Saturday, December 31, 2011

Human Motivation: What Drives Us?

Lately, I've been really interested in human motivation. In a course I took, we learned about a concept called the "overjustification effect." According to this concept, bestowing someone an external incentive (i.e., a reward) for performing a task that is intrinsically motivated (i.e., a task that the person is performing for the benefit of the task itself) leads to decreased motivation to continue performing the task. For example, paying a child to play video games may in fact decrease the likelihood that the child will continue playing video games once the money stops coming. The underlying rationale is that we, as humans, want our actions to be internally controlled. We want to have control over our actions. When we perceive our actions to be externally controlled, we are less interested in pursuing them if given a choice.

How does this apply to everyday life? Do professional athletes enjoy their sport any less than recreational athletes? Is the education system stripping us of our innate desire to learn? Some may say yes, but it appears to be more complicated than just a yes or no question.

The following video comes from a very interesting man, Daniel H. Pink, an American author and journalist. Pink argues for the necessity of autonomy, mastery and purpose. We want to control our actions, be able to see improvement in the mastery of our skills, and feel like we are contributing to the world as a whole. Enjoy the video!

Friday, December 30, 2011

Introducing: Agnes Obel

Agnes Obel is a Danish singer and songwriter who employs simple melodies and soft vocals to produce beautiful music. She is one of my favorite artists, so I thought I'd share her here.

"Riverside" is probably her most well known song, as it appeared in an episode of Grey's Anatomy. Here it is; I hope you enjoy it!
 

Thursday, December 29, 2011

A Pilot Project

This is my first ever blog post, and so I'm unsure exactly how to structure it. I started this blog because I love sharing the things I find interesting. Going off to university has been both a blessing and a curse, it seems. While I love learning new things, sometimes I find that school almost takes the fun out of learning, even at the post-secondary level. Instead of taking the time to really grasp the material I'm learning, most of the time I feel like I'm cramming down as many facts as I can to be able to fill out a scantron card that ultimately decides my course grade. This frustrates me, because I feel like most of what I'm learning is very interesting and I would like to have the time to really grasp it and marvel at how complex and beautiful our world is.

I guess that's what this blog is for: to share all the interesting little tidbits of knowledge about our vast and awesome world that most people don't really take the time to learn or appreciate. In a world where we structure our society around conveniences, where we are constantly finding ways to save time and get through our work more efficiently, it seems almost disheartening that we also seem to set less time aside for independent learning. Even part-way through my post-secondary education, it still seems the norm is to cram information into short-term memory and regurgitate it come exam time, and then immediately forget everything. Students who want to take the next step and go beyond the course material, maybe learn a thing or two that "isn't going to be on the exam," are seen as "keeners" or "geeks" and we assume they "have no lives." I don't claim to be immune to this social process; I am often quick to judge the students who seem to be on top of their courseload. It seems sad to me that we are in a society where higher learning is seen as a negative thing. Universities are becoming more like corporations than learning havens, and this is shining a very negative light on education in general. Knowing "too much" is a bad thing.

I'm sure in the future as I keep blogging, my opinions on our society will become more clear, so I will end my mini-rant there for now. As a taste of what I plan to do with this blog, I'll share a bit of info about something I learned recently that I found very interesting...

In biology, "senescence" is the natural process of aging that occurs to an organism after maturity and leads to decreased function of the organism, and eventually to death. Senescence leads to an increase in homeostatic imbalance (higher blood pressure, for example) and a decrease in stress response. But what if we could escape from this process of senescence? There is one known organism that in fact does not undergo the process of senescence. The "immortal jellyfish" (or Turritopsis nutricula) is the only known biologically immortal creature on the planet; it goes through a unique life cycle in which it can revert to its sexually immature state after reaching sexual maturity. The organism undergoes a process called cellular transdifferentiation: one type of cell turns into another type of cell. This discovery is very promising for the field of regenerative medicine, because if we could harness the concept of cellular transdifferentiation, theoretically there would be no need for stem cells. Maybe one day, humans will have achieved immortality. Then, maybe, would we take more time to learn about our world?

I called this post a "Pilot Project" because I'm not sure if I will continue this blog or not. It's always easy to come up with a great idea over the winter break, but once I start back in two weeks, I'm not sure I'll have enough time or motivation to keep posting regularly. I'd like to keep this blog, so I guess we'll see!