Saturday, July 11, 2015

Steve Jobs said, “Journey is the reward”. And he was damn right.




If you are reading this article, don’t expect that I am going to recite those famous lines from Steve Jobs speech at Harvard. Well the point is to prove one of his famous lines with the help of science and theory.

o   SCIENCE
 We all work. And we work expecting reward. We study expecting that it might help with our grade. We do hours and hours of workout in gym, figuring out how to throw a descent jab thinking that it might help to become the welter weight champion of the world. So we do work and we do expect rewards.
The point that Steve Jobs wanted to make was that we should work but we shouldn’t do it entirely keeping the reward factor in our mind. That thing helps us out in few cases but also de motivates us to a great extent in majority of scenarios.
Let’s talk some business rather than making baseless points.
Rewards force us to consider our work in a limited way, even work that we might gain great satisfaction from doing without the promise of reward. In fact, offering incentives can limit not only one’s perception of the work but one’s ability to even do the work. Consider the “candle problem” (Refer author Dan Pink’s TED talk on the candle problem for more information). Subjects are seated at a table against a wall, given a candle, some matches, and a box of tacks, and told to work out a way to burn the candle without getting wax on the table. In one study, one group was offered money for figuring the puzzle out, while another wasn’t – and the subjects who were not offered any reward did remarkably better.

(The solution, by the way, is to empty the box of tacks and set the candle up inside of the box – most people ignore the box at first, because they see it only as a holder for the tacks and not as part of the equipment available to them. People working for a reward have a much harder time making the creative leap to seeing the box as part of the puzzle than people who are not being incentivized except by the pleasure of solving the puzzle itself.)
So you saw that the group that was trying to figure out the solution keeping in view of reward did pretty badly.
So we shouldn’t expect rewards?  Well exactly not. You should rather enjoy work and think it of as your reward. Journey is the reward.  Doing so will make you remain motivated throughout your all sorts of work.

Dopamine
The origins of motivation:  It’s in your head.
What is dopamine? Dopamine is one of the chemical signals that pass information from one neuron to the next in the tiny spaces between them. When it is released from the first neuron, it floats into the space (the synapse) between the two neurons, and it bumps against receptors for it on the other side that then send a signal down the receiving neuron. That sounds very simple, but when you scale it up from a single pair of neurons to the vast networks in your brain, it quickly becomes complex. The effects of dopamine release depend on where it’s coming from, where the receiving neurons are going and what type of neurons they are, what receptors are binding the dopamine (there are five known types), and what role both the releasing and receiving neurons are playing.
We normally associate dopamine with pleasure, but it has a far wider effect than that. Dopamine has been found to fire before a reward is given, in addition to showing up in times of stress, pain, loss or pleasure. As a result, dopamine levels are now believed to be strongly linked with motivation. Interestingly, one behavioral neuroscientist discovered that rats with lower dopamine levels weren’t willing to climb a small fence to get to a larger pile of food, compared to rats with higher levels of the hormone.
Animals need to seek food for survival and dopamine helps them out in seeking. However Animals in which the VTA dopamine system has been rendered inactive do not seek food, and will starve to death if left to themselves, but if food is placed in their mouths they will consume it and show facial expressions indicative of pleasure.
It’s clear that dopamine is the science behind motivation. And to remain motivated we need that our brain releases dopamine. But dopamine releases only when reward factor is associated with the job. Dopamine’s true effect may be motivation. Dopamine performs its task before we obtain rewards. And in that scenario if we just by Steve jobs line then it would be quite easier for us to remain motivated as then our journey would be the reward (the factor behind the release of dopamine)

.
o   THEORY
Temporal motivation theory (TMT) is an integrative motivational theory. Developed by Piers Steel and Cornelius J. König, the theory emphasizes time as a critical, motivational factor.


Where Motivation, the desire for a particular outcome, Expectancy or self-efficacy is the probability of success, Value is the reward associated with the outcome, Impulsiveness is the individual’s sensitivity to delay and Delay is the time to realization.
The theory also says that motivation is closely associated with the value factor. The value is the reward that one will get after completion of the job. And in this scenario too if we remain by Steve jobs line then it would be quite easier for us to remain motivated as then our journey would be the reward.

To see how temporal motivation theory can be applied in an example, consider a student given one month to study for a final exam. The student is given two options—studying and socializing. The student enjoys socializing but needs to achieve a good grade. The reward of studying is not immediate thus at the beginning of the student's study period, the motivation to study is lower than the motivation to Socialize. However, as the study period diminishes from several weeks to several days, the motivation to study will surpass the motivation to socialize.




Thanks for reading. I hope that the content might have gone fine. Please don't forget to leave a comment. Your views and reviews always matter. :-)

Monday, May 18, 2015

Cinderella effect




In order to understand this effect you need to know the story. I know that you had read it in your childhood day but I need you to read it one more time to understand it better.

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful girl named Cinderella. She lived with her wicked stepmother and two stepsisters. They treated Cinderella very badly. One day, they were invited for a grand ball in the king’s palace. But Cinderella’s stepmother would not let her go. Cinderella was made to sew new party gowns for her stepmother and stepsisters, and curl their hair. They then went to the ball, leaving Cinderella alone at home.
Cinderella felt very sad and began to cry. Suddenly, a fairy godmother appeared and said, “Don’t cry, Cinderella! I will send you to the ball!” But Cinderella was sad. She said, “I don’t have a gown to wear for the ball!” The fairy godmother waved her magic wand and changed Cinderella’s old clothes into a beautiful new gown! The fairy godmother then touched Cinderella’s feet with the magic wand. And lo! She had beautiful glass slippers! “How will I go to the grand ball?” asked Cinderella. The fairy godmother found six mice playing near a pumpkin, in the kitchen. She touched them with her magic wand and the mice became four shiny black horses and two coachmen and the pumpkin turned into a golden coach. Cinderella was overjoyed and set off for the ball in the coach drawn by the six black horses. Before leaving. The fairy godmother said, “Cinderella, this magic will only last until midnight! You must reach home by then!”
When Cinderella entered the palace, everybody was struck by her beauty. Nobody, not even Cinderella’s stepmother or stepsisters, knew who she really was in her pretty clothes and shoes. The handsome prince also saw her and fell in love with Cinderella. He went to her and asked, “Do you want to dance?” And Cinderella said, “Yes!” The prince danced with her all night and nobody recognized the beautiful dancer. Cinderella was so happy dancing with the prince that she almost forgot what the fairy godmother had said. At the last moment, Cinderella remembered her fairy godmother’s words and she rushed to go home. “Oh! I must go!” she cried and ran out of the palace. One of her glass slippers came off but Cinderella did not turn back for it. She reached home just as the clock struck twelve. Her coach turned back into a pumpkin, the horses into mice and her fine ball gown into rags. Her stepmother and stepsisters reached home shortly after that. They were talking about the beautiful lady who had been dancing with the prince.
The prince had fallen in love with Cinderella and wanted to find out who the beautiful girl was, but he did not even know her name. He found the glass slipper that had come off Cinderella’s foot as she ran home. The prince said, “I will find her. The lady whose foot fits this slipper will be the one I marry!” The next day, the prince and his servants took the glass slipper and went to all the houses in the kingdom. They wanted to find the lady whose feet would fit in the slipper. All the women in the kingdom tried the slipper but it would not fit any of them. Cinderella’s stepsisters also tried on the little glass slipper. They tried to squeeze their feet and push hard into the slipper, but the servant was afraid the slipper would break. Cinderella’s stepmother would not let her try the slipper on, but the prince saw her and said, “Let her also try on the slipper!” The slipper fit her perfectly. The prince recognized her from the ball. He married Cinderella and together they lived happily ever after.
So this was the story part. Now let’s talk some business.
In evolutionary psychology, the Cinderella effect is the alleged higher incidence of different forms of child-abuse and mistreatment by stepparents than by biological parents. Background
In the early 1970s, a theory arose on the connection between stepparents and child maltreatment. "In 1973, forensic psychiatrist P. D. Scott summarized information on a sample of "fatal battered-baby cases" perpetrated in anger (…) 15 of the 29 killers – 52% – were stepfathers.” Although initially there was no analysis of this raw data, empirical evidence has since been collected on what is now called the Cinderella effect through official records, reports, and census.
For over 30 years, data has been collected regarding the validity of the Cinderella effect, with a wealth of evidence indicating a direct relationship between step-relationships and abuse. This evidence of child abuse and homicide comes from a variety of sources including official reports of child abuse, clinical data, victim reports, and official homicide data. Studies have concluded that "stepchildren in Canada, Great Britain, and the United States indeed incur greatly elevated risk of child maltreatment of various sorts, especially lethal beatings". Studies have found that not biologically related parents are up to a hundred times more likely to kill a child than biological parents.
Powerful evidence in support of the Cinderella effect comes from the finding that when abusive parents have both step and genetic children, they generally spare their genetic children. In such families, stepchildren were exclusively targeted 9 out of 10 times in one study and in 19 of 22 in another. In addition to displaying higher rates of negative behaviors (e.g., abuse) toward stepchildren, stepparents display fewer positive behaviors toward stepchildren than do the genetic parents. For example, on average, stepparents invest less in education, play with stepchildren less, take stepchildren to the doctor less, etc. This discrimination against stepchildren is unusual compared with abuse statistics involving the overall population given "the following additional facts: 
(1) when child abuse is detected, it is often found that all the children in the home have been victimized; and
(2) stepchildren are almost always the eldest children in the home, whereas the general (…) tendency in families of uniform parentage is for the youngest to be most frequent victims."

References:



Saturday, May 16, 2015

Hyundai : A Message to Space


I liked this news


Hyundai has helped a 13-year-old girl named Stephanie send a message to her father. The reason sending a message is so hard is that the girl's father is an astronaut aboard the ISS. To send the message, Hyundai sent a fleet of 11 Genesis cars to write a message that spanned a space as large as about half of New York's Central Park.


The message was written using tire tracks from the cars and the finished message spanned 5.55 square kilometers and could be seen from the ISS. The massive message received a Guinness World Record for the largest tire track image ever created.

The message was written at Delmar Dry Lake in Nevada. Making the message took more than 11 cars and drivers able to synchronize movements; it required a large number of support personnel. The message also had to be planned out meticulously because one mistake could ruin the entire plan.
Hyundai's team went on expeditions to several locations seeking an area to write the message that would have the ideal weather and visibility. Eventually the location in Nevada was chosen. Check out the video to see how Hyundai and its team created the message.

source:  1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EOAXrTrsOE
              2. http://www.slashgear.com/hyundai-helps-astronauts-daughter-send-a-message-that-could-be-seen-from-space-17379640/

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