god forbade...must reading

Next In Line Effect

    Research shows self preoccupation interferes with memory. When held captive by your own thoughts, people often miss part, if not all of what happens around them. From the following study the term next in line effect.

    Imagine your first day in Communcations 101. The teacher asks each to introduce and say a few things about themselves.

    As members start introducing themselves, you turn to what you will say when your turn comes. You kick into overdrive supporting the things you will say and rehearsing them.

   In your laid out preparation you do not have a clue what the others have said. As a result your are oblivious to who these people are as to what they said.

   Next in line because people are least likely to remember what the preceded said because that was when they were most self absorbed.

Mark Leary

The Curse of the Self

see unchosen action

god forbade...must reading

Memory

     Memory is not independent of everything else that brains do. This includes general thinking abilities, motivation, attitudes, lifestyle, and the mental challenges that people go for. General health, exercise, sleep, response to stress, and diet are just as important. Research continually expands our understanding of these indirect influences on learning and memory.

    Another under-appreciated area about memory is the role of learning. As two sides of the same coin, learning and memory are interdependent. How we approach a learning task has enormous impact on how much of it we remember. These factors include study strategy, attentiveness, distractibility and cognitive interference, and organization and categorization of learning material. 

   Likewise, how much you remember of learned material affects your capacity for understanding and memorizing new material. Experts in a given field have become experts because they have memorized learning templates and schema that help them to be better learners than non-experts. They may have learned to increase working memory capacity, which in turn improves the ability to think and solve problems. That is, the more they know, the more they can know.

    Memory ability is multi-dimensional. The complete learner employs many means of improving knowledge.

William R. Klemm, D.V.M, Ph.D.

in Memory Medic

Psychology Today

god forbade...must reading

Big Brother

    Cell-phone companies in Europe and Africa have donated large blocks of calling records for research use. Three-quarters of the world's people carry a wireless phone and many smartphones have sensors to record movement, proximity to other people with phones and light levels, along with taking pictures or videos. Compasses, gyroscopes and accelerometers sense rotation and direction. With that kind of data, researchers are able to identify behavior, health and eating habits, and predict stock market investments and changes in political opinions.

    But here is the scary part, one of the researchers states,

     "It is not just about observing what is happening, it is about shaping what is happening. The patterns are allowing us to learn how to better manipulate trends, opinions and mass psychology."

    What makes today's applied technology so dangerous is the ability to gather information quickly and on a day-to-day basis by observing individual movements, contacts with others and methods that do not require face-to-face interviews, or even direct inquiries over the Internet. Once the correct groups are identified, various reward systems can be introduced to shape individuals to become supporters and advocates. Scary!

Mack R. Hicks, PhD

in Digital Pandemic

Psychology Today

god forbade...must reading

Learn From Mistakes

    There are two typical brain responses to mistakes. One looks like a wake up call. The brain hones in on the negative outcome, and treats it like a problem that needs solving. What happened, and why? The brain also increases its attention during the next decision, as if it is trying to prevent a repeat of the mistake. When this happens, people are much more likely to improve their performance and learn from the mistake.

    The second brain response looks more like a shutting down. The brain reacts to the negative feedback itself as a threat. To escape feeling bad, or doubting one's abilities, the brain chooses to not think about the mistake. Interesting, people whose brains show this shutting down response pay much more attention to positive feedback.

    The researchers think this is evidence of a confirmation bias, we want to feel good about ourselves, so we pay more attention to feedback that is consistent with our self image. When this happens, people's performance does not improve, and they fail to learn from the mistake.

    Every study found an interesting predictor of whose brains paid more attention, and whose brains shut down, in the face of a mistake.

    People who think that intelligence is malleable, that we get really good at something by dedicated practicing, not innate brilliance, pay more attention to mistakes. People who think that intelligence is fixed, you're either good at something or you're not, pay less attention to, and are less likely to learn from, mistakes.

    The doctors who were most experienced were least likely to pay attention to and learn from mistakes, and more likely to show a confirmation bias. They trusted their judgment. Because they didn't learn from errors, the most experienced doctors ended up using the wrong criteria to make prescription choices.

    The lesson of these studies? When you make a mistake or receive critical feedback, don't panic. Think of it as an opportunity for learning, and remember that the process of failing, when you're willing to pay attention is often what leads to the greatest successes.

Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D.

in The Science of Willpower

Psychology Today

god forbade...must reading

Social Networks

   Social networks consist of social capital and the balance of positivity and negativity in relationships.

    Social capital refers to the resources that are available to us through our social networks. Having a social network that is made up of people in positions of power, such as a well-connected physician or lawyer, allows a person to draw on these relationships to accomplish specific tasks, such as finding a job or dealing with a legal problem. A recent study of adults in the United States found that those who have social networks made up of people with high levels of education and professional training tended to report fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety than individuals who had social networks that did not include such people.

    Having connected and powerful people in your social network aids in finding resources and attaining crucial information, which can reduce feelings of psychological distress when dealing with stressors and other problems that arise over time. A network of people with higher income and education fosters a sense of greater subjective social status, which refers to the social class that someone feels they belong to. A sense of higher subjective social status, feeling that you belong to the upper or upper-middle class, is linked with fewer symptoms of psychological distress.

    When you think about someone in your social network, does that person bring to mind positive or negative experiences? Social psychologists have studied the balance of positive and negative relationships with people in our social networks, and the impact it has on our psychological well-being. A close friend who is helpful and understanding brings mostly positive experiences. In contrast, a relationship with a co-worker who is critical and demanding is likely to lead to negative experiences. We can have ambivalent feelings, a combination of positivity and negativity towards people in our social networks, too. Positive and ambivalent relationships tend to be much more common than negative relationships. However, even a small number of negative relationships can lead to significant increases in psychological distress. This is because negative relationships have a greater impact on mental health than positive relationships.

    Decreasing conflict and negative interactions in our social networks is probably the clearest path towards improved psychological well-being.

    This suggests that we should alter our social networks to reduce negativity and increase positivity, yet changing the composition of social networks is difficult. Changing your social network involves increasing the strength of weaker social ties that already exist, acquaintances, and starting completely new relationships.

David Russell, Ph.D.

in Distress in Context

Psychology Today

god forbade...must reading

Year End

    Transitions are actually continuous, not bound by numbers on a calendar or clock. One thing leads to another. Our lives, whether we like it or not, are constantly changing, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. Nothing is static. Nothing is truly predictable.

    People often blame themselves for whatever difficulty they are facing. Retrospection-run-amok leaves us trying to imagine how we would undo the decisions we made and create a different present situation. "If only" I hadn't done this or that or the other thing, then I would not be suffering now.

     Regret and recrimination look backwards. They focus attention on the past, not on the choices available to us now.

    Perhaps we even become somewhat frozen, so caught up in self recrimination that we try not to make choices for fear that we won't like what we choose. Not choosing is a choice and often not a skillful one.

    If we are stuck in recrimination and regret, self-forgiveness is essential. We all have done the best we could with our fallible abilities in an uncertain and unpredictable world. Berating ourselves only complicates the problems we face.

     We face the end of one year, and, the the beginning of a new year. Bring forward everything you have learned.

Alison Bonds Shapiro, MBA, PhD (hon)

in Healing Into Possibility

Psychology Today

god forbade...must reading

Down and Dirty

    The art of learning to love well is one of the most demanding challenges that we will ever take in our lives.

    The current thinking is the deeper the connection that we develop with someone, the easier it should be, and if it's not getting easier it's because something is wrong, wrong with them, wrong with me, or wrong with us. Not necessarily. Deep relatedness brings out the worst as well as the best in us, our deepest fears and our greatest hopes, our selflessness as well as our possessiveness, our kindness and our insensitivity, our generosity and our self-centeredness. In working consciously with these emotions and impulses, we find ourselves feeling more trusting and open with each other and gradually begin to let down the defenses that shield and protect us from emotional distress.

    Conscious loving requires us to come out from behind the security of our manufactured image and expose ourselves to the threat of emotional pain that we desperately want to avoid. What makes this so difficult is that it requires us to be fearless yet tender, committed yet open, engaged yet unattached, powerful yet yielding, and strong, yet, vulnerable. To fully love, we must cultivate the ability to hold the tension of opposites because love is inclusive not exclusive, and it can be fierce in its demands. It invites us into the space beyond the duality of separation or enmeshment and challenges us to surrender our defenses that protect us from harm.

Linda Bloom, L.C.S.W. Charlie Bloom, M.S.W.

in Stronger at the Broken Places

Psychology Today

god forbade...must reading

A Dream is Just A Dream

   Is a dream a sign of some sort, that someone should take seriously? Many lost love couples think so. They insist that their lost loves must be right for them, must be sent by a higher power through this dream. And that justifies the affair in their minds.

   Magazines and newspapers often don't help the public understand issues when it comes to reporting science. Journalism schools teach that writers should balance their stories with several experts who have different opinions, and some editors insist that they do.

   Confirmation bias is a term found by psychologist Peter Wason in the 1960's.

   People recall the facts that support their preconceptions and make sense of their emotions, and systematically forget those facts that contradict these interpretations. Someone finds a horoscope in the newspaper and is amazed at how accurately it describes what is going on in their lives. Never mind the horoscopes are vague enough to interpret as you see fit and that their horoscopes from the last three months had no personal relevance.

    So someone will seize upon a dream that supports their feelings that they should be with their lost love, and ignore all other dreams, including those that may have been about their spouses, children, careers, strangers, enemies, whatever. When people falsely perceive an association between two unconnected events, it can lead to poor decision making.

    People who started lost love affairs because of a dream were unlikely to wind up with their lost loves and very likely to leave the affair wondering how they could have done what they did.

Nancy Kalish, Ph.D.

in Sticky Bonds

Psychology Today

god forbade...must reading

Get Your Hands Dirty

      Graduate school is a huge investment of dedication, time, effort, and money. Obtaining hands-on experience in the area you would like to pursue before making the investment is of paramount importance.

     If you don't have experience working with people in a one-on-one setting, how do you know counseling is for you? Likewise, if you have never set out to conduct a study or publish a paper, how do you know research is the career path you prefer? Getting involved with the type of work you envision doing after graduate school, even if it is only in a peripheral capacity, is the best way to make an informed decision about whether it is the right path for you.

     Gaining experience also benefits you because you will be exposed to professionals in the area.

     Graduate school applications require personal statements. Gathering relevant experience will come in handy when it's time to sit down and write. Describe the skills you have acquired. Show that you can write about your experience intelligently. Perhaps the best, most persuasive application essays include a description of how the applicant has already immersed themselves in the field. This shows admissions committees that they are prepared and ready to pursue graduate school in the area.

    Gaining experience relevant to your future graduate degree will help you develop relationships with individuals, supervisors and professors, who can write compelling letters of recommendation.

Laura E. Buffardi, Ph.D.

in Grad School Guru

Psychology Today

god forbade...must reading

Lieberman

    If you ask Connecticut independent Senator Joe Lieberman about 41 years of service, he might size it up this way,

        

    "It was a great run."

      Well, he adds, if you forget the last few years, when Washington became gridlocked over partisanship and his chamber couldn't even pass a federal budget due to ideological differences.

    "I don't think Congress ever has been as bad as it is today," Lieberman says.

    "I bet if you ask any of my colleages what's the number one thought or opinion we get from our constituents? Why don't you people just get together and get something done?"

    Lieberman warns that it might take a catastrophe to change Washington.

     "If Walmart spent its entire advertising budget attacking Target, and Target spent its entire budget attacking Walmart,"

                   Lieberman argues,

      "the net effect would be that a lot of people who are now shopping at both stores would find another place to shop."

USNews

god forbade...must reading

Worry

     Worry...feeling threatened to any degree...is stress.

    Not worrying more than we have to may be the best thing we can do for our health.

      Dr. McEwen's ‘allostasis’ means our body can adjust to being under stress. All those systems that get turned up or down, when we really feel threatened, will come back into balance.

    "The Perception Gap", when our innately subjective, instinctive, emotional system of risk perception leads us to worry about some threats more than the evidence suggests we need to. As much as we need to heed what Dr. Robert Adler and others have taught us about the biological dangers of stress, we also need to apply the wisdom that Paul Slovic and Dan Kahneman and many others have gained about the psychology of risk perception. Their research has revealed why our fears don't always match the facts. Understanding why the perception gap occurs, and why some risks feel scarier than the facts and probabilities indicate, is a self-awareness we can use to minimize the dangers of disproportionate worrying.

   We could just pop some valium and ativan and xanax or other drugs to combat stress. Or we can also try to apply our understanding of what makes some risks feel scarier than others to try to keep our fears in perspective. That sort of self control, overriding our instincts, will be hard. But it will be easier if we first recognize, and feel actually threatened by, the hidden but huge risk of stress that comes from worrying more than we need to.

David Ropeik

in How Risky Is It, Really?

Psychology Today

god forbade...must reading

Retreat

     Periods of retreat are important. Quietness and stillness allow the mental noise inside of us to fade away, and help us to come back to ourselves. After weeks of frantic rushing and chasing, we step off the fast-moving train of time and return to the present. Our energy regenerates, and we feel a sense of wholeness, a glow of well-being. At the same time, there is a feeling of rootedness, of being so grounded and stable that the normal stresses and slights of everyday life don't affect us to the same degree.

    Quietness is a source of creativity. Without regular periods of withdrawal and relaxation, creativity dries up. Stillness makes the mind fertile, like a river running over a plain, enabling ideas and inspirations to shoot up. They seem to come from nowhere, as if we've connected to some great cosmic reservoir which, if the conditions are right, channels into our own individual minds.

    At this time of year nature is in retreat. All things have withdrawn into darkness, and are slowly regenerating. That's why the winter solstice is so significant . Because after weeks of increasing darkness, the earth is starting to collect itself again, to gather its energies, in readiness for the explosion of creativity of life in spring.



    If that's what the rest of nature is doing, maybe we should do it too.

Steve Taylor

in Out of the Darkness

Psychology Today

god forbade...must reading

Many Loves

     Relationships are built upon stories of love, such as a fantasy story, prince and princess, business story, business partners, travel story, travelers through life and collector story, collector and collectee, among many others. I think it would be difficult to be in love with two people at the same time with the same story. But it is quite possible to love two people via different stories. Given societal norms, such multiple loves are likely to create conflict. Stories are hierarchically arranged, from more to less preferred. It is likely the person with whom you are in love, who is higher in the hierarchy, or possibly to whom you are already committed, will outweigh the other person.

Robert J. Sternberg, Ph.D.

     People are quite capable of being in love with more than one person. Yet the clinical reality is that a healthy individual who is emotionally, spiritually and sexually available for love will find complete satisfaction in a multiple relationship. Unfortunately, the kind of empathic attunement that's possible in a dyad is unusual these days. More commonly, individuals dissociate parts of themselves from their primary relationship. People suffering from fractured emotional lives—narcissists and borderlines, for example—would say they are capable of being in love with more than one person. The more interesting questions then become, what is revealed about individuals who are in love with more than one person? And how have such choices contributed to family dysfunction?

Drew Pinsky, M.D.

Psychology Today

god forbade...must reading

False Confession

    An admission of guilt can trump even the proverbial smoking gun. A confession is the ideal civic solution. The perpetrator takes responsibility, and the public sleeps soundly.

    It is difficult, if not impossible, to estimate the number of false confessions nationwide. A review of murder cases in a single Illinois county found 247 instances in which the defendants' self-incriminating statements were thrown out by the court or found by a jury to be insufficiently convincing for conviction.

    Suspects with low IQs are particularly vulnerable to the pressures of police interrogation. They are less likely to understand the charges against them and the consequences of admitting guilt.

    Intelligence is by no means the only decisive factor. Suspects with compliant or suggestible personalities and anxiety disorders may be hard-pressed to withstand an interrogation.

    Self-incriminating statements are often the result of a kind of cost-benefit analysis. A false confession is an escape hatch. Under the circumstances, it becomes rational. The most common explanation given after the fact is that suspects just wanted to go home.

    This often indicates an inability to appreciate the consequences of a confession, a situation that police cultivate by communicating that a confession will be rewarded with lenient sentencing. Police may also offer mitigating factors, the crime was unintentional, or, the suspect was provoked.

    The circumstances of interrogation are crucial. Everybody has a breaking point. Nobody confesses falsely in an hour.

    False confessions are generated in cell blocks as well as interrogation rooms.

    A particularly vulnerable defendant may begin to doubt their own memory when presented with false evidence. Children and the mentally handicapped, or people whose recollections are clouded by drugs or alcohol, are particularly susceptible. Interrogators may suggest that a suspect has repressed the memory. They then offer false evidence to fill in the gaps. After intense interrogation, these suspects become sufficiently convinced of their own guilt and accept an internalized false confession.

Alexandra Perina

Psychology Today

god forbade...must reading

Live, Love, Learn

     When it comes to matters of love and intimacy, most people tend to think that all they need to do is identify, meet, and choose the right person. Find the right fit. Using criteria, typically based on fantastic requirements, seek someone who closely conforms to that wish list. Sort of like going out and buying shoes, jeans or a new suit. This shopping for love approach can be effective, but only when you are truly psychologically ready for it.

    Or, is, as the father of Gestalt therapy, psychiatrist Frederick "Fritz" Perls suggested, finding love has, at least, as much to do with becoming the right person as meeting them?

Psychoanalyst Erich Fromm said,

     "Analytic therapy is essentially an attempt to help the patient gain or regain his capacity for love"

     While Fromm may have overstated his case, the fact is that many patients, like all of us, whether single, coupled or married, are constantly looking for love. Either from parents, peers, prospective mates during dating, boyfriends and girlfriends, spouses or, sometimes, from extramarital affairs. We all seek love in other ways as well, like wanting to be admired, noticed, valued, understood, appreciated and recognized by others, or even idolized by the public, as in the extreme case of certain celebrities.

    But, needless to say, real love is a precious and rare commodity.

     Parents fall short, frequently, far short of being what D. W. Winnicott called good enough parents as regards the ability to express and provide real love to their children.

    True intimacy requires a strong sense of self, good personal boundaries, and healthy self-esteem. When these qualities are not present, typically as a result of having never received sufficient real love during childhood, true intimacy is just too threatening to accept or allow. Consciously, we may seek it. But unconsciously, sometimes very subtly, we sabotage it or run away at real intimacy's first appearance. They are afraid to love and often don't feel worthy of being loved.

As Fromm said,

   They do not know that the real problem is not the difficulty of being loved but the difficulty of loving. One is loved only if one can love. . . . So this is a different type of love-ability, having to do with one's receptivity and openness to another and the ability to lovingly accept someone for whom they are. Without this capacity, a loving relationship cannot fully be entered into or cultivated, since demanding love and acceptance from a partner without being able to reciprocate in kind is doomed to disaster.

Dr. Stephen A. Diamond, Ph.D.

in Evil Deeds

Psychology Today

god forbade...must reading

Bad Boys

   Bad boys, men as crafty rogues that take advantage of the tendencies and weaknesses of many women.

    Authors assert women are choosing poor husbands and that corrective knowledge would solve the problem.

    The media, music, movies, television and the internet have taught generations of young men that deceiving women is the proper way to conduct courtship and marriage. It is unfair to blame women for foolish choices when even some of the kindest, most religious and moral young men use the same deceptive dating technique as the worst of women haters.

   Boys are taught at an early age to stuff their feelings to get what they want. They are encouraged to bring this same strategy to courtship and marriage. These mirage men gain the goal of a romance at the cost of true intimacy.

    Women are taught that the problem with relationships is once again their fault, their expectations are too high. Women are continually blamed in these times for the failure of romances when it is a shared responsibility.

Dr. J. R. Bruns

in Repairing Relationships

Psychology Today

god forbade...must reading

Self Deception

    We bend the facts to fit our self-image, perpetuating a view of ourselves that is often more positive than accurate.

    We regularly write revisionist histories and paint unrealistically glossy portraits of ourselves.

     Rationalization is a core component of self-deception. It's through rationalization that the smoker convinces herself that her habit isn't that unhealthy. It's rationalization when a customer keeps the extra change the cashier mistakenly hands back and justifies his decision by reflecting that the store is marking up prices to begin with. Or when someone refers to a banana they pick up and eat while grocery shopping as ‘the price of doing business’ with them.

    Ironically, the better-than-average effect is most exaggerated among the least competent. The worse we are at something, the better we often think we are.

    Almost anyone can drive a car or exhibit decent social skills, and amusingly high numbers of people believe that they're great at these things. But in domains where general levels of societal proficiency are lower, let's say, public speaking or running for mayor, the bias isn't nearly as prevalent.

Sam Sommers

in Science Of Small Talk

Psychology Today

god forbade...must reading

Bravery

     We're all good at doing what we do, staying inside of the lines. 

 

      But that's not where the real fun is, no matter your passion, no matter your dreams and goals.

      Fear calls us to newer and better experiences. And while fear can certainly be scary, it's far less so than the gnawing and consuming anxiety that comes from not striving for and living up to our full potential.

Make it a good new year!

Jennifer Hamady

in Finding Your Voice

Psychology Today

god forbade...must reading

Handsome Forgettable

    Something strange happens with handsome men. Women are more likely to stare at guys who look like George Clooney while visually ignoring those everyday Joe Schmoes like most of the rest of us.

    Despite the substantial amount of visual attention that women bestow on handsome men, women are unable to distinguish the handsome guys they saw from those they’d never seen.

    Over trials, though, any advantage for handsome men completely disappears, suggesting that those men did not make it into long-term memory. It is as if women process handsome men very briefly, and then promptly erase those handsome faces from downstream processing.

    There’s another case of a negative memory bang for the attentional buck. We found the same disjunction for another category of people, those with facial disfigurements. When people are concerned about disease, they stare at disfigured faces, but do not remember them later.

   It’s probably a different story for handsome men. Given that handsome men are preferred as mates, particularly for short-term relationships, women staring at handsome men might simply be sending a flirtation message. If the man doesn’t follow up by introducing himself, though, no further mental resources need be wasted.

Prof. Douglas T. Kenrick

in Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life

Psychology Today

god forbade...must reading

Dumped Again

    A very high percentage of negative events are related to the feeling that someone else doesn't value a relationship as much as you do, says Duke University psychologist Mark Leary. Those are the sore feelings that accompany such thoughts as,

     "Why did my coworker brush me off in that meeting?" or "My husband is watching TV when he should be paying attention to me!"

    Everybody hurts. In ways big and small, we are all snubbed every day of our lives. Of course, we can't possibly like everyone who likes us or join every group that would have us as a member, so we constantly let others down, too. It's the way the social universe operates. And yet, when it happens to us, we tend to take it personally, and, often, hard.

    The drive to bond lies deep in our DNA. Disappointment when we fail to connect is virtually guaranteed. That's why the ultimate rejection, the departure of a loved one, is among the most stressful of all experiences.

    Even the tiniest of slights can rile our emotions and send our self-esteem into a tailspin. In part, self-esteem reflects who we are intrinsically, but is also a barometer of our standing with others. Leary found that social self-esteem neatly rises with any inkling of acceptance,

    "Would you like to join us for lunch?"

     and plummets with any cut-down,

     "I like you—as a friend!".

 

  "It's an internal gauge that is independently programmed," he explains. "So when you feel bad, you tend to feel bad about yourself."

    Social self-esteem acts like radar, scanning the environment for any hint of disapproval or exclusion. A blip on the meter, felt as a drop in self-esteem, is unpleasant, designed to spur us to address the source of the discomfort. If the gauge weren't sensitive to all signs of rejection, it might miss the big ones, endangering happiness or even safety.

    "Nature designed us to be vigilant about potential rejection," says Leary,

    "because for most of our history we depended on small groups of people. Getting shut out would have compromised survival."

 

  Observers see a wave of psychological fragility pushing individuals in our culture toward oversensitivity to rejection.

 

   A jittery rejection-detection radar zeroes in on empty threats, creating needless anxiety and groundless jealousy. Unfortunately, those at the high end of the rejection-sensitivity scale pay a particularly steep price just for wanting to belong. Their overwrought responses to slights may even have the unintended effect of bringing about what they fear most. And although such pain may be borne privately, it has public repercussions. There is a collective cost of individual hypersensitivity to rejection. People become unwilling to take even the smallest social risks. Preoccupied with their own performance evaluations, people shy away from approaching strangers or questioning authority. Public life shrinks and civil society withers.

     There are a number of reasons why rejection-sensitivity is growing more pervasive. Major depression, a condition tightly linked to rejection sensitivity, has been on the rise among all age groups except the elderly for well over a decade. What's more, parents and educators overprotect and over-praise children, actions that backfire because they breed a preoccupation with evaluation by others.

      "If praise isn't based on anything specific, it gives you a sense of insecurity," Leary points out. "It makes you wonder whether your rejection radar is working at all."

     If you suspect you're not getting honest feedback, you'll be more sensitive to all possible slights or acceptances. You'll think,

 

     "Do people really like me?"

     Then, too, adds New York psychologist Robert Leahy, we're on our way to becoming a performance-based culture. Young people in particular feel an urgency to grab the spotlight, instead of working toward becoming a stable member of a group. That makes them especially concerned with how others are evaluating them and more sensitive to rejection.

     But the primary reason we're becoming more rejection-sensitive, Leary contends, is that our fragmented, mobile society has decreased the number and weakened the strength of our social bonds.

      "Even 200 years ago, people were part of a small clan. They likely lived their entire lives in the same town. We now constantly have to reintegrate ourselves into new social networks. The sheer number of strangers with whom we interact creates many more opportunities for rejection."

        says Leahy,

      "Because families are less intact and society is more segmented, we're all less secure. Further, an increased general sense of uncertainty makes us more vulnerable to rejection."

Carlin Flora

Psychology Today

god forbade...must reading

Microexpressions

    The public has a grip on micro expressions, their significance in our overall understanding of body language, and more importantly, their relevance in eliminating deception.

    Two researchers discovered, while looking at films of couples in therapy, what they described as micromomentary expressions. They noted behaviors that would flash by so quickly they were difficult to see except by slowing the film down. Years later, building on earlier work and observing these same behaviors, Paul Eckman coined the term micro expressions while studying deception.

    Researchers found our faces often reveal hidden sentiments that are being intentionally concealed. Over time the term micro expressions grew to include too many things, failing, for instance, to differentiate between the truly miniscule, the small, and the larger facial distortions. There was a failure to differentiate between the behaviors that were fast and those which were super-fast, but which had little to do with being micro or small. Lastly there was a failure to differentiate behaviors that are asymmetrical or that oddly freeze in place such as when we hold a tense smile at a snarling Doberman Pincer.

   There is no single behavior indicative of deception, in general.

Joe Navarro, M.A.

in Spycatcher

Psychology Today

see microaggressions

god forbade...must reading

Expectations

We miss our opportunity for available delights when we focus on imagined delights...that are not available.

    The first kind of holiday suffering is created by our expectations. We tell ourselves what our lives should be and we imagine what our lives will be. These expectations of what is true and what will be true are the product of the stories we tell ourselves about our lives. They could be not the same as what is actually happening.

    Our internal stories are essential. I'm not suggesting that we can or should be done with them, only realize we have constructed them, often with a minimum of tangible information.

     We have seen many images of what a perfect holiday should be, loving families without problems, loving friends without hidden agendas, warmth and comfort and security, and lots of presents that are precisely what we want. Many of us, telling ourselves we should have this exact experience, are disappointed when our expectations are not met and go on to imagine that we are unloved and that our lives will be difficult. We suffer.

      There may be joy right in front of us that we don't notice because we are convinced that if our experience does not live up to the expectations we bring to the holiday, it's not good enough to enjoy what we do have. We miss our opportunity for available delights when we focus on imagined delights that are not forthcoming.

    Gaining perspective on our expectations also can help us with the other kind of holiday suffering that comes to mind, loneliness. It's part of our brain structure, a biological drive, to seek connections and to build our lives in the context of other beings. Lack of that connection can be exacerbated by the stories of what our lives should be.

    When we are caught up in the cauldron of our expectations, we become further isolated. Focusing on our suffering, we push people away. We become self absorbed, close our hearts to seeing how we might connect with another human being in this moment, and miss the comfort the connection could bring.

    Allowing ourselves some perspective on our stories and our resulting expectations can be liberating.

Alison Bonds Shapiro, MBA, PhD (hon)

in Healing Into Possibility

Psychology Today

god forbade...must reading

Emotionally Contagious

      The emotionally contagious refers to how a charismatic speaker can, seemingly, infect the whole crowd with emotion, and how that emotion is quickly transmitted throughout the crowd?

    Studies in nonverbal communication show emotions can be transmitted very quickly, and at times, silently from one person to another.

     Research finds emotional expression can spread from the more expressive, infecting the less expressive, over time.

    Research shows that some people are naturally emotionally expressive, and more prone to influence the moods of other emotionally-contagious people and others are more susceptible to others' emotions. There are scales that measure both emotional expressiveness and susceptibility/sensitivity to others' emotions.

Here are some sample items for emotional expressiveness,

     I have often been told that I have expressive eyes. People immediately know when I am angry or upset with them. When I get depressed I tend to bring down those around me. I often laugh out loud.



These items measure susceptibility to emotional contagion,

  I tense when overhearing an angry quarrel. I cry at sad movies. Being with a happy person picks me up when I'm feeling down. If someone I'm talking with begins to cry, I get teary-eyed.

   People vary greatly in terms of their emotional expressiveness and susceptibility to emotion. It only becomes problematic in extremes.

  Moreover, it is important that the highly emotionally expressive temper it with the ability to regulate and control emotional expressions, being able to turn it off. Similarly, regulation is needed to keep the susceptible from becoming overwhelmed by other’s emotions. It's all about balance when it comes to emotional communication.

Ronald E. Riggio, Ph.D.

in Cutting-Edge Leadership

Psychology Today

see emotional contagion

god forbade...must reading

Self Esteem, Acceptance

     Some argue self-esteem does not relate the valued outcomes of good behavior and academic achievement, so it made no sense to teach it in schools. Others have argued that the methods used to teach self-esteem either did not work, rote repititon of I love me did not actually produce self-esteem. Becoming more likely to backfire, doing more harm than good, making recipients less able to accept criticism. Some go so far as to say that the self-esteem movement may have produced a generation of entitled and narcissistic adults.

    Evolutionary psychologists would argue that dominance hierarchies make societies function efficiently. If you believe that self-esteem is basically the same thing as dominance, you would have to agree that it would be just as impossible for everyone to have high self-esteem just as it would be for everyone to take dominant social roles.

    If we can't build high self-esteem in everyone, we might look to build more of self-esteem's quieter sister, self acceptance. Self-acceptance is less about how you compare to others and more about how you feel about yourself. The term self-acceptance might feel like the equivalent of passive resignation to one's lot in life, giving up the hope of self-improvement. By self-acceptance, I mean dealing compassionately with the self through successes and failures alike. Such self-acceptance may be essential to growth, and unlike self-esteem, it is not a zero-sum game.

Jenna Baddeley

in Embracing the Dark Side

Psychology Today

god forbade...must reading

Faulty Thinking

     Faulty ways of thinking are often more likely to occur when we feel stressed. In his book, Games People Play, Eric Byrne discussed some of these as dirty fighting tactics that couples use in an argument. As Byrne pointed out, they usually only serve the purpose of putting the person using them in a one-up position over the person that they are being used on. Unfortunately, this doesn’t make things better, it usually makes things worse. The person who has just been put down may struggle to regain balance by making use of minimization, to discount the other person's argument.

      Minimization involves discounting or minimizing either the positive or the negative elements of a situation. We do not have to be an alcoholic to make use of this way of thinking. If we lack confidence in ourselves, we may minimize our accomplishments. Unfortunately, this only continues to keep us from building confidence in ourselves.

     Another thinking trap involves jumping to conclusions. Conclusions that we jump to quickly are often based upon assumptions about a person or a situation which we have often harbored for a long time. These assumptions or conclusions are usually based on very few facts and may discourage us from trusting others, seeing and exercising new possibilities in our lives or deepening our relationships.

     Another faulty thinking trap is the proverbial making a mountain out of a molehill. Exaggeration, magnification. Again, this pattern of thinking compliments other faulty thinking patterns, such as catastrophic thinking and over-generalization.

    Many of these patterns of thinking are fueled by emotion. They are often based on what is referred to as the logic of emotion or emotional reasoning. With emotional reasoning we may assume that the way we feel is the way things really are. We don't assume that others may see things differently and may not be caught up in the same feelings.

    To change faulty thinking patterns we must first recognize that they are irrational ways of thinking that do not work well for us in the long run. Recognizing them for what they are leads to the second step which is to begin to dispute them and refuse to make use of them. Since they are often well practiced thinking habits, the process of change requires us to question the way we are looking at situations and to force ourselves to be more flexible and to look at other possible ways of thinking of and responding to a situation.

Dr. Ron Breazeale

in In the Face of Adversity

Psychology Today