subconscious-mind Archives - Social Engineering Blogs

psychmechanicsblog January 18, 2017

How to achieve long term goals (A psychological trick)

Do you find yourself unable to stick to your goals?

Do you quit on your goal as soon as you encounter the first hurdle?

Have you made resolutions countless times only to break them later?

If your answer is in the affirmative to any of the above questions, you’re not alone. Most people are like this because it’s the default way our brains are wired.

With the help of this post, I hope to create a shift in your mindset that will enable you to persist until you accomplish your important goals.

We’re wired for short-term rewards

For the most part of our evolutionary history, our ancestors hunted and gathered food. These were activities that provided instant gratification. The ability to think long-term and plan ahead is fairly recent in our evolutionary history.

This is why it’s easy to indulge in an activity that promises a reward now and difficult to delay gratification. It takes some mental effort to delay gratification and think long-term.

When you’re doing a task, your brain’s default wiring makes it ask, “Is this activity giving me what I want?” This is because you’re inclined to think that rewards are to be attained as soon as possible, that either your activity is taking you towards your goal or away from it.

The figure A below shows what usually happens when you start out on a goal…

figure A

When you reach A starting from O, you see yourself making progress and are highly motivated as a result.

Soon, something goes terribly wrong and you hit a low point B. At B, the goal seems too far away and you’re motivated to quit because you don’t see your efforts yielding any fruits.

Most people quit at this point because, remember, our mind is constantly asking us, “Is this activity giving me what I want?”

If the answer to that question is “No” there’s no point in motivating you to continue pursuing your goal and you’re in a state of demotivation. So you quit because that’s the sane thing to do in such a situation.

A task that eats away your time, energy and resources without providing you with any benefit is perceived as costly by your mind.

You could devote your time, energy and resources to something else that’s probably more promising- such as tasks that provide you with instant gratification. (see why we do what we do and not what we don’t do)

It’s not over yet

What if you hijack the way your mind works to prevent yourself from quitting when things don’t go your way?

The figure A shown above tells us that when we do things that take us closer to our goals we’re motivated to continue and when we do things that take us away from our goal, we’re de-motivated and likely to quit.

What if I told you that figure A is not the whole story?

Yes, figure A is actually a part of a larger figure B shown below…

figure B

The obstacle you faced at B that motivated you to quit was just one of the many obstacles that you were going to face on the journey towards reaching your goal.

Most people quit at B, others do so at D, yet others at F, and some at H. When people are at A, C, E, and G they’re highly motivated because their mind is telling them, “Yes, what I’m doing now has taken me closer to my goal.”

The key message that figure B is sending you is that no matter how many low points and high points you hit on the road to accomplishing your goal, the general trend of the graph is akin to a straight line going upward.

figure C (representing the general trend of figure B)

When you remember this you can trick your mind into thinking that what you’re currently doing is, after, all taking you closer toward your goal over time. You hack your short-term brain wiring to apply it to long-term thinking.

The low point that you may be currently experiencing is but a temporary inconvenience, an insignificant dip in the general upward trend of your efforts.

Whether you’re trying to lose weight, build muscle, start a business, or write a book, and have hit a low point, remind yourself that if you persist you’ll eventually get there.

psychmechanicsblog January 9, 2017

Why do couples engage in rough-and-tumble play

Amy and Paul had gotten into a relationship about a month ago and were now living together. Amy was busy cooking when Paul hugged her from behind and whispered naughty things in her ear.

“Go away! Can’t you see I’m busy?”, Amy said with a grin but Paul was too turned on to let go. She then forcibly unclasped his arms and ran away, challenging Paul to ‘come and get her’ by twirling her index finger. When Paul went after her, she ran away again.

Paul chased her from room to room around the house. They jumped around, laughed and threw pillows at each other.

Finally, Paul caught her and pushed her against the wall, grasping her hands tightly so that she couldn’t escape. The couple stopped laughing, almost simultaneously, and kissed.

I’m sure you must have witnessed something like this countless times, whether on screen or in real life. Perhaps you yourself did something like this with your partner.

What’s going on here?

Why is it always the man who chases the woman this way and not the other way around?

Female resistance as a test of male sexual competence

“Rough-and-tumble sex play is a common feature of the courtship behavior of humans and many other animals”, writes animal communication expert Robin Baker in his book Sperm Wars.

In species where females are the high-investing sex, courtship dynamics mainly revolve around mate selection by females and the display of quality by males.

Female resistance is a test of male physical strength and sexual competence. One of the criteria that a woman can add to her list when selecting a mate is his ability to overcome her physical resistance.

She can test this ability in two ways- either by watching males compete with each other or by directly testing a male’s ability to overcome her own defenses.

On average, men who are physically able to overcome the defences of a female and achieve copulation leave more offspring than those are not. So women whose sons and grandsons have this ability will enjoy greater reproductive success.

Conducting the test

To conduct such a test, a woman has to first resist verbally and then physically. The stronger and more realistic the resistance the better the test will be.

Resist too little and the test is meaningless. Resist too much and the male may inadvertently cause serious physical injury.

The fact that this type of courtship aggression rarely results in serious damage in cats, mink or even humans shows the accuracy with which this feature of sexual behavior has been molded by natural selection.

Frequency of the test

In species such as humans that form long-term relationships, you should observe this test frequently during the initial stages of the relationship. Once the female has tested the male she need not do it again and again.

Even then, occasional re-appraisal of the male’s strength and ability doesn’t harm.

For some couples, rough-and-tumble sex play is an infrequent element in their relationship while for others it may even go up to the level of sadomasochism.

Final words

It’s important to note that this test is just one of the many ways in which females evaluate the mate value of a male.

Usually, this test happens within the context of a newly formed relationship where the female has already begun favoring the male as her sexual partner.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that a female will conduct this test on any male that she hasn’t even begun evaluating as a potential partner.

psychmechanicsblog January 3, 2017

Mate choice copying and why all the good guys are taken

In humans, females are the high investing sex meaning that they invest more in their offspring than the males.

Nine months of gestation followed by years of feeding, nurturing and caring means paying a huge price in terms of time, energy, and resources.

Due to this, there is a pressure on women to select the right mates that are not only genetically sound but are also willing and able to help her invest in their offspring, especially in the context of long-term mating strategy.

Making the right mate choice is important for a woman because it’s likely to ensure her own reproductive success. Any error or misjudgment on her part, however, could mean that her huge efforts go to waste or that her reproductive success stands threatened.

One of the psychological mechanisms that women have evolved to increase the probability of making the right mate choice is called mate choice copying.

Mate choice copying

Say you move to a new city that’s very alien to you. You have no idea how things work there. What do you do to survive and adjust?

You simply copy those around you.

As soon as you arrive at the airport, you do what your fellow passengers do to reach the exit. On the subway station, you see a bunch of people lined up and assume it to be the place where tickets are sold.

In short, you make many calculations and predictions based on what other people do and they mostly turn out right.

In psychology, this is called the social proof theory and states that when we’re uncertain we follow the crowd.

Mate choice copying is very similar to the social proof theory in the way it works.

When selecting a mate, women have a tendency to evaluate what mates other women have selected in order to give themselves a better idea about which mate is worth selecting and which is not.

If a man is attractive to a lot of attractive females, a woman concludes that he must have a high mate value i.e. he must be a good mate.

Otherwise, why would so many attractive women fall for him in the first place?

Studies have shown that women rate men as attractive when they see other women smiling or positively interacting with them. Interestingly, when a women look at an attractive male, they’re more likely to spontaneously smile, thereby reinforcing mate choice copying for other women.

It’s easy to see the potential benefits that mate choice copying can offer to a woman. Evaluation of the male traits usually takes a lot of time and mate choice copying can provide women with useful shortcuts that they can use to aid their mate selection.

Mate choice copying is also the reason why women find committed men attractive. If a man has been deemed worthy enough to commit to by a woman, then surely he must be a good catch.

Women often complain that ‘all the good guys are taken’. The truth is the other way round. They perceive all the taken guys as good.

Mate choice copying in the bedroom

One of the common sources of conflict between couples in the bedroom is regarding foreplay. Women usually complain that men pay little attention to foreplay. They deem men who can stimulate them to orgasm as competent.

When asked why they like men who can stimulate them to orgasm, women naturally respond in terms of the pleasure that they gain from orgasm.

But, according to animal communication expert Robin Baker, the advantages a woman gains from selecting the more competent men are biological as well as sensual.

Basically, a woman uses a man’s approach to foreplay and intercourse to gain information about him.

A man who’s able to arouse a woman and stimulate her to orgasm signals that he has past experience with other females. This, in turn, tells her that other women have also found him attractive enough to allow intercourse.

The more effectively he stimulates her, the more experienced he should be- and hence greater the number of women who’ve so far found him to be attractive.

Mixing her genes with him, therefore, may produce sons or grandsons who’re also attractive to women, thereby increasing her own reproductive success.

References:

Yorzinski, J. L., & Platt, M. L. (2010). Same-sex gaze attraction influences mate-choice copying in humans. PLoS One, 5(2), e9115.

Jones, B. C., DeBruine, L. M., Little, A. C., Burriss, R. P., & Feinberg, D. R. (2007). Social transmission of face preferences among humans. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 274(1611), 899-903.

Eva, K. W., & Wood, T. J. (2006). Are all the taken men good? An indirect examination of mate-choice copying in humans. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 175(12), 1573-1574.