The Fundamental Four

Exploring the deepest motivational drives

Sandeep Gautam

Useful Fictions: Why Beliefs Matter

Believing in false things sometimes makes sense. Free will appears to be such a construct.

The Link Between Gratitude and Trust

A new study sheds light on how gratitude leads to increased trust via positive emotions.

Promoting Flow

Self-regulatory focus of promotion and prevention lead to different associated emotions like joy-sadness and anxiety-contentment. An effort is made to link the same with the concept of flow as espoused by Mihaly.

Creativity and Intelligence Leading to Psychosis and Autism

Creativity and intelligence, though related, are opposites on a continuum. The same type of dichotomy exists between psychosis and autism and the underlying processes are surmised to be similar.

Expecting to Be Wealthy, Famous and Happy Too? Think Again!

Research shows that striving for extrinsic goals, like wealth and fame, comes with a big downside in terms of diminished positive mental health and curtailed happiness.

Negative Emotions, Anyone?

In a recent post Todd claimed that intentionally creating or prolonging negative emotions/states may be healthy; I present a counterpoint.

Good at Task, Bad at People?

Two anti-correlated large-scale functional networks in the brain underlie the traditional task vs. people orientation amongst leaders.

Experts: Born or Made?

A response to the insinuation that ability is the end all and be all of expert performance.

4 Major Goals of Life

This post makes a case for balancing the four major goals of life: happiness, success, meaning, and integrity.

MBTI, ABCD and the Fundamental Four

MBTI or Jungian personality typology resonates well with the ABCD model and the fundamental four polarities governing personality as delineated by Theodore Millon.

Personal Intelligence

A review of Scott Barry Kaufman's 'Ungifted: Intelligence redefined"

The (RDoC) Matrix Reloaded!

Unveiling a 4 x 4 Matrix of emotional/ motivational/ personality constructs that is hoped will serve as a Periodic Table for Psychology.

To Promote, Prevent, Be Congruent or Discrepant

How promotion and prevention regulatory focus lead to different kinds of emotions.

To Avoid, Approach, Perform or to Learn?

An attempt to synthesize motivational constructs like approach/ avoidance motivations and performance/ learning orientations.

A Different Kind of SWOT for Psychological Disorders

Four major systems are proposed based on genetic/neural and behavioral data: Self-learning; world learning; opportunity maximizing; and threat mitigation systems. Perturbations from normality of these systems lead to major psychological disorder clusters.

Basic Emotions and Basic Psychological Disorders

We need a valid and useful taxonomy and classification system for mental illnesses.

Your Unconscious Calls The Shots

A review of Leonard Mlodinow's 'subliminal' focusing on how our unconscious mind rules our behaviors.

The 4 Fundamental ICN’s/Stances

There are four stances you can take towards the animate as well as the inanimate world and surprisingly there are four major brain networks that underlay and correlate with each of them.

Choice and Well-being

Why we choose to do something goes beyond maximizing our hedonistic happiness and well-being. Factors like purpose in life or relationship happiness also play a major role.

To Label or Not To Label

To Label or Not to Label, that is the question: Whether it’s nobler in the mind to suffer the taunts and stigma of same-age bullies, or by defying the label given by the insensitive society, and not taking a pill, end it!

The Varieties of Sexual Experiences

Sexual process consists of four stages—fantasy, desire, arousal and pleasure of consummation. Each stage should be enjoyed in its own right.

The Mind and its Maladies

The different types of mental disorders, though intimidating by their sheer number and complexity, can be clustered in a few discrete categories and groups, and this greatly aids our understanding of the mind and its maladies.

Creativity: Products, Processes, and People

The field of creativity needs equal focus on products, processes, and people to advance further; an integrative approach and research program that rises above the distinctions of small c and Big C is more likely to be successful and fruitful in the long run.

The Little c and Big C of Creativity

Sam McNerney argues that a focus on little c creativity detracts from doing justice to big C creativity. I beg to differ!

Academic Success Is Multi-Factorial

Academic outcomes are dependent on multiple factors like innate ability, self control, hard work and positive mindset. Some of the outcomes may differentially depend on one factor rather than the other, but to succeed in life you need both smarts and character.

Autism and ADHD: the intelligent and the creative child!

People on the autism spectrum are more likely to be intelligent; while ADHD leans towards the creativity side of the spectrum. These childhood disorders are the cost one pays for the evolution of intelligence and creativity.

Emotions and Motivations

That 'emotions arise from progress or hindrance in goal-pursuit' is a simplistic notion.

The Basic Structure of Emotions

The Factor structure of PANAS-X sheds important insights into the nature of basic emotions—that combined with insights from Eight rasas of Indian culture and the four dimensions of emotions, leads to a rich and useful taxonomy and classification system for emotions.

Functional Networks in Worms—Cultural Effects

How many functional networks are there in the nervous system of Nematode worm? Can Indian philosophical insight help in that regard?

Creativity and Intelligence: The Underlying BVSR Process

This post continues the previous discussion of opposition between creativity and intelligence and does this time by looking at one of the theories of creativity: Blind variation and selective retention, proposed by Campbell about 50 years ago .

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