M is for magic: Editorial on the concept of ‘manifesting’

 Psychologists argue that there is a thin line between thinking positively and being delusional

Ask and ye shall receive. This Biblical phrase has become the new mantra of the 21st century, especially for Gen Z. The concept of ‘manifesting’ — the belief that the power of positive thinking can change the course of events — has its origins in a self-help book, The Secret, which has sold some 50 million copies worldwide since 2006. There are apparently numerous ways of achieving such a course correction if TikTok — the barometer of everything Gen Z does — is to be believed. They range from writing one’s desires in a journal three times in the morning, six times in the afternoon and nine times in the evening to speaking only in the present tense and shunning the use of words such as ‘could’, ‘would’ and ‘might’ owing to their indefinite nature. It does not take much cerebral depth to understand why this method is so popular: it offers a portrait of a world that is extraordinarily alluring, one where every obstacle to achieving a dream can be wished away. So much so that some die-hard Lionel Messi fans in Kestopur are, at this very moment, trying to ‘manifest’ Kylian Mbappé away from the World Cup finals.

Unsurprisingly, Google searches for the term skyrocketed 669% since July 2020, when the pandemic was at its height. Stuck at home, with the economy taking a nosedive and an invisible enemy changing life inside and outside the home forever, Gen Z took to positive thinking like fish to water. However, the flames of manifestation have not been fanned by a public health crisis alone. The sterility and the starkness of the cold, hard data-driven Age of Reason may have a role to play too. Plato described emotion and reason as two horses pulling people in opposite directions. But reason collapses in the face of baffling figures — the global youth unemployment rate stands at 14.9% and the world has crossed at least five of the 16 ‘tipping points’ that will make it unliveable — that most people are powerless to change. This is when relatively inexpensive routes of escape such as manifesting take over.

But keeping the faith, as it were, can have collateral damage. Researchers at Ohio State University found that those who trust their ‘gut’ and practices such as ‘manifesting’ are more likely to fall for fake news and conspiracy theories. Psychologists also argue that there is a thin line between thinking positively and being delusional. Moreover, the corollary of relying solely on positive thinking is a victim blaming of sorts — good things not happening to a person are blamed on his or her inability to be positive enough. The medical fraternity also warns about ‘toxic positivity’ — manifesting does not allow the enunciation of ‘negative’ emotions or incidents. To force a positive outlook on pain is to encourage a person to keep silent about struggles that have serious adverse impacts on mental health.

Manifesting, at best, is a form of benign benevolence. It is telling that Gen Z, witness to cataclysmic social, environmental and cultural shocks, is making a mountain of the molehill called manifesting.

Source: The Telegraph, 18/12/22

Let's Not Reject New Learnings About Human Behaviour.

 Many of us claim to be genuine seekers of new knowledge. But how good are we in absorbing new knowledge? Let’s take the example of human behaviour. There is no doubt that policymakers are keen to find new ways to manage our behaviour, be it be how to make people drive safely or ensure that citizens take their much-needed vaccinations in time. In the past few decades, lots of new knowledge has emerged that could help develop new strategies to deal with many behaviour-related problems. But much of this new knowledge about human behaviour have not been absorbed by policymakers and practitioners. Why? Gerald Zaltman, professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, was among the first in recent times to put forth genuinely new knowledge about human behaviour. In his 2003 book, How Customers Think, Professor Zaltman announced that more than 95% of human decisions occur at the non-conscious level. He pointed out that existing tools of consumer research, like focus group techniques and questionnaires, tap only 5% of the human decisions that are conscious. He went on to propose a new consumer research technique called Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique ( ZMET) to decipher many more decisions made at a non-conscious level.

A paper titled ‘The Nervous System in the Context of Information Theory’ by M. Zimmerman went few steps further. He pointed out that of the human brain’s 16 million bits of processing capacity, only 77 bits work at a conscious level. More than 99.99% of brain processes, according to the paper, occur at a non-conscious level, and so consciousness has a very small role to play in human decision making. While human consciousness deals with a tiny proportion of all incoming stimuli, the rest is processed at the non-conscious level, which is more than 200,000 times the capacity of the conscious.

An experiment by the late Benjamin Libet at the University of California, San Francisco, took the importance of our non-conscious processes to another level. He instructed participants to flick their wrists whenever they felt like it. Electrodes fitted in their heads detected fluctuations in electrical activity, indicating ‘readiness potential’, almost half a second before people made their flicking motion. But participants became aware of their intention to move only about 200 milliseconds before doing so. This led to the conclusion that their brains had decided on action before they became aware of it. In essence, non-conscious brain processes were in the driver’s seat.

More recent studies using functional MRI suggest that non-conscious triggers for human decisions occur even earlier. In research published in 2013, neuroscientist John-Dylan Haynes of the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin had volunteers decide whether to add or subtract two numbers while under an fMRI scanner. They found patterns of neural activity that were predictive of the study subjects’ behaviour four seconds before those subjects were aware of making the choice.

Many interesting results from recent studies of the brain’s non-conscious processes have emerged from the field of sports. Neuroscientists have figured out that decisions, whether it’s while playing cricket, baseball or tennis, are made in a matter of milliseconds, and thus below our thresholds of consciousness. Studying these decisions that happen within milliseconds can be extrapolated to better understand the decision making processes of a driver on the road, or those of an e-commerce consumer online.

While all this new knowledge about our non-conscious calls was being generated, there were further experiments to establish the reduced role of consciousness in human decision-making. Cognitive psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris showed that when people focus hard on something consciously, say, counting the passes made by a basketball team, they become blind even to an unexpected sight, such as a gorilla dancing on the court right in front of them. This famous experiment reiterated the fact that the conscious brain can do only one thing at a time.

Shankar Vedantam, in his book The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives, writes: “The new understanding of human behaviour constitutes a revolution no less intriguing—and perhaps more powerful than the discovery that the sun really does not revolve around the earth." New knowledge about human behaviour is not just an incremental change to our existing knowledge base. It is a paradigm shift. So ideally, all our existing research methodologies must change. Our existing communication strategies have to change, and not just incrementally, but fundamentally.

Thomas Kuhn, the philosopher of science who spawned the trendy term ‘paradigm’, reminds us that “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." This is just a reminder how difficult it is to get people to accept new knowledge, even if it is a well-established biological reality.

How many more lives must we lose to road accidents and how many more people should hesitate to take their vaccinations before policymakers realize that their traditional assumptions of human behaviour are fundamentally faulty? When will policymakers and professionals start embracing the new understanding of human behaviour? The wait continues.

Biju Dominic is chief evangelist, Fractal Analytics, and chairman, FinalMile Consulting. 

What is 'Smoke detector principle' in Psychology

This refers to the idea that the human brain is designed by nature to be paranoid as a defence mechanism to protect itself from possible dangers that could be fatal to its chances of survival. While paranoia can lead the brain to commit a lot of false positive errors, it can, however, help human beings avoid a number of false negative errors which could turn out to be extremely costly as well. This is similar to the way a smoke detector is designed by engineers, who want the device to never miss an actual fire even if such a design causes the device to raise a number of false alarms. The term was coined by American physician Randolph M. Nesse in a 2006 paper.

Source: The Hindu, 19/02/2019

People are happiest at 16 and 70, finds study

 Well-Being Levels — Which Include Happiness, Life Satisfaction, Self-Worth, Lack Of Anxiety— Fall Between 20s And 50s

While one could be happy at any age, it peaks first at age 16, according to a new study by a UK-based think tank. Don’t worry if 16 is a distant memory, though, as our well-being reaches a high point again later in life — at 70. The Resolution Foundation analysed seven years of wellbeing surveys run by the Office for National Statistics since 2011. Respondents of a variety of ages rated their life satisfaction, self-worth, happiness and anxiety levels on a scale from one to 10. In a Ushaped curve, it showed that being in one’s 50s is the pits, while the ages of 16 and 70 are the twin peaks of happiness. According to the report, what contributes to happiness at 70 is, predictably, good fortune to have health, a degree, a job, a partner and to own your home. “The report finds that well-being levels — which include happiness, life satisfaction, self-worth and lack of anxiety — generally fall between someone’s mid-20s and early 50s, and then start rising again until people reach their 70s. On the basis of age alone, the key to happiness is to be 16 or 70,” the think tank notes. It calls on policy-makers who want to boost well-being to dig deeper into what drives those improvements. A secure job, a home of your own, and more money, particularly for low-income households, are all key drivers of higher well-being, and should therefore be prioritised. “Well-being matters to all of us, and yet we’ve only recently started to collect serious data on how happy people are with their lives. This important data shows that there is more to life than a country’s GDP, but that the employment and

income trends that lie behind our economy can make a big difference to our well-being too,” said George Bangham, research and policy analyst at the Resolution Foundation. “It is encouraging that a growing number of policymakers are interested in boosting well-being. But their focus on the new objective should complement, rather than replace, priorities such as income redistribution, better jobs and secure housing. The evidence suggests that these core economic policies are effective ways to raise well-being,” he said. The report, ‘Happy Now?’, finds that the most important determinants of well-being are having good health, a job and a partner, but that levels of well-being also vary significantly depending on someone’s age, income level, housing tenure, and neighbourhood. The report notes too that permanent contracts and control of working hours are also associated with higher well-being, suggesting that quantity and quality matter when it comes to work. The think-tank concludes that the importance of stronger income growth, higher employment, better jobs and increasing home ownership in boosting well-being reinforce the need for policy-makers to focus on these issues

Source: Times of India, 18/02/2019

What is matching hypothesis in psychology?

This refers to the idea that people are more likely to be romantically attracted towards people who are as attractive as themselves than those less attractive. While physical attractiveness can determine the mating preferences of people to a significant extent, social and other non-physical forms of attraction can also determine mating patterns prevalent across various human societies.

Source: The Hindu, 5/02/2019

What is object relations theory in psychology

his refers to a branch of psychoanalysis which describes the process by which children develop an internal image of various people around them during their initial years of growth. It is believed that the psyche that children develop during their early years through constant exposure to various objects around them determines their behaviour as adults to a significant extent. The first image of an object that a child usually forms in life is that of her mother, so object relations theorists generally emphasise the importance of the relationship between a mother and her child. Object relations theory has been employed in the treatment of various mental illnesses.

Source: The Hindu, 4/01/2018

What is Kübler-Ross model in psychology

his refers to the five emotional stages that a person usually goes through during a period of grief. They are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. However, not all people who experience grief go through all these stages. Some people may skip past some of the stages. The duration of each stage of grief may also vary from person to person depending on various reasons. The Kübler-Ross model was first proposed by Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book On Death and Dying, based on her study of patients who were terminally ill.

Source: The Hindu, 1/1/2018

What is 'overperception bias' in Psychology?

Also known as the sexual overperception bias, this refers to the tendency among people to overestimate the level of sexual interest that others have in them. It is believed that men are more likely to overestimate the interest level of women. On the other hand, women are said to underestimate men’s interest level. This is attributed to the fact that the evolutionary cost of underestimation is relatively high for men when compared to women. The overperception bias is considered to be a corollary of the sexual underperception bias which refers to the tendency among people, mostly women, to underestimate the interest level of people of the opposite sex.

Source: The Hindu, 19/12/2018

What is savanna principle in Psychology?

This refers to the hypothesis that the human brain is adapted primarily to the conditions in which human ancestors survived once upon a time rather than to the modern age. The term was coined by American evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa in an academic article published in 2004 to state that the human brain may be adapted to the time when human ancestors lived in the African savannas. The Savanna principle has been used to explain why a lot of human behaviour in the modern age seems irrational. Since the modern age is relatively recent in evolutionary terms, the human brain may not have evolved sufficiently to deal with the modern environment.

Source: The Hindu, 29/11/2018

In psychology, what is illusion of control?

This refers to a form of cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate the extent of their control over external events. It often leads people to believe that they can influence things or events that are actually well beyond their direct influence. The phenomenon is named after a 1975 paper by American psychologist Ellen Langer. The illusion of control is prevalent among gamblers who believe that certain tricks or repeated routines can influence the outcome of bets even though bets are simply chance events influenced mostly just by luck. It can lead to overoptimism about the future and disappointment.

Source: The Hindu, 5/11/2018

It’s time India gave serious thought to joint parenting

The Supreme Court has sought the Centre’s response on a petition seeking a “joint parenting plan” to reduce the trauma faced by children of divorced couples. Given the impact that alienation from either parent can have on the child, choosing between the father and the mother without taking a considered view of the possibilities of joint parenting might work against the child’s interests.

The Supreme Court on Monday sought the Centre’s response on an NGO’s petition seeking a “joint parenting plan” to reduce the trauma faced by children of divorced couples. Petitioner Child Rights Foundation has also sought guidelines for custody battles in the courts, where it said children of those undergoing divorce often face a hostile environment owing to attempts at brainwashing by either parent. At present, courts are empowered to grant a child’s custody to either parent depending on the child’s overall interests and well-being. The petition has pleaded that both parents be granted equal custody rights.

The prevalent practice in the country is to hand over custody to either the father or the mother, taking into account the best interests of the child. But given the impact that alienation from either parent can have on the child, choosing between the father and the mother without taking a considered view of the possibilities of joint parenting might work against the child’s interests. Granting parenting rights to just one parent can play havoc with the child’s emotional and psychological well-being. “Non-custodial parents are relegated to the role of mere visitors in their child’s life and are not allowed to fulfil their parenting role, resulting in the destruction of the parent-child relationship,” argues the petition.

Experts say alienation from either parent makes children more prone to dropping out from school, indulging in crime, taking to drugs, or harbour suicidal thoughts.

But the concept of joint parenting also has its critics. Detractors argue that shared parenting is an impractical alternative to granting exclusive custody to one parent, with visitation rights to the other. The child cannot be expected to shuttle between visiting the residences of the two parents. But the consensus of the judiciary appears to be moving towards shared parenting, albeit gradually. In 2013, the Karnataka High Court ruled in a case that both parents were entitled to get custody and brought into operation an appropriate parenting plan. In 2015, the Law Commission of India, headed by former chief justice of the Delhi High Court AP Shah sought an amendment to the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, 1956, spelling out the conditions that the court should consider before exercising the option of joint custody. Before proposing the option, the court needs to assess whether the parents are mature, responsible and willing to agree upon decisions that affect the child’s welfare. The court should also assess whether the parents will be able to jointly design and implement a day-to-day care plan that fosters stability.

Shared parenting systems exist in a number of countries around the world including the US, the UK, Australia, South Africa and the Netherlands. With divorce rates on the rise in India, it’s time our lawmakers gave serious thought to amending the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act to alleviate the trauma that children of estranged parents undergo during the divorce proceedings and the custodial battle. The court could consider appointing at least one trained child psychologist or clinical psychologist in every family court. This will help alleviate the trauma faced by children during custodial litigation

aasheesh.sharma@htlive.com

Source: Hindustan Times, 12/09/2018

What is Construal Level Theory in Psychology?

This describes how psychological distance affects the way in which human beings perceive various things. Objects or events that are distant to the human mind are generally perceived to be more abstract than things that are closer to the mind. Among other things, the idea has been used to explain how modern warfare desensitises soldiers from the stigma of killing fellow human beings. As soldiers using modern warfare technology can kill fellow human beings at a comfortable distance without having to be directly exposed to the effects of killing, they are prone to construe killing as an abstract action.

Source: The Hindu, 10/09/2018

7 tips for getting over disappointment

Getting knocked down is part of life. And so is bouncing back. Here’s how you can learn to do it right

Against my best judgment, I succumbed to Powerball fever and bought a ticket for a recent massive payout. Why had I been resistant to doing so? Because while the odds of winning the jackpot were 1 in 292 million, the likelihood of ending up disappointed were 291,999,999 in 292 million.

Most of us are aware the odds are ever not in our favor, but that inconvenient statistical truth does not prevent us from indulging a fantasy or two about what we would do were we to win. In essence, we buy hope for $2 [Rs 140] ticket — and that hope allows us to overlook the fact that we’re virtually guaranteed to lose. Hope gives us a few hours to indulge the extraordinarily remote if delicious possibility that we might actually win. Hope encourages us to visualise how satisfying it would be to march into work, tell our boss what we really think of them, and declare, “I quit!” or how rewarding it would be to see our parents cry with joy when we buy them a huge mansion.

Hope is great, but it comes with a downside — disappointment. The more time we spend fantasising about how amazing it would be to win, the greater our disappointment is likely to be when we lose. The day before the Powerball drawing, there was a lot of hope in the air. The day after? A lot of disappointment.

So, for the millions who had to force a smile and mumble a hello to their boss while dealing with letdown (myself included), here are seven strategies for getting over disappointment:

1 Give yourself a limited time to feel bad

Acknowledge the letdown but don’t get mired in it. If you didn’t win the lottery, give yourself an hour to feel bad. If you didn’t get a promotion or if your bonus was less than you hoped for, give yourself a day—but then move on.

2 Don’t ruminate about what might have been

The more you dwell on the disappointment, the more it will hurt and disrupt your ability to focus, concentrate, problem-solve, or be creative. So be careful not to feed the disappointment and deepen your emotional hurt.

3 Avoid self-pity

Self-pity comes with a price—it takes away feelings of empowerment and agency and makes us feel as though we don’t have control over our lives. So indulge it at your peril; it can foster a bad mood and even depression if you get stuck for too long.

4 Use self-compassion

Be sympathetic toward yourself and compassionate about the fact that you hurt. Don’t beat yourself up or become self-critical; doing so will only hurt your confidence, damage your self-esteem, and make you feel worse.

5 Put it in perspective

We often feel disappointed about things we are unlikely to remember in a month’s time. How many of us will think back from five years in the future to that day in 2016 when we didn’t win the lottery? Very few. If the disappointment you experienced was significant, try to focus on the larger picture of your life and remind yourself of all the things that are going well and for which you can be grateful.

6 Identify the next opportunity

This is easier to do with lottery tickets, of course, than with more significant events in your life that cause disappointment, but as they say in baseball: There’s always next season. Regardless of what disappointed you, spend a few moments figuring out when and how you can try again.

7 Remember: Success does not equal happiness

Research on lottery winners has found that their level of happiness rises dramatically after they win, but then reverts to the same level of happiness they felt before they won—usually within a year.

The writer is a psychologist with a private practice in Manhattan. He is the author of Emotional First Aid: Healing Rejection, Guilt, Failure and Other Everyday Hurts 

Source: Mumbai Mirror, 3.08.18

Why being happy all the time is bad

Rachel Hosie

THE INDEPENDENT





It Can Leave Us Emotionally Stunted: Expert

In recent years, wealth is no longer seen as the ultimate marker of success in soceity , but rather happiness. Inspirational Instagrammers tell us to “banish negative thoughts“, self-help books claim to provide the secrets to perpetual positivity , and we think we must never feel anything less than awesome.But, a Danish psychology professor has said that our obsession with happiness could have a serio us dark side. Svend Brinkmann from Aalborg University said forcing ourselves to be happy all the time could leave us emotionally stunted. Moreover, happiness isn't the appropriate response for all situations in life.
“Our thoughts and emotions should mirror the world. When something bad happens, we should be allowed to have negative thoughts and feelings about it because that's how we understand the world,“ said Brinkmann. According to Brinkmann, we won't be able to cope by desperately trying to be happy all the time when something bad does happen. “Life is wonderful from time to time, but it's also tragic. People die in our lives, we lose them, if we have only been accustomed to being allowed to have positive thoughts, then these realities can strike us even more intensely when they happen.“
Brinkmann acknowledged that there were people who seemed naturally to have more cheery outlooks on life. But he said there was a danger in happiness becoming a necessity and warned of the perils of companies insisting on employees being perpetually upbeat. “When you engage with people and you work in teams, then these personality traits become much more important. That's why we put much more emphasis on them, because we want to exploit humans and their emotional lives,“ he said.
“I think this is a dark side of positivity. Our feelings tend to become commodities and that means we're very easily alienated from our feelings.“ He also feared that society was getting to a point where people don't even feel they could discuss their worries with their friends because they thought they needed to pretend everything was rosy all the time. He said without the bad things in life you'd never appreciate the good, and it was fine to feel sad, angry , ashamed and happy too.
Source: Times of India, 10-03-2017

Depression on the rise but India does not have a policy for the mentally ill

The World Health Organization (WHO) in its global health estimates on depression for 2015 has said over five crore Indians suffered from depression and over three crore others from anxiety disorders that year. But sadly in this country, this medical and social challenge has always been brushed under the carpet, though things are changing, albeit slowly. Last year, actor Deepika Padukone came clean on her struggle with depression. Among non-celebrities, however, any sign of deviating from the expected and usual, emotionally and behaviourally, is viewed with a sense of horror. And so the condition festers unheeded till it spirals out of control. Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide, and is a major contributor to the overall global burden of disease, WHO has said, asserting that more women are affected by depression than men and at its worst, depression can lead to suicide.

Is India equipped to tackle such a burgeoning crisis? No. There is no insurance coverage for a person with a mental disorder. The WHO Mental Health Atlas 2011 states that the government’s expenditure on mental health was only 0.06% of the total health budget. The country has only 0.301 psychiatrists per 100,000 people. Treatment at the hospitals too leaves much to be desired. The focus is excessively on medication. There are only 3,000 psychiatrists when the estimated requirement is for 11,500. The number of clinical psychologists is just 500 when the estimated requirement is 17,250. Then there are just 400 social workers who can tackle psychiatric patients when 23,000 is the minimum requirement.

Even when it comes to legislation, we are slow. The Mental Healthcare Bill 2013 has been passed in the Rajya Sabha but is awaiting the Lok Sabha’s nod though the bill is progressive in many ways: The definition of mental illness is no more “any mental disorder other than mental retardation.” It is broader and more inclusive. Mental illness is now defined as “a substantial disorder of thinking, mood, perception, orientation or memory that grossly impairs judgment, behaviour, capacity to recognise reality or ability to meet the ordinary demands of life, mental conditions associated with the abuse of alcohol and drugs, but does not include mental retardation which is a condition of arrested or incomplete development of mind of a person, specially characterised by subnormality of intelligence.” Needless to say, along with the passage of the bill, the government needs to invest more money in tackling this challenge.

Source: Hindustan Times, 27-02-2017

Love bigger cause of unhappiness than cash

Charlotte England

THE INDEPENDENT





LSE Study Finds Failed Relationships Have Greater Role In Unhappiness Than Monetary Issues

Economic factors are not the biggest cause of un happiness -failed relationships and mental illness play a far greater role, a major new study into the “origins of happiness“ has found.Eliminating depression and anxiety would reduce misery by 20%, whereas eliminating poverty would only cut it down by 5%, social scientists at the London School of Economics have said, after conducting extensive research into the most effective ways to promote wellbeing and reduce misery .
Treating mental illness would involve no net cost to the public purse, the team added, because the economic benefits would exceed the initial costs. The group, led by economist Richard Layard, said they want to “revolutionise how we think about human priorities“ and promote using the “burgeoning new science of `subjective wellbeing'“ as a measure of successful governance, instead of the economy.
“The evidence shows that the things that matter most for our happiness and for our misery are our social relationships and our mental and physical health,“ said Layard, “This demands a new role for the state -not `wealth creation' but `wellbeing creation'.“ He added: “In the past, the state has successively taken on poverty , un employment, education and physical health. But equally important now are domestic violence, alcoholism, de pression and anxiety conditions, alienated youth, exammania and much else. These should become centre stage.“
Although living stan dards have vastly improved in the last 40 years, levels of enjoyment from life have stayed static for people in Australia, Germany , the US, and the UK, the team said, as they prepared to present their findings for the first time at an OECD co-organised conference on wellbeing, which will be held at the LSE on Monday and Tuesday .
When people evaluate their income or education, they generally measure it against the prevailing local norm, the study found, as a result, overall increases in income or education have little effect on the overall happiness of the population.
In fact, income inequality explains only 1% of the variation in happiness in the community , while mental health differences explain over 4%.Other key findings included education only having a very small effect on life satisfaction, compared with, for example, having a partner. The strongest factor predicting a happy adult life is not children's qualifications but their emotional health, the researchers said, criticising “exam-mania“.

Source: Times of India, 13-12-2016

Dec 16 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

Anti-social behaviour is linked to genes: Study

Kounteya Sinha

London





Swedish researchers have found for the first time that people are genetically predisposed to anti-social behaviour.Both positive and negative experiences influence how genetic variants affect the brain, and thereby, behaviour. “Evidence is accumulating to show that the effects of variants of many genes that are common in the population depend on environmental factors.
Further, these genetic variants affect each other,” said Sheilagh Hodgins of the University of Montreal and its affiliated Institut Universitaire en Sante Mentale de Montreal. “About 25% of Caucasian men carry the less active variant of MAOA. Among them those who experience physical abuse in childhood are more likely than those who are not abused to display serious antisocial behaviour from childhood through adulthood,” Hodgins said.
“Among females it is the high activity variant of the MAOA gene that interacts with adversity in childhood to increase the likelihood of antisocial behaviour,” he added.

Write your blues away

TOPICS

education

school

teaching and learning

students

health

Psychologists suggest that writing about life experiences can have cathartic effects and promote well-being.

Each day, your anxiety ratchets up a few notches as you await your exam results. Being one of the few who were not recruited during campus placements, your morale is at an all-time-low. Over the past few weeks, you have been having frequent skirmishes with your parents who are equally worried about your future. You try and keep your cool, but, sometimes, life can be overwhelming, and stress can take a toll on your physical and mental well-being.

But what can you do when circumstances are beyond your control? Talking with your parents and peers only seems to stress you out further. You do not want to present a sour face to your friends who are doing well, and your parents are too agitated themselves to counsel you. So, how do you deal with the gnawing tension that is simmering within you? The answer is so simple that it almost seems nonsensical — write about your problems. Yes, you read it right. Research by psychologists suggests that writing about life experiences can have cathartic effects and can promote well-being. Sounds far-fetched? Read on.

Words can heal

Psychologist James Pennebaker has been investigating the therapeutic power of writing for over two decades. In a 1997 article in Psychological Science, where he provides an overall review of various studies, he claims that individuals who pen down their thoughts about emotional experiences, show “significant physical and mental health improvements.” Most studies follow a basic paradigm where individuals are asked to write about a given topic for 15 to 30 minutes for three to five consecutive days. Those who write about emotional events require fewer visits to the doctor than they did prior to the writing exercise; this effect was found to last for up to six months to a year in different studies. By contrast, a control group that writes about superficial topics does not show similar gains in health. Likewise, writing about upsetting events, while initially distressing, promotes well-being in the long term. Interestingly, students who were in the emotional writing group got better grades in the months right after the study.

The body responds

In another overview of expressive writing studies, published in 2005 in Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, authors Karen Baike and Kay Wilhelm list specific health benefits like better lung and liver function, lower blood pressure and enhanced immune functioning. Other benefits involve less absenteeism from work, enhanced performance in sports and better working memory, which refers to the amount of information a person can hold in his or her mind so that it can be manipulated if required.

In order for expressive writing to have positive outcomes, you must ensure that what you write remains confidential as you do not want to be judged by it. Further, do not worry about the technical aspects of writing like spelling, grammar and punctuation. What is important is that you process your deepest feelings and thoughts about emotional issues that have impacted you.

Impact

While all of the above studies used a similar writing paradigm of asking subjects to record their heartfelt and intense responses, there is another form of journalling that is also associated with beneficial outcomes. In a paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2003, Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough found that people who maintained a weekly gratitude journal, where they listed five things, either great or small, that they were thankful for, were more optimistic about their life. Further, when participants did this exercise daily, they were more likely to report that they helped another person. In another study, published in the Journal of Writing Researchin 2009, Steven Toepfer and Kathleen Walker examined the impact of writing three letters of gratitude over an eight-week period. Participants, who were all college students, were asked to write letters to people who they felt grateful to in a significant way. The researchers found that students who engaged in this exercise experienced greater subjective well-being.

Keep a diary

Now that the evidence has been presented for you, perhaps it is time to make those diary entries and write more ‘thank you’ letters. For the next few weeks, try maintaining a journal where you jot down what you are grateful for. It could be anything from the lofty to the mundane. Or, surprise a family member or close friend with a letter where you voice your heartfelt appreciation. If you feel your well-being improves as a result, it won’t take much to keep up these exercises. However, if you feel that your miseries and misgivings are causing mental mayhem and preventing you from acting in positive ways, don’t hesitate to seek professional help.

The author is director, Prayatna. Email: arunasankara@gmail.com

Keywords: anxiety, exam stress, students stress issues, students issues, mental health

Sep 03 2014 : Mirror (Pune)

Your skin is much smarter than you think

MM





Neurons in human skin perform advanced calculations, previously be lieved that only the brain could per form. This is according to a study from Umea University in Sweden published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. A fundamental characteristic of neurons that extend into the skin and record touch, so-called first-order neurons in the tactile system, is that they branch in the skin so that each neuron reports touch from many highly-sensitive zones on the skin.According to researchers at Umea University, this branching allows first-order tactile neurons not only to send signals to the brain that something has touched the skin, but also process geometric data about the object . “Our work has shown that two types of firstorder tactile neurons that supply the sensitive skin at our fingertips not only signal information about when and how intensely an object is touched, but also information about the touched object's shape“ says Andrew Pruszynski, who is one of the researchers behind the study.
The study also shows that the sensitivity of individual neurons to the shape of an object depends on the layout of the neuron's highly-sensitive zones in the skin.
“Perhaps the most surprising result of our study is that these peripheral neurons, which are engaged when a fingertip examines an object, perform the same type of calculations done by neurons in the cerebral cortex. Somewhat simplified, it means that our touch experiences are already processed by neurons in the skin before they reach the brain for further processing“ says Andrew Pruszynski. MM

Jul 18 2014 : Mirror (Pune)

HOW TO FIND INDIAN LOVE - Emotional Efficiency

BY PAROMITA VOHRA





Love has never been a very submissive character, but perhaps we might be in an era where it is being tamed. And its potential vanquisher is a new way of being: Emotional Efficiency.Are you cautious in romance to the point of being constantly guarded? Do you always leave a situation before it gets messy? Do you carefully calibrate your romantic interactions to ensure things go smoothly for you and you are not drawn into uncomfortable situations? Do you often say -I don't want to make any false promises? Are you quick to move on? Then, I guess, you are an emotionally efficient person.
Most conversations about love nowadays seem very sensible.
For example, K, a 28-year-old designer is seeing a woman from another city. When we meet I demand details. I get a matter-of-fact account followed by a risk assessment. We're taking one day at a time. We'll see where it goes. We're so different you know. There is no fanciful talk of fantasy, foolish smiles, heartache, missing and longing, but instead, a kind of admirable control, understanding and well, sensibleness.
I run into A, a 23-year-old software professional, and ask her how things are going with her new boyfriend. “Oh, we're not seeing each other,“ she tells me -we enjoyed really different things, so we thought it's better to part ways.
What fault can one find with such amicability! Looks like here's a sophisticated generation, which is going to be friends with all its exes. No scenes, no fuss, no false expectations, less hurt, less baggage, less toxicity. It's enviable compared to the complete loss of control and dignity, frequent encounters with humiliation and unfairness that once were part and parcel of the love thing.
No wastage here, only efficient composure. Where has this efficiency come from? My friend S, a 55year-old filmmaker, thinks it's because the relationship between the genders today is much more collegial and friendly -more `matey' he calls it. His 24-year-old daughter has been staying over at various male friends' houses to watch the recent football matches, and parents feel it's no more loaded than any old-fashioned pyjama party. So perhaps this friendship has translated into kinder romantic relationships? Also, we no longer think love happens just once, and is for keeps, so perhaps we enter and exit relationships without too much hoo ha, which is obviously A Good Thing.
But some of this being sensible about relationships also comes from a world of self-preservation, rather than kindness and fairness. We live in times where we think constantly of our progress in the world -networking, moving ahead in one's career, success of a certain type. We don't want to waste time on what does not present its immediate usefulness in these linear goals. Relationships too must conform to the imperatives of this new world.
We think -will this relationship destabilise me in some way and make me lose focus? In that case better to get out before things get sticky. We efficiently slice and dice our emotions till they add up neatly so we can insure ourselves against every risk.
The flipside of emotional efficiency is that we become increasingly unable to deal with emotional challenges. We grow more spiritually secluded, become less emotionally resilient. Love's so-called inefficiencies are a lesson in regeneration. They show us that it is possible to feel devastated -to become decomposed in a sense -and yet renew and reinvent ourselves in glorious ways, whether together or alone. In protecting ourselves from expected hurts, we may deprive ourselves of unexpected joys. You can write to Paromita Vohra at punemirror.feedback@gmail.com