Hi All,

Here's an article about a study that identifies how specifically people like people like them. It turns out that if someone thinks of someone else as being enough like them, the actually think of them in a way that activates parts of the brain that are normally used for self-appraisal.

In other words, we think of them in the same way we might think of ourselves and attribute many of our own characteristics to them!

And, since the basic human instinct tends to be for self preservation and self promotion... well, I think you can do the math for yourself!

And if you are aware that this sort of projection is taking place, I wonder what further distinctions one might make about both the advantages and disadvantages that establishing this state might create and what possibilities those might provide when we both make and break this kind of connection?

For example, as Richard Bandler has often intimated, if you need to be thought of as someone who has different, perhaps more powerful capabilities in a given situation, do you really want someone who cannot yet deal with that situation to think of you as being just like them in that context? Food for thught, methinks...

A little aside...

One of my pet peeves about the circumstances surrounding NLP thus far is that it's countercultural roots (Bandler and Grinder weren't and aren't exactly what you might call conformists ) and the adversarial relationship that NLP has with the academia of psychology, who also happen to be the gatekeepers of the vast majority of research (and funding) have meant that NLP has not been able to benefit from the kind of studies that, if properly designed and skilfully conducted, could potentially reveal all sorts of new distinctions about the things we do.

And that's also why I'm excited about so much of the research being done by neurologists and neuropsychologists. So much of it feeds directly into the distinctions made in the field of NLP, both confirming most of it's basic postulates and also providing us with even further insights that we can use to make what we do even more effective, that we can enjoy the benefits of the research even if we didn't do it ourselves...

So, I wonder, what new distinctions will you find yourself making as you think about these things today? Wonderful days indeed!

Be Well,

Michael Perez