Why stubborn

Recently it occurred to me that I should maybe look into short-term mood boosting practices. My long-term mood boosting practice is taking Prozac. I was preparing to go out for the night, which I did not want to do. My girlfriend was trying to cheer me up, but I did not want to be cheered up.

This is how I often am when bad moods strike: determined to make them last as long as possible. Much of the time this is, I think, a useful trait to have. Take Joe, a senior level executive whom I coached. Joe was known for his commanding presence, and for driving results within the organization. His decisiveness and ability to focus on key issues and solutions made him a valuable asset to his company.

However, there were times when Joe was blinded by his own abilities and unable to see other courses of action that were in the best interest of the company and critical stakeholders. Ivry of the University of California, Berkeley, makes a good argument for why we should call it stubborn. Through these studies, Ivry has been able to examine the contributions of specific brain regions to various learning mechanisms and to discern the functioning of different processes that operate outside human awareness.

These include. But after individuals learn a motor skill, they need to constantly adapt and calibrate the movements to match the context and current environment. Ivry referred to his sons and their adjustable basketball hoop to elaborate on the process: As the children grew, Ivry raised their hoop, and although they did not have to learn an entirely new skill to reach the higher hoop, they had to recognize the height difference i.

Although he might not have been able to reach the autonomous stage, he certainly became quite proficient in moving about his upside-down world. And his work set the stage for many modern studies of sensorimotor learning.

The screen precludes their vision of their hand and displays a marker in its stead as well as a target. Participants are instructed to move their hand underneath the screen toward the target while the visual marker mimics their movement; then they return to the starting point to repeat the process.

After the subjects become accustomed to the task, the researchers introduce a manipulation or perturbation to the visual feedback, making the marker move on an altered course compared with the hand e. And overall, participants are able to rapidly adapt to the change in visual feedback, with the hand moving in a direction that nullifies the effect of the perturbation. Studies conducted on individuals with cerebellar degeneration or ataxia the loss of control of bodily movements have found that these individuals are not able to adapt to the task i.

This copy is then used internally to predict how the movement should ideally occur and what the sensory feedback should ideally be. After the movement is executed, the actual feedback from the sensory system is then compared with the predicted feedback from the efference copy, and the difference between what was predicted and what happened is understood by the brain as the sensory prediction error. For example, when people walk down the stairs, their efference copy leads them to predict that their foot should feel the next step.

However, if the tread is missing and the expected pressure on the foot is absent, the brain processes this difference as a sensory prediction error, a signal that can be used to trigger a rapid correction to the movement to prevent the person from toppling over.

Sometimes, hidden feelings of aggression are the cause of stubborn behaviour. The unwavering urge to possess or want something can turn into stubbornness by being obstinate about it.

And opinions of others, even when more logical, do not matter in such situations. The feeling of being inferior or weak is masked by the trait of stubbornness. This helps them to hide their vulnerable side from others. From loud outbursts to imposing their opinion on others, stubbornness can become visibly distressing.

We encounter such people everywhere, and communicating with them can sometimes become frustrating and exhausting. However, there are some easy ways to deal with them. Dr Ishita Mukerji, senior psychologist at Kaleidoscope, a mental wellness centre mentions eight ways to interact with stubborn people , and bring them on the same page as yours:.