Progress-focused

In this post from 2012 , I wrote that people may create fear in order to control other people. I explained that creating fear is an effective way of gaining people's attention, creating hyper-vigilance, suppressing their rationality, and legitimizing violence in order to fight the (supposed) threats and to enforce loyalty. People doing this set in motion a vicious cycle. In other words, a process of escalation seems inevitable. In order to keep their followers' fears sustained, and their rationality suppressed, they have to keep feeding them new information about the (supposed) threat. By creating more fear, they get more attention, suppress more people's rationality, legitimize greater violence, and acquire greater control. These are the methods dictators use.

"I-am-thinking" can be more harmful than we may realize. How we think and talk about ourselves, and others, can have a great influence on our and others' emotions, behavior, results, and development. Research by Mueller & Dweck (1998), for example, has shown that different types of praise can have different types of effects. Praising traits and abilities can evoke a fixed mindset while praising effort can evoke a growth mindset.

Last year I wrote that the existence of ego depletion is doubtful ( here ) and that I think the concept is based on a too simple way of thinking about psychology ( here - sorry it is in Dutch). Now it appears that the curtain definitely falls for the concept of ego depletion.