking out.

33. You Are Not So Smart

But the book: http://amzn.to/2cg1938

Largely dealing with fallacies in our minds that happen to make us look very stupid when they’re in action, McRaney takes topics that are largely known by those with an interest in the field, like the Dunning-Kruger effect, and creates an entertaining read on otherwise well-covered studies.

The thing is, the presentation makes this book worthwhile even if you have already heard of a few of these, and McRaney is a great writer; his blog was featured on my big list of blogs that are awesome and not about marketing.

If you’re interested in how your brain is sabotaging you and in finding out more about the delusions we all hold, this book is the perfect place to start.

34. What Makes Your Brain Happy (and Why You Should Do the Opposite)

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2c4QsS6

Take this as a more serious version of the book above. Largely concerned with cognition and specifically with cognitive biases, David DiSalvo makes this book stand out in quite a few ways.

The research isn’t rehashed like many books you’ll find in this space. Not only that, there are tactics and resource materials included in the book.

My only problem with these is that they are clumped near the end instead of being sprinkled about the many great examples. An overall exciting book with a lot to offer, I’ve read this one very recently and was happy that I did.

35. Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bQsk5j

This book is all about the levels of consciousness in the brain, as as we’ve seen, you’re brain isn’t just the thing you think you control. While the examples in this book are quite interesting, considering it is a “real” neuroscience book, I expected a bit more from the research.

Despite that, Eagleman has put together a seriously fascinating list of studies that I will shamelessly steal and write about here on Sparring Mind.

Seriously though, the writing is captivating, if nothing else, you’ll learn how to write attention-grabbing headlines as Eagleman sends you page after page into highly interesting findings on our unconscious.

36. Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2crAx1d

Whatever you make will be deemed original or cliché in comparison to what currently exists; creation may be about the lonely hours, but a final product is never judged in isolation.

In other words, creative work lives in a dynamic, ever-changing ecosystem.

Getting ahead of the curve, or doing the unexpected, means eschewing what everyone currently expects, which requires knowing what everyone expects. Knowing the metagame — or comparing your work to what exists today — is useful for spotting opportunities for differentiation.

Originals will help you spot opportunities to stand out, and digs into the research around how creative thinking works, and what you can do to encourage those light-bulb moments.

37. Out of Character

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bQsPw6

Just what exactly is happening when someone breaks character? Is character even concrete, or is it more like a shade of gray?

I found this book really fascinating in it’s singular focus on character and the psychology of how external events impact it.

Living a humdrum life often makes understanding these crazy acts difficult, and this book takes a look at a lot of examples that show us that if we were in similar circumstances, we’d be very likely to act in a similar manner. Great examples, great research, and a great focus make this a must-read.

38. Blink

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bQsUjo

The good part about this book is that the studies presented are interesting, and Gladwell does a superb job of showcasing how people are able to develop a sense about things; it becomes one of the more interesting books on the unconscious because of this.

The problem with the book is apparent though: it’s been pointed out by many others. This book seems like a collection of short stories, and not a unified idea.

Putting that aside, the different sections are far too interesting to pass up for this general lack of unity.

39. The Person and the Situation

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2crB2bA

This book is about situational influence and the effects on our decision making process. The authors do a great job in demonstrating the many types of faulty logic that we are prone to in a variety of environments.

This book almost reads like one of those great textbooks that you had in college: the one’s that you actually enjoyed, even though they were supposed to be academic.

I would classify this as an introductory book, however, so keep that in mind if you are very familiar with the field.

40. The Psychology of Attitude Change and Social Influence

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2c4ST76

If I could sum up this book in a single phrase, I would call it a more academic Influence. What I mean is that the book takes a very scholarly approach to the psychology of influence, but is perhaps a little bit less practical than Cialdini’s work.

For a true academic understanding of persuasion though, this book is fantastic. It came highly recommended from a former professor of mine, and I’m glad I picked it up.

If you enjoyed the former recommendation at all, the one that covers Zimbardo’s prison experiment, you will need to pick this up.

41. Situations Matter

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2cr82xU

I really enjoyed the writing style of this book. My goal with this blog has always been to take interesting psychology and neuroscience research and turn it into actionable, digestible posts for readers. I can appreciate when an author has a fun writing style to keep things engaging.

That being said, it’s not for everyone. The research, however, is enjoyable by academic or laymen readers alike in my humble opinion.

I’d sum the subject matter of being about the psychology of “context”, the implications are pretty powerful. For instance, “Who we love is more explained by geography, familiarity and state of mind than we realize.” One of those books that has a knack for getting your brain to ask intriguing questions.

42. The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bXK8Zq

This is a book that falls squarely into positive psychology, but it is, bar none, one of the best out there.

Self-control & work ethic go hand-in-hand in my opinion: many people want to work hard, but it’s self-control that prevents them from doing so. And let’s be frank here, everybody suffers from a lack of self-control from time to time.

If you are interested in applying psychology to improve yourself and your mind, this is the book for you.

If not, you’ll still walk away with a great understanding of how self-control works in our minds. This book is practical, the science is sound, and the author, Kelly McGonigal is highly recognized: I have no hesitation recommending this one.

43. Beyond Culture

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bPwDjW

This book is not very actionable in any way, but the ideas explored are enormously important.

I have a lot of praise for this book in that specific regard, in the same way that I once overheard someone talking about Guns, Germs and Steel saying: “If you read that book, you’ll find it hard to be racist.”

Funny, but it makes a compelling point: we aren’t often educated on understanding others, and while GG&S looks at human evolution and human history, this book is largely concerned with cross-cultural human psyche and it’s implications on our interactions.

44. The Tipping Point

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bQuIsC

As with much of Gladwell’s work, I found this really interesting, but maybe a bit short of the hype surrounding it (and there was a ton of hype, so it’s hard to approach this book with neutral anticipation).

Gladwell would suppose that there are 3 types of gifted people who are essential to “sticky” ideas: Connectors, Mavens and Salespeople. While all of the information is great on explaining that there are critical aspects of things that become “epidemics” or “go viral”, he doesn’t really get into how that happens, just that it does.

Now, it’s not like I was looking for a “how to create a viral campaign” from this book, but the examples are lacking in that area. Still, a highly important book, and it references the monkey sphere, so I needed to include it.

45. The 48 Laws of Power

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2cr9bWe

This book is a great example of fantastic book marketing: the ideas in this book are sound, and are often backed by real research elsewhere.

What the book does well in it’s marketing is that it creates this ideal that these are some secret laws for the inner Machiavelli in us all (despite that The Prince may have been written as satire).

The funny thing is, some of the ideas are not all that devious, it’s just smart interpersonal relationship & persuasion advice. Despite it’s fantastic marketing and seemingly cynical nature, it’s just really good advice on interacting with people.

I would warn that you shouldn’t let the sometimes negative messages detract your from enjoying this; don’t take an exploitative view of persuading people.

46. How to Win Friends and Influence People

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bQtSMv

With the reach that this book has had in it’s long lifetime, it’s unlikely that you’ve never encountered it before. In order to mix things up a bit, since this book is so well known, I thought I might offer some fantastic insights from one of my favorite Amazon reviews of all time:

—

The advice is largely sound, but I think the reader should keep in mind the context within which this book was written… [it was] intended primarily as a companion book to Dale Carnegie’s classes on how to be a good salesman.

…these techniques work very well in the context of sales and public relations, i.e., in relationships that are not expected to be deep and/or long-lasting.

What I found most interesting was that the last chapter… was to describe those individuals with whom none of Dale Carnegie’s techniques work. In this unpublished chapter, Carnegie wrote that there were some people with whom it was impossible to get along. You either needed to divorce such people, “knock them down,” or sue them in court.

Why is that chapter absent from this book, you ask? Well, Dale Carnegie was in the middle of writing this chapter when he was offered a trip to Europe, and rather than complete this last chapter he decided to take the trip. The uncompleted book was sent off to publishers, and Carnegie shipped off to Europe.

—

Interesting stuff to consider before you dig in.

47. Strangers to Ourselves

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2c4U1aM

Your conscious mind isn’t always in control. If many of these books on the brain teach you anything, it’s probably this.

This book is one of the biggest jolts in this category of understanding that concept; it’s definitely a psychology book, but the questions it brings up almost make it feel like the book was written for philosophy majors.

While it’s an easy read, it’s certainly challenging to the mind, I didn’t find the research as compelling as some other similar books, but the questions raised by Wilson are by far some of my favorites.

48. Sleights of Mind

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bXJB9A

The main issue that this book tackles is more on how we are influenced, with the author taking a very specific look at the tricks of magic and some related neuroscience studies.

This book therefore reads like “The Psychology of Magic,” and if that sounds interesting to you, this is a must read.

As for practicality, I would say this book is another one of those books that is about understanding, and through this understanding there are some practical applications to be had. All that being said, to me it was damn interesting, and it’s one of the most unusual books on this list.

49. Why We Buy

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2cg4oHF

I’ll agree with the many reviewers of this book that it ends… uneventfully, shall we say. It gets very sales-y for the author’s company, which was a huge letdown.

The rest of the book is a fun read. Be sure to verify claims by checking the actual studies, as this is definitely the ‘fun’ side of science. Still, it’s interesting to see some data on how people shop.

Some of the examples definitely left me scratching my head, especially in areas of business where I’m clueless, such as product placement in grocery stores.

50. The Invisible Gorilla (How Our Intuitions Deceive Us)

Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2bWsLcZ

Before reading this book, watch this video and count how many times the players in the white shirts pass the basketball.

Go on, I’ll wait.

How many did you count?

That’s the study that the book gets it’s name from, and it looks at how we often have massive illusions about our attention. Even if the study didn’t trick you, you’ll still enjoy the book, I promise. If the study did get you, you’ll love it even more.

Over To You

First of all, thanks for stopping by and for reading my post. I hope you found this list of psychology books useful.

A humble reminder: this list was compiled based off of a large scope — social psychology, persuasion, understanding one’s mind — and it was also not limited to strictly scientific books so that it could be enjoyed by a wide variety of people. Some pop-psychology is obviously going to appear on the list.

Other than that, feel free to recommend any other good social psychology books on your bookshelf.

If you’re interested in some of the deeper stuff out there, feel free to shoot me an email, it mostly comes to me in the form of research papers, not full books. But I’m always glad to share.

Thanks for reading, please share this article if you enjoyed it.

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airoasis · 7 years ago

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Intrinsic Inspiration or Function Pursuit: Which matters most?-- Positive Psychology News

"Where does sense of purpose and meaning fit into the self-determination theory?" (Amanda, thank you for asking this, and sorry for taking so long to respond!)

It's an excellent concern, and one that I think should have conversation. It has been on my mind recently as I immerse myself further in writing music, a venture that is nearly entirely intrinsic, although accompanied by a few unhappy minutes of questioning how numerous plays I'm getting and caring what individuals will think about my music. I do not especially have a function in doing it, but I'm motivated to keep at it. It's stimulating for me.The question is also on my mind since a friend appears to be slowing for one of her highly purpose-driven ventures. Even though what she does helps individuals and brings more happiness to the world, she is finding it stressful, and she appears to be losing interest.So, a variant

of Amanda's question has begun to pop up for me:

Is intrinsic inspiration more crucial than pursuing a purpose?Quick Evaluation of

Self-Determination Theory Let's go over self-determination theory(SDT ), quickly, to better frame this concern. Ryan and Deci lay out a spectrum of inspiration in SDT, ranging from no inspiration at all to completely self-governing, intrinsic motivation, in which people behave freely of their own will out of interest or enjoyment in the activity for its own sake. In between are kinds of extrinsic motivation, where the goal is something external, beyond the activity itself.Ryan and Deci think that we are naturally in an intrinsically inspired state till our

environment undermines it. In order not to undermine it, our environment must provide three supporting nutriments: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Simply puts, we need to feel that our actions are easily done and aligned with our values or interests, that we are able to achieve desired outcomes, and the activity connects us to others. Quick Review of Significance and Function Purpose and significance are a little harder to define with clarity. Carol Ryff specifies high scorers in the location of'

purpose in life' as having objectives and

a sense of directedness along with the sense that their existing and previous lives are meaningful.Seligman defines significance as contributing to something higher than the self.Personally, I consider purpose a broad objective or direction (e.g., improve people's well-being)and indicating to be

the psychological element or sensation linked to something higher than the self.

This separation follows Veronika Huta's concept of meaning as a sensation that results from habits that stands out from purpose.Thinking about these meanings, I view the pursuit of purpose as the pursuit of something external, and for that reason separate from intrinsic motivation.What about Prosocial Motivation?Adam Grant has done some research study concerning prosocial motivation which comes as close as anything I have actually seen to linking the ideas of motivation and the pursuit of something greater than the self.Grant explains prosocial inspiration as including a form of extrinsic regulation, in the language of Ryan and Deci, either the introjected objective

of preventing regret or the identified objective of satisfying one's own worths. It is a focus on the ends, rather than the methods, whereas intrinsic motivation is a process-focused state. The last significant difference that Grant notes is that intrinsic motivation involves a concentrate on today, whereas prosocial motivation involves a concentrate on the future.In his 2008 study, Grant asked how intrinsic and prosocial motivations interact to influence determination, efficiency, and productivity. He carried out 2 studies, one on firefighters and one on fundraising call center workers. He surveyed their motivation types and looked at overtime hours for the firefighters and calls-per-week and money raised for fundraisers. He discovered that intrinsic motivation strengthened the association in between prosocial inspiration and perseverance, efficiency, and performance. That is, prosocial motivation is more most likely to enhance these outcomes when intrinsic motivation is present.Intrinsic inspiration individually anticipated the number of overtime hours the firefighters worked, however not the calls or money raised by the call. Grant suspects this might be due to the difference in task type: there are probably more opportunities for intrinsic motivation in firefighting. This finding recommends that prosocial inspiration might not suffice in itself to improve perseverance, performance, and productivity.While Grant focused on performance

rather than wellness, these outcomes imply that there may be more energy behind a mix of the 2 inspiration types, with maybe intrinsic motivation dominating. Energy is essential given that efficiency, persistence and productivity include using up effort.Motivation in practice is complex, and it may be that throughout most pursuits an individual is motivated in different methods. I do not think that Grant's paper is conclusive, but it is a start. I still have a couple of questions: can indicating take place outside of function? How does the pursuit of a prosocial objective affect the nutriment of relatedness and vice versa? I invite your comments and questions and plan to write more on this topic in the future.

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drakeramoraythedoctor · 3 years ago

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options trading programs South Carolina That's right!

options trading programs South Carolina That's right, automated stop loss that works without human involvement. This can be in the form of a stop limit, contingent order or trailing stop loss order. As long as you do not have to physically execute the stop loss. Physically executed stop losses are stop losses that rarely gets executed. Remember that. Buying options with your whole account and trading unlimited loss potential options positions without stop loss points are the two main reasons most options beginners lose their shirt. Take heed of my advice here and you would go through your initial options trading years in much more safety. How to Learn Options TradingMost people think they can learn options trading the very same way they learnt stock trading, which is just buying an options on stocks they think will do well. It's just that simple isn't it? Well, the simplicity ends when they discover that there are not one kind of option but two and each kind of option has countless strike prices and expiration dates! That's right! They suddenly realize that there is much much more to options trading than stock trading. Yes, stock options are a totally different ball game from stock trading even through they are used for the very same purpose of profiting from moves that stocks make. Yes, the fact that you are presented with so many different strike prices and expiration dates instantly tells you that there is no way to just pick on and profit. Much less trying to learn by trial and error. Yes, trial and error is very expensive in options trading as you cannot hold on to a mistake like in stock trading forever hoping for a come back. Options expire so options don't give you the ability to hold on to your mistakes forever. So, what is the correct way to learn?To learn how to trade options, you need to first of all learn what call options and put options are. All optionable stocks come with both call options and put options. Call options allow you to buy a stock at a fixed price no matter what price the stock is and put options allow you to sell a stock at a fixed price no matter what price the stock is. This means that if you buy a call option and the price of the stock goes up, the call option would make a profit because you still have the right to buy at a price lower than the stock price. As such, you would buy call options when you think a stock is going to go up. Conversely, put options allow you to sell a stock at a fixed price. This means that if you buy a put option and the price of the stock goes down, the put option would make a profit because you still have the right to sell at a price higher than the stock price. As such, you would buy put options when you think a stock is going to go down. This is only a brief outline of what call and put options are, obviously there is much more to it but this is where you start learning about options. After you have a clear idea what call options and put options are, you need to know what strike prices and expiration dates are. A strike price is the price agreed upon in an options contract. A call option with a strike price of $10 allows you to buy a stock at $10 no matter what price the stock is and a put option with a strike price of $10 allows you to sell a stock at $10 no matter what price the stock is. There are strike prices covering a very wide price range both higher and lower than the prevailing stock price. Which brings us to the next important thing to learn about options; Options Moneyness. Depending on the strike price in relation to the prevailing stock price, an option can be either In The Money, At The Money or Out Of The Money. Options of different moneyness caters to different outlooks. You would buy out of the money options when you think a stock is going to make a big move and you would buy in the money options when you expect only a relatively small move. So, unlike stock trading where you simply buy the stock when you think it will go up, options trading make you think one more step deeper into the possible degree of move in order to maximize profits. Complete understanding of options moneyness and the implications of options of different moneyness is impossible without an understanding of how options are priced in terms of their intrinsic value and extrinsic value. Only by understanding the difference between intrinsic value and extrinsic value and how to calculate how much of each value is in the price of an option, you cannot intelligently choose the right option for your specific outlook. Once you have a good understanding of what call and put options are, how they are priced and the implications of different moneyness, it is time you learn how to place options orders through your options broker. Placing options orders is another complex issue as there are 4 main order types for options trading unlike the two simple order type for stock trading.

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Many options beginners were taken in by the apparent "free money" phenomena of writing naked options positions unaware that most of these credit strategies have unlimited loss potential. For instance, if you wrote call options (shorting call options), you would make a fixed premium in profit if the stock went downwards or sideways. Some "gurus" call this "playing bookmaker". Well, they are right that you are playing bookmaker to gamblers by selling options to them but they forgot to mention the fact that sometimes, gamblers win big too. When you write call options, your position will make an incrementally bigger loss as the stock price rises! It will continue to make bigger and bigger loss as long as the stock continues to rise. This is what is known as an unlimited loss position. This loss is often, or always, much bigger than the premium you received from selling the options. Before you know it, your entire account is wiped out on this one trade because the stock refused to go down as you expected it to. Does that mean we should not trade credit spreads or naked writes ever again? Not really. These are excellent options strategies but only if you trade them using a specific and definite stop loss point. Yes, most options trading beginners trade such unlimited loss potential credit spreads with stop loss points but most of them give in to emotion when it's time to stop loss and hold their positions beyond their stop loss points in hope that things will turn around, which most often, they never do. quantitative options trading course South Carolina When operating a small business, you need to assess the risk associated with a venture. You also need to assess the risks and potentials associated with the success or failure of the business. This same ideology needs to be put towards options trading. If you can honestly assess yourself as someone with the self discipline to follow through with a reliable options trading strategy, then you may very well be extremely successful with options trading. Also, how well can you handle losing trades? Are you able to handle losses and pick things up and start the process over again? If you are then you may very well embody the proper psychological makeup for succeeding with options trading. Those that cannot handle the pressure of the occasional loss would be better served looking towards another investing strategy. It has been said success starts with the right mental makeup. If you can adapt your mindset to your psychological approach to trading, you may find success is not as elusive as you think. How People Lose Their Shirts in Options TradingYou must have heard horror stories surrounding options trading before. Stories such as how some people lose their whole account within a few days and even stories of options traders going bankrupt in express time. These stories have no doubt cast a shadow over options trading and there are even people who now tout that options trading is as risky as futures trading. Well, strange thing is, after more than 15 years of trading options, I have never experienced losing all my money within a few days nor going bankrupt. This led me to wonder why these things happen to some options traders. After some investigation, I conclude that it is not options trading that breaks accounts but specific things some options traders tend to do, especially beginners, that opens the door to such financial disasters. I narrowed these reasons down to two main ones. The first of these is that some options traders trade options just like they trade stocks; buying call options with their whole account on that one "hot stock. "Yes, this is the number reason why most options beginners lose their shirt. Most beginners to options trading do with call options exactly what they do with stocks when they have a "hot tip"; throwing their whole account into that single "hot" trade. Now, this isn't that big a problem in stock trading because if the stock didn't move as expected, the trader could simply continue to hold the position until it does, sometimes for years. However, when you buy call options on stocks that didn't eventually move up as expected, the call options can expire worthless by expiration, taking your WHOLE account with it if you bought those call options with all the money you had! This problem is made even more pronounced by the fact that options have a definite expiration date that goes from a few months to a year for some stocks but never forever. This means that you do not have the luxury of holding on to bad trades forever, hoping they will come back in a few years time.

crash course in options trading South Carolina

But, once again, there is a big difference in having the desire to follow such a process and actually following through with it. Those that are able to follow through with such steps may be limited in number. No, that is not said as a means of undermining anyone's motivation, morale, or desire. Rather, it is meant as a way of properly forecasting the management of your venture and assessing the risk of getting involved with options trading. You also need a plan for when the market goes against your strategy, so that you don't make decisions because you're panicking. Yes, trading in options needs to be looked from the perspective of managing a small business. When operating a small business, you need to assess the risk associated with a venture. You also need to assess the risks and potentials associated with the success or failure of the business. This same ideology needs to be put towards options trading. If you can honestly assess yourself as someone with the self discipline to follow through with a reliable options trading strategy, then you may very well be extremely successful with options trading. Also, how well can you handle losing trades? Are you able to handle losses and pick things up and start the process over again? If you are then you may very well embody the proper psychological makeup for succeeding with options trading.

m3 options trading system South Carolina Yes, most options trading beginners trade such unlimited loss potential credit spreads with stop loss points but most of them give in to emotion when it's time to stop loss and hold their positions beyond their stop loss points in hope that things will turn around, which most often, they never do.

options paper trading South Carolina The commissions alone will eat you up.

options trading quickstart guide the simplified beginner s guide to options trading South Carolina Also, how well can you handle losing trades? Are you able to handle losses and pick things up and start the process over again? If you are then you may very well embody the proper psychological makeup for succeeding with options trading.

Some may believe they have the discipline to succeed. However, believing you possess certain attributes to a specific degree and actually possessing those attributes to the proper degree are two completely different things. Knowing exactly where you stand in terms of your mindset and your levels of discipline will aid in boosting your chances of success. For example, someone who needs to keep fiddling with their account by buying and selling every few days isn't someone who should be investing in options! The commissions alone will eat you up. Similarly someone who like a lot of excitement in their trading should probably stay away from options. Having a quality options trading strategy is helpful. Putting the options trading strategy through to fruition is even more helpful. But, once again, there is a big difference in having the desire to follow such a process and actually following through with it. Those that are able to follow through with such steps may be limited in number. No, that is not said as a means of undermining anyone's motivation, morale, or desire. Rather, it is meant as a way of properly forecasting the management of your venture and assessing the risk of getting involved with options trading.

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drakeramoraythedoctor · 4 years ago

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daily options trading alerts South Carolina These stories have no doubt cast a shadow over options trading and there are even people who now tout that options trading is as risky as futures trading.

daily options trading alerts South Carolina For example, someone who needs to keep fiddling with their account by buying and selling every few days isn't someone who should be investing in options! The commissions alone will eat you up. Similarly someone who like a lot of excitement in their trading should probably stay away from options. Having a quality options trading strategy is helpful. Putting the options trading strategy through to fruition is even more helpful. But, once again, there is a big difference in having the desire to follow such a process and actually following through with it. Those that are able to follow through with such steps may be limited in number. No, that is not said as a means of undermining anyone's motivation, morale, or desire. Rather, it is meant as a way of properly forecasting the management of your venture and assessing the risk of getting involved with options trading. You also need a plan for when the market goes against your strategy, so that you don't make decisions because you're panicking. Yes, trading in options needs to be looked from the perspective of managing a small business. When operating a small business, you need to assess the risk associated with a venture. You also need to assess the risks and potentials associated with the success or failure of the business. This same ideology needs to be put towards options trading. If you can honestly assess yourself as someone with the self discipline to follow through with a reliable options trading strategy, then you may very well be extremely successful with options trading. Also, how well can you handle losing trades? Are you able to handle losses and pick things up and start the process over again? If you are then you may very well embody the proper psychological makeup for succeeding with options trading. Those that cannot handle the pressure of the occasional loss would be better served looking towards another investing strategy. It has been said success starts with the right mental makeup. If you can adapt your mindset to your psychological approach to trading, you may find success is not as elusive as you think. How People Lose Their Shirts in Options TradingYou must have heard horror stories surrounding options trading before. Stories such as how some people lose their whole account within a few days and even stories of options traders going bankrupt in express time. These stories have no doubt cast a shadow over options trading and there are even people who now tout that options trading is as risky as futures trading. Well, strange thing is, after more than 15 years of trading options, I have never experienced losing all my money within a few days nor going bankrupt. This led me to wonder why these things happen to some options traders. After some investigation, I conclude that it is not options trading that breaks accounts but specific things some options traders tend to do, especially beginners, that opens the door to such financial disasters. I narrowed these reasons down to two main ones. The first of these is that some options traders trade options just like they trade stocks; buying call options with their whole account on that one "hot stock.

youtube

This is only a brief outline of what call and put options are, obviously there is much more to it but this is where you start learning about options. After you have a clear idea what call options and put options are, you need to know what strike prices and expiration dates are. A strike price is the price agreed upon in an options contract. A call option with a strike price of $10 allows you to buy a stock at $10 no matter what price the stock is and a put option with a strike price of $10 allows you to sell a stock at $10 no matter what price the stock is. There are strike prices covering a very wide price range both higher and lower than the prevailing stock price. Which brings us to the next important thing to learn about options; Options Moneyness. Depending on the strike price in relation to the prevailing stock price, an option can be either In The Money, At The Money or Out Of The Money. Options of different moneyness caters to different outlooks. You would buy out of the money options when you think a stock is going to make a big move and you would buy in the money options when you expect only a relatively small move. So, unlike stock trading where you simply buy the stock when you think it will go up, options trading make you think one more step deeper into the possible degree of move in order to maximize profits. Complete understanding of options moneyness and the implications of options of different moneyness is impossible without an understanding of how options are priced in terms of their intrinsic value and extrinsic value. private options trading mentor South Carolina Understanding such components is vital to exploring a trading method to make sure it is valuable to your goals.

course in trading cboe vix options South Carolina

Some "gurus" call this "playing bookmaker". Well, they are right that you are playing bookmaker to gamblers by selling options to them but they forgot to mention the fact that sometimes, gamblers win big too. When you write call options, your position will make an incrementally bigger loss as the stock price rises! It will continue to make bigger and bigger loss as long as the stock continues to rise. This is what is known as an unlimited loss position. This loss is often, or always, much bigger than the premium you received from selling the options. Before you know it, your entire account is wiped out on this one trade because the stock refused to go down as you expected it to. Does that mean we should not trade credit spreads or naked writes ever again? Not really. These are excellent options strategies but only if you trade them using a specific and definite stop loss point. Yes, most options trading beginners trade such unlimited loss potential credit spreads with stop loss points but most of them give in to emotion when it's time to stop loss and hold their positions beyond their stop loss points in hope that things will turn around, which most often, they never do. Professional options traders always trade unlimited loss potential positions with an AUTOMATED stop loss point. That's right, automated stop loss that works without human involvement.

best options trading subscription service South Carolina Similarly someone who like a lot of excitement in their trading should probably stay away from options. Having a quality options trading strategy is helpful. Putting the options trading strategy through to fruition is even more helpful. But, once again, there is a big difference in having the desire to follow such a process and actually following through with it. Those that are able to follow through with such steps may be limited in number. No, that is not said as a means of undermining anyone's motivation, morale, or desire. Rather, it is meant as a way of properly forecasting the management of your venture and assessing the risk of getting involved with options trading. You also need a plan for when the market goes against your strategy, so that you don't make decisions because you're panicking. Yes, trading in options needs to be looked from the perspective of managing a small business. When operating a small business, you need to assess the risk associated with a venture. You also need to assess the risks and potentials associated with the success or failure of the business. This same ideology needs to be put towards options trading. If you can honestly assess yourself as someone with the self discipline to follow through with a reliable options trading strategy, then you may very well be extremely successful with options trading. Also, how well can you handle losing trades? Are you able to handle losses and pick things up and start the process over again? If you are then you may very well embody the proper psychological makeup for succeeding with options trading. Those that cannot handle the pressure of the occasional loss would be better served looking towards another investing strategy. It has been said success starts with the right mental makeup. If you can adapt your mindset to your psychological approach to trading, you may find success is not as elusive as you think. How People Lose Their Shirts in Options TradingYou must have heard horror stories surrounding options trading before. Stories such as how some people lose their whole account within a few days and even stories of options traders going bankrupt in express time. These stories have no doubt cast a shadow over options trading and there are even people who now tout that options trading is as risky as futures trading. Well, strange thing is, after more than 15 years of trading options, I have never experienced losing all my money within a few days nor going bankrupt. This led me to wonder why these things happen to some options traders. After some investigation, I conclude that it is not options trading that breaks accounts but specific things some options traders tend to do, especially beginners, that opens the door to such financial disasters. I narrowed these reasons down to two main ones. The first of these is that some options traders trade options just like they trade stocks; buying call options with their whole account on that one "hot stock. "Yes, this is the number reason why most options beginners lose their shirt.

best options trading software South Carolina Again, your own personal psychological makeup regarding comfort levels of trading in essential in options.

options trading hedge funds South Carolina You also need to assess the risks and potentials associated with the success or failure of the business.

When operating a small business, you need to assess the risk associated with a venture. You also need to assess the risks and potentials associated with the success or failure of the business. This same ideology needs to be put towards options trading. If you can honestly assess yourself as someone with the self discipline to follow through with a reliable options trading strategy, then you may very well be extremely successful with options trading. Also, how well can you handle losing trades? Are you able to handle losses and pick things up and start the process over again? If you are then you may very well embody the proper psychological makeup for succeeding with options trading. Those that cannot handle the pressure of the occasional loss would be better served looking towards another investing strategy. It has been said success starts with the right mental makeup. If you can adapt your mindset to your psychological approach to trading, you may find success is not as elusive as you think. How People Lose Their Shirts in Options TradingYou must have heard horror stories surrounding options trading before. Stories such as how some people lose their whole account within a few days and even stories of options traders going bankrupt in express time. These stories have no doubt cast a shadow over options trading and there are even people who now tout that options trading is as risky as futures trading.

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drakeramoraythedoctor · 4 years ago

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cl options trading service South Carolina Buy to open allows you to open a new options position by buying it, sell to open allows you to open a new options position by creating a new options contract and selling it, buy to close allows you to buy back and close options you previously created and sold and sell to close allows you to sell options that you previously bought.

cl options trading service South Carolina Well, they are right that you are playing bookmaker to gamblers by selling options to them but they forgot to mention the fact that sometimes, gamblers win big too. When you write call options, your position will make an incrementally bigger loss as the stock price rises! It will continue to make bigger and bigger loss as long as the stock continues to rise. This is what is known as an unlimited loss position. This loss is often, or always, much bigger than the premium you received from selling the options. Before you know it, your entire account is wiped out on this one trade because the stock refused to go down as you expected it to. Does that mean we should not trade credit spreads or naked writes ever again? Not really. These are excellent options strategies but only if you trade them using a specific and definite stop loss point. Yes, most options trading beginners trade such unlimited loss potential credit spreads with stop loss points but most of them give in to emotion when it's time to stop loss and hold their positions beyond their stop loss points in hope that things will turn around, which most often, they never do. Professional options traders always trade unlimited loss potential positions with an AUTOMATED stop loss point. That's right, automated stop loss that works without human involvement. This can be in the form of a stop limit, contingent order or trailing stop loss order.

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These people are among those that many will look towards as inspiration for their options trading adventures. Then, there will be those that will look towards these success stories for more than inspiration. They will look towards successful options traders as those to duplicate. Or, more accurately, they will try to duplicate the trading methods and strategies of the trader. While it is certainly a wise thing to look towards the trading methods of a successful trader, duplicating the steps of the trader alone may not prove to be the best strategy. The reason for this is that there are other factors that go into the process of developing a trading strategy than just the execution of the trades. Personal factors will go into the development of a methodology. In some instances, there will be psychological factors that will be developed into the trading plans. Understanding such components is vital to exploring a trading method to make sure it is valuable to your goals. Actually, it would not hurt to explore your own psychological factors and facets prior to looking seriously at trading. Now, some may assume such assessments are little more than 'psycho-babble' that seek to examine options trading from an over-analytical perspective. trading options training course South Carolina [[S-EXTLINK-TEXT]]

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professional options trading course by online trading academy South Carolina I narrowed these reasons down to two main ones.

tradingology options trading course South Carolina Some may believe they have the discipline to succeed.

options swing trading picks South Carolina This same ideology needs to be put towards options trading. If you can honestly assess yourself as someone with the self discipline to follow through with a reliable options trading strategy, then you may very well be extremely successful with options trading. Also, how well can you handle losing trades? Are you able to handle losses and pick things up and start the process over again? If you are then you may very well embody the proper psychological makeup for succeeding with options trading. Those that cannot handle the pressure of the occasional loss would be better served looking towards another investing strategy. It has been said success starts with the right mental makeup. If you can adapt your mindset to your psychological approach to trading, you may find success is not as elusive as you think. How People Lose Their Shirts in Options TradingYou must have heard horror stories surrounding options trading before. Stories such as how some people lose their whole account within a few days and even stories of options traders going bankrupt in express time. These stories have no doubt cast a shadow over options trading and there are even people who now tout that options trading is as risky as futures trading. Well, strange thing is, after more than 15 years of trading options, I have never experienced losing all my money within a few days nor going bankrupt. This led me to wonder why these things happen to some options traders. After some investigation, I conclude that it is not options trading that breaks accounts but specific things some options traders tend to do, especially beginners, that opens the door to such financial disasters. I narrowed these reasons down to two main ones. The first of these is that some options traders trade options just like they trade stocks; buying call options with their whole account on that one "hot stock. "Yes, this is the number reason why most options beginners lose their shirt. Most beginners to options trading do with call options exactly what they do with stocks when they have a "hot tip"; throwing their whole account into that single "hot" trade. Now, this isn't that big a problem in stock trading because if the stock didn't move as expected, the trader could simply continue to hold the position until it does, sometimes for years. However, when you buy call options on stocks that didn't eventually move up as expected, the call options can expire worthless by expiration, taking your WHOLE account with it if you bought those call options with all the money you had! This problem is made even more pronounced by the fact that options have a definite expiration date that goes from a few months to a year for some stocks but never forever. This means that you do not have the luxury of holding on to bad trades forever, hoping they will come back in a few years time. Professional options traders like me only enter a single position with money we can afford to lose. If I intend to lose no more than 10% of my account on any one trade, I do not use more than 10% of my account in a single trade. That's right, you NEVER buy a single options position or options contract with all the money you have! Although that would have made sense in stock trading, it is pure suicide and gamble in options trading. The other reason is trading credit spreads or naked option writing without using stop loss. Many options beginners were taken in by the apparent "free money" phenomena of writing naked options positions unaware that most of these credit strategies have unlimited loss potential. For instance, if you wrote call options (shorting call options), you would make a fixed premium in profit if the stock went downwards or sideways. Some "gurus" call this "playing bookmaker".

A strike price is the price agreed upon in an options contract. A call option with a strike price of $10 allows you to buy a stock at $10 no matter what price the stock is and a put option with a strike price of $10 allows you to sell a stock at $10 no matter what price the stock is. There are strike prices covering a very wide price range both higher and lower than the prevailing stock price. Which brings us to the next important thing to learn about options; Options Moneyness. Depending on the strike price in relation to the prevailing stock price, an option can be either In The Money, At The Money or Out Of The Money. Options of different moneyness caters to different outlooks. You would buy out of the money options when you think a stock is going to make a big move and you would buy in the money options when you expect only a relatively small move. So, unlike stock trading where you simply buy the stock when you think it will go up, options trading make you think one more step deeper into the possible degree of move in order to maximize profits. Complete understanding of options moneyness and the implications of options of different moneyness is impossible without an understanding of how options are priced in terms of their intrinsic value and extrinsic value. Only by understanding the difference between intrinsic value and extrinsic value and how to calculate how much of each value is in the price of an option, you cannot intelligently choose the right option for your specific outlook. Once you have a good understanding of what call and put options are, how they are priced and the implications of different moneyness, it is time you learn how to place options orders through your options broker.

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drakeramoraythedoctor · 4 years ago

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best stocks for options trading 2020 South Carolina These stories have no doubt cast a shadow over options trading and there are even people who now tout that options trading is as risky as futures trading. Well, strange thing is, after more than 15 years of trading options, I have never experienced losing all my money within a few days nor going bankrupt. This led me to wonder why these things happen to some options traders. After some investigation, I conclude that it is not options trading that breaks accounts but specific things some options traders tend to do, especially beginners, that opens the door to such financial disasters. I narrowed these reasons down to two main ones. The first of these is that some options traders trade options just like they trade stocks; buying call options with their whole account on that one "hot stock.

youtube

For instance, if you wrote call options (shorting call options), you would make a fixed premium in profit if the stock went downwards or sideways. Some "gurus" call this "playing bookmaker". Well, they are right that you are playing bookmaker to gamblers by selling options to them but they forgot to mention the fact that sometimes, gamblers win big too. When you write call options, your position will make an incrementally bigger loss as the stock price rises! It will continue to make bigger and bigger loss as long as the stock continues to rise. This is what is known as an unlimited loss position. This loss is often, or always, much bigger than the premium you received from selling the options. Before you know it, your entire account is wiped out on this one trade because the stock refused to go down as you expected it to. Does that mean we should not trade credit spreads or naked writes ever again? Not really. These are excellent options strategies but only if you trade them using a specific and definite stop loss point. Yes, most options trading beginners trade such unlimited loss potential credit spreads with stop loss points but most of them give in to emotion when it's time to stop loss and hold their positions beyond their stop loss points in hope that things will turn around, which most often, they never do. Professional options traders always trade unlimited loss potential positions with an AUTOMATED stop loss point. lazy trader options trading course South Carolina Knowing exactly what these orders do is extremely important for knowing how to execute extremely complex options strategies. Yes, Options Strategies allow you to profit from multiple directions and cater to even more specific outlooks and is one of the most unique features of options trading. Putting different options both long and short together produces strategies that go beyond simply profiting when a stock goes up or down. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of options strategies and some are so complex that a single position consists of 4 to 8 different trades utilizing a complex combination of the different order types you learnt above. In fact, each option strategy is a study on its own that requires long period of learning and trading to master. After you have learnt all of the above can you start placing some simple options trades and know exactly what you are doing.

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However, believing you possess certain attributes to a specific degree and actually possessing those attributes to the proper degree are two completely different things. Knowing exactly where you stand in terms of your mindset and your levels of discipline will aid in boosting your chances of success. For example, someone who needs to keep fiddling with their account by buying and selling every few days isn't someone who should be investing in options! The commissions alone will eat you up. Similarly someone who like a lot of excitement in their trading should probably stay away from options. Having a quality options trading strategy is helpful. Putting the options trading strategy through to fruition is even more helpful. But, once again, there is a big difference in having the desire to follow such a process and actually following through with it. Those that are able to follow through with such steps may be limited in number. No, that is not said as a means of undermining anyone's motivation, morale, or desire. Rather, it is meant as a way of properly forecasting the management of your venture and assessing the risk of getting involved with options trading. You also need a plan for when the market goes against your strategy, so that you don't make decisions because you're panicking.

what is trading options South Carolina These stories have no doubt cast a shadow over options trading and there are even people who now tout that options trading is as risky as futures trading. Well, strange thing is, after more than 15 years of trading options, I have never experienced losing all my money within a few days nor going bankrupt. This led me to wonder why these things happen to some options traders. After some investigation, I conclude that it is not options trading that breaks accounts but specific things some options traders tend to do, especially beginners, that opens the door to such financial disasters. I narrowed these reasons down to two main ones. The first of these is that some options traders trade options just like they trade stocks; buying call options with their whole account on that one "hot stock. "Yes, this is the number reason why most options beginners lose their shirt. Most beginners to options trading do with call options exactly what they do with stocks when they have a "hot tip"; throwing their whole account into that single "hot" trade. Now, this isn't that big a problem in stock trading because if the stock didn't move as expected, the trader could simply continue to hold the position until it does, sometimes for years. However, when you buy call options on stocks that didn't eventually move up as expected, the call options can expire worthless by expiration, taking your WHOLE account with it if you bought those call options with all the money you had! This problem is made even more pronounced by the fact that options have a definite expiration date that goes from a few months to a year for some stocks but never forever. This means that you do not have the luxury of holding on to bad trades forever, hoping they will come back in a few years time.

how does trading options work South Carolina Depending on the strike price in relation to the prevailing stock price, an option can be either In The Money, At The Money or Out Of The Money.

options trading for income South Carolina Personal factors will go into the development of a methodology. In some instances, there will be psychological factors that will be developed into the trading plans. Understanding such components is vital to exploring a trading method to make sure it is valuable to your goals. Actually, it would not hurt to explore your own psychological factors and facets prior to looking seriously at trading. Now, some may assume such assessments are little more than 'psycho-babble' that seek to examine options trading from an over-analytical perspective. This may be the case in some instances but as a general explanation of what motivates people towards options trading, it is definitely not something you want to overlook. By having a clear understanding of your own psychological makeup, you can develop the proper insight into how to be effective in the art of trading. Simply put, some people are more cut out for options trading than others. Those that are conservative in their investment strategies might wish to limit options trading to a smaller part of their overall portfolio. Those that can be considered quite aggressive in their approach may look towards possibly using options as a hedge to their portfolio. Again, your own personal psychological makeup regarding comfort levels of trading in essential in options.

You would buy out of the money options when you think a stock is going to make a big move and you would buy in the money options when you expect only a relatively small move. So, unlike stock trading where you simply buy the stock when you think it will go up, options trading make you think one more step deeper into the possible degree of move in order to maximize profits. Complete understanding of options moneyness and the implications of options of different moneyness is impossible without an understanding of how options are priced in terms of their intrinsic value and extrinsic value. Only by understanding the difference between intrinsic value and extrinsic value and how to calculate how much of each value is in the price of an option, you cannot intelligently choose the right option for your specific outlook. Once you have a good understanding of what call and put options are, how they are priced and the implications of different moneyness, it is time you learn how to place options orders through your options broker. Placing options orders is another complex issue as there are 4 main order types for options trading unlike the two simple order type for stock trading. Buy to open allows you to open a new options position by buying it, sell to open allows you to open a new options position by creating a new options contract and selling it, buy to close allows you to buy back and close options you previously created and sold and sell to close allows you to sell options that you previously bought. Knowing exactly what these orders do is extremely important for knowing how to execute extremely complex options strategies. Yes, Options Strategies allow you to profit from multiple directions and cater to even more specific outlooks and is one of the most unique features of options trading. Putting different options both long and short together produces strategies that go beyond simply profiting when a stock goes up or down. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of options strategies and some are so complex that a single position consists of 4 to 8 different trades utilizing a complex combination of the different order types you learnt above.

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drakeramoraythedoctor · 4 years ago

Text

best course for futures and options trading South Carolina Simply put, some people are more cut out for options trading than others.

best course for futures and options trading South Carolina You also need to assess the risks and potentials associated with the success or failure of the business. This same ideology needs to be put towards options trading. If you can honestly assess yourself as someone with the self discipline to follow through with a reliable options trading strategy, then you may very well be extremely successful with options trading. Also, how well can you handle losing trades? Are you able to handle losses and pick things up and start the process over again? If you are then you may very well embody the proper psychological makeup for succeeding with options trading. Those that cannot handle the pressure of the occasional loss would be better served looking towards another investing strategy. It has been said success starts with the right mental makeup. If you can adapt your mindset to your psychological approach to trading, you may find success is not as elusive as you think. How People Lose Their Shirts in Options TradingYou must have heard horror stories surrounding options trading before. Stories such as how some people lose their whole account within a few days and even stories of options traders going bankrupt in express time. These stories have no doubt cast a shadow over options trading and there are even people who now tout that options trading is as risky as futures trading. Well, strange thing is, after more than 15 years of trading options, I have never experienced losing all my money within a few days nor going bankrupt. This led me to wonder why these things happen to some options traders. After some investigation, I conclude that it is not options trading that breaks accounts but specific things some options traders tend to do, especially beginners, that opens the door to such financial disasters. I narrowed these reasons down to two main ones. The first of these is that some options traders trade options just like they trade stocks; buying call options with their whole account on that one "hot stock. "Yes, this is the number reason why most options beginners lose their shirt. Most beginners to options trading do with call options exactly what they do with stocks when they have a "hot tip"; throwing their whole account into that single "hot" trade. Now, this isn't that big a problem in stock trading because if the stock didn't move as expected, the trader could simply continue to hold the position until it does, sometimes for years. However, when you buy call options on stocks that didn't eventually move up as expected, the call options can expire worthless by expiration, taking your WHOLE account with it if you bought those call options with all the money you had! This problem is made even more pronounced by the fact that options have a definite expiration date that goes from a few months to a year for some stocks but never forever. This means that you do not have the luxury of holding on to bad trades forever, hoping they will come back in a few years time. Professional options traders like me only enter a single position with money we can afford to lose. If I intend to lose no more than 10% of my account on any one trade, I do not use more than 10% of my account in a single trade. That's right, you NEVER buy a single options position or options contract with all the money you have! Although that would have made sense in stock trading, it is pure suicide and gamble in options trading. The other reason is trading credit spreads or naked option writing without using stop loss. Many options beginners were taken in by the apparent "free money" phenomena of writing naked options positions unaware that most of these credit strategies have unlimited loss potential. For instance, if you wrote call options (shorting call options), you would make a fixed premium in profit if the stock went downwards or sideways.

youtube

There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of options strategies and some are so complex that a single position consists of 4 to 8 different trades utilizing a complex combination of the different order types you learnt above. thinkorswim options trading tutorial South Carolina [[S-EXTLINK-TEXT]]

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How People Lose Their Shirts in Options TradingYou must have heard horror stories surrounding options trading before.

options trading crash course richmond pdf South Carolina Only by understanding the difference between intrinsic value and extrinsic value and how to calculate how much of each value is in the price of an option, you cannot intelligently choose the right option for your specific outlook. Once you have a good understanding of what call and put options are, how they are priced and the implications of different moneyness, it is time you learn how to place options orders through your options broker. Placing options orders is another complex issue as there are 4 main order types for options trading unlike the two simple order type for stock trading. Buy to open allows you to open a new options position by buying it, sell to open allows you to open a new options position by creating a new options contract and selling it, buy to close allows you to buy back and close options you previously created and sold and sell to close allows you to sell options that you previously bought. Knowing exactly what these orders do is extremely important for knowing how to execute extremely complex options strategies. Yes, Options Strategies allow you to profit from multiple directions and cater to even more specific outlooks and is one of the most unique features of options trading. Putting different options both long and short together produces strategies that go beyond simply profiting when a stock goes up or down. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of options strategies and some are so complex that a single position consists of 4 to 8 different trades utilizing a complex combination of the different order types you learnt above. In fact, each option strategy is a study on its own that requires long period of learning and trading to master. After you have learnt all of the above can you start placing some simple options trades and know exactly what you are doing. See how much learning it takes to place your first options trade? Yes, options trading require investment knowledge that goes beyond merely buying and selling and is as much a science as it is an art.

options trading crash course pdf South Carolina Call options allow you to buy a stock at a fixed price no matter what price the stock is and put options allow you to sell a stock at a fixed price no matter what price the stock is.

can you make a living trading options South Carolina However, believing you possess certain attributes to a specific degree and actually possessing those attributes to the proper degree are two completely different things. Knowing exactly where you stand in terms of your mindset and your levels of discipline will aid in boosting your chances of success. For example, someone who needs to keep fiddling with their account by buying and selling every few days isn't someone who should be investing in options! The commissions alone will eat you up. Similarly someone who like a lot of excitement in their trading should probably stay away from options. Having a quality options trading strategy is helpful. Putting the options trading strategy through to fruition is even more helpful. But, once again, there is a big difference in having the desire to follow such a process and actually following through with it. Those that are able to follow through with such steps may be limited in number. No, that is not said as a means of undermining anyone's motivation, morale, or desire. Rather, it is meant as a way of properly forecasting the management of your venture and assessing the risk of getting involved with options trading. You also need a plan for when the market goes against your strategy, so that you don't make decisions because you're panicking. Yes, trading in options needs to be looked from the perspective of managing a small business. When operating a small business, you need to assess the risk associated with a venture. You also need to assess the risks and potentials associated with the success or failure of the business. This same ideology needs to be put towards options trading. If you can honestly assess yourself as someone with the self discipline to follow through with a reliable options trading strategy, then you may very well be extremely successful with options trading. Also, how well can you handle losing trades? Are you able to handle losses and pick things up and start the process over again? If you are then you may very well embody the proper psychological makeup for succeeding with options trading. Those that cannot handle the pressure of the occasional loss would be better served looking towards another investing strategy. It has been said success starts with the right mental makeup. If you can adapt your mindset to your psychological approach to trading, you may find success is not as elusive as you think. How People Lose Their Shirts in Options TradingYou must have heard horror stories surrounding options trading before.

This can be in the form of a stop limit, contingent order or trailing stop loss order. As long as you do not have to physically execute the stop loss. Physically executed stop losses are stop losses that rarely gets executed. Remember that. Buying options with your whole account and trading unlimited loss potential options positions without stop loss points are the two main reasons most options beginners lose their shirt. Take heed of my advice here and you would go through your initial options trading years in much more safety. How to Learn Options TradingMost people think they can learn options trading the very same way they learnt stock trading, which is just buying an options on stocks they think will do well. It's just that simple isn't it? Well, the simplicity ends when they discover that there are not one kind of option but two and each kind of option has countless strike prices and expiration dates! That's right! They suddenly realize that there is much much more to options trading than stock trading. Yes, stock options are a totally different ball game from stock trading even through they are used for the very same purpose of profiting from moves that stocks make. Yes, the fact that you are presented with so many different strike prices and expiration dates instantly tells you that there is no way to just pick on and profit. Much less trying to learn by trial and error.

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