interesting #5: on emotions and image in the digital age

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2. Instagram made me feel bad about myself—until I hacked its algorithms to improve my body image, Quartz
Sounds clickbaitey, but actually insightful. Be careful about what you like . How to not expose yourself to comparing? Hack instagram to learn from it instead of letting it make you feel unhappy. Relevant in the digital age

It’s not me, I swear: The Explore tool mingles personalized images with trending content, so even if you completely ignore images you don’t want to see, they may still show up. There’s also a problem with hashtags. If you “like” an image with a certain hashtag, the algorithms seem to think you want to see more photos grouped by that hashtag. Try to consider your feed holistically, rather than each specific image.
Reset: If certain types of images particularly upset you, click on the Instagram option “I don’t want to see this anymore.”

Learn to learn better. Break up with someone before exam season? (mainly kidding) 

We have known for quite some time that emotional experiences stick in the memory better than non-emotional ones do. However, in the Nature Neuroscience study, the researchers demonstrate that non-
emotional experiences that followed emotional ones were also better remembered on a later memory test.

Very do androids dream of electric sheep?. Emotions on command? Where does being human end and being a robot start if we're able to program ourselves? 

With a pair of regular headphones, users can access an accompanying app to access the binaural beats that tweak brain wave frequencies. Through the audio tracks, the company claims that ReNu can oscillate the frequency between alpha and theta zones -- essentially producing a state of deep relaxation and recovery to cope with a stressful day. The product is expected to officially launch later in the Fall this year.


For instance, in one of our studies, conducted in 2013, we asked 400 people to recall and write about their past experiences: some people recalled and wrote about their past unethical actions, some about their past ethical actions, and others recalled and wrote about other types of actions not related to morality.

We found that, on average, participants remembered fewer details of their actions and had less vivid memories of unethical behaviors as compared to ethical behaviors or positive or negative (but not unethical) actions.