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Judges are human; they make mistakes. Sometimes these mistakes can be harmless, but other times they might require cases to be reopened. Discuss with your team: should judges who make more mistakes be assigned to simpler cases?

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An error by a judge in the conduct of a trial that an appellate court finds was not damaging enough to the appealing party's right to a fair trial to justify reversing the judgment. Harmless errors include technical errors that have no bearing on the outcome of the trial, and an error that was corrected (such as mistakenly allowing testimony to be heard, but then ordering it stricken and admonishing the jury to ignore it). In general, the more overwhelming the evidence against the appealing party (appellant), the harder it will be to convince the appellate court that any errors were harmful. In such situations, courts rule that even in the absence of the errors, the appellant could not have won.

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An error by a judge in the conduct of a trial that an appellate court finds was not damaging enough to the appealing party's right to a fair trial to justify reversing the judgment.

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Not all mistakes shatter the world. Think about the ones people make at home and in school as part of their everyday lives. As you can see, they are often quite trivial. Answe rhis question:: what kinds of mistakes are worth worrying about? How often is it okay to misplace your keys or to forget to feed the dog? When should you intervene in someone else’s everyday mistakes?

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In your daily routine, it's easy to forget to question even some of the simplest things. From hygeine to sleeping to exercise, we've rounded up some of the most common life mistakes and assumptions that you may never have guessed you're getting wrong. Time to re-align...

Chewing Too Much Gum

We all know a diet high in sugar feeds gut bacteria. Well, it's the same for bacteria in your mouth. If you jump for chewing gum to help your bad breath regularly, you could be doing yourself more damage than good.

If they contain sugar, then they may only eventually worsen the situation

Dr. Harold Katz, known as the bad-breath guru of Beverly Hills, explains: "Ultimately, all the gum and mints in the world will not stop chronic halitosis (bad breath) and is not a replacement for a robust oral hygiene regimen.

"Sucking mints or chewing gum does serve as a good occasional short-term fix, but if they contain sugar, then they may only eventually worsen the situation. I'd recommend trying to avoid candy mints all together, and choose a gum that doesn't contain aspartame, artificial flavors and colors."

One option is The Fix: If you're going to chew gum, look for products with xylitol to protect your teeth. PUR Gum, a vegan, aspartame-free chewing gum that uses 100% xylitol as its sweetener. Xylitol is recommended by dentists, and it can actually help to reduce plaque buildup. With that said, you'll still want to brush regularly - no gum can take the place of a decent toothbrush - but if you're looking for a gum that won't ruin your teeth, this is a good place to start. Get PUR Aspartame-Free Gum for $4.28 on Amazon

If you're not ready to let go of you mint obsession, check out Spry, a peppermint-flavored lozenge made with 100% xylitol. They're fairly small, but remarkably powerful, and reviewers say that they're a nice upgrade over Altoids and other sugary mints.
Get a 240-Count Pack of Spry Xylitol Mints for $19.99 on Amazon
Sleeping On Your Stomach

Everyone has their favorite sleeping position but as chiropractor Andrew Green explains, one stands out from the rest for all the wrong reasons.

Stomach sleepers tend to develop respiratory problems

"There is one sleeping position, on your stomach, that should be avoided at all costs," he says. "If you sleep like this, you are twisting your spine severely as your head will be turned to one side and usually you will have one hip hitched up. This position adversely affects both blood and nerve flow.

"Stomach sleepers tend to develop respiratory problems, or tingling and numbness in their arms, hands and fingers. They also tend to be more prone to headaches as the neck is twisted to one side. The solution is to sleep either on your back or side."

While that may sound impossible (we're looking at you, die-hard stomach sleeper), believe it or not, you can gradually learn to sleep in a new position.

The Fix: It's not the easiest process, but that's where the iSleepFit belt comes into play. Frequently recommended for sleep apnea sufferers, it uses three adjustable balls to keep you in position as you drift off. If you try to roll over onto your stomach (or back, depending on how you position it), you'll wake up. After a few nights, you should begin to adjust.

If you're having trouble adjusting your sleep position, Get the Adult Sleep Positioner Belt by iSleepFit for $39.99 on Amazon wedge pillows can also be extraordinarily beneficial here, as they adapt to your body's curves, providing a supportive, comfortable sleep surface that effectively prevents orthopedic issues. Plus, you can reposition the wedge to read or watch TV (although you really shouldn't be watching TV in bed, either).
Get the Bed Wedge Pillow for $35.95 on Amazon
Doing Sit Ups For Abs

Personal trainer Faye Pritchard explains: "Sit ups have been around for years and they've been hard-wired into our subconscious as exercise we need to do when we want toned abs.

The truth is that the best exercises to develop abs are actually the plank, deadbugs and crunches.

"Nowadays there is a lot more research into fitness and the exercises that are most effective for targeting certain areas. The truth is that the best exercises to develop abs are actually the plank, deadbugs and crunches."

"To do the deadbug, lie on your back with your arms pointing towards the ceiling and your legs at a 90 degree angle. Then, gradually take your arms back as you lower one leg. Return arms and legs back to starting position and repeat for the other leg. Aim for 20 reps, and do them 4-5x."

To avoid injuries, make sure you're performing ab exercises on a well-padded surface. Do your deadbugs on a hard floor, and you're just asking for trouble.

The Fix: Fortunately, yoga mats are pretty cheap these days. Our pick here is Valeo's foam exercise mat, which has a ribbed surface on one side and a smooth surface on the other. The closed-cell foam should provide plenty of cushioning, and you can clean it easily with a damp cloth.
Get the Valeo Foam Exercise Mat for $23.65 on Amazon
Using Resistance Bands To Build Muscle

Pritchard wants you to push past this warm up: " swipe through Instagram and you'll be inundated with images of men and women with strong, built bums using resistance bands and you'll automatically think that is the way to develop your glutes.

"Resistance bands only activate your glutes - I love band work but only for warm ups - to truly build a bum, you need to weight train and lift fairly heavy," she tells us.

That's not to say that you shouldn't have a decent set of resistance bands. Just recognize that they're not a replacement for a decent set of actual weights. You can still use them for toned, lean muscle - and they're great for stretching those tight quads.

The Fix: UPOWEX offers a high-quality set of bands that provide up to 50 pounds of resistance, which should be more than enough for most people. They're double layered, so they won't snap, and they come with door anchor and leg attachments for safe, effective workouts.
Get the UPOWEX Resistance Bands Set for $22.97 on Amazon
When you're ready for serious weight training, kettlebells are an excellent option as they enable you to increase your strength, and build up speed as well as your endurance level at the same time. Our pick is AmazonBasics' cast-iron kettlebells, available in a variety of weights at a reasonable price. They feature a textured handle, and they're backed by a limited one-year warranty.
Get AmazonBasics Cast-Iron Kettlebells for $36.49 on Amazon
Using A Wooden Chopping Board

Still have a wooden chopping board? Time to throw it away.

"Wooden cutting boards are more difficult to disinfect, and sometimes they don't go in the dishwasher," says infectious disease expert, Dr. Belinda Stuart-Moonlight. "It's strongly advised to have plastic cutting boards that are easy to clean and disinfect.

It's a very nasty bug that can cause long term auto immune illnesses

Cutting up raw chicken? "Probably one in two retail chickens will have a bug, campylobacter, on the surface," Dr. Stuart-Moonlight adds. "It's a very nasty bug that can cause long term auto immune illnesses - people end up in wheelchairs."

Matt Shipman of New York State University notes that vegetarians aren't off the hook, since produce can also contain a variety of unpleasant foodborne pathogens. Once those critters are on your wooden cutting board, they're hard to get off. Shipman notes that wood cutting boards be safe, even though they're more difficult to sanitize, but they're definitely not ideal for cutting meats. Whatever you're chopping on, make sure to clean it regularly.

We're big fans of Gorilla Grip's reversible BPA-free cutting boards. Their deep grooves help to catch juices, keeping your counter clean, and they're easy to sanitize with a quick trip through the dishwasher (or, if you'd prefer, with water and antibacterial soap). Get Gorilla Grip's 3-piece Reversible Cutting Board Set for $16.99 on Amazon

Refrigerating Your Avocados

As millennials, we love avocados. We spend all of our money on them. We're literally homeless because of our dedication to avocados, but we have a refrigerator, and we keep it fully stocked. With said avocados.

"Do not refrigerate your avocados," he says. "At least not initially. Once picked from the tree, avocados, much like bananas, produce ethylene, which triggers the ripening process. The optimal temperature for this is 68°F/20°C.

"Fresh-picked avocados should ripen under these conditions within three to six days. When ripe, the avocado should yield gently to pressure, but not be squishy."

Sticking With Your Default WIFI Settings

At a bare minimum you should change the default admin password

"Many of us get a free router from our internet provider, plug it in and never think about it again unless something goes wrong, but they often come with insecure default passwords and if not maintained can be left vulnerable to hackers and viruses.

"Our own internal research found 51% of people hadn't taken any steps to deal with this, with most unaware of the issues that could arise.

Picking a decent password is, of course, fairly easy. For many routers, you can access settings and change your password by typing 192.168.0.1 into your browser's address bar, but you'll need to consult the documentation that came with your device for specific instructions.

"At a bare minimum you should change the default admin password which controls access to the router's settings," he says. "And get into the habit of checking for updates to protect against security holes."

Avoiding A Credit Card

The golden rule is to make a plan to pay back the money and never miss a payment

"Using a credit card sensibly actually builds your credit history and improves your credit score. It shows lenders that you can manage your money well and pay back your debts on time.

"It also means you're more likely to be accepted for financial products in the future, for example if you want to get a mobile phone contract or a mortgage.

If you don't trust your spending habits, consider getting a card with a restricted spending limit (most credit card companies will lower your limit if you make the request). Basini also recommends automating your payments so that your entire card is paid back at the end of every billing period.

"If you do decide to take out a credit card, the golden rule is to make a plan to pay back the money and never miss a payment, as this will impact you negatively."

Of course, if you're concerned about your credit, you'll need proper Radio-frequency identification (RFID) protection. By reading your credit card's information with an RFID scanner, a high-tech hacker could take out money or make purchases with your credit. While you can dispute these purchases, your best bet is to protect yourself ahead of time.

The Fix: RFID-blocking wallets are fairly inexpensive, and some are even stylish. This trifold wallet from Clifton Heritage is durable, practical, and reliable.
Get a Clifton Heritage RFID-Blocking Leather Wallet for $14.99 on Amazon
Taking Painkillers To Cure A Hangover

You overdid it, and now you've got an aching head. You're about to reach for your go-to painkiller - but not so fast.

Before going to sleep, drink a big glass of water rather than a paracetamol

"It can be easy to go for a pack of paracetamol when you have a throbbing headache the morning after a heavy night - but many of the symptoms associated with a hangover are actually due to dehydration," personal trainer Jay Bolton says.

"Before going to sleep, drink a big glass of water rather than a paracetamol, and you'll feel better for it the following morning."

The Fix: To rehydrate as quickly as possible, you can even add some Pedialyte to that tall glass of H2O. Yes, Pedialyte. It's formulated to help children recover from the flu, but it works just as well on adults, and it's not packed with sugar (unlike sports drinks). Mix up a batch of Pedialyte, and you'll replenish your fluids and electrolytes in short order.
Get a 24-pack of Pedialyte Electrolyte Powder for $26.97 on Amazon
Rinsing Immediately After Brushing

You brush, spit, and now you're ready to gargle. What could be more natural? Well, if you've followed this article at all, you know where this is going.

"Also, after eating, you should avoid brushing for at least half an hour to give your enamel enough time to recover; it's far more sensitive after a meal. Avoiding these two common mistakes can make a huge difference in dental health and can keep your teeth healthy for years to come."

If you have trouble building good dental habits, an electric toothbrush can be a quick fix. The main advantage of high-end electric toothbrushes is that they often come with built-in timers, which tell you when to switch sides and when to stop brushing.

The Fix: FairWill offers an affordable option with a smart timer, and it holds a four-hour charge - perfect for keeping your teeth sparkling clean while you're traveling. Get a FairWill Electric Toothbrush for $27.95 on Amazon

Painting A Room First

"Many interior designers suggest that to really get a feeling of how you want to create a room, buy fabrics like rugs, throws and pillows as well as textiles like curtains before you even consider the color of the room.

"These touches will inspire you to get a vision of how the room could look and what would go well alongside your pieces."

Keeping Babies Awake During The Day

Zarja Cibej, founder of childcare matchmaker and maternity nurse specialist calls this out as a parenting myth.

Skip those naps, and you're up for a much shorter night!

"Contrary to popular belief, you should not exhaust your baby during the day by keeping them awake in order for them to sleep better and longer during the night. Babies need to be rested in order to sleep well at night. An overtired baby will be restless at night.

"For example, a three-month-old baby needs a short nap in the morning - 45 minutes to an hour - and a longer nap after lunch (around one and a half to two hours) alongside a catnap in the afternoon of around 30 minutes.

"Follow this routine and they will still need about 11-12 hours of sleep at night. Skip those naps, and you're up for a much shorter night!'

The Fix: Infants have a built-in attachment to their caregivers. If you're looking for some rest without baby drooling over your shoulder, try the Lulla Doll Sleep Companion. Created by a Norwegian mother, the doll is made of natural cotton and provides soothing sounds of real-life breathing and heartbeat.
Get Lulla Doll Sleep Companion, $85.99 on Amazon
Using The Phrase 'Sleep Like A Baby'

And, speaking of, no one should ever want to sleep like a baby. Sleeping like a baby means not knowing how to put yourself to sleep and waking up every 45 minute sleep cycle.

Contrary to the popular belief, babies don't know how to fall asleep, and how to stay asleep. They need to be taught how to fall asleep and how to actually stay asleep, says Cibej. Everyone who has ever raised a human knows that.

Using The Sun As Natural Bleach For Your Hair

According to award-winning professional hairdresser Andrew Barton, this is a total lie. "Contrary to popular belief, sunshine will not make your colored blonde locks blonder.

"UV light will fade blonde hair color so to avoid a washed out look and hair that is dull, keep your blonde hair covered up in the sun and pop on a sunhat instead!"

This stylish straw The Fix: Fortunately, wide-brimmed sun hats are pretty fashionable (just check Instagram). Lanzom hat offers UPF50+ protection, which is a clever way of saying that it blocks out sunlight. It adjusts easily, and it's tightly woven for optimal durability.
Get a Wide-Brim Straw Roll-Up Hat for $14.99 on Amazon
Storing Chocolate In The Fridge

"Although it may be tempting to store chocolate in the fridge during the summer months, refrigeration can cause chocolate flavors to dull," says to Genevieve Holdsworth, creative director of Holdsworth Chocolates.

"Additionally, chocolate can absorb odors from the fridge, and the chilly temperatures can even cause sugar bloom or fat bloom, which both lead to a white coating on the outside of the chocolate, affecting the taste and the texture.

"For best results, store chocolate in a cool, dark place at just below room temperature - somewhere like a pantry - to ensure that the flavors stay as they should be."

Wearing A White T-Shirt To Prevent Sunburn

It may seem conducive to protecting your skin but a white T-shirt actually provides your body with very little protection.

London Doctors Clinic says it's one of the biggest mistakes people make in the sun: "It may feel like it's keeping you cool but a white T-shirt does not protect you from sun damage. It only has SPF of 7 and when it is wet, that drops to 3!"

The takeaway? If you're not using sunscreen, you're in trouble. And in 2018, there's really no excuse for not wearing it.

The Fix: If you simply hate the coconut-ish smell of most lotions, look for a fragrance-free option like Rocky Mountain Sunscreen. It provides broad-spectrum protection, it's water resistant, and it's non-comedogenic, so it doesn't feel greasy on your skin. Get Rocky Mountain SPF 30 Sunscreen for $31.00 on Amazon

Only Working The Glamour Muscles

"When most people step into the gym, they often ignore working out the smaller muscle groups and spend far too much time working solely on their 'glamour' muscles such as biceps, chest and glutes," they tell us.

" This leaves some of the smaller muscle groups, including the shoulders, knees and hips, ignored.

"As you may expect, ignoring these muscles can have a negative overall effect on your workout as they will become less able to support the larger muscle groups as they become stronger.

"If these smaller muscles become overloaded by your workouts, they may not be able to perform optimally, and this may result in injury and potentially mean you may need some time away from the gym to recover."

Showering

Turns out that long, hot shower that wakes you up in the morning is terrible for your skin.

"Showering and being in the water dries out your skin," says Alan J. Parks, MD, a board-certified dermatologist. "It's okay [to] shower every day, but you should keep your showers relatively short - as short as possible - so that your skin doesn't dry out."

"... Hot water opens the pores, which promotes water loss and also washes away skin's protective emollient oils, further compounding water loss," says New York dermatologist Neal Schultz, MD. Schulz is the host of DermTV.com and creator of BeautyRx by Dr. Schultz. "Together this causes dry and itchy skin," he says. "Take warm showers instead."

The Fix: If you've already got rough skin, invest in a high-quality moisturizer. Ideally, you'll pick up something non-comedogenic-meaning that it doesn't block your pores-and formulated with hyaluronic acid, which helps your skin stay naturally hydrated. CeraVe Moisturizing Cream checks both of those boxes. The best course of action is to limit your showers, but if you're set in your ways, this stuff will help you maintain your silky smooth skin.
Get CeraVe Moisturizing Cream for $14.31 on Amazon

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In your daily routine, it's easy to forget to question even some of the simplest things. From hygeine to sleeping to exercise, we've rounded up some of the most common life mistakes and assumptions that you may never have guessed you're getting wrong. Time to re-align...

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Considerable evidence suggests that men and women in positions of leadership are judged differently for their mistakes, although not all studies concur. Discuss with your team: is there any truth to this argument, and, if so, should we take steps to address the discrepancy? For instance, should the media (or teachers) be required to spend extra time discussing the successes of female leaders?

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Tech CEO Marissa Mayer and Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton have it tough right now. Activists investors are saying Marissa Mayer should be fired for mismanaging Yahoo, and Hillary Clinton is fending off criticisms for her use of a private email server and for taking large speaking fees from Goldman Sachs.

There's no doubt that both leaders have made mistakes. Since Mayer entered the C-suite, Yahoo has spent over $2.5 billion acquiring other businesses and made a number of strategic and hiring missteps. Clinton's decisions have left her open to harsh attacks from both the right and the left during the presidential race.

And yet Mayer and Clinton have also done many things right - otherwise, they wouldn't be where they are. So as professional women watch these female leaders, they inevitably ask themselves: Would these women-a female CEO in the tech industry, where male leaders outnumber female leaders four to one, plus the only woman to ever be this close to becoming president of the United States-be judged differently if they were men?

Further Reading

Leadership Magazine Article

Two new books illuminate the challenges still facing female CEOs.

Research suggests they would be. Victoria Brescoll, a social psychologist at Yale School of Management who studies gender stereotypes, was curious how people evaluate women who make mistakes in traditionally male occupations. She and her colleagues gave participants a fictional news story about a police chief in a major city preparing for a big protest rally. Several hours in, the protest got out of hand and the chief dispatched squad cars. In one version of the story, the chief didn't send enough officers, and twenty-five people were seriously injured.

Did it matter whether the police chief who made the bad call was male or female? It did. When a male police chief found himself with twenty-five injured civilians, his rating as an effective chief dropped by roughly 10 percent. When a female police chief made the same mistake, her ratings dropped by almost 30 percent. Participants reading the story also wanted to demote her, but their counterparts did not want to demote him. Both leaders made a risky decision that backfired, but it cost her more.

In another version of the story, the protest was successfully pacified when the chief sent in the squad cars. No one was injured and the protest didn't escalate. In that version, participants gave both leaders high marks, which means a female leader wasn't automatically seen as a poor fit - just when she experienced a perceived failure.

Brescoll and her team looked at two other traditionally male jobs with considerable power - the CEO of an engineering firm and the chief judge of a state supreme court. The pattern persisted. A decision that backfired led to harsher scrutiny for female leaders than for men.

Was there a situation in which a man was judged more harshly for making a bad call? There was-a male president of a women's college. In this leadership role, a role often played by women, men paid a price for showing poor judgment. Were there any other highly respected, powerful roles people associated with women? I asked Brescoll that question, and she said they've looked for other leadership positions that are both seen as high status and primarily held by women. They haven't found any. A president of a women's college was the only one. "It's kind of depressing to be honest," she said.

Brescoll's team concluded that people find it easier to accept a poor decision when it's made by a leader in gender-appropriate role. His areas of expertise are not interchangeable with hers, and leaders are more severely judged when they make mistakes in the other gender's territory.

And how big is men's territory? Huge. This isn't just a problem for Marissa Mayer in the tech sector, or Hillary Clinton in politics. Finance, law, sports, the military and the stock market - they're all occupations where men dominate, and all professions in which, naturally, mistakes get made. When women's mistakes are judged so much more harshly than men's, is it any wonder that female managers may be labeled "micromanagers" or "perfectionists" or "risk-averse"? Seeking to reduce mistakes at all costs is a logical reaction to others' biased perceptions.

If we were talking about Marvin Mayer or Henry Clinton, they might still have dropped a notch in our estimation, but they probably wouldn't have dropped as far. Until we associate women with leadership roles, mistakes will remain much more costly for women.

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Research: We Are Way Harder on Female Leaders Who Make Bad Calls

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Tech CEO Marissa Mayer and Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton have it tough right now. Activists investors are saying Marissa Mayer should be fired for mismanaging Yahoo, and Hillary Clinton is fending off criticisms for her use of a private email server and for taking large speaking fees from Goldman Sachs.

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The science of signal detection theory explores the way people perceive and interpret the information around them—but that detection process is not perfect. Research the basics of SDT and consider: are some of us more prone to perceptual mistakes? How often do you perceive things incorrectly, such as hearing your name when no one said it? Can missed or misinterpreted signals, lead to serious mistakes?

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Background

Consider the following situation: You are driving down the road, and you think you heard a sound that might have come from the engine. Say it sounded kind of like a clunk. Now, you have your stereo going, and there are sounds from the road, so you are not sure. If you car is relatively new and has a history of smooth running, perhaps you will decide that you didn't really hear anything. Your hearing is "playing tricks" on you. Perhaps instead of the fine automobile described above you are driving an old car that has a history of spending nearly as much time in the shop as on the road. In this case, you might decide that you did hear something and head to the nearest service center. What is important in this example is that even in this very basic sensory discrimination, there is a cognitive decision-making element that needs to be taken into account.

Signal detection theory attempts to understand the role that decision making plays in these situations. Examine the situation above a little more carefully. All the possible outcomes are shown in Table 1(a). In the real world, the stimulus event does not always occur. So it is possible that the clunk either occurred or did not. These two possible stimulus events are indicated across the top of the table. In either case, and to some extent independently, of whether the clunk happened or not, you can decide that you heard the clunk or not. These possible judgments on your part are shown on the left-hand side of the table. The four cells of the table are the possible outcomes. For example, the clunk could have happened, and you could decide that you heard the clunk and so you go get the car serviced. That outcome is in the upper left hand cell of the table. Thus, two of the outcomes, deciding the sound occurred when it did and deciding the sound did not occur when it did not, are correct responses and have positive outcomes; the other two outcomes represent incorrect decisions and have negative outcomes. It is, of course, in your best interest to maximize the positive outcomes while minimizing the negative outcomes.

Table 1(b) gives the general terms to what has been described. The clunk in our original example is now called the signal. The signal is simply what we have been calling the stimulus. It is the event in the world that a person is trying to detect. If the signal is present and you judge it happened, it is a hit; if the signal is present but you judge it did not happen, it is a miss; if the signal is absent and you judge it happened, it is a false alarm; finally, if the signal is absent and you judge it did not happen, it is a correct rejection.

So let's look at a model of signal detection, starting with a visual detection example. Signal detection assumes that there is "noise" in any system. In this example, if we have an old car, we may hear clunks even when the car is operating effectively, or even tinnitus in our ear, or something rustling in the trunk. The signal is what you are trying to detect. In our example, it is a clunk that means the engine is in trouble.

See the illustration to see how signal detect theory describes this situation.

Instructions

Full Screen Mode

To see the illustration in full screen, which is recommended, press the Full Screen button, which appears at the top of the page.

Illustration Tab

Settings

Below is a list of the ways that you can alter the model. The settings include the following:

Noise: check to display the Noise curve. This curve represents how likely a given stimulus intensity will occur when there is no signal (stimulus) present.
Signal+Noise: check to see the Signal+Noise curve. The noise does not go away, but the stimulus adds to the noise, making the Signal+Noise curve move to the right of the Noise curve. This curve represents how likely a given stimulus intensity will occur when the signal (stimulus) is preseent.
Sensitivity-d': the difference in the position of the Noise and Signal+Noise curve relates to how easy it is to detect that the signal is present. The greater the difference, the easier the detection. We call this difference sensitivity and measure it with the measure called d' (pronounced d prime).
Show Overlap: click to highlight the region where the Noise and Signal+Noise curves overlap. Where there is overlap, a given stimulus intensity could be by either the noise alone or by the signal. You cannot know for certain. As you increase d', the overlap gets smaller.
Show d': click to add a visual representation of d'. An orange line will connect the two peaks. The larger the d', the longer the line.

Reset

Pressing this button restores the settings to their default values.

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Consider the following situation: You are driving down the road, and you think you heard a sound that might have come from the engine. Say it sounded kind of like a clunk. Now, you have your stereo going, and there are sounds from the road, so you are not sure.

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Joe Biden recently referred to the president of the United States as Donald Hump; Donald Hump recently declared that he “will stop defrauding all of the people of this country.” People often misspeak; sometimes, as here, they misspeak in ways that suggest they are exposing a thought they would prefer to keep hidden. Learn more about these so-called Freudian slips (also referred to as parapraxis) and the arguments for and against their revealing true thoughts, feelings, and desires. Discuss with your team: are Freudian slips examples of when it is a mistake to tell the truth? Are there other times when dishonesty is socially preferable?

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It was 1988 and the then-vice president, George H. W. Bush, was on a routine visit to Idaho. He was supposed to give a dry speech on agricultural policy and praise his successes alongside President Reagan, live on television. Then he said: "We've had triumphs. Made some mistakes. We've had some sex... uh... setbacks."

Long after his political career is consigned to distant memory, President George Bush Senior will be celebrated for this legendary gaffe.

Ah, the Freudian slip. There are the things you want to say, the things you could get away with saying and the things it would be utterly disastrous to utter - which, invariably, are what actually comes out of your mouth. It's the greatest fear of any public speaker. But what really causes these errors? And do they have any hidden meaning?

For Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, it wasn't enough to simply ask his patients what they thought. Their true desires, he believed, could only be examined by paying attention to 'slips of the tongue' and other clues from the unconscious. A classic slip is, as the saying goes, when you say one thing and mean your mother.

Otherwise known as parapraxis, these verbal stumblings could reveal forbidden urges - such as sex and swearing - which were usually locked safely within the unconscious mind. Verbal errors aren't random at all, but puzzles to be decoded.

There's just one problem: Freudian slips, as with many of his other ideas, are extremely difficult to test. Freud may be as famous as Darwin, but many modern-day psychologists, linguists and neuroscientists think that he was wrong about almost everything. But was he wrong about this?

One ingenious early study used sex and electric shocks to find out. At the start of the experiment, two of three groups of heterosexual males were greeted by a middle-aged professor, while the third was ushered into a room with a provocatively dressed lab assistant. "We sort of went to the limits of what one might expect on campus. She was attractive and wearing a very short skirt and sort of a translucent blouse," says Michael Motley, a psychologist from the University of California Davis who co-authored the study.

Participants were asked to read a list of word pairs ('back mud', 'bat much', 'mad bug') silently, at a rate of one per second. What they didn't know was that the word pairs had been designed to induce 'spoonerisms', slip-ups named after the error-prone Reverend William Archibald Spooner, in which the initial sounds or letters in two words are switched.

Every so often the experimenters indicated, via a buzzer, for subjects to say a pair out loud. As Freud would have predicted, the men in the presence of the lab assistant made significantly more sex-based slip-ups ('fast passion' instead of 'past fashion' and 'happy sex' instead of 'sappy hex') than the control group, but no more slips overall.

Meanwhile the third group had their fingers hooked up to electrodes, plugged into a machine capable of delivering mild electric shocks. "We told the fellows - this was a lie, of course - there's a 70% chance you're going to get a shock," says Motley. Again, the students let slip what was really on their mind (misreading 'worst cottage' as 'cursed wattage' and 'shad bock' as 'bad shock').

Later the experimenters measured the participants' sexual anxiety and discovered, counter-intuitively, that those with the most carnal angst made the most sexual missteps. Why?

In attempting to suppress their urges, the men may have fallen victim to the 'white bear problem', first noticed by Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Try hard enough not to think of something, such as sex or a polar bear, and it will be all you can think about. It's the basis for The Game, a popular mind game which challenges players to avoid thinking about its existence. Let it sneak into your conscious and you lose, and must announce your loss out loud - causing everyone around you to lose also. To win... well no one's figured that one out yet.

Back in the 1980s, psychologist Daniel Wegner suggested that the very system which aims to prevent Freudian slips may be to blame. According to his theory, subconscious processes are continuously scouring our thoughts to keep our innermost desires locked away. When such a thought occurs, instead of remaining quiet - ironically - the thought may be announced to the conscious brain, causing you to think it.

Then it's only a matter of time before the truth slips out. "When we're thinking about something we're priming the relevant words, they're being prepared to be spoken in case we need them," says Motley. With so many options, the word we end up choosing can be revealing.

Take the sentence "The old hillbilly kept his moonshine in a big (blank)". In another version of the sexual arousal experiment, Motley asked participants to choose the last word. Lots of words - pitcher, barrel, jar - are viable candidates, but more often than not those who felt attracted to his lab assistant chose 'jugs'. "It's sort of doubly primed and it gets selected over the others. We think something similar is happening with Freudian slips," says Motley.

Deliberately try not to tell your gym partner "you're very fat - I mean fit!", blurt out "pornography" at a meeting rather than "photography" or call out your ex's name during sex, and you'll be inviting subconscious sabotage. To add insult to injury, being stressed makes these catastrophic blunders even more likely.

But not everyone is convinced. At the time, Freud's harshest critic was Austrian linguist Rudolf Meringer. While working at the University of Vienna in the late 19th Century, Meringer collected, catalogued and scrutinised thousands of verbal mistakes, mostly from lunchtime conversations with colleagues. The group would take turns speaking and when an error occurred, they would cease all conversation until it had been meticulously recorded.

From this record, Meringer concluded that slips of the tongue are intrusions of letters, not meaning. In fact, according to Rob Hartsuiker, a psycholinguist from Ghent University, the majority of errors are entirely innocent.

Take the unfortunate blunder by journalist Jim Naughtie, who slipped up while pronouncing the then-Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt's surname on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. At first glance it looks like a classic Freudian mishap; in fact, it reveals more about how the brain processes language than Naughtie's feelings about the politician.

A mountain of experimental evidence has shown that if two words share contextual meaning and a vowel, the initial consonants are at risk of getting mixed up. "I'm sure many people don't find Jeremy Hunt a very pleasant person, but it's actually an intrusion of the 'c' from culture," says Hartsuiker.

It's the result of the way words are accessed in the brain. First, one must be selected from a network of words which are organised by similarity and meaning - an opportunity to mix up Culture and Hunt. Once you have the word, the brain selects the word sounds - which is when the consonants are swapped. "This is very typical, and it's also something Freud rather ignored," says Hartsuiker. As the program's co-host pointed out at the time, you might say appointing a man with the name Hunt as the Culture Secretary was extremely reckless.

Despite these verbal traps, the average person slips up on fewer than 22 words per day out of around 15,000. Brain scans have shown that we routinely make embarrassing blunders while rehearsing our sentences in 'inner speech', but the majority are caught before we say them out loud. "What is produced at the end is correct but brainwaves reveal that internally they made the taboo mistake," says Hartsuiker, who co-authored the study.

We're probably more vulnerable to slips when we're distracted or our unconscious spellchecker isn't working properly - if we're nervous, tired, or intoxicated and as we get older. You're also more likely to trip up if you're talking too quickly.

In other words, our verbal slips may reveal something interesting about the way the brain processes language, and they may even suggest our current preoccupations we'd rather not discuss. But whether they ever tell our deepest secrets is still a matter of debate. Psychoanalysts like Rosine Perelberg from University College London certainly think they are important. "They are very much the stuff of jokes, but they are so precious because they betray something the person did not want to consciously reveal," she says. "We take them very seriously." She mentions a recent patient whose slip revealed subconscious anxieties about being violent towards his future child (he said battle instead of bottle).

Hartsuiker is sceptical. "The evidence for real Freudian slips is very, very limited indeed." For others, it's likely that the explanation depends on the slip. "Do I agree with Freud that all slips are Freudian? Well, no. But do I think that there is such a thing? Yes I think so," says Motley.

So which kind was President George W. Bush's slip-up? We'll never know for sure, but they were probably just partners in copulation... sorry... collaboration.

If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called "If You Only Read 6 Things This Week". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, Travel and Autos, delivered to your inbox every Friday.

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What Freudian slips really reveal about your mind

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It was 1988 and the then-vice president, George H. W. Bush, was on a routine visit to Idaho. He was supposed to give a dry speech on agricultural policy and praise his successes alongside President Reagan, live on television. Then he said: "We've had triumphs. Made some mistakes. We've had some sex...

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Consider this argument that “Western” and “Eastern” cultures treat mistakes at school differently. Answer this question: is the author making the mistake of overgeneralizing? Based on her findings, should the lowest-scoring scholars on the Challenge be required to retake the test in front of other teams?

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In 1979, when Jim Stigler was still a graduate student at the University of Michigan, he went to Japan to research teaching methods and found himself sitting in the back row of a crowded fourth-grade math class.

"The teacher was trying to teach the class how to draw three-dimensional cubes on paper," Stigler explains, "and one kid was just totally having trouble with it. His cube looked all cockeyed, so the teacher said to him, 'Why don't you go put yours on the board?' So right there I thought, 'That's interesting! He took the one who can't do it and told him to go and put it on the board.' "

Stigler knew that in American classrooms, it was usually the best kid in the class who was invited to the board. And so he watched with interest as the Japanese student dutifully came to the board and started drawing, but still couldn't complete the cube. Every few minutes, the teacher would ask the rest of the class whether the kid had gotten it right, and the class would look up from their work, and shake their heads no. And as the period progressed, Stigler noticed that he - Stigler - was getting more and more anxious.

"I realized that I was sitting there starting to perspire," he says, "because I was really empathizing with this kid. I thought, 'This kid is going to break into tears!' "

But the kid didn't break into tears. Stigler says the child continued to draw his cube with equanimity. "And at the end of the class, he did make his cube look right! And the teacher said to the class, 'How does that look, class?' And they all looked up and said, 'He did it!' And they broke into applause." The kid smiled a huge smile and sat down, clearly proud of himself.

Stigler is now a professor of psychology at UCLA who studies teaching and learning around the world, and he says it was this small experience that first got him thinking about how differently East and West approach the experience of intellectual struggle.

"I think that from very early ages we [in America] see struggle as an indicator that you're just not very smart," Stigler says. "It's a sign of low ability - people who are smart don't struggle, they just naturally get it, that's our folk theory. Whereas in Asian cultures they tend to see struggle more as an opportunity."

In Eastern cultures, Stigler says, it's just assumed that struggle is a predictable part of the learning process. Everyone is expected to struggle in the process of learning, and so struggling becomes a chance to show that you, the student, have what it takes emotionally to resolve the problem by persisting through that struggle.

"They've taught them that suffering can be a good thing," Stigler says. "I mean it sounds bad, but I think that's what they've taught them."

Granting that there is a lot of cultural diversity within East and West and it's possible to point to counterexamples in each, Stigler still sums up the difference this way: For the most part in American culture, intellectual struggle in schoolchildren is seen as an indicator of weakness, while in Eastern cultures it is not only tolerated but is often used to measure emotional strength.

It's a small difference in approach that Stigler believes has some very big implications.
'Struggle'

Stigler is not the first psychologist to notice the difference in how East and West approach the experience of intellectual struggle.

Jin Li is a professor at Brown University who, like Stigler, compares the learning beliefs of Asian and U.S. children. She says that to understand why these two cultures view struggle so differently, it's good to step back and examine how they think about where academic excellence comes from.

For the past decade or so, Li has been recording conversations between American mothers and their children, and Taiwanese mothers and their children. Li then analyzes those conversations to see how the mothers talk to the children about school.

She shared with me one conversation that she had recorded between an American mother and her 8-year-old son.

The mother and the son are discussing books. The son, though young, is a great student who loves to learn. He tells his mother that he and his friends talk about books even during recess, and she responds with this:

Mother: Do you know that's what smart people do, smart grown-ups?

Child: I know ... talk about books.

Mother: Yeah. So that's a pretty smart thing to do to talk about a book.

Child: Hmmm mmmm.

It's a small exchange - a moment. But Li says, this drop of conversation contains a world of cultural assumptions and beliefs.

Essentially, the American mother is communicating to her son that the cause of his success in school is his intelligence. He's smart - which, Li says, is a common American view.

"The idea of intelligence is believed in the West as a cause," Li explains. "She is telling him that there is something in him, in his mind, that enables him to do what he does."

But in many Asian cultures, Li says, academic excellence isn't linked with intelligence in the same way. "It resides in what they do, but not who they are, what they're born with," she says.

She shares another conversation, this time between a Taiwanese mother and her 9-year-old son. They are talking about the piano - the boy won first place in a competition, and the mother is explaining to him why.

"You practiced and practiced with lots of energy," she tells him. "It got really hard, but you made a great effort. You insisted on practicing yourself."

"So the focus is on the process of persisting through it despite the challenges, not giving up, and that's what leads to success," Li says.

All of this matters because the way you conceptualize the act of struggling with something profoundly affects your actual behavior.

Obviously if struggle indicates weakness - a lack of intelligence - it makes you feel bad, and so you're less likely to put up with it. But if struggle indicates strength - an ability to face down the challenges that inevitably occur when you are trying to learn something - you're more willing to accept it.

And Stigler feels in the real world it is easy to see the consequences of these different interpretations of struggle.

"We did a study many years ago with first-grade students," he tells me. "We decided to go out and give the students an impossible math problem to work on, and then we would measure how long they worked on it before they gave up."

The American students "worked on it less than 30 seconds on average and then they basically looked at us and said, 'We haven't had this,' " he says.

But the Japanese students worked for the entire hour on the impossible problem. "And finally we had to stop the session because the hour was up. And then we had to debrief them and say, 'Oh, that was not a possible problem; that was an impossible problem!' and they looked at us like, 'What kind of animals are we?' " Stigler recalls.

"Think about that [kind of behavior] spread over a lifetime," he says. "That's a big difference."
Not East Versus West
This is not to imply that the Eastern way of interpreting struggle - or anything else - is better than the Western way, or vice versa. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, which both sides know. Westerns tend to worry that their kids won't be able to compete against Asian kids who excel in many areas but especially in math and science. Li says that educators from Asian countries have their own set of worries.

" 'Our children are not creative. Our children do not have individuality. They're just robots.' You hear the educators from Asian countries express that concern, a lot," she notes.

So, is it possible for one culture to adopt the beliefs of another culture if they see that culture producing better results?

Both Stigler and Li think that changing culture is hard, but that it's possible to think differently in ways that can help. "Could we change our views of learning and place more emphasis on struggle?" Stigler asks. "Yeah."

For example, Stigler says, in the Japanese classrooms that he's studied, teachers consciously design tasks that are slightly beyond the capabilities of the students they teach, so the students can actually experience struggling with something just outside their reach. Then, once the task is mastered, the teachers actively point out that the student was able to accomplish it through hard work and struggle.

"And I just think that especially in schools, we don't create enough of those experiences, and then we don't point them out clearly enough."

But we can, Stigler says.

In the meantime, he and the other psychologists doing this work say there are more differences to map - differences that allow both cultures to more clearly see who they are.

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Struggle For Smarts? How Eastern And Western Cultures Tackle Learning

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In 1979, when Jim Stigler was still a graduate student at the University of Michigan, he went to Japan to research teaching methods and found himself sitting in the back row of a crowded fourth-grade math class.

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We’ve all made mistakes, but what does the way you react to them say about you? Answer this question: what is the best way to respond to a mistake—and does your answer differ for different kinds of mistakes? How important is it that people feel guilty for their mistakes?

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Association for Psychological Science - APS

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"Whether you think you can or think you can't-you're right," said Henry Ford. A new study, to be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that people who think they can learn from their mistakes have a different brain reaction to mistakes than people who think intelligence is fixed.

"One big difference between people who think intelligence is malleable and those who think intelligence is fixed is how they respond to mistakes," says Jason S. Moser, of Michigan State University, who collaborated on the new study with Hans S. Schroder, Carrie Heeter, Tim P. Moran, and Yu-Hao Lee. Studies have found that people who think intelligence is malleable say things like, "When the going gets tough, I put in more effort" or "If I make a mistake, I try to learn and figure it out." On the other hand, people who think that they can't get smarter will not take opportunities to learn from their mistakes. This can be a problem in school, for example; a student who thinks her intelligence is fixed will think it's not worth bothering to try harder after she fails a test.

For this study, Moser and his colleagues gave participants a task that is easy to make a mistake on. They were supposed to identify the middle letter of a five-letter series like "MMMMM" or "NNMNN." Sometimes the middle letter was the same as the other four, and sometimes it was different. "It's pretty simple, doing the same thing over and over, but the mind can't help it; it just kind of zones out from time to time," Moser says. That's when people make mistakes-and they notice it immediately, and feel stupid.

While doing the task, the participant wore a cap on his or her head that records electrical activity in the brain. When someone makes a mistake, their brain makes two quick signals: an initial response that indicates something has gone awry-Moser calls it the "'oh crap' response"-and a second that indicates the person is consciously aware of the mistake and is trying to right the wrong. Both signals occur within a quarter of a second of the mistake. After the experiment, the researchers found out whether people believed they could learn from their mistakes or not.

People who think they can learn from their mistakes did better after making a mistake - in other words, they successfully bounced back after an error. Their brains also reacted differently, producing a bigger second signal, the one that says "I see that I've made a mistake, so I should pay more attention" Moser says.

The research shows that these people are different on a fundamental level, Moser says. "This might help us understand why exactly the two types of individuals show different behaviors after mistakes." People who think they can learn from their mistakes have brains that are tuned to pay more attention to mistakes, he says. This research could help in training people to believe that they can work harder and learn more, by showing how their brain is reacting to mistakes.

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How Your Brain Reacts To Mistakes Depends On Your Mindset

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"Whether you think you can or think you can't-you're right," said Henry Ford. A new study, to be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that people who think they can learn from their mistakes have a different brain reaction to mistakes than people who think intelligence is fixed.

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Research suggests that when people think back to past experiences, they focus on their mistakes more than on their successes. What are the positive and negative impacts that this tendency might have on their decision-making?

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And how our perception influences the way we feel.

Photo by Sarah Kilian on Unsplash

Mistakes.

We all make them.

There are plenty of valid reasons why we shouldn't be afraid of making mistakes and experiencing failure. Numerous articles floating around on the internet have covered why mistakes are good. I have even covered how we should change the way we see failure in...

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And how our perception influences the way we feel. Mistakes. We all make them. There are plenty of valid reasons why we shouldn't be afraid of making mistakes and experiencing failure. Numerous articles floating around on the internet have covered why mistakes are good.

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Some psychologists argue that people who are reluctant to admit mistakes suffer from fragile egos. Answer this question: what is the best way to handle someone who refuses to accept they have made a mistake, even when the facts are indisputable?

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We all make mistakes, and we do so with regularity. Some errors are small, such as, "No, we don't need to stop at the store; there's plenty of milk left for breakfast." Some are bigger, such as, "Don't rush me; we have plenty of time to get to the airport before the flight leaves." And some are crucial, such as, "I know it was raining and dark, but I'm sure that was the man I saw breaking into the home across the street."

No one enjoys being wrong. It's an unpleasant emotional experience for all of us. The question is how do we respond when it turns out we were wrong-when there wasn't enough milk left for coffee, when we hit traffic and missed the flight, or when we find out the man who sat in jail for five years based on our identification was innocent all along?

Some of us admit we were wrong and say, "Oops, you were right. We should have gotten more milk."

Some of us kind of imply we were wrong, but we don't do so explicitly or in a way that is satisfying to the other person, "We had plenty of time to get to the airport on time if the traffic hadn't been unusually bad. But fine, we'll leave earlier next time."

But some people refuse to admit they're wrong, even in the face of overwhelming evidence: "They let him go because of DNA evidence and another dude's confession? Ridiculous! That's the guy! I saw him!"

The first two examples are probably familiar to most of us, because those are typical responses to being wrong. We accept responsibility fully or partially (sometimes, very, very partially), but we don't push back against the actual facts. We don't claim there was enough milk when there wasn't, or that we were not late to the airport.

But what about when a person does push back against the facts, when they simply cannot admit they were wrong in any circumstance? What in their psychological makeup makes it impossible for them to admit they were wrong, even when it is obvious they were? And why does this happen so repetitively - why do they never admit they were wrong?

The answer is related to their ego, their very sense-of-self. Some people have such a fragile ego, such brittle self-esteem, such a weak "psychological constitution," that admitting they made a mistake or that they were wrong is fundamentally too threatening for their egos to tolerate. Accepting they were wrong, absorbing that reality, would be so psychologically shattering, their defense mechanisms do something remarkable to avoid doing so - they literally distort their perception of reality to make it (reality) less threatening. Their defense mechanisms protect their fragile ego by changing the very facts in their mind, so they are no longer wrong or culpable.

As a result, they come up with statements, such as, "I checked in the morning, and there was enough milk, so someone must have finished it." When it's pointed out that no one was home after they left in the morning, so no one could have done that, they double down and repeat, "Someone must have, because I checked, and there was milk," as though some phantom broke into the house, finished the milk and left without a trace.

In our other example, they will insist that their erroneous identification of the robber was correct despite DNA evidence and a confession from a different person. When confronted, they will continue to insist or pivot to attacking anyone who tries to argue otherwise and to disparaging the sources of the contradictory information (e.g., "These labs make mistakes all the time, and besides, you can't trust a confession from another criminal! And why do you always take their side?").

People who repeatedly exhibit this kind of behavior are, by definition, psychologically fragile. However, that assessment is often difficult for people to accept, because to the outside world, they look as if they're confidently standing their ground and not backing down, things we associate with strength. But psychological rigidity is not a sign of strength, it is an indication of weakness. These people are not choosing to stand their ground; they're compelled to do so in order to protect their fragile egos. Admitting we are wrong is unpleasant, it is bruising for any ego. It takes a certain amount of emotional strength and courage to deal with that reality and own up to our mistakes. Most of us sulk a bit when we have to admit we're wrong, but we get over it.

But when people are constitutionally unable to admit they're wrong, when they cannot tolerate the very notion that they are capable of mistakes, it is because they suffer from an ego so fragile that they cannot sulk and get over it - they need to warp their very perception of reality and challenge obvious facts in order to defend their not being wrong in the first place.

How we respond to such people is up to us. The one mistake we should not make is to consider their persistent and rigid refusal to admit they're wrong as a sign of strength or conviction, because it is the absolute opposite - psychological weakness and fragility.
Copyright 2018 Guy Winch

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Why Certain People Will Never Admit They Were Wrong

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We all make mistakes, and we do so with regularity. Some errors are small, such as, "No, we don't need to stop at the store; there's plenty of milk left for breakfast." Some are bigger, such as, "Don't rush me; we have plenty of time to get to the airport before the flight leaves."