Academic Competency

Sir Ken Robinson links to a fun film where giraffes jump from a springboard into the water (Deveaux). It evokes the emotions of surprise and curiosity. The film can be created because of something called imagery – the ability to work out scenarios for our inner eye. This ability arose (1) after our ancestors started eating bone marrow and meat that expanded their prefrontal cortex, (2) after [at least] two major climate changes. In 1840, Elizabeth Ricord wrote that using imagination to combine conceptions was the highest level of the intellect. In the early 20th century, physicists, mathematicians and psychologists reasoned about the same. Link to my appearance at the 2012 Science Festival on creativity. The neurological and psychological dispositions of our species, which enable creations like the video showing giraffes jumping, arose as a consequence of animal-based food and significant climate change. Note. The same mental ability underlies all artifacts (things that do not occur in...

In a collaboration between researchers in design and neuroscience, they set out to search for which brain activity was associated with creativity. The starting point was the following definition of creativity: the ability to create new but appropriate results. The study was criticized for its design. I believe that the definition is too abstract. Another part of the criticism concerned the absence of a network perspective. My own definition of creativity: a mental process in which unrelated knowledge objects, or fragments of them, are combined or fused into new cognitive structures with meaning. Although creativity is an innate ability, it may take a little encouragement to get that type of thinking going, e.g. with dance. In 2012 I was invited to be a keynote speaker at the Science Festival in Gothenburg. There I designed a test where subjects were tasked with combining two letters into symbols that represented something useful. The results showed that those who danced produced 57% mo...

Ipsos shows that people are generally unable to make accurate judgments about demographics. Rosling suggest that we use constructed memories when assessing the present. And although research shows: that the Sun is the center of our solar system, that our species is related to other animals, that relativity matters, that it is important to problematize the phenomenon of climate, that we live in the most peaceful of times, a father-effect on children's emotional adjustment and cognitive development and that women more often than men are perpetrators of intimate partner violence, Copernicus, Gallilei, Darwin and Wallas, Dr. Piejke Jr. Dr Pinker, and Dr. Österberg/Mr. Bergkvist suffered harsh criticism including personal attacks for their discoveries and opinions. Research in psychology shows we rely on on information that is prototypical, often mentioned, and easy to access, and that memory is for simulating the future and that we during that process tend to suffer from simulation bia...

Peter Österberg Department of Psychology, Lund University The article has been updated – the content is the same, but the order has changed. Abstract The purpose of this paper is to investigate emotions in the context of social and organizational creativity. The conclusions made from this paper are that emotions play crucial roles in learning and idea generation as well as for decision making; emotions can be interpreted by others as well as triggered by leaders. An emergent thought that came during the process of writing this paper was the two-factor approach common to many models of psychology (in leadership, decision making, cognition, and so forth). Most models concerning human behavior seem to involve things that can be verbalized and things that cannot; conscious and unconscious thoughts seem to be present at every aspect of human thinking. In Locke and Latham’s Goal-setting theory, challenging symbolic representation, either by imagery or by leadership assignment, tr...

Organizations are governed by socio-culturally determined norms. At the same time, organizations need people who dare to think outside that box and thus use their innate creativity to be able to solve ongoing complex problems. People's values vary, e.g. between collectivism and individualism. The former tend to stay within the box, while the latter tend to venture outside the box. Collectivism poses problems for companies. The Emperor's new clothes, Facit in Åtvidaberg, Sweden, and Apollo 13 are mentioned as examples. It is important to stand up for one's values in combination but to accept the ditto of others. It gives room for reasoning that leads to new insights and conclusions. 3 pages. Please support the blog via Swish (Sweden), MobilePay (Finland) or Wise.

Generative learning management – a two-factor model to improve organizations social generative learning (later also social creativity). Please support the blog via Swish (Sweden), MobilePay (Finland) or Wise.

I avhandlingen testar jag Darwins Facial feedback teori i en kontext av idrottspsykologi. Anekdoten indikerade att atleter som aktiverar zygomatic major, en muskel som lyfter mungiporna, förkortar tiden för mental repetering i betydande grad. Studien, som har en experimentell design, bekräftade anekdoten. Bachelor's thesis in emotional psychology. Facial feedback: how a smile can help you interpret the world more positively! In this thesis, I test Darwin's Facial feedback theory in the context of sports psychology. The anecdote indicated that athletes who activate the zygomatic major, a muscle that lifts the corners of the mouth, shorten the time for mental rehearsal significantly. The study, which has an experimental design, confirmed the anecdote. Stöd gärna bloggen via Swish (Sverige), MobilePay (Finland) eller Wise.