The Mystery of Picasso’s Son

• Motivation and intrinsic drive are key indicators for sucess
• Intrisinc motivation is the drive to do something for the sense of competence and achievement as opposed to purely extrinsic rewards like money.
• Goldilock’s zone of achievements: setting demanding but attainable goals lead to maximum success.
• Hiding the ladder: Parents know they climbed a difficult ladder with many small steps, many of them luck, some perseverence, and some skill and application. But sometimes successful people hide the ladder. In the self-satisfaction of their sucess, they wish to be admirred for their greatness without tarnishing it with the picture of a thousand small steps on a shaky ladder.

The Puzzle of Changeling Fish

• High testosterone –> traders earn higher profit <-> increase in appetite for risk, likelihood of snatching a daring profit
• Winning -> surge in testosterone <-> less anxious, more aggressive, higher pain threshold -> likely to win next fight
• These surges may be long-term but mostly the brain behaves like a turbo-charged car that pushes more power for the same amount of gasoline
• But all these effects are context-dependent -> context refers to place - sight, sounds, smell. Most of all context means mental landscape, the beliefs, emotions, and feelings - some conscious, most unconscious - that encompass the event.
• Wearing color red results in much more number of wins compared to blue -> wired as danger (due to association with blood), primitive association of dominance -> wearing releases performance enhancing drug - testosterone and reduces it in opponent.
• Negotiations stuck on home-ground always earn better than ones elsewhere.
• Raising clenched fists in triumph -> universal sign of victory and power -> increases confidence in mass action
• Most senior person in a meeting -> strech back, clasp hands behind head, stick out elbows, juniors -> hunch forward over table, head thrust out, hands clasped under the table.
• Key lesson: no matter what I feel outside, if I behave as if the way I want to feel, the feelings will likely follow –> positive feedback loop.

The Enigma of Bill Clinton’s Friend

• Mum effect: ‘Shoot the messenger’ culture often leads to reluctancy in juniors giving bad news to seniors due to their relatively powerlessness. Hence, most battles are led by upper/middle class rather than lower class.
• Holding power -> egocentricity, corrosion of ability to detach from one’s point of view -> (1) less inclined to see event’s from other’s perspective, (2) subject to illusion that they can control events too vast and complex to be controllable.
• Sex and power are linked to surge in tertosterone -> increase appetute for power and sex -> profound effect on how brain functions.
• Power put blinkers on us – less likely to be put off by distractors in peripheral vision. Low power brodens the focus of attention to take signals – warnings.
• Action-man CEO + quitely spoken caution-monger counterpart (accountant / lawyer)
• Noradrenaline: Linked to vigilance, monitoring and response to threat, while dopamine is lined to action towards a goal and reward for achieving it.
• The Need for power: People are motivated to have an impact on other people – give orders, make decisions, take control –> action-oriented. Actions can also be in the form of giving – advice, gifts, and direction. Having an impact involves having a particularly strong concern with your own reputation.
• Killer instrinct in sports – shows need for power –> dominating other
• Signs for need of power: 1) facial expression, 2) sex – people with more need for power tend to have more intercourse, 3) leaders have less inclination to seek advice or consensus.
• World needs leaders with a desire to make an impact – power in itself is not a bad thing, problem arises when the brain primed with high need for power is over-exposed to actual power.
• Ideal leader: minimum level of need for power, otherwise responsibilities would be too stressfull.
• Power makes us more ambitious, aggressive, and focused -> opens more doors to gain more power -> power feedback loop

The Mystery of Oscars

• Winning an Oscars or Nobel prize is linked to increased life expectancy.
• Cognition dissonance: Human mind reduces incompatibility between what it believes and what it feels. Examples: spend time doing volunteer work -> I must care a lot about others, I am married to him -> I must love him
• Respect and admiration is a potent source of dopamine reward to the brain.
• Cortisol: first-line stress hormone – pumps glucose into blood and brain – also has brain-dulling effect, e.g., people rendered temporarily drunk when they’re starstuck. Short term effect: usefully energising, long-term: damaging effects to the body.
• For employees, feeling a sense of control is important for greater health –> financial benefits to the company to avoid loss of productivity due to health conditions.
• Learned helplessness: feeling constantly overwhelmed by work – not under control.
• It is not the actual control but rather the feeling of being in control that matters. This belief is the antidote to stress – sort of anti-stress drug, reducing the cortisol pumped into our veins.
• What is Shame? The recreation inside one’s own head of the negative judgement of other people –> ancient tokens of submission / yielding to a superior, e.g., hiding, crouching down, shrinking away, lowering eyes –> withdrawing or disengaging
• Conditioned stimuli: an event linked to other physical things. Glimpse of a presentation software open on your laptop – bad experience with last presentation.
• Answer to the Oscar problem lies in safety signals – antidotes to stress and toxic consequences –> triggers release of Brain-Derived Neurotropic Factor (BDNF). Winning something like Oscars or a Nobel Prize is a safety signal for self – a sort of lifelong insurance policy that protects from negative evaluations of people – protects self, defends the body.

Riddle of the Flying CEOs

• In evolution, those who had attention to unexpected as opposed to predictable rewards were more likely to survive – similarly for unexpected disappointments like empty water hole or fruitless tree –> lottery opertors publicise unexpected wins causing dopamine surges, losses were predicted.
• Dopamine is the currency for sex, desire, drugs and gambling –> more importantly power
• Money and status – switch the same parts of the brain – recognition and approval of others – similar to winning a bet or the teasing sexual caress
• Dopamine – Goldilocks zone –> too little leads to poor coordination of partner areas of the brain, too much disrupts the coordination and organization of connecte parts of the brain
• Self-sufficiency: ability to be in control –> makes people focus on personal goals. Less money -> less selfish
• Self-interest comes to fore –> special-case exceptionalism, e.g. large personal gains in the form of bonuses or personal shares in trading profits magnify self-interest –> weaken the application of moral standards to oneself
• Hypocrisy – feature of high power policitians –> inevitable adjunct to power – natural neural correlate of having control over others.
• No difference in need for power in men and women – but men more power-aware, pay attention to signs of power and remember facts about powerful men and women, women have less selective memory
• S power –> power for society, group, others, P power –> power for self, personal interest
• S power not only tames p power but it acts as a coolant to the destructive effects of s power.
• Men typically have more p power and hence most dictators have been men.