The 2017 Mind & Life Summer Research Institute gives attention to scientific, humanistic and first-person contemplative perspectives on intersubjectivity and social connectivity. Plenary presentations, workshops and small group discussions explore interrelational human dynamics, including how we relate to ourselves and others, and to community and strangers. Faculty from across a multitude of disciplines present research findings on the meditative cultivation of pro-social emotions, intergroup dynamics, social and embodied cognition, cognitive ecology, implicit bias and social justice.
Topic Archives:
Interdisciplinary Panel Human Relations: From Implicit Biases to Compassion for Strangers
This panel will discuss and explore cross-cutting perspectives about interpersonal relationships and the interdependent forces that bind humans. The conversation will consider the range of human relations from implicit biases that inhibit inter-personal communication to spontaneous intimate relations with strangers. Panelists will discuss from both empirical and theoretical perspectives how human relations impact people at …
Relationships, Health, and Technology: Toward an Evolutionary Mismatch?
Close relationships provide a critical context for health. In this Plenary Session, David Sbarra will discuss the evolutionary basis of the relationship-health association, and in particular the central role of perceived partner responsiveness (PPR) as a key interpersonal behavior that maintains high-quality relationships. After reviewing research in this area, he will discuss a growing literature …
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Social Connectivity, Mind States, and Biological Aging
This lecture will review salient examples of social connectivity — in mood, mind states, and physiology. We will explore how different states or tendencies — biases toward threat appraisals, mind wandering, and engagement in the present, are related to social, psychological, and biological well being. Elissa Epel will focus more deeply on social influences on …
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The Other as Part of the Self: Empathy, Understanding and Support
High-quality social relationships help us live longer, happier and healthier lives — facts that hold true, as far as anyone knows, regardless of geography or culture. Although links between relationships and health have been observed for decades (if not millennia), the mechanisms responsible for them remain speculative. In this talk, Jim Coan will first describe …
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Breaking Habits: Self-Transcendence and Health Behavior Change
What promotes adaptive attitude and behavior change? In this talk, it will be proposed that self-transcendence, or the drive to care for the well-being of others beyond self-interests, is key to increasing receptivity to change. Psychological and neurocognitive mechanisms of self-transcendence that help make people more open to change in the domains of social attitudes …
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From Looking Out to Looking In: Re-Thinking How We Study and Train Attention in Mental Health
Mindfulness is practiced and cultivated through the training of attention. Not coincidentally, across thought traditions, attention and its (dys)regulation has long been theorized to underlie various mental habits and biases, common forms of suffering, and well-being. Yet, despite this compelling theory, empirical data supporting these foundational ideas about the nature and function of attention are …
How Thinking About Thinking Shapes the Human Experience of Spirit
This talk makes the argument that the way people think about their minds shapes the way they come to know spirit. This is done by looking at the kinds of people who have more vivid spiritual experiences (they are more likely to get absorbed in their inner worlds), the way prayers train attention to inner …
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Mental Habits, Prediction Machines, and Controlled Hallucinations
Just as behavioral habits define our behavioral lives, mental habits define our psychological lives. Mental habits can be thought of as the perceptual, emotional, and cognitive processes that shape and bias how we perceive self, others, and the world. This talk will describe a view of mental habits from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience, focusing …
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Measuring, Understanding, and Changing Mental Habits
This presentation will first explore possible domains of mental habits, including personality, social interaction, identity, emotion, mind wandering, and contemplative practice. From the perspective of grounded cognition, the question will be raised as to how “mental” are mental habits, given that they appear to be strongly grounded in external situations (and conversely that physical habits …
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