Mindful nature of human identity

Masud Husian, a neuroscience professor at Oxford university, whose emotionally powerful book delves deeply into the nature of individual human identity and how this relates to our belonging to a supportive social group. Husain examines, the way injury and disease transformed the lives of seven patients  with very different experiences. The thread uniting them is that all were “confronted by the very real possibility of social exclusion, because their behaviour had changed so significantly. As a consequence of the cognitive effects of their brain disorder, they were no longer considered acceptable within their social networks” he writes. The resulting isolation exacerbated … Continue reading Mindful nature of human identity

Do you make critical decisions after intuitive and rational thinking?

Why do we make critical decisions we do? Psychologist Daniel Kahneman, the godfather of behavioural science, whose work on prospect  theory won him a Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002, an award he acknowledges he would have shared with collaborator Amos Tversky, had Tversky lived.  Prospect theory means that investors value gains and losses differently, placing more weight on perceived gains than perceived losses. His research come to a conclusion that women make better investors than men because they hold on to their investment  where as men panic and sell when the market dips, thereby missing out on upswings. Kahneman … Continue reading Do you make critical decisions after intuitive and rational thinking?