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Written and researched by Bob Murray, PhD
Sep 17, 2006 |
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Lost in Thought
Prof. Rafael Malach, Ilan Golberg and Michal Harel of the Weizmann Institute's Neurobiology Department found a scientific means of addressing this question--by scanning the brains of volunteers performing various mental tasks. The results of their study, which were published recently in the journal Neuron, were unanticipated: When subjects were given outwardly-focused tasks that demanded their full attention, areas of the brain that relate to the self were not only inactive--they appeared to be vigorously suppressed.
The functional brain scans were done with an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) system, which maps brain activity by measuring changes in blood flow and oxygenation. Volunteers either viewed photos or listened to short music segments. For each stimulus, however, participants were asked to perform two different tasks. In one, "introspective" assignment, they were asked to think about themselves and how the image or musical selection made them feel. In the second, "sensory-motor" task, they performed quick recognition exercises--such as identifying pieces that included a trumpet's sound. The scientists were particularly interested in certain regions in the prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain known to be involved in personality and self-knowledge, among other things. Indeed, the fMRI confirmed that these regions were active during introspection but, when subjects were absorbed in the recognition task, activity in these areas was silenced. (fMRI readings in these areas fell below those measured when subjects were resting.)
"It is tempting," says Malach, "to put these findings in a broader perspective, one that veers away from traditional western thought, with its emphasis on self-control and for which 'someone is always minding the store,' and toward more eastern perspectives, in which the 'self must be abandoned in order to fully engage with the outside world.'" On a more scientific level, their study suggests that the brain's self-awareness centers do not function as a critical element that allows perceptual awareness of the outside world. Rather, the self-related areas of the prefrontal cortex appear to be engaged specifically when we are aware both of the sensory experience and of ourselves as the observers of this experience. When we are so occupied with the outside world as to "forget ourselves," only local, sensory-specific systems seem to be needed.
Read more in Neuron
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The Mystery Behind Love-Hate Relationships
We have often noted that people can love and hat the same person at different times. Sometimes these people can be sufferers from a personality disorder such as borderline personality disorder. But Yale researchers wondered if there could be something else that makes people do this.
One of the strange things that the Yale researchers found was that people who see their relationships as either all good or all bad tend to have low self-esteem. Their results were recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
In two of the studies participants were asked to indicate as quickly as possible whether each of 10 adjectives applied to their relationship partner, adjectives such as caring and warm or greedy and dishonest. Partners in this study included college roommates and mothers. Individuals low in self-esteem were considerably slower to respond when negative and positive adjectives were alternated than when similar adjectives appeared in blocks. Those high in self-esteem were equally quick to respond to the adjectives no matter how they were presented.
"This suggests it was hard for them to think of their partners as a mix of positive and negative characteristics at a given point in time," said Margaret Clark, a professor in the Department of Psychology and senior faculty author of the study. "We do not think these results are limited to any one type of relationship. We think they apply to any close relationship."
Clark said the effects were obtained only when people judged relationship partners. There was no delayed response when judging an object, in this case, their computer.
The researchers first measured self-esteem by asking participants to fill out the Rosenberg self-esteem inventory. The reaction time task was administered weeks later by an experimenter who did not know their evaluation results.
"Those low in self-esteem are chronically concerned about whether or not their close relationship partners will or will not accept them," Clark said. "In good times, those low in self-esteem tend to idealize partners, rendering those partners safe for approach and likely to reflect positively upon them. At the first sign of a partner not being perfect, however, they switch to focusing on all possible negatives about the partner so as to justify withdrawing from that partner and not risking vulnerability."
Read more in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
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School of Hard Knocks Impairs Judgement
People who have suffered life's hard knocks while growing up tend to be more gullible than those who have been more sheltered, startling new findings from the University of Leicester reveal.
A six-month study in the University's School of Psychology found that rather than 'toughening up' individuals, adverse experiences in childhood and adolescence meant that these people were vulnerable to being mislead. The research analysing results from 60 participants suggest that such people could, for example, be more open to suggestion in police interrogations or to be influenced by the media or advertising campaigns.
The study found that while some people may indeed become more 'hard-nosed' through adversity, the majority become less trusting of their own judgment.
Kim Drake, a doctoral student at the University of Leicester, conducted the research with Professor Ray Bull and Dr Julian Boon of the School of Psychology. Kim said: "People who have experienced an adverse childhood and adolescence are more likely to come to believe information that isn't true--in short they are more suggestible, and easily mislead which may in turn impact upon their future life choices; they might succumb to peer pressure more readily."
'Adverse life experiences' examined included major personal illnesses/injuries, miscarriage (from the male and female perspective), difficulties at work (being fired/laid off), bullying at school, being a victim of crime (robbery, sexual violence), parental divorce, death of family member and others. Seventy percent of the variation across people in suggestibility can be explained by the different levels of negative life events that they have experienced, the study found.
"We also found that the way people cope with adversity had an impact on their psychological profile," said Kim. "The majority of people may learn through repeated exposure to adversity to distrust their own judgment; a person might believe something to be true, but when they, for example, read something in a newspaper that contradicts their opinion, or they talk to someone with a different view-point, that individual is more likely to take on that other person's view.
"This is because the person may have learned to distrust their actions, judgments and decisions due to the fact that the majority of the time their actions have been perceived to invite negative consequences. "Another example is in relationships. Women, as well as men, can become "brainwashed", and end up changing in their personality, their views and beliefs and in some extreme cases, they may even take on their views and ideas of the world and come to feel incompetent (in their partner's eyes)."
Kim added that there is already evidence to suggest that there is a relationship between intensity/frequency of negative life impacts and degree of vulnerability. Experience of adversity may have a knock-on effect on a person's mindset- they may come to believe that "they are no good", or "nothing they do is ever good enough". In contrast, the findings also suggest that early positive life events may have a protective influence over the effects of subsequent adversity: "If positive life events predate the negative life events then individuals may be more resilient in terms of, not being so badly affected, psychologically, by the subsequent adverse events. However, issues may arise if the reverse is the case; if the adverse life events precede the positive, those individuals may become, as a result, more susceptible to suggestion and misleading information.
The study found that the parental role is an important one. Parental education--showing parents functional ways of dealing with their children-leads to children will seeing positive role models, and learning "healthy" skills or ways of dealing with stress/negative life events. What's more this may help cultivate a positive mind-set within the child or adolescent which will stay with them throughout life.
Study not available on the web.
Read more in Raising an Optimistic Child (McGraw-Hill, 2004)
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ADHD Drugs Send Thousands to ERs
People who have suffered life's hard knocks while growing up tend to be more gullible than those who have been more sheltered, startling new findings from the University of Leicester reveal.
A six-month study in the University's School of Psychology found that rather than 'toughening up' individuals, adverse experiences in childhood and adolescence meant that these people were vulnerable to being mislead. The research analysing results from 60 participants suggest that such people could, for example, be more open to suggestion in police interrogations or to be influenced by the media or advertising campaigns.
The study found that while some people may indeed become more 'hard-nosed' through adversity, the majority become less trusting of their own judgment.
Kim Drake, a doctoral student at the University of Leicester, conducted the research with Professor Ray Bull and Dr Julian Boon of the School of Psychology. Kim said: "People who have experienced an adverse childhood and adolescence are more likely to come to believe information that isn't true--in short they are more suggestible, and easily mislead which may in turn impact upon their future life choices; they might succumb to peer pressure more readily."
'Adverse life experiences' examined included major personal illnesses/injuries, miscarriage (from the male and female perspective), difficulties at work (being fired/laid off), bullying at school, being a victim of crime (robbery, sexual violence), parental divorce, death of family member and others. Seventy percent of the variation across people in suggestibility can be explained by the different levels of negative life events that they have experienced, the study found.
"We also found that the way people cope with adversity had an impact on their psychological profile," said Kim. "The majority of people may learn through repeated exposure to adversity to distrust their own judgment; a person might believe something to be true, but when they, for example, read something in a newspaper that contradicts their opinion, or they talk to someone with a different view-point, that individual is more likely to take on that other person's view.
"This is because the person may have learned to distrust their actions, judgments and decisions due to the fact that the majority of the time their actions have been perceived to invite negative consequences. "Another example is in relationships. Women, as well as men, can become "brainwashed", and end up changing in their personality, their views and beliefs and in some extreme cases, they may even take on their views and ideas of the world and come to feel incompetent (in their partner's eyes)."
Kim added that there is already evidence to suggest that there is a relationship between intensity/frequency of negative life impacts and degree of vulnerability. Experience of adversity may have a knock-on effect on a person's mindset- they may come to believe that "they are no good", or "nothing they do is ever good enough". In contrast, the findings also suggest that early positive life events may have a protective influence over the effects of subsequent adversity: "If positive life events predate the negative life events then individuals may be more resilient in terms of, not being so badly affected, psychologically, by the subsequent adverse events. However, issues may arise if the reverse is the case; if the adverse life events precede the positive, those individuals may become, as a result, more susceptible to suggestion and misleading information.
The study found that the parental role is an important one. Parental education--showing parents functional ways of dealing with their children-leads to children will seeing positive role models, and learning "healthy" skills or ways of dealing with stress/negative life events. What's more this may help cultivate a positive mind-set within the child or adolescent which will stay with them throughout life.
Study not available on the web.
Read more in Raising an Optimistic Child (McGraw-Hill, 2004)
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Heart Attacks Linked to Jobs Loss
Losing your job late in your career doubles the chance of suffering a heart attack or stroke, a study says. Yale University researchers studied 4,301 people aged 51 to 61 who were working in 1992, the research, printed in the Occupational and Environmental Medicine journal claimed. Of the sample group over 10 years, there were 23 heart attacks and 13 strokes among the group of 582 who were forced out of a job.
Lead researcher Dr William Gallo said: "For many individuals, late career job loss is an exceptionally stressful experience, with the potential for provoking numerous undesirable outcomes. I don't think it is necessarily because of the age, but rather related to the problems people over 50 have finding jobs of equivalent standard because of the ageism in the workplace.
"Based on our results, the true costs of unemployment exceed the obvious economic costs and include substantial health consequences as well."
In total, 202 had heart attacks and 140 had strokes from all the groups studied, which included those who had lost their jobs involuntarily, retired, taken a temporary break from work or were still employed. Once risk factors such as diabetes, smoking, obesity and high blood pressure were taken into account, the risk of the involuntary job loss group having a heart attack after losing their job was 2.5% and a stroke 2.4%.
Read more in Occupational and Environmental Medicine
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Childhood Experience Influences Mood
Despite all the research that has been done over the last decade showing the prime importance of early childhood experience, there are still those, even in the psychiatric ands psychological professions who remain doubters. There are still parents who ignore the warning signs and give their children over to too-early childcare or insist on pursuing two full-time careers at the expense of their offspring.
Indeed there are still professional therapists telling parents that their own mood and the way that they interact with each other has no real influence on their children. To be frank, this is dangerous nonsense!
Not only their overall relationship, but also their prevailing mood and outlook can be a powerful life-long influence on the way their children view the world and can affect their life-chances. A new study published in the recent issue of the Journal of Personality finds a correlation between adult pessimism and childhood in a low socioeconomic status (SES) family.
By connecting socioeconomic status to pessimism, which in turn has in earlier studies shown to be related to physical and mental health, the current study provides critical information for policy makers and parents concerned with preventing the development of bad coping strategies of children.
Researchers compared optimism and pessimism levels of participants from different socioeconomic backgrounds and found that persons of high SES had a more optimistic outlook on life. This is hardly surprising. Further, it was discovered that the effect of childhood socioeconomic status on pessimism tended to remain in spite of socioeconomic fluidity.
A person from a low SES childhood who moved upwards in status was less likely to be optimistic as an adult than someone from a high SES childhood who remained in high SES. The inverse also held true, as people from a high SES childhood who moved downwards in socioeconomic status were more optimistic than those who remained in low SES.
"Children from the higher SES classes who are subsequently downwardly mobile may have learned successful coping strategies during childhood and consequently developed a sense of mastery and control that protected them in adulthood from the adverse effects of lower SES, whereas children from lower SES backgrounds who are subsequently upwardly mobile may not have had the opportunities to develop those psychological resources, and thus are not able to benefit as much as possible from the later success experiences," concludes the study's lead author.
Our own experience confirms what the researchers have found. However we would emphasize that children from a high-income home where one of the parents was pessimistic or depressed can also suffer from life-long depression or pessimism.
Read more in Journal of Personality
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Video Games Desensitize People to Real-Life Violence
Research led by a pair of Iowa State University psychologists has proven for the first time that exposure to violent video games can desensitize individuals to real-life violence.
They authored a paper titled "The Effects of Video Game Violence on Physiological Desensitization to Real-Life Violence," which was published a recent issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. In this paper, the authors define desensitization to violence as "a reduction in emotion-related physiological reactivity to real violence."
Their paper reports that past research--including their own studies--documents that exposure to violent video games increases aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, physiological arousal and aggressive behaviors, and decreases helpful behaviors. Previous studies also found that more than 85 percent of video games contain some violence, and approximately half of video games include serious violent actions.
Their latest study tested 257 college students (124 men and 133 women) individually. After taking baseline physiological measurements on heart rate and galvanic skin response--and asking questions to control for their preference for violent video games and general aggression--participants played one of eight randomly assigned violent or non-violent video games for 20 minutes. The four violent video games were Carmageddon, Duke Nukem, Mortal Kombat or Future Cop; the non-violent games were Glider Pro, 3D Pinball, 3D Munch Man and Tetra Madness.
After playing a video game, a second set of five-minute heart rate and skin response measurements were taken. Participants were then asked to watch a 10-minute videotape of actual violent episodes taken from TV programs and commercially-released films in the following four contexts: courtroom outbursts, police confrontations, shootings and prison fights. Heart rate and skin response were monitored throughout the viewing.
When viewing real violence, participants who had played a violent video game experienced skin response measurements significantly lower than those who had played a non-violent video game. The participants in the violent video game group also had lower heart rates while viewing the real-life violence compared to the nonviolent video game group.
"The results demonstrate that playing violent video games, even for just 20 minutes, can cause people to become less physiologically aroused by real violence," said the researchers. "Participants randomly assigned to play a violent video game had relatively lower heart rates and galvanic skin responses while watching footage of people being beaten, stabbed and shot than did those randomly assigned to play nonviolent video games. It appears that individuals who play violent video games habituate or 'get used to' all the violence and eventually become physiologically numb to it."
Participants in the violent versus non-violent games conditions did not differ in heart rate or skin response at the beginning of the study, or immediately after playing their assigned game. However, their physiological reactions to the scenes of real violence did differ significantly, a result of having just played a violent or a non-violent game. The researchers also controlled for trait aggression and preference for violent video games.
The researchers' conclusion was that the existing video game rating system, the content of much entertainment media, and the marketing of those media combine to produce "a powerful desensitization intervention on a global level. It (marketing of video game media) initially is packaged in ways that are not too threatening, with cute cartoon-like characters, a total absence of blood and gore, and other features that make the overall experience a pleasant one," they said. "That arouses positive emotional reactions that are incongruent with normal negative reactions to violence. Older children consume increasingly threatening and realistic violence, but the increases are gradual and always in a way that is fun.
"In short, the modern entertainment media landscape could accurately be described as an effective systematic violence desensitization tool," they said. "Whether modern societies want this to continue is largely a public policy question, not an exclusively scientific one."
Read more in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Read more in Raising an Optimistic Child (McGraw-Hill, 2004)
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About the Author
Dr Bob Murray is a widely published psychologist and expert on emotional health and optimal relationships. Together with his wife and long-term collaborator Alicia Fortinberry, he is founder of the highly successful Uplift Program, and author of Raising an Optimistic Child (McGraw-Hill, 2006) and Creating Optimism (McGraw-Hill, 2004).
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