There is an urgent need to recognise and treat anxiety disorders in children that otherwise might lead to educational underachievement, substance abuse and mental disorders in adulthood, according to a leading child psychiatrist from UT Southwestern Medical Centre.
While writing in New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Graham Emslie said that anxiety disorders in children are frequently unrecognised because they may only report physical aches and may be unable to verbalize “worry” or “fear.”
“Anxiety disorders may cause children to avoid social situations and age-appropriate developmental milestones,” said Emslie.
“Further, the avoidance cycle can lead to less opportunity to develop social skills necessary for success later in life. Treatment would help children learn healthy coping skills,” the expert added.
Previous research has shown that failure to identify these disorders early leads to educational underachievement and increased rates of anxiety disorders, depression and substance abuse later in life.
The editorial accompanied a study led by John Walkup of Johns Hopkins Medical Institute compared medication treatment, cognitive behavioural therapy that examines thinking patterns in order to modify behaviour, and the combination of both treatments in children and teens with anxiety disorders.
The results showed that antidepressant medications and cognitive behavioural therapy were equally effective treatments for anxiety and that the combination of both treatments was most effective.
Emslie said he hopes future studies will help determine what type to treatment is best for individual patients. (ANI)
1/10/2009
Causes of Anxiety Disorders
Many prominent psychiatrists and therapists have different theories regarding the causes of this disorder. Many state that genetics may be the key to understanding such disorders. Others state it arises from circumstances people experience, thus making it a learned behavior. Many more have no real idea as to why extreme anxiety is caused in the first place.
We may identify some of the common causes of anxiety as being brought about by some mental condition, or perhaps a physical condition. The misuse of drugs, also the effects of certain types of prescribed medications can sometimes become press backgrounder of the causes. Also there is the possibility that a combination of the above causes can lead to an anxiety disorder.
Causes of anxiety illnesses are due to certain mental conditions which may also include other types of anxiety disorders such as panic disorders. There online press release also the physical conditions that can give rise to anxiety. Conditions such as Palpitations, dizziness and shortness of breath can all be considered to be causes.
Other reasons may include coffee and caffeine based beverages, amphetamines such as speed, an overactive thyroid muscle, abnormal heart rhythms and many types of heart problems. An example of such heart problems is mitral valve prolapse.
While these may be some of the causes of anxiety there are many others which play their part in causing anxiety disorders. Many other types of anxiety disorders may themselves contribute towards the disorder. This can be Generalized Anxiety Disorder or GAD, Phobic disorders and, or Stress Disorder.
General stress caused from a number of different situations can also cause anxiety. Instances like stress experienced at work, stress involving website press release problem, stress resulting from personal relationships like marriage and stress due to trauma, such as the death of a loved one. Stress due to a serious illness and financial stress may also be contributory causes of anxiety.
Apart from these causes you may experience anxiety because of the type of medication that you may be taking. These medications can be prescription drugs prescribed by your doctor, to treat other web site press release or in some cases they may even be illegal drugs like cocaine. Another thing to consider is that the side effects from certain drugs can also be part of the causes of anxiety.
We may never really know the reasons why extreme anxiety develops, because the exact causes of anxiety are still a mystery. Hopefully one day we will understand the causes of anxiety disorder and be able to treat it long before it becomes a serious problem.
We may identify some of the common causes of anxiety as being brought about by some mental condition, or perhaps a physical condition. The misuse of drugs, also the effects of certain types of prescribed medications can sometimes become press backgrounder of the causes. Also there is the possibility that a combination of the above causes can lead to an anxiety disorder.
Causes of anxiety illnesses are due to certain mental conditions which may also include other types of anxiety disorders such as panic disorders. There online press release also the physical conditions that can give rise to anxiety. Conditions such as Palpitations, dizziness and shortness of breath can all be considered to be causes.
Other reasons may include coffee and caffeine based beverages, amphetamines such as speed, an overactive thyroid muscle, abnormal heart rhythms and many types of heart problems. An example of such heart problems is mitral valve prolapse.
While these may be some of the causes of anxiety there are many others which play their part in causing anxiety disorders. Many other types of anxiety disorders may themselves contribute towards the disorder. This can be Generalized Anxiety Disorder or GAD, Phobic disorders and, or Stress Disorder.
General stress caused from a number of different situations can also cause anxiety. Instances like stress experienced at work, stress involving website press release problem, stress resulting from personal relationships like marriage and stress due to trauma, such as the death of a loved one. Stress due to a serious illness and financial stress may also be contributory causes of anxiety.
Apart from these causes you may experience anxiety because of the type of medication that you may be taking. These medications can be prescription drugs prescribed by your doctor, to treat other web site press release or in some cases they may even be illegal drugs like cocaine. Another thing to consider is that the side effects from certain drugs can also be part of the causes of anxiety.
We may never really know the reasons why extreme anxiety develops, because the exact causes of anxiety are still a mystery. Hopefully one day we will understand the causes of anxiety disorder and be able to treat it long before it becomes a serious problem.
Dealing with the anxiety of not smoking
Was your New Year’s resolution to quit smoking cigarettes? Whether it was out of concern for your health, or because of a loved one’s concern for you, the decision to stop smoking itself causes anxiety.
To add to the problem, almost all newbie non-smokers gain weight, adding to the anxiety of withdrawal. This is because nicotine is an appetite suppressant – when it’s absent, appetite returns with a vengeance. To add to the problem, food meets the natural desire for comfort during times of anxiety.
One way to address these dual anxieties and help you carry through your New Year’s resolution is to use the Bach Flower Essence Rescue ® Remedy. British homeopath and physician Dr. Edward Bach developed this combination of essences from five different flowers in the 1930’s and it is now used by millions of people when they find the stress of life to be overwhelming.
The Rescue ® product comes in the form of a dropper bottle, a spray bottle, or even lozenges which provide the gratification of food. Instead of reaching for a cigarette next time, perhaps try Rescue Remedy. Soothing jangled nerves naturally will save your lungs and maybe a few pounds too.
To add to the problem, almost all newbie non-smokers gain weight, adding to the anxiety of withdrawal. This is because nicotine is an appetite suppressant – when it’s absent, appetite returns with a vengeance. To add to the problem, food meets the natural desire for comfort during times of anxiety.
One way to address these dual anxieties and help you carry through your New Year’s resolution is to use the Bach Flower Essence Rescue ® Remedy. British homeopath and physician Dr. Edward Bach developed this combination of essences from five different flowers in the 1930’s and it is now used by millions of people when they find the stress of life to be overwhelming.
The Rescue ® product comes in the form of a dropper bottle, a spray bottle, or even lozenges which provide the gratification of food. Instead of reaching for a cigarette next time, perhaps try Rescue Remedy. Soothing jangled nerves naturally will save your lungs and maybe a few pounds too.
Social anxiety disorder puts welfare recipients at risk for economic hardship
Welfare recipients with social anxiety disorder worked only six of 12 months, compared with about nine months for those who did not suffer from this disorder or from major depression. By comparison, women with depression only worked about eight of 12 months.
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Women on welfare who suffer from social anxiety find it harder to work—and leave welfare—than women without the disorder, according to a new University of Michigan study.Welfare recipients with social anxiety disorder worked only six of 12 months, compared with about nine months for those who did not suffer from this disorder or from major depression. By comparison, women with depression only worked about eight of 12 months.Social anxiety disorder is a persistent fear of social or performance situations that might involve exposure to unfamiliar people or possible scrutiny by others. This condition, which often remains undetected and untreated, undermines a woman's ability to become self-sufficient and impedes efforts to reduce welfare costs through return-to-work programs, the U-M researchers said."Women with social anxiety disorder are at risk of extreme economic hardship," said Richard Tolman, a professor in the School of Social Work and the study's lead author. "These welfare recipients may lose benefits if they fail to enter the work force rapidly and if they exceed time limits for support."Tolman and colleagues examined whether social anxiety disorder was an obstacle to successful employment among women receiving welfare. They analyzed data on 609 respondents who completed four annual interviews from the Women's Employment Study.More than a third of the women cared for a child younger than age 2 and more than 60 percent lived in poverty in the month before the interview.Interview questions included measures of social anxiety disorder, other mental health diagnoses, welfare and work status, and other variables."Very few of the women in this study received any help for a treatable problem that made it nearly impossible for them to get a job and get off of welfare," said Joseph Himle, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and School of Social Work.The findings also highlight that other barriers—such as poor physical health of the women and their children, low educational attainment and inadequate transportation—remain a concern and are significant obstacles to work for women in this disadvantaged economic group. An accumulation of multiple barriers increases interference with work efforts, the researchers said."With unemployment growing rapidly in these tough economic times, people suffering from social anxiety disorder may be at even greater risk," said James Abelson, a professor of psychiatry. "Social fears may increase their risk of being laid off, and discomfort making phone calls or interviewing will greatly undermine efforts to find new employment."In a follow-up study led by Himle, the research team is developing and testing a treatment program specifically designed for this disadvantaged population. The researchers hope to increase job success for those whose social anxiety has contributed to their lack of employment.Since the study focused on women, the researchers do not know if the findings are relevant to low-income men, who are generally denied public welfare benefits in the United States.The study's other authors are Deborah Bybee, research scientist, School of Social Work; Jody Hoffman of Ann Arbor Consultation Services; and Michelle Van Etten-Lee, adjunct assistant professor, Department of Psychology.The findings appear in the current issue of Psychiatric Services.
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Women on welfare who suffer from social anxiety find it harder to work—and leave welfare—than women without the disorder, according to a new University of Michigan study.Welfare recipients with social anxiety disorder worked only six of 12 months, compared with about nine months for those who did not suffer from this disorder or from major depression. By comparison, women with depression only worked about eight of 12 months.Social anxiety disorder is a persistent fear of social or performance situations that might involve exposure to unfamiliar people or possible scrutiny by others. This condition, which often remains undetected and untreated, undermines a woman's ability to become self-sufficient and impedes efforts to reduce welfare costs through return-to-work programs, the U-M researchers said."Women with social anxiety disorder are at risk of extreme economic hardship," said Richard Tolman, a professor in the School of Social Work and the study's lead author. "These welfare recipients may lose benefits if they fail to enter the work force rapidly and if they exceed time limits for support."Tolman and colleagues examined whether social anxiety disorder was an obstacle to successful employment among women receiving welfare. They analyzed data on 609 respondents who completed four annual interviews from the Women's Employment Study.More than a third of the women cared for a child younger than age 2 and more than 60 percent lived in poverty in the month before the interview.Interview questions included measures of social anxiety disorder, other mental health diagnoses, welfare and work status, and other variables."Very few of the women in this study received any help for a treatable problem that made it nearly impossible for them to get a job and get off of welfare," said Joseph Himle, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and School of Social Work.The findings also highlight that other barriers—such as poor physical health of the women and their children, low educational attainment and inadequate transportation—remain a concern and are significant obstacles to work for women in this disadvantaged economic group. An accumulation of multiple barriers increases interference with work efforts, the researchers said."With unemployment growing rapidly in these tough economic times, people suffering from social anxiety disorder may be at even greater risk," said James Abelson, a professor of psychiatry. "Social fears may increase their risk of being laid off, and discomfort making phone calls or interviewing will greatly undermine efforts to find new employment."In a follow-up study led by Himle, the research team is developing and testing a treatment program specifically designed for this disadvantaged population. The researchers hope to increase job success for those whose social anxiety has contributed to their lack of employment.Since the study focused on women, the researchers do not know if the findings are relevant to low-income men, who are generally denied public welfare benefits in the United States.The study's other authors are Deborah Bybee, research scientist, School of Social Work; Jody Hoffman of Ann Arbor Consultation Services; and Michelle Van Etten-Lee, adjunct assistant professor, Department of Psychology.The findings appear in the current issue of Psychiatric Services.
Ecstasy for treatment of traumatic anxiety
TREATMENT with a pharmacological version of the drug ecstasy makes PTSD patients more receptive to psychotherapy, and contributes to lasting improvement. Norwegian researchers explain why.People who have survived severe trauma - such as war, torture, disasters, or sexual assault - will often experience after-effects, in a condition called posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The symptoms can include anxiety, uncontrolled emotional reactions, nightmares, intrusive memories, sleep and concentration difficulties, evasion of situations that resemble the trauma, and feelings of shame or amnesia. For many, the condition gradually goes away by itself. Other individuals experience PTSD as a chronic condition that needs treatment, which typically involves drugs that help with anxiety and depression, and/or psychotherapy.More than just happy pillsPsychotherapy usually involves a combination of talk sessions and tasks. In exposure therapy, the focus is to help the patient digest the traumatic event in a safe context. So the patient realizes that the memories of the traumatic event and the situation surrounding it are not dangerous. The patient learns to deal with the traumatic incident as a painful memory, and not as if it will happen again.“Studies show that exposure therapy can be a very effective treatment of post traumatic disorders. Yet far too many patients receive treatment only with drugs. But anxiety reducing drugs and anti-depressants may work against our efforts and reduce the patient’s emotional learning”, says Psl-+rjan Johansen, a psychologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Along with Teri Krebs, a neurobiologist at the university, he is now exploring what happens when chronic trauma patients are treated with a combination of psychotherapy and pharmacological versions of ecstasy, MDMA (3,4 methylenedioxy-N-methyl-amphetamine). A U.S. study,* recently conducted by psychiatrist Michael Mithoefer, has shown remarkable success with this combination
Depression and pregnancy
Pregnancy is a joyous occasion. Pregnancy, though, does not protect women from experiencing mild to severe depression. Medication and/or therapy may be recommended.
Treating depression is always important and it can be successfully treated during and after pregnancy. Some antidepressant/antianxiety medications can be used safely throughout pregnancy and breast feeding.
Paxil (generic name Paroxetine) has been shown to cause cardiac malformations in the fetus and absolutely should not be used during the first trimester of pregnancy. There is no evidence that children have harmful long-term effects as a result of their mother taking antidepressant medication during pregnancy.
No medication is 100 percent safe during pregnancy, but some are safer than others. Mood stabilizers generally are not safe during pregnancy. If you have been diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder, discuss this with your health care provider.
Untreated depression during pregnancy has been proven to lead to higher rates of:
Please share your experiences.
Treating depression is always important and it can be successfully treated during and after pregnancy. Some antidepressant/antianxiety medications can be used safely throughout pregnancy and breast feeding.
Paxil (generic name Paroxetine) has been shown to cause cardiac malformations in the fetus and absolutely should not be used during the first trimester of pregnancy. There is no evidence that children have harmful long-term effects as a result of their mother taking antidepressant medication during pregnancy.
No medication is 100 percent safe during pregnancy, but some are safer than others. Mood stabilizers generally are not safe during pregnancy. If you have been diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder, discuss this with your health care provider.
Untreated depression during pregnancy has been proven to lead to higher rates of:
- Lower birth weights
- Pre-term labor (depression doubles the risk)
- Increased use of alcohol and drugs to self-medicate
Please share your experiences.
Dysthymia treatment can help reduce depression symptoms
Dysthymia is a chronic form of depression that lasts at least two years. Dysthymia symptoms can include depressed mood, appetite changes, sleep problems, concentration difficulties, poor energy, and feelings of worthlessness, pessimism or irritability. The symptoms are not as intense as severe depression symptoms. Still, dysthymia can cause significant problems in one's life.
People struggling with dysthymia are at risk for developing major depression, substance abuse problems and heart disease. Dysthymia tends to develop prior to the age of 20. Women having double the risk men do. Because it starts early on, you may have gotten used to your symptoms and just assumed you had to put up with them.
But don't get discouraged. We are fortunate to have good treatments, including medication, for many forms of depression, including dysthymia. A recent Dartmouth College study that looked at problem solving therapy and the use of a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) such a Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa or Lexapro showed good results.
When you get depressed, your thoughts can be distorted. The longer you've suffered from depression, the more ingrained your thought patterns are. Talk therapy can help to reverse these negative thinking patterns. As always, see your health care provider for accurate diagnosis and, if necessary, medical work up. And, if you've had any experience with dysthymia, please share your story.
People struggling with dysthymia are at risk for developing major depression, substance abuse problems and heart disease. Dysthymia tends to develop prior to the age of 20. Women having double the risk men do. Because it starts early on, you may have gotten used to your symptoms and just assumed you had to put up with them.
But don't get discouraged. We are fortunate to have good treatments, including medication, for many forms of depression, including dysthymia. A recent Dartmouth College study that looked at problem solving therapy and the use of a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) such a Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa or Lexapro showed good results.
When you get depressed, your thoughts can be distorted. The longer you've suffered from depression, the more ingrained your thought patterns are. Talk therapy can help to reverse these negative thinking patterns. As always, see your health care provider for accurate diagnosis and, if necessary, medical work up. And, if you've had any experience with dysthymia, please share your story.
Depression recovery program explained
More than two million people in Canada suffer from depression annually and during stressful times, this disease can intensify, says Dr. Neil Nedley, presenter for his eight-week Depression Recovery Program that will be offered in the lakecity during February.
He says many factors can lead to depression including unrealistic goals, added financial stress, family expectations, and change of schedule or eating patterns. “But the cure may not be as difficult as you might think. Actually, just a few basic lifestyle changes can help you break free of the trap of depression.”
Nedley, has put together his eight-week Depression Recovery Program from his 15 plus years of research and clinical experience helping his patients.
The program he offers is being hosted in the lakecity by Valley Outreach, the Williams Lake SDA Church, and Lakeside Colour Productions, says Rita Corbett, one of the SDA directors.
“This seminar is not only excellent for people who are depressed, but also for those who have family members or friends who are depressed,” Corbett says.
“It will focus on brain health and what a person can do to treat depression as well as the healthy lifestyle habits they can adopt to keep depression from ever happening — even for those with a genetic predisposition to mental illness.
This course can help anyone!”
The program begins Monday, Feb. 2 at 7 p.m.
It will help people to identify the underlying causes, or “hits,” which bring on depression. “Every case is as different as each individual, but the 10 Hit Categories summarize all the possible causes for depression. And determining your causes can be as simple as taking the depression questionnaire in this program,” says Nedley.
Nedley is also the author of the books Proof Positive and Depression: the Way Out, and works to teach participants how to improve brain function, maximize IQ in children, increase energy, boost concentration, engage in healthy sleep habits, improve physical performance, and gain renewed hope.
In addition to the essential information on lifestyle and diet, Nedley will also cover by DVD the benefits and risks of psychiatric counseling and medication.
Stone said that those attending the sessions will learn how to understand depression, eliminate negative habits of body and mind, develop healthy patterns, and get more out of the day by enhancing brain function.
Participants will spend less time frustrated by stress, decrease the risk for many diseases, say goodbye to negative thinking, and understand the true power of positive thinking.
Nedley will show better ways to combat depression — how to know what you can change and what you can’t, the importance of minimizing drug use, and how to make use of effective natural therapies.
Dr. Neil Nedley has served thousands of families for more than 15 years through his medical practice and extensive, worldwide lecturing.
He educates students of all ages in nutrition and healthy lifestyle principles through his radio shows, satellite and cable television, and live appearances.
Nedley also helped develop the Omega-3 Uplift bar, a tasty way to get more than 3,000 mg of Omega-3 in each bar which is specially designed for optimal brain health.
Those interested should call Rita Corbett at 250-392-6598 or come to 782 Ninth Ave. North for the class beginning Feb. 2, 7-9 p.m.
He says many factors can lead to depression including unrealistic goals, added financial stress, family expectations, and change of schedule or eating patterns. “But the cure may not be as difficult as you might think. Actually, just a few basic lifestyle changes can help you break free of the trap of depression.”
Nedley, has put together his eight-week Depression Recovery Program from his 15 plus years of research and clinical experience helping his patients.
The program he offers is being hosted in the lakecity by Valley Outreach, the Williams Lake SDA Church, and Lakeside Colour Productions, says Rita Corbett, one of the SDA directors.
“This seminar is not only excellent for people who are depressed, but also for those who have family members or friends who are depressed,” Corbett says.
“It will focus on brain health and what a person can do to treat depression as well as the healthy lifestyle habits they can adopt to keep depression from ever happening — even for those with a genetic predisposition to mental illness.
This course can help anyone!”
The program begins Monday, Feb. 2 at 7 p.m.
It will help people to identify the underlying causes, or “hits,” which bring on depression. “Every case is as different as each individual, but the 10 Hit Categories summarize all the possible causes for depression. And determining your causes can be as simple as taking the depression questionnaire in this program,” says Nedley.
Nedley is also the author of the books Proof Positive and Depression: the Way Out, and works to teach participants how to improve brain function, maximize IQ in children, increase energy, boost concentration, engage in healthy sleep habits, improve physical performance, and gain renewed hope.
In addition to the essential information on lifestyle and diet, Nedley will also cover by DVD the benefits and risks of psychiatric counseling and medication.
Stone said that those attending the sessions will learn how to understand depression, eliminate negative habits of body and mind, develop healthy patterns, and get more out of the day by enhancing brain function.
Participants will spend less time frustrated by stress, decrease the risk for many diseases, say goodbye to negative thinking, and understand the true power of positive thinking.
Nedley will show better ways to combat depression — how to know what you can change and what you can’t, the importance of minimizing drug use, and how to make use of effective natural therapies.
Dr. Neil Nedley has served thousands of families for more than 15 years through his medical practice and extensive, worldwide lecturing.
He educates students of all ages in nutrition and healthy lifestyle principles through his radio shows, satellite and cable television, and live appearances.
Nedley also helped develop the Omega-3 Uplift bar, a tasty way to get more than 3,000 mg of Omega-3 in each bar which is specially designed for optimal brain health.
Those interested should call Rita Corbett at 250-392-6598 or come to 782 Ninth Ave. North for the class beginning Feb. 2, 7-9 p.m.
Learning lessons from the Great Depression
Mickey HepnerThe Edmond Sun
With a steady drumbeat of bad economic news and a recession that looks to be the most severe since World War II, it is inevitable that there would be many concerns about a repeat of the Great Depression. Such concerns, however, are unwarranted.There is clearly reason to be concerned about the economy, and a need for a stimulus package of some sort. The Congressional Budget Office released its latest economic outlook last week in which they predicted the current recession will turn out to be the longest downturn since World War II. On Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. economy shed another 524,000 jobs in December bringing the total job loss for 2008 to 2.6 million. Most disturbingly though, is that the job losses accelerated at the end of 2008 with the economy shedding 1.9 million jobs in just the last four months alone. With the automakers, financial institutions and retailers still struggling, more job losses are likely to come in the next few months.The magnitude of the job losses and the depth of this recession have led some economists to invoke the dreaded “depression” word. Princeton economist and recent Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman’s latest book is even titled “The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008.” Also, a new report by the Center for American Progress shows on its front cover a picture of a Depression-era food line. Before we get too carried away with the Depression references though, let’s look at some facts.Below are the annual changes in U.S. Gross Domestic Product from 1930-33:• 1930: GDP fell by 8.6 percent.• 1931: GDP fell by 6.4 percent.• 1932: GDP fell by 13.0 percent.• 1933: GDP fell by 1.3 percent.How does this compare to today? While the final numbers for 2008 GDP will not be known until March (the advance estimates are due at the end of January), it appears that in 2008 GDP will fall by at most 1 percent. As for next year, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that GDP will fall by 2.2 percent before rebounding in 2010. In other words, the economy of today is nowhere near as bad as the economy of the Great Depression. Although it almost was.Perhaps the definitive book on the causes of the Great Depression was “A Monetary History of the United States,” written by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz in 1963. Friedman — who was arguably the greatest economist of the 20th century — and Schwartz found that a series of banking crises and bank runs in the early 1930s, coupled with an inattentive Federal Reserve, generated a significant contraction in the supply of money in the economy. It’s what Friedman and Schwartz called “The Great Contraction.” Since money is the fuel that powers commerce, with less fuel there is less commerce. In the 1930s this “Great Contraction” of money turned an ordinary recession into the Great Depression. According to Friedman and Schwartz, if the Federal Reserve had more aggressively sought to offset this contraction and pump more money into the financial system the Great Depression would have been avoided.Interestingly, earlier this year we saw this same scenario begin to play out, but with a much different ending. Just as we saw at the beginning of the Depression a banking crisis began to contract the money supply. In this case, banks holding assets that were plummeting in value began hoarding cash instead of lending it out into the economy. As a result, interbank lending interest rates nearly doubled in just the few weeks from late September to early October as banks demanded that borrowers pay higher interest rates in order to receive a loan.It was at this time that the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury began pumping about $2 trillion of money into the economy. These efforts have ensured that we do not see another “Great Contraction” today. In fact, with more money available in the economy, interest rates have fallen, thereby facilitating more commerce. In other words, by not repeating the mistakes of the Great Depression, the efforts of the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury are keeping us from repeating the experience of the Great Depression.The economy is not yet out of the woods. We are not yet on the verge of a recovery. The financial crisis of the past few months generated ripple effects throughout the economy that will take months to sort out. But the good news is that the Federal Reserve, and the U.S. Treasury, appear willing to do whatever needs to be done in order keep the money flowing. In short, it looks as if they have learned the lessons from the Great Depression.MICKEY HEPNER is an associate professor of economics at the University of Central Oklahoma.
With a steady drumbeat of bad economic news and a recession that looks to be the most severe since World War II, it is inevitable that there would be many concerns about a repeat of the Great Depression. Such concerns, however, are unwarranted.There is clearly reason to be concerned about the economy, and a need for a stimulus package of some sort. The Congressional Budget Office released its latest economic outlook last week in which they predicted the current recession will turn out to be the longest downturn since World War II. On Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. economy shed another 524,000 jobs in December bringing the total job loss for 2008 to 2.6 million. Most disturbingly though, is that the job losses accelerated at the end of 2008 with the economy shedding 1.9 million jobs in just the last four months alone. With the automakers, financial institutions and retailers still struggling, more job losses are likely to come in the next few months.The magnitude of the job losses and the depth of this recession have led some economists to invoke the dreaded “depression” word. Princeton economist and recent Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman’s latest book is even titled “The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008.” Also, a new report by the Center for American Progress shows on its front cover a picture of a Depression-era food line. Before we get too carried away with the Depression references though, let’s look at some facts.Below are the annual changes in U.S. Gross Domestic Product from 1930-33:• 1930: GDP fell by 8.6 percent.• 1931: GDP fell by 6.4 percent.• 1932: GDP fell by 13.0 percent.• 1933: GDP fell by 1.3 percent.How does this compare to today? While the final numbers for 2008 GDP will not be known until March (the advance estimates are due at the end of January), it appears that in 2008 GDP will fall by at most 1 percent. As for next year, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that GDP will fall by 2.2 percent before rebounding in 2010. In other words, the economy of today is nowhere near as bad as the economy of the Great Depression. Although it almost was.Perhaps the definitive book on the causes of the Great Depression was “A Monetary History of the United States,” written by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz in 1963. Friedman — who was arguably the greatest economist of the 20th century — and Schwartz found that a series of banking crises and bank runs in the early 1930s, coupled with an inattentive Federal Reserve, generated a significant contraction in the supply of money in the economy. It’s what Friedman and Schwartz called “The Great Contraction.” Since money is the fuel that powers commerce, with less fuel there is less commerce. In the 1930s this “Great Contraction” of money turned an ordinary recession into the Great Depression. According to Friedman and Schwartz, if the Federal Reserve had more aggressively sought to offset this contraction and pump more money into the financial system the Great Depression would have been avoided.Interestingly, earlier this year we saw this same scenario begin to play out, but with a much different ending. Just as we saw at the beginning of the Depression a banking crisis began to contract the money supply. In this case, banks holding assets that were plummeting in value began hoarding cash instead of lending it out into the economy. As a result, interbank lending interest rates nearly doubled in just the few weeks from late September to early October as banks demanded that borrowers pay higher interest rates in order to receive a loan.It was at this time that the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury began pumping about $2 trillion of money into the economy. These efforts have ensured that we do not see another “Great Contraction” today. In fact, with more money available in the economy, interest rates have fallen, thereby facilitating more commerce. In other words, by not repeating the mistakes of the Great Depression, the efforts of the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury are keeping us from repeating the experience of the Great Depression.The economy is not yet out of the woods. We are not yet on the verge of a recovery. The financial crisis of the past few months generated ripple effects throughout the economy that will take months to sort out. But the good news is that the Federal Reserve, and the U.S. Treasury, appear willing to do whatever needs to be done in order keep the money flowing. In short, it looks as if they have learned the lessons from the Great Depression.MICKEY HEPNER is an associate professor of economics at the University of Central Oklahoma.
Recession vs. Depression
Do you think it is very likely that we'll head into a depression because of all this financial mess?
It might be helpful to define some terms.
One wag has said that a recession is when you lose your job. But a depression is when I lose my job.
There are some common (if serious) definitions of economic recessions and depressions. A recession is said to occur when an economy goes backward for at least two quarters (six months) in a row. A depression is less often identified by a specific number, but is said to occur when an economy shrinks "significantly" and lasts several years.
No one doubts that we are presently in the midst of some sort of economic recession. How deep and long it will last is usually only discernible after the fact, but it's a pretty good bet that this one is going to be on the big side.
Because we are linear creatures that tend to extrapolate our current trajectory to the extreme, it's natural that many folks are asking today, "Are we headed toward another Great Depression?" No one can guarantee that will not happen. But there are significant reasons to believe we are not headed to that extreme.
More production. We call all the stuff we make each year Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This is what we watch to see whether or not our economy is in recession. It seems inevitable that once all the chips are counted for 2008 that we'll see economic shrinkage. Suppose the number comes in at 2 percent to 3 percent economic shrinkage. That's a recession for sure.
Contrast that to the shrinkage of GDP during the Great Depression — it was 27 percent. Our nation's industrial production shrunk by 50 percent. We're nowhere near those kinds of cataclysmal numbers, nor are there any credible voices that anticipate that.
More jobs. This column is being written before the Friday jobs numbers come out. But suppose they show the unemployment rate at around 7 percent. It's likely to head higher before things level off. But during the Great Depression unemployment reached 25 percent — imagine one out of every four people in this nation unemployed. Not pretty, but we're not anywhere close to that.
More sales to others. During the Depression, governments around the world pursued a campaign of mutually assured destruction by putting up barriers to trade. This withered economic activity worldwide, destroyed jobs and caused incalculable misery in this country and around the world. U.S. exports shrank by 66 percent during the Depression era. Thankfully, our understanding of trade is very different today. While U.S. exports may shrink during a recession, the shrinkage will pale in comparison to the Depression.
More money. During the Depression the Fed foolishly pulled money out of the economy, thinking it could punish speculators without harming the overall economy. These days that approach has about as much economic credibility as the use of leaches for medical purposes. What the economy needs during a recession is a reasonable amount of money injected into it to stimulate economic growth without sowing the seeds of inflation. While this is a difficult balance to strike, attempts to strike that balance are far better than the economic leaching done during the Depression.
Recessions are best seen as a season of pruning. Pruning is painful and seems to head in the opposite direction of anyone wanting fruit off the tree. But the experienced gardener knows this cutting back is actually the secret to more and healthier fruit later.
Be wise. Be careful. Make the changes you need to make it. But whatever you do, don't give up or give in to despair.
Because of today's pruning there will be harvest days again.
Byron R. Moore, managing director for the planning group of Argent Advisors, Inc. Write to him at 500 East Reynolds Drive, Ruston, LA 71270 or call him at 251-5858.The views expressed in the preceding commentary do not necessarily reflect the views of Argent Advisors Inc.
It might be helpful to define some terms.
One wag has said that a recession is when you lose your job. But a depression is when I lose my job.
There are some common (if serious) definitions of economic recessions and depressions. A recession is said to occur when an economy goes backward for at least two quarters (six months) in a row. A depression is less often identified by a specific number, but is said to occur when an economy shrinks "significantly" and lasts several years.
No one doubts that we are presently in the midst of some sort of economic recession. How deep and long it will last is usually only discernible after the fact, but it's a pretty good bet that this one is going to be on the big side.
Because we are linear creatures that tend to extrapolate our current trajectory to the extreme, it's natural that many folks are asking today, "Are we headed toward another Great Depression?" No one can guarantee that will not happen. But there are significant reasons to believe we are not headed to that extreme.
More production. We call all the stuff we make each year Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This is what we watch to see whether or not our economy is in recession. It seems inevitable that once all the chips are counted for 2008 that we'll see economic shrinkage. Suppose the number comes in at 2 percent to 3 percent economic shrinkage. That's a recession for sure.
Contrast that to the shrinkage of GDP during the Great Depression — it was 27 percent. Our nation's industrial production shrunk by 50 percent. We're nowhere near those kinds of cataclysmal numbers, nor are there any credible voices that anticipate that.
More jobs. This column is being written before the Friday jobs numbers come out. But suppose they show the unemployment rate at around 7 percent. It's likely to head higher before things level off. But during the Great Depression unemployment reached 25 percent — imagine one out of every four people in this nation unemployed. Not pretty, but we're not anywhere close to that.
More sales to others. During the Depression, governments around the world pursued a campaign of mutually assured destruction by putting up barriers to trade. This withered economic activity worldwide, destroyed jobs and caused incalculable misery in this country and around the world. U.S. exports shrank by 66 percent during the Depression era. Thankfully, our understanding of trade is very different today. While U.S. exports may shrink during a recession, the shrinkage will pale in comparison to the Depression.
More money. During the Depression the Fed foolishly pulled money out of the economy, thinking it could punish speculators without harming the overall economy. These days that approach has about as much economic credibility as the use of leaches for medical purposes. What the economy needs during a recession is a reasonable amount of money injected into it to stimulate economic growth without sowing the seeds of inflation. While this is a difficult balance to strike, attempts to strike that balance are far better than the economic leaching done during the Depression.
Recessions are best seen as a season of pruning. Pruning is painful and seems to head in the opposite direction of anyone wanting fruit off the tree. But the experienced gardener knows this cutting back is actually the secret to more and healthier fruit later.
Be wise. Be careful. Make the changes you need to make it. But whatever you do, don't give up or give in to despair.
Because of today's pruning there will be harvest days again.
Byron R. Moore, managing director for the planning group of Argent Advisors, Inc. Write to him at 500 East Reynolds Drive, Ruston, LA 71270 or call him at 251-5858.The views expressed in the preceding commentary do not necessarily reflect the views of Argent Advisors Inc.
The Vicious Cycle Of Depression And Insomnia
Perhaps the lack of studies dedicated to treating depression stems from the fact that there are already anti-depressants on the market that are effective. At least, they're effective according to the statistics. As for the common side effects, there are sleeping pills that can help with insomnia. There are also drugs that can be used to treat most of the physical side effects associated with depression. However, these drugs tend to be difficult to obtain over-the-counter, which puts things into an interesting situation. Most people tend not to recognize by themselves that they are experiencing depression, which means that while they might treat the side effects, they're ignoring the heart of the matter. In addition, not all of the side effects of depression are treatable by medications, such as the changes in body temperature.Another problem is that the side effects have a tendency to form a vicious cycle that makes prolonged depression worsen. For example, one of the common causes of depression comes in the form of anxiety disorders, typically social anxiety. It has been documented that social anxiety can worsen with the onset of depression, about online courses resulting in total social withdrawal for short intervals. In another tangent, insomnia – another common side effects – can also worsen a person's depressed state. As the lack of sleep starts to interfere with the patient's already shaky ability to perform socially and professionally, the already-fragile self-confidence starts to fracture even more. This can cause the person's already shaky state of mental health to be damaged to the breaking point, possibly resulting in a total nervous breakdown.However, some people have also made the mistake of connecting insomnia directly to depression. While being depressed can have physical effects on the body that can trigger insomnia, it is by no means the absolute cause. According to about online courses studies on the matter, insomnia is a physical condition, one that is more likely to be affected by factors such as a person's diet than an anxiety disorder. However, the popular perception that insomnia is linked to depression can sometimes cause a person to develop the latter. There are several factors that have to be considered, such as whether or not the insomnia has caused a dip in the person's social standing, but the connection is a possibility.
Breaking recession psychology
Here's something that everybody knew: we are worried about our jobs and household finances and the country's economy.
The Conference Board of Canada says its December consumer confidence index sank to levels just above the historic lows hit during the recession of 1981- 82.
The board had some other bad stuff to say. But we're going to choose to highlight some of the bright spots the board found in its telephone survey of 2,000 Canadians.
For one thing, the survey discovered that, for the second straight month, an increasing number of consumers said it was a good time to buy large items such as TV sets, fridges, stoves, washing machines and cars.
Glen Hodgson, the board's chief economist, noted that optimistic consumers are taking advantage of steep price cuts.
He also pointed out that the economy is in better shape than in the country's two previous recessions. Some predict Canada's unemployment rate could reach eight per cent next year, but that would be down from 13 per cent during the early 1980s and 10 per cent in the early 1990s.
In Canadians' favour is a decline in energy costs, which is taking out some of the sting of filling up cars and heating homes.
Unfortunately, any bright spots are, as Mr. Hodgson noted, being "crowded out by a fear of the future ...and that fear is not totally rational."
The economist is pinning his hopes for an increase in consumer confidence next year on an effective federal stimulus package expected to be announced as part of next month's budget.
If the package works, it could go a long way to breaking the "psychology of recession," which causes consumers to
Hodgson also points out that confidence will return once most Canadians realize they are keeping their jobs and, perhaps, getting a small wage increase.
"When that starts to happen, you'll see a change in attitude," Mr. Hodgson said.
So, much depends on breaking the "psychology of recession," which takes hold when worried consumers stop spending, which in turn causes retailers and manufacturers to cut back on goods and jobs.
We're counting on our political leaders to give us reason to be hopeful.
The Conference Board of Canada says its December consumer confidence index sank to levels just above the historic lows hit during the recession of 1981- 82.
The board had some other bad stuff to say. But we're going to choose to highlight some of the bright spots the board found in its telephone survey of 2,000 Canadians.
For one thing, the survey discovered that, for the second straight month, an increasing number of consumers said it was a good time to buy large items such as TV sets, fridges, stoves, washing machines and cars.
Glen Hodgson, the board's chief economist, noted that optimistic consumers are taking advantage of steep price cuts.
He also pointed out that the economy is in better shape than in the country's two previous recessions. Some predict Canada's unemployment rate could reach eight per cent next year, but that would be down from 13 per cent during the early 1980s and 10 per cent in the early 1990s.
In Canadians' favour is a decline in energy costs, which is taking out some of the sting of filling up cars and heating homes.
Unfortunately, any bright spots are, as Mr. Hodgson noted, being "crowded out by a fear of the future ...and that fear is not totally rational."
The economist is pinning his hopes for an increase in consumer confidence next year on an effective federal stimulus package expected to be announced as part of next month's budget.
If the package works, it could go a long way to breaking the "psychology of recession," which causes consumers to
Hodgson also points out that confidence will return once most Canadians realize they are keeping their jobs and, perhaps, getting a small wage increase.
"When that starts to happen, you'll see a change in attitude," Mr. Hodgson said.
So, much depends on breaking the "psychology of recession," which takes hold when worried consumers stop spending, which in turn causes retailers and manufacturers to cut back on goods and jobs.
We're counting on our political leaders to give us reason to be hopeful.
Anxiety and Depression Affect Left-Handed People More
A new scientific study shows that the handedness of a patient is crucial in understanding at least a part of his or her behavior. Apparently, all left-handed people share in common traits such as anxiety, depression and fear of making important decisions, unlike right-handers. The researchers behind this survey say that the difference in the way people act occurs because different brain hemispheres are stimulated for the use of each hand.
The paths that the brain uses for the control of the dominant hand are located in the opposite hemisphere – meaning that right-handed patients will have a more active left hemisphere, whereas left-handed ones will use their right one more. Psychologists say that the right side of the brain is responsible for the control of negative emotions, so it stands to reason that, if it's more active than the left side, it also generates more such emotions.
These beliefs were confirmed by the new study, conducted by a team of scientists at the University of Abertay Dundee, in the UK, led by behavioral psychologist Lynn Wright. They tested on 46 left-handed participants, both men and women, as well as on 66 right-handed individuals. All participants were given questionnaires, meant to measure their levels of security, alertness, impulsiveness and restraint as well.
The results showed that left-handed people are generally more reticent than right-handers. This was also the case for women, regardless of their dominant hand, who answered positively to statements such as "Criticism or scolding hurts me quite a bit" and "I worry about making mistakes."
The team says that the fact that some people use their right side of the brain more, rather than the left side, is not an indicator of their personality in any way. It merely offers insight into how emotions are processed by those people. In fact, it's the way we process information and emotions that differentiates us from each other. Otherwise, all participants to an event, for example, will have the same opinion about it, and the same applies to every event involving many people.
The paths that the brain uses for the control of the dominant hand are located in the opposite hemisphere – meaning that right-handed patients will have a more active left hemisphere, whereas left-handed ones will use their right one more. Psychologists say that the right side of the brain is responsible for the control of negative emotions, so it stands to reason that, if it's more active than the left side, it also generates more such emotions.
These beliefs were confirmed by the new study, conducted by a team of scientists at the University of Abertay Dundee, in the UK, led by behavioral psychologist Lynn Wright. They tested on 46 left-handed participants, both men and women, as well as on 66 right-handed individuals. All participants were given questionnaires, meant to measure their levels of security, alertness, impulsiveness and restraint as well.
The results showed that left-handed people are generally more reticent than right-handers. This was also the case for women, regardless of their dominant hand, who answered positively to statements such as "Criticism or scolding hurts me quite a bit" and "I worry about making mistakes."
The team says that the fact that some people use their right side of the brain more, rather than the left side, is not an indicator of their personality in any way. It merely offers insight into how emotions are processed by those people. In fact, it's the way we process information and emotions that differentiates us from each other. Otherwise, all participants to an event, for example, will have the same opinion about it, and the same applies to every event involving many people.
The Psychology of Crying
There are numerous scientific studies that argue the benefits of crying for most people, in terms of letting go of their inner emotions and of whatever bothers them. But a new research, conducted by researchers at the University of South Florida and the Tilburg University, in The Netherlands, shows that these benefits depend entirely on when, where and why crying occurs. The study was based on the accounts of volunteers who experienced recent crying episodes.
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Out of the 3,000 participants to the new study, most indeed reported improvements in their moods after crying, but there were those who said that they actually felt worse afterwards. The psychologists in charge determined that an important factor that triggered these emotions was social support. And while two thirds of those who received it felt better, one third reported no change in their state of mind.An additional 10 percent said that they actually felt worse after crying, on account of the humiliation they experienced by crying in public, instead of when they are alone. This was especially true in the case of people suffering from anxiety and mood disorders. They reported none of the benefits of crying, and experienced only its negative effects.The main positive aspect of crying is the fact that it calms the body, which enters a state of arousal when a person is upset or in distress. Heart rates go up, and excessive sweating sets in. While crying, breath normalizes and the heart rate slowly reverts to normal, causing the calming effect crying is renowned for.Psychologists have been puzzled by crying for many years, as its effects, which vary considerably from individual to individual, are hard to catalog. The new finds, published in the December issue of the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, show that the ability that the human mind has, of turning upsetting moments into positive thoughts via crying, is necessary, if crying is to be a calming experience. For those lacking this ability, crying will keep making things worse.
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Out of the 3,000 participants to the new study, most indeed reported improvements in their moods after crying, but there were those who said that they actually felt worse afterwards. The psychologists in charge determined that an important factor that triggered these emotions was social support. And while two thirds of those who received it felt better, one third reported no change in their state of mind.An additional 10 percent said that they actually felt worse after crying, on account of the humiliation they experienced by crying in public, instead of when they are alone. This was especially true in the case of people suffering from anxiety and mood disorders. They reported none of the benefits of crying, and experienced only its negative effects.The main positive aspect of crying is the fact that it calms the body, which enters a state of arousal when a person is upset or in distress. Heart rates go up, and excessive sweating sets in. While crying, breath normalizes and the heart rate slowly reverts to normal, causing the calming effect crying is renowned for.Psychologists have been puzzled by crying for many years, as its effects, which vary considerably from individual to individual, are hard to catalog. The new finds, published in the December issue of the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, show that the ability that the human mind has, of turning upsetting moments into positive thoughts via crying, is necessary, if crying is to be a calming experience. For those lacking this ability, crying will keep making things worse.
LEWISHAM AND GREENWICH: Psychology lecturer receives New Year Honour
A PSYCHOLOGY lecturer researching stammering in children has been recognised in the New Year Honours list.
Dr Stephen Davis, of Baring Road, Grove Park, has been awarded an OBE for his research at University College London.
The 60-year-old is campaigning to raise awareness of children who suffer from the condition.
He said: “I was surprised and obviously absolutely delighted to receive this honour.
“Stammering absolutely destroys people’s lives and I’m pleased there is this opportunity to raise the profile of stammering and the need for more funding from the Government.”
Others awarded an OBE include Brockley resident Lucy Sayce, chief executive of disabled charity RADAR, and the Rev Adam Scott, of Blackheath, for his work in public and voluntary services.
Eltham resident Evelyn Green was awarded an MBE for voluntary work in south London, as well as Tracy Johnson from Lee for her services to the cosmetics industry.
Dr Stephen Davis, of Baring Road, Grove Park, has been awarded an OBE for his research at University College London.
The 60-year-old is campaigning to raise awareness of children who suffer from the condition.
He said: “I was surprised and obviously absolutely delighted to receive this honour.
“Stammering absolutely destroys people’s lives and I’m pleased there is this opportunity to raise the profile of stammering and the need for more funding from the Government.”
Others awarded an OBE include Brockley resident Lucy Sayce, chief executive of disabled charity RADAR, and the Rev Adam Scott, of Blackheath, for his work in public and voluntary services.
Eltham resident Evelyn Green was awarded an MBE for voluntary work in south London, as well as Tracy Johnson from Lee for her services to the cosmetics industry.
Turner touts reverse psychology
Originally published 06:47 p.m., December 31, 2008, updated 06:48 p.m., December 31, 2008
It's one of those fun plays, a gadget that gets crowds to their feet, gives offenses some razzle-dazzle and gives defenses something else to worry about. It's a play that always seems to go a long way or go nowhere at at all.
When it goes well, it's Norv Turner's kind of play.
“I'm a big reverse guy,” the Chargers coach said. “People used to complain in a couple places I've coached that I ran too many reverses.”
He's running more of them now. Last Sunday, the Chargers so enjoyed the sight of Vincent Jackson taking the ball around the corner for 17 yards against the Denver Broncos, they later called for a second reverse and got 13 more yards from the wide receiver.
In both cases, the blocker directly ahead of Jackson was Philip Rivers, though that wasn't why the NFL's top-rated quarterback Wednesday was named the league's Offensive Player of the Month for December.
“He's a football player,” Turner said of his quarterback. “He knows how to take care of himself. He did a good job of faking the block and getting out of the way.”
By making the call, Turner not only made more work for the Indianapolis Colts as they prepare for Saturday's playoff game, but he also was making a statement about his faith in Rivers' physicality. The coach said he restrained himself from calling such a play earlier this season because he knew Rivers was rebounding from postseason knee surgery.
“The quarterback has to be the lead block,” Turner said. “One thing that's kinda gotten lost in what's happened because Philip's played so well is that last March, we're sitting here wondering if he can be ready for training camp, ready for the season. What he's done has been remarkable.”
OK, so he's not Lorenzo Neal on the lead block. Rivers did prove an impediment to defenders trying to get at Jackson.
“All (last) week we're doing that play (in practice),” LaDainian Tomlinson said, smiling. “We joked with Philip about it, that (his) may be the block that springs Vincent. (Rivers) came back (Sunday) and said, 'Dang, I missed it.' I was thinking to myself, 'Were you surprised?'”
Starting to hear his name mentioned more in league MVP conversations, Rivers was almost off the charts in December. He completed 80-of-121 passes for 1,054 yards, with just one interception, in leading the Chargers to four consecutive victories and their highly improbable rise to another AFC West championship.
Rivers is the second Charger to win the monthly award this season. Darren Sproles was named the top special-teams player in September.
LT, GATES SKIP PRACTICE
Tomlinson (strained groin) and Antonio Gates (sprained ankle) were withheld from practice Wednesday, but could be back on the field Thursday, according to Turner.
As insurance against Tomlinson's unavailability for Saturday, though, the Chargers are likely to activate running back Michael Bennett for the first time since they acquired him off waivers Nov. 12.
“That's one of the things we have to consider,” said Turner, who also said he hopes Tomlinson and Gates “can get out and run around” in Thursday's practice. Tomlinson said he didn't expect to do much in drills.
“Part of (the problem) for me last year was trying to push it in practice, so it got sore the next day,” said Tomlinson, hobbled and sidelined by injury during the last postseason. “I'd rather push it in the game, then let it be sore the next day.”
Tomlinson said the fact the Chargers have played the Colts so many times – five games since 2004, including last season's playoffs and this year's regular season – minimized the effect of missed practice time.
“You can do it when you've played guys quite a bit,” Tomlinson said. “The only thing that might be a little different in the beginning is timing, but as the game goes on, that's something you can get. It shouldn't be too much of a factor when you don't practice too much during the week, knowing you're going against a team you've gone against a bunch of times.”
Tomlinson played little more than two quarters before leaving Sunday's game with the injury, but he still did enough damage – 96 yards on just 14 carries – to the Broncos to warrant the FedEx Ground Player of the Week award for last weekend.
CONCERNS ABOUT THE FIELD
Turner expressed concerns over the fact that by Saturday night, Qualcomm Stadium will have hosted four games in less than two weeks, including the Chargers' regular-season finale, the Poinsettia Bowl and Holiday Bowl.
“I was disappointed they didn't re-sod the whole field,” Turner said. “They did it between the numbers, inside the numbers. It was in great shape the other night when we played on it. It's obviously gotten torn up. I know some of our players have asked about it, but there's not a whole lot we can do right now.”
LUCKY 13
The Colts and Chargers will set a league record this weekend – longest combined winning streak for opposing teams in the wild-card round. The Colts have won nine straight, the Chargers four.
It's one of those fun plays, a gadget that gets crowds to their feet, gives offenses some razzle-dazzle and gives defenses something else to worry about. It's a play that always seems to go a long way or go nowhere at at all.
When it goes well, it's Norv Turner's kind of play.
“I'm a big reverse guy,” the Chargers coach said. “People used to complain in a couple places I've coached that I ran too many reverses.”
He's running more of them now. Last Sunday, the Chargers so enjoyed the sight of Vincent Jackson taking the ball around the corner for 17 yards against the Denver Broncos, they later called for a second reverse and got 13 more yards from the wide receiver.
In both cases, the blocker directly ahead of Jackson was Philip Rivers, though that wasn't why the NFL's top-rated quarterback Wednesday was named the league's Offensive Player of the Month for December.
“He's a football player,” Turner said of his quarterback. “He knows how to take care of himself. He did a good job of faking the block and getting out of the way.”
By making the call, Turner not only made more work for the Indianapolis Colts as they prepare for Saturday's playoff game, but he also was making a statement about his faith in Rivers' physicality. The coach said he restrained himself from calling such a play earlier this season because he knew Rivers was rebounding from postseason knee surgery.
“The quarterback has to be the lead block,” Turner said. “One thing that's kinda gotten lost in what's happened because Philip's played so well is that last March, we're sitting here wondering if he can be ready for training camp, ready for the season. What he's done has been remarkable.”
OK, so he's not Lorenzo Neal on the lead block. Rivers did prove an impediment to defenders trying to get at Jackson.
“All (last) week we're doing that play (in practice),” LaDainian Tomlinson said, smiling. “We joked with Philip about it, that (his) may be the block that springs Vincent. (Rivers) came back (Sunday) and said, 'Dang, I missed it.' I was thinking to myself, 'Were you surprised?'”
Starting to hear his name mentioned more in league MVP conversations, Rivers was almost off the charts in December. He completed 80-of-121 passes for 1,054 yards, with just one interception, in leading the Chargers to four consecutive victories and their highly improbable rise to another AFC West championship.
Rivers is the second Charger to win the monthly award this season. Darren Sproles was named the top special-teams player in September.
LT, GATES SKIP PRACTICE
Tomlinson (strained groin) and Antonio Gates (sprained ankle) were withheld from practice Wednesday, but could be back on the field Thursday, according to Turner.
As insurance against Tomlinson's unavailability for Saturday, though, the Chargers are likely to activate running back Michael Bennett for the first time since they acquired him off waivers Nov. 12.
“That's one of the things we have to consider,” said Turner, who also said he hopes Tomlinson and Gates “can get out and run around” in Thursday's practice. Tomlinson said he didn't expect to do much in drills.
“Part of (the problem) for me last year was trying to push it in practice, so it got sore the next day,” said Tomlinson, hobbled and sidelined by injury during the last postseason. “I'd rather push it in the game, then let it be sore the next day.”
Tomlinson said the fact the Chargers have played the Colts so many times – five games since 2004, including last season's playoffs and this year's regular season – minimized the effect of missed practice time.
“You can do it when you've played guys quite a bit,” Tomlinson said. “The only thing that might be a little different in the beginning is timing, but as the game goes on, that's something you can get. It shouldn't be too much of a factor when you don't practice too much during the week, knowing you're going against a team you've gone against a bunch of times.”
Tomlinson played little more than two quarters before leaving Sunday's game with the injury, but he still did enough damage – 96 yards on just 14 carries – to the Broncos to warrant the FedEx Ground Player of the Week award for last weekend.
CONCERNS ABOUT THE FIELD
Turner expressed concerns over the fact that by Saturday night, Qualcomm Stadium will have hosted four games in less than two weeks, including the Chargers' regular-season finale, the Poinsettia Bowl and Holiday Bowl.
“I was disappointed they didn't re-sod the whole field,” Turner said. “They did it between the numbers, inside the numbers. It was in great shape the other night when we played on it. It's obviously gotten torn up. I know some of our players have asked about it, but there's not a whole lot we can do right now.”
LUCKY 13
The Colts and Chargers will set a league record this weekend – longest combined winning streak for opposing teams in the wild-card round. The Colts have won nine straight, the Chargers four.
Practical Psychology: Affirmations for new year could improve relationships
Today is the 6th day of the new year. I wish for each of you a very meaningful and happy new year. Today, instead of New Year’s resolutions, I offer you some affirmations that might help my wish for you to be realized.
How we think, feel and behave is highly influenced by our own individualistic perceptual world. If we view the world as threatening, we will behave defensively. If we perceive it to be friendly and supportive, we will be open and curious. How we interpret our perceptual world determines how we choose to function within it.
Our perceptual reality is like a colored glass bottle in which we live. Everything we experience as outside ourselves is distorted or clarified by the shape and color of the bottle. Likewise, everything we express from within ourselves is colored by our view of “how things are.” Six people viewing the same event will experience the event in six individual ways. All six will be correct — from their point of view.
When we are unhappy with our partner in a relationship, we need to change the nature of the “bottle” in which we live. One of the most powerful methods for changing our images of life is through changing the nature of the language in which we habitually think. Positive affirmations can have a transformational effect on our relationships and on us.
Healing affirmations
Irv Niece, a marriage and family counselor in Redlands, Calif., shares the following set of affirmations with couples. Can you imagine the healing transformation of a marital relationship if both partners agreed to, regularly stated to one another, and habitually behaved according to these affirmations?
-- I want to know and give attention to your needs.
-- Your emotional needs are more important than my desires.
-- I want you to be right instead of me having to be right.
-- I want to quit blaming.
-- I want you to feel loved, valued, understood and listened to in our relationship.
-- I want you to feel confident that you are my best friend, the top person in my life.
-- I want to generate positive energy in our relationship.
-- I want to quit feeding the negative when we disagree.
-- I want you to help me to not offend your spirit.
-- I want to listen to your feelings and honor them.
-- I want to help you raise your self-esteem all the time.
-- I want to be a forgiving, trusting partner to you always.
-- I want my daily behavior to be loving behavior toward you.
-- If I give you unloving behavior, please alert me so that we can talk about it.
-- I want to make our relationship and home joyous, loving and enthusiastic.
-- I accept responsibility for creating the climate of positive values in our home and relationship. Please help me.
-- I want to learn how to process anger creatively. I give you permission to be angry. I promise not to attack you when I’m angry.
-- I need your help with my anger. Help me to express my anger in a way that does not hurt you.
-- I want to do more learning and less protecting of myself.
-- My intent is to learn and truly understand, rather than to defend and protect my ego.
-- I want to explore our thoughts behind our negative emotions so that we can correct them, understand each other better, and live together without threat.
-- I want to build comfortableness and harmony into our relationship more and more.
-- I want to explore how you are affected by my behavior, so we can both gain more freedom and more intimacy.
-- I want you to be able to share your pain and receive my warmth and caring in return.
-- I want to learn to say, “I’m sorry” when I have offended your spirit.
-- And I want you to know that I’m grateful for you, and want us together to enjoy an increasingly fulfilling and loving relationship.
Can you imagine the healing change that would occur in 2009, if the grown-ups viewed themselves and their relationships from a bottle colored and shaped by those affirmations?
How we think, feel and behave is highly influenced by our own individualistic perceptual world. If we view the world as threatening, we will behave defensively. If we perceive it to be friendly and supportive, we will be open and curious. How we interpret our perceptual world determines how we choose to function within it.
Our perceptual reality is like a colored glass bottle in which we live. Everything we experience as outside ourselves is distorted or clarified by the shape and color of the bottle. Likewise, everything we express from within ourselves is colored by our view of “how things are.” Six people viewing the same event will experience the event in six individual ways. All six will be correct — from their point of view.
When we are unhappy with our partner in a relationship, we need to change the nature of the “bottle” in which we live. One of the most powerful methods for changing our images of life is through changing the nature of the language in which we habitually think. Positive affirmations can have a transformational effect on our relationships and on us.
Healing affirmations
Irv Niece, a marriage and family counselor in Redlands, Calif., shares the following set of affirmations with couples. Can you imagine the healing transformation of a marital relationship if both partners agreed to, regularly stated to one another, and habitually behaved according to these affirmations?
-- I want to know and give attention to your needs.
-- Your emotional needs are more important than my desires.
-- I want you to be right instead of me having to be right.
-- I want to quit blaming.
-- I want you to feel loved, valued, understood and listened to in our relationship.
-- I want you to feel confident that you are my best friend, the top person in my life.
-- I want to generate positive energy in our relationship.
-- I want to quit feeding the negative when we disagree.
-- I want you to help me to not offend your spirit.
-- I want to listen to your feelings and honor them.
-- I want to help you raise your self-esteem all the time.
-- I want to be a forgiving, trusting partner to you always.
-- I want my daily behavior to be loving behavior toward you.
-- If I give you unloving behavior, please alert me so that we can talk about it.
-- I want to make our relationship and home joyous, loving and enthusiastic.
-- I accept responsibility for creating the climate of positive values in our home and relationship. Please help me.
-- I want to learn how to process anger creatively. I give you permission to be angry. I promise not to attack you when I’m angry.
-- I need your help with my anger. Help me to express my anger in a way that does not hurt you.
-- I want to do more learning and less protecting of myself.
-- My intent is to learn and truly understand, rather than to defend and protect my ego.
-- I want to explore our thoughts behind our negative emotions so that we can correct them, understand each other better, and live together without threat.
-- I want to build comfortableness and harmony into our relationship more and more.
-- I want to explore how you are affected by my behavior, so we can both gain more freedom and more intimacy.
-- I want you to be able to share your pain and receive my warmth and caring in return.
-- I want to learn to say, “I’m sorry” when I have offended your spirit.
-- And I want you to know that I’m grateful for you, and want us together to enjoy an increasingly fulfilling and loving relationship.
Can you imagine the healing change that would occur in 2009, if the grown-ups viewed themselves and their relationships from a bottle colored and shaped by those affirmations?
The psychology of Territorians’ New Year resolutions
After weeks of binge eating and enthusiastic drinking, many Territorians are now wrestling with the sober activity of New Year resolutions, according to a Darwin psychologist.
Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Charles Darwin University, Dr Mary Morris said New Year resolutions were a puzzling ritual from a psychological perspective.
Dr Morris said of greatest interest was what determined the goals that were set, how many goals people set themselves at one time and how successful they were at achieving these goals.
“Why do we pick a single point in time each year to try and change certain things in our life — behaviours, attitudes, whatever — make resolutions about them, and then proceed to fail at them within a month’s time?” she said.
Some of the more popular New Year goals Territorians set include starting an exercise regime, eating better, reducing their consumption of alcohol and caffeine, and the most popular of all, quitting smoking.
“Research suggests that people who believe that self-control is something dynamic, changing and unlimited, and would therefore make claims such as - ‘I can stop smoking, all I have to do is put my mind to it’ - tend to set more resolutions and are generally more successful at achieving their goals,” Dr Morris said.
“In contrast, people who believe that we all are born with a limited, set amount of self-control, that we cannot change and who also have little belief in their own capabilities to carry out their own goals naturally do worse in achieving their New Year’s resolution goals.
“Yet these people still make resolutions knowing they have absolutely no chance of achieving them.”
Dr Morris said another major contributing factor determining success or failure was the actual skills a person possesses to make the changes proposed for the New Year.
“While it’s all well and good to say you want to quit smoking or eat healthy foods, one of the determining factors in achieving success is whether you really know how to actually do it,” she said.
“Researching the most effective methods for achieving change ahead of time predicts better success in actually achieving goals. And, of course, being ready to change also helps.
“If you don’t want to change and so only make a half-hearted resolution to do so, don’t be surprised by your amazing lack of success.”
Dr Morris’ tips for New Year resolution success:
• Have a strong initial commitment to make a change • Identify what method will work for you• Engage the support of family and friends• Have coping strategies to deal with problems that will come up • Keep track of your progress. The more monitoring you do and feedback you get, the better you will do.
Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Charles Darwin University, Dr Mary Morris said New Year resolutions were a puzzling ritual from a psychological perspective.
Dr Morris said of greatest interest was what determined the goals that were set, how many goals people set themselves at one time and how successful they were at achieving these goals.
“Why do we pick a single point in time each year to try and change certain things in our life — behaviours, attitudes, whatever — make resolutions about them, and then proceed to fail at them within a month’s time?” she said.
Some of the more popular New Year goals Territorians set include starting an exercise regime, eating better, reducing their consumption of alcohol and caffeine, and the most popular of all, quitting smoking.
“Research suggests that people who believe that self-control is something dynamic, changing and unlimited, and would therefore make claims such as - ‘I can stop smoking, all I have to do is put my mind to it’ - tend to set more resolutions and are generally more successful at achieving their goals,” Dr Morris said.
“In contrast, people who believe that we all are born with a limited, set amount of self-control, that we cannot change and who also have little belief in their own capabilities to carry out their own goals naturally do worse in achieving their New Year’s resolution goals.
“Yet these people still make resolutions knowing they have absolutely no chance of achieving them.”
Dr Morris said another major contributing factor determining success or failure was the actual skills a person possesses to make the changes proposed for the New Year.
“While it’s all well and good to say you want to quit smoking or eat healthy foods, one of the determining factors in achieving success is whether you really know how to actually do it,” she said.
“Researching the most effective methods for achieving change ahead of time predicts better success in actually achieving goals. And, of course, being ready to change also helps.
“If you don’t want to change and so only make a half-hearted resolution to do so, don’t be surprised by your amazing lack of success.”
Dr Morris’ tips for New Year resolution success:
• Have a strong initial commitment to make a change • Identify what method will work for you• Engage the support of family and friends• Have coping strategies to deal with problems that will come up • Keep track of your progress. The more monitoring you do and feedback you get, the better you will do.
PU Psychology dept holds first sports day
LAHORE: Punjab University Centre for Clinical Psychology (CCP) celebrated its first sports day and charity carnival, according to a press release issued by the university on Saturday.The funds generated from the carnival were donated to the Rose Garden-Half Way House, a CCP project launched in collaboration with the Punjab Institute of Mental Health. The centre will rehabilite under-privileged women with chronic schizophrenia. Both the visitors and the participants of the sports days participated with enthusiasm. The visitors also showed great interest in the stalls set up by the Rose Garden, Living Institute for Special Learners and students of the centre. Badminton and cricket matches were played. Four quarter finals and two semi finals were conducted for Badminton. The final match was played between the Pansy (BSV) and the Pink Rose (BS III) teams in which Pink Rose bagged the trophy. The final match of cricket was played between the Hawks (BS III) and the Stallions (BS I,V,VII). The Hawks (BS III) won the match by 21 runs.Prof Dr Shahida Hasnain, dean of PU Life Sciences Department, was the chief guest at the prize distribution ceremony. Addressing the ceremony, she said that the significance of physical education could not be undermined as it developed discipline, leadership, cooperation, endurance and a desire to excel among the students. She also appreciated the efforts of the centre for its commitment in running the Rose Garden-Half Way House, saying that it was the foremost duty of psychologists to help people with mental problems. She also met the members of the Rose Garden. CCP Director Dr Aisha Sitwat was also present on the occasion.
1/07/2009
Birth Order, Age Raise Autism Risk, Study Says UW Researcher Finds More Frequency in Kids of Older Parents
In the largest study of its kind, researchers have shown that the risk of autism increases for firstborn children and children of older parents.
The risk of a firstborn with an autism spectrum disorder triples after a mother turns 35 and a father reaches 40.
Although the study was not designed to uncover the cause of the disorder, the findings suggest avenues of research to explore, including the role of environmental toxins.
"Is this pure genetics? Or a toxic phenomenon?" said Darold Treffert, former president of the Wisconsin Medical Society, a psychiatrist at St. Agnes Hospital in Fond du Lac and an expert in savant syndrome. Treffert was not involved in the study.
"I think we're bombarded with all sorts of stuff. And we know from experiences such as thalidomide that there are specific times during development of specific risks with specific chemicals. The problem is there is just so much out there."
Thalidomide was a drug taken by pregnant women in the 1950s and 1960s that caused severe birth defects in their children.
The autism study, led by University of Wisconsin-Madison epidemiologist Maureen Durkin, looked at more than 1,200 cases of autism, or 50% more than any previous study. The research team looked at more than 300,000 U.S. births.
The team found a 20% increase in the risk of autism with each 10- year increase in the parents' ages. Also, they found a couple's fourth child has half the risk of the first, regardless of the parents' ages.
Although debate exists about the prevalence of autism in the U.S. population and whether it is on the rise, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the disorder appears in one in 150 births and is increasing.
Regardless of its prevalence, Durkin and Treffert say, the link between age and the risk of autism is not surprising. They pointed to several developmental disorders, including Down syndrome, for which risk rises as the parents' age increases.
Treffert said, "This a trend that I'm concerned about: The increase in developmental disorders in general and the rise in premature births," which are related to autism.
Durkin said the study shows there probably is an ideal window in which to have children -- when parents are not too young or too old. But regardless of age, she said, the chances are still very low.
"For the individual family, this study is not going to have a big impact," because the chances are so low for any one individual, said James Crow, a retired professor of genetics at UW. But the study will shape public health statistics, he said.
Possible causes
Durkin said her research will hopefully lead to other studies designed to uncover the causes of the disorder. She said the observations that parental age and birth order are involved bring to mind several likely causes.
For instance, she said, factors that might influence the disorder in the children of older parents include age-related genetic and chromosomal damage, environmental toxins and the effects of infertility treatment.
Crow thinks the genetic hypotheses can be ruled out because the kinds of genetic problems that occur with age are not the same for men and women. So, if autism were caused by an age-related genetic mutation, then the study would show that it is only the age of the father that causes the disorder. That's because men produce sperm throughout their lives, while a woman's eggs are developed before she is born.
And if the disease were caused by chromosomal damage, as occurs in older women's eggs, then the risk would be dependent on only the mother's age.
Crow said the other two possibilities are more likely.
As for what is occurring in firstborn children, he said the most likely explanation is just a statistical artifact caused by "stoppage." Parents whose first child is autistic generally do not continue to have other children. The correlation seen with firstborn children is simply a result of parents not having more children, Crow said.
Although Durkin didn't test for this, she believes it's unlikely because most parents do not know their child is autistic until the child is 2 or 3 years old. She said many couples have had, or already are pregnant with, their second child when they realize that their first is autistic.
Other theories include the firstborn's exposure to toxins. The chemicals a woman has acquired over her lifetime are either released directly into the fetus or passed through her breast milk as she nurses. The firstborn soaks up more of those stored chemicals.
Another theory is the hygiene hypothesis, which suggests that firstborn children are exposed to fewer infections from other children early in childhood. Because of this delay, they may be more likely to develop autoimmune responses that affect brain development.
Although some parents consider vaccines a possible cause of autism, they were not mentioned in the paper. Numerous other studies have shown no link between vaccines and autism.
Before any cause can be discovered, Treffert said, doctors must refine their definition of autism. Some types of autism are apparent at birth, while other cases don't appear until a child is 3 or 4. There may be different causes for these kinds of autism, he said.
"While I'm all for community acceptance and education, if we keep expanding the definition, we're never going to find the cause," he said.
The risk of a firstborn with an autism spectrum disorder triples after a mother turns 35 and a father reaches 40.
Although the study was not designed to uncover the cause of the disorder, the findings suggest avenues of research to explore, including the role of environmental toxins.
"Is this pure genetics? Or a toxic phenomenon?" said Darold Treffert, former president of the Wisconsin Medical Society, a psychiatrist at St. Agnes Hospital in Fond du Lac and an expert in savant syndrome. Treffert was not involved in the study.
"I think we're bombarded with all sorts of stuff. And we know from experiences such as thalidomide that there are specific times during development of specific risks with specific chemicals. The problem is there is just so much out there."
Thalidomide was a drug taken by pregnant women in the 1950s and 1960s that caused severe birth defects in their children.
The autism study, led by University of Wisconsin-Madison epidemiologist Maureen Durkin, looked at more than 1,200 cases of autism, or 50% more than any previous study. The research team looked at more than 300,000 U.S. births.
The team found a 20% increase in the risk of autism with each 10- year increase in the parents' ages. Also, they found a couple's fourth child has half the risk of the first, regardless of the parents' ages.
Although debate exists about the prevalence of autism in the U.S. population and whether it is on the rise, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the disorder appears in one in 150 births and is increasing.
Regardless of its prevalence, Durkin and Treffert say, the link between age and the risk of autism is not surprising. They pointed to several developmental disorders, including Down syndrome, for which risk rises as the parents' age increases.
Treffert said, "This a trend that I'm concerned about: The increase in developmental disorders in general and the rise in premature births," which are related to autism.
Durkin said the study shows there probably is an ideal window in which to have children -- when parents are not too young or too old. But regardless of age, she said, the chances are still very low.
"For the individual family, this study is not going to have a big impact," because the chances are so low for any one individual, said James Crow, a retired professor of genetics at UW. But the study will shape public health statistics, he said.
Possible causes
Durkin said her research will hopefully lead to other studies designed to uncover the causes of the disorder. She said the observations that parental age and birth order are involved bring to mind several likely causes.
For instance, she said, factors that might influence the disorder in the children of older parents include age-related genetic and chromosomal damage, environmental toxins and the effects of infertility treatment.
Crow thinks the genetic hypotheses can be ruled out because the kinds of genetic problems that occur with age are not the same for men and women. So, if autism were caused by an age-related genetic mutation, then the study would show that it is only the age of the father that causes the disorder. That's because men produce sperm throughout their lives, while a woman's eggs are developed before she is born.
And if the disease were caused by chromosomal damage, as occurs in older women's eggs, then the risk would be dependent on only the mother's age.
Crow said the other two possibilities are more likely.
As for what is occurring in firstborn children, he said the most likely explanation is just a statistical artifact caused by "stoppage." Parents whose first child is autistic generally do not continue to have other children. The correlation seen with firstborn children is simply a result of parents not having more children, Crow said.
Although Durkin didn't test for this, she believes it's unlikely because most parents do not know their child is autistic until the child is 2 or 3 years old. She said many couples have had, or already are pregnant with, their second child when they realize that their first is autistic.
Other theories include the firstborn's exposure to toxins. The chemicals a woman has acquired over her lifetime are either released directly into the fetus or passed through her breast milk as she nurses. The firstborn soaks up more of those stored chemicals.
Another theory is the hygiene hypothesis, which suggests that firstborn children are exposed to fewer infections from other children early in childhood. Because of this delay, they may be more likely to develop autoimmune responses that affect brain development.
Although some parents consider vaccines a possible cause of autism, they were not mentioned in the paper. Numerous other studies have shown no link between vaccines and autism.
Before any cause can be discovered, Treffert said, doctors must refine their definition of autism. Some types of autism are apparent at birth, while other cases don't appear until a child is 3 or 4. There may be different causes for these kinds of autism, he said.
"While I'm all for community acceptance and education, if we keep expanding the definition, we're never going to find the cause," he said.
A New Council of Psychological Advisors for President Obama?
After President Barack Obama figures out how to bring the economy out of recession, stabilize financial institutions, end two wars, and get every citizen health insurance, there is something else that he should consider: The United States needs a Council of Psychological Advisors.
This new body would parallel and complement the Council of Economic Advisors. When economists have the president's ear, all their whispers concern incentives and self-interest. We need psychologists whispering in his other ear, about the economy, education, healthcare, and more.
On the Economy—Understand the "Irrational" Where did our financial institutions go wrong? Many accounts focus on greed, fear, and lack of trust. And why did things get so out of hand? Why was there a housing "bubble"? Somehow, "irrational exuberance" (Robert Schiller) or "animal spirits" (John Maynard Keynes) overwhelmed rational calculations of risk and reward. And it isn't just that irrational optimism, or even blindness to market fundamentals, gets the better of our rational faculties. Rather, as George Soros has pointed out, these psychological phenomena can become part of a feedback loop that actually changes market fundamentals. "Reflexivity," he calls it. The housing bubble was not the first such phenomenon, nor will it be the last.
Economists offer little that helps us understand why such bubbles occur or how they might be prevented. They also have little to tell us about how to prevent a "downward spiral of negative expectations" that makes fear of an economic downturn self-fulfilling. Economists largely make assumptions about the rationality of human decision-making and proceed from there. Witness Alan Greenspan's recent admission that he was mistaken in assuming that markets operate rationally and efficiently. The current crisis makes it clear that ignoring the real psychology of greed, fear, trust, and irrational enthusiasm (0r pessimism) can be perilous. Economists offer little that helps us understand why such bubbles occur or how they might be prevented. A Council of Psychological Advisors could help.
On Education—More than Just Carrots and Sticks: One of President Obama's top priorities is to improve the quality of American education. This will require recruiting and retaining excellent teachers and finding ways to motivate students. How can this worthy goal be achieved? At the moment, we're pointing in the direction of school choice and competition to produce better schools, higher pay to produce better teachers, big tests to monitor their performance, and financial incentives to motivate students. A bunch of carrots and sticks. Will these kinds of measures be enough? Research in psychology suggests not. More important than pay (as long as it is adequate) are working conditions that allow teachers to be flexible, autonomous, and creative in their work with students, and that provide teachers with a sense that they are working in a community that has a common purpose. From this perspective, the regimentation of instruction ushered in by big-test accountability is actually counter-productive. And so is the move, now being tried in pilot projects around the country, to pay students for showing up to class and for getting good grades. A Council of Psychological Advisors could help design environments that encourage students to pursue mastery rather than money and teachers to view their work as a calling.
On Health Care—Understanding Efficacy and Managing Chronic Conditions: Everyone should have health insurance. This is necessary, but not sufficient. The cost of health care must come down. Computerized medical records that produce coordination of care will help bring down costs, but it also isn't sufficient. We need to help patients (and their doctors) understand how to think about the efficacy and the risks involved in various medical procedures, so that fewer unnecessary, but costly procedures are undertaken. There is plentiful evidence that patients make serious mistakes in thinking about risks and efficacy, and that their doctors make the very same mistakes! Moreover, most medical care in a developed country like the U.S. involves management of chronic diseases (hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, asthma). Managing these conditions effectively demands that patients be partners; they need to make lifestyle changes (eg., diet, smoking, and exercise) that are often difficult to adhere to. A Council of Psychological Advisors can help in designing formats for presenting evidence about the efficacy and risks of various treatments that will reduce misunderstanding and thus reduce unnecessary procedures. And it can help develop interventions that will make patients healthcare partners more effectively.
On the Environment—Do It Because It's Right: Traditional economic incentives like investment tax credits, energy taxes, and pollution credits might help us reduce our environmental footprint, but focusing exclusively on these neglects the extraordinary opportunity to call on citizens to do the right thing because it's the right thing. Indeed, there is even evidence that incentives can undermine people's desire to do the right thing. In a Swiss study of citizen-willingness to have a nuclear waste dump located in their communities, researchers found that whereas 50% of citizens agreed (reluctantly) when no incentives were involved, only 25% agreed when substantial incentives were involved. Each of us can take responsibility as citizens to contribute in small ways to solving the big environmental problems we face. A Council of Psychological Advisors can help in crafting appeals to citizens to do their duty.
Moving Beyond GDP: Finally, let us ask the most fundamental question: what is public policy for? We aim to increase collective welfare, but just what does welfare consist in? For the most part, under the sway of economic thinking, our aim has been to make the country more prosperous-to increase per capita GDP. The appeal of this goal is two-fold. First, we assume that if people are richer, they will be freer to choose as individuals the objects and activities that serve their welfare. We (the state and its technocrats) don't have to choose for them. So wealth serves as a proxy for everything else. And second, GDP can be measured. But like a drunk looking under a lamp post for his car keys, even though he dropped them someplace else (because "that's where the light is"), it doesn't help much to pursue what you can measure if what you're measuring is the wrong thing. It doesn't help to get better at achieving goals if you're achieving the wrong goals. Much research in the psychology of well being suggests that some wealth-enhancing policies improve welfare, but others do not. Indeed, some of what it takes to get more prosperous may be counterproductive when it comes to well being. A Council of Psychological Advisors can help here too, in the design of a system of national "psychological accounts" that does a better job of measuring well being than per capita GDP ever could.Many of us hold out the hope that the coming Obama administration will mark a return to respect for knowledge and expertise. Agencies will be run and staffed not by political cronies, or by people who "just know in their gut" what needs to be done, or by ideologues, but by people who actually have respect for evidence. It would be a shame to bring experts on board in existing agencies, only to have them have to rely on personal intuition rather than knowledge in formulating policies and making decisions that could benefit from psychological expertise. A Council of Psychological Advisors is long overdue. This would be an excellent time to create one
This new body would parallel and complement the Council of Economic Advisors. When economists have the president's ear, all their whispers concern incentives and self-interest. We need psychologists whispering in his other ear, about the economy, education, healthcare, and more.
On the Economy—Understand the "Irrational" Where did our financial institutions go wrong? Many accounts focus on greed, fear, and lack of trust. And why did things get so out of hand? Why was there a housing "bubble"? Somehow, "irrational exuberance" (Robert Schiller) or "animal spirits" (John Maynard Keynes) overwhelmed rational calculations of risk and reward. And it isn't just that irrational optimism, or even blindness to market fundamentals, gets the better of our rational faculties. Rather, as George Soros has pointed out, these psychological phenomena can become part of a feedback loop that actually changes market fundamentals. "Reflexivity," he calls it. The housing bubble was not the first such phenomenon, nor will it be the last.
Economists offer little that helps us understand why such bubbles occur or how they might be prevented. They also have little to tell us about how to prevent a "downward spiral of negative expectations" that makes fear of an economic downturn self-fulfilling. Economists largely make assumptions about the rationality of human decision-making and proceed from there. Witness Alan Greenspan's recent admission that he was mistaken in assuming that markets operate rationally and efficiently. The current crisis makes it clear that ignoring the real psychology of greed, fear, trust, and irrational enthusiasm (0r pessimism) can be perilous. Economists offer little that helps us understand why such bubbles occur or how they might be prevented. A Council of Psychological Advisors could help.
On Education—More than Just Carrots and Sticks: One of President Obama's top priorities is to improve the quality of American education. This will require recruiting and retaining excellent teachers and finding ways to motivate students. How can this worthy goal be achieved? At the moment, we're pointing in the direction of school choice and competition to produce better schools, higher pay to produce better teachers, big tests to monitor their performance, and financial incentives to motivate students. A bunch of carrots and sticks. Will these kinds of measures be enough? Research in psychology suggests not. More important than pay (as long as it is adequate) are working conditions that allow teachers to be flexible, autonomous, and creative in their work with students, and that provide teachers with a sense that they are working in a community that has a common purpose. From this perspective, the regimentation of instruction ushered in by big-test accountability is actually counter-productive. And so is the move, now being tried in pilot projects around the country, to pay students for showing up to class and for getting good grades. A Council of Psychological Advisors could help design environments that encourage students to pursue mastery rather than money and teachers to view their work as a calling.
On Health Care—Understanding Efficacy and Managing Chronic Conditions: Everyone should have health insurance. This is necessary, but not sufficient. The cost of health care must come down. Computerized medical records that produce coordination of care will help bring down costs, but it also isn't sufficient. We need to help patients (and their doctors) understand how to think about the efficacy and the risks involved in various medical procedures, so that fewer unnecessary, but costly procedures are undertaken. There is plentiful evidence that patients make serious mistakes in thinking about risks and efficacy, and that their doctors make the very same mistakes! Moreover, most medical care in a developed country like the U.S. involves management of chronic diseases (hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, asthma). Managing these conditions effectively demands that patients be partners; they need to make lifestyle changes (eg., diet, smoking, and exercise) that are often difficult to adhere to. A Council of Psychological Advisors can help in designing formats for presenting evidence about the efficacy and risks of various treatments that will reduce misunderstanding and thus reduce unnecessary procedures. And it can help develop interventions that will make patients healthcare partners more effectively.
On the Environment—Do It Because It's Right: Traditional economic incentives like investment tax credits, energy taxes, and pollution credits might help us reduce our environmental footprint, but focusing exclusively on these neglects the extraordinary opportunity to call on citizens to do the right thing because it's the right thing. Indeed, there is even evidence that incentives can undermine people's desire to do the right thing. In a Swiss study of citizen-willingness to have a nuclear waste dump located in their communities, researchers found that whereas 50% of citizens agreed (reluctantly) when no incentives were involved, only 25% agreed when substantial incentives were involved. Each of us can take responsibility as citizens to contribute in small ways to solving the big environmental problems we face. A Council of Psychological Advisors can help in crafting appeals to citizens to do their duty.
Moving Beyond GDP: Finally, let us ask the most fundamental question: what is public policy for? We aim to increase collective welfare, but just what does welfare consist in? For the most part, under the sway of economic thinking, our aim has been to make the country more prosperous-to increase per capita GDP. The appeal of this goal is two-fold. First, we assume that if people are richer, they will be freer to choose as individuals the objects and activities that serve their welfare. We (the state and its technocrats) don't have to choose for them. So wealth serves as a proxy for everything else. And second, GDP can be measured. But like a drunk looking under a lamp post for his car keys, even though he dropped them someplace else (because "that's where the light is"), it doesn't help much to pursue what you can measure if what you're measuring is the wrong thing. It doesn't help to get better at achieving goals if you're achieving the wrong goals. Much research in the psychology of well being suggests that some wealth-enhancing policies improve welfare, but others do not. Indeed, some of what it takes to get more prosperous may be counterproductive when it comes to well being. A Council of Psychological Advisors can help here too, in the design of a system of national "psychological accounts" that does a better job of measuring well being than per capita GDP ever could.Many of us hold out the hope that the coming Obama administration will mark a return to respect for knowledge and expertise. Agencies will be run and staffed not by political cronies, or by people who "just know in their gut" what needs to be done, or by ideologues, but by people who actually have respect for evidence. It would be a shame to bring experts on board in existing agencies, only to have them have to rely on personal intuition rather than knowledge in formulating policies and making decisions that could benefit from psychological expertise. A Council of Psychological Advisors is long overdue. This would be an excellent time to create one
Good sex is good for relationships: Oxytocin and relationships
My evolutionary psychology colleagues have a fascination with what they affectionately call "human mating." Obviously, sex and sexuality is an important part of human experience, and it is important to have a theoretical framework for trying to understand sex differences in sexual strategies. Plus, if the headlines splashed on supermarket magazine covers are to be believed, we all like to read about sex, so it makes for good reading.
Unfortunately, many evolutionary approaches take a fairly narrow view of sexuality, by starting with the role of sex in reproduction. This discussion needs to be broadened.
To caricature the evolutionary psychology approach to human mating, these views assume that animals with internal conception (like humans) require a larger parental investment by the female than by the male. Thus, males should be prone to mate with many females to try to maximize the probability of conception. Because conception is internal, there is paternity uncertainty, so females should try to get the best genes possible for their future offspring, but should also try to gain resources from males to support the unborn children.
Unfortunately, a lot of human behavior gets missed by this approach. Lots of people stay married for a long time. Couples that are the happiest tend to be those with the best sex lives. People continue to have sex long after they are able to conceive children.
An interesting study in the November, 2008 issue of Psychological Science by Christian Unkelbach, Adam Guastella, and Joseph Forgas helps shine a light on an aspect of sexuality that is under-appreciated in many discussions of sex that come out of evolutionary psychology.
They did a study on a group of men who were given either a dose of oxytocin or a placebo. Oxytocin is a chemical that is released in men and women during orgasm. It plays other roles as well, but we'll focus on that one for now.
The men in this study were then given a recognition test for positive and negative words related to sex, relationships, other positive emotions, and words unrelated to positive emotion at all. This recognition test was set up to determine the degree of accessibility of the words. As frequent readers of this blog will remember, concepts that are more accessible tend to have a stronger influence on behavior than concepts that are less accessible.
This study observed that oxytocin made positive words related to sex and relationships more accessible relative to the placebo condition. Other words (including words for positive emotions) were not influenced. This finding suggests that oxytocin release will make it easier for men to act in a positive and loving way toward their sexual partners. This study was done only with men, but similar kinds of results have been obtained with women as well.
So, it is important to recognize that sex plays an important role in strengthening relationships in a way that goes above and beyond mere procreation. To be clear, I am not saying that the principles that evolutionary psychologists use are all wrong, only that the discussion needs to be broadened.
Unfortunately, many evolutionary approaches take a fairly narrow view of sexuality, by starting with the role of sex in reproduction. This discussion needs to be broadened.
To caricature the evolutionary psychology approach to human mating, these views assume that animals with internal conception (like humans) require a larger parental investment by the female than by the male. Thus, males should be prone to mate with many females to try to maximize the probability of conception. Because conception is internal, there is paternity uncertainty, so females should try to get the best genes possible for their future offspring, but should also try to gain resources from males to support the unborn children.
Unfortunately, a lot of human behavior gets missed by this approach. Lots of people stay married for a long time. Couples that are the happiest tend to be those with the best sex lives. People continue to have sex long after they are able to conceive children.
An interesting study in the November, 2008 issue of Psychological Science by Christian Unkelbach, Adam Guastella, and Joseph Forgas helps shine a light on an aspect of sexuality that is under-appreciated in many discussions of sex that come out of evolutionary psychology.
They did a study on a group of men who were given either a dose of oxytocin or a placebo. Oxytocin is a chemical that is released in men and women during orgasm. It plays other roles as well, but we'll focus on that one for now.
The men in this study were then given a recognition test for positive and negative words related to sex, relationships, other positive emotions, and words unrelated to positive emotion at all. This recognition test was set up to determine the degree of accessibility of the words. As frequent readers of this blog will remember, concepts that are more accessible tend to have a stronger influence on behavior than concepts that are less accessible.
This study observed that oxytocin made positive words related to sex and relationships more accessible relative to the placebo condition. Other words (including words for positive emotions) were not influenced. This finding suggests that oxytocin release will make it easier for men to act in a positive and loving way toward their sexual partners. This study was done only with men, but similar kinds of results have been obtained with women as well.
So, it is important to recognize that sex plays an important role in strengthening relationships in a way that goes above and beyond mere procreation. To be clear, I am not saying that the principles that evolutionary psychologists use are all wrong, only that the discussion needs to be broadened.
The Ideological Animal
We're easily manipulated by politics. We think our political stance is the product of reason, but we're surprisingly malleable. Our essential political self is more a stew of childhood temperament, education, and fear of death.
By: Jay Dixit
Cinnamon Stillwell never thought she'd be the founder of a political organization. She certainly never expected to start a group for conservatives, most of whom became conservatives on the same day—September 11, 2001. She organized the group, the 911 Neocons, as a haven for people like her—"former lefties" who did political 180s after 9/11.
Stillwell, now a conservative columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, had been a liberal her whole life, writing off all Republicans as "ignorant, intolerant yahoos." Yet on 9/11, everything changed for her, as it did for so many. In the days after the attacks, the world seemed "topsy-turvy." On the political left, she wrote, "There was little sympathy for the victims," and it seemed to her that progressives were "consumed with hatred for this country" and had "extended their misguided sympathies to tyrants and terrorists."
Disgusted, she looked elsewhere. She found solace among conservative talk-show hosts and columnists. At first, she felt resonance with the right about the war on terror. But soon she found herself concurring about "smaller government, traditional societal structures, respect and reverence for life, the importance of family, personal responsibility, national unity over identity politics." She embraced gun rights for the first time, drawn to "the idea of self-preservation in perilous times." Her marriage broke up due in part to political differences. In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, she began going to pro-war rallies.
In 2005, she wrote a column called "The Making of a 9/11 Republican." Over the year that followed, she received thousands of e-mails from people who'd had similar experiences. There were so many of them that she decided to form a group. And so the 911 Neocons were born.
We tend to believe our political views have evolved by a process of rational thought, as we consider arguments, weigh evidence, and draw conclusions. But the truth is more complicated. Our political preferences are equally the result of factors we're not aware of—such as how educated we are, how scary the world seems at a given moment, and personality traits that are first apparent in early childhood. Among the most potent motivators, it turns out, is fear. How the United States should confront the threat of terrorism remains a subject of endless political debate. But Americans' response to threats of attack is now more clear-cut than ever. The fear of death alone is surprisingly effective in shaping our political decisions—more powerful, often, than thought itself.
Abstract Art vs. Talk Radio: The Political Personality Standoff
Most people are surprised to learn that there are real, stable differences in personality between conservatives and liberals—not just different views or values, but underlying differences in temperament. Psychologists John Jost of New York University, Dana Carney of Harvard, and Sam Gosling of the University of Texas have demonstrated that conservatives and liberals boast markedly different home and office decor. Liberals are messier than conservatives, their rooms have more clutter and more color, and they tend to have more travel documents, maps of other countries, and flags from around the world. Conservatives are neater, and their rooms are cleaner, better organized, more brightly lit, and more conventional. Liberals have more books, and their books cover a greater variety of topics. And that's just a start. Multiple studies find that liberals are more optimistic. Conservatives are more likely to be religious. Liberals are more likely to like classical music and jazz, conservatives, country music. Liberals are more likely to enjoy abstract art. Conservative men are more likely than liberal men to prefer conventional forms of entertainment like TV and talk radio. Liberal men like romantic comedies more than conservative men. Liberal women are more likely than conservative women to enjoy books, poetry, writing in a diary, acting, and playing musical instruments.
"All people are born alike—except Republicans and Democrats," quipped Groucho Marx, and in fact it turns out that personality differences between liberals and conservatives are evident in early childhood. In 1969, Berkeley professors Jack and Jeanne Block embarked on a study of childhood personality, asking nursery school teachers to rate children's temperaments. They weren't even thinking about political orientation.
Twenty years later, they decided to compare the subjects' childhood personalities with their political preferences as adults. They found arresting patterns. As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient. People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3. The reason for the difference, the Blocks hypothesized, was that insecure kids most needed the reassurance of tradition and authority, and they found it in conservative politics.
The most comprehensive review of personality and political orientation to date is a 2003 meta-analysis of 88 prior studies involving 22,000 participants. The researchers—John Jost of NYU, Arie Kruglanski of the University of Maryland, and Jack Glaser and Frank Sulloway of Berkeley—found that conservatives have a greater desire to reach a decision quickly and stick to it, and are higher on conscientiousness, which includes neatness, orderliness, duty, and rule-following. Liberals are higher on openness, which includes intellectual curiosity, excitement-seeking, novelty, creativity for its own sake, and a craving for stimulation like travel, color, art, music, and literature.
The study's authors also concluded that conservatives have less tolerance for ambiguity, a trait they say is exemplified when George Bush says things like, "Look, my job isn't to try to nuance. My job is to tell people what I think," and "I'm the decider." Those who think the world is highly dangerous and those with the greatest fear of death are the most likely to be conservative.
Liberals, on the other hand, are "more likely to see gray areas and reconcile seemingly conflicting information," says Jost. As a result, liberals like John Kerry, who see many sides to every issue, are portrayed as flip-floppers. "Whatever the cause, Bush and Kerry exemplify the cognitive styles we see in the research," says Jack Glaser, one of the study's authors, "Bush in appearing more rigid in his thinking and intolerant of uncertainty and ambiguity, and Kerry in appearing more open to ambiguity and to considering alternative positions."
Jost's meta-analysis sparked furious controversy. The House Republican Study Committee complained that the study's authors had received federal funds. George Will satirized it in his Washington Post column, and The National Review called it the "Conservatives Are Crazy" study. Jost and his colleagues point to the study's rigorous methodology. The study used political orientation as a dependent variable, meaning that where subjects fall on the political scale is computed from their own answers about whether they're liberal or conservative. Psychologists then compare factors such as fear of death and openness to new experiences, and seek statistically significant correlations. The findings are quintessentially empirical and difficult to dismiss as false.
Yet critics retort that the research draws negative conclusions about conservatives while the researchers themselves are liberal. And it's true that over the decades, a disproportionate amount of the research has focused on figuring out what's behind conservative behavior. Right shift is likewise more studied than left shift, largely because most of that research has been since 9/11, and aimed at trying to explain the conservative conversions of people like Cinnamon Stillwell.
Even with impeccable methodology, bias may creep into the choice of which phenomena to study. "There is a bias among social scientists," admits Glaser. "They look for the variables that are unflattering. There probably are other nice personality traits associated with conservatism, but they haven't shown up in the research because it's not as well studied."
"There are differences between liberals and conservatives, and people can value them however they like," Jost points out. "There is nothing inherently good or bad about being high or low on the need for closure or structure. Some may see religiosity as a positive, whereas others may see it more neutrally, and so on."
Red Shift
By 2004, as the presidential election drew near, researchers saw a chance to study the Jost results against the backdrop of unfolding events. Psychologists Mark Landau of the University of Arizona and Sheldon Solomon of Skidmore sought to explain how President Bush's approval rating went from around 51 percent before 9/11 to 90 percent immediately afterward. In one study, they exposed some participants to the letters WTC or the numbers 9/11 in an image flashed too quickly to register at the conscious level. They exposed other participants to familiar but random combinations of letters and numbers, such as area codes. Then they gave them words like coff__, sk_ll, and gr_ve, and asked them to fill in the blanks. People who'd seen random combinations were more likely to fill in coffee, skill, and grove. But people exposed to subliminal terrorism primes more often filled in coffin, skull, and grave. "The mere mention of September 11 or WTC is the same as reminding Americans of death," explains Solomon.
As a follow-up, Solomon primed one group of subjects to think about death, a state of mind called "mortality salience." A second group was primed to think about 9/11. And a third was induced to think about pain—something unpleasant but non-deadly. When people were in a benign state of mind, they tended to oppose Bush and his policies in Iraq. But after thinking about either death or 9/11, they tended to favor him. Such findings were further corroborated by Cornell sociologist Robert Willer, who found that whenever the color-coded terror alert level was raised, support for Bush increased significantly, not only on domestic security but also in unrelated domains, such as the economy.
University of Arizona psychologist Jeff Greenberg argues that some ideological shifts can be explained by terror management theory (TMT), which holds that heightened fear of death motivates people to defend their world views. TMT predicts that images like the destruction of the World Trade Center should make liberals more liberal and conservatives more conservative. "In the United States, political conservatism does seem to be the preferred ideology when people are feeling insecure," concedes Greenberg. "But in China or another communist country, reminding people of their own mortality would lead them to cling more tightly to communism."
Jost believes it's more complex. After all, Cinnamon Stillwell and others in the 911 Neocons didn't become more liberal. Like so many other Democrats after 9/11, they made a hard right turn. The reason thoughts of death make people more conservative, Jost says, is that they awaken a deep desire to see the world as fair and just, to believe that people get what they deserve, and to accept the existing social order as valid, rather than in need of change. When these natural desires are primed by thoughts of death and a barrage of mortal fear, people gravitate toward conservatism because it's more certain about the answers it provides—right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, us vs. them—and because conservative leaders are more likely to advocate a return to traditional values, allowing people to stick with what's familiar and known. "Conservatism is a more black and white ideology than liberalism," explains Jost. "It emphasizes tradition and authority, which are reassuring during periods of threat."
To test the theory, Jost prompted people to think about either pain—by looking at things like an ambulance, a dentist's chair, and a bee sting—or death, by looking at things like a funeral hearse, the grim reaper, and a dead-end sign. Across the political spectrum, people who had been primed to think about death were more conservative on issues like immigration, affirmative action, and same-sex marriage than those who had merely thought about pain, although the effect size was relatively small. The implication is clear: For liberals, conservatives, and independents alike, thinking about death actually makes people more conservative—at least temporarily.
Fear and Voting In America
Campaign strategists in both parties have never hesitated to use scare tactics. In 1964, a Lyndon Johnson commercial called "Daisy" juxtaposed footage of a little girl plucking a flower with footage of an atomic blast. In 1984, Ronald Reagan ran a spot that played on Cold War panic, in which the Soviet threat was symbolized by a grizzly lumbering across a stark landscape as a human heart pounds faster and faster and an off-screen voice warns, "There is a bear in the woods!" In 2004, Bush sparked furor for running a fear-mongering ad that used wolves gathering in the woods as symbols for terrorists plotting against America. And last fall, Congressional Republicans drew fire with an ad that featured bin Laden and other terrorists threatening Americans; over the sound of a ticking clock, a voice warned, "These are the stakes."
"At least some of the President's support is the result of constant and relentless reminders of death, some of which is just what's happening in the world, but much of which is carefully cultivated and calculated as an electoral strategy," says Solomon. "In politics these days, there's a dose of reason, and there's a dose of irrationality driven by psychological terror that may very well be swinging elections."
Solomon demonstrated that thinking about 9/11 made people go from preferring Kerry to preferring Bush. "Very subtle manipulations of psychological conditions profoundly affect political preferences," Solomon concludes. "In difficult moments, people don't want complex, nuanced, John Kerry-like waffling or sophisticated cogitation. They want somebody charismatic to step up and say, 'I know where our problem is and God has given me the clout to kick those people's asses.'"
Into The Blue
Studies show that people who study abroad become more liberal than those who stay home.
People who venture from the strictures of their limited social class are less likely to stereotype and more likely to embrace other cultures. Education goes hand-in-hand with tolerance, and often, the more the better:
Professors at major universities are more liberal than their counterparts at less acclaimed institutions. What travel and education have in common is that they make the differences between people seem less threatening. "You become less bothered by the idea that there is uncertainty in the world," explains Jost.
That's why the more educated people are, the more liberal they become—but only to a point. Once people begin pursuing certain types of graduate degrees, the curve flattens. Business students, for instance, become more conservative in their views toward minorities. As they become more established, doctors and lawyers tend to protect their economic interests by moving to the right. The findings demonstrate that conservative conversions are fueled not only by fear, but by other factors as well. And if the November election was any indicator, the pendulum that swung so forcefully to the right after 9/11 may be swinging back.
Tipping The Balance
Political conversions that are emotionally induced can be very subtle: A shift in support for a given issue or politician is not the same as a radical conversion or deep philosophical change. While views may be manipulated, the impact may or may not translate in the voting booth. Following 9/11, most lifelong liberals did not go through outright conversion or shift their preferred candidate. Yet many liberals who didn't become all-out conservatives found themselves nonetheless sympathizing more with conservative positions, craving the comfort of a strong leader, or feeling the need to punish or avenge. Many in the political center moved to the right, too. In aggregate, over an electorate of millions—a large proportion of whom were swing voters waiting to be swayed one way or the other—even a subtle shift was enough to tip the balance of the Presidential election, and the direction the country took for years. "Without 9/11 we would have a different president," says Solomon. "I would even say that the Osama bin Laden tape that was released the Thursday before the election was sufficient to swing the election. It was basically a giant mortality salience induction."
If we are so suggestible that thoughts of death make us uncomfortable defaming the American flag and cause us to sit farther away from foreigners, is there any way we can overcome our easily manipulated fears and become the informed and rational thinkers democracy demands?
To test this, Solomon and his colleagues prompted two groups to think about death and then give opinions about a pro-American author and an anti-American one. As expected, the group that thought about death was more pro-American than the other. But the second time, one group was asked to make gut-level decisions about the two authors, while the other group was asked to consider carefully and be as rational as possible. The results were astonishing. In the rational group, the effects of mortality salience were entirely eliminated. Asking people to be rational was enough to neutralize the effects of reminders of death. Preliminary research shows that reminding people that as human beings, the things we have in common eclipse our differences—what psychologists call a "common humanity prime"—has the same effect.
"People have two modes of thought," concludes Solomon. "There's the intuitive gut-level mode, which is what most of us are in most of the time. And then there's a rational analytic mode, which takes effort and attention."
The solution, then, is remarkably simple. The effects of psychological terror on political decision making can be eliminated just by asking people to think rationally. Simply reminding us to use our heads, it turns out, can be enough to make us do it.
By: Jay Dixit
Cinnamon Stillwell never thought she'd be the founder of a political organization. She certainly never expected to start a group for conservatives, most of whom became conservatives on the same day—September 11, 2001. She organized the group, the 911 Neocons, as a haven for people like her—"former lefties" who did political 180s after 9/11.
Stillwell, now a conservative columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, had been a liberal her whole life, writing off all Republicans as "ignorant, intolerant yahoos." Yet on 9/11, everything changed for her, as it did for so many. In the days after the attacks, the world seemed "topsy-turvy." On the political left, she wrote, "There was little sympathy for the victims," and it seemed to her that progressives were "consumed with hatred for this country" and had "extended their misguided sympathies to tyrants and terrorists."
Disgusted, she looked elsewhere. She found solace among conservative talk-show hosts and columnists. At first, she felt resonance with the right about the war on terror. But soon she found herself concurring about "smaller government, traditional societal structures, respect and reverence for life, the importance of family, personal responsibility, national unity over identity politics." She embraced gun rights for the first time, drawn to "the idea of self-preservation in perilous times." Her marriage broke up due in part to political differences. In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, she began going to pro-war rallies.
In 2005, she wrote a column called "The Making of a 9/11 Republican." Over the year that followed, she received thousands of e-mails from people who'd had similar experiences. There were so many of them that she decided to form a group. And so the 911 Neocons were born.
We tend to believe our political views have evolved by a process of rational thought, as we consider arguments, weigh evidence, and draw conclusions. But the truth is more complicated. Our political preferences are equally the result of factors we're not aware of—such as how educated we are, how scary the world seems at a given moment, and personality traits that are first apparent in early childhood. Among the most potent motivators, it turns out, is fear. How the United States should confront the threat of terrorism remains a subject of endless political debate. But Americans' response to threats of attack is now more clear-cut than ever. The fear of death alone is surprisingly effective in shaping our political decisions—more powerful, often, than thought itself.
Abstract Art vs. Talk Radio: The Political Personality Standoff
Most people are surprised to learn that there are real, stable differences in personality between conservatives and liberals—not just different views or values, but underlying differences in temperament. Psychologists John Jost of New York University, Dana Carney of Harvard, and Sam Gosling of the University of Texas have demonstrated that conservatives and liberals boast markedly different home and office decor. Liberals are messier than conservatives, their rooms have more clutter and more color, and they tend to have more travel documents, maps of other countries, and flags from around the world. Conservatives are neater, and their rooms are cleaner, better organized, more brightly lit, and more conventional. Liberals have more books, and their books cover a greater variety of topics. And that's just a start. Multiple studies find that liberals are more optimistic. Conservatives are more likely to be religious. Liberals are more likely to like classical music and jazz, conservatives, country music. Liberals are more likely to enjoy abstract art. Conservative men are more likely than liberal men to prefer conventional forms of entertainment like TV and talk radio. Liberal men like romantic comedies more than conservative men. Liberal women are more likely than conservative women to enjoy books, poetry, writing in a diary, acting, and playing musical instruments.
"All people are born alike—except Republicans and Democrats," quipped Groucho Marx, and in fact it turns out that personality differences between liberals and conservatives are evident in early childhood. In 1969, Berkeley professors Jack and Jeanne Block embarked on a study of childhood personality, asking nursery school teachers to rate children's temperaments. They weren't even thinking about political orientation.
Twenty years later, they decided to compare the subjects' childhood personalities with their political preferences as adults. They found arresting patterns. As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient. People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3. The reason for the difference, the Blocks hypothesized, was that insecure kids most needed the reassurance of tradition and authority, and they found it in conservative politics.
The most comprehensive review of personality and political orientation to date is a 2003 meta-analysis of 88 prior studies involving 22,000 participants. The researchers—John Jost of NYU, Arie Kruglanski of the University of Maryland, and Jack Glaser and Frank Sulloway of Berkeley—found that conservatives have a greater desire to reach a decision quickly and stick to it, and are higher on conscientiousness, which includes neatness, orderliness, duty, and rule-following. Liberals are higher on openness, which includes intellectual curiosity, excitement-seeking, novelty, creativity for its own sake, and a craving for stimulation like travel, color, art, music, and literature.
The study's authors also concluded that conservatives have less tolerance for ambiguity, a trait they say is exemplified when George Bush says things like, "Look, my job isn't to try to nuance. My job is to tell people what I think," and "I'm the decider." Those who think the world is highly dangerous and those with the greatest fear of death are the most likely to be conservative.
Liberals, on the other hand, are "more likely to see gray areas and reconcile seemingly conflicting information," says Jost. As a result, liberals like John Kerry, who see many sides to every issue, are portrayed as flip-floppers. "Whatever the cause, Bush and Kerry exemplify the cognitive styles we see in the research," says Jack Glaser, one of the study's authors, "Bush in appearing more rigid in his thinking and intolerant of uncertainty and ambiguity, and Kerry in appearing more open to ambiguity and to considering alternative positions."
Jost's meta-analysis sparked furious controversy. The House Republican Study Committee complained that the study's authors had received federal funds. George Will satirized it in his Washington Post column, and The National Review called it the "Conservatives Are Crazy" study. Jost and his colleagues point to the study's rigorous methodology. The study used political orientation as a dependent variable, meaning that where subjects fall on the political scale is computed from their own answers about whether they're liberal or conservative. Psychologists then compare factors such as fear of death and openness to new experiences, and seek statistically significant correlations. The findings are quintessentially empirical and difficult to dismiss as false.
Yet critics retort that the research draws negative conclusions about conservatives while the researchers themselves are liberal. And it's true that over the decades, a disproportionate amount of the research has focused on figuring out what's behind conservative behavior. Right shift is likewise more studied than left shift, largely because most of that research has been since 9/11, and aimed at trying to explain the conservative conversions of people like Cinnamon Stillwell.
Even with impeccable methodology, bias may creep into the choice of which phenomena to study. "There is a bias among social scientists," admits Glaser. "They look for the variables that are unflattering. There probably are other nice personality traits associated with conservatism, but they haven't shown up in the research because it's not as well studied."
"There are differences between liberals and conservatives, and people can value them however they like," Jost points out. "There is nothing inherently good or bad about being high or low on the need for closure or structure. Some may see religiosity as a positive, whereas others may see it more neutrally, and so on."
Red Shift
By 2004, as the presidential election drew near, researchers saw a chance to study the Jost results against the backdrop of unfolding events. Psychologists Mark Landau of the University of Arizona and Sheldon Solomon of Skidmore sought to explain how President Bush's approval rating went from around 51 percent before 9/11 to 90 percent immediately afterward. In one study, they exposed some participants to the letters WTC or the numbers 9/11 in an image flashed too quickly to register at the conscious level. They exposed other participants to familiar but random combinations of letters and numbers, such as area codes. Then they gave them words like coff__, sk_ll, and gr_ve, and asked them to fill in the blanks. People who'd seen random combinations were more likely to fill in coffee, skill, and grove. But people exposed to subliminal terrorism primes more often filled in coffin, skull, and grave. "The mere mention of September 11 or WTC is the same as reminding Americans of death," explains Solomon.
As a follow-up, Solomon primed one group of subjects to think about death, a state of mind called "mortality salience." A second group was primed to think about 9/11. And a third was induced to think about pain—something unpleasant but non-deadly. When people were in a benign state of mind, they tended to oppose Bush and his policies in Iraq. But after thinking about either death or 9/11, they tended to favor him. Such findings were further corroborated by Cornell sociologist Robert Willer, who found that whenever the color-coded terror alert level was raised, support for Bush increased significantly, not only on domestic security but also in unrelated domains, such as the economy.
University of Arizona psychologist Jeff Greenberg argues that some ideological shifts can be explained by terror management theory (TMT), which holds that heightened fear of death motivates people to defend their world views. TMT predicts that images like the destruction of the World Trade Center should make liberals more liberal and conservatives more conservative. "In the United States, political conservatism does seem to be the preferred ideology when people are feeling insecure," concedes Greenberg. "But in China or another communist country, reminding people of their own mortality would lead them to cling more tightly to communism."
Jost believes it's more complex. After all, Cinnamon Stillwell and others in the 911 Neocons didn't become more liberal. Like so many other Democrats after 9/11, they made a hard right turn. The reason thoughts of death make people more conservative, Jost says, is that they awaken a deep desire to see the world as fair and just, to believe that people get what they deserve, and to accept the existing social order as valid, rather than in need of change. When these natural desires are primed by thoughts of death and a barrage of mortal fear, people gravitate toward conservatism because it's more certain about the answers it provides—right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, us vs. them—and because conservative leaders are more likely to advocate a return to traditional values, allowing people to stick with what's familiar and known. "Conservatism is a more black and white ideology than liberalism," explains Jost. "It emphasizes tradition and authority, which are reassuring during periods of threat."
To test the theory, Jost prompted people to think about either pain—by looking at things like an ambulance, a dentist's chair, and a bee sting—or death, by looking at things like a funeral hearse, the grim reaper, and a dead-end sign. Across the political spectrum, people who had been primed to think about death were more conservative on issues like immigration, affirmative action, and same-sex marriage than those who had merely thought about pain, although the effect size was relatively small. The implication is clear: For liberals, conservatives, and independents alike, thinking about death actually makes people more conservative—at least temporarily.
Fear and Voting In America
Campaign strategists in both parties have never hesitated to use scare tactics. In 1964, a Lyndon Johnson commercial called "Daisy" juxtaposed footage of a little girl plucking a flower with footage of an atomic blast. In 1984, Ronald Reagan ran a spot that played on Cold War panic, in which the Soviet threat was symbolized by a grizzly lumbering across a stark landscape as a human heart pounds faster and faster and an off-screen voice warns, "There is a bear in the woods!" In 2004, Bush sparked furor for running a fear-mongering ad that used wolves gathering in the woods as symbols for terrorists plotting against America. And last fall, Congressional Republicans drew fire with an ad that featured bin Laden and other terrorists threatening Americans; over the sound of a ticking clock, a voice warned, "These are the stakes."
"At least some of the President's support is the result of constant and relentless reminders of death, some of which is just what's happening in the world, but much of which is carefully cultivated and calculated as an electoral strategy," says Solomon. "In politics these days, there's a dose of reason, and there's a dose of irrationality driven by psychological terror that may very well be swinging elections."
Solomon demonstrated that thinking about 9/11 made people go from preferring Kerry to preferring Bush. "Very subtle manipulations of psychological conditions profoundly affect political preferences," Solomon concludes. "In difficult moments, people don't want complex, nuanced, John Kerry-like waffling or sophisticated cogitation. They want somebody charismatic to step up and say, 'I know where our problem is and God has given me the clout to kick those people's asses.'"
Into The Blue
Studies show that people who study abroad become more liberal than those who stay home.
People who venture from the strictures of their limited social class are less likely to stereotype and more likely to embrace other cultures. Education goes hand-in-hand with tolerance, and often, the more the better:
Professors at major universities are more liberal than their counterparts at less acclaimed institutions. What travel and education have in common is that they make the differences between people seem less threatening. "You become less bothered by the idea that there is uncertainty in the world," explains Jost.
That's why the more educated people are, the more liberal they become—but only to a point. Once people begin pursuing certain types of graduate degrees, the curve flattens. Business students, for instance, become more conservative in their views toward minorities. As they become more established, doctors and lawyers tend to protect their economic interests by moving to the right. The findings demonstrate that conservative conversions are fueled not only by fear, but by other factors as well. And if the November election was any indicator, the pendulum that swung so forcefully to the right after 9/11 may be swinging back.
Tipping The Balance
Political conversions that are emotionally induced can be very subtle: A shift in support for a given issue or politician is not the same as a radical conversion or deep philosophical change. While views may be manipulated, the impact may or may not translate in the voting booth. Following 9/11, most lifelong liberals did not go through outright conversion or shift their preferred candidate. Yet many liberals who didn't become all-out conservatives found themselves nonetheless sympathizing more with conservative positions, craving the comfort of a strong leader, or feeling the need to punish or avenge. Many in the political center moved to the right, too. In aggregate, over an electorate of millions—a large proportion of whom were swing voters waiting to be swayed one way or the other—even a subtle shift was enough to tip the balance of the Presidential election, and the direction the country took for years. "Without 9/11 we would have a different president," says Solomon. "I would even say that the Osama bin Laden tape that was released the Thursday before the election was sufficient to swing the election. It was basically a giant mortality salience induction."
If we are so suggestible that thoughts of death make us uncomfortable defaming the American flag and cause us to sit farther away from foreigners, is there any way we can overcome our easily manipulated fears and become the informed and rational thinkers democracy demands?
To test this, Solomon and his colleagues prompted two groups to think about death and then give opinions about a pro-American author and an anti-American one. As expected, the group that thought about death was more pro-American than the other. But the second time, one group was asked to make gut-level decisions about the two authors, while the other group was asked to consider carefully and be as rational as possible. The results were astonishing. In the rational group, the effects of mortality salience were entirely eliminated. Asking people to be rational was enough to neutralize the effects of reminders of death. Preliminary research shows that reminding people that as human beings, the things we have in common eclipse our differences—what psychologists call a "common humanity prime"—has the same effect.
"People have two modes of thought," concludes Solomon. "There's the intuitive gut-level mode, which is what most of us are in most of the time. And then there's a rational analytic mode, which takes effort and attention."
The solution, then, is remarkably simple. The effects of psychological terror on political decision making can be eliminated just by asking people to think rationally. Simply reminding us to use our heads, it turns out, can be enough to make us do it.
This Is So We
Our preferences in art and music are often influenced by the masses.
Duncan Watts was annoyed to see a rapturous mob swarming around Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa at the Louvre while many other magnificent works at the museum sat unviewed.
A sociologist at Columbia University, Watts traced the Mona Lisa's popularity to a series of events that brought attention to it, among which were its theft by an Italian patriot in 1911 and a refashioning by Andy Warhol in 1963.
"We have this myth of individual people making decisions, but our tastes are shaped by social forces," says Watts's colleague Matthew Salganik, a professor of sociology at Princeton University.
To explore why some works of art top the charts while others languish in the discount bin, the team created a Web site where thousands of subjects could listen to obscure songs. Half of the group simply downloaded the tunes they liked. The other half did the same, but could see how many times each song had already been downloaded.
The second group tended to choose the most popular songs, creating a snowball effect for tunes picked by the first listeners. Though bowing to the influence of others gets a bad rap, there are good reasons to go along with the crowd, Salganik says. "We're social creatures. If everyone at work is talking abut Harry Potter, it's nice to be able to join in." Besides, it's a natural shortcut out of the tremendous consumer-choice overload we face.
Groupthink tends to keep the dreck down, thankfully unappealing songs (as judged by the group who couldn't see which were popular) were not downloaded often. But not all good songs rose to the top. Salganik advises artists not to feel bad if the masses haven't latched on to their work. "Just because you haven't broken through doesn't mean people wouldn't like what you're doing if they were exposed to it."
By: Carlin Flora
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