Brain Wave

Original interview with author Ellen Morris Prewitt

Ellen Morris is the author of Making Crosses: A Creative Connection with God, which was released Wednesday (April 1).

Just before the book's release, I conducted an interview with her, which is available here.

How smart people, even psychologists, get duped

"Everybody is doing it" -- apparently, the phrase still carries immense social capital that informs decision-making.

NPR’s Talk of the Nation included a segment today entitled “The Science of Gullibility: Why We Get Duped.” (Click here to listen online.)

The program featured an interview with Stephen Greenspan, a psychologist and author of Annals of Gullibility: Why We Get Duped and How to Avoid It. (Check it out at Amazon.com)

And, Greenspan was one of the people who was duped by Bernard Madoff.

According to a brief piece in the London TimesOnline:

Stephen Greenspan is clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado. He is one of the losers from Bernard Madoff, having seen a fair chunk of his retirement savings disappear. He is also one of the world's experts on financial scams and why investors get dragged into them, and the recent author of Annals of Gullibility: Why We Get Duped and How to Avoid it.

The irony is not lost on the professor, who has published a scholarly analysis of how he came to be duped in eSkeptic, the newsletter of the Skeptics Society. The notion of gullibility has been largely ignored by social scientists, he writes. There are four aspects: situation, cognition, personality and emotion.

The Madoff scam involved “social feedback measures”, which meant that, as so many prominent people were investing, it was hard to believe they were all wrong. In terms of cognition, he admits he knows little about finance and was too lazy to find out. Greenspan says he has a trusting personality and does not like to say no to a sales person who has given him an hour or two of his time.

Emotionally, he was not greedy but merely wanted a safe return for his retirement. “A host of factors, situational, cognitive, personality and emotional came together to cause me to put my critical faculties on the shelf,” he admits.

Basically, it sounds like it could have happened to anyone -- certainly if the people involved are bright, successful, and widely known, how could you be wrong to jump on the same train?

I offer a religious angle on this story here.

-Colin Foote Burch

Clint Eastwood on political correctness: 'Everybody is taking themselves and everything so seriously'

From CNN's interview with Clint Eastwood, regarding his new movie Gran Torino:

CNN: When you read the script, were you at all concerned about the nature of the language?

Clint Eastwood: No, I wasn't. If you're going to learn something and progress in the movie as a character, you have to start as something else in order to learn tolerance. And your character obviously is never too old to learn that, so he has to be a certain way.

But I -- being politically incorrect -- I find [it] fascinating because I hate the so-called PC thing. I think that's one of the things that's damaging our generation at the present time. Everybody is taking themselves and everything so seriously. If they just relax a little more and take themselves and everything else a little less seriously, they'd have a lot more fun.

Interview: Jim Sendelbach, neurofeedback practitioner, describes the development of protocols for neurofeedback

I contacted Dr. Jim Sendelbach of Anchor Point Neurofeedback and Counseling in Conyers, Ga., to find out if he thinks there are new uses of neurofeedback on the horizon. Here is his reply:

"Neurofeedback researchers and clinicians are constantly searching for protocols that address symptoms and symptom complexes.  Practices are typically small and take careful 'baby steps.' 

"For example, a client may seek neurofeedback for depression and the practitioner finds that the standard protocol is not working so well with this client.  So the practitioner may shift a lead [a contact on the head] from one site to another and observe the results.  Brain responses to neurofeedback are not necessarily predictable, as is the case of prescription medicines where a physician would shift a patient from one ineffective antidepressant to another based on response.  Because practices are usually small they follow a surgical model as distinguished from a pharmaceutical where clinical trials might involve hundreds or thousands of patients. The surgical model is the one involving organ transplants, for example.  No large scale clinical trials were conducted; just one case at a time, published in peer reviewed journals from which others learn. 

"Associations such as the ISNR and the AAPB routinely report the findings of researchers and clinicians in professional journals and advance the field of neurofeedback.  There is ongoing development of very sophisticated eqiupment that allows greater flexibility, clearer recording, and most precise interpretation of EEG signals.  Much work is being done with substance abuse, TBI [traumatic brain injury], and PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder].  Because the brain is involved in all psychophysical activities, this field of non-invasive treatment offers tremendous promise."