Crying, revisited

Indeed, as suggested in the comments section of the post on the Pittsburgh Shooter and catharsis, the usefulness of crying to relieve sadness is (unsurprisingly) more multifaceted than revealed in previous research.

Scientific American Mind on Crying

The takeaway? In the lab, people seem to feel worse on average after crying. But the lab isn't anything like the real world (say, your own bedroom), so take that with a grain of salt. In real life, people report feeling better. But real life isn't like the lab, where they can make much more accurate assessments.

More interesting details:

Criers who received social support during their crying episode were more likely to report mood benefits than were criers who did not report receiving social support. Likewise, mood benefits were more likely when the precipitating events of a crying episode had been resolved than they were when events were unresolved. Finally, criers who reported experiencing negative social emotions like shame and embarrassment were less likely to report mood benefits.

Some people do report feeling worse after crying, in the real world, too. So I guess forget about folk wisdom for now, and make your own decisions about crying :)

What the world needs more of

The recent trend towards more interactive authorship on the web (wikis, YouTube, etc.) seems to offer a fascinating glimpse into the minds of "regular people." In particular, the comments sections on news sites are great for the subject matter of this blog. While not at all scientific, I find them quite useful in broadening my understanding of how people see the world.

I could devote pages to the fascinatingly mean-spirited comments that can be found on these sites (and the irony of all the armchair psychiatrists spewing vitriol at the jerks who are clearly to blame), but today I want to share a few that really inspired me.

There was a story this morning about a man in Washington who was shot dead while brandishing a gun at hospital staff. He'd been brought there because of head trauma, and although he had been peacefully disarmed of two of his handguns, he ended up producing a third and threatening a nurse with it. A police officer shot and killed him during the confrontation, and thankfully nobody else was injured.

Amidst the usual slew of cruel judgements we find these (emphasis mine):

Joseph Burkett was my dearly beloved, but troubled, nephew. The messages I've read so far on here have been so judgemental and cruel. He was mentally ill and in need of his medication. I DO understand that poeople will judge him harshly, but he was such a wonderful person when he was himself. I'm grateful no one else was injured, but so saddened that our Joey had to be taken from us in this manner. The police officer was just doing his duty . . .no blame there. Joey was such a lovely child and young man, but drugs and alcohol had taken it's toll. He is at peace now, thank God

As Joe's cousin, we are saddened by what happened. Of course no one know's him the way we did. He had mental illness and while we aren't defending what he did, it played a huge role in this. We are thankful the officer involved went home safely to his family and that innocent people we not killed or harmed, we do realize though that the officer will have to bear the scar of this his entire life. We loved Joe. Help was sought for him repeatedly but proved unhelpful. After someone feels "normal" with their meds they frequently stop taking them feeling they are well. My aunt is a wonderful person and my heart breaks for her and his siblings. This has been huge blow to our family.

This man was my cousin and before you people start going crazy you all should know there is WAY more to this. I am so very thankful that he didn't kill anyone and that the officer could go home to his family. I loved my cousin but he did have a mental illness and was heavily into alcohol and drugs, mixed with his mental illness wasn't a good thing. My Aunt tried very hard to help him, she was even there when all this happend. My heart goes at to her. I do not agree with what he did nor am I protecting anything. He was fine and then just snapped, we dont know what happend or why he did what he did. All I can say is thank you to the officer and I am glad that you are able to be home with your family.

These accounts do something that couldn't be accomplished even if the story's author had done due diligence in reporting on the man's mental illness. They're a striking testament to how difficult this situation really must have been, given the incredible compassion of his loved ones.

If only such accounts were more prominent in the media...

The Pittsburgh Shooter

You probably heard the story last week about George Sodini, the man in Pittsburgh who killed 3 women, injured 9 more, and then turned the gun on himself at an LA Fitness gym. You've probably also heard it mentioned that his choice of location wasn't aribtrary: he was bitter and resentful against women in general, and picked a place where he could target his supposed tormentors.

I'll start with some quotes that won't surprise anyone, just to reinforce an important point:

Sodini was not a bad-looking man; he was intelligent and had a good job, so his failure to attract women must have had something to do with his behavior, Meloy [a psychologist] said. But Sodini couldn't see that.

"He had difficult and unhappy and unsuccessful relationships with everybody," Fox said. "What he was never able to do was to see that perhaps the problem was him. Maybe there's a reason why everybody rejects him, no one wants to be close to him. Maybe it's something about his own personality.

"But mass murderers don't look at things that way. If they saw themselves as being the culprit, perhaps they would just commit suicide. But no. Everyone else is to blame."

Anyone who's reached a reasonable level of maturity (post high school, maybe?) would have realized that it's not sensible to blame others for not liking them. Not just that it doesn't work -- even our shooter may have realized that -- but that it doesn't make sense. Now probably most of us have wished at one time or another that this or that person would feel differently toward us. But the mindset that they are to blame for it is probably quite foreign, and perhaps it's worth attempting to don that viewpoint if only to see just how different perspectives can be.

Anyway, on to more novel things. First, I'll shamelessly steal another quote from the article:

"There's this myth that mass killers just snap and go berserk and suddenly, without warning, shoot indiscriminately," Fox said. "Well, he had been thinking about this for some time. He had originally planned to commit the mass murder in January [but] 'chickened out,' as he said. But this shows a lot of methodical planning, thinking."

This brings us to an interesting fallacy about emotions and their regulation. We like tidy analogies and generalizations, and I'd like to poke a hole in a cherished one: the assumption that we must either bottle up or vent our emotions.

George produced a home video that's now available on YouTube, and at the end he pans past his punching bag and mentions it in passing.

Now, YouTube isn't renowned for its brilliant comments, but one or two people seemed to suggest that he wasn't utilizing that obvious source of anger release. Well, guess what? It's been studied, and venting doesn't work. In fact, the use of punching bags has specifically been tested, and it leads to more anger and aggression. Moreover, it doesn't work for sadness, either: having "a good cry" generally leads to more sadness in the future.

It probably comes as no surprise to you that ruminating isn't any good, either. Unlike with catharsis, which has been thoroughly debunked by psychological science, studies uphold the common wisdom that stewing in resentment only serves to magnify it.

If you can't think of a third option to overcome negative emotions, you're probably not trying hard enough: even distraction is generally a better choice. But even that probably isn't the best we can do. Actively practicing positive skills like gratitude and forgiveness are known to help quell undesirable emotions -- but first, we have to really accept that such feelings as bitterness really are undesirable.

That may seem like an obvious suggestion, but I suspect it's one that people like George never really absorb.

Unlucky bastards

First, a shout-out to my homie Esther Pun. She and I were chatting the other day, and the topic of genocide came up (yep, just your usual inane banter). She inspired me to do some writing. Genocide is still too big a topic for me to tackle just yet, so I'll try to place another piece of the puzzle.

Today's topic falls under the heading of system justification. That's the tendency of people in a society to justify the status quo. It's a cognitive bias that manages to quell or circumvent emotions that might otherwise lead to beneficial change.

One statement that reflects this bias is the idea that bad things happen to bad people. Now, while it may be the case that "bad people" bring additional misery to themselves, the bias runs deeper than that. The fascinating discovery I want to share today is how pervasive and irrational the tendency can be.

As usual, I'll save myself some time and you some misery by pointing you to the original piece, this time on "the lucky effect."

For those of you too busy to read this fascinating article, the sum-up is this: when we associate even a few members of a particular group with unlucky outcomes, we tend to see the entire group as deserving of arbitrary misfortune. If I show you that a blue-shirted (!) individual has had is home broken into while a red-shirted one has won the lottery, along with one or two more polarizing examples, you're likely to prefer red-shirted people in general. And presumably what's going on inside your head is a justification that red-shirted people must be somehow deserving of the obviously-random fortunes that have befallen them.

It happens in adults, who should know better, and in children as young as 5, who are presumably too young to have been taught this directly. It's disquieting enough to realize that young children dislike victims of random misfortune, instead of being more compelled to help them. To see that they (and we) generalize this tendency to entire groups is even less inspiring.

What is inspiring, I think, is that we're beginning to investigate these issues scientifically. And as G.I. Joe taught (okay, told) us, knowing is half the battle :) The other half, I think, belongs to the field of contemplative science. Perhaps it's time to devote a post or two to that in the near future...

Imperfection and forgiveness

Wow, almost a month without posting. Will get back on the wagon soon.

Can't do a long post today, but wanted to share some more excerpts from a bookmarked article. This is a piece from earlier this year about empathy and forgiveness. Again, something that perhaps many people know intuitively, but good to see research on it.

I will re-post the entire quote this article picked from the research:

Takaku’s experiments showed that an offended party was more likely to accept an apology, and extend forgiveness, when that offended party had an opportunity to reflect on his or her own “imperfect nature” (p. 506).
[. . .]
Takaku’s research offers important insights on how apologies “work.” Mutual empathy is key. While the offer of an apology may be the result of, and an expression of, the offender’s empathy with the offended party, forgiveness requires empathy from the offended to the offender. Empathy must be experienced by, and communicated by, both parties to the conflict, not simply one or the other. In other words, to be effective in resolving conflict, apology and forgiveness are best viewed as interactive processes, not simply one-sided speech events.

Takaku’s research demonstrates that an offended party has the power to shift the nature of a conflict interaction by reflecting on his or her own “imperfect nature,” developing empathy for the offender, and thus being open to the process of apology and forgiveness. Some people can undertake such reflection on their own; others might need to be prompted toward reflection. However, Takaku also urged caution: care must be taken regarding who prompts the offended party to reflect on his or her own imperfections. For example, if the offending party makes the prompt, it would likely generate resistance on the part of the offended party and actually escalate the conflict.

Takaku’s research also suggests that there could be a benefit from “outsiders” to the conflict (such as friends and family, coaches, therapists, mediators, managers, and others) helping the apology-forgiveness interaction by encouraging empathic reflection on the part of the offended party. But the risk is that, if the prompt is too harsh, directive, insistent, or clumsy, it could generate resistance rather than reflection. I would suggest, on the basis of Takaku’s research, that an appropriate communication approach for such “outsiders” in these circumstances is actually a time-honored strategy for encouraging reflection without creating resistance — active listening (Rogers & Farson, 1987).

Makes so much sense, doesn't it?

The research points out the difficulty of getting the offended party to reflect on his/her "imperfect nature" after the harm is done. I would hope there is research being done on the effects of self-reflective meditation on this ability. In my own experience with Buddhist practice, this is a common theme: by noticing the bilge floating through the practitioner's mind, he may be able to proactively adopt forgiveness as his default stance for conflict resolution instead of relying on it post-hoc.

Thinking on it more: although it can be argued that all religions have as a common goal social harmony, and contain instructions on forgiveness ("let he who is without sin cast the first stone..."), practices such as suggested above seem to go beyond that. For if true, such reflections can be seen as merely ways of adopting more rational and accurate views of reality and human nature. As such, they seem like excellent ways of integrating seemingly spiritual approaches into the inherently empirical methods of science.

Working memory and morality

Sorry I've been away for so long! Lots of things going on, but I figured I'd get in a post today since it's been some two weeks.

I want to share the results of a study that hopefully connects another puzzle piece: People with higher working memory make more balanced moral decisions.

Working memory is the kind of memory you use when solving a math problem in your head: it's like a blackboard, where you temporarily keep facts and figures that you'll need to reason through or solve immediate problems. It's also strongly correlated with well-accepted measures of fluid intelligence -- the ability to learn new things. So why should that relate to making moral decisions?

Well, as the authors point out:

Previous studies have suggested that moral dilemmas can evoke strong emotions in people and tend to override thoughtful deliberation and reasoning.

However, a new neuroimaging research has shown that sometimes people are capable of voluntarily suppressing these emotional reactions, allowing for decisions based on reasoning and careful deliberation of the consequences of one’s actions.

This latter skill (voluntary control of emotion) is precisely the kind of training that one develops in certain kinds of meditation -- some of which have also been implicated in improving working memory itself. We'll delve into that another time, but it's an interesting point to ponder for those who may not have made the connection before.

In their conclusions, the authors note:

“This suggests that emotional reactions to moral issues can drive our judgments and motivate action but can also blind us to the consequences of our decisions in some cases.”

This sounds like an extremely relevant piece in the Sotomayor controversy: I would bet that the definition the Republican party uses when questioning the utility of "empathy" on the judicial bench reflects the supposition that empathy must involve emotional expressions which can lead to ill-founded biases. When properly executed, however, the effects should be something more akin to those described in the article:

Researchers found that in such emotion laden scenarios, people with high working memory capacity were not only more consistent in their judgments but their answers indicated that they were considering the consequences of their choices in a way that the other participants were not.

Leaving aside the definition of empathy, the above sounds like a skill we can all agree is valuable.

As an added bonus in this post, I'd like to make a quick offshoot to cognitive psychology: how can one train working memory, seeing as it's at the core of both intelligence and empathy?

Well, there was a big brouhaha last year about a task called the "dual n-back" task. The science is solid (there have even been good neuroscience followups on its effects), and the best implementation I've found so far is here:

www.soakyourhead.com

It's hard, but the evidence suggests it's well worth the effort. Both for your raw intelligence and for the well-being of those around you :)

Where's my jet pack?

Again I have the good fortune of a piece that lays the groundwork for me. I came across it the other day, and the title ("Where's my jetpack?" -- at least that was the name of the link from the homepage) immediately gave me hope that it might be relevant.

Why? Well, here in Silicon Valley, the Twitters and Zazzles and Floobles (I made that last one up... I think) are a dime a dozen. You can almost drown in the tech Kool-Aid here, so overpowering is the reek of desperation for shiny gadgets to fix all of our problems.

The other day, I came across the abstract of a talk purporting that Thorium reactors were the answer to all of our energy problems. I don't know much about Thorium reactors, but if human history is any indication of its future -- and it is -- then it's probably not a solution in the sense one might hope. Yes, it might help us rid ourselves of fossil fuel dependency and the environmental pillaging that goes with it, but you can be sure we're going to find new and clever ways of depleting it as fast as we can.

So anyway, back to the article. I quickly scanned and pulled out two key quotes. First:

"Scientists are OK at predicting what technology is going to happen in the future," Wilson says. "They're really bad at predicting how it's going to affect us."

It's a relatively recent finding that humans are incredibly inept at estimating how well they'll feel after a particular event or in some circumstance. This topic ("affective forecasting") is much more than another intellectual curiosity. Its relevance should be immediately obvious: how are we supposed to decide what to do with our lives if we can't even predict how the outcomes will feel to us?

As it is, it's hard enough to predict both how long you'll feel happy and how happy you'll be after experiencing something as simple and common as your favorite football team winning a game. How much sense, then, does it make to believe you know how much you'll improve the life of someone across the world when your website that (pick something... anything) launches? Hint: none.

The second quote basically summarizes the point of the article and this post:

"At some point, you can't expect a miracle to come in the form of technology to save us," Verheiden says. "At some point, the miracle has to come from a change in attitude and a new outlook."

It seems like a much more viable solution to start from the ground up. First find out what it is that makes people's lives subjectively better. There's already plenty of research out there (which we'll explore), and the amount of data is constantly growing. Don't assume you already know the answer, because our intuition for these things is incredibly faulty.

Then, if technology turns out to be the right answer, go for it! But I suspect it'll be some time before an improvement in Internet bandwidth is actually the lowest hanging fruit for improving lives.