Befindlichkeit

Giving the Credit to God

2006-05-23T19:55:00.000-04:00

This weekend I will be presenting a poster presentation at the Association for Psychological Science, which will be holding its 18th Annual Convention in New York, NY from May 25 through the 26th. The research I will be presenting is co-authored with my colleague and friend, Justin Bailey, who is Assistant Professor at Framingham State College. The study found that spiritual experiences and cognitive attributions were able to predict changes in cognitive appraisals and positive psychological variables such as mood, purpose in life, state hope, state self-esteem, and internal control (Robbins & Bailey, 2006).

Past research has linked personal and religious attributions to cognitive appraisals of emotion and various measures of positive psychology, including self-esteem, subjective well-being, personal growth, positive affect, coping activities, and locus of control.

Religious attributions are beliefs about how God or divinity influences the course of natural events (Bailey & Hayes, 1998). While religious attributions are less frequent than naturalistic attributions for events (Lupfer, Brock, & Da Paola, 1992), believers also tend to think of God as acting indirectly through naturalistic interventions (Weeks & Lupfer, 2000). Religious attributions for mental disorders and states of mind appear to be quite common (Pfeifer, 2000; Hartog & Gow, 2005) and differ as a function of culture (Edman & Koon, 2000). Religious attributions are also associated with psychological adjustment and personal growth--a relationship that is likely mediated by religious coping (Roesch, 2003; Robbins, 2004).

Bailey and Hayes (1998) distinguished between two types of religious attributions: (1) Attributions to God as responsible for the cause of an event and (2) attributions to God as responsible for the outcome of an event. Past research suggests that attributions of responsibility to God for the solution to a problem predicts greater purpose in life and performance self-esteem as well as decreased hopelessness (Bailey, 2003). This finding contrasts with personal attributions for resonbility for a solution to a negative event, which predicted greater hope and decreased anxiety. Also, personal attributions for responsibility for the cause of a negative event predicted decreases in self-esteem. Our current study aimed to extend these findings by examining the role of personal and religious attributions in both positive and negative events. Our study also expands the dependent variables to include a wider variety of positive psychological variables, as well as cognitive appraisals.

Religious attributions have also been found to be related to daily spiritual experiences (Robbins, 2004). Daily spiritual experiences are defined as "a person's perception of the transcendent (God, the divine) in daily life and his or her perception of his or her interaction with or involvement of the transcendent in life" (Underhill & Teresi, 2002). Daily spiritual exprience has been found to be negatively related to alcohol consumption, anxiety, depression, anger, stress, and hostility, and has been found to be positively associated with quality of life, optimism, and perceived social support (Underwood & Teresi, 2002). We expected that our findings would replicate past findings linking daily spiritual experiences to religious attributions. We also expected that daily spiritual experience would function as a mediator between religious attributions and the dependent variables under consideration.

Personal attributions of responsibility (Brickman et al, 1982) have also been linked to positive psychological variables, but this study was the first to explore their relationship to cognitive appraisals.

For our study, we recruited 208 undergraduate students. The data of two students was omitted because they did not follow directions. Most of the students were traditionally aged college students (M age=20.05, SD=1.47). The participants were primarily White (94.2%), female (78.8%), and Christian (68.3%).

Each participant was asked to attend three different testing sessions of their choice, which were offered over a period of three weeks. The participants were asked to complete numerous scales as well as open-ended writing exercises in which they wrote summaries of the most positive and negative event in his or her life in the past year. On the first day participants were given all of the scales and wrote about their first event (half of the participants were randomly assigned to write first about a negative experience, while the other half wrote about a positive experience). On the second day, participants wrote a follow-up exercise, again took the scales, and wrote about another event (negative if the previous write-up was positive and vice versa). On the third day, participants wrote a follow-up to the previous event, took the same scales, and were finished with the exercise.

The variables we measured included the dependent variables of positive and negative mood (State of Mind measure; Schwartz, 1997), purpose in life (Crumbaugh & Maholick, 1969), state hope (Synder et al, 1996), state self-esteem (Heatherton & Polivy, 1991), internal control (Rotter, 1966), and cognitive appraisals. The independent variables were religious attributions of responsibility (Bailey & Hays, 1998), personal attributions of responsibility (Brickman et al, 1982), and daily spiritual experiences (Underhill & Teresi, 2002). Cognitive appraisals were recorded by five independent coders, who each coded the written narratives for cognitive appraisals of emotion. The coding method was based upon Lazarus' (1991) appraisal theory of emotion. Codings were used only if three of the five coders agreed that the appraisal had been present in the narrative.

Here are the results of the study

-- When participants used religious attributions to explain the cause of a negative event, they also tended to use religious attributions for a solution to the negative event, religious attributions for the cause of their positive event, and religious attributions for the outcome of their positive event. They also tended to be slightly younger.

-- When participants used religious attributions to predict the solution for their negative event, they tended more often to have a more positive mood (time 1) and had higher purpose in life. They also were more likely to use religious attributions for the cause and outcome of their positive event and had higher daily spiritual experience scores.

-- Participants who used religious attributions of responsibility for the cause of positive events also tended to have a more positive mood (time 1 & 2) and higher purpose in life (time 1). They also tended more often to use religious attributions for the outcome of the positive event. They had higher daily spiritual experiences scores, and were less likely to use personal attributions for the solution of a positive event.

-- Participants who used religious attributions of responsibility for the outcome of a positive event also were more likely to have a positive mood (time 1 & 2), higher purpose in life (time 1 & 2), and higher daily spiritual experience scores. They were less likely to use personal attributions for the outcome of a positive event.

-- Daily spiritual experience, in addition, was positively associated with positive mood (time 1, 2 & 3), purpose in life (time 1, 2 & 3), state hope (time 1, 2 & 3), and state self-esteem (time 1, 2 & 3). Daily spiritual experience was negatively related to anxiety appraisals, as well as personal attributions of responsibility for the cause and the outcome of a positive event.

-- Personal attributions of responsibility for the cause of a negative event was positively related to guilt appraisals, as well as personal attributions for the solution to a negative event. It was negatively related to appraisals for sadness and love.

-- Personal attributions of responsibility for the solution to a negative event, in addition, was positively related to guilt appraisals and negatively related to appraisals for anger, sadness, and love.

-- Personal attributions of responsibility for the cause of a positive event was linked to increased locus of control (time 1, 2 & 3), as well as personality attributions of responsibility for the outcome of the positive event.

-- Finally, personal attributions of responsibility for the outcome of a positive event was also positively realted to internal control (time 1, 2 & 3).

We performed multiple regression analyses to identify which independent variables independently predicted specific dependent variables. Here is what we found:

-- Daily spiritual experiences independently predicted positive mood at time 1, 2 & 3.

-- Purpose in life at time 1 was associated with fewer personal attributions for the cause of a negative event and higher daily spiritual experience. At time 2, daily spiritual experience alone predicted purpose in life. However, again at time 3, personal attributions for the cause of a negative event contributed to the prediction of purpose in life scores beyond any variance predicted by daily spiritual experience.

-- At time 2 only, personality attributions of responsibility for the cause of a negative event was associated with lower state hope, while daily spiritual experience was associated with higher state hope. At time 3, only higher daily spiritual experience predicted state hope.

-- Religious attributions of responsibility played a unique role only in the prediction of self-esteem. At time 1, self-esteem was associated with lower personal attributions of responsibility for causing a negative event and higher daily spiritual experience. However, at time 2, self-esteem was associated with a lower incidence of religious attributions for the cause of a negative event, as well as lower personal attributions for the cause of the negative event, higher personal attributions for the cause of the positive event, and higher daily spiritual experience. At time 3, religious attributions for the cause of a negative event again predicted lower self-esteem. However, religious attributions for the outcome of the event was associated with higher self-esteem.

-- At time 3, internal control was solely predicted by personal attributions of responsibility for the outcome of a positive event.

-- Personal attributions for the outcome of a positive event independently predicted more frequent anxiety appraisals and less frequent relief appraisals.

-- Personal attributions for the outcome of a negative event were associated with more frequent hope appraisals.

-- Personal attributions for the cause of a negative event was associated with more frequent guilt appraisals.

Some interpretations of these results:

-- People who have frequent experience of the divine in their lives also tend to have a more positive mood.

-- People with daily spiritual experiences also tend to have more purpose in life, increased hope for the future, and higher self-esteem.

-- When bad things happen and people blame themselves for causing the event, they tend to have less purpose in life, less hope, and lower self-esteem. They also tend to feel more guilty.

-- However, when good things happen and people see themselves as being responsible for outcome of that event, they are more likely to feel in control of their situation. But they tend to feel more anxiety and less relief.

-- When something bad happens and people believe they are responsibility for solving the problem, they tend to be more frequently think hopefully about the future.

-- When people feel that God caused a negative event in their lives, they tend to have lower self-esteem. But when they feel God is responsible for solving a problem resulting from a negative event in their lives, their self-esteem tends to be higher than those who do not feel God plays this role in their lives.

Limitations of the research:

-- Our sample was mostly limited to White females who are Christian. Results might differe in a more heterogenous sample.

-- The relationships among the variables are correlation, therefore we cannot make inferences about the causal relationship between these variables. Future experimental research should explore the causal relationship between the variables under consideration.

References

Bailey, J. (2003). Religious attributions of responsibility. Doctoral dissertation, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

Bailey, J., & Hayes, J.A. (1998). Religious attributions of responsibility: A review of empirical literature and development of an instrument. Counseling and Values, 43(1), 49-62.

Brickman, P., Rabinowitz, V.C., Karuza, J., Coates, D., Cohn, E., & Kidder, L. (1982). Models of helping and coping. American Psychologist, 37, 368-384.

Crumbaugh, J.C., & Maholick, L.T. (1969). Manual instructions for the Purpose-in-Life Test. Munster: Psychometric Affiliates.

Edman, J.L., & Koon, Y.Y. (2000). Mental illness beliefs in Malaysia: Ethnic and intergenerational comparisons. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 46(2), 101-109.

Hartog, K., & Gow, K.M. (2005). Religious attributions pertaining to the causes and cures of mental illness. Mental Health, Religion, & Culture, 8(4), 263-276.

Heatherton, T.F., & Polivy, J. (1991). Development and validation of a scale for measuring state self-esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 895-910.

Lupfer, M.B., Brock, K.F., & De Paola, S.J. (1992). The use of secular and religious attributions to explain everyday behavior. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 31, 486-503.

Pfeifer, S. (2000). Religious interpretations of mental distress: Empirical findings and clinical implications. Psyche en Geloof, 11(2), 86-97.

Robbins. B.D., & Hakimian, Y. (2004). Coping with terrorism: The role of attributions and daily spiritual experiences. International Network on Personal Meaning's Biannual Conference, Vancouver, BC, Canada, July 2004.

Roesch, S.C. (2003). Testing an attribution and coping model of stress: Religion as an orienting system. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 22(3), 197-209.

Rotter, J.B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs, 80, Whole No. 609.

Schwartz, R.M. (1997). Consider the simple screw: Cognitive science, quality improvement, and psychotherapy. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 65(6), 970-983.

Snyder, C.R., Sympson, S.C., Ybasco, F.C., Borders, T.F., Babyak, M.A., & Higgins, R.L. (1996). Development and validation of the State Hope Scale. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2, 321-335.

Underwood, L.G., & Teresi, J.A. (2002). The Daily Spiritual Experience Scale: Development, theoretical description, reliability, exploratory factor analysis and preliminary construct validity using health-related data. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 24(1), 22-33.

Weeks, M., & Lupfer, M.B. (2000). Religious attributions and proximity of influence: An investigation of direct interventions and distal explanations. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 39(3), 348-362.

Early Humanoids Mated with Chimps?

2006-05-17T16:04:00.000-04:00

An amazing new study from the Broad Institute has found through genome comparisons "that the evolutionary split between humans and chimpanzees may have been more recent and more convoluted than expected."

How recent? Much more recent than originally thought:

"The scientists discovered that the age range of the human genome relative to chimp spans a period of more than 4 million years, a much larger window than expected. In addition, they found that the youngest of regions are much younger than anticipated — no older than 6.3 million years and perhaps less than 5.4 million years old.

Notably, this estimate puts the time of human-speciation about 1 to 2 million years earlier than previous predictions, which are based in part on a well-known fossil nicknamed "Toumaï." This fossil exhibits several characteristics thought to be human-like, such as its dentition and skeletal features indicative of an upright posture. Because of these, Toumaï is classified as a hominid, part of the ancestral line of humans that appeared subsequent to the split from chimpanzees."

...From their findings, the scientists propose that ancestral humans initially separated from chimps, but that the two populations continued to interbreed before finally splitting from each other, less than 5.4 million years ago."

Picture that. Early humanoids interbreeding with early chimps? Okay, then again, maybe you don't want to picture that...

The Personality of Politics

2006-05-17T15:30:00.000-04:00

Can you predict whether nusery school kids will turn out to be conservative or liberal? Turns out you can...

Jack and Heanne Block (2006) have generated a massive amount of data from 30-year long longitudinal study of Bay Area individuals. They started the data collection when the children were 3-years-old, and collected subsequent data at ages 4, 5, 7, 11, 14, 18, 23, and 32. They report on some of their most interesting findings in the latest issue of American Psychologist.

One interesting finding has to do with the political beliefs these children developed as adults. When these children were 23-years-old, Block and Block (in press) measured whether the individuals had conservative or liberal political beliefs. Remarkably, they were able to find relationships between the adult political beliefs and the personality of these individuals when they were in preschool 30-years-ago!

What of participants who grew up to be conservatives at age 23? Back in preschool, they were more overcontrolled: "inhibited, uncomfortable with uncertainty, susceptible to a sense of guilt, and rigid when experiencing duress."

And what about the liberals? In preschool, by contrast, they were more undercontrolled: "self-reliant, energetic, having developed close relationships, and somewhat dominating."

Obviously these findings present wide-ranging implications for political science.

References

Block, J., & Block, J.H. (in press). Nursery school personality and political orientation two decades later. Political Psychology.

Block, J., & Block, J.H. (2006). Venturing a 30-year longitudinal study. American Psychologist, 61(4), 315-327.

Just Say NO ... To ADHD Drugs

2006-05-08T22:48:00.000-04:00

Addiction to attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder medications, such as Adderall and Ritalin, reportedly is rising among U.S. teenagers.

An Indiana University survey of school-age children last year found 7 percent of high school seniors admitted trying Ritalin without a doctor's order, the Indianapolis Star reported Monday, noting at some colleges 16 percent or more students have tried Ritalin.

High school students reportedly sprain their ankles, are prescribed painkillers and then trade their leftovers for Ritalin or other drugs.

One student, 17-year-old Eric Whittaker, told the Star he first tried Adderall at age 14.

Eric said at one point he was selling Adderall pills for $2 each and swallowing up to 10 a day. He told the newspaper he sold his guitars to buy more pills.

"When I'd start coming down, I'd need to take more to get it back up," he said. "Sometimes it was like my heart was going to explode."

Eric's mother, Carrie Whittaker, blames herself for not identifying the problem. "What I never realized is how easy it is to get (the drugs) at school," she told the Star. "It's out there, and nobody's paying attention."

Those Lying Lemurs

2006-05-08T21:24:00.000-04:00

In the latest Monitor on Psychology, APA's monthly rag, I found a report of a cute little study of lemurs and their deceptive ways.

I was surprised to learn that, while lemurs are primates like apes and chimps, they have a much longer evolutionary history and lack many of the cognitive features shared by such primates, including us humans. But one thing lemurs do that we do: they'll lie their butts off if it means holding onto their food.

The design of the study is actually pretty ingenius in its simplicity. The researchers used three lemurs and trained them to pick out which bowl hid a raisin--apparently a favorite treat of these critters. With that right pick, the trainer would give the lemur the raison for a little positive reinforcement. The experimental manipulation involved the introduction of a new trainer and a third guy who would steal the raison whenever the monkey picked the right bowl. As it turned out, whenever this third guy was around, the lemurs learned to pick the wrong bowl--the one without the raisin--in order to preserve the treat for himself! Pretty smart lemurs, eh?

The study was conducted by Emilie Gentry and colleagues at University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and will appear in the next issue of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes (Vol. 32, No. 2).

Reference

Dingfleder, S. (2006). Lemurs can be liars, if they think you want their food. Monitor on Psychology, 37(5), 10.

Having a Sense of Belonging Increases Reasons for Living Among the Elderly

2006-05-07T16:13:00.000-04:00

Research by Kissane and McLaren (2006) have found empirical evidence for the link between having a sense of belonging and having a reason to live among the elderly.

Older people are at an increased risk of suicide compared to the general population. The good news is that suicide among the elderly can be reduced if they have reasons to live. Reasons for living include having a sense of responsibility to one's family, concern for children, and a belief that one can cope with problems, as well fears of suicide, fears of social disapproval, and moral objections to suicide.

New research by Kissane and McLaren (2006) has found that, among the elderly, reasons for living are significantly increased when elderly persons have a sense of belonging. A "sense of belonging" means the person perceives that he or she is or can be meaningfully involved in his or her environment or social system. Those who are widowed, living alone and lonely are at risk of having a reduced sense of belonging, and may also be at greater risk of having few reasons to live, which would increase their risk of suicide.

In their study, Kissane and McLaren gathered data from 104 respondents between the ages of 61 and 91 years. 80% of the respondents were women. They gave them a questionnaire called the Reasons for Living Inventory, which has subscales measuring survival and coping beliefs, responsibility to family, child concerns, fear of suicide, fear of social disapproval, and moral objections. The participants were also giving the Sense of Belonging Instrument, and they were asked a variety of questions about demographic information (e.g., age, gender, etc.).

As predicted, these researchers found that sense of belonging was associated with reasons for living, and in particular, was associated with the subscales for responsibility to family and survival and coping beliefs. And these associations were significant even when controlling for gender and marital status. As the authors write, "It was evident that having a higher level of sense of belonging was related to more reasons to live overall, as well as more child-related concerns, greater responsibility to family and more survival and coping beliefs, specificially" (p. 253).

The variables of sense of belonging, marital status and gender, when taken together, accounted for a large proportion of the variance (24%) in the survival and coping beliefs subscale of the Reasons for Living Inventory.

These results have direct practical implications for reducing the risk of suicide among the elderly:

"Results suggest that those in contact with elderly individuals should encourage both family and community involvement in older people to develop their sense of belonging. Older people may benefit from attending social groups such as senior citizens clubs, bowling clubs, and returned servicemen’s leagues, as they may be valuable resources for increasing older people’s sense of belonging in the community. Activities conducted by retirement villages and homes could focus on increasing sense of belonging within the villages and homes and in the wider community. Theoretically, once sense of belonging is enhanced, reasons for living should increase too. Future research needs to investigate if this in fact occurs" (p. 254).

How can you make a difference? Well, have you called your grandma lately? Also, take a weekend out of your month and visit a local long-term care facility. Shine a little light on the lonely worlds of those confined to hospitals and nursing homes. You could be the difference between life and death for one lonely soul.

References

Kissane, M., & McLaren, S. (2006). Sense of belonging as a predictor of reasons for living in older adults. Death Studies, 30,(3), 243-258.

The Pain of Anticipation

2006-05-07T15:10:00.000-04:00

Now researchers using brain scans to unravel the biology of dread have an explanation: For some people, anticipating pain is truly as bad as experiencing it.

How bad? Among people who volunteered to receive electric shocks, almost a third opted for a stronger zap if they could just get it over with, instead of having to wait.

More importantly, the research found that how much attention the brain pays to expected pain determines whether someone is an "extreme dreader" -- suggesting that simple diversions could alleviate the misery.

The research, published in the journal Science, is part of a burgeoning new field called neuroeconomics that uses brain imaging to try to understand how people make choices. Until now, most of that work has focused on reward, the things people will do for positive outcomes.

"We were interested in the dark side of the equation," explained Dr. Gregory Berns of Emory University, who led the new study.

"Dread often makes us make bad decisions."

Standard economic theory says that people should postpone bad outcomes for as long as possible, because something might happen in the interim to improve the outlook.

In real life the "just get it over with" reaction is more likely, said Berns, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. He offers a personal example: He usually pays credit card bills as soon as they arrive instead of waiting until they're due, even though "it doesn't make any sense economically."

So Berns designed a study to trace dread inside the brain. He put 32 volunteers into an MRI machine while giving them a series of 96 electric shocks to the foot. The shocks varied in intensity, from barely detectable to the pain of a needle jab.

Participants were told one was coming, how strong it would be, and how long the wait for it would be, from 1 to 27 seconds.

Later, participants were given choices: Would they prefer a medium jolt in 5 seconds or 27 seconds? What about a mild jolt in 20 seconds vs. a sharp one in 3 seconds?

When the voltage was identical, the volunteers almost always chose the shortest wait. But those Berns dubbed "extreme dreaders" picked the worst shock if it meant not having to wait as long.

The MRI scans showed that a brain network that governs how much pain people feel became active even before they were shocked, particularly the parts of this "pain matrix" that are linked to attention -- but not brain regions involving fear and anxiety. The more dread bothered someone, the more attention the pain-sensing parts of the brain were paying to the wait.

In other words, the mere information that you're about to feel pain "seems to be a source of misery," George Lowenstein, a specialist in economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, wrote in an accompanying review of the work.

"These findings support the idea that the decision to delay or expedite an outcome depends critically on how a person feels while waiting," Lowenstein added.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse funded the research. What's the link between dread and drug use? It's indirect, but now that scientists know how healthy people's brains anticipate unpleasant consequences, future studies can compare how drug abusers process such information.

Remembering Freud: Not So Wrong After All?

2006-05-07T13:53:00.000-04:00

As the 150th anniversary of Sigmund Freud's birth approaches on Saturday, mental-health experts consider his legacy mixed: A seminal thinker, Freud was far ahead of his time with some ideas but dead wrong on others.

Freud invented the concept of the unconscious, his most important idea to stand the test of time, says Drew Westen, a psychologist at Emory University who has studied the Viennese analyst's contributions. "Before him, nobody realized that our conscious mind is the tip of the mental iceberg." But it's now a given that people often act from unconscious motives or emotions that may reveal themselves in dreams.

And Freud was right about denial. "The research is crystal-clear that we look the other way not to see what makes us uncomfortable," Westen says.

Another key Freudian notion that has held up well is ambivalence, adds psychiatrist Peter Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac, whose biography of Freud is due next year. "He knew people were very conflicted -- they had mixed emotions, even about those they loved, and that was a revolutionary thought in his era."

Some pioneering ideas advanced by Freud are so widely accepted now that many don't realize who thought them up, Westen says. For example, it's common knowledge that childhood experiences can shape what we think of ourselves and how we develop adult relationships. But, says Westen, Freud was the first to see this key influence.

He also pioneered the idea that a therapist could help ease emotional pain. "He invented psychotherapy," says David Baker, director of the Archives of the History of American Psychology, based at the University of Akron.

But Freud's concept of therapy -- in-depth psychoanalysis several times a week -- is rarely done, Baker says. Most patients don't have the time or money for it, and insurance won't cover most of the cost, he says. Also, shorter-term therapies have been proven helpful.

The supportive environment that spawned the heyday of psychoanalysis after World War II "will not be seen again," predicted Sander Abend, training and supervising analyst at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, in a 2006 issue of The American Psychoanalyst.

That doesn't mean nobody benefits from Freudian therapy. Although these sessions can cost more than $200 an hour (four days a week) in big cities, some still consider it worth every penny. David Lundin, a 64-year-old retired executive in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., pays $24,000 a year out of pocket -- his insurance covers a bit -- for psychoanalytic therapy. He's been doing it for 10 years.

Other therapies didn't ease his depression, anxiety and lack of confidence, Lundin says. "By free association and dreams, I accessed very early feelings that led to not trusting people, to anger. You work them through, and they have less hold on you. I'm not cured, but I'm much better. I'm a happier person."

Although Freud's "big-picture items held up," he faltered on many specifics, Kramer says. He wrongly linked physical symptoms to specific feelings. "For example, if you were nauseous, there was something you couldn't stomach." He thought paranoia was always based on someone wanting to have done to them what they claim to fear -- not so, Kramer says.

And of course Freud has been pilloried by feminists for dreaming up "penis envy." But, notes Westen, "if you grow up in a culture where men are so privileged, it's easy to see how he could arrive at that."

Freud also mistakenly reduced people to having just two basic motives: sex and aggression. What about love for one's children or desire for material things? Many forces drive behavior, Westen says.

Freud fell far from the mark in predicting that religion would die out soon, as modern science took hold. Today, 92% of Americans say they believe in God, according to the Barna Group, a Ventura, Calif., market research company that focuses on culture and faith.

Still, the modern world confirms Freud was prophetic in sensing the power of religion to channel human aggression into destructive paths, says Naomi Janowitz, director of religious studies at University of California-Davis. "He knew there were powerful, aggressive motives that religious leaders could tap into."

Freud also left behind a valuable primer for understanding political leaders, says presidential historian and biographer Robert Dallek. "There are grandiose and paranoid men in leadership. There are struggles to outdo one's father," says Dallek, who attended psychoanalytic seminars for four years and says they gave him a clearer fix on what drives politicians.

Numerous Freudian concepts -- "anal" people, being "in denial," the Freudian slip -- have made their way into common parlance, Baker says. So even though he's been wrong about a number of things, perhaps the inventor of "the talking cure" still may claim to have the last word -- sometimes.

CDC Confirms High-End Rate of U.S. Autism

2006-05-07T13:48:00.000-04:00

An estimated 300,000 U.S. children in 2003-2004 had an autism diagnosis, according to a first-ever national study released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a number higher than some previous estimates.

The study confirms the high rate of autism estimated in previous studies done on small, regional populations and helps illustrate the huge public health impact of the disorder, CDC officials said.

It gives possibly the best national look to date at the impact of a disorder that has been difficult to quantify and the subject of much controversy, particularly over its cause.

According to data from two national health care surveys conducted in those years by the CDC — the National Health Interview Survey and the National Survey of Children's Health — parents reported that the disorder had been diagnosed in between 1 in 175 and 1 in 181 children nationwide. Previously, the CDC's estimates on the rate of autism had ranged from 1 in 166 to 1 in 500 children.

The new national data suggest the higher rate of autism is more likely, researchers said.

The findings come amid controversy over what causes autism, with many parents believing the disorder is the result of vaccines that previously contained thimerosal, a mercury preservative. That additive has since been removed from most childhood vaccines, except for some influenza shots.

Autism spectrum disorders "are an urgent public health issue," said Dr. Jose Cordero, director of the CDC's National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities.

Lee Grossman, president of the Autism Society of America, said the numbers will help gain funds for research and services for autistic children and adults.

"This is yet another survey that validates this has reached epidemic proportions," he said.

Autism is a lifelong neurological disorder that causes problems with communication skills and the ability to have normal social interactions. Autism and related autism spectrum disorders cover a range of symptoms that can vary from mild to severe. The cause of the disorders is unknown.

Thursday's study, while helping to better quantify how many children have been diagnosed, does not answer two of the most pressing questions for parents: the cause of autism and whether it is on the rise.

The CDC's study estimated autism prevalence by asking parents whether they were "ever told by a doctor or other health care provider that their child had autism." The analysis covered about 18,885 children in the National Health Interview Survey and 79,590 children in the National Survey of Children's Health.

The data in both surveys independently showed a higher rate of autism diagnosis among children ages 6-8 and 9-11 — who would have been born from 1992 through 1997, than among children ages 12-14 and 15-17, who would have been born from 1986 through 1991.

An advocacy group for parents of autistic children said the data indicate autism rates were higher among children who received more doses of old-style vaccines containing thimerosal, which started being eliminated in 1999. But CDC officials said age differences in the data were not statistically significant.

"We have to be careful in making too much of these differences," said Laura Schieve, a CDC epidemiologist and co-author of the study. She said the age differences may reflect discrepancies in parents' responses or changes in disease diagnoses over time.

Sallie Bernard, executive director of Safe Minds, which advocates for parents and autistic children, disagreed and said the pattern was consistent with the increased mercury that children received as the number of recommended childhood vaccines was increased during the same period.

Autism: Time cover story

2006-05-07T13:43:00.000-04:00

Once thought to be mainly a disease of the cerebellum, a region in the back of the brain that integrates sensory and motor activity, autism is increasingly seen as a pervasive problem with the way the brain is wired.

The distribution of white matter, the nerve fibers that link diverse parts of the brain, is abnormal, but it's not clear how much is the cause and how much the result of autism.

The immune system may play a critical role in the development of at least some types of autism. This suggests some new avenues of prevention and treatment.

Many classic symptoms of autism -- spinning, head banging, endlessly repeating phrases -- appear to be coping mechanisms rather than hard-wired behaviors. Other classic symptoms -- a lack of emotion, an inability to love --can now be largely dismissed as artifacts of impaired communication. The same may be true of the supposedly high incidence of mental retardation.

The world of autism therapy continues to be bombarded by cure-of-the-day fads. But therapists are beginning to sort out the best ways to intervene.

And while autism is generally a lifelong struggle, there are some reported cases in which kids who were identified as autistic and treated at an early age no longer exhibit symptoms.

Indeed, most researchers believe autism arises from a combination of genetic vulnerabilities and environmental triggers. An identical twin of a child with autism has a 60 percent to 90 percent chance of also being affected with the disorder. And the sibling of a child with autism has about a 10 percent chance of also having it.

Media Effects on Body Esteem and Desire for Cosmetic Surgery

2006-04-21T16:00:00.000-04:00

At our Daemen College Psychology Lab, Michelle Krupke completed her Senior Thesis, which investigated how the TV show America's Next Top Model influenced body esteem and desire for cosmetic surgery in undergraduate females.

Introduction

Recently there have been a variety of television shows created to focus attention on appearance. Shows such as "The Swan," "I Want a Famous Face," and "Extreme Makeover" portray the idea that attaining beauty should be held with high regard, even if cosmetic surgery must be involved. Other television shows, such as "American's Next Top Model" and "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model Search," focus on the maintenance of a thin physique. Through various media resources, society's concept of beauty is often represented by the depiction of slender actresses and models.

With the growing promotion of cosmetic surgery throughout media, women seem to be focusing a great deal of attention on their bodies and appearance. According to Delinsky (2005), cosmetic surgery is growing in it's acceptance as a form of self-improvement. Increased media exposure is a strong factor leading to the approval of cosmetic surgery. Media images of models with great bodies tend to affect certain people more than others. Green and Pritchard (2003) reviewed research on various factors that contribute to body image satisfaction in both men and women. They concluded that women were more significantly affected than men by the media. The promotion of being thin can often lead women to take on a personal drive for thinness. As a result, women can become increasingly dissatisfied with their own bodies.

Women tend to admire the bodies of actresses and models, and they may strive to achieve similar physiques. Adolescent females are generally more vulnerable to taking on the desire to look like their favorite celebrity (Maltby, Giles, Barber, & McCutcheon, 2005). The idealization of a celebrity is called "Celebrity Worship." Poorer body images in young girls result in greater levels of celebrity worship.

Taking into consideration past research about the effects of media and the relation of cosmetic surgey to media influences, we developed three hypotheses. The hypotheses were as follows:

Hypothesis I:
After exposure to a media piece presenting thin, beautiful women, female college freshman will present lower scores of body esteem than females who are in their senior year of college.

This hypothesis would be consistent with the past findings of Maltby, Giles, Barber and McCutcheon (2005), who found that adolescents develop strong celebrity worship. This worship is expected to last until around 20 years of age, when the girl begins adulthood. College freshman are generally between the ages of 18 and 19; therefore, we expect they will be more vulnerable to developing a desire for a celebrity body and will consequently experience greater dissatisfaction with their own bodies.

Hypothesis II:
We hypothesized that the experimental group would have lower scores on the body esteem questionnaire.

Tiggermann (2003) has suggested that individual dissatisfaction with the body is positively correlated with media exposure. Women's dissatisfaction and low self-esteem were suggested to be a result of thei internalization of thin ideals established by society.

Hypothesis III:
We predicted the experimental group, who were exposed to a clip from the TV show "Top Models," would posses a greater desire for cosmetic surgery.

We developed this hypothesis based on the reality television 0programs that have been promoting cosmetic surgery, and the research by Delinsky (2005), which found that approval and likelihood of cosmetic surgery are greated increased by high amounts of media exposure.

Methods

Participants:
The subjects who participated in the evaluation of body-esteem and cosmetic surgeries were Daemen College undergraduate women who were classified as Seniors or Freshman. A total of 52 students volunteered. Nineteen (36.5%) of the participants were seniors, and 33 (63.5%) were freshmen. With regard to ethnicity, 98% of the participants classified themselves as Caucasian, and 2% classified themselves as Black or of African descent.

Tests and Measures:

Body Esteem was measured with the State Self-Esteem Scale (Heatherton & Polivy, 1991). Only the items related to appearance were used to evaluate body esteem. This scale was chosen because it has strong internal consistency, with a coefficient alpha of .92 (Heatherton & Polivy, 1991). Likewise, we found that the items had good interitem reliability (Chronbach's alpha = .89).

To measure the desire for cosmetic surgery, we used a survey containing thirty-eight various cosmetic surgery options related to females. Desirability was determined by the number of procedures checked from the list. All participants were asked to choose procedures based on the idea that money would not be an issue nor would pain be involved.

The control group viewed viewed a 9 minute documentary about sharks taped from the Discovery Channel. The experimental group watched a 10 minute tape of a photo shoot and judge evaluaation from UPN's "America's Next Top Model."

Procedure:
After completing the consent form, all participants watched either the clip of "America's Next Top Model" or the brief shark documentary. After viewing the media clip, all participants completed the Desire for Cosmetic Surgery questionnaire. Then, they completed The State Self-Esteem Scale (Heatherton & Polivy, 1991). The third form participants completed was the demographics form, which asked participants for their college status, race, height, weight, and weight change since beginning the Freshman year of college. The height and weight were used to calculate individuals' Body Mass Index (BMI).

Results

For the analysis, we used multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) to examine whether the two factors--college status and the experimental manipulation--significantly influenced the dependent variables. After conducting multivariate tests, results presented a significant main effect in college status, Wilk's lamba = .85, F (1, 48) = 4.09, p = .02; a significant main effect in experimental groups, Wilk's lamba = .86, F (2, 47) = 3.76, p = .03; and a non-significant effect for the interaction of college status and experimental groups, Wilk's lamba = .92, F (2, 47) = 2.12, p = .12.

Follow-up ANOVA tests found the following:

-- The experimental group (M = 6.61, SD = 4.53) and the control group (M = 4.26, SD = 2.98) were significantly different in their desires for cosmetic surgery (p = .008).
-- The experimental group (M = 18.82, SD = 4.22) and the control group (M = 19.58, SD = 4.23) did not significantly differ in their body esteem scores (p = .55).
-- College status, Freshman (M = 4.42, SD = 3.15) and Seniors (M = 8.05, SD - 4.72), had significantly different desires for comestic surgery (p = .006).
-- College status, Freshman and Seniors, did not significantly differ in body esteeem scores (p = .37).
-- The interaction of college status and experimental group was not significant, but demonstrated a strong trend toward significance (p = .051).

Conclusion

Of our hypotheses, Hypothesis II and Hypothesis III were supported; however, Hypothesis I was not supported.

Hypothesis I stated that women who are of freshman college status would have lower body esteem levels than whomen who are of senior college status. According to the data collected in this study, seniors' body esteem scores were lower than freshmen body esteem scores. This may have been due to the additional finding that Seniors had gained more weight since their freshmen year compared to freshman women.

Hypothesis II suggested that the experimental groups would experience more body dissatisfaction after watching a media clip promoting beauty through the use of thing actresses/models. Although the findings were not significant, the trend of the results followed this hypothesis. The control grops body esteem was greater than the experimental group's body esteem.

Hypotehsis III suggested that the experimental group would report greater desires for cosmetic surgery than the control group. The experimental group showed a significantly greater desire for cosmetic surgery than the control group. This hypothesis was based on the belief that viewing media would produce a greater desire to change one's own body parts to resemble that of the actress/models to resemble that of the actresses/models, and cosmetic surgery is an instantaneous way to alter one's body.

There are a variety of limitations to this study. First, there was a very low sample size representing the college students, and 98% of the participants were Caucasian. Second, the convenience sampling used in the study, which was necessary due to time constraints, may have been biased. Future research in this area should replicate this study with a random sampling method and a larger sample size.

References

Delinsky, S. (2005). Cosmetic surgery: A common and accepted form of self-improvement? Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 35, 2012-2028.

Green, S.P., & Pritchard, M.E. (2003). Predictors of body image dissatisfaction in adult men and women. Social Behavior and Personality, 31, 215-222.

Heatherton, T.F., & Polivy, J. (1991). Development and validation of a scale for measuring state self-esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 895-910.

Maltby, J., Giles, D.C., Barbert, L., & McCutcheon, L.E. (2005). Intense-personal celebrity worship and body image: Evidence of a link among female adolescents. British Journal of Health Psychology, 10, 17-32.

Tiggemann, M. (2003). Media exposure, body dissatisfaction and disordered eating: Televition and magazines are not the same. European Eating Disorders Review, 11, 418-430.

Mediterranean Diet Reduces Risk of Alzheimer's Disease

2006-04-18T17:31:00.000-04:00

A Columbia University study has found that the Mediterranean diet rich in olive oil can reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease by up to 40 percent.

The study, one of the largest on the impact of food and drink on mental decline, appeared Tuesday in the Annals of Neurology, reports Britain's Independent newspaper. The study monitored 2,258 healthy, elderly people in New York who were part of a research project into aging, it said.

Earlier studies have said the diet of southern France, Italy and Spain, which also includes red wine, protects against heart disease and high blood pressure. The new study is the first to show its impact on Alzheimer's disease, says the report.

In the study, those who adhered most closely to the Mediterranean diet, eating lots of fruits, vegetables, legumes, some fish and alcohol with little dairy food and meat had the lowest risk of Alzheimer's, down by 39 to 40 percent. Those who only partially followed the diet had a reduced risk of 15 to 20 percent compared to those who consumed the typical American diet of hamburgers and ice cream.

Culture and Ideal Affect

2006-04-10T17:42:00.000-04:00

In a new study, Tasi, Knutson, and Fung (2006) studied how the factor of culture influences ideal and actual affect. "Ideal affect" refers to the way a person wants to feel, whereas "actual affect" refers to how the person is actually feeling.

The authors studied differences among European American, Asian American, and Hong Kong Chinese participants. They found that European Americans and Asian Americans both valued high-arousal positive affect, such as excitement, more than did Hong Kong Chinese participants. However, in comparison to European Americans, Chinese Hong Kong participants and Asian-Americans more highly valued low-arousal positive affects, such as feeling calm.

Irregardless of cultural differences, for all cultures participant depression scores increased to the extent that there was a discrepency between ideal and actual affect.

As the authors write, "These findings illustrate the distinctiveness of ideal and actual affect, show that culture influences ideal affect more than actual affect, and indicate that both play a role in mental health."

Reference

Tsai, J.L., Knutson, B., & Fung, H.H. (2006). Cultural variation in affect valuation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(2), 288-307.

Gizmos in the Bedroom Linked to Poor Sleep in Teenagers

2006-04-10T16:49:00.000-04:00

Today's teenagers are getting far less sleep than they're supposed to, and a new national study blames their bedrooms. Or more precisely, what's in those bedrooms.

Computers, cell phones, televisions and video games all keep those who should be asleep wide awake, said Jodi A. Mindell, associate director of the Sleep Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and coauthor of the study. As a result, more than a quarter of high school students fall asleep in school at least once a week. Fourteen percent don't make it on time - if at all.

At fault is not just teenagers' altered circadian rhythm but the number of distractions keeping them up at night, according to a two-month poll of 1,602 caregivers and their children in grades six through 12.

Nearly all the children surveyed had one gadget in their bedrooms, but by 12th grade, 39 percent had more than four electronic items there, the study found.

"Those with four or more electronic devices in their bedroom were twice as likely to fall asleep in school," said Mindell, cochair of the National Sleep Foundation task force that conducted the poll.

Houses and Faces: The Neuroscience of Autism

2006-04-10T13:06:00.000-04:00

Poor communication between brain areas in people with autism may give clues to difficulties they have in relating with other people, a study has found.

As the weak links mean they benefit less from social situations, it may explain why they do not interact well, said the study published in Neuroimage, the BBC reported Sunday.

Researchers from the University of London compared brain scans of 16 people with autism spectrum disorders, or ASD, and above-average IQs, as well as 16 volunteers unaffected by ASD.

The two groups were shown four images on a screen -- two of houses and two of faces. They were then asked to concentrate on either the faces or houses and decide if they were identical.

In the control group, paying attention to pictures of faces caused a significant increase in brain activity, but for ASD people it made no impact at all on the brain, explaining their lack of interest in faces.

Both groups had the same reaction to houses.

Research head Dr. Geoff Bird of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience said, "It seems that, for people with ASD, paying attention to a face is much harder to do and doesn't have the same effect."

Note: What the authors don't mention here -- this difference in the processing of faces vs houses may be explained by motivation. "Normals" may be more motivated to process faces than individuals with autism. So, the issue could be the relative presence or absence of social motivation, i.e. attachment to people.

9/11 Survivors Suffer Psychological and Health Consequences Five Years Later

2006-04-08T00:01:00.000-04:00

A majority of survivors of the 2001 attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center suffered from respiratory ailments and depression, anxiety and other psychological problems up to three years later, federal health officials said Friday.

The people who escaped from collapsed or damaged buildings on Sept. 11, 2001, were several times as likely to suffer from breathing problems or psychological trauma if they were caught in the cloud of trade center dust and debris that covered lower Manhattan, researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

Playing Violent Video Games Linked to Drug and Alcohol Abuse

2006-04-07T16:12:00.000-04:00

After playing a violent video game, young men are more likely to think it's OK to smoke marijuana and drink alcohol, raising the possibility that exposure to violent media could negatively affect health-related behavior.

Mother Who Committed Infanticide, Not Guilty By Reason of Insanity

2006-04-07T16:05:00.000-04:00

Dena Schlosser, 38, will be sent to a state mental hospital and held until she is no longer found to be a threat to herself or others.

"My own expectation is that she will remain at the hospital for many, many years," defense attorney David Haynes said.

Police arrested Schlosser in 2004 after she told a 911 operator she had severed her baby's arms. Officers found the 10-month-old baby, Margaret, near death in her crib and Schlosser covered in blood, holding a knife and listening to a hymn.

In issuing the verdict, Judge Chris Oldner said Schlosser had met the legal standard for insanity, but did not elaborate. Both the defense and the prosecution had agreed to let the judge decide the case after Schlosser's previous trial ended in a deadlocked jury in February.

Last week it was disclosed that Schlosser had a brain tumor that defense attorneys said could have caused hallucinations.

Emotional Consequences of Upward Social Comparisons

2006-04-07T01:20:00.000-04:00

In our lab at Daemen College, my students and I just finished analyzing the data for a study of the emotional consequences of upward social comparisons.

Past research has shown that people generally tend to have more negative affect when they compare themselves to someone who is perceived to be more successful. In contrast, people tend to have more positive affect when they compare themselves downward, in relation to someone who is worse off.

In our study, we looked at the relationship between attributional qualities in the social context of upward social comparisons, and we examined how these qualities influenced subsequent scores measuring state emotion.

Students volunteers (N = 120, 41 men and 79 women) from undergraduate classes at Daemen College participated in the study in exchange for extra credit in their psychology class. The mean age for participants was 24.13 (SD = 9.31), and the ethnic categories represented included 80.8% Anglo-American, 12.5% African-American, 4.2% Latino, 0.8% Asian-American, 0.8% Native American, and 0.8% "Other" participants.

Our research group used a brainstorming method to develop second-person narratives describing a situation involving upward social comparisons. The narratives were of two kinds: one was a work-related situation, the other was a sports-related comparison. In the work-related narrative, the second-person story invited the participant to identify with the protagonist who compared him- or herself with a colleague who had been given a promotion. In the sports-related narrative, the second-person story had the participant identify with an athlete whose teammate had been made captain of the team. Each narrative had elements of the story that were manipulated to either increase or decrease the controllability and stability attributions regarding the protagonist's deficient performance in comparison to the successful comparison target. The resulting narratives includes two scenarios -- one work-related and one sports-related -- with four conditions:

(a) High Controllability, Low Stability (HCLS)

Compared trait was attributed to an aspect of the protagonist that could be controlled by the person, and which was subject to change over time.

(b) High Controllability, High Stability (HCLS)

Compared trait was attributed to an aspect of the protagonist that could be controlled by the person, but which was not subject to change over time.

(c) Low Controllability, Low Stability (LCLS)

Compared trait was attributed to an aspect of the situation that could not be controlled by the person and which was not subject to change over time.

(d) Low Controllability, High Stability (LCHS)

Compared trait was attributed to an aspect of the situation that could not be controlled by the person but which was subject to change over time.

Upon reading the narratives, the participants were given the State Hope Scale and the State Shame and Guilt Scale. Sub-scales included scores for agency (hope), pathways (hope), shame, guilt, and pride.

Here is the breakdown of our findings. When identifying with a protagonist in a narrative who was engaged in upward social comparisons:

*** Participants in the high control conditions had lower agency scores than participants in the low control conditions.

*** Participants reported more guilt in the high control conditions than in the low control conditions.

*** Pride was reported to be higher among participants in the low control conditions compared to participants in the high control conditions.

*** Females had higher shame and guilt scores than males, but males had higher pride scores than females.

*** Within the high controllability conditions, participants who read a low stability scenario had higher agency scores than participants who read a high stability scenario.However, participants in the low controllability conditions did not significantly differ in agency scores between the low stability conditions.

*** Also, in the high controllability conditions, participants had higher pathways scores in the high stability conditions compared to the low stability conditions. However, in the low controllability conditions, participants did not significantly differ on pathways measures between the high stability and low stability conditions.

Conclusion:

Generally, in comparison to males, females tend to rate themselves higher on measures of shame and guilt, but lower on measures of pride. During upward social comparisons, individuals who attribute the negative comparison to something under their own control generally tend to have less agency (hope) and more guilt about their relative deficiency in achievement. On the other hand, when the deficiency is attributed to an aspect of the person or situation that is not under the protagonist's control, the participants reported higher pride.

Stability of the scenario had an effect on hope -- both agency and pathways -- but only in the high controllability scenarios. When the situation was controllable, participants felt more agency in unstable situations, but they saw more pathways to their goal(s) when the situation was more stable. In other words, it appears that, within controllable circumstances, agency is a consequence of situational instability, whereas pathways is a consequence of situational stability.

Kudos to Koocher

2006-04-07T01:01:00.000-04:00

In this month's Monitor on Psychology, here is what the American Psychological Association's President, Gerald P. Koocher, had to say:

"...I often find myself considering the distinction between performing psychotherapy and engaging in behaviors that seem likely to have psychologically beneficial effects. Many studies have taught us that empathy, the ability to form an emotional connection, and forging an alliance with the client will create a far stronger foundation for change and quality of life than any treatment manual validated by a plethora of randomized clinical trials.

I hope that in the constant quest to improve our science and validate our techniques we do not lose our understanding of just how important fundamental human connections become in advancing the quality of our clients' lives and our own."

Reference

Koocher, G.P. (2006). On being there. Monitor on Psychology, 37(4), p. 5.

Mental Disorders on Campus: On the Rise

2006-04-06T19:25:00.000-04:00

Almost 95 percent of college counseling centers report an increase in the past few years in the number of students who have already taken psychiatric medication when they arrive at college.

And experts say the college years, ages 18 to 22, are a common time for those with a mental illness to experience their first bout with depression or first schizophrenic break.

Colleges across the country also are reporting an increase in the intensity of mental problems, including depression, stress and self-injury. In fact, the number of college counseling center clients on psychiatric medication rose from 9 percent in 1994 to 25 percent in 2005, a University of Pittsburgh study said.

Nationwide, 9 percent of college students sought on-campus counseling last year, the study says. At CSU in Fort Collins, the counseling center had a 15 percent increase in clinical sessions last school year compared with the prior year, director Charles Davidshofer said. The center saw 2,281 students for almost 14,000 clinical sessions.

Male Victims of Domestic Abuse

2006-04-06T19:20:00.000-04:00

CNN "Behind the Scenes" investigates a problem that is getting increasingly more attention: Male victims of domestic abuse and the women who abuse them.

Philosophical Practices

2006-04-06T19:10:00.000-04:00

The new issue of Janus Head is now on-line.

Special Issue: PHILOSOPHICAL PRACTICES

Guest Edited by Helen Douglas

Including essays by Margret Grebowicz, Alphonso Lingis, Seth Huebner, Bert Olivier, John M. Desmond, Robert D. Walsh, Peter B. Raabe, Robert Scott Stewart, Jana Milloy, Stuart Grant, Tom Strong & Andy Lock, Louis N. Sandowsky, Mike Kantey, & Jonathan Diamonod

An Interview with Alejandro Jodorowsky

Art & Photography by Syrie Kovitz, Uwe Schmidt-Hess, & Doc Ross

Poetry by Tomas Transtromer, Laurelyn Whitt, Robert Gibbons, Claire Barbetti, Richard Hoffman, Jonathan Monroe, & Sarah Biggs

Plus book reviews...

Give Me Endorphins, Give Me Jerry Seinfeld

2006-04-06T02:29:00.000-04:00

A group of California researchers have found that anticipating watching a funny video can affect body chemistry.

They recruited 16 healthy young men as subjects and assigned them at random into two groups. They were told three days before the experiment began whether they would be watching a video or would be in the control group.

Lee Berk of Loma Linda University and his colleagues found that in the video group beta-endorphins were 27 percent higher and human growth hormone 87 percent higher just before they watched.

Earlier experiments have shown that watching a funny movie reduces stress and has effects that last for hours.

"It may sound corny, but we in the health care medical sciences need to 'get serious about happiness' and the lifestyle that produces it, relative to mind, body and spirit and its biotranslation," Berk said.

The paper was presented Sunday at an American Physiological Society session at Experimental Biology 2006.

More Evidence That Our Education System is Failing Students...

2006-03-29T13:20:00.000-05:00

Children in the United States have shown few gains in educational achievement over the past three decades, a sour note in a broad social report card that also cites declines in drug use, pregnancy rates and crime.

The study, to be released Tuesday by a private philanthropy, paints a mixed picture for the 18 and under crowd, with trouble spots including classroom performance and obesity.

Educational achievement for 9-, 13- and 17-year-olds has stagnated since 1975 despite government efforts such as the No Child Left Behind law of 2001, according to the Foundation for Child Development, which is dedicated to helping children, particularly the disadvantaged.

This year's study, which covers 1975 to 2005, "raises serious concerns around education and illustrates the urgent need for policies and practices that serve our nation's youth in this area," said the author, Kenneth Land, a sociology professor at Duke University.

It found that children's safety and behavior has improved the most over that time, thanks to declines in teenage birth rates, drinking and drug use and criminal activity.

The study followed up reports from the past two years that looked at 1975-2003 and 1975-2004. The latest study noted that more children were likely to attend preschool, get college degrees and be more politically active than their parents' generation.

On the education front, the study found that while math and reading scores for 9-year-olds improved, they were offset by a flat performance by 13-year-olds and some declines by 17-year-olds.

The foundation attributed better performance by the younger students, particularly in math, to the increased quality of prekindergarten programs. Some 12 states provide no support for such programs, according to the report, which predicted even more gains if not for state budget shortfalls.

Other factors that limit achievement include inconsistent standards for educational assessment; the growth of minority groups receiving education; and bureaucratic resistance to changes such as merit pay.

"Quality early education programs must be a part of the effort as we move forward, coupled with strong curricula and qualified teachers to maintain prekindergarten momentum through primary and secondary grades," said Ruby Takanishi, the foundation's president.

The study also found:

-A steady rise in obesity is offsetting improvements in mortality as fewer children are dying young. Overall, children's health is continuing to decline.

-An increasing number of children lives with one parent, a situation that affects their social relationships.

The Child Well-Being Index tracks 28 separate measures and is based on statistical reports from the Census Bureau, the National Center for Health Statistics and other agencies. The section on education is drawn from results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, widely considered the "nation's report card."

Let Them Fidget

2006-03-29T13:12:00.000-05:00

The fidgety boys and girls in Phil Rynearson's classroom get up and move around whenever they want, and that's just fine with him.

In fact, stretching, swaying and even balancing on big wobbly exercise balls are the point of this experimental classroom. The goal is to see if getting children to move even a little can help combat childhood obesity.

As an added perk, there's some splashy technology, too - laptop computers, a wireless network and iPods.

The data aren't in yet. But anecdotally, Rynearson and Superintendent Jerry Williams say the fourth- and fifth-graders are more focused on the curriculum than their peers in a comparison group in an ordinary classroom. And there are fewer distractions than in the traditional setup - where a lot of time is spent trying to get children to sit still.

Feeling Smart? But Are You Smart About Feelings?

2006-03-28T20:11:00.000-05:00

Traditional measures of intelligence do a poor job of predicting interpersonal and carreer success. However, measures of "emotional intelligence" promise to help predict success in relationships and at work.

In a recent article, Peter Salovey and Daisy Grewel (2005)have provided an update of the latest research on emotional intelligence.

They define "emotional intelligence" as the ability to perceive, use, understand, and manage emotions. These capacities can be measured with the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2002), which is a 40-minute battery of tests similar to IQ tests, e.g. Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WISC).

With use of this scale, researchers have found that emotional intelligence does seem to predict a wide range of adaptive behavior. Among the findings:

-- Male adolescents who engage in deviant behavior tend to have lower scores on the MSCEIT
-- Males with lower MSCEIT scores are more likely to use recreational drugs and alcohol, and they tend to have less satisfying relationships with friends
-- People with high scores tend to have more positive relationships with other people, perceive that their parents are more supportive, and have fewer negative interactions with close friends
-- People who score high on MSCEIT tend to have more success with the opposite sex
-- The happiest couples are those in which both partners score high on the MSCEIT
-- Employees with higher emotional intelligence scores are viewed as easier to work with and more likely to create a positive work environment
-- These employees were also rated by their supervisors as more interpersonally sensitive, more tolerant of stress, more sociable and better potential leaders
-- Higher MSCEIT scores predicted higher salary and more promotions

Reference

Salovey, P., & Grewel, D. (2005). The science of emotional intelligence. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(6), 281-285.

What Makes Her Happy?

2006-03-28T19:32:00.000-05:00

Freud confessed that his "thirty years of research into the feminine soul" left him unable to answer one great question: "What does a woman want?" Modern feminists have been arguing for decades over a variation of it: What should a woman want?

This week, two sociologists from the University of Virginia are publishing the answer to a more manageable variation. Drawing on one of the most thorough surveys ever done of married couples, they've crunched the numbers and asked: What makes a woman happy with her marriage?

Their answer doesn't quite jibe with current conventional wisdom. Three decades ago, two-thirds of Americans surveyed said it was better for wives to focus on homemaking and husbands to focus on breadwinning, but by the 1990s, only a third embraced the traditional division of labor. The new ideal in theory, not in practice became a partnership of equals who split duties inside and outside the home.

This new egalitarian marriage was hailed by academics and relationship gurus as a recipe for a happier union. As wives went off to work and husbands took on new jobs at home, couples would supposedly have more in common and more to talk about. Husbands would do more "emotion work," as sociologists call it, and wives would be more fulfilled.

That was the theory tested by the Virginia sociologists, Bradford Wilcox and Steven Nock, who analyzed a survey of more than 5,000 couples. Sure enough, they found that husbands' "emotion work" was crucial to wives' happiness. Having an affectionate and understanding husband was by far the most important predictor of a woman's satisfaction with her marriage.

But it turns out that an equal division of labor didn't make husbands more affectionate or wives more fulfilled. The wives working outside the home reported less satisfaction with their husbands and their marriages than did the stay-at-home wives. And among those with outside jobs, the happiest wives, regardless of the family's overall income, were the ones whose husbands brought in at least two-thirds of the money. These male providers-in-chief were regarded fondly by even the most feminist-minded women the ones who said they believed in dividing duties equally. In theory, these wives were egalitarians, but in their own lives they preferred more traditional arrangements.

Bad News for Psychiatrists, Good News for Psychotherapists -- Anti-Depressants Are Going Out of Style

2006-03-28T18:03:00.000-05:00

THE nation's heady romance with antidepressant medication appears to be over.

First came the warning of a possible link between selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and suicidal thoughts among children and adolescents. Then came a drop in sales — 14% last year compared with the year before. Now research has found that a single medicine typically does not effectively treat depression for most people and that those with depression often stop taking the medicines altogether.

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"The problem is not that the drugs don't work. They do. The challenge is we can't predict who will get well with what medicine," says Dr. Andrew Leuchter, vice chairman of the department of psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Counter-Intuitive Science Alert: Cortisal Reduces Anxiety

2006-03-28T17:16:00.000-05:00

Swiss researchers have found that giving people the stress hormone cortisol shortly before they entered an anxiety-provoking situation actually reduced fear and anxiety.

While promising, the results are too preliminary to warrant a sea change in current treatments, the study authors say.

Who Desires Cosmetic Surgery?

2006-03-27T21:37:00.000-05:00

What personal traits predict whether a person will desire cosmetic surgery? In a study I recently completed at Daemen College (with the help of my Research Methods class), we have some answers.

We surveyed 70 undergraduate college students, who answered items on a number of questionnaires (e.g., Desire for Cosmetic Surgery Questionnaire, Experience of Shame Scale, Mindful Attention Awareness Scale, Self-Consciousness Scale, Self-Reflection and Insight Scale, Sexual Esteem Scale, and others).

Our prelimary analyses suggest that people who desire cosmetic surgery tend to have higher levels of social anxiety and more feelings of shame. They also tend to have lower scores on measures of mindful attention.

These findings imply that, when it comes to patients who seek cosmetic surgery, medical doctors may have a special obligation to recommend other forms of treatment before the patient undergoes something as drastic (and irreversible) as cosmetic surgery. Many patients who seek plastic surgery may benefit more from psychotherapy, which might help them reduce their social anxiety and feelings of shame, while increasing the character strength of mindfully attentive awareness. Following treatment, and a more beautiful 'inner self,' the patient may no longer have a need for a more beautiful 'outer self.'

We're still working on our analysis, but our study will be coming to a conference near you...

He's Got a Chip on His Neuron...

2006-03-27T21:27:00.000-05:00

The line between living organisms and machines has just become a whole lot blurrier. European researchers have developed "neuro-chips" in which living brain cells and silicon circuits are coupled together.

The achievement could one day enable the creation of sophisticated neural prostheses to treat neurological disorders or the development of organic computers that crunch numbers using living neurons.

To create the neuro-chip, researchers squeezed more than 16,000 electronic transistors and hundreds of capacitors onto a silicon chip just 1 millimeter square in size.

They used special proteins found in the brain to glue brain cells, called neurons, onto the chip. However, the proteins acted as more than just a simple adhesive.

"They also provided the link between ionic channels of the neurons and semiconductor material in a way that neural electrical signals could be passed to the silicon chip," said study team member Stefano Vassanelli from the University of Padua in Italy.

The proteins allowed the neuro-chip's electronic components and its living cells to communicate with each other. Electrical signals from neurons were recorded using the chip's transistors, while the chip's capacitors were used to stimulate the neurons.

They Don't Come Knocking Anymore...

2006-03-26T23:45:00.000-05:00

Growing up in Miami, Barbara Pruitt remembers her parents popping in at friends' houses and staying for a couple of hours. These impromptu visits were threaded into the fabric of the family's social life.

Almost four decades later, Pruitt doesn't know many people who still pay old-fashioned visits. "We've bought into the idea that we're all stressed out and we're really busy, so we don't have time to visit with each other," says the Coral Gables mother of two grown children. "You don't pop in on people anymore."

Pruitt's assessment is very much on the mark, according to a recent study by an economist at the National Bureau of Economic Research in New York. Visits to friends have been declining for the past 30 years, and visits to relatives for the past 20. It's not a huge decline -- an estimated 10 percent drop -- but it's enough to raise eyebrows.

Three Cheers for Dads!

2005-06-22T10:39:00.000-04:00

This past Sunday was Father's Day, which I spent in Pittsburgh with my father and my 2-year-old son. We had a great time. On Sunday, we saw Aimee Mann and Ben Lee perform at Point State Park for the finale of the Pittsburgh Arts Festival. On Monday, we saw the Pirates lose to Washington at PNC Park -- my first time in the new baseball stadium. Overall, a good time was had by all.

In honor of Father's Day, I have compiled a short annotated bibliography of empirical research which demonstrates the importance of Dads.

Why Dads Matter: A Bibliography

1. Aldous, J., & Mulligan, G.M. (2002). Father's child care and childrens' behavior problems. Journal of Family Issues, 23(5), 624-647.

This was a longitudinal study of 600 children in 2-parent families. When fathers were actively involved in the care of difficult-to-raise preschoolers, the children had fewer problems as grade-schoolers. The father's care had an influence beyond the influence of the mother's care.

2. Dubowitz, H., Block, M.M., Cox, C.E., Kerr, M.A., Litrownik, A.J., Radhakrishna, A., English, D.J., Schneider, M.W., & Runyan, D.K. (2001). Father involvement and children's functioning at age 6 years: A multisite study. Child Maltreatment: Journal of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, 6(4), 300-309.

Examined 855 6-year-old children and caregivers. They found that, when fathers were present in the life of a child, the children tended to have better cognitive development and perceived themselves to be more competent.

Among the children with father figures, those children who reported more support from their fathers had significantly more social competence and displayed fewer symptoms of depression.

These results were the same irregardless of the child's gender, race or religion.

3. Flouri, E., & Buchanan, A. (2002). Father involvement in childhood and trouble with the police in adolescence: Findings from the 1958 British cohort. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 17(6), 689-701.

This massive study examined 6,768 children who were examined at 7-years-old and again at 16. Among the results, they found that, along with a relatively higher IQ, the presence of the father significantly reduced the risk that boys would get into trouble with the police. Girls were more likely to get into trouble with the police when they were from non-intact families.

4. Jackson, J.L. (2003). African-American adolescent girls and fathers: Paternal contribution to depression, self-efficacy, and religiosity. Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University.

This dissertation is a study of 255 middle-class, African-American, adolescent girls between the ages of 12 and 19.

Among the findings: Adolescents who reported feeling close with their father had few symptoms of depression and more frequently attended church services. Adolescents who reported both feeling close to their father and whose fathers were present in the home had more future academic goals.

5. Jones, K. (2004). Assessing psychological separation and academic performance in nonresident-father and resident-father adolescent boys. Child & Adolescent Social Work Journal, 21(4), 333-354.

This study looked at 25 boys living with their fathers and compared them to 25 boys with fathers who did not live at home. Results found that:

-- Boys living with their fathers were functioning better than boys whose father lived elsewhere.
-- Boys who lived part-time with their father, in comparison to boys who did not live with their father at all, demonstrated more similarities with their father's attitudes and beliefs. They also performed better at school.
-- When boys were more dependent on their father and when their attitudes and beliefs were more similar to Dad's, they tended to demonstrated significantly better academic performance.
-- Among boys who did not live with their fathers, they performed better academically to the extent that they reported a better quality relationship with their father
--Overall, there was a positive relationship between the quality of the father-son relationship and academic performance
--And, finally, among boys who were not living with their fathers, they tended to perform better academically when they had more frequent contact with Dad.

6. McBride, B.A., Schoppe-Sullivan, S.J., & Ho. M.H. (2005). The mediating role of fathers' school involvement on student achievement. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 26(2), 201-216.

This study examined 1334 families with children between the ages of 5 and 12. They found that the father's involvement in the child's education predicted the child's achievement in school beyond any variance accounted for by the involvement of the mother.

7. McDowell, D.J., Parke, R.D., & Wang, S.J. (2003). Differences between mothers' and fathers' advice-giving style and content: Relations with social competence and psychological functioning in middle childhood. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 49(1), 55-76.

In a longitudinal study of children, these researchers found that the style of a parent's advice-giving was related to the childn's social competence. The advice giving of the father in particular predicted social competence beyond the influence of the mother, according to both peer and teacher ratings.

8. Roggman, L.A., Boyce, L.K., Cook, G.A., Christiansen, K., & Jones, D. (2004). Playing with Daddy: Social toy play, Early Head Start, and developmental outcomes. Fathering, 2(1), 83-108.

This study examined fathers in low-income families. They compared the fathers of children in Early Head Start to other fathers from low-income families who did not particulate in the program.

They found that father's in Early Head Start tended to use more complex social toy play with their children. Overall, more complex social toy play was associated with better cognitive and social development in the children, and this effect was more pronounced in the children who particulated in Early Head Start. These positive results, however, were limited when they father had psycho-social problems and also by the time availability of the father.

9. Williams, S.K., & Kelly, F.D. (2005). Relationships among involvement, attachment, and behavioral problems in adolescence: Examining father's influence. Journal of Early Adolescence, 25(2), 168-196.

This study examined 116 adolescents. The study found that adolescents had less secure paternal attachment when living apart from their fathers. The degree that the father was involved in the adolescent's life and the quality of the attachment were found to explain a unique proportion of the variance in problem behaviors at school, as reported by teachers.

Summary:
The results are clear. Fathers matter. They have important contributions to make for children which go beyond what the mother can provide on her own. This seems to be especially the case when it comes to psychosocial development, depression, problem behaviors, and academic achievement.

For some additional reading on the importance of fathers, see:

The Role of the Father in Child Development by Michael E. Lamb (editor)

Life Without Father: Compelling New Evidence That Fatherhood and Marriage are Indispensable for the Good of Children and Society by David Popenoe

Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem by David Blankenhorn

"Poppa" Psychology: The Role of Fathers in Children's Mental Well-Being by Vicky Phares

FatherNeed: Why Father Care Is As Essential as Mother Care for Your Child by Kyle D. Pruett

Jesus and Mary walk into a bar . . .

2005-06-17T22:15:00.000-04:00

Christians have a sense of humor too. No, really, they do.

Conventional wisdom in popular culture and in past research has suggested an inverse relationship between fundamentalist religious beliefs and sense of humor. In fact, one study found empirical evidence that humor and religiousness, especially of the fundmentalist type, are negatively correlated (Saroglou, 2002).

Not so, says William Stone of the Linguistics Department at Northeastern Illinois University. In a qualitative study of sermons by three fundamentalist Christian pastors in the Chicago area, he found that, indeed, "contrary to academic and popular opinion and expectation, Christian Fundamentalists use a wide variety of humorous techniques, and project humor as a Christian virtue."

So, there you go. Laugh and the Lord laughs with you.

References

Saroglou, V. (2002). Religiousness, religious fundamentalism, and quest as predictors of humor creation. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 12, 177-188.

Stone, W. (2005). Humor and religion: A fundamental(ist) disagreement. Presented at the 17th Annual Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, Ohio, June 13-17, 2005.

The Dark Side of Humor

2005-06-17T21:37:00.000-04:00

Eric Siegel of the University of Maryland and Larry Ventis of the College of William and Mary are among several researchers currently studying the role of racism and race stereotyping in humor.

At the 17th Annual Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, they presented their latest research findings.

They had 34 college students watch videos of African American comedians. Half the students saw a comedian who used neutral humor, while the other half watched a comedian who drew on humor around racist stereotypes.

After the students watched the video, they took the Implicit Association Test, which is a measure of racism. They found that "exposure to the racially explicit video resulted in both significantly greater stereotyped performance on the implicit test and expression of racially biased attitudes on the overt test as well."

These findings are consistent with prior research. For example, Ford and Ferguson (2004) recently reported on research which supports their "Prejudiced Norm Theory" -- a theory which holds that "exposure to disparagement humor affects tolerance of discrimination against members of groups targeted by the humor" (p. 79). In their research, they have found that exposure to racist jokes leads certain audience members to feel more free to express their racist attitudes --- but only when they were initially racist to begin with.

These findings suggest that we ought to be more critical of humor which disparages and pokes fun at certain social groups. Irregardless of whether it makes us laugh or not, it's effects are not at all benign.

References

Ford, T.E., & Ferguson, M.A. (2004). Social consequences of disparagement humor: A prejudiced norm theory. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8(1), 79-94.

Siegel, E., & Ventis, L. (2005). Humor and racism: Causes of stereotype reinforcement. Presented at the 17th Annual Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH, June 13-17, 2005.

Humor in America

2005-06-17T20:55:00.000-04:00

Giselinde Kuipers -- from the Department of Culture and the Arts at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands -- is exploring cultural differences in humor. At the 17th Annual Conference for the Society of Humor Studies, Kuipers presented some of her recent findings.

In her empirical work, Kuipers found that, in comparison to the Dutch, American culture has some distinct conceptualizations of humor, including "a strong evaluation of humor; a tendency to see 'sense of humor' as a moral quality; the idea that humor is strongly associated with playfulness and childishness; and -- in most people -- a mistrust, or even aversion, towards sharpness in humor."

And here I expected her to say we're a bunch of cheerless dolts!

References

Kuipers, G. (2005). 'You gotta have a sense of humor' -- Humor and the American worldview(s). Presented at the 17th Annual Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH, June 13-27, 2005.

Laugh or Death?

2005-06-17T17:25:00.000-04:00

Another Humor Studies Conference study:

Daniela Herzog of Ben-Gurion University of Negev, Israel, explored the relationship between humor styles and influenza-like symptoms in the elderly.

She found that humor appreciation was linked to decreased flu-like symptoms. Another finding was that humor appreciation moderated the relationship between hostility and flu-like symptoms. Among those who were low in humor, high hostility increased the risk of flu-like symptoms. Finally, humor appreciation was also linked to mortality. Those participants with low humor appreciation were more likely to die within the year.

So, laugh or death? I'll take the laugh.

References

Herzog, D. (2005). Do different kinds of humor style predict influenza-like symptoms' occurrence in the elderly? Psychology of half a population. Presented at the 17th Annual Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH, June 13-17, 2005.

The Laugh of the Lonely

2005-06-17T16:37:00.000-04:00

Yet another interesting study from the Humor Studies conference:

William Hampes of Black Hawk College gave the Humor Styles Questionnaire and the UCLA Loneliness Scale to 106 undergraduates. He found that students who reported higher loneliness scores tended to score lower in affiliative and self-enhancing humor, but higher in self-defeating humor. There was no significant relationship between loneliness and aggressive humor.

In other words, the findings suggest that people who are lonely are more likely to use humor in a way that is maladaptive: to poke fun at themselves rather than to build relationships or cheer themselves up.

Perhaps a humor-based therapy would help lonely people, if it could help them use humor both as a way to build friendships and as a way to put life's difficulties into a humorous light.

References

Hampes, W. (2005). .The relation between humor styles and loneliness. Presented at the 17th Annual Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH, June 13-17, 2005.

Don Rickles, You Sexy Man!

2005-06-17T15:11:00.000-04:00

At the 17th Annual Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, Eric P. Bressler, Sigal Balshine, & Rod Martin explored the question of sex differences in the attractiveness of "sense of humor." Turns out funny is sexy, at least when it comes to women's taste in men. If so, Don Rickles must have been in high demand when it came to the ladies.

The reseachers noted that there is much theory about the evolution of humor, and some theorists have speculated that humor developed as a result of sexual selection. In other words, humor is "sexy" because it signals the qualities of the potential mate. However, to date, there has been little research on the question.

They conducted two studies. They first one examined how humor affected the desirability of a potential mate for men and women. Interestingly, only the female participants increased their ratings of a potential partner when he exhibited humor. A woman's humor did not influence whether or not a male would find her desirable.

In a follow-up study, the researchers explored whether men and women have different ways of conceptualizing "sense of humor." As it turns out, the women were more holistic in their concept of "sense of humor" -- in other words, they used "sense of humor" to refer both to the production of humor and to whether or not the other person appreciated their own style of humor. Men, however, only valued partners who were receptive to their own humor. They didn't particularly care if the women were funny. A woman had a "good sense of humor" if she laughed at his jokes!

Very interesting, eh? She wants someone to laugh at, and he wants someone to laugh at him. Everybody's happy. But what does it say about the evolution of laughter? One obviously conclusion: If it is a signal of reproductive fitness, it's going to be his signal, not hers.

In men, it seems, a good joke is the equivalent to a peacock's tail feathers.

References

Bressler, E.R., Balshine, S., & Martin, R. (2005). Sex differences in the attractiveness of a "sense of humor." Presented at the 17th Annual Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH< June 13-17, 2005.

Whatever You Do, Don't Laugh!

2005-06-17T14:44:00.000-04:00

Well, it has been about 10 days since I last posted a message. The reason: I was preparing a presentation for the 17th Annual Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, which was held at Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH, June 13-17.

The title of my presentation and paper was: "The Self-Regulation of Humor Expression: A Phenomenological Investigation of Suppressed Laughter." Here is the abstract:

Suppressed laughter can be understood as the effort to self-regulate the expression of humor or mirth. Research on suppressed laughter has implications for models of affect regulation and theories of humor. However, past research on suppressed laughter has focused upon the study of participants in contrived laboratory experiments with questionable ecological validity. In an effort to ground the construct of suppressed laughter in more ecological valid examples from everyday life, this study used the empirical-pheomenological method of analysis to find common themes and various subthemes among 16 autobiographical narratives about the suppression of laughter. The participants included 11 female and 5 male undergraduates. Suppressed laughter was found to occur in serious situations in which a surprising, incongruous stimulus was perceived to be humorous and evoked the expression of mirth through laughter. However, the participant did not feel free to express the laughter due to his or her expectation that laughter would bring undesirable social consequences. The effort to suppress the laughter was rendered especially difficult by the presence of others who shared the humor. The findings are discussed in light of their implications for theories of humor and affect regulation.

I will be submitting my report to Humor: International Journal of Humor Research.

I became interested in suppressed laughter because my own experience didn't seem to fit current theories of the self-regulation of emotion. My study demonstrates some of the limitations of prior literature and suggests that trying not to laugh can sometimes be a very difficult thing to do.

References

Robbins, B.D., Vandree, K., & Akers, A. (2005). The self-regulation of humor expression: A phenomenological investigation of suppressed laughter. Presented at the 17th Annual Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH, June 13-17, 2005.

Older Kids Feel Good When They Follow the Rules

2005-06-07T14:26:00.000-04:00

Wow, here's something that will surprise every parent. In a new study out of University of California, Davis, Kristin H. Lagattuta (2005) found that, between the ages of 4- and 7-years-of-age, kids feel increasingly good about following the rules.

The study included 64 participants, with both adults and children between 4 and 7. The participants were read stories in which the characters were told to do something by a parent. In half of the stories, the character transgressed the rule, and in the other half, they obeyed the rule.

Older kids, around 7 years of age, as well as adults, were much more likely to talk about feeling good about having the willpower to stick to the rule, even when they felt like breaking it, and they were also more attuned to how emotions were linked to the future consequences of breaking or holding to the rule.

As Laggattuta explains:

These findings have implications for research on theory of mind and moral reasoning, as well as practical applications for educators and parents. First, between the ages of 4 and 7 children increasingly recognize that emotional satisfaction is shaped not only by immediate desire fulfillment (a potent cause of happiness even for adults), but also by obligations to abide by rules and by consideration of possible future consequences.

From a practical standpoint, these data suggest methods to boost children's willingness to comply; namely, children believe that people feel happiest exhibiting willpower when they follow a rule that they remembered by themselves, consider the importance of teh rule, and focus on how, by complying, they will successfully avoid a negative outcome or ensure a more positive future.

References

Lagattuta, K.H. (2005). When you shouldn't do what you want to do: Young children's understanding of desires, rules, and emotions. Child Development, 76(3), 713-733.

Baby Talk: Names are the Gateway to the Symbolic Order

2005-06-07T02:11:00.000-04:00

In a study recently published in Psychological Science, Heather Bortfield and colleagues (2005) found that familiar names, their own and others, as well as other familiar words, are recognized by babies as early as 6 months of age. But that's not anything new. The new finding is that these names appear to function as "anchors in the speech stream" which help them to learn new, adjoining words.

Consider this finding in light of Lacan's concept of the "Name-of-the-Father." As Lacan suggested, names seem to function as a kind of entry point or gateway into the symbolic world of language--but at a much earlier age than Lacan would have predicted, given that he links the symbolic order to the Oedipal complex, which per Freud doesn't kick into gear until around the 3rd year of life.

References

Bortfeld, H., Morgan, J.L., Golinkoff, R.M., & Rathbun, K. (2005). Mommy and me: Familiar names help launch babies into speech-stream segmentation. Psychological Science, 16(4), 298-304.

In the Caudoputamen, Baby!

2005-06-07T01:03:00.000-04:00

Take some mice, shock them a few times. When a light goes on, don't shock them. Then look at what happens to their brains when the light is on.

That's what researchers did at Columba University Medical Center, and they found that when that light was on, those mice had an active caudoputamen. What's a caudoputamen, you ask? Well, it's a part of the brain that has been linked to addictive behavior--as well as motivation and reward, which is located in the striatum-- and based on this study, it may constitute a safety circuit in the brain which turns on whenever you are feeling safe and secure.

This is a big deal because neuroscientists have already identified a fear circuit in the brain, and up until now, neuroscientists usually assumed that someone who is safe and secure is someone who has low activity in that fear circuit. Well, it seems to be more complicated than that. An inactive fear circuit isn't the whole picture; there's the caudopatamen!

Now sing along with me. In-A-Caudoputamen, baby! Don'tcha know that I love you! In-A-Caudoputamen, baby! Don't you know that I'll always be true-ue!

References

Rogan MT, Leon KS, Perez DL, et al. (2005). Distinct neural signatures for safety and danger in the amygdala and striatum of the mouse. Neuron, 46(2), 309-320

Your Brain on Sarcasm

2005-06-03T09:30:00.000-04:00

Shamay-Tsoory, Tomer, & Aharon-Peretz (2005) have published a new study on the neuroanatomy of sarcasm. This is a follow-up to a previous study which found a link between prefrontal lobe damage, deficits in empathy, and problems with grasping sarcasm (Shamay, Tomer, & Aharon-Peretz, 2002).

Sarcasm is a form of irony which is typically a statement which is the opposite of its intended meaning. For example, if I am a manager of an office, and I find one of my subordinates playing computer games, I might say, "Joe, don't work so hard." I of course don't literally mean that he is working hard; in fact, quite the contrary, I intend to communicate through irony my displeasure at his lack of productivity.

What does it take to comprehend a sarcastic statement? Obviously, you need your brain. But what parts of your brain operate when you comprehend a sarcastic statement and what does this tell us about the cognition of sarcasm?

The researchers studied a group of patients with brain damage: 25 of them with lesions in the prefrontal cortex and 16 with lesions in the posterior cortex. These patients with also examined for the extent of the damage to these areas and then assigned to one of three lesion groups according to the specific locations of the lesions. Finally, the participants were given a variety of measures which quantified their various abilities to comprehend sarcasm, recognize social faux pas, and recognize affect through prosody and facial expression.

The researchers found that only patients with damage to the prefrontal cortex had problems comprehending sarcasm. They also found that problems with two cognitive functions account for this deficit: Problems with "theory of mind," which is the ability to take on the perspective of another person and problems with the identification of emotions. Whereas problems with theory of mind was associated with prefrontal damage, the right hemisphere in particular was associated with problems identifying emotions.

Based on their findings, the authors suggest that the processing of sarcasm involves a neural network in which the prefrontal cortex is central, and that the processing occurs in three stages:

1. In the left hemisphere of the brain, the sarcastic comment is first interpreted in a literal way.

2. In the frontal lobes and in the right hemisphere of the brain, the person takes account of the the context of the comment. This context includes the possible intention of the person making the comment, the social situation in which the comment was made, and any emotions that may be expressed or inferred based on that context.

3. Based on the context of the statement, the person is able to infer that the literal meaning of the statement should not be taken literally but ironically.

This study has important implications not only for understanding sarcasm, but especially for understanding how the brain operates to process complex social interactions with others, and it implies that similar brain processes are going on with other complex verbal interactions, such as in jokes and other forms of subtle, nuanced communication.

References

Shamay, S.G., Tomer, R., & Aharon-Peretz, J. (2002). Deficit in understanding sarcasm in patients with prefrontal lesion is related to impaired empathic ability. Brain and Cognition, 48(2-3), 558-563.

Shamay-Tsoory,, Tomer, R., & Aharon-Peretz, J. (2005). The neuroanatomical basis of understanding sarcasm and its relationship to social cognition. Neuropsychology, 19(3), 288-300.

A Third of New York Kids Suffered Anxiety Disorder After 9/11

2005-06-02T09:23:00.000-04:00

According to a report in the Daily Post, a study of 8,000 schoolchildren in the area of New York City found that almost 1 in 3 children suffered from an anxiety disorder following the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 1, 2001. The study was lead by Dr. Christina Hoven, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

The most common anxiety disorders found were agoraphobia (15%), separation anxiety (12%), and posttraumatic stress disorder (10%).

These numbers are quite remarkable in their magnitude and demonstrate just how devastating these attacks were for children in the area.

British Association of University Teachers (AUT) Attacks Academic Freedom

2005-06-02T08:55:00.000-04:00

The press release from The American Association of University Professors:

Delegates to a recent meeting of the British Association of University Teachers (AUT) approved resolutions that damage academic freedom. The resolutions call on all members of AUT to "refrain from participation in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration, or joint projects" with two universities in Israel, Haifa University and Bar Ilan University. Excluded from the ban are "conscientious Israeli academics and intellectuals opposed to their state's colonial and racist policies," an exclusion which, because it requires compliance with a political or ideological test in order for an academic relationship to continue, deepens the injury to academic freedom rather than mitigates it.

These resolutions have been met with strong condemnation and calls for repeal within the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The American Association of University Professors joins in condemning these resolutions and in calling for their repeal. Since its founding in 1915, the AAUP has been committed to preserving and advancing the free exchange of ideas among academics irrespective of governmental policies and however unpalatable those policies may be viewed. We reject proposals that curtail the freedom of teachers and researchers to engage in work with academic colleagues, and we reaffirm the paramount importance of the freest possible international movement of scholars and ideas. The AAUP urges the AUT to support the right of all in the academic community to communicate freely with other academics on matters of professional interest.

To my mind, this is a very ominous development and demonstrates just how tense the politics of academia has become in recent years, particularly with regard to policy on the Middle East. I join the AAUP and the American Psychological Association (APA) in condemning AUT's attack on academic freedom.

Happiness Decreases Chronic Pain in Fibromyalgia and Osteoarthritis Patients

2005-05-27T10:36:00.000-04:00

Alex Zautra of Arizona State University has developed what he calls a Dynamic Model of Affect (DMA) (Zautra, Johnson, & Davis, 2005). According to this model of affect,

. . . the degree of complexity in individuals' awareness of their own emotions is significantly reduced during times of stress. Heightened pain, as a stressor would narrow the range of emotional experiences leading to an increasingly inverse relationship between positive and negative emotions during pain episodes. Thus, the presence of positive emotions may become more critical to preservation of well-being during times of high pain as well as during other stressful times. (p. 212)

In other words, as Watson and Clarke (1992) have argued, positive and negative affect are usually independent of one another. During a typical, relatively stress free period of time and during times when we are not in acute pain, the amount of positive feelings we have will typically do not predict how much negative feeling we have. However, according to the DMA Model, acute stress and pain will tend to polarize positive and negative feelings to such an extent that they become related to one another. Because positive and negative emotions become polarized and related at these times, positive emotion might serve the purpose of helping us reduce negative feelings and feelings of pain.

The DMA model, as it turns out, shares some affinities with the "Broaden and Build Model of Positive Affect" developed by Fredrickson and Joiner (2002). Like the DMA model, the Broaden and Build Model holds that positive feelings can serve the function of building resources to help us cope with negative feelings. The only (major) difference between the two models is that the DMA model explains temporary states of mind, whereas the Broaden and Build Model is meant to explain character traits, or long term dispositions.

So what? Why should anyone care? Well, as it turns out, these models have a wide range of implications for personal well-being and health.

Specifically, Zautra and colleagues (2005) have found that positive feelings act as a buffer or source of protection against both negative feelings and chronic pain.

In their research on patients with fibromyalgia and osteoarthritis, the results supported both the DMA model and the Broaden and Build Model. They followed a group of these patients for several weeks, and here is what they found:

-- Reports of negative feelings were highest during the weeks when they reported the most pain, when they reported high interpersonal stress, and when they reported less positive feelings

-- The relationship between positive and negative feelings was strongest during those times when the patients were experiencing the most pain and stress

-- During weeks when people had low levels of positive feelings, their pain and stress was more likely to cause elevated levels of negative feelings

-- When positive feelings were high, they served both to reduce negative feelings and to blunt pain and stress

-- Patients who had a general disposition to feel positive emotions, as the Broaden and Build Model would predict, had lower levels of stress, pain and negative feelings, and these affects remained even when diagnosis, age and average pain levels were taken into account

-- Finally, the researchers found that, in fact, weekly feelings predicted reports of pain in the subsequent weeks! When patients felt more negative feelings during one week, they were more likely to experience pain the following week. But when they felt more positive feelings, they were less likely to report pain the following week.

This study is quite remarkable because, due to its longitudinal design, we are able to say more confidently that indeed, negative emotions appear to cause people to have more pain and positive emotions appear to reduce it.

The implications are far-reaching. But one immediate implication is for treatment of chronic pain. As previous research has suggested, chronic pain seems to be alleviated in particular by training in acceptance-based mindfulness meditation practice (Kabat-Zinn, Lipworth, & Burney, 1985; Bruckstein, 1999). Perhaps the effect of mindfulness on chronic pain is mediated by positive feelings and not simply the reduction of negative feelings. We'll just have wait and see what future research yields.

References

Bruckstein, D.C. (1999). Effects of acceptance-based and cognitive behavioral interventions on chronic pain management. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering, 60(1-B), pp. 0359.

Fredrickson, B.L., & Joiner, T. (2002). Positive emotions trigger upward spirals toward emotional well-being. Psychological Science, 13, 172-175.

Kabat-Zinn, J., Lipworth, L. & Burney, R. (1985). The clinical use of mindfulness meditation for the self-regulation of chronic pain. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 8(2), 163-190.

Watson, D., & Clark, L.A. (1992). Affects separable and inseparable: On the hierarchical arrangment of the negative affects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 489-505.

Zautra, A.J., Johnson, L.M., & Davis, M.C. (2005). Positive affect as a source of resilience for women in chronic pain. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 73(2), 212-220.

Fat Chance of Health: The Obesity Controversy

2005-05-26T22:15:00.000-04:00

In the new issue of Scientific American, W. Wayt Gibbs gives us the skinny on fat. The article, "Obesity: An Overblown Epidemic?" is quite literally an indictment of the entire field of obesity research by suggesting that the hype around fat is driven by greed.

A variety of researchers are interviewed, including Paul F. Campos, Michael Gard, and J. Eric Oliver, each of whom have written books which throw barbs at the weight loss industry and its increasing influence upon the rhetoric of obesity experts, public health officials and the media, who are charged with exaggerating the health risk of being overweight and obese.

Of course, the common sense view is that fat is bad for you. If you are overweight or obese, we assume, then you are putting yourself at an increasing health risk. What's so controversial about that? How could anybody argue to the contrary?

Well, suggest the critics, the widespread claim that fat increases health risks is not well-supported by the empirical evidence. Yes, they agree that, since 1980, obesity has almost doubled in the U.S. and parts of Europe. And they also agree that extreme obesity is a risk factor for disease and early mortality. However, they disagree with the claim that being overweight or midly obese is a significant health risk.

This claim, of course, flies in the face of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has publically announced that "excess body fat leads to a higher risk for premature death, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia (high cholesterol), cardiovascular disease, stroke, gall bladder disease, respiratory dysfunction, gout, osteroarthritis, and certain kinds of cancers."

According to Campos, these claims are not only an exaggeration, they are also "for the most part . . . simply fabricated."

Say what? He's not kidding. In a recent survey conducted by Katherin M. Flegal, one of the few researchers out there who are not paid off by the weight loss industry, it is actually underweight individuals who are at the greatest risk of health--in fact, even more at risk than severely obese people! Wow.

Further research has demonstrated that when other extraneous variables, like smoking and exercise, are taken into consideration (controlled), overweight and obesity predicts only a very, very small amount of variance in mortality rates. The one exception seems to be in the case of diabetes, which has been strongly linked to obesity. But even in that case, the critics argue that more research is necessary before we can confidently draw a causal link between obesity and diabetes. Some third factor, such as a common genetic influence or stress, might be a third variable that systematically influences both risk for obesity and diabetes. Or it could be that diabetes actually causes people to get fat rather than vice versa.

So, who would have thunk it? Here we have credible researchers who, out of no obvious self-serving reason, are debunking what seems to be the most obvious "truth" in the world -- that it just isn't good to be tubby. Now, if I were you, I wouldn't break out the Pringles just yet. But for the moment, at least, us fat guys can rest a little easier that we might have a little more hope of living a long and joyous life like the rest of the population.

One thing seems certain. Diets don't work. Research has shown repeatedly that diets cannot produce sustained weight loss beyond 5 pounds. In fact, research actually suggests that diets tend to cause people to rebound to a higher weight once the person quits the diet. The best bet is to exercise. You might still be heavy, but you will be healthier and you will live longer. Unless of course you jog in front of a bus.

Here's hoping you watch out for those buses.

For further reading, see:

The Obesity Myth by Paul F. Campos

The Obesity Epidemic: Science, Morality, and Ideology by Michael Gard

Obesity: The Making of an American Epidemic by J. Eric Oliver

Big Fat Lies: The Truth About Your Weight and Your Health by Glen A. Gaesser

The Fat Girl's Guide to Life by Wendy Shanker

Revolting Bodies? The Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity by Kathleen Lebesco

Food Fight: The Inside Story of the Food Industry, America's Obesity Crisis, and What We Can Do About It by Kelly D. Brownell

Bodies Out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression by Jana Evans Braziel

Just the Weigh You Are: How to Be Fit and Healthy, Whatever Your Size by Linda Konner

The Invisible Woman: Confronting Weight Prejudice in America by W. Charisse Goodman

The Hungry Gene: The science of Fat and the Future of Thin by Ellen Ruppel Shell

Fat: The Anthropology of an Obssession edited by Don Kulick & Anne Menely

Paul Ricoeur, We'll Miss You

2005-05-24T22:01:00.000-04:00

On Friday, we lost one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, Paul Ricoeur.

We will miss you, Paul. Thank you for gracing us with your mind during your illustrious life. You have been an influence on me and many others, and you will not be forgotten. This week, we celebrate you.

This Winter, my journal, Janus Head, will be featuring an unpublished interview with Ricoeur. Stay tuned for the big event.

Learn more about Paul Ricoeur:

Telegraph Obituary of Paul Ricoeur

BBC News Obituary

Paul Ricoeur page at Mythos & Logos

Ricoeur page at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Ricoeur page at Wikipedia

Ricoeur page at Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

"The Knot Between Ricoeur and Derrida: A Look at Rhetoric in the Human Sciences" by Rex Olson

Recommended Readings:

Freud and Philosophy by Paul Ricoeur

Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences by Paul Ricoeur

Memory, History, Forgetting by Paul Ricoeur

Critique and Conviction by Paul Ricoeur

The Rule of Metaphor by Paul Ricoeur

On Paul Ricoeur: The Owl of Minerva by Richard Kearney

It's Schizophrenia Awareness Week!

2005-05-22T13:39:00.000-04:00

According to the PRNewswire, May 22-28 is Schizophrenia Awareness Week. The declaration comes from the National Schizophrenia Foundation, and the theme this year is, "Schizophrenia, It's Not What You Think!"

The National Schizophrenia Foundation will work hard this week to dispel various myths of schizophrenia and to reduce the stigma that often surrounds the mental disorder.

What are some myths of schizophrenia? That it can't be treated, that it is a result of bad parenting or a weak personality, and that is it the same as multiple or split personality disorder (Dissociative Identity Disorder). None of these common assumptions are accurate perceptions of schizophrenia.

What is schizophrenia? Schizophrenia is a mental disorder to affects more than 2.5 million Americans. Research suggests that it develops from a combination of biological and psychological factors. People with a certain genetic disposition are more likely to develop it, but the disease is not triggered unless a person is exposed to certain psychological stressors, or so goes the "Diathesis-Stress Model" of schizophrenia, the most widely accepted explanation for how schizophrenia is formed.

People who are diagnosed with schizophrenia exhibit a variety of symptoms, including disorgized thought and speech, auditory hallucinations, disordered emotional expression (usually a lack of emotional expression, called "flat affect"), and, generally, difficulty functioning in daily life, particularly when it comes to self-care (e.g., hygiene) and interpersonal relationships.

For further reading on schizophrenia, see:

Schizophrenia: Symptoms, Causes, Treatments by Kayla F. Bernheim

Surviving Schizophrenia: A Manual for Families, Consumers, & Providers by E. Fuller Torrey

The Day the Voices Stopped by Ken Steele & Claire Berman

Models of Madness, Edited by John Read, Loren R. Mosher, & Richard P. Bentall

Schizophrenia Revealed by Michael Foster Green

Is Strep Throat a Potential Cause of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in Children?

2005-05-22T12:57:00.000-04:00

In "Can You Catch Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?" Lisa Belkin explores the question for the New York Times.

The article chronicles the controversy around what has come to be called Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infection (PANDAS). The theory is that strep throat causes antibodies which, in some cases among children, attack the basal ganglia of the brain and cause obsessive-compulsive symptoms.

Symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder include repetitive thoughts and compulsive behaviors, such as handwashing.

In her book, The Boy who Couldn't Stop Washing, Judith Rapaport popularized the notion that PANDAS might explain some cases of rapid-onset O.C.D. in children. The research itself was developed by N.I.M.H. scientist Susan E. Swedo.

The research at this point is inconclusive. There does appear to be a surprisingly strong association between onset of strep throat and O.C.D. symptoms. In past research, roughly 50% of children with O.C.D. symptoms had recently had strep throat.

But due to the nature of the research design, it is difficult to say if there is actually a cause and effect relationship between O.C.D. and strep throat. Roger Kurlan of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Detinstry and Edward L. Kaplan of the University of Minnesota Medical School have both been vocal critics of the PANDAS theory of rapid-onset O.C.D. They believe much more recent needs to be conducted before we can more definitively say there is any sort of causal connection between strep throat and O.C.D. They suggest, for example, that not just strep throat, per se, but any infection might hold the risk of triggering or exascerbating latent O.C.D. in children.

Mostly, critics are concerned that parents might mistakenly assume that antibiotics as a treatment for O.C.D. is some kind of 'magic bullet,' when, at least in most cases, it is not. Parents of children with O.C.D. have every right to pursue antibiotic treatment for O.C.D. if the child's symptoms are rapid in onset and if the child shows evidence of infection. But a regime of antibiotics should not replace the pursuit of time-honored approaches to treating O.C.D., including medication and psychotherapy.

For further reading:

Is It "Just a Phase"? by Susan A. Swedo & Henrietta L. Leonard

The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Washing by Judith L. Rapaport

What to Do When Your Child Has Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder by Aureen Pinto Wagner

OCD in Children and Adolescents: A Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment Manual by John S. March and Karen Mulle

Potential New Treatment for Depression is a Bust

2005-05-22T11:06:00.000-04:00

For some time now, the psychiatric community has been buzzing about a potential new treatment for severe depression which is resistant to other forms of treatment, such as antidepressants, psychotherapy, and elecro-shock therapy. The new treatment, however, is quite invasive, and involves the implantation of a pace-maker like device into the chest and neck area. The device, called a vagus nerve stimulator (VNS), does just what's its name suggests: it stimulates the vagus nerve.

The vagus nerve stimulator has already been approved by the F.D.A. for use in the treatment of epilepsy. But it was not until 2003 that Cyberonics, the manufacturer of the device, announced that the treatment is affective for treating severe depression.

Unfortunately, further research into the efficacy of the treatment has not bourne out these initial findings. In the most recent trials, the evidence suggests that the VNS treatment is no better than a placebo group in the treatment of severe depression. Consequently, the F.D.A will not be approving the device, at least until further evidence can be established for its efficacy. (See this New York Times article).

On top of its apparent lack of effectiveness for treating depression, there are a number of major drawbacks to the treatment. First, it is quite costly. The device itself costs about 12 grand, and the surgery costs about 15 grand. So, just to get the device implanted, you're looking at a whopping expense of 30,000 bucks. Secondly, the surgery to implant to the device is very invasive, likely painful, and, to some extent, irreversible. The device can be removed later, but not the wires, which are left in the neck region of the body. That can't be good.

All in all, it seems VNS is a major bust for Cyberonics. A big whopping flop.

What was the logic in the first place?

Well, the reasoning behind VNS goes back to a study conducted about 5 years ago and published in the Annals of Neurology (Hesdorffer, Hauser, Annegers, & Cascino, 2000). The authors found that those participants in their study diagnosed with major depression had six times the risk of developing unprovoked seizures compared to a control group. The risk remains even when controlling for a variety of other, potentially confounding variables, including age, sex, the length of medical follow-up, and medical therapies for depression.

If there was a link between depression and seizures, it might explain why electro-shock therapy has been so successful with severe depression. (Yes, as a last resort, electroshock therapy does seem to help alleviate depressive symptoms).

If there is a link between depression and seizures, then, VNS might prove to be a more long-term and potentially less harmful treatment than electro-shock therapy.

As it turns out, the research findings now seem to indicate these assumptions were probably incorrect. Why? For that answer, we'll have to wait and see.

References

Hesdorffer, D.C., Hauser, W.A., Annegers, J.F., & Cascino, G. (2000). Major depression is a risk factor for seizures in older adults. Annals of Neurology, 47(2), 246-249.

Angry Kids and Their Moms

2005-05-22T02:11:00.000-04:00

Research out of University of Toronto (Root & Jenkins, 2005) suggests that how mothers talk about emotions to their children is related to the childrens' biases toward the expression of anger in school. Family risk status, defined as a combination of factors including socioeconomic status, visible minority status, and having a lone-parent, appears to contribute to the risk that children of such mothers will develop an anger bias.

For the study, the researchers observed mothers telling stories to their children. These stories were designed so that the characters in the stories engaged in action which could be constructed as malevolent or benevolent, due to the ambiguity of the story. As a measure of the mother's appraisals of emotion, the researchers coded this data to identify hostile appraisals (e.g., hostile intent, blaming others, presence of aversive phenomenon) and prosocial appraisals (e.g., neutral/positive intent, cooperation, friendliness/helping).

Anger bias in children was measured through a variety of ratings, including peer ratings of emotion, observations of facial expressions, and teacher ratings.

The results of the study suggest that mothers with a higher family risk index tended to use more hostile appraisals and less prosocial appraisals when explaining the actions of the characters in the stories.

Mothers who used hostile appraisal more frequently and prosocial appraisals less frequenty were more likely to have children who scored relatively high on the measures of anger bias.

These findings suggest that mothers who are in at-risk families are (a) more likely to attribute hostile intent to others, (b) less likely to attribute prosocial intent to others, and, consequently, (c) they are more likely to socialize their children to perceive anger in others even when anger is not actually present.

In other words: this is yet another study to demonstrate the importance of both the relationship of the mother to the child and various demographic variables for the development of good interpersonal skills, or poor ones, as the case may be.

Children from disadvantaged households, therefore, seem to be generally at risk of developing angry and less prosocial interactions with other children, a habit that might set the stage for problems in adulthood.

References

Root, C.A., & Jenkins, J.M. (2005). Maternal appraisal styles, family risk status, and anger biases in children. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology , 33(2), 193-204.

Babies Have a Sense-of-Humor Too

2005-05-19T12:04:00.000-04:00

Eleni Loizou (2005) has recently published a wonderful little study in Journal of Early Years Education.

The study uses a variety of qualitative methods to study 6 infants in a child care setting. (Yes, a small sample size, but that's okay for these kinds of qualitative studies). Essentially, Louizou carefully observed and described the context around baby smiles and laughter to address the question of baby humor. What do infants find funny?

In her analysis, Loizou concludes that two theories seem to best explain baby humor, the Theory of the Absurd and Empowerment Theory.

According to the theory of the absurd, babies laugh at events which are incongruent with their expectations, basically deviations from the ordinary state of affairs. I can vouch for this with my son. When my son was an infant, he giggled the most when I acted just plain goofy and sometimes also when I used mock aggression to scare him or chase him. In both cases, these events can certainly be construed as unexpected and incongruous with my usual, nurturing role with him. I would add, in the case of my son, that I also gave clear signals that these incongruous behaviors were not serious but all in fun, and I think I mostly communicated this with facial expressions.

Empowerment theory is the idea that children also like to create incongruous situations, by challenging the expectations of caregives, and they think this is pretty funny too. Loizou suggests that this style of humor is a way for babies to empower themsleves, hence the title, "empowerment theory." I think these seems to hold more for slightly older infants, based on my observations of my son.

This study is interesting in that it supports one of the major theories of humor, which contends that all humor has its basis in the perception of incongruity--the defience of expectations, with one qualification: these expectations must occur in the context of a safe and non-threatening situation.

And, ultimately, the study supports what those who have babies already know: Babies really do have a sense-of-humor. And, boy, don't we love to make 'em giggle.

References

Loizou, E. (2005). Infant humor: The theory of the absurd and the empowerment theory. International Journal of Early Years Educatiaon, 13(1), 43-53.

Some related reading fun:

97 Ways to Make a Baby Laugh by Jack Moore

The Baby Games by Elaine Martin

Maltreated Kids in Foster Care: Empathy Problems

2005-05-19T10:18:00.000-04:00

Katherine C. Pears and Philip A. Fisher (2005) of the Oregon Social Learning Center have published a new paper in the journal, Development & Psychopathology. Their paper, titled "Emotion Understanding and Theory of Mind Among Maltreated Children in Foster Care: Evidence of Deficits," replicates findings and extends other findings from previous research, which helps us to better understand how maltreatment influences emotional and cognitive functioning in children.

The sample included 60 3- to 5-year-old maltreated foster children and a comparison group of 31 nonmaltreated children who were still living with their biological families.

The researchers found that, even when controlling for confounding variables such as age, verbal ability, and executive function, maltreated children in foster care were significantly more likely to have deficits in emotion understanding and theory of mind. In other words, children in foster care who had been abused, neglected or abandoned demonstrated more difficulty interpreting emotions and they had more difficult with the cognitive task of taking another person's perspective, which is a foundation for empathy. This finding is consistent with past research on the effects of maltreatment on children (Rogosch, Chicchetti, & Aber, 1995; Smith & Walden, 1999; Cicchetti, Rogosch, Maughan, Toth, & Bruce, 2003).

However, contrary to prior research (e.g., Pollak, Cicchetti, Hornung, & Reed, 2000), the researchers did not find evidence to support the hypothesis that maltreated foster children were more attuned to feelings of anger in others. Rather than having problems specifically with interpretations of anger, these foster children had global deficits in the ability to interpret emotion in general. The authors point out, however, that their findings may differ from past research due to the nature of the sample, which included many more children with a history of neglect and few representations of children with histories of physical and sexual abuse.

Finally, contary to their predictions, the researchers did not find a link between the variables of interest (emotion understanding and theory of mind) and the history of the child's foster care placement (how much time they spend in foster care and the number of times they changed foster care placements).

These research findings underscore the importance of early therapeutic interventions with foster children who have been maltreated. They also highlight that the cognitive skills of interpreting emotion and perspective-taking may mediate the wide range of problems faced by children who have suffered maltreatment.

References

Cicchetti, D., Rogosch, F.A., Maughan, A., Toth, S.L., & Bruce, J. (2003). False belief understanding in maltreated children. Development & Psychopathology, 15, 1067-1091.

Pears, K.C. & Fisher, P.A. (2005). Emotion understanding and theory of mind among maltreated children in foster care: Evidence of deficits. Development & Psychopathology, 17(1), 47-65.

Pollak, S., Cicchetti, D., Hornung, L., & Reed, A. (2000). Recognizing emotion in faces: Developmental effects of child abuse and neglect. Developmental Psychology, 36, 679-688.

Rogosch, F.A., Cicchetti, D., & Aber, J.L. (1995). The role of child maltreatment in early deviations in cognitive and affective processing abilities and later peer relationship problems. Development & Psychopathology, 7, 591-609.

Smith, M., & Walden, T. (1999). Understanding feelings and coping with emotional situations: A comparison of maltreated and nonmaltreated preschoolers. Social Development, 8, 93-116.

The Big O

2005-05-18T10:20:00.000-04:00

In yesterday's New York Times, Dinitia Smith explores the evolution of the female orgasm.

At the center of the story is Elzabeth A. Lloyd, philosopher of science and professor of biology at Indiana University and author of The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution.

Lloyd argues that the scientific evidence does not support the theory that female orgasm is a direct product of evolution. It has no adaptive value, she argues. It's just "for fun."

She's inclined to agree with the theory of anthropologist Donald Symons (1979) who argued that female orgasms, like male nipples, are just a byproduct of parallel development in males and female. During the first 8-9 weeks of life, the nerves that create orgasms are formed, and both men and women get them. They are adaptive for men, who are reinforced for frequent sex, but women get to enjoy the happy accident that they get the same nerves too.

There are a variety of alternative theories. Here are a few.

R. Robin Baker & Mark A. Bellis of Manchester Univeristy, have argued that the female orgasm functions to retain sperm and increases the likelihood that the female will be impregnated. However, as Lloyd points out, research by Ludwig Wildt and colelagues syggest that the uterus has contractions throughout the day, a finding which appears to shoot down the Baker-Ellis thesis.

Randy Thornhill, professor of biology at University of New Mexico, has argued that women are more likely to orgasm with a man who has symmetrical facial features. Since symmetrical facial features are a sign of good genes, this implies that orgasms by women are meant to reinforce sexual relations with men who have genes that will produce healthy, thriving offspring.

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy of University of California, Davis has done work mainly with primates, which she writes about in her book The Woman That Never Evolved. Her argument is that orgasm evolved in primates as a way to protect offspring from males. Male monkeys, apparently, are less likely to attack the babies of mothers with whom they have had sex. So the more promiscuous of the females--the one who has the most sex with the most males--is the one less likely to have their baby attacked. Orgasm, then, serves as a reinforcer to reward Mom for lots of sex with various partners.

Personally, I am not convinced of Lloyd's argument that orgasm is only a evolutionary byproduct of male orgasm. I'm more inclined to believe the Baker-Ellis thesis. Not all women have orgasms with all men, but give a gal a hot guy who knows what he's doing (e.g., someone with a good bucketful of genes), and she will be curling her toes. Oh yes.

In any case: Three cheers for female orgams! Who doesn't love 'em?

For your reading pleasure:

The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution by Elisabeth A. Lloyd

The Woman That Never Evolved by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy

Animal Behavior: An Evolutionary Approach by John Alcock

Sperm Wars: The Science of Sex by Robin Baker

The Mating Mind by Geoffrey Miller

A Natural History of Rape by Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer

Iconoclastic Utopianism vs Blueprint Utopianism

2005-05-17T15:14:00.000-04:00

UCLA historian Russell Jacoby has just published a new book, Picture Imperfect: Utopian Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age. Jacoby, who has previously published books such as The Last Intellectuals and The End of Utopia, argues in favor of a tempered utopianism.

In the book, Jacoby makes the distinction between blueprint utopianism, exemplified by the likes of Thomas More and Edward Belammy, and iconoclastic utopianism, which he sees represented by figures such as Ernst Bloch, Martin Buber, Gustav Landauer, Theodor Adorno, and Max Horkheimer.

While "blueprint utopianism" is linked to effort to predetermine the specifics of a utopian society, "iconoclastic utopianism" is much more modest in scope. Rather then attempting to predicting and controlling for the outcome of a utopian future, iconoclastic utopians put forth a vision that is open to the unexpected. I think of it as a kind of postmodern utopianism, if that doesn't like too much of an oxymoron.

It's an important distinction because, as authors such as Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper, and Hannah Arendt have argued, blueprint utopianism has traditionally been associated with some of the worst atrocities in modern history, including Stalinism via Marxist theory, Nazism, and even the genocide in Rwanda.

In an interview with the Boston Globe, Jacoby describes the virtues of inconoclastic utopianism: "What we learn from these utopians is that a reluctance to depict utopia does not diminish but exalts it. You can listen for utopia, approach it through hints and parables but to give its precise measurements would be a betrayal."

Where do I sign up?

Pinker and Spelke Duke It Out at Harvard

2005-05-17T14:08:00.000-04:00

This past January, Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers found himself in the middle of a controversial, based on his remark at a conference for the National Bureau of Economic Research. Summers, who was scheduled to speak, asked why there are relatively few women in the upper ranks of faculty in the sciences and engineering. When Summers suggested that it might have something to do with genetics, several women scientists in the audience left in disgust.

One of the women who left, Nancy Hopkins, an MIT biologist, has recently lead a study of gender inequalities at MIT. Asked why she left Summers' talk, she said, "It is so upsetting that all these brilliant young women [at Harvard] are being led by a man who views them this way."

Summers later apologized but his address has sparked a controversy in it's wake. While Summers, as a Harvard President, had not carefully considered the potential impact of his remarks, essentially putting a huge foot in his mouth, many have come to his defense, arguing that, indeed, the empirical research suggests that women, when compared to men, tend not to perform as well in math and science.

Enter Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke. Steven Pinker is Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University and, until recently, taught in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. Spelke is Professor of Psychology and Co-Director of the Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative at Harvard University.

This week, Pinker and Spelke engaged in a debate about the role of gender in the math and sciences. Pinker makes the case that, at least to some extent, there are indeed gender disparities between men and women when it comes to mathematics and science, and at least some of these disparities can be traced to biological differences between the sexes. Spelke, on the contrary, argues that gender inequalities in mathematics and science are not the result of biologically determined forces, but rather the product of social-cultural forces.

The exchange is available on-line, both as streaming audio/video and as text.

If you ask me, Pinker seemed to have the more cogent argument. Both drew from a considerable body of empirical evidence. However, Spelke's arguments did not appear to adequately address the points raised by Pinker. But decide for yourself.

Consider this exchange near the end of the debate:

SPELKE: I'm glad you brought up the case of the basketball and baseball players. I think it's interesting to ask, what distinguishes these cases, where you remove the overt discrimination and within a very short period of time the differential disappears, from other cases, where you remove the overt discrimination and the covert discrimination continues? In the athletic cases where discrimination disappears quickly, there are clear, objective measures of success. Whatever people think about the capacities of a black player, if he is hitting the ball out of the park, he is going to get credit for a home run. That is not the case in science.

In science, the judgments are subjective, every step of the way. Who's really talented? Who deserves bigger lab space? Who should get the next fellowship? Who should get promoted to tenure? These decisions are not based on clear and objective criteria. These are the cases where you see discrimination persisting. You see it in academia. You see it in Claudia Goldin's studies of orchestra auditions, which also involve subtle judgments: Who's the more emotive, sensitive player? If you know that the players are male or female, you're going pick mostly men, but if the players are behind a screen, you'll start picking more women.

PINKER: But that makes the wrong prediction: the harder the science, the greater the participation of women! We find exactly the opposite: it's the most subjective fields within academia — the social sciences, the humanities, the helping professions — that have the greatest representation of women. This follows exactly from the choices that women express in what gives them satisfaction in life. But it goes in the opposite direction to the prediction you made about the role of objective criteria in bringing about gender equity. Surely it's physics, and not, say, sociology, that has the more objective criteria for success.

Quite a knock-out punch from Spinker. Spelke wasn't able to offer a counter-retort.

No matter what your opinion on the matter, it was quite a treat to see these two great minds engaged in spirited, reasoned debate, without resorting to the kind of ad hominem attacks so common when these heated issues come under scrutiny. Kudos to Pinker and Spelke for elevating the level of debate on this important issue.

For more reading on these issues, see:

The Essential Difference: The Truth About the Male and Female Brain by Simon Baron-Cohen

Brain Gender by Melissa Hines

Brain Sex: The Real Difference Between Men and Women by Anne Moir and David Jessel

Sex on the Brain by Deborah Blum

God is good . . . for your health

2005-05-12T21:31:00.000-04:00

In "Why attending religious services may benefit health," the Associated Press reports on recent trends in religious activity as well as the health benefits of regularly attending religious services.

As the article reports, the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center has recently released results of its survey of Americans' attendance at religious services. Between 2002 and 2004, it turns out, there has been an almost 3% increase in weekly church attendance by Americans.

The article suggests that increased health benefits is one positive outcome for increased church attendance.

In the article, Lynda Powell is interviewed. Powell was one of three scientists on a panel organized by the National Institutes of Health, which set out specifically to examine the claim that religion is good for your health.

While the panel found that there is little evidence that religion benefits those who are already ill, they did find strong evidence that religious practice is associated with signficantly lower rates of mortality, especially among those who attend weekly religious services. Remarkably, Powell is convinced of the relationship even through she is an atheist.

While religious practice has health benefits, part of the effect is due to the social network that comes with belonging to a religious community. When people have a wider social network, this tends to have positive effects on health-related variables. Also, people who regularly attend church also tend to have healthier habits, such as eating healtheir and exercising frequently.

Nevertheless, as Powell's research and the research of others has demonstrated, the effect of religious practice on health goes beyond the social benefits of church attendance and healthier habits. As Powell notes in the article, there remains "an unkown mechanism" of church attendance which accounts for improved health and reduced mortality. While Powell herself does not believe God is the "unknown mechanism," she certainly can't rule it out.

Federal Government Targets Pot

2005-05-11T22:12:00.000-04:00

In "Feds Sound Warning About Marijuana Abuse," the Associated Press reports on how the Federal government is stepping up the arrest and prosecution of pot-smokers and dealers.

Why the sudden increased focus on marijuana? According to John P. Waters, director of the White House Office of Drug Control Policy: "A growing body of evidence now demonstrates that smoking marijuana can increase the risk of serious mental health problems."

Well, John -- not so fast. There are a handful of studies that demonstrate a correlation between marijuana use and various psychological problems, including mental disorders. But, for those who know squat about statistics, you should also know that correlation does not imply causation. It could be that people with mental disorders and other psychological problems turn to marijuana as an attempt to self-medicate. For example, some people might smoke pot because it seems to help them manage difficult emotions. In that case, it would be psychological problems that cause marijuana use, not pot causing psychological problems.

It could also be that marijuana and psychological problems are both influenced by a third, unknown variable. For example, maybe listening to too much prog-rock, like Pink Floyd, can make you depressed, and people who listen to Pink Floyd just so happen to smoke a lot of dope. Okay, stupid theory, but, really, have you ever listened to the lyrics of "Comfortably Numb"? Nuff said. In any case: If there is a third variable that causes systematic changes in both pot smoking and psychological variables, that would mean pot doesn't have a direct, causal influence on psychological variables.

Maybe all this just sounds like a rationalization from a dope junkie. Actually, no, I don't smoke the stuff. Oh, sure, I experimented in college like most other people, but no thanks. I like to keep a clear head. All I'm doing here is looking at the science behind the government policy.

But with all that aside, I can't say I'd be surprised to find clear, definitive, experimental evidence that marijuana does increase the risk of mental problems.

My hunch is that pot-smoking will have its primary affects upon motivation. Decreased motivation and productivity would influence a variety of other psychological factors, including self-efficacy (the feeling that you can accomplish things) and, another related variable, one's sense of competency. When people feel like they can't get things done (when they have low self-efficacy) and when they don't feel that they are gaining important competencies at the things that matter to them--such as school, work and relationships--they are liable to feel bad in any number of ways, including feelings of anxiety and sadness. If these feelings persist, they could generate a whole syndrome of symptoms from generalized anxiety disorder to major depressive disorder.

So, the concept that marijuana causes mental problems is not a far-fetched notion. Nevertheless, as scientists, we need evidence before drawing definitive conclusions. Politicians, on the other hand, are a different kind of animal.

But let's think about this for a minute:

If it's true that the Federal government is truly concerned about protecting youth from the mental health dangers of marijuana abuse, why is is the Federal government spending a whopping 2/3 of it's drug-related budget on law enforcement and only 25% on treatment and a meager 12% for prevention? Something don't smell right.

Link Between Depression and Poverty in Welsh Study

2005-05-11T09:26:00.000-04:00

A recent analysis of the 1998 Welsh Health Survey (Skapinakis, Lewis, Araya, Jones, & Williams, 2005) has gotten a lot of press. The article was reported in a Western News article, "The Poor Get More Depressed."

According to the report, the link between mental disorders and geograpical area in the UK is not a new finding. However, in this case, Skapinakis and colleagues attempted to use a multiple regression analysis to examine the variance in mental illness accounted for by geographical area after individual characteristics, such as age, employment, marital status, and gender, had been accounted for.

According to the report:

The research appears to confirm a report by the National Public Health Service in Wales about the impact of deprivation on health. People living in pockets of high social and economic deprivation were almost twice as likely to have suffered depression or anxiety than those in affluent areas.

However, after examining the original study, the above statement seems a bit misleading. In the actual study, only a little more than 1% of the varance in mental health was accounted for by region. Yes, this was a statistically significant relationship between mental health and region, which demonstrates that a higher area of deprivation was only very moderately associated with a higher score on the mental health assessment. But statistical significance does not necessarily suggest that the relationship is strong enough to be meaningful.

Also, the study is not able to determine the causal direction of the relationship. It could be that people who live in deprived regions of the UK live in those regions because they are depressed. Or the relationship could be due to a third variable which was not accounted for in the multiple regression analysis.

Despite this limitations of the study, the most reasonable conclusion is that poverty is very moderately linked with depression, which suggests that mental health efforts should perhaps concentrate especially (but definitely not exclusively) on folks who live in these areas.

References

Skapinakis, P., Lewis, G., Araya, R., Jones, K., & Williams, G. (2005). Mental health inequalities in Wales, UK: multi-level investigation of the effect of area deprivation. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 186, 417-422.

Babies of 9/11 Moms Traumatized in Womb

2005-05-11T01:21:00.000-04:00

In a groundbreaking study, Yehuda, Engel, Brand, Seckl, Marcus & Berkowitz (2005) examined the saliva of 38 mothers exposed to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

The researchers observed that vulnerability to PTSD has been previously found to be related to reduced cortisol levels. Further, in research on Holocaust survivors, adult offspring of the survivors were found to carry the low cortisol risk factor for PTSD.

In this current study, low cortisol levels were found in both the mothers and the babies of mothers who had developed PTSD symptoms after the 9/11 attacks. The lowest cortisol levels were found in babies who were in the third trimester when the attacks occurred.

Dr. Yehuda comments in a PR Newswire report:

The findings suggest that mechanisms for transgenerational transmission of biologic effects of trauma may have to do with very early parent-child attachments," says Dr. Yehuda, "and possibly even in utero effects related to cortisol programming."

In other words: When mothers are traumatized, so are their babies, especially during the third trimester of pregnancy. However, the babies are not "traumatized" because they witness the traumatic event, they are chemically "traumatized" by mom's chemical reactions to stress. A truly remarkable study with major implications for understanding not only the etiology of PTSD, but potentially other stress-related problems as well.

References

Yehuda, R., Engel, S.M., Brand, S.R., Seckl, J., Marcus, S.M., & Berkowitz, G.S. (2005). Transgenerational effects of posttraumatic stress disorder in babies of mothers exposed to the World Trade Center attacks during pregnancy. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 10.

The Cutting Craze

2005-05-10T22:23:00.000-04:00

In the latest issue of Time magazine, Jeffrey Kluger explores the latest teen fashion statement: self-cutting. In the article, "The Cruelist Cut," Kluger asks why teens self-mutilate and why they seem to be doing it with increasing frequency.

Self-cutting tends to be associated with Borderline Personality Disorder, but is not limited to that population. The literature estimates that somewhere between 6 to 39% of teens self-mutilate.

Kluger writes:

Overwhelmingly, self-mutilators say they began cutting for one of two reasons: to feel less or to feel more. Some kids suffering from such problems as anxiety, depression or borderline-personality disorder--a condition characterized by explosiveness and unstable relationships--find their pain so overwhelming that they simply shut off their emotional spigot. Cutting, they find, is a way to kick-start feelings when the numbness becomes worse than the pain. Other kids say the opposite--that their emotional turmoil is so great that they need something to serve as a bleed valve to calm them down in times of crisis. "I would do it when things got me upset," says Brittany, 17, an outpatient at the Vista Del Mar clinic in west Los Angeles. "At the time it was a relief, until you wake up the next morning, look at your arms and think, s___, what did I do?"

What is the most recent evidence on self-mutilation?

Ross & Heath (2003) put forth two models of self-mutilation. According to one model, self-mutilation functions to reduce hostility. The other model assumes that self-mutilation is an attempt to regulate anxiety. In either case, cutting seems to be a way of managing overwhelming feelings.

In their empirical study, Ross & Heath found support for both models. Students who self-mutilate reported significantly more anxiety and more intropunitive and extrapunitive hostility. Also, self-mutilating feelings of both hostility and anxiety were described by the participants. These findings suggest that those who self-mutilate seem to be dealing with overwhelming feelings of anxiety, but also hostility toward both themselves and others.

Haines & Williams (2003) studied incarcerated males who self-mutilate and compared them to nonmutilating prisoners and nonprisoner groups. They found that the self-mutilators had lower self-worth, lower optimism about life, and lower perceived control over problem-solving options in comparison to the control groups. They also reported more problem-avoidance behaviors.

In their research on patients with Borderline Personality Disorder, McKay, Gavigan, & Kulchycky (2004) found evidnece that patients with self-mutilating behavior have deficits in non-verbal communication skills, particularly with regard to emotions--and they seem to have difficulty communication emotional information both about themselves and about others.

Interestingly, they also found that self-mutilators were more likely to be typed as undifferentiated, rather than masculine, feminine or adrogynous on the Bem Sex Role Inventory, a finding which is consistent with dynamic theories of borderline personality as the result of a weak, undifferentiated ego. On the other hand, participants who did not self-mutilate were more likely to be identified with a masculine sex role.

Research by Nock & Prinstein (2005) suggests that self-mutilating behavior tends to be impulsive and seems to happen both in the absence of physical pain and without the use of alcohol or drugs. The behavior seems to function both as automatic and social reinforcement. In other words, people who self-mutilate seem to do it both because the behavior itself is rewarding and because they tend to get social rewards, such as attention, for the behavior.

The good news is that there is hope for the treatment of self-mutilation and borderline personality disorder. In a recent randomized, controlled study of dialectical behavior therapy, Bohus and colleagues (2004) examined the effects of a 3-month inpatient treatment program. The 50 patients with borderline personality disorder demonstrated an overall decrease in depression, anxiety, global psychopathology, and self-mutilation. They also demonstrated a collective increase in interpersonal functioning and social adjustment. In fact, 42% of the patients clinically recovered on a general measure of psychopathology. So, at least in the case of dialectical behavior therapy, treatment seems to be moving in the right direction.

References

Bohus, M., et al. (2004). Effectiveness of inpatient dialectical behavior therapy for borderline personality disorder: A controlled trial. Behaviour Research & Therapy, 42(5), 487-499.

Haines, J. & Williams, C.L. (2003). Coping and problem solving of self-mutilators. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 59(10), 1097-1106.

Nock, M.K., & Prinstein, M.J. (2005). Contextual features and behavioral functions of self-mutilation among adolescents. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 114(1), 140-146.

McKay, D., Gavigan, C.A., & Kulchycky, S. (2004). Social skills and sex-role functioning in Borderline Personality Disorder: Relationship to self-mutilating behavior. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, 33(1), 27-35.

Ross, S. & Heath, N.L. (2003). Two models of adolescent self-mutilation. Suicide & Life-Threatening Behavior, 32(3), 277-287.

Gay Men Smell Like Women

2005-05-10T09:23:00.000-04:00

The New York Times reports on new research that gay men respond to certain smells in ways similar to straight women. The article, "Study Finds Different Brain Response in Gay, Straight Men," details some of the research findings.

One study was conducted at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. They found that, when examining the brains of participants with PET scans, smells such as cedar and lavender caused responses in the brain related to olfaction (smelling) for all participants. However, when the participants were provided with a chemical from testosterone, straight women and gay men, but not straight men, responded with activity in the preoptic region of the hypothalamus, which is linked to sexual behavior.

In a separate study conducted by researchers in Philadelphia, they found, similarly, that gay men and straight women responded similarly and different from straight men in response to body odor.

In the article, Sandra Witelson of McMaster University states, "It is one more piece of evidence . . . that is showing that homosexuality is not all learned."

Witelson is not one of the researchers. In fact, the researcher team is much more cautious, and rightly so, in their interpretation of the findings. Based on these results, we cannot determine the causal direction. It could be that gay men and straight women are born to respond to the testosterone with activity in hypothalamus. But it is just as likely that gay men learn, based on past experience, to associate the scent of testosterone with sexual behavior.

The research study is actually a quasi-experimental study. To be a true experiment, you would have to randomly assign participants to the various conditions, and of course it is impossible to randomly assign participants to the sexual orientation categories. For this reason, it is not possible to control for potential confounding variables, such as past learning history.

However, past research has found some difference in the hypothalamus of gay and straight men. This new research could help identify the link between these structural differences in the brain with their function in pheromone reception, which is an interesting and provocative line of research.

Brain Turbulence Generators

2005-05-09T21:03:00.000-04:00

In Philosopher's Mag, five philosophers have their go at what they believe to be the most intractable problems of philosophy today.

Here they are:

1. Rights v. welfare

What's more important for ethical deliberation: Consideration of the rights of the persons involved, or consideration of the greatest happiness for all? Thanks to Richard Ashcroft of Imperial College London for disclosing the wrench in his bioethical clockwork.

2. Human nature

Ok, really, what the heck are we, after all? What is a human? Are humans special amongst creatures or are we just another animal? Is the self autonomous or merely the effect of a chain of causes and effects beyond our control? Am I really writing this or is it a smurf in my brain doing the writing for me? Thanks to Stephen Burwood of University of Hull and author of The Self for screwing with our species- and self-centricism.

2. Quantum reality

How can something exist in two places at the same time? How can a something be both a wave and a particle? How did Sonny end up with Cher? And how in the heck did he manage to become Senator? Maybe in another universe he married Roseanne Barr and became Mayor of Buffalo, New York. So says J.B. Kennedy of University of Manchester, author of Space, Time and Einstein. Ok, actually, he didn't mention Sonny and Cher.

3. Probability

Is the universe not determined but instead pulsating with probability? Probably. Or so it may be, according to David Papineau of Kings College, London, author of The Roots of Reason.

4. The Dualism of Practical Reason

There is a duality creeping in practical reason. Yes, indeed, it may just be that what is in the best interests of others may in fact be contrary to my own self-interests. In order to be a good, ethical person, must I sacrifice my self-interests of the good of the whole? And, if so, in that case, when can I give the collective finger to the universe and just enjoy my own slice of the pie, to hell with the rest of you??? So wonders Bart Schultz of the University of Chicago and author of Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe.

Good times.

Two Great Thinkers on Consciousness

2005-05-09T14:57:00.000-04:00

At Reason, Kenneth Silber reviews the latest books on two great thinkers on the problem of consciousness, John Searle and Jeff Hawkins.

In the article, "Are We Really Just Smart Robots?", Silber points out how both Searle and Hawkins dispel the myth that an understanding of consciousness leaves us with no other choice than materialist reductionism or mind-body dualism.

In On Intelligence, Hawkins makes the case that artificial intelligence (A.I.) is a project that will produce what appear to be intelligent beings -- but the products of A.I. will not be proto-human. They will not be conscious nor will they have feelings like humans do.

In Mind: A Brief Introduction, Searle maintains that consciousness is both rooted in material matter and irreducible to its component, material parts. He argues that consciousness depends upon a "first-person ontology" which maintains the integrity of consciousness as fundamentally experiential in nature, in contrast to other, non-conscious entities which can be understood only in terms of a "third-person ontology."

Sounds like good stuff. I will be ordering both books for myself. I'll let you know what I think when I've had the chance to read them.

Antidepressants and Kids: A US News Spin

2005-05-09T12:15:00.000-04:00

In U.S. News and World Report, Marianne Szegedy-Maszak ponders the problems of Prozac and other depressants when used to treat depression in children. The article, "Medication and Melancholy," is a bit biased toward the drug industry, in my opinion.

Here's my question: Why in the hell are psychiatrists prescribing antidepressants to kids when we do not yet have the foggiest idea how they will be affected by them? Why are doctors drugging kids with Prozac when we have evidence, in fact, that kids may sometimes be even more prone to suicide than if they hadn't taken the drugs in the first place?

Answer: There is no reason. It is negligence, plain and simple.

Why? Don't these drugs help kids? Yes, they do. But they also kill kids sometimes.

But more importantly, there is a viable and more effective alternative: Psychotherapy. There is plenty of evidence that psychotherapy is just as effective as antidepressants for the treatment of depression (see below), and, unlike the case with antidepressants, psychotherapy actually decreases the likelihood of suicide in kids rather than sometimes increasing it.

There is only one sensible conclusion: Doctors, start referring depressed kids to psychotherapists, and only provide antidepressants as a last resort, when psychotherapy alone is not working. It's a simple formula. Try it sometime.

Child Maltreatment: Therapy Works

2005-05-09T11:03:00.000-04:00

Skowron & Reinemann (2005) have published a meta-analysis of therapy effectiveness for child maltreatment. Good news: It seems to be working, at least for most clients.

As Skowron notes:

Although the prevention and eradication of child abuse and neglect is a high-priority societal goal, the fact remains that an overwhelming number of youth will become victims. Results of the current study indicate that psychological treatments for child abuse and neglect are effective and can assist children and their families to regain their functioning and facilitate the development of healthy, productive lives.

"Child maltreatment" in this study included all forms of physical, emotional and sexual abuse or neglect which results in potential harm to the child.

The results suggest that clients who are treated for child maltreatment functioned better than 71% of nontreated others.

Therapy orientation seemed to make a difference. Non-behavioral therapies appeared to demonstrate larger effect sizes than behavioral therapies. However, it is not clear if non-behavioral therapies performed better because the clients were treated for a longer period of time. It could be the length of treatment and not the therapy orientaiton that makes the difference.

Treatment modality did not seem to make a difference. Clients seemed to improve equally whether they were in individual or group therapy and whether they were in a parent-focused versus a child-focused therapy. Individual, group, family, milieu, and multi-level forms of treatment were all equally effective.

Also, the mandatory of voluntary nature of the treatment did not appear to make a difference for treatment outcome.

One caveat is that there larger effect sizes were associated with self-reports by parents and children. When measures were based on objective behavioral observations of the family, the treatment gains appeared to be more modest. This is not a surprise since parents would obviously have a vested interest in providing the social desirable response that the treatment worked, even when it hadn't. For this reason, future studies will need to make sure they measure objective changes in family behavior and not ony parent and child self-reports.

References

Skowron, E. & Reinemann, D.H.S. (2005). Effectiveness of psychological interventions for child maltreatment: A meta-analysis. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 42(1), 52-71.

PTSD in victims of domestic violence: The role of self-criticism and dependency

2005-05-09T10:16:00.000-04:00

Sharhabani-Arzy, Amir, & Swisa (2005) studied 91 women who were victims of domestic violence. Results suggest, among victims, the intensity of the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was related to the self-critical personality style. They also found that the dependency personality style was a moderating factor to the association between self-criticism and PTSD. As the authors note: "At high levels of self-criticism, dependency had no influence on the intensity of PTSD, but at low levels of self-criticism, high levels of dependency moderated the intensity of PTSD."

In other words: Women who are victims of domestic violence are more likely to develop more severe symptoms of PTSD if they have personalities which dispose to be more self-critical and dependent than others.

Possible implication: Treatment of PTSD for victims of domenstic violence should focus on reducing self-critical cognitions and increasing autonomy.

References

Sharhabani-Arzy, R., Amir, M., & Swisa, A. (2005). Self-criticism, dependency and posttraumatic stress disorder among a female group of help-seeking victims of domestic violence in Israel. Personality and Individual Differences, 38(5), 1231-1240.

Old News on Neuroscience Packaged as New News in the NY Times

2005-05-09T09:30:00.000-04:00

In the latest NY Times Magazine, Jim Holt waxes poetic about neuroscience in his article "Of Two Minds."

Holt is alarmed to find out that neuroscience has accumulated evidence that there is *gasp* unconscious processing of information in the brain. He's amazed in wide-eyed wonder that split-brain patients with a severed corpus collasum engage in operations in one hemisphere of the brain but are not aware of it in the other hemisphere.

Okay, Jim, where have you been for the last 20 years? Nothing new here.

Listen closely Mr. Holt. When you digest your food, you are not conscious of doing it. Your stomach and intestines etc. do all the work for you. Your heart keeps beating in your chest thanks to your brain even when you are not paying attention. You can even get an erection without willfully initiating the sexual arousal. So, it's no surprise that, when you process visual information, you don't have to consciously process every bit of information that floats across your retina. Your brain does that for you so you can concentrate on other things -- like writing pointless columns for the NY Times.

Dearth Weber

2005-05-06T14:44:00.000-04:00

At First Things, The American Enterprise Institute's Michael Novak expounds upon the contemporary relevance of Max Weber's sociology of capitalism.

Novak's "Max Weber Goes Global" is actually a remarkable update on Weber and his relevance to contemporary thought about the relationship between religion, human behavior, and economics. In many ways, Weber is more relevant today than ever.

As Novak writes:

Weber may have unnecessarily limited himself by focusing exclusively on the role of Calvinism in the emergence of capitalism; no doubt his thesis would benefit from a broader, more generalized restatement. Yet in our newly dynamic world, Weber’s identification of necessary spiritual and moral conditions for successful economic activity continues to be a source of wisdom. Weber rightly teaches us that success in economics is largely dependent on the spiritual and moral qualities embodied in the practice of economic agents. Moral and spiritual flaws, in other words, have economic consequences. In economic transactions, a failure of insight, determination, perseverance, honesty, respect for law, or cooperativeness with one’s fellows can be self-defeating. Even entire worldviews can be self-defeating—when, for instance, they employ supposedly divine taboos to stifle economic innovation or curtail economic growth. Max Weber was among the first thinkers to draw our attention to these crucial moral and spiritual dimensions of economic behavior—and for that reason his work remains as vital and important today as it was a century ago.

For some excellent reading on Weber, I recommend the following:

-- Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
-- Stephen Turner (Ed), The Cambridge Companion to Weber
-- Anthony Giddens, Capitalism and Modern Social Theory

Video Game as Brain Food

2005-05-06T13:48:00.000-04:00

In Wired, author Steven Johnson poses the argument that video games and other examples of modern technology, from VCR's to computers, make us smarter.

The evidence? The first bit of evidence is the fact that IQ has grown steadily over the past century. This is called the "Flynn effect." And not only is our collective IQ growing larger, it's growth is exponential. The more time goes on, the faster our IQ increases.

The second bit of evidence: Even though IQ tests show increasing collective numbers, achievement tests are not showing the same trend. Achievement tests measure how educated we are. So, it's not education that's making us smarter, or else we'd see just as much improvement in achievement tests.

The third bit of evidence: What has changed other than education over the past century? Technology. We are faced with an increasingly complex, technological world.

In other words: Technology, not education, has made us smarter.

Now ain't that a kick in the nuts for Luddites?

And a win for gamers!

But let's think about this for a minute. What is "IQ" anyway? If you study what "IQ" tests really measure, what they measure is our ability to adapt to the technical problems we face in the world. What we consider "smart" in our culture--and therefore what we structure our IQ tests around--are abilities which allow us to thrive in our technological world. So, put in that perspective, the link between IQ and technology is not very surprising at all. It's only surprising to those people who were lead to believe erroneously that IQ can be traced back to some specific "g-factor" gene--which, frankly, was a dumb idea to begin with. It was always just cover for racism and other forms of elitism.

Like to read more? Check out Steven Johnson's book, Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter. You gotta love that title.

Cognitive Therapy and Antidepressant Medication: Equally Effective

2005-05-06T07:41:00.000-04:00

Research by Robert J. DeRubeis and colleagues (2005) suggests that cognitive therapy is just as effective as medication for the treatment of moderate to severe depression.

120 patients with moderate to severe depression were assigned to one of three conditions: medication, pill placebo, or cognitive therapy. At 16 weeks of treatment, response rates were 58% for patients receiving antidepressant medications and for those receiving cognitive therapy. Remission rates were 46% in antidepressant medications patients and 40% in cognitive therapy patients.

As the authors note:

On the whole, these findings do not support the current American Psychiatric Association guideline, based on the TDCRP (the Treatment of Depression Collaborative Research Program), that 'most [moderately and severely depressed] patients will require medication. It appears that cognitive therapy can be as effective as medications, even among more severely depressed outpatients, at least when provided by experienced cognitive therapists.

Major Depression vs Generalized Anxiety: Differences in Memory Bias

2005-05-06T07:14:00.000-04:00

A study by Rinck & Becker (2005) suggests that women with Major Depressive Disorder have memory biases in both explicit and implicit memory, whereas women with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and normal controls do not.

The study examined 117 women: 35 with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, 27 with Major Depressive Disorder, and 55 healthy controls. Each were given tests of visual attention, explicit memory, and implicit memory.

The authors report: "Both clinical groups exhibited attentional biases for disorder-related words, whereas only depressed participants showed clear evidence of explicit and implicit memory biases."

References

Rinck, M. & Becker, E.S. (2005). A comparison of attentional biases and memory biases in women with social phobia and major depression. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 114(1), 62-74.

Relational Aggression and Emotion Regulation: A New Frontier

2005-05-06T06:33:00.000-04:00

In the most recent issue of American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Anne Conway (2005) of The Child Center at Pennsylvania State University argues that "investigation into the associations between emotion regulation and relational aggression is a critical direction for future research on the etiology and prevention of mental health problems in girls."

Past research has shown that young males are more likely to engage in physical aggression(Coie & Dodge, 1997), but girls are more relationally aggressive. That is, girls who are bullies will not usually hit you or scratch you; instead, they will humiliate you through the spreading of rumors, gossip, and any other means of alienating you from your peers.

Couple the above research with the insight that problem behaviors in youngsters are associated with difficulties with emotion regulation (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1999; Gilliam, Shaw, Beck, Schonberg, & Lukon, 2002). One has to wonder if young girls who agress relationally might be doing so as a maladaptive means of regulating emotion. So, I agree with Conway that more research in this area is important. And I think we should be prepared for potentially surprising results. It could turn out that relational aggression requires a certain degree of emotion regulation skills. We'll have to wait and see.

References

Coie, J.D., & Dodge, K.A. (1998). Aggression and antisocial behavior. In W. Damon & N. Eisenberg (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 3. social, emotional and personality development (5th ed., pp. 779-862). New York: Wiley.

Conway, A.M. (2005). Girls, aggression, and emotion regulation. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 75(2), 334-339.

Eisenberg, N. & Fabes, R.A. (1999). Emotion, emotion-related regulation, and quality of socioemotional functioning. Iin L. Balter & C.S. Tamis-LeMonda (Eds.), Child psychology: A handbook of contemporary issues (pp. 318-335). New York: Psychology Press.

Gilliom, M., Shaw, D.S., Beck, J.E., Schonberg, M.A., & Lukon, J.L. (2002). Anger regulation in disadvantaged preschool boys: Strategies, antecedents and the development of self-control. Developmental Psychology, 38(2), 222-235.

Star Wars memories

2005-05-06T05:40:00.000-04:00

Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith will be released May 20th. Of course, the Lucas empire has already begun their saturation of the mass media, and, thanks to that, my 2-year-old son is now stoked about "Star Wars."

I was 7-years-old in 1977 when the original Star Wars film was released. Almost 30 years ago. I have an acute memory of the day I saw the film. It was at the Bank Cinema in downtown Pittsburgh with my mother and father. I remember the smell of the popcorn, and I even recall where we sat in the theater -- about 2/3 of the way down on the left side. I was completely riveted to the screen. Like most kids, the experience was transformative. Star Wars instantly became part of our cultural mythology.

When the films were re-released some time ago, I took my second cousin, who at the time was about the same age I was when I first saw the original films. I have taken him to other movies since, and I have never seen him sit through an entire screening of a film. But for Star Wars? He did not move an inch nor take an eye from the screen.

I will admit that I even enjoyed the first two episodes released over the last 5 years or so. Yes, they were a little disappointing, but only because our expectations were so high. But I think our anticipation may finally pay off with Episode III.

A review by Todd McCarthy in Variety gives me hope that Episode III will be a return to the magic of the original. And perhaps not surprisingly because we will see the return of some of the magical figures -- Darth Vader and the birth of Luke and Leia. But more than that, the key I think will be the return of themes from the original John Williams score, which I have missed most of all. I anticipate my adrenal rush when the Darth Vader theme shakes the theater.

McCarthy writes:

Entertaining from start to finish and even enthralling at times, "Sith" has some acting worth writing home about, specifically McDiarmid's dominant turn as the mastermind of the evil empire. McGregor remains a steady presence, and both Portman and Christensen have loosened up since "Clones" to acceptable, if hardly inspired, levels. Expressiveness of the digitally animated Yoda, voiced as always by Frank Oz, is amazing.

I can't wait.

As many of you already know, the original Star Wars was inspired by Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Check out this page for some Campbell-Star Wars fun.

Negative Emotions Linked to OCD

2005-05-05T07:39:00.000-04:00

In a new study, Marcello Spinella (2005) of Richard Stockton College of New Jersey explored the relationship between subclinical symptoms of Obsessive-Compusive Disorder and emotion.

Spinella found that the severity of the obsessive and compulsive symptoms were associated with the self-reported intensity of negative emotions (anger, depression, tension, confusion, and fatigue) but not positive emotion (vigor).

Interpretation: When people feel bad, they are more likely to have obsessions and to engage in compulsive behaviors. It doesn't matter how good they feel. This seems to imply that OCD symptoms are a (maladaptive?) attempt to regulation negative emotions, but not positive ones.

References

Spinella, M. (2005). Mood in relation to subclinical obsessive-compulsive symptoms. International Journal of Neuroscience, 115(4), 433-443.

Eating Disorder as Self-Regulation of Emotion

2005-05-05T05:58:00.000-04:00

Fascinating new evidence suggests that women with eating disorders use their maladaptive eating behavior as a means to self-regulate both positive and negative emotion.

Averill Overton and colleagues (2005), from the Department of Psychology at University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, found that women with eating disorders, when compared with normal people, experienced more plesant emotions, such as joy, interest and surprise, in response to behaviors associated with eating disorder (e.g., restricting food intake, binging, purging). Interestingly, women with eating disorder also reported less anger compared to controls.

These findings, reported in the Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings, suggest that women with eating disorders use maladaptive eating patterns as a means of regulating their subjective experience of emotional states. In other words, they use their eating patterns as a way of up-regulating positive emotions and down-regulating negative ones.

Of course, these findings have major implications for the treatment of eating disorder. One obvious conclusion is that any successful treatment will need to focus on providing these women with alternative, adaptive means of regulating their emotions.

References

Overton, A., Selway, S., Strongman, K., & Houston, M. (2005). Eating disorders -- the regulation of positive as well as negative emotion experience. Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings, 12(1), 39-56.

The Affective Revolution in Economic Theory: A New Contribution

2005-05-05T05:00:00.000-04:00

In a recent issue of the Journal of Economic Psychology, Roberta Muramatsu and Yanic Hanoch (2005) advance the claim that research on human decision-making must account for the role of emotion.

The author's build on a theory of bounded rationality known as "the adaptive toolbox of fast and frugal heuristics"(Gigerenzer & Selton, 2001). According to this theory, "individuals rely on decision strategies that economize on an agent's cognitive processing capabilities, since they exploit information within particular environment structure" (p. 10).

"Heuristics" are cognitive shortcuts that people use in everyday life when making decisions. Often times, such cognitive shortcuts work to our advantage because they speed up the decision-making process because we don't have to think through every possible consequence of every possible decision we make. If it weren't for heuristics, we would never have time to do anything because we'd just stand around thinking about what we were going to do rather than doing it. In this sense, heuristics are "fast" and "frugal." The downside is that such mental shortcuts can sometimes lead us into error.

According to this theory, good decision-making can be interpreted in terms of its "ecological rationality": that is, the degree that "the degree that [the decision and behavior based on the decision] is adapted to the structure of a specific environment."

So, where does emotion comes into play? Emotions, argue Muramatsu & Hanoch, serve the function of contributing to the production of ecologically rational heuristics. In other words, emotions often operate in such a way that they help us to make better decisions than we would be capable of without them.

Why should this be the case? Don't emotions interfere with rationality? Not necessarily and not usually, according to the authors. From an evolutionary perspective, emotions have thousands of years of evolution behind them. They often lead us to make the most adaptive and appropriate decisions.

But why do we sometimes find that emotions get us into trouble? The authors explain that "emotions will lead to distorted outcomes (they are non-fucntional) when they give rise to mental procedures that fail to exploit relevant pieces of information in the environment (in which the task is embedded) and therefore select a behavioral strategy that is not a proper solution to the faced decision problem."

If the authors are correct--and I think they are at least in the ballpark--we have another important contribution to the importance of the current "affective revolution." We won't undertand people until we better understand emotion, because we are, after all, emotional beings.

References

Gigerenzer, G., & Selton, R. (2001). Rethinking rationality. In G. Gigerenzer & R. Selten (Eds)., Bounded rationality: The adaptive toolbox (pp. 1-12). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Muramatsu, R. & Hanoch, Y. (2005). Emotions as a mechanism for boundedly rational agents: The fast and frugal way. Journal of Economic Psychology, 26(2), 201-221.

TV Babies are Bullies

2005-05-05T02:45:00.000-04:00

New research suggests that children who watch too much TV at 4-years-old are more likely to become bullies in grade school

The study, conducted by Frederick J. Zimmerman and colleagues (2005) at University of Washington, Seattle, suggests that parents should reconsider using the boob tube as a babysitter -- unless of course you want your kid to grow up to be a brute.

As Zimmerman reports, per an article at United Press International:

"The magnitude of the risk associated with television ... is clinically significant," the authors wrote in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. "One-standard deviation increase -- 3.9 hours -- in the number hours of television watched at age 4 years is associated with an approximate 25 percent increase in the probability of being described as a bully by the child's mother at ages 6 through 11 years."

Those are some pretty serious numbers. A 25% increase in probability is nothing to sneeze at. But let's think about this a minute. Are these kids watching Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers? Probably not. One has to wonder if these kids become bullies, not because of TV per se, but because their television viewing is not monitored. And even in that case, a parent who fails to monitor their kid's television viewing are probably just crappy parents in general. So, perhaps future research can clarify what mediating variables might be operating here. In any event, an eye opening study and one you probably won't hear about on TV.

References

Zimmerman, F.J., Glew, G.M., Christakis, D.A., & Katon, W. (2005). Early cognitive stimulation, television watching, and subsequent bullying among grade-school children. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, 159(4), 354-388.

Fear, Anger and Ease-of-Thought Generation: Influences on Thoughts about the Future

2005-05-05T01:27:00.000-04:00

Past research in psychology has shown that emotion and ease-of-thought generation influence how people think about their future.

Contrary to what one might think, the feeling of anger actually tends to make people feel more optimistic about the future. Why? Anger makes people feel like they are in control. And when people feel they are in control, they feel more hopeful, optimistic or positive about the outcome of future events.

In contrast, people who are afraid experience the opposite effect. They feel less in control and, consequently, they feel more pessimistic about the future. (See Lerner & Keltner, 2001).

Another influence on how people think about the future are "ease-of-thought generation" effects. Basically, this means that the easier it is for a person to think of future risks, the more pessimistic they will feel about the future. But if thinking of risks is difficult, they will be more optimistic of the future. Of course, the relative ease of thinking of future risk doesn't necessarily--and usually doesn't--correspond to the actual probability of a negative future outcome. (see, for example, Rothman & Schwarz, 1998).

In a new study, Jennifer Lerner and Roxana Gonzalez (2005) of Carnegie Mellon University designed a study to examine how the emotions of anger and fear and ease-of-thought generation combine to influence expectations about the future.

They found some interesting results. As expected, they found that ease-of-thought generation effects only influenced perceptions of the future when the participants were angry. However, these effects were suppressed when participants felt afraid. The results suggest the emotion, anger or fear, first has an effect on how in control the person feels. The feeling of control, in turn, influences their future expectations. So, it seems that ease-of-thought generation effects only work when a person feels in control.

In a second experiment, Lerner & Gonzalez also found that, if a person felt accountable for their predictions--that is, if they thought their predictions would be compared with actual facts about the future--the effects of anger and ease-of-thought were diminished but not eliminated. Interestingly, however, there was a paradoxical effect for people who felt afraid. In other words, when people who were afraid were made the feel accountable for their predictions, they became more influenced by the effects of ease-of-thought generations.

These results have a variety of practical implications. If we are better able to predict how people make decisions about the future--and, more specifically, if we can better understand how people make bad decisions about the future--we will be in a better position to help people make better decisions. Of course, such knowledge could have wide-ranging implications for helping people to improve their decision-making in business, health care, and career decisions, just to name a few.

References

Lerner, J.S., & Gonzalez, R.M. (2005). Forecasting one's future based on fleeting subjetive experiences. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(4), 454-466.

Lerner, J.S., & Keltner, D. (2001). Fear, anger, and risk. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(1), 146-159.

Rothman, A.J., & Schwarz, N. (1998). Constructing perceptions of vulnerability: Personal relevance and the use of experiential information in health judgments. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24(1), 1053-1064.

The Right-Hemisphere Hypothesis of the Lateralization of Emotion: New Evidence

2005-05-05T00:07:00.000-04:00

According to the Right-Hemisphere Hypothesis, emotional stimuli are processed more efficiently by the right hemisphere of the brain.

Stephen D. Smith, from the Department of Psychology at Vanderbilt University, has just published a new study in Brain and Cognition. The study, titled "An examination of the right-hemisphere hypothesis of the lateralization of emotion," explores the extent to which the right hemisphere of the brain is involved in the processing of emotional stimuli.

The experimental manipulation involved presenting neutral, positive, and negative words to the right or left visual field of the participants. Via subjective report and an "exclusion task," Smith was able to determine the extent of conscious and unconscious processing of the words.

The results partially support the Right-Hemisphere Hypothesis, but only for the processing of negative emotion words. Also, consistent with previous research, this advantage was only present for conscious processing of the information. Indeed, the right-hemisphere demonstrated an inferiority for the processing of unconscious information.

The study also qualifies the Right-Hemisphere Hypothesis. As it turned out, the effect was only found for negative words. The processing of positive emotion words did not favor one hemisphere over the other. This suggests that the Right-Hemisphere Hypothesis may only be applicable to negative emotional stimuli.

Reference

Smith, S.D. (2005). An examination of the right hemisphere hypothesis of the lateralization of emotion. Brain & Cognition, 57(2), 210-213.

Reprehensible

2005-05-04T22:01:00.000-04:00

The AP reports a shocking new story about the use of foster kids for the testing of experimental AIDS/HIV drugs. These studies were funded by the National Institute of Health and, based upon both government policy and standard professional ethics, these kids should have received advocates to look after their rights. In most cases, such advocates were not provided.

Some of the disturbing repercussions:

Researchers reported some children had to be taken off the drug because of "serious toxicity," others developed rashes, and the rates of death and blood toxicity were significantly higher in children who took the medicine daily, rather than weekly.

At least 10 children died from a variety of causes, including four from blood poisoning, and researchers said they were unable to determine a safe, useful dosage. They said the deaths didn't appear to be "directly attributable" to dapsone but nonetheless were "disturbing." "An unexpected finding in our study was that overall mortality while receiving the study drug was significantly higher in the daily dapsone group. This finding remains unexplained," the researchers concluded.

Another study involving foster children in the 1990s treated children with different combinations of adult antiretroviral drugs. Among 52 children, there were 26 moderate to severe reactions - nearly all in infants. The side effects included rash, fever and a major drop in infection-fighting white blood cells.

I don't think we've had such negligence nor such an abject violation of basic human rights and scientific ethical conduct since the infamous Tuskegee syphilis studies. Heads will roll.

Diagnosis: Evil!

2005-05-04T00:59:00.000-04:00

This weekend, the Metropolitcan Center for Mental Health will be hosting a gaggle of psychoanalyists, philosophers, and religious scholars who will all be speaking on the topic of evil. The event? The Conference on Evil!

In the Boston Globe, conference participant, Wendy Doniger, who is a religious studies professor at University of Chicago, is keeping an open mind. Her theory is "not a perfect theory," she says, "there is no answer to the problem of evil. But is a very good one that helps people come to terms with their lives."

So, what's next? A conference on witch burning and bloodletting? Bring on the leeches!

Want to satisfy your curiosity for all things modern and evil, then check out Susan Neiman's Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy.

The Island of Unuseless Toys

2005-05-03T23:20:00.000-04:00

Apparently, the kids at MIT have a lot of time on their hands. The latest contest has them practicing the Japanese art of chindogu. No, it has nothing to do with origami. No, it's not tai chi. Feng Shui? Nope.

Chindogu is the art of crafting the unuseless--basically, crap that nobody wants.

The rules of Chindogu are strict and not for the faint of heart.

The 10 tenets of chindogu

1. A chindogu cannot be for real use

2. A chindogu must exist

3. Inherent in every chindogu is the spirit of anarchy

4. Chindogu are tools for everyday life

5. Chindogu are not for sale

6. Humor must not be the sole reason for creating a chindogu

7. Chindogu is not propaganda

8. Chindogu are never taboo

9. Chindogu cannot be patented

10. Chindogu are without prejudice

According to the Boston Globe, some unuseless finalists include a hairy bike, a butterstick, a portable commuter seat, a grin grabber, a catsup crapper, a will powered chiar, a humane fly swatter, stata glasses, a hairy ego booster, and a portable parking lot.

So what does Chindogu tell us about ironic consumer culture in the postmodern age? Discuss amongst yourselves.

For further reading, check out The Big Bento Book of Unuseless Japanese Inventions. For those with too much time on their hands . . .

Go Ahead, Let the Ugly Kid Play in Traffic

2005-05-03T09:23:00.000-04:00

The New York Times reports on research by W. Andrew Harrell & colleagues at the University of Alberta. Harrell, who is Executive Director of the Population Reserach Laboratory at the University of Alberta, presented the research at the Warren E. Kalbach Population Conference in Edmonton, Alberta.

The findings: Ugly kids are more neglected than the pretty ones.

The study was a quasi-experimental field study and the data were gathered by observing children and their parents at grocery stores. Cool idea. So what did they find? Specifically, kids who were rated ugly by the research team (we don't know the interrater reliability) were less often buckled into seatbelts, were more often left out of sight of the parent(s), and were more likely to be allowed to wander more than 10 feet away.

Based on the results, Harrell speculates: "Like lots of animals, we tend to parcel out our resources on the basis of value. Maybe we can't always articulate that, but in fact we do it. There are a lot of things that make a person more valuable, and physical attractiveness may be one of them."

One problem: This is a quasi-experimental study, which means there are a lot of potential extraneous variables that were not controlled. Also, due to the nature of such quasi-experimental designs, we don't know if the dependent variable (attractiveness) is the cause of the independent variable (parental attention/concern). It could be that, at least in part, "ugly" kids become "ugly" due to parental neglect. You know, less primping.

One advantage of such a field study design: It has good external validity. In other words, because the study was conducted in the "real world" of a grocery store and not in some artificial environment in some university laboratory, the results probably generalize better to other, similar "real world" situations and people.

But one has to ask: What the hell is wrong with these parents? Ok, evolutionary biology aside, let's get it together, moms and dads. Ugly kids need love too!

Happy Cow? Holy Cow!

2005-05-02T21:59:00.000-04:00

In the Times Online, Jonathan Leake ponders "The Secret Life of Moody Cows":

. . . cows have a secret mental life in which they bear grudges, nurture friendships and become excited over intellectual challenges, scientists have found. Cows are also capable of feeling strong emotions such as pain, fear and even anxiety — they worry about the future. But if farmers provide the right conditions, they can also feel great happiness.

And I thought "MOO!" just meant she was hungry!

The researcher, Christine Nicol, is Professor of Animal Welfare at Bristol University, and she'll be presenting her cow study at the Compassion in World Farming Conference, which will be held in London. Jane Goodall will be giving the keynote address.

Other studies of animal consciousness represented at the conference will include John Webster (Bristol University), Donald Broom (Cambridge University), and Keith Kendrick (Babraham Institute in Cambridge).

For further reading, check out Animal Welfare: Limping Towards Eden by John Webster.

Dr. Cardiologist's Lonely Heart's Club Band, or How a Broken Heart Causes a Broken Heart

2005-05-02T20:21:00.000-04:00

There is now over three decades of research on the link between social relationships, health, and immune system functioning. The new frontier of psychoneuroimmunology is not so new anymore; in fact, its central premise--that there is a link between psychological processes (i.e., emotion), the functioning of the nervous system, and the immune system--is now well-established fact. This may be hard to believe considering that, only just 20 years ago, the New England Journal of Medicine dismissed the connection between mental and physical health as a mere "folklore." Well, folklore no more.

Social support has been linked to a wide variety of positive health outcomes, including resistance to disease, lower incidence of coronary heart disease, faster recovery from surgery, and longer life, to name a few. In fact, research suggests that the quality and size of a person's social network may predict mortality equally as well as smoking!

One of the largest studies of longitudinal studies of health is the Framingham Heart Study, which boasts a huge sample consisting of 3,267 men and women. The study's most recent findings lend even more support to the growing body of evidence that social relationships are good for the heart--and a lack of social connection leads to a broken one.

A "broken heart" is operationalized (defined) in this case by interluekin-6 (IL-6), which is a molecule which acts as a marker of inflammation of the heart. As it turns out, men who were more socially isolated had significantly more elevated levels of IL-6. As the BBC News reports, "Researchers say IL-6, and so inflammation, may be elevated in socially isolated men because they are more prone to living less healthily and that socially isolated people are more often depressed and under stress than those who are more outgoing."

And so research once again confirms the common wisdom: If you want to maintain a healthy heart, try to keep it from getting broken. Loneliness, its a killer.

I See the Light!

2005-05-02T19:35:00.000-04:00

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a kind of temporary depression which tends to surface in the Winter months and which, theoretically, results from a lack of sunlight. Recent research by Robert N. Golden at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has found good, empirical support for the efficacy of light therapy for the treatment of SAD.

Golden now tells his patients that "light therapy is a reasonable depression treatment, even if the data base for this approach is relatively small."

The study will appear in the upcoming issue of the Journal of Psychiatry.

Past research on light therapy has been sketchy at best.

Want to Become a Parent? Are you Insane? No, Just Altruistic

2005-05-02T09:50:00.000-04:00

Need more evidence that humans are altruistic? Consider parenting. With birth control, it is possible today for humans to satisfy the instinctual impulse to procreate without actually procreating. We can enjoy the pleasures of sex without producing the offspring. Get the goodies, but forego the natural consequence of it. Sounds like a super deal, right? So why, in spite of birth control, do humans continue to have kids? What's in it for us?

Evolutionary biologists will, of course, explain the impulse to have children as a biological urge to keep our genes alive by preserving them in the next generation. That may be true, but the evidence also suggests that, in the modern age, humans choose to have children at tremendous cost to themselves. Just consider college tuition alone! Consider what happens to a mother's body as a result of pregnancy and childbirth, the pain of childbirth, and the time and energy that goes into caring for young children--time that is taken away from other, perhaps more lucrative pursuits such as work. If so, might parenting be motivated by altuistic rather than merely selfish interests to self-perpetuate? This thesis is engaging and must be seriously considered.

In "The Roots of Civil Society," Karnick argues that parenting is the root of civil society because parental love provides the basis for compassion and civil service. The love we receive as kids and the love we give as parents is a love that can be generalized to others in need. As Karnick explains:

Regardless of how we explain it, or whether we even try to, love is an essential part of human nature and is central to the human condition. Once we understand that, altruistic behavior begins to make sense, even the powerfully counterintuitive choice to be a parent in the twenty-first century. Love is why people have children, why they band together to help their less successful neighbors, why they try to preserve nature, why they try to create and spread economic prosperity, why they protect the innocent, why they pursue criminals, why they fight wars, and why they offer their religious faith as a comfort and aid to the despondent and rejected.

In light of recent empirical evidence that humans may have a biological motivation for reciprocal altruism (see below), we must take such considerations more seriously than we may have in the past.

Normalizing Illness and Medicalizing Health: On an Assbackward Cultural Paradigm

2005-05-02T00:39:00.000-04:00

Frank Furedi, Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent, has authored a brilliant little article at Spiked: "Our Unhealthy Obsession with Illness."

Furedi offers us four simple formulations.

1. There is an imperative of medicalization.

By "medicalization," Furedi is referring to idea that what were once 'normal,' 'healthy' states of mind have now become interpreted in terms of a disease model. For example, people now are not just shy, they have "social phobia." Of course, this movement is driven by the medical industry and pharmeceutical companies. No one takes a pill for shyness, but they'll take Zoloft for "social phobia."

2. There is a presupposition now that illness is as normal as health.

Furedi means that illness has become a kind of badge of honor, and as a result, people are increasingly identified with their diseases. For example, at what other time in history have people identified themselves as "cancer survivor"?

3. We increasingly use health to make sense of the human experience.

Because, as a culture, we lack a moral compass--a function traditionally served by religion--we now use health as a means to formulate substantive reasons for our actions, to determine the difference between 'good' and 'evil.' Think of it as a kind of medicalization of theodicy.

4. Health has become politicized.

Because medicine has become such a dominant, cultural meta-narrative, the rhetoric of health has come to carry an increasingly powerful political charge. So, politicians and pundits are quick to speak of health-related issues while eskewing more explicit talk of morals and values.

What's the upshot?

Here's a prediction - Western societies are not going to overcome the crisis of healthcare; it is beyond the realms of possibility. No matter what policies government pursue, or how much money they throw at the problem, even if they increase health expenditure fourfold, the problem will not go away. As long as the normalisation of illness remains culturally affirmed, more and more of us are likely to identify ourselves as sick, and will identify ourselves as sick for a growing period of time. The solution to this problem lies not in the area of policymaking, or even medicine, but in the cultural sphere.

People are going to stay sick because it's cool to be sick, even normal to be sick. Sick is the new health.

I like Furedi. I'm going to buy his latest book, Where Have All The Intellectuals Gone? When I get a chance to read it, I'll let you know what I think of it.

The Altruism Instinct

2005-05-01T23:22:00.000-04:00

Mounting evidence suggests that genuinely altruistic behavior--selflessly giving to others--is not only a common behavior among humans, but it may be biologically wired by thousands of years of human evolution.

In the New Scientist, a review article describes the research of Ernst Fehr of the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

Over the past decade, experiments devised by Ernst Fehr of the University of Zurich in Switzerland, among others, have shown that many people will cooperate with others even when it is absolutely clear they have nothing to gain. A capacity for true altruism seems to be a part of human nature. It is a heartening discovery, yet one that has also touched off a firestorm of debate.

Fehr's remarkable research program has participants play the "ultimatum game" in which a person chooses what percentage of $20 to offer another participant. If the other participant refuses the offer, they both get nothing. Remarkably, participants tend to give as much as 50% of the award, and even more surprising, participants who are offered less than 25% are likely to refuse the offer. Neither of these behaviors can be understood according to evolutionary theory's usual assumption that people essentially operate according to selfish motives. So, what's going on?

Subsequent research suggests that large groups are rewarded for reciprocal altruism because groups that contain such behavior tend to flourish by becoming more productive. This effect is heightened when those who act selfishly are punished and when those who fail to punish offenders are themselves punished.

What does all this mean? The implication seems to be that humans have a pre-wired "instinct" to be compassionate, caring and giving to one another, which just tells us what most of us understand intuitively: Mother Theresa was one of the most highly evolved among us. God rest her soul.

Imagine the implications for psychotherapy! Have depression? Must be neurosis resulting from the frustration of your innate, libidinal drive to give of yourself to others. Prescription: Love!

100 Years After Pavlov, Science Finally Gets It Right: Dogs Really Are Smart!

2005-05-01T21:38:00.000-04:00

Over 100 years ago, C. Llyod Morgan, the famed British psychologist, had had enough of the then popular habit of explaining animal behavior in terms of human mental states. In response, he supplied us with the assertion that has come to be known as "Morgan's Law":

In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of the exercise of one which stands lower in the psychological scale.

Of course, Morgan never considered the fact that his distinction of "higher" vs "lower" faculties is itself an extra-scientific value judgment which presumes that human animals are somehow superior to other species. This is the assumption which likely undergirds his second assumption that more directly animates his Law: that only humans have mental states. But why should we assume that humans are superior? And are we to believe by Morgan's authority alone his audacious assertion that somehow human consciousness appeared out of a complete vaccuum? With absolutely no precedence in the animal kingdom? One can only conclude that these assumptions are byproducts of Christian theology which presumes that only humans have dominion over the earth, an assumption called into question well before Morgan with the Copernican revolution, the discovery that indeed the sun and not the earth is the center of the solar system. If the earth is not the center of the solar system, well, anything's possible. Perhaps humans are not so superior after all, just one animal among many, albeit a strange animal with a bulbous frontal cortex and opposable thumbs.

So, perhaps it is no surprise that scientists are beginning to come around. Vilmos Csányi's research is providing mounting evidence, for example, that dogs have remarkable mental abilities. For example, in an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, we learn that

Mr. Csányi's team has been studying canine cognition for the past decade and, in the process, has built a body of experimental evidence that suggests dogs have far greater mental capabilities than scientists have previously given them credit for. "Our experiments indicate a high level of social understanding in dogs," he says.

In their relationship with humans, dogs have developed remarkable interspecies-communications skills, says Mr. Csányi. "They easily accept a membership in the family, they can predict social events, they provide and request information, obey rules of conduct, and are able to cooperate and imitate human actions," he says. His research even suggests that dogs can speculate on what we are thinking.

But not everyone is 'biting'. The associationists in the tradition of Ivan Pavlov are not moved by the evidence. They 'doggedly' adhere to the old paradigm of "Morgan's Law." They argue that everything Csanyi has found in his lab can be understood in terms of simple associative learning based on instincts.

But for those of us who love dogs: We know better.

Viva Le Difference!

2005-05-01T17:05:00.000-04:00

When I was in college it was pretty much taboo to even suggest that men and women might have innate differences. Interestingly, that implicit social constraint due to "political correctness" is beginning to be lifted, mostly because of overwhelming evidence that there are biological differences between the sexes that go beyond differences in secondary sexual characteristics and which can't be solely explained by social influences.

Almost 60 years ago, Erich Fromm in the Art of Loving suggested that our culture of "democratic" conformity would move toward erasing differences between the sexes--and this was a cause for concern. Rollo May said much the same thing in Love and Will, written over 35 years ago. Both Fromm and May were concerned that a covering over of the differences between the sexes would serve to reduce the eros, or desire, that binds us together--a kind of erotic tension which relies upon difference in order to stay aroused. It was through this tension between the differences, thought May, that women and men could potential bring out the best in each other. For example, he wrote:

It is the common experience of all of us that when you put a bunch of men together--as in the army, fraternities, or a monastery--you may be able to get them to devote themselves single-mindedly to the task at hand. But there is a curious lack of vitality in other realms. We see a deadening, a lack of variety of response; and they will accept authoritarian procedures without any tendency to rebel. But introduce a woman, as in the Garden of Eden, and consciousness sharpens, a moral sense develops, and even rebellion begins to sprout. In a genuine sense, sexes seems to ignite each other, offering a vitality and power--and even better ideas. (Rollo May, Love and Will, p 114).

But in the 1970's, with the rise of what is sometimes called "second wave" feminism, there was an attempt to politicize any talk of sexual difference. The unfortunate consequence was a cultural move to make women into men, and vice versa, to feminize men, and there have been a series of disasters as a result of this social policy. One consequence has been a steady decrease in marital satisfaction. Another has been the phenomenon of the "supermom," where women have been saddled with the burden of trying to do everything a man can do--AND still do everything a woman used to do. The third consequence inevitably followed: A screwed up, socially disenfranchized and pissed off generation of "latch key kids."

The "third wave" of feminism, a celebration of feminine difference, is a response to the "second wave" feminism of the 1970's. The challenge of the "third wave" is to articulate a theory (or theories) of sexual difference without having it (them) collapse into the old-fashioned binaries where all that is male is glorified while all that is female is derided. And a good solution is not one that simply turns the binary on it's head, vilifying everything masculine and exalting everything feminine. It is possible to acknowledge sexual differences without falling into the knee-jerk response of categorizing one set of differences as superior or inferior to the other. But of course this is all easier said than done.

With that said, a recent article in Scientific American, titled "His Brain, Her Brain," provides an excellent review of the most recent research on sexual differences in brain structure and function. As it turns out, even among monkeys, young males like to play with cars while girls prefer dolls, which suggests that certain social functions are not only social constructions but also, to some extent, rooted in biology. As Cahill notes:

Because vervet monkeys are unlikely to be swayed by the social pressures of human culture, the results imply that toy preferences in children result at least in part from innate biological differences. This divergence, and indeed all the anatomical sex differences in the brain, presumably arose as a result of selective pressures during evolution. In the case of the toy study, males--both human and primate--prefer toys that can be propelled through space and that promote rough-and-tumble play. These qualities, it seems reasonable to speculate, might relate to the behaviors useful for hunting and for securing a mate. Similarly, one might also hypothesize that females, on the other hand, select toys that allow them to hone the skills they will one day need to nurture their young.

For many "second wave" feminists, the knee-jerk response might be that these research studies are an attempt to oppress women by keeping them in the home. I don't doubt that some of the most male chauvanist among us might leap to such conclusions, but that would be a reflection more of faulty reasoning and ignorance, if not simply maleficence, than anything inherent in the results. The results mean simply that males and females seem to have differences beyond that which can be explained by social influence. The results do not imply which set of differences are better or worse than the others. If anything, they suggest that both sets of qualities are important and part of a much needed natural balance. Fromm and May might suggest that their balance and tension are part of the dynamic vitality which animates our attraction to one another.

Doctors Duped by Drug Company Propaganda

2005-05-01T16:25:00.000-04:00

Who hasn't seen a television or print advertisement for psychotropic drugs? Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil. It doesn't take a genius to understand these ads are not purely benevolent. TV ads are not just designed to reach an audience in need of the product. They also serve to create desires for the product in those who don't need it. So, it is no surprise that today we see so many people on drugs to treat psychiatric conditions when, in fact, many of them are really only dealing with difficulties of normal, albeit challenging, life circumstances, such as grief, family crises, and difficult life choices.

What's most surprising, however, is that doctors too are being brainwashed by these ads. As The Washington Post reports, a recent empirical study supports this view.

Actors pretending to be patients with symptoms of stress and fatigue were five times as likely to walk out of doctors' offices with a prescription when they mentioned seeing an ad for the heavily promoted antidepressant Paxil, according an unusual study being published today.

The study employed an elaborate ruse -- sending actors with fake symptoms into 152 doctors' offices to see whether they would get prescriptions. Most who did not report symptoms of depression were not given medications, but when they asked for Paxil, 55 percent were given prescriptions, and 50 percent received diagnoses of depression.

If even the so-called "experts" are being duped by drug advertising, it is no longer a stretch to conclude that drug advertising is a hazard to society and should be outlawed.

The Age of Autism

2005-05-01T15:09:00.000-04:00

An intriguing question is whether autism is a new phenomenon or whether it is a growing epidemic. Most people don't know that autism is a relatively recent diagnosis, which wasn't identified until the mid-20th century. And, in recent years, there has been a growing number of children diagnosed with the condition. However, it is important to keep in mind that, in the late 1980's, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV (DSM-IV) changed the criteria for autism to include a much wider range of symptoms than in previous editions of the manual. So, while we are seeing an increase in diagnoses, this is at least in part a result of the change in diagnostic criteria. People who would not have met the criteria in the past now meet the criteria. A second issue to keep in mind is that a diagnosis of autism is more likely to receive more funding for treatment than, say, mental retardation or childhood schizophrenia. So, there is also an economic factor. More research will need to be conducted before we can better understand the unique and complex role of the diagnostic criteria and economic incentives on this apparent "epidemic." For more reading, check out this Washington Post article:

If autistic children always existed in the same percentages but just were not formally classified until the 1940s, that would suggest better diagnosis, not a troubling increase in the number of autistic children.

If, however, autism had a clear beginning in the fairly recent past (a past so recent that Fritz and Donald could both be alive today at age 71), then the issue is very different. That would suggest something new caused those first autism and Asperger's cases in the early 1930s; something caused them to increase, and something is still causing them today.

Finally joining the blogosphere

2005-05-01T14:48:00.000-04:00

It's about time I joined the dimension of blog. Its too hard to maintain my webpage, which has deteriorated since I actually had to start working for a living instead of being a full-time student. So, how about a blog? I will be focusing mostly on professional issues revolving around the topics of psychology and philosophy. I hope maybe people will find it interesting, helpful or at least an entertaining object of scorn and ridicule. Anything but apathy.