Category: Mind Space

Safer Cities Stem from Active Communities

housing

In the 1990s former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani popularized the broken window theory which is a zero tolerance approach to getting rid of crime. At first it proved successful and the approach spread, only later was it revealed that other factors were at work. Today, the solution to fighting crime and bringing life back to communities isn’t by cracking down on the people living there – it’s to empower them. In order to do this it means changing the streetscape from car-focused to people focused and giving people agency around what the spaces are redesigned for.

Busy streets have less crime

These surface-level environmental changes turned out to have profound economic and societal effects on this part of central Flint.

We surveyed residents there in 2014—before the intervention began—as well as in 2016 and 2017. We are now preparing the results of the Flint study for publication in an academic journal, but here’s a snapshot of our findings.

the coalition’s latest report, assaults decreased 54 percent, robberies 83 percent and burglaries 76 percent between 2013 and 2018.

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This Flowchart Helps You Evaluate any Argument

Argument analysis flowchart
Figure 1 from Cook, Ellerton, and Kinkead 2018. CC BY 3.0

Complex issues with multiple influential factors can be difficult to process for some. Three researchers from George Mason University and the University of Queensland decided to help people evaluate arguments by combining their own knowledge into one handy flowchart. The flowchart (above) is a great tool to help you think through any topic that you’re having difficulty with. The best part of the using the flowchart is that the more you use it the better you’ll get at reasoning through other’s arguments.

Step 3:  Determine Inference

Recall that we can make deductive or inductive arguments. Deductive arguments make their conclusion necessarily true or false. Inductive arguments merely make their conclusion more or less probably true — thus admitting the possibility that the conclusion is wrong. One way to test whether an argument relies on deductive or inductive inference is to check whether and how its premises support its conclusion.

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Reading is for Winners

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It’s easy to fall out of the habit of reading books because of the endless entertainment options we access through our phones. This year you ought to put down your phone and pick up a book. Yes, you can read and you can read a lot! Over at Inc they compiled a quick list of reasons why reading books are good for you.

Reading fiction can help you be more open-minded and creative.
According to research conducted at the University of Toronto, study participants who read short story fiction experienced far less need for “cognitive closure” compared with counterparts who read non-fiction essays. Essentially, they tested as more open-minded, compared with the readers of essays. “Although nonfiction reading allows students to learn the subject matter, it may not always help them in thinking about it,” the authors write. “A physician may have an encyclopedic knowledge of his or her subject, but this may not prevent the physician from seizing and freezing on a diagnosis, when additional symptoms point to a different malady.”

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A Healthy Mind Comes from Autonomy and a Sense of Control

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A new book authors William Stixrud and Ned Johnson describe a healthy way to raise children is to let me e themselves. In the book, The Self-Driven Child, they argue that children – and adults – benefit from a sense of control over their lives. Indeed, stress and anxiety increase when one feels that they cannot alter their surroundings or course of action. For a healthy child and a healthy adult life give yourself some slack to have control over things.

From a neurological perspective, when we experience a healthy sense of control, our prefrontal cortex (the executive functioning part of our brain) regulates the amygdala (a part of the brain’s threat detection system that initiates the fight or flight response). When the prefrontal cortex is in charge, we are in our right minds. We feel in control and not anxious. So, the fact that kids are feeling more anxiety, by definition, suggests that their amygdalas are more active, which indicates that they are more likely to feel overwhelmed, stuck, or helpless.

Research on motivation has suggested that a strong sense of autonomy is the key to developing the healthy self-motivation that allows children and teens to pursue their goals with passion and to enjoy their achievements.

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Celebrate Silence for a Clear Mind

desert and stars

For a healthy body and mind one ought to embrace silence. It turns out that silence is really helpful for our minds and can bring health benefits. The research into how good silence is for us is still up and coming but the results are looking good! Indeed, silence is so golden that Finland has even modified their tourism campaign to reflect the appeal of quietness.

So we like silence for what it doesn’t do—it doesn’t wake, annoy, or kill us—but what does it do? When Florence Nightingale attacked noise as a “cruel absence of care,” she also insisted on the converse: Quiet is a part of care, as essential for patients as medication or sanitation. It’s a strange notion, but one that researchers have begun to bear out as true.
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The blank pauses that Bernardi considered irrelevant, in other words, became the most interesting object of study. Silence seemed to be heightened by contrasts, maybe because it gave test subjects a release from careful attention. “Perhaps the arousal is something that concentrates the mind in one direction, so that when there is nothing more arousing, then you have deeper relaxation,” he says.

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