Cloudfindings

The True Political Compass: A Hypothesis of the Underlying Psychology of Political Orientations It is commonly thought that worldviews originate purely from social influences and intellectual reflection. While the creation of ideology may involve these, many biologically based psychological traits heavily influence worldviews through various mechanisms, and the originators of ideologies likely have traits predisposing them towards certain ideas. The reason for this not being common knowledge is likely due to individuals wanting to believe that their worldview is objective and unbiased and purely intellectual, when it isn't, mixed with motivated gross scientific ignorance. In this post, I look into the psychology of political orientation, and form hypotheses that will be tested in a study. Disgust Sensitivity Disgust sensitivity is a trait that effects how much disgust you experience in response to various stimuli. Disgust sensitivity evolved to effect behavior in a way that encoura...

Dimensions of Talent and Ability: A Critical Look at Multiple Intelligences, and How They Really Manifest A popular idea touted as an alternative or "better" version of the standard scientific definition of intelligence (i.e., general intelligence, IQ) is the "multiple intelligences" theory, which suggests that there are many "types" of intelligences, such as musical, naturalistic, spiritual, visual, interpersonal, etc. While a popular idea, it is not really grounded in true axes of differences in humans and some do not much constitute the concept of an ability, and most of the “multiple intelligences” are found to not be separate from IQ and general intelligence (Visser et al. 2006). However, it is clear that all talent, ability, and successful outcomes aren't entirely covered by the general factor of intelligence, and it might be useful for individuals to have awareness of the different axes of ability and what they relate to, as opposed to the commo...

Beyond Dopamine: Possible Neurochemical Bases of Openness To Experience and Intellect In recent years, efforts have been made to understand how individual differences & personality traits relate to neurotransmitter systems, such as dopamine and serotonin (e.g., Alkalay et al. 2022). To my knowledge however, research on the neurobiology of openness is limited, and almost all focuses on dopamine. However, dopamine is linked to both openness and extraversion, though are thought to be related to separate parts of the dopamine system (DeYoung 2013), leaving openness independent from extraversion or openness with low extraversion unexplained in regards to neurochemical influences. Understanding the neurobiology of openness beyond dopamine may be beneficial to treatment of disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, as persons with schizophrenia spectrum disorders tend to have high openness but low extraversion, and antipsychotics may worsen extraversion-linked symptoms, and autism is lin...