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LITTLE-KNOWN SELF-IMPROVEMENT CONCEPTS

1) Musterbating: Albert Ellis’ term for rigid, self-imposed ideas that many people hold that “I/you/they absolutely must (or should) do X.” Rather than seeing these as preferences or nice-to-haves, they see them as absolutes, which fuels irrational belief and negative emotions.

2) Hormetic exposure – Exposures that are beneficial precisely because they are mild stresses (e.g., exercise, fasting, hot/cold therapy). By putting the body under stress, in some cases, you can trigger helpful adaptive over-compensation (hormesis).

3) Healthspan – The length of time you spend in good health, free from chronic disease and disability (not merely alive). For some who see themselves as wanting to increase their lifespan, their values might be more accurately captured by aiming to increase their healthspan.

4) Valuism – Okay, this is mine. A personal life philosophy with 2 parts:

(i) figure out what you intrinsically value

(ii) seek to use effective methods to create more of what you intrinsically value.

It’s a framework for living without requiring belief in absolute moral truth.

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LITTLE-KNOWN CONCEPTS RELATED TO CRITICAL THINKING

5) Paltering – Misleading an audience by selectively stating only true facts that nonetheless foster a false overall impression. Some of the most effective public manipulators mainly palter instead of lying.

6) Deepity – A term coined by Daniel Dennett (piggybacking off of its usage by an unspecified friend of his teenage daughter) to refer to statements that seem profound by exploiting ambiguity: they have one interpretation by which they are trivially or boringly true and another interpretation by which they are meaningless or false (but where it would seem profound if true). Our brains can accidentally mix these interpretations together, leading to the mistaken impression that the statement is both true and profound (e.g., “Love is just a word.”)

7) Epistemics – The norms, methods, and quality standards governing how beliefs are formed, updated, and justified. If you think that society is bad at figuring out what’s true, you may want people to work on improving their epistemics.

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LITTLE-KNOWN CONCEPTS FOR THINKING ABOUT THE WORLD

8 ) M.E.C.E. – A useful principle for structuring information by dividing it into categories that are mutually exclusive (there’s no overlap between categories) and collectively exhaustive (no items are left out; everything has a category).

9) Hyperstition – A term coined by Nick Land for a narrative or idea that becomes true (or shapes reality) precisely because people believe and propagate it. For instance, if people believe a company to be very valuable, that can make it become very valuable, or if people believe a handbag is very popular (even if at that time it isn’t actually), that can make it become very popular.

10) Superstimuli – something that is optimized by human ingenuity to stimulate our naturally evolved reward circuits more than they could be stimulated by things in our natural environment. For instance, junk food is a food superstimulus, or social media is a social superstimulus.

11) Bezel – Galbraith’s term for the illusory wealth created by fraud or embezzlement before it gets discovered. It’s the gap between the perceived and real asset value. The bezel makes the defrauder and defrauded both have a psychological perception of wealth.

12) Gamable – Able to be strategically manipulated or “gamed,” i.e., its rules allow actors to extract advantage without fulfilling the system’s intended purpose. One of the most important aspects of system design in high-stakes situations lacking trust is that systems should be ungamable. Otherwise, the system will be exploited or not achieve its intended purpose.

13) QALY – A quality-adjusted life year (related to healthspan but in the context of improving the lives of others): a way of quantifying the benefit of any intervention designed to help people live longer or improve their health that takes into account both the number of extra years of life produced AND the quality of those years of life. So, 1 QALY is one extra year of life lived in full health.

14) Longtermism – An ethical view that “positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time.” Sometimes, it’s justified by arguing that the importance of actions may lie in their effects on the far future, given the vast potential number of future lives.

15) Familicide – Murder of one’s family (typically spouse/partner and children), often followed by suicide. Why bother having a word for this upsetting concept at all? Well, bizarrely, it’s statistically the most common form of mass murder (i.e., where three or more people are killed during one event).

16) Superorganism – A coordinated collective (e.g., an ant colony or tightly integrated human society) that functions as a single organism despite being composed of many organisms. Interestingly, even the human body is a superorganism since we’re composed of distinct living organisms.

17) Umwelt – An organism’s perceptual experience of the world or the slice of reality created by a particular creature’s unique sensory and cognitive apparatus. For instance, the Elephantnose Fish apparently gets a 3d sense of its surroundings by creating an electric field – their umwelt must be nearly unimaginably different than our own.

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LITTLE-KNOWN EMOTION-RELATED CONCEPTS

18) Alonely – negative feelings caused by not getting enough time alone (the opposite of loneliness).

19) Ego-syntonic – Experienced as consistent with one’s self-image, values, and goals. For instance, Narcissistic Personality Disorder is usually ego-syntonic, meaning that insofar as they’re willing to accept their traits, narcissists usually don’t see them as problematic.

20) Mudita – Buddhist “sympathetic joy,” that is, genuine happiness at another’s good fortune, which can be viewed as the inverse of envy or schadenfreude.

21) Compersion – Empathic pleasure or happiness felt when a loved one experiences pleasure or happiness. This word usually crops up in polyamorous circles, indicating feeling happy at the fact that one of your partners is experiencing happiness with another romantic or sexual partner. Some see it as the near opposite of jealousy.

22) JOMO (Joy of Missing Out) – Positive satisfaction you get from deliberately skipping social or popular activities in favor of using time for something more personally valuable (such as time with loved ones). Some see it as the near opposite of FOMO (fear of missing out).

23) Alexithymia – A condition where you struggle to identify, describe, and/or differentiate your emotions. If you often can’t tell how you feel or usually can’t put your emotions into words, you may have Alexithymia.

24) Defusion – The skill of viewing thoughts as transient mental events rather than literal truths – such as by viewing them from an external perspective – which reduces their emotional power over us. For example, instead of just having a thought X and being “inside” it, you observe that “you’re having the thought that X” or even “I’m noticing that I’m having the thought that I’m having the thought that X.” You can ask yourself about a particular thought: are you “fused” with that thought (living inside of it, treating it as the truth) or defused from it?

25) Pronoid – A pervasive conviction that other people or the universe at large are conspiring for your benefit. It is the optimistic mirror-image of being paranoid: where a paranoid expects hidden threats, a pronoid expects hidden aid. Thanks to Andreea Alexuc for introducing me to this concept.

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LITTLE-KNOWN CONCEPTS FOR THINKING ABOUT PEOPLE

26) Wamb – A term coined by John Nerst, which means the opposite of “nerd.” Things that are wamb tend to be socially mainstream, trendy, cool, and non-intellectual. Jock, prom king, football players in high school are often the epitome of wamb. We can also think about a wamb-to-nerd spectrum that people and things can be placed on.

27) D.A.R.V.O. – A tactic often used by abusers when they are accused of wrongdoing: (1) Deny wrongdoing, (2) Attack the accuser, and (3) Reverse Victim and Offender (so as to make the abuser appear to be the victim)
28) Mimophant – Someone who is simultaneously aggressive, forceful, or insensitive to other people’s feelings (charging forward like an elephant) yet hypersensitive to criticism or has their own feelings easily hurt (like a mimosa plant, which quickly retracts its leaves when touched).

29) Apophenia (Spectrum) – Apophenia is the cognitive bias of perceiving meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. I prefer, though, to adapt this concept to use it as a spectrum applied to people. I use it to indicate the extent to which you spot patterns and connections. Those who are high in apophenia find real patterns that others miss but also see more false patterns, whereas those who are low have fewer false patterns but may miss real patterns. There’s a fundamental trade-off related to pattern identification – some people have more false positives, whereas others have more false negatives. People with schizophrenia tend to be very high in apophenia.

30) Lightgassing – The opposite of gaslighting – when someone reinforces your false misconceptions about the world (e.g., “You’re right, your girlfriend [who broke up with you] is a terrible person and doesn’t deserve you.”) This is another one by me.

This piece was first written on July 8, 2025, and first appeared on my website on September 15, 2025.

More specifically, I suspect that art is created mainly for four reasons:

1) Urge: many artists seem to have a compulsion to create (sometimes, to create oddly specific things). They make art to satisfy this urge. In this category, I would also include art that is mainly motivated by helping the artist achieve the flow state that they are seeking, as well as art that is made to help the artist process their own experiences. For instance, “The Race Track” is a 35-inch painting that Pinkham Ryder spent literal years working on, “building up layers of paint, resin, and varnish…He used unorthodox materials such as candle wax and bitumen. In his urgency, he wouldn’t wait for each layer to dry and was often painting into wet varnish or brushing fast-drying paint into slow-drying paint” (the Washington Post reports). He painted it in response to an experience he had: a friend told him he planned to bet $500 on a horse and then died by suicide when the horse lost. This kind of work is the artist making something for themself, or because they feel like they can’t NOT make it. Sometimes, art created out of compulsion appeals to art lovers, but sometimes, it only appeals to the artist themself. 

2) Beauty: people love Monet for the stunning beauty of his paintings (often landscapes). If there is a deeper meaning beyond “I’ve captured something of great beauty and done so in a beautiful way,” I can’t figure out what that thing is. More often than not, I think that the sort of art that regular people and art lovers (as opposed to art collectors) buy for themselves is simply what they find beautiful or what they find that creates a pleasing vibe.

3) Emotion: lots of art aims less at beauty and more at stirring emotions or provoking interesting thoughts. Examples include the Fountain by Duchamp (a porcelain urinal signed “R. Mutt”) or the Treachery of Images by Magritte (a painting of a pipe with the French phrase, “This is not a pipe” written beneath it). This can be the deepest form of art, but it is often hard to distinguish it from bullshit: the line between deep and bullshit is a thin one. But even if you think works like The Fountain and The Treachery of Images suck, it’s hard to deny that they at least provoke thought (though this cannot necessarily be said for the endless derivatives that now exist that riff on these themes). I would also put political art, as well as art that just aims to amuse, in this category of art that is about generating emotion or producing thoughts in the viewer. Another more specific example of art that appears to be about emotion rather than beauty is Artemisia Gentilesch’s painting Judith Slaying Holofernes (which depicts the assassination of a general by the Israelite heroine Judith). Even if you find the painting heinous, it’s hard not to feel something when you look at it. Note I had originally used Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son as an example here, but as Gwern pointed out, that was actually an example of painting done out of obsession, not for stirring emotions in others. Much of this kind of art is aimed at producing visceral emotions rather than intellectual thoughts. Art that evokes emotion is sometimes beautiful, but often it is ugly, shocking, or confusing. 

4) Playing Status Games: Art is a way for people to show off that they are in the know about what’s cool, that they have sophisticated and refined taste, and that they have lots of money. For instance, a member of the Saudi royal family purchased a Da Vinci painting (Salvator Mundi) for $450 million. As another example, Bored Ape #4580 (an NFT linked to an image of an ape wearing 3D glasses) sold for $1.9 million. Obviously, these were not purchased due to the great emotion or beauty evoked by these images. People buy these things because they want you to believe something about them (or, in some cases, less cynically but more pathetically because they are trying to convince themselves that they are cool). Collecting artworks is especially well-suited to status signaling because it better enables claims of connoisseurship and sophistication compared to buying, say, a yacht or private jet. Like everyone, artists want to make money, and some will lean into the social signaling aspects of art rather than creating art that they feel the need to create or rather than trying to make something deep or beautiful.

But, considering just these four motivations for making art, how do they work against each other?

Well, since most of the money in art comes from very wealthy people who are trying to signal status (to others, but also, sometimes to themselves), this warps the art market (especially what gets attention). For instance, it appears to have a really negative influence on what is shown in some galleries and museums (showing art that is about what it signals about the owner and viewer rather than art that is about the artist, beauty, or the emotion it creates in the viewer). 

I suspect that most people who go to museums and galleries want a combination of (1) learning about the interesting minds and lives of the artists, (2) seeing things of great beauty, and (3) seeing things that move them or make them think. 

Unfortunately, more often than is ideal, they see a lot of status signaling (sometimes it’s of the form “look how one-of-a-kind this is,” “sometimes it’s “look how expensive this is,” “and sometimes it’s “look how incomprehensible this is; if you were more sophisticated, maybe you’d understand”).

Most artists who toil away at making whatever they feel the urge to create, or whatever they find beautiful, or whatever they think will make people feel and think, are typically not going to make works that are effective at status signaling. So there is a subworld of artists producing works for wealthy people to use to signal status, and this stuff gets way overrepresented in museums, galleries, and the media relative to its value as art (as opposed to its monetary value in terms of what people will pay for it).

If what you want is beauty on your walls, you can simply get an inexpensive print or replica of your favorite works of all time. But people who play the art game would rather spend a lot of money on something unattractive than spend a small amount of money on something far more beautiful. In fact, ugliness makes something BETTER status signaling because lots of people can appreciate something beautiful, but only those most in the know (with the most evolved and sophisticated taste) can appreciate something that is shit. 

Sometimes literally. Piero Manzoni filled 90 tin cans with his own excrement. Christie’s auctioned off tin number 51 for $161,000 (unfortunately, the artist had already passed away, so I don’t think he got to experience his shit being worth more than gold).

So if you suspect that a lot of art that gets famous is bad, you’re honestly probably right, but that’s mainly because a certain kind of bad is good status signaling, and this crowds out attention from work that is more beautiful and more thought-provoking.

Thanks to Hunter Muir, Barry Galef, and Gwern for their comments, which were especially valuable in helping me improve this essay.

This piece was first written on November 11, 2023, and first appeared on this site on December 16, 2023.

Some remarkable things I suspect are true of nearly all adults: 

1) We each hold some beliefs that are almost totally non-responsive to evidence involving some combination of our identity (who we are), our group, the nature of reality (e.g., God), or the nature of what’s good.

Examples:

• Many have an unshakable belief that they are good even as they harm the world (or believe they’re insufficient even though they’re altruistic and productive)

• Most have an unshakable belief that their in-group is good and any group opposing their group is bad

2) We assume that other people’s internal experiences are more similar to our internal experiences than they really are. Consequently, we tend to predict they’ll behave more like us than they really will.

Example:

• You’re an anxious person who avoids situations you’re afraid of, so you predict other people will be more afraid of similar situations than they really will be and that they’ll be more avoidant than they really will be

3) Emotions alter our behaviors and thoughts (increasing the likelihood of some behaviors and thoughts, decreasing the likelihood of others) in emotion-dependent ways.

Examples: 

• Physical disgust increases the chance of backing away and reduces the chance of eating soon

• Feelings of depression increase the chance of thinking thoughts about situations being hopeless or actions being pointless

4) How good or bad we feel about something happening depends on the difference between our expectations about what will happen and the reality of what actually happened.

Examples: 

• If you think someone with a gun is about to shoot, but instead, they take your wallet and run, you might feel relief (whereas normally wallet theft would be highly distressing) 

• If you expect to make $300k on a deal, you might feel bad if you “only” get $200k

5) We have multiple “drives” encoded in our brains that want different things (e.g., they have different values or goals), and these often come into conflict. Our behavior is influenced by which drives are activated and how strongly each is activated.

Examples: 

• If we smell delicious popcorn right in front of us, most of us will eat it, whereas if it’s a few feet away and we can’t smell it, we’re less likely to 

• If we’re exhausted but also slightly hungry, we may delay making food until we are more hungry or less tired

6) We are influenced by the behavioral norms and patterns demonstrated by the people around us, especially when they are people who we identify as being part of our group or similar to us.

Example: 

• If it’s common to dress or talk a certain way in a place we move to, it will increase the chance we start to dress and talk similarly

This piece was first written on October 20, 2023, and first appeared on my website on February 7, 2024.

Ethical force 1: Emotion 

The vast majority of us experience empathy and compassion. We tend to feel happy when seeing others happy and feel bad when we see others suffering. These feelings guide our ethical behavior at an interpersonal level, causing prosocial behavior. For instance, people who behave kindly tend to have more compassion than average.

Ethical force 2: Mimicry 

Most of the time, most of us copy the behaviors of our social peers without even thinking. If everyone stands up, we’ll stand up. If everyone dangles a funny piece of fabric around their necks, we’ll do it too. Copying seems to be deeply rooted in us.

Social mimicry limits bad behaviors that aren’t the sort of thing that our peers do. For instance, in most subcultures in the US, punching someone when you feel angry is considered wildly inappropriate. So mimicry, in this case, can reduce violence.

Ethical force 3: Punishment 

Most of us have a strong desire to belong. We don’t want to be ostracized, which encourages avoiding unethical actions that our social group condemns. If we hurt someone, they may personally take revenge on us. And nobody wants to go to jail, which helps reduce the frequency of people committing crimes.

Some unethical behavior is avoided just to avoid punishment.

Ethical force 4: Belief 

Many people believe in specific ethical systems. Examples include Christians who adopt God’s commandments and the subset of Effective Altruists who adopt a flavor of utilitarianism. Belief can guide ethical behavior even in the absence of the other forces.

Individual Differences

People differ in how strongly they experience each of these four ethical forces. For instance, sociopaths (by definition) have a diminished capacity to experience #1 (especially empathy and compassion). From my observations, they also seem to be less influenced than usual by #2 (mimicry) and #3 (punishment). Hence, unless they have a strong #4 (belief system) or are especially fearful of punishment, they can be at a greatly elevated risk of unethical actions.

When someone engages in unethical behavior, we can return to this Four Forces framework to help make sense of their action. Most people would avoid that behavior due to some combination of the four forces described above. So, which of those forces were missing in this person’s case?

These Forces Can Also Promote Unethical Behavior

It’s also worth noting that each of these four forces can work in reverse. Whereas compassion discourages unethical behavior, emotions like anger can cause it. 

Whereas mimicry encourages good behavior in some ways, in an unjust society, it can encourage bad behavior (e.g., you may harm the outgroup because your ingroup normalizes it).

In a society with highly unjust laws, punishment can actually promote unethical behavior (e.g., requiring that you discriminate against a certain group).

And some belief systems lead to unethical behavior as well (e.g., if you join a cult whose leader teaches you that you must commit mass murder to become a martyr). 

Situational Factors

Some situations have little to no influence on one’s moral behavior, whereas other situations tend to create a strong pull toward or away from ethical behavior.

For example, there are some situations that would cause a substantial percentage of normal people to behave unethically. For instance:

• When there is a very strong social mimicry force in favor of unethical behavior (e.g., everyone you know thinks it’s good to hurt people from group X)

• When there is an extremely large personal gain to be made from behaving unethically, with no risk of punishment and with no identifiable victim (e.g., you have a chance to steal ten million dollars by taking pennies each from lots of people and it’s almost impossible for you to be caught)

• When there is an extremely large punishment for not behaving unethically (e.g., you’ll be tortured if you don’t commit a heinous act) 

So when we’re considering whether a person will behave unethically, we need to consider both personal factors (e.g., do they experience strong compassion for others) and situational factors (such as those described above).

This piece was first written on December 9, 2022, and first appeared on this site on January 7, 2023.

When a friend or loved one has something bad happen to them, what should you do to help them feel better? This question can be difficult to answer because it seems that at different times people want different things: empathy, problem-solving, optimism, distraction, and so on. See for instance this study where people give divergent answers about what they want from a friend after something bad happens.

We propose that there are four general states that a person may be in when something bad happens, and that knowing which of these states they are in can help you figure out how you can best comfort them. The key distinctions we draw here are that when something bad happens to you, at first you may not yet comprehend what’s happening, then you may feel bad but not yet want those emotions to go away. After that, you may be ready to start feeling better, and finally, you may want help with problem-solving. Often when you try to comfort somebody and it seems to make things worse, it’s because you are offering assistance that is best given at a different stage. For example, trying to cheer someone up when the person is still in a stage where they do not want to feel better yet or offering advice when they are still too upset to hear it.

Note that we are only considering non-emergency situations here, since emergencies require immediate action. Furthermore, note that while people do not always pass through all of these different states when something bad happens (so they are not really “stages” per se), when they do all occur, they tend to happen in a predictable order.

The Four States of Distress Model

State 1: Shocked or confused (you can help them understand what happened and how they feel about it)

Most common potential emotions: shock, confusion, surprise, fear, dread, denial

Example situation 1: your friend comes home from vacation and finds that their apartment is wrecked.

Example situation 2: your friend who thought their relationship was going great is suddenly dumped by their partner.

Strategies more likely to be helpful: :

• Active listening
• Helping to resolve confusion
• Expression of concern
• Validating their confusion
• Reflecting back to them your understanding of what they have said

Why: when something negative and unexpected occurs, we may need time to understand what actually happened and how we feel about it. A friend can help facilitate that process.

State 2: Feeling bad and not ready to feel better (you can help them express their feelings and feel validated)

Most common potential emotions: intense forms of sadness, depression, anxiety, anger, contempt, guilt, jealousy

Example situation 1: your friend whose home was wrecked is feeling highly anxious about the expensive damages and furiously angry at the person whom they let stay there while they were gone

Example situation 2: your friend who was broken up with yesterday is feeling very sad about the loss of the relationship

Strategies more likely to be helpful:

• Active listening
• Empathy
• Validating their emotions
• Reflecting back to them your understanding of what they have said
• Help them get into a mind set where they are ready to feel better

Why: when we’re feeling strong negative emotions we may actually want to be feeling them. For instance, if someone we love dies, we likely will want to be sad about it for some period of time. Or if we are betrayed, we may well want to stay angry at the person for a while because we feel that anger is deserved.

State 3: Feeling bad but wants to feel better (you can help them feel better)

Most common potential emotions: intense to moderate forms of sadness, depression, anxiety, anger, contempt, guilt, jealousy [same list as State 2]

Example situation 1: your friend whose home was wrecked is still feeling anxious about the cost of replacing their possessions and angry at the person who caused the damage, but they are sick of thinking about it all the time and want to move past it

Example situation 2: your friend who was broken up with still feels very sad about it, but wants to feel better, move on, and focus on the future

Strategies more likely to be helpful (though note that this section is especially person dependent, with different people having different Comfort Languages):

• Optimism, reframing (e.g., seeing it in a less negative light or finding a silver lining)
• Physical comforting (e.g., a hug)
• Validating their emotions
• Distraction (e.g., doing a fun activity)
• Helping them explore and understand their feelings
• Problem-solving (especially if there is a way to quickly fix much of the problem)

Why: after feeling bad for a while, at some point we are likely to get sick of those negative feelings and wish that we could feel better again. At that point a friend can help alleviate those negative feelings.

State 4: Feeling better and wants solutions (you can help them move forward past the problem)

Most common potential emotions: more manageable or minor forms of sadness, depression, anxiety, anger, contempt, guilt, or jealousy

Example situation 1: your friend whose home was wrecked is feeling somewhat less bad about it, but now they want help figuring out how they are going to get their stuff replaced and whether they can get the guest who caused the damage to pay.

Example situation 2: your friend who was broken up with is feeling somewhat less bad about it and wants your help meeting someone new

Strategies more likely to be helpful (though your choice will depend on the person and your relationship to them)::

• Brainstorming solutions
• Problem solving
• Advice
• Volunteering your time to actually help on the solution
• Providing resources to help solve the problem

Why: when we’re feeling intensely bad, it’s often both difficult and unappealing to problem-solve. After we start to feel better, however, we may start to feel motivated to find a way to improve our situation. A friend can be very helpful at this point in helping us think through potential solutions or by volunteering to help directly.

So the next time a friend or loved one has had something bad happen to them, consider applying the The Four States of Distress Model by considering which of the four states they are likely in:

1. Shocked or confused – you can help them figure out what happened and how they they are feeling
2. Feeling bad and not ready to feel better – you can listen empathetically and validate their feelings
3. Feeling bad but wants to feel better – you can help them feel better using their preferred Comfort Language
4. Feeling better and wants solutions – you can help them figure out what to do

If you’re not an outlier, you may never guess that someone’s internal experience could be so vastly different. Even if 5% of people have an experience, and it causes very different internal experiences than you have but doesn’t manifest in an apparent difference in behavior, you might not notice the difference exists. So these “outliers” don’t necessarily have to be rare to escape your notice.

Here are a few real examples of some of the most extraordinarily different psychological experiences I’m aware of:

(1) Some can control things about themselves that people don’t normally view humans as being in control of (e.g., can choose to quickly lower their heart rate, or can choose to suddenly make themselves feel happier if they want) vs. those who aren’t in control of things that people normally think we all control (e.g., they feel as though they are literally unable to take action in certain types of situations regardless of how bad the consequences of inaction are, or they can’t stop thinking about a certain thing no matter how much they want to)

(2) Some view themselves as truly special, capable of world-changing things that no one else is, or existing for a singular and unique purpose, vs. people who view themselves as inherently inferior to others or fundamentally not deserving of love

(3) Some lack any desire for friendship and have no negative feelings about long periods of solitude vs. those who prefer to spend literally every hour of their waking time around others.

(4) Some control their physical condition primarily by treating their body as a chemical machine and consciously varying the inputs (e.g., caffeine, certain foods, nicotine, marijuana, alcohol, microdoses, modafinil, Adderall) vs. those who purposely avoid any substance that causes significant changes in their physical condition.

(5) Some have virtually no awareness of the facial expressions they are making vs. those who are aware of their facial expression at all times in social settings

(6) Some never experience a specific emotional state (e.g., they have little idea what a “depressive” state means because they’ve never experienced one, or they have never had an experience of awe) vs. people who experience specific emotions at a higher frequency or intensity than is typical (e.g., they find humor in almost everything)

(7) Some have almost no awareness of social dynamics (e.g., who is trying to suck up to whom and who is trying to signal what) vs. people who observe social dynamics just as they would a person’s hair color

(8) Some have almost no ability to change how they feel emotionally by changing their cognitive beliefs about a thing vs. can actually “snap” their emotions into alignment immediately using their cognitive beliefs when the two are out of sync

(9) Some view coincidences and strange occurrences as being deeply meaningful and fundamentally non-random vs. those who view most of their existence as being driven by unavoidable but totally meaningless chance

(10) Some have extremely limited abilities to guess what emotion another person is feeling in a given situation vs. those who constantly are aware of the emotional states of the other people in the room

(11) Some have learned that it is bad when another person is very unhappy and want to help, but experience essentially no emotion about it vs. those who viscerally experience pain when they see (or even hear of) someone else who is very unhappy, and can’t imagine what it would be like to not feel compelled to help

Let’s dissect what’s going on here. An event triggers an upsetting thought, and the thought causes negative emotion. With your mood now lowered, upsetting thoughts are more likely to come to mind. Soon, another upsetting thought does occur, which causes more negative emotion, and further upsetting thoughts. Anxiety provokes worried thoughts, which themselves produce further anxiety. Sadness leads to despairing thoughts, which provoke greater sadness.

But negative emotions don’t just cause negative thoughts, they cause excessively negative thoughts, that reflect a distorted picture of reality. Anxiety causes us to overestimate how dangerous things are, depression makes our situation seem hopeless, and anger makes small slights seem like major attacks. In other words, negative emotions cause us to think in distorted ways that make these same emotions grow.

One way out of this downward emotional spiral is to use reason to reduce the mood lowering effect of negative thoughts by challenging any irrational or exaggerated content lurking in them. The earlier in the process you can apply reasoning, the better, because the more upset you are, the more difficult it is to reason effectively, and the more your thoughts are likely to be distorted.

A useful approach to reasoning yourself into a better mood is to pinpoint the negative distortions in thought that your emotions are causing, and then rephrase your thoughts more realistically. If you do this successfully your thoughts won’t lower your emotional state, and in this less negative mood state, further negative thoughts will be less likely to occur. This realization and those mentioned above are some of the powerful insights to come out of the field of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

But how do you go about finding distortions in your thinking? Psychologists like David Burns have made it easy for us by categorizing the most common cognitive distortions that occur when people are upset. These are listed at the bottom of this page in an easy to consume form, and you can also download a quick reference here. Not only does this list of common distortions provide a fascinating glimpse into the content of the depressed and anxious mind, it serves as a useful tool that we can leverage when emotional.

So when you’re feeling upset, apply the following procedure:

1. Notice the upsetting thoughts that are running through your mind, and write them down.
2. Search the list of common cognitive distortions for any distortions that are lingering in these thoughts.
3. For each thought, generate a more realistic and productive one. These new thoughts should address or refute any distortions in the originals. Say these new thoughts to yourself, and confirm that you believe them.

Click here for a worksheet to help you do this exercise.

There is a good chance that just carrying out the exercise will immediately improve your mood. Even better, repeated practice may start to permanently alter your thinking, so that you’re less likely to produce cognitive distortions in the first place. Methods like this one are commonly employed by psychologists when treating severely anxious and depressed people, with good effect, but this technique also works well for milder forms of negative emotion.

So the next time you’re suffering from negative emotions and want to reduce your pain, you’ll now have an exercise you can apply to do something about it.

Below is the list of common cognitive distortions.

1. All or nothing thinking

Seeing things in extreme, black or white categories.

Since I’ve never had a girlfriend, I must be a loser.

If I fail this exam, I’m worthless.

If was actually good, I wouldn’t have made that mistake.

2. Overgeneralization

Seeing bad things as being part of a pattern that will inevitably repeat.

Just my luck! Bad things are always happening to me.

There I go again, screwing up another good lead.

Turned yet down again. I’m never going to have a girlfriend.

3. Focusing on the negative

Paying attention to the bad parts of a thing while ignoring the good.

I may have done well on my other exams, but I got a B in math.

This war proves that humanity is fundamentally evil.

The wedding would have been nice, but the waiters were rude.

4. Disqualifying the positive

Discrediting positive aspects or turning them into negatives.

The special effects were good, but not as good as I hoped.

He said he admired my intelligence, but was only being nice.

It’s true I got an A in that class, but that one was easy.

5. Jumping to conclusions

Making negative guesses about the future or what others think.

If they cared about me they would have come to my party.

He must be angry at me since he didn’t return my phone call.

I just know that they are going to reject my paper submission.

6. Magnification

Exaggerating the scale or significance of an event.

I’m never going to be happy again without her.

I can’t believe I’m filing for bankruptcy. My life is over.

If I don’t get this job, I’m going to be completely screwed.

7. Emotional Reasoning

Using your feeling about things as proof they really are that way.

Feel ashamed  ->  Assume you’ve done wrong  ->  “I shouldn’t have done that”

Feel angry  ->  Assume the other person was in the wrong  ->  “You asshole”

Feel rejected  ->  Assume no one wants to see you  ->  “No one likes me”

8. Should and Must statements

Telling yourself that you/things should be a certain way.

I can’t make mistakes like this again!

She shouldn’t treat me that way.

Waiters should always show respect to their customers.

9. Labeling

Oversimplifying the traits of yourself or others using emotional wording. 

I’m such a pig for eating all that ice cream!

That bitch at the movie theatre was so rude.

Only an idiot would make that mistake.

10. Blaming

Placing blame on yourself or others when the blamed person isn’t really responsible.

If I were a good mother, my daughter would be happier.

If you had been more careful, I wouldn’t have biked into you!

Still jobless after a month of searching. What’s wrong with me?

But all hope is not lost. We can effectively reason about which of our beliefs are more likely to be correct, and which are more likely to be in error. Even if we feel equally strong feelings of belief for two ideas, further considerations can make us realize that we are more likely to be correct in one of the cases than the other. In other words, there are traits that go beyond our strength of belief that can help us identify where we are likely to have made errors.

Consider the following properties that beliefs can have. Each of these is an indicator that a belief is less likely to be true.

1. Many smart, knowledgeable people disagree with you (e.g. you think that evolution didn’t happen). If many such people think you are wrong, it is not obvious why your belief is more likely to be correct than the beliefs of those who disagree.
2. You have a financial (or other) incentive to believe it (e.g. you think that the product you created really does regrow hair, and you value providing a product that helps people). When we have an incentive to think a certain way, we are less likely to seek out or listen to evidence that contradicts this way of thinking.
3. If the belief were not true you would find it psychologically disturbing (e.g. you believe that your wife does not fantasize about any other men). Our minds tend to veer away from thoughts that disturb us, making it less likely that we believe them, even when they are true.
4. You originally came to believe for reasons that don’t have much to do with logic, evidence or reason (e.g. growing up, your mom wouldn’t let you pet dogs on the street, so you believe that doing so is dangerous).
5. Your argument as to why your belief is true is long and complex (e.g. you believe that a convicted criminal is innocent, because when you evaluate the twelve pieces of evidence given against her, you find that they each don’t hold up). When our arguments are long and complex it is more likely that we have made an error at some point in our thinking.
6. There are lots of possible outcomes, and your belief is that just one of them will occur (e.g. you think Hillary will beat out the other seven candidates in this primary). Typically, the more possible outcomes there are, the less likely it will be that any particular one of them is correct.
7. A large number of factors influence whether your belief will end up being true (e.g. you’re convinced that GDP growth will decline over the next year). When many factors influence an occurrence, it is really hard to be sure that you have properly taken into account all of the important ones.
8. You don’t understand the arguments of those that disagree with you, or see how they could believe what they believe (e.g. you know that a fetus is obviously a person). When you don’t understand contrary opinions, it is an indicator that you have mainly researched one side of an issue, and so are less likely to have really weighed the strength of arguments on all sides.
9. You become emotional when people disagree with you about the belief (e.g. you think that insurance companies should not cap health expenditures for illnesses that are usually terminal, and you become upset when challenged on this issue). The problem here is that strong emotions can interfere with our ability to evaluate arguments objectively, and prevent us from engaging in open-minded discourse about a subject.
10. You can’t clearly explain what your belief means (e.g. you’re convinced that you have free will). When we find it hard to explain what we mean by one of our beliefs, it may be the case that we have merely become attached to an idea or intuition, rather than having considered the evidence and made a decision based on that.

To be good at identifying and stamping out our false beliefs, we need to go beyond just considering how strong our feeling of belief is. We need to consider the properties of our beliefs, and decide whether each is the sort of belief that we should have skepticism about.

Influences: Kathryn Schulz

Consider, for example, what happens when you feel tired. The obvious and natural thing to do is to lie down. This works well when there is time to sleep or nap. But what if you are feeling tired and should leave your house in 10 minutes? While lying down is what you naturally feel like doing, it is likely to make you feel even more tired, or cause you to be late. A better solution to your grogginess is to do things that you probably don’t feel like doing. Put on energetic music, make a cup of tea, and while it is heating, do fast jumping jacks for two minutes. Jumping jacks may sound really unappealing, but they are more likely to help you feel awake than lying down is.

Let’s take another example. When people are depressed, activities they usually enjoy very much tend to seem unappealing. Because of this, people tend to plan fewer fun activities when they are depressed than they usually do. Often, they have the inclination just to sit around their homes. Unfortunately, staying at home for long periods of time has a tendency to further people’s depression, socially isolate them, and make life seem even duller. As in the fatigue example, the solution is to fight against what you feel like doing. In this case, that means making plans and getting out of the house. To reduce depression, you should call friends to hang out, exercise, go for a walk, go out to dinner, etc. Behavioral changes like these are a key component of the therapeutic system known as behavioral activation, which studies indicate is one of the most effective treatments for depression.

Yet another example of our natural tendencies failing us is our reaction to our own anxiety. People who are anxious naturally tend to avoid whatever is making them anxious. The problem with this response, however, is that when we have irrational anxiety or fears that are blown out of proportion, running from the things that frighten us tends to reinforce our irrational reactions. If a man who is phobic of spiders runs away at the sight of one, he is reinforcing this behavior (via negative reinforcement). Whenever he runs from the spider, his anxiety is reduced (so the behavior leads to the removal of the negative stimulus, which acts as a form of reward for unhelpful behavior). A person with that fleeing behavior never truly learns (or becomes used to) the idea that most spiders are safe. If he had instead done the opposite behavior, and stayed in the room with the spider, it is likely that eventually his brain would stop reacting so strongly. Sitting in a room with a spider for 10 minutes may be terrifying when you are phobic, but sitting in the room with the spider for 5 hours is going to be downright boring. This technique, facing up to the things that make us anxious, is a key component of exposure therapy, which randomized controlled trials show is one of the most effective treatments for anxiety.

Anger, like anxiety and depression, also leads to counterproductive behaviors. People who feel angry tend to overact, take risks, attack, and damage relationships. But in the modern world, yelling often prevents people from discussing situations calmly and finding solutions, and it often furthers the anger of the other party. Anger increases the likelihood of physical violence, which rarely leads to productive outcomes. Often, the most useful way to react when feeling very angry is to fight against our inclinations and act to calm ourselves down. Walk away from the situation if possible. Take ten, slow, deep breaths, counting each one. Visualize something incompatible with anger (like petting a puppy, or watching your best friend laugh). Try to empathize with the person that has made you angry, asking “Why might he have behaved this way?” and “Have I ever behaved in that way?”

Fatigue  is the body’s signal for wanting rest or sleep. If it is not a good time to sleep, then you will be better off if you ignore what your body feels like it wants, and try to energize yourself rather than lying down. Depression often leads to a lack of desire to do activities, and underestimation of how fun they will be if you try them. But going with this inclination tends to promote further depression, whereas doing exactly the opposite (calling up that friend, planning that activity) tends to reduce it. Anxiety is your body’s way of warning you of danger, and there is a natural tendency to want to avoid and escape danger. But in many cases in the modern world we fear things that are unlikely to hurt us, and sometimes the anxiety is more harmful than the thing we fear. Fighting against your inclination to escape tends to reduce your fear, whereas fleeing reinforces fleeing in the future. Anger is part of a system that helps us preserve social status, and defend ourselves from enemies. But in today’s world it can get us in trouble, preventing helpful conflict resolution. We are therefore sometimes better off fighting against our impulses, and engaging in behaviors that reduce our anger.

When we are tired, depressed, anxious or angry the inclinations to do things that are not good for us can be very strong. But strategizing what is best for you to do while experiencing these strong feelings is very difficult. One solution that can be quite helpful is to, in advance, write down good strategies to use in these situations. This is rather easy to do while in an emotionally neutral state. These strategies take the form “If I am feeling Y then do A, B and C”. Then, when you next find yourself feeling Y, you can just consult this list of strategies (which ideally will be memorized). It can be far easier to follow a specific plan from a list than to come up with the right strategy on the fly. And if you get in the habit of consulting this list, the new reactions will start to feel effortless and natural.

Here are some pre-written strategies that you can save, print or memorize. You can then consult this list when the situation calls for it.

When tired, and it’s not a good idea to sleep:

• drink a caffeinated beverage
• put on energetic music
• do a couple minutes of fast exercise, like jumping jacks

When feeling depressed:

• call some friends and have a conversation with someone you like and feel close to
• plan some activities that you normally would enjoy (even if you predict you won’t enjoy them)
• exercise
• go outdoors
• force yourself to smile for two minutes straight, trying to imitate a real smile as closely as possible

When feeling anxious about something that is actually not going to harm you:

• don’t run away or avoid this thing that you fear
• face it, as this will help reduce your unreasonable fear in the long run
• expose yourself to similar things that you fear on a repeated basis, until you get used to them, not allowing yourself to leave the situation

When angry, and anger is counterproductive:

• walk away, if possible, and avoid acting until you feel calmer
• take ten, slow, deep breaths, and count them as you do it
• think about something incompatible with anger (like petting a puppy, or watching someone you love laugh)
• try to empathize with the person that has angered you (ask yourself “Why is he behaving this way?” and “Have I ever done something similar?”)

It turns out that the answers produced by our reasoning system are highly impacted by our emotional state. When anxious, the probability we assign to bad events occurring increases compared to when we are excited. When depressed we tend to plan as though activities are unlikely to bring us pleasure, even ones that do bring us pleasure reliably (so we avoid friends, predict that we won’t enjoy our favorite activities, lie in bed without trying to entertain ourselves, etc.) When anxious we tend to plan for the future in a risk averse way, whereas when angry we tend to be risk seeking and often act without planning. And when we feel vulnerable we tend to construct theories about cause and effect relationships (both real and imagined) more readily and based on less data than we do when we feel safe.

Since the conclusions produced by our reasoning system are altered by our emotional state, if our goal is to get the right answers reliably while reasoning it makes sense to take into account how our current emotions are likely to alter our conclusions. To be safe, it is wise to save important reasoning for times when you are emotionally neutral. Don’t compose that email to your boss while you are still angry at him, don’t do financial planning when you are anxious, and avoid drawing conclusions about conspiracy theories when you are already feeling vulnerable.

On the flip side, our reasoning system is capable of altering our emotional state. Techniques to achieve this are discussed a great deal in the Cognitive Therapy literature. Founders of this field hit upon a remarkable finding: when you get people who are experiencing strong emotions (like anxiety or depression) to write down the thoughts running through their heads, you find that many of their thoughts are unreasonable, distorted or irrational. That is, rather than being based in sound reasoning, their negative emotions are at least in part produced and maintained by irrational, exaggerated and self-destructive thinking. So, it was theorized, correcting some of these distorted thoughts using rational thinking might lead to an improvement in the devastating emotions that people experience. And this is, in fact, precisely what happens.

When seeing a cognitive therapist, patients are taught to make Thought Records. That is, when they are experiencing unhelpful and painful emotions they take a few minutes to write down what situation just occurred and the thoughts that they are having. They then may search these thoughts for common cognitive distortions, consider the evidence for and against their thoughts, come up with “rational responses” (true statements that dispute their negative thinking), or write more balanced and realistic thoughts to replace the ones that they had. The result of this process is that the level of emotion is often reduced, and over the long-term, incorrect and unreasonable beliefs that lead to negative emotions can be altered.

If you need to get correct answers to factual questions, don’t reason while emotional. If you must reason while emotional, consider how your emotion is likely to influence your conclusions. And if you frequently suffer from unhelpful or painful emotions, consider learning about Cognitive Therapy techniques which can help you feel better and correct distortions in your thinking that may be magnifying your harmful emotions.

Influences: David Burns, Paul Ekman