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In this section we will be discussing consciousness, sleep, dreams, and altered states of consciousness. I want you to choose a resource and topic that is the most interesting to you to complete the assignment

Please choose at least two different resources to learn about the importance of sleep and the significance of dreams.

Prompts:
1. Complete the Sleep & Dream tracker- what do you notice?
2.What did you learn about sleep & dreams?
3. What are you left wondering about sleeping & dreaming?
4. Where do you see the role of sleep & dreaming in your everyday life?
5. What reflections do you have after your learning?

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I have included some resources for getting ideas and exploring famous, influential, and infamous psychological experiments. Explore the material to use, or get ideas about where you want to go next with our assignment for Week 2 September 8th.

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Stress relievers: Tips to tame stress:Stress getting to you? Try some of these tips for stress relief.

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Stress relievers: Tips to tame stress:Stress getting to you? Try some of these tips for stress relief.

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Stress relievers: Tips to tame stress

Stress getting to you? Try some of these tips for stress relief.
By Mayo Clinic Staff
Is stress making you angry and grouchy? Stress relievers can help bring back calm and peace to your busy life. You don't have to put a lot of time or thought into stress relievers. If your stress is getting out of control and you need quick relief, try one of these tips.

Get active

Almost any form of physical activity can act as a stress reliever. Even if you're not an athlete or you're out of shape, exercise can still be a good stress reliever.

Physical activity can pump up your feel-good endorphins and other natural neural chemicals that boost your sense of well-being. Exercise also can refocus your mind on your body's movements. This refocus can improve your mood and help the day's irritations fade away. So go on a walk, take a jog, work in your garden, clean your house, bike, swim, weight train, vacuum or do anything else that gets you active.

Eat a healthy diet

Eating a healthy diet is an important part of taking care of yourself. Aim to eat many fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

Avoid unhealthy habits

Some people may deal with stress with unhealthy habits. These may include drinking too much caffeine or alcohol, smoking, eating too much, or using illegal substances. These habits can harm your health and increase your stress levels.

Meditate

During meditation, you focus your attention and quiet the stream of jumbled thoughts that may be crowding your mind and causing stress. Meditation can give you a sense of calm, peace and balance that can help both your emotional well-being and your overall health. Meditation can empower us to enhance our well-being.

You can practice guided meditation, guided imagery, mindfulness, visualization and other forms of meditation anywhere at any time. For example, you could meditate when you're out for a walk, riding the bus to work or waiting at your health care provider's office. Try an app to show you how to do these exercises. And you can try deep breathing anywhere.

Laugh more

A good sense of humor can't cure all ailments. But it can help you feel better, even if you have to force a fake laugh through your grumpiness. When you laugh, it lightens your mental load. It also causes positive physical changes in the body. Laughter fires up and then cools down your stress response.

So read some jokes, tell some jokes, watch a comedy or hang out with your funny friends. Or give laughter yoga a try.

Connect with others

When you're stressed and irritable, you may want to isolate yourself. Instead, reach out to family and friends and make social connections. Even one good friend who listens can make a difference.

Social contact is a good stress reliever because it can offer distraction, give support, and help you put up with life's up and downs. So take a coffee break with a friend, email a relative or visit your place of worship.

Got more time? Try volunteering for a charity and help yourself while helping others.

Assert yourself

You might want to do it all, but you can't, at least not without paying a price. Learning to say no or being willing to delegate can help you manage your to-do list and your stress. Healthy boundaries are important in a wellness journey. Everyone has physical and emotional limits.

Saying yes may seem like an easy way to keep the peace, prevent conflicts and get the job done right. But instead, it may cause you inner conflict because your needs and those of your family come second. Putting yourself second can lead to stress, anger, resentment and even the wish to take revenge. And that's not a very calm and peaceful reaction. Remember, you're a priority.

Try yoga

With its series of postures and breathing exercises, yoga is a popular stress reliever. Yoga brings together physical and mental disciplines that may help you reach peace of body and mind. Yoga can help you relax and ease stress and anxiety.

Try yoga on your own or find a class - you can find classes in many areas. Hatha yoga, especially, is a good stress reliever because of its slower pace and easier movements.

Get enough sleep

Stress can cause you to have trouble falling asleep. When you have too much to do - and too much to think about - your sleep can suffer. But sleep is the time when your brain and body recharge. Most adults need about 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night.

And how well and how long you sleep can affect your mood, energy level, focus and overall functioning. If you have sleep troubles, make sure that you have a quiet, relaxing bedtime routine. For example, listen to soothing music, make sure the area you sleep in is cool, dark and quiet, put phones and tablets away, and stick to a regular schedule.

Keep a journal

Writing down your thoughts and feelings can be a good release for otherwise pent-up feelings. Don't think about what to write - let it happen. Write anything that comes to mind. No one else needs to read it. So don't aim for perfect grammar or spelling.

Let your thoughts flow on paper, or on the computer screen. Once you're done, you can toss out what you wrote or save it to think about later.

Get musical and be creative

Listening to or playing music is a good stress reliever. It can provide a mental distraction, lessen muscle tension and lower stress hormones. Turn up the volume and let your mind be absorbed by the music.

If music isn't one of your interests, turn your attention to another hobby you enjoy. For example, try gardening, sewing, reading or sketching. Or try anything that makes you focus on what you're doing rather than what you think you should be doing.

Seek counseling

If new stressors are making it hard for you to cope or if self-care measures aren't relieving your stress, you may want to think about therapy or counseling. Therapy also may be a good idea if you feel overwhelmed or trapped. You also may think about therapy if you worry a great deal, or if you have trouble carrying out daily routines or meeting duties at work, home or school.

Professional counselors or therapists can help you find the sources of your stress and learn new coping tools.

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Show references

1. How stress affects your health. American Psychological Association. http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/stress.aspx. Accessed Jan. 24, 2023.

2. Relaxation techniques: What you need to know. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. https:// www.nccih.nih.gov/health/relaxation-techniques-what-you-need-to-know. Accessed Jan. 23, 2023.

3. Meditation and mindfulness: What you need to know. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/meditation-and-mindfulness-what-you-need-to-know. Accessed Jan. 23, 2023.

4. Yoga: What you need to know. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/yoga-what-you-need-to-know. Accessed Jan. 23, 2023.

5. Stress and your health. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. https://www.womenshealth.gov/mental-health/good-mental-health/stress-and-your-health. Accessed Jan. 23, 2023.

6. I'm so stressed out! Fact sheet. National Institute of Mental Health. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/so-stressed-out-fact-sheet. Accessed Jan. 24, 2023.

7. Seaward BL. Essentials of Managing Stress. 5th ed. Jones & Bartlett Learning; 2021.

8. Creagan ET (expert opinion). Mayo Clinic. Feb. 8, 2023.

See more In-depth

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Stress relievers can help restore calm to your chaotic life. When stress gets out of control, try these tips for quick relief.

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Two of the most common psychological disorders are Anxiety Disorders and Mood Disorders, like Depression.  With the recent events of the global pandemic, along with more awareness of mental health, these two topics are something that people see and experience more and more often.  Life has many ups and downs and it is perfectly "normal" to experience these things some of the time.

However,
If you ever become concerned about yourself or might be affected by a psychological disorder we discuss in class, please reach out and talk to someone. Talk to your parents, family, friends, and guidance counselors to seek a path to help.

Directions:
1. Choose at least one resource from the provided material in this Padlet.
2. Choose at least one prompt to answer, or create your own reflection of your learning:

-How does anxiety and/or depression impact your life?
-How can you apply your new learning to help yourself or others?
-Why is it important to learn about anxiety and depression?

3. Your response must be at least 250 words long and use evidence from your sources.
4. Your response should use "in text citation"

Examples of in text citation:

"According to the AI podcast clip, Gary Marcus said....."

"In the Ted Talk", Johann Hari discussed.......

"Behaioral Geneticist Rober Plomin says................"

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Your job is to pick at least two, use the resources to learn a little more about it, and then write a journal entry. Here are some things you can write about:

-where you see the topic in your life

-your new learning

-wonderings you still have

-a movie, tv show, or book you’re reading that you think shows the topic

-observations from the news and current events

-your general thoughts on the topic

-a fictional story about the topic

- any other reflection you might have.

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The 25 Most Influential Psychological Experiments in History-University of Wisconsin

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The 25 Most Influential Psychological Experiments in History-University of Wisconsin

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Teaching For Better Humans 2.0 : TED Radio Hour : NPR

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Teaching For Better Humans 2.0 : TED Radio Hour : NPR

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More than test scores or good grades-what do kids need for the future? This hour, TED speakers explore how to help children grow into better humans, both during and after this time of crisis.

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Keep track of your sleep quality and your dreams. What do you notice?

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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This week we are exploring the question, "Why study Psychology?"
Using the resources below, you can...
1. learn more about jobs and careers that apply psychology.
2. learn more about how psychology applies directly to any place of work (Adam Grant podcasts-- he's incredibly insightful and I learn from him constantly, 🙏 his Twitter).
3. research available mental health professionals and explore the many different certifications people have earned & understand what kind of help they provide (look at letters following their name, for example, Emily Gilmore, LCSW, would mean "licensed clinical social worker")--> use the first article from "Psychology Today" to do so.
4. explore TED Talks about Psychology and reflect on how you can apply what you learned to your own life
5. watch "100 Humans" on Netlix and reflect on how you can apply what you learned to your own life
6. practice meditating/self-care

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"Who are you, really?"- Brian Little

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Brian Little: Who are you, really? The puzzle of personality | TED Talk

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What makes you, you? Psychologists like to talk about our traits, or defined characteristics that make us who we are. But Brian Little is more interested in moments when we transcend those traits -- sometimes because our culture demands it of us, and sometimes because we demand it of ourselves. Join Little as he dissects the surprising differences between introverts and extroverts and explains why your personality may be more malleable than you think.

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THIS IS A MUST-LISTEN

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We have collectively hit weary. This is especially true for the brave folks on the front lines of this pandemic and for the people who love and support them. And, it's also true for all of us. In this episode, I talk about strategies for falling apart, staying connected + kind, and giving ourselves permission to feel hard things.

Listen

For the latest from Unlocking Us

Behind the Scenes

Guest Info

Brené Brown

Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston where she holds the Huffington Foundation - Brené Brown Endowed Chair at The Graduate College of Social Work. Brené is also a visiting professor in management at The University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business.

She has spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy and is the author of five #1 New York Times bestsellers: The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, Braving the Wilderness, and her latest book, Dare to Lead, which is the culmination of a seven-year study on courage and leadership.

Brené hosts the Unlocking Us podcast, and her TED talk - The Power of Vulnerability - is one of the top five most viewed TED talks in the world with over 45 million views. She is also the first researcher to have a filmed lecture on Netflix. The Call to Courage special debuted on the streaming service on April 19, 2019.

Brené lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband, Steve. They have two children, Ellen and Charlie.

VIEW TRANSCRIPT

Podcasts
Brené Brown Education and Research Group, LLC, owns the copyright in and to all content in and transcripts of the Unlocking Us and Dare to Lead podcasts, with all rights reserved, including right of publicity. WHAT'S OK: You are welcome to share an excerpt from the episode transcript (up to 500 words but not more) in media articles (e.g., The New York Times, LA Times, The Guardian), in a non-commercial article or blog post (e.g., Medium), and/or on a personal social media account for non-commercial purposes, provided that you include proper attribution and link back to the podcast URL. For the sake of clarity, media outlets with advertising models are permitted to use excerpts from the transcript per the above. WHAT'S NOT OK: No one is authorized to copy any portion of the podcast content or use Brené Brown's name, image or likeness for any commercial purpose or use, including without limitation inclusion in any books, e-books, book summaries or synopses, or on a commercial website or social media site (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) that offers or promotes your or another's products or services. For the sake of clarity, media outlets are permitted to use photos of Brené Brown from her Media Kit page or license photos from Getty Images, etc.
CLICK TO CONTINUE

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Brené on Comparative Suffering, the 50/50 Myth, and Settling the Ball | Brené Brown

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We have collectively hit weary. This is especially true for the brave folks on the front lines of this pandemic and for the people who love and support them. And, it's also true for all of us. In this episode, I talk about strategies for falling apart, staying connected + kind, and giving ourselves permission to feel hard things.

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How to Find Balance When Too Much Self-Doubt Gets in The Way"

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"Many kids experience it," he said, though many find a way to conceal their anxiety. "You may know a ton of subjective overachievers and never appreciate their internal struggle and turmoil," he added.

Self-doubt among students is prevalent today for two broad reasons, Carroll said. American culture, for one, places a premium on talent, which is rooted in the belief that success is a function of innate ability: Those born with natural talent are the select and privileged few. To gain favor, individuals have to demonstrate their innate competence. "Teachers and parents monitor SATS, achievement tests and grades as indicators of natural ability," Carroll said. Fast-moving social changes also contribute to widespread self-doubt. The rate at which people change jobs, and move, and upend their daily lives provokes uncertainty.

Though common, relentless suspicion about one's abilities corrodes confidence and limits learning, even when that anxiety produces successful outcomes, as it does with subjective overachievers. "The emotional drawbacks are intense," Carroll said. Stress, anxiety and health problems associated with spikes in cortisol levels are byproducts.

Persistent fear of failure and focus on the outcome also impede clear thinking, so that learning may be compromised. What Carroll calls the "brain dump philosophy" takes hold: Students cram their subjects for the sake of a grade, expel the information at the right time, and vow never to look at it again. Homework, too, becomes an exercise in finding the answer rather than exploring the process of figuring it out. It's so common among college students, Carroll said, that when he implores them to think about learning they "look at me like I'm a fuddy-duddy."

Some amount of self-doubt is healthy and normal, Carroll added. Indeed, some have argued that the complete absence of self-doubt is associated with a lack of self-awareness and incompetence. "Those with extremely low levels of self-doubt may be the lowest achievers of all," he said. What's vital is for students to gain a sensible perspective on their abilities so that every assignment and challenge isn't a referendum on their worth.

Parents and teachers of self-doubting kids can take steps to help buoy these students' well-being.

Change the meaning of doubt. To start, students prone to subjective overachievement can work on changing their mindset toward the experience of doubt. Ordinarily, the first stabs of worry about an assignment can provoke internal questioning: Students think that if they're feeling doubtful about their ability to tackle a project, say, then the work must not be for them. "It signals 'I'm not good at it,' " Carroll explained. Students need to be reminded that doubt is a normal emotional response to a challenge rather than an indication of incompetence. "They should see doubt as a natural and normal sign that they're on the path towards pursuing something worthwhile," Carroll said. Just as a tough workout in the gym might result in sweating and sore muscles, a difficult intellectual challenge should involve mental struggle and uncertainty.

Challenge the self-doubting thoughts. Social worker and psychotherapist Lauren Pardo said some self-doubt is normal and healthy, as it prevents exuberant grandiosity. But when the self-doubt starts to seep into relationships, body image and other aspects of well-being, she encourages her patients to interrogate their internal ruminations. "If a kid says, 'I'm dumb,' she can ask herself, 'Is that a thought or a fact? Do 'dumb' people get into Ivy League schools? What is a more productive and rational thought?' "

Changing young persons' minds about how they think of themselves is especially hard for self-doubters, because altering the way they think and behave would seem to threaten what is intrinsically working-in Sophia's case, her high achievements. But working to alter an unforgiving self-perception is essential to avoid long-term psychological consequences, such as shame, Pardo said.

Step back in time. University of Pennsylvania professor and author Adam Grant offers this advice to restless, never-happy strivers: Remember how you felt years ago before having achieved what you've now mastered. "Compare your current accomplishments to your past expectations," Grant advised in a newsletter, "and for a few minutes, before you're jolted back to the present, you'll feel contented." While not eliminating corrosive self-doubt, dwelling briefly in the past can provide short-term peace.

Focus on process rather than results. Teachers and parents can also shift from "person praise" when a child performs well to "process praise": Rather than praising a child for being smart when she receives an "A" on a paper, acknowledge her effort and attention to the process of writing it. Zeroing in on the learning steps the student took to achieve a positive outcome reinforces the idea that subjects can be mastered with work. "If you can learn the procedures, you can do anything and do it well," Carroll advised. This focus on process enhances learning and soothes emotional distress, while chipping away at the notion that innate ability determines all.

Visualize your successful future self. Carroll also advises students to cultivate what he calls the "vivid desired self" to supplant the fear of failure that triggers self-doubt. Common among subjective overachievers and self-handicappers is a tendency to fixate on negative outcomes and ruminate on coming failures. To draw mental attention away from these intense and negative mental images, children can be encouraged to dwell on their strengths and visualize their future selves succeeding. "Help them build their desired possible self-one that's rooted in their competencies," Carroll said. Developing a vivid desired self, he added, can be a kind of "psychological Ritalin."

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How to Find Balance When Too Much Self-Doubt Gets in the Way | KQED

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"Many kids experience it," he said, though many find a way to conceal their anxiety. "You may know a ton of subjective overachievers and never appreciate their internal struggle and turmoil," he added. Self-doubt among students is prevalent today for two broad reasons, Carroll said.

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Your job is to pick at least two, use the resources to learn a little more about it, and then write a journal entry. Here are some things you can write about:

-where you see the topic in your life

-your new learning

-wonderings you still have

-a movie, tv show, or book you’re reading that you think shows the topic

-observations from the news and current events

-your general thoughts on the topic

-a fictional story about the topic

- any other reflection you might have.

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Choose a prompt to answer, or create your own reflection of your learning:
-How does anxiety and/or depression impact your life?
-How can you apply your new learning to help yourself or others?
-Why is it important to learn about anxiety and depression?

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This week you will be learning about what motivates our behavior. There are two main ways we are motivated: Externally (things in our world motivate us) or Internally (things we think or feel motivate us). Use the resources to learn a little more about it, and then write a journal entry. Here are some things you can write about:

-where you see the topic in your life

-your new learning

-wonderings you still have

-a movie, tv show, or book you’re reading that you think shows the topic

-observations from the news and current events

-your general thoughts on the topic

-a fictional story about the topic

- any other reflection you might have.

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This week we will be learning more about who we are and how we are shaped by our environment, as well as how our environment shapes us.

You may reflect by choosing one of these prompts (or create one of your own):
1. How does your understanding of social psychology now help you to understand how you feel about school, work, family, or friendship?
2. Choose one idea you learned about this week and explain how you will use the idea in your life.
3. Create a drawing of your interpretation of a concept from social psychology.
4. Explain what you wish you had known earlier in your life from social psychology.

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(Episode on Neflix)

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Skip to main content

Why is human memory so bad? Why do we have so many really weird dreams? And why is anxiety the most common mental disorder?

The human mind might be one of life's greatest mysteries, but scientists have figured out so much more than you might realize. And starting September 12, we'll help you understand your own mind better: Our Netflix show Explained is back and we're starting with 5 new episodes - narrated by Emma Stone - taking you on an adventure through the mind. The episodes will answer your biggest questions on five topics: memory, dreams, anxiety, mindfulness, and psychedelics.

Explained is a show for people who are endlessly curious about the world around them. Here's our promise: If you give us 15 minutes of your time, we'll take you from being curious about a big important topic to understanding it.

You can check it out by searching for Explained on Netflix or by clicking here. And read on for some of Vox's best explainers on the endlessly fascinating human mind - on everything from the rise of anxiety products to how smartphones are changing our brains.

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Skip to main content Why is human memory so bad? Why do we have so many really weird dreams? And why is anxiety the most common mental disorder? The human mind might be one of life's greatest mysteries, but scientists have figured out so much more than you might realize.

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Psychology Today: Health, Help, Happiness + Find a Therapist

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Psychology Today: Health, Help, Happiness + Find a Therapist

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Psychology Today: Health, Help, Happiness + Find a Therapist

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View the latest from the world of psychology: from behavioral research to practical guidance on relationships, mental health and addiction. Find help from our directory of therapists, psychologists and counselors.

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"Depressed dogs, cats with OCD..."- Laurel Braitman

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Laurel Braitman: Depressed dogs, cats with OCD - what animal madness means for us humans

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Behind those funny animal videos, sometimes, are oddly human-like problems. Laurel Braitman studies non-human animals who exhibit signs of mental health issues -- from compulsive bears to self-destructive rats to monkeys with unlikely friends.

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"The Personality Myth"

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We like to think of our own personalities, and those of our family and friends as predictable, constant over time. But what if they aren't? What if nothing stays constant over a lifetime?

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"Soul Searching Through the Myers-Briggs Test"

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The personality test isn't perfect, but it plays to people's desire to understand themselves and others.

A group of young adults shyly meet for the first time on the second floor of an empty Manhattan shopping mall. The stores are all closed for the weekend, and other than a man stopping in the lobby to read his phone, this group is the only sign of activity.

"I actually really like clubbing," shares one guy.

The group goes silent.

"Get out of the circle," a woman whispers.

Everyone in this group took the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a personality test. They all tested as the same type (one that tends to be introverted), joined an online group for others who got the same result, and decided to meet up.

Which explains why they're meeting in an empty food court: It's perfect for a group of people who like quietude. In this crowd of 20-something New Yorkers, the clubber is, truly, an oddball.

Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers drew from influential psychologist Carl Jung's theories to invent the MBTI personality test in 1942. In an age of "What Disney princess are you?" quizzes, MBTI is a personality test that, while still reductive, actually indicates something about personality. The test uses four dichotomies to divide people:

Introvert (I) v. Extrovert (E)

Intuitive (N) v. Sensory (S)

Thinking (T) v. Feeling (F)

Judging (J) v. Perceiving (P)

The test ultimately divides people into 16 types, based on the combination of traits they fall into-as demonstrated in the interactive below:

Some psychologists and many test-takers believe these types say a lot about how people think and interact. Since the '70s, researchers have published their findings on MBTI in a peer-reviewed Journal of Psychological Type.

However, others consider the test to be worthless.

University of Pennsylvania professor of psychology Adam Grant says it doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny. "In social science, we use four standards: Are the categories reliable, valid, independent, and comprehensive?" Grant posted on LinkedIn. "For the MBTI, the evidence says not very, no, no, and not really."

Grant points out that the test ignores important personality features, such as the ability to stay calm under stress. Moreover, people often get different results when they retake it. Research shows "that as many as three-quarters of test takers achieve a different personality type when tested again," Annie Murphy Paul writes in The Cult of Personality Testing.

Additionally, the test relies on all-or-none categories, even when spectrums might be more accurate. For instance, no one is completely introverted or completely extroverted. (Some versions of the test do include what percentage you score for each category though.)

Given all this controversy, you might think people would treat the test as just a curiosity, or at least take it with a grain of salt. Instead, many people use types as a schema for understanding the world. There are blogs that sort Disney characters into MBTI types and YouTube sketch videos that compare types. According to CPP, a company that administrates the MBTI, college and universities worldwide use the test, as do 89 of the Fortune 100 companies.
It's not about going out with neighbors who also like to play golf or go to the beach. It's about looking for people with similar minds.
While there's plenty to criticize about the MBTI, it's easy to imagine that, if you put a group of people with the same personality type in a room together, you'll see a lot of similarities. Thanks to the popularity of online community-building sites like Meetup.com, MBTI personality groups, such as the one in the shopping mall, have actually materialized, allowing test-takers to meet up with other members of their type. Because the best kinds of friends are the ones who are just like you. Or, as Jerry Seinfeld put it in an episode of Seinfeld, "Now I know what I've been looking for all these years...myself! I've been waiting for me to come along, and now I've swept myself off my feet!"

The young adults in the shopping mall are all the INFJ type-introverted (I), intuitive (N), feeling (F), and judging (J). According to David Keirsey's Please Understand Me, a book about the Myers-Briggs types, INFJs are quiet, private people who like discussions and care intensely about helping others. The fact that I know this might be coloring my perception, but these traits all seem to come out at the meetup. One person speaks at a time, and comfortable silences break up the conversation. No one seems interested in small talk. Instead, they consider philosophy and personal issues.

In a sense, they're here for the same reason people go to any meetup: to find people with common interests and attitudes. Except in this case, it's not about going out with neighbors who also like to play golf or go to the beach. It's about looking for people with similar minds.

Before coming to the INFJ meetup, I took an MBTI test too. It told me I'm an INTJ, which is only one letter off from INFJ. I have to admit, I definitely felt like I was surrounded by similar people: We were all on time ("judging" types prefer their lives to be structured), relatively quiet (introverted), and focused on digging into theories (intuitive).

And yet I still felt a little disconnected from some of the discussions. I couldn't quite figure out why until one young woman told us about the time she spent 10 minutes in a grocery store trying to choose between fair trade and regular chocolate. She almost broke out in tears as she thought about the suffering workers in third world countries, she said. The others nodded, saying they too got upset in these kinds of situations.

I, on the other hand, kept my mouth shut, knowing that whether or not I bought the fair-trade chocolate, no tears would be involved. I'd weigh the various factors (price, likely taste, likely impact on the world), make a choice, and be fine with it.

After hearing the others talk about how the knowledge of overseas distress caused them emotional pain, I felt a bit guilty. Did my nonchalance make me a monster?

According to the MBTI, the difference between fair-trade-chocolate girl and me is that I am a Thinker (T) rather than a Feeler (F), meaning I make decisions by analyzing rather than by feeling. And as skeptical as I am about putting people in boxes, this distinction felt true in this scenario.

Leon Sao, a life coach and MBTI meetup organizer, says he's been successfully guessing his peers' types since high school. His classmates were surprised how much he could figure out about them, he says, and now he does the same thing at meetups.

"We get to laugh at the eerie accuracy of the MBTI together," Sao says.

Sao researched MBTI for years before he started running MBTI meetups in October 2014 (he also runs a MBTI YouTube channel). He likes the meetup groups largely because they let him learn about personality types through direct experience.

"You actually get to see the types in action," Sao says.
Participants get a chance to vent about how family, friends, and coworkers of dissimilar types can't understand them.
Sometimes he runs meetups for a mix of types. Sao claims that each type has its own quirks.

"INFPs live half their lives in a fairytale. Many ESTPs can curse like a sailor and not really care what people think of them. ESFPs are fun and light-hearted," he explains. "Over time, you get to figure out the noticeable vibe that each type gives off."

He also noticed patterns in how different types interact with each other.

"The 'FJ' types might get irritated with the 'TJ' types when the latter start to mess with the group dynamics, such as when the INTJs get into the conversation and say exactly what they honestly think, which may not always be pleasant," he explains. "The 'NF' and the 'NT' types try to get an understanding [of] where the other is coming from... to an extent. They still complain about each other."

Sao considers these meetups therapeutic, as participants get a chance to vent about how family, friends, and coworkers of dissimilar types can't understand why they act the way they do.

"When we get together in the MBTI group, it is like we finally get to express our frustrations," he says. They often workshop career and personal problems together, and the process usually reveals something about their types.

"The rest of us think 'Wow, your behavior reminds me of so-and-so of the same type of yours,'" Sao says. "Which is great, because then we can help you out with your issue, since we have everyone's experiences to work off."

Sao says he once met an ENFJ girl who had an INFP boyfriend. Without knowing much about them, Sao guessed that her boyfriend didn't share his feelings with others. Rather, he brooded about them when he was alone. And Sao guessed that the ENFJ girl wanted him to verbalize his feelings.

According to Sao, she told him that his description was dead-on. He advised that she give her boyfriend more time to process his feelings but encourage him to be open sometimes for her sake.

Conflicts between types are, apparently, quite common.

Manju Pradhan, a counseling psychologist who frequently uses this test with patients, says that having the most uncommon female type (2 percent of the population and less than 1 percent of women, according to the Meyers and Briggs Foundation) makes it difficult to be an INTJ woman.

Pradhan points out that INTJs are often socially clumsy. They play devil's advocate and introduce opposing ideas in order to learn, and many find this off-putting. In a society that encourages women to be nurturing rather than logical, INTJ women can be made to feel like outcasts.

"[They're] ostracized for being perceived as unconventional, robotic, and seemingly impersonal," Pradhan explains.

Pradhan sought out MBTI meetups to meet others like her. But getting involved had an unexpected benefit: Pradhan has found she's better able to deal with people who are different from her.

"If I notice that, as an introvert, my friends may seem more invested in organizing large gatherings and paying attention to the sports event at the restaurant's television bar, I realize they are simply being their natural selves, not undermining our friendship," she explains.

Pradhan runs workshops to teach others about how other types see the world. She once had participants role-play a job evaluation between a supervisor (INTJ), and employee (ENFJ).

"The ENFJ was judged as 'flirtatious' [by the supervisor] when in fact as an extroverted feeler, she was just focused on doing well at her job as a store manager," explains Pradhan.
Perhaps the MBTI is more of a starting point for self-discovery, rather than a finishing line.
Sao has discovered similar insights. These meetups have helped him notice that things he considers weaknesses could actually be strengths.

"As an INFP, I may feel bad about how little emotion I give off relative to how I feel," he admits. "But then I meet an INFJ, who feels bad about how much emotion she gives off, betraying how she feels at all times, which is another can of worms."

He recognizes that every type runs into challenges.

"It makes you relax a bit, and realize that other types have the other side of the coin, which is not necessarily better-it has its strengths and drawbacks," Sao says. "It is easy to get caught up in our assumptions about the world, but we do not realize that these assumptions are limited to how we are wired. We can work on our personal issues by seeing things objectively from the mindset of the type we are in conflict with."

How useful is the MBTI? Psychologists argue about it all the time; even Pradhan and Sao say that the MBTI isn't all encompassing. Pradhan stresses that the MBTI isn't made to "stereotype, objectify, or pigeonhole anyone" but instead to offer an average experience of each type. There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical of the test, and to be cautious about using it to judge people, whether that be in hiring or dating.

Stereotyping people using the test seems risky at best and harmful at worst. In particular, screening potential employees through the MBTI is probably a mistake, since there's no proof that you can link MBTI to how effective people will be at their jobs.

But even if the test isn't perfect, people's infatuation with it shows that it's quenching some kind of thirst they have for understanding themselves and others.

There's never been a universally agreed upon way to measure personality, and yet, people undeniably have different personality traits that must be taken into account to understand behavior. The test provides one framework to help understand these differences.

Plus, as Sao pointed out, many find their MBTI results startlingly accurate, giving them insights into their own personalities and relationships with others. It seems silly to throw away information that people find helpful.

Perhaps the MBTI is more of a starting point for self-discovery, rather than a finishing line. At minimum, the test points out that people behave differently largely because they view and interact with the world differently. If the MBTI helps people to understand that their conflicts may be the results of these different worldviews, then that alone might make the test worthwhile.

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Finding Yourself Through the Myers-Briggs Test

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The personality test isn't perfect, but it plays to people's desire to understand themselves and others.

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Feeling All the Feels: Crash Course Psychology #25

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What is Perception? | Introduction to Psychology

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Comprehensive coverage of core concepts grounded in both classic studies and current and emerging research, including coverage of the DSM-5 in discussions of psychological disorders. Incorporates discussions that reflect the diversity within the discipline, as well as the diversity of cultures and c…

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Kay M. Tye: What investigating neural pathways can reveal about mental health | TED Talk

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Kay M. Tye: What investigating neural pathways can reveal about mental health | TED Talk

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Kay M. Tye: What investigating neural pathways can reveal about mental health

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Neuroscientist Kay M. Tye investigates how your brain gives rise to complex emotional states like depression, anxiety or loneliness. From the cutting edge of science, she shares her latest findings -- including the development of a tool that uses light to activate specific neurons and create dramatic behavioral changes in mice.

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The term motivation describes why a person does something. It is the driving force behind human actions. Motivation is the process that initiates, guides, and maintains goal-oriented behaviors.

For instance, motivation is what helps you lose extra weight, or pushes you to get that promotion at work. In short, motivation causes you to act in a way that gets you closer to your goals. Motivation includes the biological, emotional, social, and cognitive forces that activate human behavior.

Motivation also involves factors that direct and maintain goal-directed actions. Although, such motives are rarely directly observable. As a result, we must often infer the reasons why people do the things that they do based on observable behaviors.

Learn the types of motivation that exist and how we use them in our everyday lives. And if it feels like you've lost your motivation, do not worry. There are many ways to develop or improve your self-motivation levels.

Press Play for Advice on Motivation

Hosted by therapist Amy Morin, LCSW, this episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast shares an exercise you can use to help you perform your best. Click below to listen now.

Follow Now: Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Google Podcasts

What Are the Types of Motivation?

The two main types of motivation are frequently described as being either extrinsic or intrinsic.

Extrinsic motivation arises from outside of the individual and often involves external rewards such as trophies, money, social recognition, or praise.

Intrinsic motivation is internal and arises from within the individual, such as doing a complicated crossword puzzle purely for the gratification of solving a problem.

A Third Type of Motivation?

Some research suggests that there is a third type of motivation: family motivation. An example of this type is going to work when you are not motivated to do so internally (no intrinsic motivation), but because it is a means to support your family financially.

Why Motivation Is Important

Motivation serves as a guiding force for all human behavior. So, understanding how motivation works and the factors that may impact it can be important for several reasons.

Understanding motivation can:

What Are the 3 Components of Motivation?

If you've ever had a goal (like wanting to lose 20 pounds or run a marathon), you probably already know that simply having the desire to accomplish these things is not enough. You must also be able to persist through obstacles and have the endurance to keep going in spite of difficulties faced.

These different elements or components are needed to get and stay motivated. Researchers have identified three major components of motivation: activation, persistence, and intensity.

Activation is the decision to initiate a behavior. An example of activation would be enrolling in psychology courses in order to earn your degree.

Persistence is the continued effort toward a goal even though obstacles may exist. An example of persistence would be showing up for your psychology class even though you are tired from staying up late the night before.

Intensity is the concentration and vigor that goes into pursuing a goal. For example, one student might coast by without much effort (minimal intensity) while another student studies regularly, participates in classroom discussions, and takes advantage of research opportunities outside of class (greater intensity).

The degree of each of these components of motivation can impact whether you achieve your goal. Strong activation, for example, means that you are more likely to start pursuing a goal. Persistence and intensity will determine if you keep working toward that goal and how much effort you devote to reaching it.

Tips for Improving Your Motivation

All people experience fluctuations in their motivation and willpower. Sometimes you feel fired up and highly driven to reach your goals. Other times, you might feel listless or unsure of what you want or how to achieve it.

If you're feeling low on motivation, there are steps you can take to help increase your drive. Some things you can do to develop or improve your motivation include:

Adjust your goals to focus on things that really matter to you. Focusing on things that are highly important to you will help push you through your challenges more than goals based on things that are low in importance.

If you're tackling something that feels too big or too overwhelming, break it up into smaller, more manageable steps. Then, set your sights on achieving only the first step. Instead of trying to lose 50 pounds, for example, break this goal down into five-pound increments.

Improve your confidence. Research suggests that there is a connection between confidence and motivation. So, gaining more confidence in yourself and your skills can impact your ability to achieve your goals.

Remind yourself about what you've achieved in the past and where your strengths lie. This helps keep self-doubts from limiting your motivation.

If there are things you feel insecure about, try working on making improvements in those areas so you feel more skilled and capable.

Causes of Low Motivation

There are a few things you should watch for that might hurt or inhibit your motivation levels. These include:

All-or-nothing thinking: If you think that you must be absolutely perfect when trying to reach your goal or there is no point in trying, one small slip-up or relapse can zap your motivation to keep pushing forward.

Believing in quick fixes: It's easy to feel unmotivated if you can't reach your goal immediately but reaching goals often takes time.

Thinking that one size fits all: Just because an approach or method worked for someone else does not mean that it will work for you. If you don't feel motivated to pursue your goals, look for other things that will work better for you.

Motivation and Mental Health

Sometimes a persistent lack of motivation is tied to a mental health condition such as depression. Talk to your doctor if you are feeling symptoms of apathy and low mood that last longer than two weeks.

Theories of Motivation

Throughout history, psychologists have proposed different theories to explain what motivates human behavior. The following are some of the major theories of motivation.

The instinct theory of motivation suggests that behaviors are motivated by instincts, which are fixed and inborn patterns of behavior. Psychologists such as William James, Sigmund Freud, and William McDougal have proposed several basic human drives that motivate behavior. They include biological instincts that are important for an organism's survival-such as fear, cleanliness, and love.

Drives and Needs

Many behaviors such as eating, drinking, and sleeping are motivated by biology. We have a biological need for food, water, and sleep. Therefore, we are motivated to eat, drink, and sleep. The drive reduction theory of motivation suggests that people have these basic biological drives, and our behaviors are motivated by the need to fulfill these drives.

Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs is another motivation theory based on a desire to fulfill basic physiological needs. Once those needs are met, it expands to our other needs, such as those related to safety and security, social needs, self-esteem, and self-actualization.

Arousal Levels

The arousal theory of motivation suggests that people are motivated to engage in behaviors that help them maintain their optimal level of arousal. A person with low arousal needs might pursue relaxing activities such as reading a book, while those with high arousal needs might be motivated to engage in exciting, thrill-seeking behaviors such as motorcycle racing.

The Bottom Line

Psychologists have proposed many different theories of motivation. The reality is that there are numerous different forces that guide and direct our motivations.

Understanding motivation is important in many areas of life beyond psychology, from parenting to the workplace. You may want to set the best goals and establish the right reward systems to motivate others as well as to increase your own motivation.

Knowledge of motivating factors (and how to manipulate them) is used in marketing and other aspects of industrial psychology. It's an area where there are many myths, and everyone can benefit from knowing what works with motivation and what doesn't.

Additional Reading

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Motivation is the force that guides behaviors. Discover psychological theories behind motivation, different types, and how to find the motivation to meet your goals.

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Social Psychology: Definition, Theories, Scope, & Examples

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Social psychology is the scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, beliefs, intentions, and goals are constructed within a social context by the actual or imagined interactions with others.

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American Psychological Association on Sleep

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American Psychological Association on Sleep

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Cite this

American Psychological Association. (2020, May 14). Why sleep is important and what happens when you don't get enough. https://www.apa.org/topics/sleep/why

Sleep is essential for a person's health and wellbeing, according to the National Sleep Foundation (NSF). Yet millions of people do not get enough sleep and many suffer from lack of sleep. For example, surveys conducted by the NSF (1999-2004) reveal that at least 40 million Americans suffer from over 70 different sleep disorders and 60 percent of adults report having sleep problems a few nights a week or more. Most of those with these problems go undiagnosed and untreated. In addition, more than 40 percent of adults experience daytime sleepiness severe enough to interfere with their daily activities at least a few days each month - with 20 percent reporting problem sleepiness a few days a week or more. Furthermore, 69 percent of children experience one or more sleep problems a few nights or more during a week.

What are the signs of excessive sleepiness?

According to psychologist and sleep expert David F. Dinges, Ph.D., of the Division of Sleep and Chronobiology and Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, irritability, moodiness and disinhibition are some of the first signs a person experiences from lack of sleep. If a sleep-deprived person doesn't sleep after the initial signs, said Dinges, the person may then start to experience apathy, slowed speech and flattened emotional responses, impaired memory and an inability to be novel or multitask. As a person gets to the point of falling asleep, he or she will fall into micro sleeps (5-10 seconds) that cause lapses in attention, nod off while doing an activity like driving or reading and then finally experience hypnagogic hallucinations, the beginning of REM sleep. (Dinges, Sleep, Sleepiness and Performance, 1991)

Everyone's individual sleep needs vary. In general, most healthy adults are built for 16 hours of wakefulness and need an average of eight hours of sleep a night. However, some individuals are able to function without sleepiness or drowsiness after as little as six hours of sleep. Others can't perform at their peak unless they've slept ten hours. And, contrary to common myth, the need for sleep doesn't decline with age but the ability to sleep for six to eight hours at one time may be reduced. (Van Dongen & Dinges, Principles & Practice of Sleep Medicine, 2000)

What causes sleep problems?

Psychologists and other scientists who study the causes of sleep disorders have shown that such problems can directly or indirectly be tied to abnormalities in the following systems:

Physiological systems

Brain and nervous system

Cardiovascular system

Metabolic functions

Immune system

Furthermore, unhealthy conditions, disorders and diseases can also cause sleep problems, including:

Pathological sleepiness, insomnia and accidents

Hypertension and elevated cardiovascular risks (MI, stroke)

Emotional disorders (depression, bipolar disorder)

Obesity; metabolic syndrome and diabetes

Alcohol and drug abuse
(Dinges, 2004)

Groups that are at particular risk for sleep deprivation include night shift workers, physicians (average sleep = 6.5 hours a day; residents = 5 hours a day), truck drivers, parents and teenagers. (American Academy of Sleep Medicine and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Working Group on Problem Sleepiness. 1997).

How environment and behavior affect a person's sleep

Stress is the number one cause of short-term sleeping difficulties, according to sleep experts. Common triggers include school- or job-related pressures, a family or marriage problem and a serious illness or death in the family. Usually the sleep problem disappears when the stressful situation passes. However, if short-term sleep problems such as insomnia aren't managed properly from the beginning, they can persist long after the original stress has passed.

Drinking alcohol or beverages containing caffeine in the afternoon or evening, exercising close to bedtime, following an irregular morning and nighttime schedule, and working or doing other mentally intense activities right before or after getting into bed can disrupt sleep.

If you are among the 20 percent of employees in the United States who are shift workers, sleep may be particularly elusive. Shift work forces you to try to sleep when activities around you - and your own "biological rhythms" - signal you to be awake. One study shows that shift workers are two to five times more likely than employees with regular, daytime hours to fall asleep on the job.

Traveling also disrupts sleep, especially jet lag and traveling across several time zones. This can upset your biological or "circadian" rhythms.

Environmental factors such as a room that's too hot or cold, too noisy or too brightly lit can be a barrier to sound sleep. And interruptions from children or other family members can also disrupt sleep. Other influences to pay attention to are the comfort and size of your bed and the habits of your sleep partner. If you have to lie beside someone who has different sleep preferences, snores, can't fall or stay asleep, or has other sleep difficulties, it often becomes your problem too!

Having a 24/7 lifestyle can also interrupt regular sleep patterns: the global economy that includes round the clock industries working to beat the competition; widespread use of nonstop automated systems to communicate and an increase in shift work makes for sleeping at regular times difficult.

Health problems and sleep disorders

A number of physical problems can interfere with your ability to fall or stay asleep. For example, arthritis and other conditions that cause pain, backache, or discomfort can make it difficult to sleep well.

Epidemiological studies suggest self-reported sleep complaints are associated with an increased relative risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. For women, pregnancy and hormonal shifts including those that cause premenstrual syndrome (PMS) or menopause and its accompanying hot flashes can also intrude on sleep.

Finally, certain medications such as decongestants, steroids and some medicines for high blood pressure, asthma, or depression can cause sleeping difficulties as a side effect.

It is a good idea to talk to a physician or mental health provider about any sleeping problem that recurs or persists for longer than a few weeks.

According to the DSM, some psychiatric disorders have fatigue as a major symptom. Included are: major depressive disorder (includes postpartum blues), minor depression, dysthymia, mixed anxiety-depression, seasonal affective disorder and bipolar disorder.

Teenagers, sleep problems and drugs

According to a long-term study published in the 2004 April issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, young teenagers whose preschool sleep habits were poor were more than twice as likely to use drugs, tobacco or alcohol. This finding was made by the University of Michigan Health System as part of a family health study that followed 257 boys and their parents for 10 years. The study found a significant connection between sleep problems in children and later drug use, even when other issues such as depression, aggression, attention problems and parental alcoholism were taken into account. Long-term data on girls isn't available yet. The researchers suggest that early sleep problems may be a "marker" for predicting later risk of early adolescent substance abuse - and that there may be a common biological factor underlying both traits. Although the relationship between sleep problems and the abuse of alcohol in adults is well known, this is the first study to look at the issue in children.

Children and sleep disturbances

Nightmares are dreams with vivid and disturbing content. They are common in children during REM sleep. They usually involve an immediate awakening and good recall of the dream content.

Sleep terrors are often described as extreme nightmares. Like nightmares, they most often occur during childhood, however they typically take place during non-REM (NREM) sleep. Characteristics of a sleep terror include arousal, agitation, large pupils, sweating, and increased blood pressure. The child appears terrified, screams and is usually inconsolable for several minutes, after which he or she relaxes and returns to sleep. Sleep terrors usually take place early in the night and may be combined with sleepwalking. The child typically does not remember or has only a vague memory of the terrifying events.

Sleepiness and decision making

In the August 2004 issue of the journal Sleep, Dr. Timothy Roehrs, the Director of research at the Sleep Disorders and Research Center at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit published one of the first studies to measure the effect of sleepiness on decision making and risk taking. He found that sleepiness does take a toll on effective decision making.

Cited in the October 12, New York Times Science section, Dr. Roehrs and his colleagues paid sleepy and fully alert subjects to complete a series of computer tasks. At random times, they were given a choice to take their money and stop. Or they could forge ahead with the potential of either earning more money or losing it all if their work was not completed within an unknown remainder of time.

Dr. Roehrs found that the alert people were very sensitive to the amount of work they needed to do to finish the tasks and understood the risk of losing their money if they didn't. But the sleepy subjects chose to quit the tasks prematurely or they risked losing everything by trying to finish the task for more money even when it was 100 percent likely that they would be unable to finish, said Dr. Roehrs.

Consequences of lost sleep

According to the National Commission on Sleep Disorders Research (1998) and reports from the National Highway Safety Administration (NHSA)(2002), high-profile accidents can partly be attributed to people suffering from a severe lack of sleep.

Each year the cost of sleep disorders, sleep deprivation and sleepiness, according to the NCSDR, is estimated to be $15.9 million in direct costs and $50 to $100 billion a year in indirect and related costs. And according to the NHSA, falling asleep while driving is responsible for at least 100,000 crashes, 71,000 injuries and 1,550 deaths each year in the United States. Young people in their teens and twenties, who are particularly susceptible to the effects of chronic sleep loss, are involved in more than half of the fall-asleep crashes on the nation's highways each year. Sleep loss also interferes with the learning of young people in our nation's schools, with 60 percent of grade school and high school children reporting that they are tired during the daytime and 15 percent of them admitting to falling asleep in class.

According to the Department of Transportation (DOT), one to four percent of all highway crashes are due to sleepiness, especially in rural areas and four percent of these crashes are fatal.

Risk factors for drowsy driving crashes:

1. Late night/early morning driving

2. Patients with untreated excessive sleepiness

3. People who obtain six or fewer hours of sleep per day

4. Young adult males

5. Commercial truck drivers

6. Night shift workers

7. Medical residents after their shift

How to get a good night sleep

According to sleep researchers, a night's sleep is divided into five continually shifting stages, defined by types of brain waves that reflect either lighter or deeper sleep. Toward morning, there is an increase in rapid eye movement, or REM sleep, when the muscles are relaxed and dreaming occurs, and recent memories may be consolidated in the brain. The experts say that hitting a snooze alarm over and over again to wake up is not the best way to feel rested. "The restorative value of rest is diminished, especially when the increments are short," said psychologist Edward Stepanski, PhD who has studied sleep fragmentation at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. This on and off again effect of dozing and waking causes shifts in the brain-wave patterns. Sleep-deprived snooze-button addicts are likely to shorten their quota of REM sleep, impairing their mental functioning during the day. ( New York Times, October 12, 2004)

Certain therapies, like cognitive behavioral therapy teach people how to recognize and change patterns of thought and behavior to solve their problems. Recently this type of therapy has been shown to be very effective in getting people to fall asleep and conquer insomnia.

According to a study published in the October 2004 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine, cognitive behavior therapy is more effective and lasts longer than a widely used sleeping pill, Ambien, in reducing insomnia. The study involved 63 healthy people with insomnia who were randomly assigned to receive Ambien, the cognitive behavior therapy, both or a placebo. The patients in the therapy group received five 30-minute sessions over six weeks. They were given daily exercises to "recognize, challenge and change stress-inducing" thoughts and were taught techniques, like delaying bedtime or getting up to read if they were unable to fall asleep after 20 minutes. The patients taking Ambien were on a full dose for a month and then were weaned off the drug. At three weeks, 44 percent of the patients receiving the therapy and those receiving the combination therapy and pills fell asleep faster compared to 29 percent of the patients taking only the sleeping pills. Two weeks after all the treatment was over, the patients receiving the therapy fell asleep in half the time it took before the study and only 17 percent of the patients taking the sleeping pills fell asleep in half the time. (New York Times, October 5, 2004)

According to leading sleep researchers, there are techniques to combat common sleep problems:

Keep a regular sleep/wake schedule

Don't drink or eat caffeine four to six hours before bed and minimize daytime use

Don't smoke, especially near bedtime or if you awake in the night

Avoid alcohol and heavy meals before sleep

Get regular exercise

Minimize noise, light and excessive hot and cold temperatures where you sleep

Develop a regular bed time and go to bed at the same time each night

Try and wake up without an alarm clock

Attempt to go to bed earlier every night for certain period; this will ensure that you're getting enough sleep

Insomnia and cognitive-behavioral treatment

In clinical settings, cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) has a 70-80 percent success rate for helping those who suffer from chronic insomnia. Almost one third of people with insomnia achieve normal sleep and most reduce their symptoms by 50 percent and sleep an extra 45-60 minutes a night. When insomnia exists along with other psychological disorders like depression, say the experts, the initial treatment should address the underlying condition.

But sometimes even after resolving the underlying condition, the insomnia still exists, says psychologist Jack Edinger, PhD, of the VA Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University and cautions that treating the depression usually doesn't resolve the sleep difficulties. From his clinical experience, he has found that most patients with insomnia should be examined for specific behaviors and thoughts that may perpetuate the sleep problems. When people develop insomnia, they try to compensate by engaging in activities to help them get more sleep. They sleep later in the mornings or spend excessive times in bed. These efforts usually backfire, said Edinger.

From his clinical work and research on sleep, psychologist Charles M. Morin, PhD, a Professor in the Psychology Department and Director of the Sleep Disorders Center at University Laval in Quebec, Canada says that ten percent of adults suffer from chronic insomnia. In a study released in the recent issue of Sleep Medicine Alert published by the NSF, Morin outlines how CBT helps people overcome insomnia. Clinicians use sleep diaries to get an accurate picture of someone's sleep patterns. Bedtime, waking time, time to fall asleep, number and durations of awakening, actual sleep time and quality of sleep are documented by the person suffering from insomnia.

A person can develop poor sleep habits (i.e. watching TV in bed or eating too much before bedtime), irregular sleep patterns (sleeping too late, taking long naps during the day) to compensate for lost sleep at night. Some patients also develop a fear of not sleeping and a pattern of worrying about the consequences of not sleeping, said Morin. "Treatments that address the poor sleep habits and the faulty beliefs and attitudes about sleep work but sometimes," said Morin, "medication may play a role in breaking the cycle of insomnia. But behavioral therapies are essential for patients to alter the conditions that perpetuate it."

CBT attempts to change a patient's dysfunctional beliefs and attitudes about sleep. "It restructure thoughts - like, 'I've got to sleep eight hours tonight' or 'I've got to take medication to sleep' or 'I just can't function or I'll get sick if I don't sleep.' These thoughts focus too much on sleep, which can become something like performance anxiety - sleep will come around to you when you're not chasing it," said Edinger.

What works in many cases, said Morin and Edinger, is to standardize or restrict a person's sleep to give a person more control over his or her sleep. A person can keep a sleep diary for a couple of weeks and a clinician can monitor the amount of time spent in bed to the actual amount of time sleeping. Then the clinician can instruct the patient to either go to bed later and get up earlier or visa versa. This procedure improves the length of sleeping time by imposing a mild sleep deprivation situation, which has the result of reducing the anxiety surrounding sleep. To keep from falling asleep during the day, patients are told not to restrict sleep to less than five hours.

Standardizing sleep actually helps a person adjust his or her homeostatic mechanism that balances sleep, said Edinger. "Therefore, if you lose sleep, your homeostatic mechanism will kick in and will work to increase the likelihood of sleeping longer and deeper to promote sleep recovery. This helps a person come back to their baseline and works for the majority."

A person can also establish more stimulus control over his or her bedroom environment, said Morin. This could include: going to bed only when sleepy, getting out of bed when unable to sleep, prohibiting non-sleep activities in the bedroom, getting up at the same time every morning (including weekends) and avoiding daytime naps.

Finally, a person can incorporate relaxation techniques as part of his or her treatment. For example, a person can give herself or himself an extra hour before bed to relax and unwind and time to write down worries and plans for the following day.

In CBT, said Morin, breaking the thought process and anxiety over sleep is the goal. "After identifying the dysfunctional thought patterns, a clinician can offer alternative interpretations of what is getting the person anxious so a person can think about his or her insomnia in a different way." Morin offers some techniques to restructure a person's cognitions. "Keep realistic expectations, don't blame insomnia for all daytime impairments, do not feel that losing a night's sleep will bring horrible consequences, do not give too much importance to sleep and finally develop some tolerance to the effects of lost sleep.

According to Edinger, aging weakens a person's homeostatic sleep drive after age 50. Interestingly, the length of the circadian cycle stays roughly the same over the lifespan but the amplitude of the circadian rhythm may decline somewhat with aging.

National Sleep Foundation
http://www.thensf.org

American Academy of Sleep Medicine
http://www.aasmnet.org/

American Insomnia Association
http://www.americaninsomniaassociation.org/

Sleep Research Society
http://www.sleepresearchsociety.org/

NIH National Center for Sleep Disorders Research
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/sleep

The MayoClinic.com Sleep Center

(Blake, et al, Psychological Reports, 1998; National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Working Group on Insomnia, 1998)

David F. Dinges, PhD, Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry, Chief, Division of Sleep and Chronobiology, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

Jack Edinger, PhD, of the VA Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University

Charles M. Morin, PhD, a Professor in the Psychology Department and Director of the Sleep Disorders Center at University Laval in Quebec, Canada

Timothy Roehrs, PhD, the Director of Research, Sleep Disorders and Research Center at Henry Ford Hospital

Edward Stepanski, PhD, who has studied sleep fragmentation at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago

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Why sleep is important and what happens when you don't get enough

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Cite this American Psychological Association. (2020, May 14). Why sleep is important and what happens when you don't get enough. https://www.apa.org/topics/sleep/why Sleep is essential for a person's health and wellbeing, according to the National Sleep Foundation (NSF). Yet millions of people do not get enough sleep and many suffer from lack of sleep.

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Entry-Level Job Options for Psychology Majors

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Entry-Level Job Options for Psychology Majors

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Psychology is one of the top six most popular college majors. It's a field that fascinates many people, and once you've earned a psychology degree, jobs in many fields are open to you. Having a good understanding of the human mind and human behavior can help you excel in a wide variety of career paths.

While those with an bachelor's degree in psychology do not have all of the same career options available to those with a master's or doctorate, there are many entry-level jobs for college graduates with a bachelor's degree in psychology. These career options might appear to have little to do with the field. However, an undergraduate education in psychology helps students develop skills that are important in a variety of careers.

Advertising or Marketing Manager

The art and science of persuasion is a major topic in psychology, which is why advertising or marketing is often an ideal career choice for people with a bachelor's degree in psychology. Careers in this field often involve researching the target audience for a product or message and developing advertising materials based on this research.

If you are interested in a career in this field, look for ways that you can gain practical experience now. Internships are an excellent way to get experience, find professional mentors, and build networking relationships in your chosen field.

Sales Representative

Undergraduate psychology programs help students acquire a wide range of interpersonal skills. Understanding how to determine and then meet a client's needs is valuable in sales and marketing positions.

Employers value skills such as the ability to speak well and communicate effectively. If you are interested in working in this field, take classes that will improve your understanding of people and human behavior. Courses in social psychology, personality, and communications can be especially beneficial.

Psychiatric Technician or Partial Care Worker

Many people with a bachelor's degree in psychology choose to work directly in the field of health and human services. These jobs allow psychology majors to pursue a career in psychology without a graduate degree, or to gain experience prior to enrolling in a graduate degree program. Jobs in this category include:

Case manager

Mental health technician

Psychiatric technician

Rehabilitation specialist

Social work assistant

Partial care worker

These workers aid clients in inpatient and outpatient settings who have a variety of mental health concerns. In most cases, people in these jobs work under the supervision and guidance of a licensed clinical psychologist or social worker.

Job duties involve helping patients with basic daily needs, teaching life skills, conducting applied therapy sessions, and performing related case management tasks.

Career Counselor

If you enjoy helping people discover their potential, then working as a career counselor can be a fulfilling choice. This job often involves helping people select a career, assisting those in the process of changing careers, or providing vocational rehabilitation to individuals returning to the workforce.

Some psychology majors choose to work with adults with disabilities who may need skills training, job search help, on-the-job training, and regular workplace supervision.

Earning a bachelor's degree in psychology generally requires a great deal of writing. After graduation, you could put those communication skills to work in a writing-related career. With a psychology degree, jobs such as technical writer, advertising copywriter, or newspaper reporter may be of interest to you.

Probation and Parole Officer

If you are interested in criminal justice, you might want to consider a career as a probation or parole officer. Typically hired by local or state governments, probation and parole officers work directly with people who have been convicted of criminal offenses.

These professionals supervise offenders in home, work, and school settings to track behaviors; make recommendations to the courts; and coordinate with drug treatment professionals or therapists.

Market Researcher

People working in the field of market research perform a variety of tasks, including conducting interviews, performing opinion polls, collecting data, and interpreting results. A bachelor's degree in psychology prepares students for work in this field by training them in statistical and scientific methodologies.

Child Care Worker

Another way to use your bachelor's degree in psychology is to become a childcare worker. You would have an immediate and direct impact in helping children learn and grow in a safe environment. You might consider working in a child care center, preschool, or after-school program or even opening up your own child care center or family child care home.

Research Assistant

If you have an interest in research and experimental psychology, working as a psychology laboratory assistant could be a great way to put your bachelor's degree to work. Some settings that might employ psychology lab assistants include university psychology programs, government agencies, and businesses that study human behavior.

If this is the kind of post-psychology degree job that interests you, you can gain valuable research experience while you're still an undergrad. Sign up for a research assistant position at your university, or consider taking an internship in a psych lab.

Social Service Specialist

Individuals with a bachelor's degree in psychology can also find career opportunities working in the social services sector for government agencies or non-profits. These positions might entail helping individuals locate psychological resources in their community, providing counseling services directly to clients, and other types of case management services.

Some important skills for those working in the social service field include the ability to assess client needs, keep thorough and accurate records, express care and empathy, and to act as advocates for clients.

Students who also earn a teaching certificate along with their bachelor's degree in psychology can also become teachers. Some graduates may opt to apply their knowledge of psychology indirectly as an elementary or middle-school teacher, while others may choose to teach psychology at the high school level.

If you already hold a bachelor's degree in psychology, you might be able to enroll in an accredited teacher education program in order to earn a teaching certificate in your state. Contact your state's board of education to learn more about the requirements and any alternative routes to becoming a credentialed teacher that might be available.

Another option is to work as a paraprofessional, in which you assist a teacher in a classroom or serve as a one-on-one aide to a student with special needs. These positions do not require a master's degree or teaching certificate.

Prepare for a Post-College Career

While opportunities in the field of psychology for those with a bachelor's degree may be more limited than for those with graduate degrees, there are ways to maximize your potential and get the most out of your psychology degree. During your undergraduate years, take courses that will help you later in the job market. Employers value skills such as:

Creativity

Critical thinking

Effective written communication

Knowledge of group and organizational behavior

One-on-one and small group communication

Understanding of individual human behavior

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the job outlook for psychologists is expected to grow at an average rate over the next decade. The need for psychological services in hospitals schools, private businesses, social service agencies, and mental health centers is expected to drive this growth.

It is important to note that the greatest opportunities will be for those with a doctorate degree. "Opportunities directly related to psychology will be limited for bachelor's degree holders," says the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its Occupational Outlook Handbook.

"Some may find jobs as assistants in rehabilitation centers or in other jobs involving data collection and analysis. Those who meet state certification requirements may become high school psychology teachers."

A Word From Verywell

While job opportunities and earnings potential are more limited with a bachelor's degree compared to a graduate degree, there are still plenty of job options out there for those who have a bachelor's degree in psychology.

Take advantage of the job resources available through your university. Many universities host job fairs, and most schools have designated career resources centered on helping students and alumni look for work.

Frequently Asked Questions

What jobs can I get with an associate's degree in psychology?

With an associate's degree in psychology, you are qualified for several entry-level jobs (although some may require some additional training). Possibilities include:

Social services assistant

Psychiatric technician

Mental health advocate

Home care aide

Teacher's aide/paraprofessional

Childcare worker or youth counselor

Police officer or corrections officer

Research assistant

What jobs can you get with a social psychology degree?

With a social psychology degree, jobs in social services, human resources, or marketing may be a good option. People with bachelor's degrees will likely start in entry-level jobs, such as human resources assistant.

What mental health jobs can I get with a bachelor's degree in psychology?

A graduate degree is essential for some jobs in mental health, such as counselor or therapist. However, with a bachelor's degree in psychology, you can work in the mental health field as a behavioral or psychiatric technician, care worker, rehab specialist, or social services assistant. In these roles, you would work directly with clients, but be under the supervision and guidance of a psychologist, psychiatrist, or social worker.

What is a good job for a student pursuing a degree in psychology?

As an undergraduate studying psychology, you may have the opportunity to work as a research or teaching assistant in psychology. This is an excellent option if you plan to pursue a graduate degree.

If you think that you will enter the job market once you earn your bachelor's degree, look for jobs or internships that allow you to gain experience in your chosen field. That might mean coaching, mentoring, or caring for kids if you are interested in education; working for the human resources department in a business; or working in a retail store if you are interested in sales.

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

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11 Jobs You Can Do With a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology

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Psychology is one of the top six most popular college majors. It's a field that fascinates many people, and once you've earned a psychology degree, jobs in many fields are open to you. Having a good understanding of the human mind and human behavior can help you excel in a wide variety of career paths.

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"Should you live for your resume...?"- David Brooks

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Please [contact us](https://www.ted.com/contact) and let us know what happened.

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"Flip the Script"

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In this episode we look at situations where someone flips the script - does the opposite of what their natural instinct is - and in this way, transforms a situation.

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"How the Psychology of the England Football Team Could Change Your Life"

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his week, the England midfielder Dele Alli was asked if he was nervous about the big tests up ahead: first, of course, the team's semi-final against Croatia on Wednesday. "Excited, not nervous," he replied. His apparent happiness and confidence reflected an England team that seems transformed from previous incarnations. Where once it was stuffed with entitled, surly stars, burdened with the weight of history and the pressure of expectations, it now comes across as a hungry, humble team, playing with lightness and joy.

"We've spoken to the players about writing their own stories," said the manager, Gareth Southgate, after the team beat Colombia in an unprecedentedly victorious (for England) penalty shootout. "Tonight they showed they don't have to conform to what's gone before. They have created their own history ... We always have to believe in what is possible in life and not be hindered by history or expectations."

The team appears in a better place psychologically than it has for generations. Much of the credit has gone to Southgate, but also to Pippa Grange, the team psychologist, who has been working behind the scenes. "She's an amazing person," Alli said on Monday. "Everyone listens to her when she talks."

Grange was appointed by the FA as its head of people and team development in November last year, given the job of building resilience while confronting the pressures and psychodramas faced by previous England squads. The FA has said it searched globally for the right person for the job, but Grange, like most of the young players, isn't an obvious superstar in her field; there is no self-promoting social media presence or bestselling self-development books.

She wrote in 2013 that being a woman in a male team environment "is a constant navigation, for everyone. I have no interest in being one of the lads and I don't quite fit in the 'nurturing mother figure' category in terms of the leadership work I do. I would be professionally ineffective if I remained in the background, psychologically safe with minimal voice, and I am not here to be the centre of attention as some form of entertainment. I don't want to be completely separate because that would make me inaccessible and probably be a lonely place to operate from."

Born in Yorkshire, but said to be an Arsenal fan, Grange graduated in sports science from Loughborough University and played basketball in England's National League, before moving to Australia in 1996, where she undertook a doctorate in psychology. Since then, she has been working as a "culture performance coach" for sports bodies including rugby teams in New Zealand and the Australian [Rules] Football League's player association. Her expertise is in changing the culture of groups, and she built a reputation in Australia as someone unafraid to confront issues head-on.

The midfielder Eric Dier said: "I think a lot of the work that we've done with her has been prior to the tournament starting, over the last six or seven months." This has reportedly included getting the players to sit down together in small groups to share their life experiences and anxieties, and to reveal intimate truths about their character and what drives them. The point, Southgate has said, is to build trust, "making them closer, with a better understanding of each other".

Pippa Grange in Melbourne, Australia, in 2010. Photograph: Fairfax Media

The England football team has focused on the mental side of the game before, most prominently with the psychiatrist Steve Peters, who was recruited before the 2014 World Cup. What is new is the extent to which psychology has been embraced (prior to Grange's appointment, the performance consultancy Lane 4 was working with the FA on psychological tactics). Access to Peters, it was reported, was offered to the players only if they felt they needed it - and not many would have admitted to wanting help.

"The whole group must buy into the idea that the sports psychologist has come with a specific set of skills and practices that are really worthwhile," says Andy Lane, the professor of sport and learning at the University of Wolverhampton. "A recent turnaround in professional soccer is the preparedness to use sports science in an integrated way. It's that acceptance by the whole group that gives one professional the chance to be effective." Much of that culture shift will have been down to Southgate, who has shown his support for Grange, whom he clearly respects. "She is a strong and important addition to the team," the manager said in May.

Grange is a fan of inspirational quotes, from Oscar Wilde to Nelson Mandela to Michael Jordan; some adorn the training gym walls ("Success isn't given, it's earned," reads one). She is also said to encourage the players to get off their phones and play games with each other - including one in the hotel pool with inflatable unicorns after the win against Tunisia in the group stages; and she is said to dislike social media, which she expects the players to use wisely. Southgate hasn't banned social media - unlike previous managers, he hasn't appeared to ban anything - but has apparently taken Grange's thoughts on board. While he acknowledged it was good for the players to engage with fans, he added: "Personally, I'm not sure there's value to reading comments that come in. It comes back to: what creates pressure, or what creates misery in your life?"

The psychological transformation of the team has taken them much further than anyone could have expected at the start of the tournament, and raises the question of what the rest of us can learn from England's awakening, and from sports psychology more generally. When it comes to life's penalties and pressure points, Lane suggests thinking of the critical inner voice as "the yobbo in the crowd shouting at you. If you present it that way, [the player] will say: 'Well, they don't affect me.' Sometimes [it helps to] see your own thoughts as a third person and, when they come in, choosing to see them as not relevant."

The sport performance consultant Andy Barton says: "Often, it's the spin you put on things." Emotions can be reframed - as with Alli saying that he was excited rather than nervous. Barton has worked with England players in the past, and they would "talk about the dread of taking a penalty, as if it's the worst thing you could possibly do. We create this narrative in our heads and live it." What he thinks the England team have done is to rethink the idea of a penalty from a threat to an opportunity. It helps, he points out, that the team is young and relatively "unsullied by past failures, so [Southgate has] been able to create a more positive narrative. They're playing with freedom; there's no fear of failure. Fear is essentially made up because it is a projection into the future, where you have created a narrative of something badly going wrong. We all do it, and we get very good at creating the negative [future] rather than the positive one."

Michael Caulfield, a sport psychologist and the co-director of the consultancy Sporting Edge, says Southgate, with whom he worked at Middlesbrough, has a leadership style "built on incredible levels of trust between him and his players and staff. He was determined to convince the team there was nothing to fear from playing in the World Cup for England, whereas in the past people were nervous or fearful. He was determined to change that mindset from one of fear to one of adventure. That's the biggest thing he's done."

Simply thinking positive isn't helpful, says Barton. "If the team just imagined themselves lifting the World Cup, that's positive thinking but it doesn't serve any real purpose." Instead, he says, we should visualise what we need to do to perform, rather than the fantasy result. "The skill is in your application to a task because that's the bit you're in control of. Say you have a big presentation to do, or a big event, or job interview - if you're feeling fear you're already mentally rehearsing it in a negative way. [In mental rehearsal] you prime your brain to play it how you would like to be. You might want to be confident, speak clearly. It's not just positive thinking."

Routines can be useful, he says. "If you watch Harry Kane, if he's been interrupted [before taking a penalty], he starts again - he picks the ball up and puts it down on the spot and goes through his whole routine again, and that's something I've never seen England players do before. They usually want to get it over with as quickly as possible, but fear causes us to do things that are unhelpful." Routines, says Barton, help to keep us in the moment, focused and in the right frame of mind.

When someone is under a moment of extreme pressure, using a tactic such as mental cues can be helpful, says Kate Hays, the head of psychology at the English Institute of Sport. "People will have cue words that will bring them back into focus on the task at hand - for some, they could be emotional cues; for others, it could be technically focused. It's just one or two words that can get people to focus on the right thing."

In dealing with a negative event, she says, "the reflection component is critical. It allows people time and space to work through that emotionally and be able to go back to what happened, to process it and be able to move on." We could also learn to view failure as having potentially positive consequences in the long term. "There is some evidence that people have been able to be successful in sport because of previous [adverse] early experiences, not necessarily in sport," says Hays. "Overcoming difficult situations and building resilience potentially contributes to success."

Gareth Southgate celebrates with Jordan Henderson after beating Colombia. Photograph: Tim Goode/PA

Southgate, who has experienced his own disappointments - that missed penalty at the semi-finals of Euro 96, and his managerial career at Middlesbrough ending in relegation - has said as much: "I have learned from things that have gone wrong and had to pick myself up ... Because of those failures, I feel it gives you the freedom of being able to say, 'How might we be the best possible team?' and not be afraid of what goes wrong - because whatever goes wrong we can deal with, as I have lived through it."

Grange has no fear of failure either. She has written: "I'd like to turn this unhealthy preoccupation with success on its head and put it on the record that I think failure is really useful. For without failure we cannot progress longer, higher or faster. It's a funny paradox - our successes are achieved through trying, and trying most often ends in failure. Every day in our general lives and our sporting lives we will win some and lose some; it's just part of the way life should be. It could be missing out on a promotion, being pipped at the line in a running race or bombing out in an exam - it doesn't matter - the important lesson is to learn from our failures, reassess, rethink, move forward (sometimes in a different direction) and keep those dreams and goals alive."

Those in a managerial role - or teaching, perhaps, or parenting - may find praise can be more motivational than a telling-off, or allowing someone to dwell on mistakes. Raheem Sterling may have missed a couple of chances in the game against Sweden, but Caulfield says Southgate won't be focusing on that. "[Sterling is] playing so well and creating mayhem for the opposition defences, so Gareth will be praising that. He won't be criticising him for missing a chance, he'll be doing the exact opposite - he'll be praising him for contributing so much to the team."

Kevin George, the author of Soccology, who works with clubs and coaches on performance, also says that respecting the individual qualities and personalities of your players (or your employees) is key. "To instil confidence in one player might be to give them freedom, so they know you trust them," he says. "For somebody else, it might be a lot of praise. For a group of people, you have to tap into who they are individually, but as a group, give them the belief that you trust them." Singling people out for praise in a group setting can be tricky, he adds. "People can think: 'That person's a favourite, I'm not a favourite.' It is tough." Southgate doesn't play favourites; everyone feels as if they have a chance.

The era of hard-talking, tyrannical managers is over - both on and off the pitch. "Football, which I love and work in, is really bad at talking," says Caulfield. "It does instructing and telling off but it doesn't do talking and listening and empathy that well. It sounds a bit fluffy but that's the world in which we now live, and the world in which these players have grown up." Southgate, he says, realised early in his coaching career that instilling fear wasn't going to work. "We all need a telling-off now and then - and he's good at that, by the way - but you'll get far more from putting your faith in people than you will anything else. People had this lazy opinion that he's too 'nice' and they see kindness as weakness, but it's the most unbelievable strength if you use it in the right way."

As for nerves, it is a mistake to think it is essential or even desirable to eliminate them - from sport or from life. Caulfield says they can be "wonderful. They keep you alive and make you realise something important is about to happen. If you discuss what the nerves mean to you and how you deal with them, then they don't become a threat to you. They become this wonderful cortisol that runs through your veins and you deal with the problem, and then you rest afterwards." With or without an inflatable unicorn.

Five top tips for success

* Don't fear failure. "Part of what it takes to be courageous is overcoming the constant battle between the desire for what we want and the fear of failure. Most of us don't expose ourselves because we are fearful," writes Grange.

* Reframe emotions: you're not "nervous", you're "excited"; a penalty shootout/job interview/important speech is not something to dread, it's an "opportunity".

* Positive thinking is unhelpful if you're simply fantasising about achieving an Oscar/the World Cup/a fuller social life. Instead, focus - positively - on the steps that could get you to your goal.

* Treat your employees/children/customers as individuals rather than a homogenous group. Different approaches will work for different people.

* Kindness, listening and empathy will take you further than barking orders. Use praise to motivate people.

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How the psychology of the England football team could change your life

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his week, the England midfielder Dele Alli was asked if he was nervous about the big tests up ahead: first, of course, the team's semi-final against Croatia on Wednesday. "Excited, not nervous," he replied. His apparent happiness and confidence reflected an England team that seems transformed from previous incarnations.

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By Dr. Saul McLeod, updated 2018

In order to receive information from the environment we are equipped with sense organs e.g. eye, ear, nose. Each sense organ is part of a sensory system which receives sensory inputs and transmits sensory information to the brain.

A particular problem for psychologists is to explain the process by which the physical energy received by sense organs forms the basis of perceptual experience. Sensory inputs are somehow converted into perceptions of desks and computers, flowers and buildings, cars and planes; into sights, sounds, smells, taste and touch experiences.

A major theoretical issue on which psychologists are divided is the extent to which perception relies directly on the information present in the environment. Some argue that perceptual processes are not direct, but depend on the perceiver's expectations and previous knowledge as well as the information available in the stimulus itself.

This controversy is discussed with respect to Gibson (1966) who has proposed a direct theory of perception which is a 'bottom-up' theory, and Gregory (1970) who has proposed a constructivist (indirect) theory of perception which is a 'top-down' theory.

Psychologists distinguish between two types of processes in perception: bottom-up processing and top-down processing.

Bottom-up processing is also known as data-driven processing, because perception begins with the stimulus itself. Processing is carried out in one direction from the retina to the visual cortex, with each successive stage in the visual pathway carrying out ever more complex analysis of the input.

Top-down processing refers to the use of contextual information in pattern recognition. For example, understanding difficult handwriting is easier when reading complete sentences than when reading single and isolated words. This is because the meaning of the surrounding words provide a context to aid understanding.

Gregory (1970) and Top Down Processing Theory

Psychologist Richard Gregory (1970) argued that perception is a constructive process which relies on top-down processing.

Stimulus information from our environment is frequently ambiguous so to interpret it, we require higher cognitive information either from past experiences or stored knowledge in order to makes inferences about what we perceive. Helmholtz called it the 'likelihood principle'.

For Gregory perception is a hypothesis, which is based on prior knowledge. In this way we are actively constructing our perception of reality based on our environment and stored information.

Summary

A lot of information reaches the eye, but much is lost by the time it reaches the brain (Gregory estimates about 90% is lost).

Therefore, the brain has to guess what a person sees based on past experiences. We actively construct our perception of reality.

Richard Gregory proposed that perception involves a lot of hypothesis testing to make sense of the information presented to the sense organs.

Our perceptions of the world are hypotheses based on past experiences and stored information.

Sensory receptors receive information from the environment, which is then combined with previously stored information about the world which we have built up as a result of experience.

The formation of incorrect hypotheses will lead to errors of perception (e.g. visual illusions like the Necker cube).

Evidence to Support Gregory's Theory

Highly unlikely objects tend to be mistaken for likely objects

Gregory has demonstrated this with a hollow mask of a face (see video below). Such a mask is generally seen as normal, even when one knows and feels the real mask.

There seems to be an overwhelming need to reconstruct the face, similar to Helmholtz's description of 'unconscious inference'. An assumption based on past experience.

Perceptions can be ambiguous

The Necker cube is a good example of this. When you stare at the crosses on the cube the orientation can suddenly change, or 'flip'.

It becomes unstable and a single physical pattern can produce two perceptions.

Gregory argued that this object appears to flip between orientations because the brain develops two equally plausible hypotheses and is unable to decide between them.

When the perception changes though there is no change of the sensory input, the change of appearance cannot be due to bottom-up processing. It must be set downwards by the prevailing perceptual hypothesis of what is near and what is far.

Perception allows behavior to be generally appropriate to non-sensed object characteristics

For example, we respond to certain objects as though they are doors even though we can only see a long narrow rectangle as the door is ajar.

What we have seen so far would seem to confirm that indeed we do interpret the information that we receive, in other words, perception is a top down process.

Critical Evaluation of Gregory's Theory

1. The Nature of Perceptual Hypotheses

If perceptions make use of hypothesis testing the question can be asked 'what kind of hypotheses are they?' Scientists modify a hypothesis according to the support they find for it so are we as perceivers also able to modify our hypotheses? In some cases it would seem the answer is yes. For example, look at the figure below:

This probably looks like a random arrangement of black shapes. In fact there is a hidden face in there, can you see it? The face is looking straight ahead and is in the top half of the picture in the center. Now can you see it? The figure is strongly lit from the side and has long hair and a beard.

Once the face is discovered, very rapid perceptual learning takes place and the ambiguous picture now obviously contains a face each time we look at it. We have learned to perceive the stimulus in a different way.

Although in some cases, as in the ambiguous face picture, there is a direct relationship between modifying hypotheses and perception, in other cases this is not so evident. For example, illusions persist even when we have full knowledge of them (e.g. the inverted face, Gregory 1974). One would expect that the knowledge we have learned (from, say, touching the face and confirming that it is not 'normal') would modify our hypotheses in an adaptive manner. The current hypothesis testing theories cannot explain this lack of a relationship between learning and perception.

2. Perceptual Development

A perplexing question for the constructivists who propose perception is essentially top-down in nature is 'how can the neonate ever perceive?' If we all have to construct our own worlds based on past experiences why are our perceptions so similar, even across cultures? Relying on individual constructs for making sense of the world makes perception a very individual and chancy process.

The constructivist approach stresses the role of knowledge in perception and therefore is against the nativist approach to perceptual development. However, a substantial body of evidence has been accrued favoring the nativist approach, for example: Newborn infants show shape constancy (Slater & Morison, 1985); they prefer their mother's voice to other voices (De Casper & Fifer, 1980); and it has been established that they prefer normal features to scrambled features as early as 5 minutes after birth.

3. Sensory Evidence

Perhaps the major criticism of the constructivists is that they have underestimated the richness of sensory evidence available to perceivers in the real world (as opposed to the laboratory where much of the constructivists' evidence has come from).

Constructivists like Gregory frequently use the example of size constancy to support their explanations. That is, we correctly perceive the size of an object even though the retinal image of an object shrinks as the object recedes. They propose that sensory evidence from other sources must be available for us to be able to do this.

However, in the real world, retinal images are rarely seen in isolation (as is possible in the laboratory). There is a rich array of sensory information including other objects, background, the distant horizon and movement. This rich source of sensory information is important to the second approach to explaining perception that we will examine, namely the direct approach to perception as proposed by Gibson.

Gibson argued strongly against the idea that perception involves top-down processing and criticizes Gregory's discussion of visual illusions on the grounds that they are artificial examples and not images found in our normal visual environments. This is crucial because Gregory accepts that misperceptions are the exception rather than the norm. Illusions may be interesting phenomena, but they might not be that informative about the debate.

Gibson (1966) and Bottom Up Processing

Gibson's bottom up theory suggests that perception involves innate mechanisms forged by evolution and that no learning is required. This suggests that perception is necessary for survival - without perception we would live in a very dangerous environment. Our ancestors would have needed perception to escape from harmful predators, suggesting perception is evolutionary.

James Gibson (1966) argues that perception is direct, and not subject to hypotheses testing as Gregory proposed. There is enough information in our environment to make sense of the world in a direct way. His theory is sometimes known as the 'Ecological Theory' because of the claim that perception can be explained solely in terms of the environment.

For Gibson: sensation is perception: what you see if what you get. There is no need for processing (interpretation) as the information we receive about size, shape and distance etc. is sufficiently detailed for us to interact directly with the environment.

Gibson (1972) argued that perception is a bottom-up process, which means that sensory information is analyzed in one direction: from simple analysis of raw sensory data to ever increasing complexity of analysis through the visual system.

Features of Gibson's Theory

The starting point for Gibson's Theory was that the pattern of light reaching the eye, known as the optic array, containing all the visual information necessary for perception

This optic array provides unambiguous information about the layout of objects in space. Light rays reflect off of surfaces and converge into the cornea of your eye.

Perception involves 'picking up' the rich information provided by the optic array in a direct way with little/no processing involved.

Because of movement and different intensities of light shining in different directions it is an ever changing source of sensory information. Therefore, if you move, the structure of the optic array changes.

According to Gibson, we have the mechanisms to interpret this unstable sensory input, meaning we experience a stable and meaningful view of the world.

Changes in the flow of the optic array contain important information about what type of movement is taking place. The flow of the optic array will either move from or towards a particular point.

If the flow appears to be coming from the point, it means you are moving towards it. If the optic array is moving towards the point you are moving away from it.

the optic array contains invariant information that remains constant as the observer moves. Invariants are aspects of the environment which don't change. They supply us with crucial information.

Two good examples of invariants are texture and linear perspective.

Another invariant is the horizon-ratio relation. The ratio above and below the horizon is constant for objects of the same size standing on the same ground.

Are, in short, cues in the environment that aid perception. Important cues in the environment include:

OPTICAL ARRAY: The patterns of light that reach the eye from the environment.

RELATIVE BRIGHTNESS: Objects with brighter, clearer images are perceived as closer

TEXTURE GRADIENT: The grain of texture gets smaller as the object recedes. Gives the impression of surfaces receding into the distance.

RELATIVE SIZE: When an object moves further away from the eye the image gets smaller. Objects with smaller images are seen as more distant.

SUPERIMPOSITION: If the image of one object blocks the image of another, the first object is seen as closer.

HEIGHT IN THE VISUAL FIELD: Objects further away are generally higher in the visual field

Evaluation of Gibson's (1966) Direct Theory of Perception

Gibson's theory is a highly ecologically valid theory as it puts perception back into the real world. A large number of applications can be applied in terms of his theory e.g. training pilots, runway markings and road markings. It's an excellent explanation for perception when viewing conditions are clear. Gibson's theory also highlights the richness of information in optic array and provides an account of perception in animals, babies and humans.

His theory is reductionist as it seeks to explain perception solely in terms of the environment. There is strong evidence to show that the brain and long term memory can influence perception. In this case, it could be said that Gregory's theory is far more plausible.

Gibson's theory also only supports one side of the nature nurture debate, that being the nature side. Again, Gregory's theory is far more plausible as it suggests that what we see with our eyes is not enough and we use knowledge already stored in our brain, supporting both sides of the debate.

Visual Illusions

Gibson's emphasis on DIRECT perception provides an explanation for the (generally) fast and accurate perception of the environment. However, his theory cannot explain why perceptions are sometimes inaccurate, e.g. in illusions. He claimed the illusions used in experimental work constituted extremely artificial perceptual situations unlikely to be encountered in the real world, however this dismissal cannot realistically be applied to all illusions.

For example, Gibson's theory cannot account for perceptual errors like the general tendency for people to overestimate vertical extents relative to horizontal ones.

Neither can Gibson's theory explain naturally occurring illusions. For example if you stare for some time at a waterfall and then transfer your gaze to a stationary object, the object appears to move in the opposite direction .

Bottom-up or Top-down Processing?

Neither direct nor constructivist theories of perception seem capable of explaining all perception all of the time. Gibson's theory appears to be based on perceivers operating under ideal viewing conditions, where stimulus information is plentiful and is available for a suitable length of time. Constructivist theories, like Gregory's, have typically involved viewing under less than ideal conditions.

Research by Tulving et al manipulated both the clarity of the stimulus input and the impact of the perceptual context in a word identification task. As clarity of the stimulus (through exposure duration) and the amount of context increased, so did the likelihood of correct identification.

However, as the exposure duration increased, so the impact of context was reduced, suggesting that if stimulus information is high, then the need to use other sources of information is reduced. One theory that explains how top-down and bottom-up processes may be seen as interacting with each other to produce the best interpretation of the stimulus was proposed by Neisser (1976) - known as the 'Perceptual Cycle'.

References

DeCasper, A. J., & Fifer, W. P. (1980). Of human bonding: Newborns prefer their mothers' voices. Science, 208(4448), 1174-1176.

Gibson, J. J. (1966). The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Gibson, J. J. (1972). A Theory of Direct Visual Perception. In J. Royce, W. Rozenboom (Eds.). The Psychology of Knowing. New York: Gordon & Breach.

Gregory, R. (1970). The Intelligent Eye. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Gregory, R. (1974). Concepts and Mechanisms of Perception. London: Duckworth.

Necker, L. (1832). LXI. Observations on some remarkable optical phenomena seen in Switzerland; and on an optical phenomenon which occurs on viewing a figure of a crystal or geometrical solid. The London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, 1(5), 329-337.

Slater, A., Morison, V., Somers, M., Mattock, A., Brown, E., & Taylor, D. (1990). Newborn and older infants' perception of partly occluded objects. Infant behavior and Development, 13(1), 33-49.

How to reference this article:
McLeod, S. A. (2018). Visual perception theory. Simply Psychology. www.simplypsychology.org/perception-theories.html
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You wouldn't think you could win a Nobel Prize for showing that humans tend to make irrational decisions. But that's what Richard Thaler has done. The founder of behavioral economics describes his unlikely route to success; his reputation for being lazy; and his efforts to fix the world - one nudge at a time. Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.
Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called "People Aren't Dumb. The World Is Hard." (You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts , or , get the , or listen via the media player above.)

* * *

Stephen J. DUBNER: So let's begin. If you would, say your name and title. DUBNER: I see, technically, you're called the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Sciences, blah, blah, blah. Is that accurate? THALER: Yeah, that's accurate, but I didn't want to take up the whole podcast with my title. DUBNER: I understand. I was curious, however, I guess it's an endowed chair, is that what that is? THALER: Yeah. In fact, it's a chair that has only been held by three people, all of whom have won a certain prize. DUBNER: Interesting. More important, though, I want to know, as it's bestowed by the Walgreen family, does the position come with a discount at Walgreens drugstores? THALER: There is no discount that I've been informed of. DUBNER: That said, you - and I guess the other two holders of said chair - you are about a million-plus dollars richer since you were last on the show, because I understand that you went out and won a Nobel Prize, and that they give you some money with that. THALER: Now that you mention that, I won that prize in spite of your best efforts to prevent it. I think the show owes me an apology. Like, on the air. DUBNER: This is sore winner-dom we're seeing. You win the Nobel Prize, having been on our show previously, talking about potentially winning the Nobel Prize, and yet somehow you're sour about our theoretically negative influence, when in fact the outcome was positive? What kind of logic is that?

Yeah. We found the tape:

Per STROMBERG: So I'm actually not allowed to talk so much about what happens.

The episode was called " How to Win a Nobel Prize." Per Stromberg is on the committee that awards the economics prize. As he pointed out, he couldn't say too much about the secret process. But, he said, his committee was very reliant on the reports they commissioned on potential winners.

STROMBERG: Our goal is to keep on scanning the field of economic sciences broadly speaking, and to keep this up to date, we continuously send out these reports, basically scanning the field. So these are super-helpful, and they're sent to really top people in these fields who put a lot of work into these reports. So this is probably our most important input. DUBNER: And those reports remain confidential for 50 years, correct? STROMBERG: Exactly. DUBNER: So Richard Thaler tells me that he was asked many years ago to write a report - he was commissioned to write a report on the work of THALER: - You described me, revealing I had written a long report on my friends Kahneman and Tversky back in the 1980's. And you told Per I had told you that, and I think his words were, "Oh, he shouldn't have done that."STROMBERG: I'm not sure he was allowed to say that, but fine. DUBNER: Okay, well, that's his problem, not mine. THALER: The show owes me an apology for trying to block my slim chances and drive them to zero. DUBNER: Well, let me ask you just to entertain the counterfactual. Maybe it made that Nobel committee think, "Oh, that Thaler, he's his own man. He identifies what he thinks are important ideas and he feels it's important to disseminate them even at personal risk to himself," and because -THALER: You know, it would be a line you could have used. I was holding off on the lawsuit until it was clear I hadn't won, but I think you're safe now, Steve, so we can move beyond this. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who -

And move beyond this we shall.

* * *

Years ago, Richard Thaler became enthralled with a new line of research about decision-making by the psychologists Amos Tversky and Danny Kahneman. Thaler went on to collaborate with them, thereby helping to create the field now known as behavioral economics.

To mainstream economists, Thaler's research was often an irritant. He insisted that the elegant models they used to describe human economic activity were in fact grotesquely inelegant - because they failed to factor in how real humans actually think and decide and behave. Over time, however, Thaler's work came to be tolerated, if not outright accepted. Along the way, he wrote a few books, including Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics and Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

Today, governments around the world are running so-called Nudge units, hoping to harness the simple power of Thaler's ideas in the pursuit of better outcomes in health, education, personal finance, and crime reduction. Many other institutions and firms are practicing what Thaler has been preaching, often to quite substantial success. If Kahneman and Tversky were the architects of this behavior revolution, Richard Thaler was the man who turned their sketches into something we could actually inhabit.

DUBNER: I have a lot of questions for you today. And we also solicited listener and reader questions. So we'll toss them in as we go. Here's one from Jose Albino Sanchez. He's an economics major who graduated from Notre Dame in 2016. So: congratulations. He wants to know, "How did you, Richard Thaler, use your behavioral-economics research to not run away with the $1 million-plus prize money of the Nobel Prize and go buy a Ferrari?" And I should say, that's assuming you didn't do that. But I, like Jose, am curious how you used your behavioral knowledge to spend or not spend your money. THALER: Well, every Nobel winner, I think, is asked this question: "What are you going to do with the money?!" And they asked me this at 4:45 in the morning. The routine is, you get this call at 4:00 a.m. Chicago time, and once they've convinced you this is not a prank, they say, "Okay, get ready. There's a press conference in 45 minutes." And I hopped in the shower, and then I'm on a press conference and the first question is, "What are you going to do with the money?" And all I could think of was, "Well, to an economist this is a silly question, an impossible question."DUBNER: To most economists perhaps. THALER: Well, certainly to a non-behavioral economist, it's a silly question. DUBNER: Because the answer would be, "It just goes into the pool with the other money. It's no different than any other." Is that why? THALER: Right. The proceeds of that money, half of which will end up in the U.S. Treasury, are sitting in some account at Vanguard. And if I go out for a fancy dinner, there's no way for me to label that "Nobel money." Though that might be a fun thing to do. I've thought that maybe the hedonically optimal way to spend the money would be to get a special credit card, the Nobel credit card. And then when I decide to buy a ridiculously expensive set of golf clubs, hoping that that will turn me into a competent golfer, then I just whip out the Nobel card - that might be a good idea. DUBNER: Now, I'm curious. You do believe - and in fact helped identify - the notion that we think of as mental accounting, which I know that the smart people tell you you shouldn't do. You shouldn't set aside money for vacation or for a certain project, because money is fungible. That's one of the beauties of money. And yet, as you discovered, many people do it. And, you also argued, it's not such a bad idea. Or, at least, since so many people do it, we should figure out how to deal with it. But is there a cookie jar on the counter where you've got the half a million that you can dip into whenever you want to do something fun? THALER: Yeah. That would be a really good idea, especially -DUBNER: And what's your address, by the way? THALER: Especially if we announce it on the radio! DUBNER: But why just stick it in Vanguard, where it just becomes more dollars mixed in with the others? THALER: Well, I've been busy, Steve, you're getting me to think about labeling it. And, of course, maybe we should figure out what percentage, maybe all, should go to some cause. That would make me feel good, too. DUBNER: If there were a cause, can you tell us just the general outlines of the cause? Would it be poverty alleviation? DUBNER: Now, let me ask you this. Your wife, France, you've been married quite a while. I don't know how much credit you give her for being part of the familial team that produced this Nobel Prize. If you were to divide the prize, how do you think about divvying that up? THALER: First you try to prevent me from winning the Nobel Prize. Now you try to break up my marriage, Steve. You know, I used to think of you as a friend. I would say that France should get 120 percent of the after-tax money. DUBNER: Good answer. THALER: And you should get -20 percent. And I think that would be a great solution. DUBNER: Early in your academic career - and I hope you don't mind me saying this - it didn't appear as if you were destined for huge distinction in your field. THALER: I think that's fair. DUBNER: The undergraduate and graduate schools you went to aren't quite elite. Your place in the economic firmament was hardly guaranteed. So what happened? How'd that guy get to here? THALER: So, you're right. I don't think I was - well, I certainly wasn't a great student. And I don't think I was a great economist, in the way economists are usually judged, in the sense that I wasn't a great mathematician and my econometrics skills were not superb. Suppose there was an economics combine, like the N.F.L. combine, and they did all the stats on Thaler. No one would have drafted him. And so what I really ended up having to do to survive - and this sounds premeditated, and of course it wasn't - was to figure out a kind of way of doing economics that would be something I was good at. And had I not done that, I might well have not gotten tenure and gone off and maybe I would be competing with you in book writing. DUBNER: You've summed up behavioral economics as a collection of "supposedly irrelevant factors that, when it comes to how people actually live their lives, are in fact not irrelevant." Can you give an example? THALER: Sure. One of the first things that I noticed back when I was a graduate student puzzling through the behavior I saw, was that people don't follow the economists' advice to ignore sunk costs. If you paid for some expensive, rich dessert and after one bite you were already full, and your waistline doesn't really need it, but you remember how much you paid for it, and so you think you need to eat it, following all kinds of mothers' bad advice to finish what's on your plate - then you are failing to follow the economist's advice of ignoring that money, because eating it doesn't get the money back. So, sunk costs are something that economists predict will have no effect on behavior. And there are a class of these supposedly irrelevant factors. In fact, it's almost the only set of things about which economists have precise predictions. Consider supply and demand. If the price goes up, people will demand less. Well, how much less? "Oh sorry, the theory doesn't specify that." All it says is: less. Whereas here, sunk costs will matter precisely zero. DUBNER: So says the theory, at least. THALER: Says the theory, right. DUBNER: In reality, you're saying they matter a great deal. THALER: Right. That's why I call them supposedly irrelevant factors. Another example is default options, which box is ticked on a form. Again, according to economic theory, the cost of clicking the other box is infinitesimal. And yet we know that making enrollment in a retirement plan the default option increases enrollment rates to over 90 percent. And so again, economists would predict confidently that that would have a zero effect, and it has a massive effect.

In an earlier episode of this podcast, called " How to Launch a Behavior-Change Revolution," we heard Danny Kahneman - who won his own Nobel Prize in 2002 - describe the history of behavioral economics. He pointed out something that distinguished Richard Thaler from many other economists.

Daniel KAHNEMAN: Now, Richard, he hates my saying the next two things I'll say about him. One of them I think he would tolerate. I think he's a genius. That one he accepts. I think he's lazy. I've made him famous for being lazy. DUBNER: You've been accused - or really, praised - by your collaborator and mentor and friend Danny Kahneman as being extremely lazy, and furthermore he argues that laziness has in fact been a big part of your success. What does he mean by that, and should we all try to be a little bit lazier? THALER: Well, I don't know whether I can recommend laziness. Danny insists in great earnestness that this was intended as a compliment. He described it as my best feature. And I object to that. I concede some laziness, but that being my best feature? Really, Danny? So I think what he means is that - at least I'm going to interpret it this way - that I have little patience for working on things that aren't, at least to me, both interesting and somewhat important. And so compared to too many economists or academics, I haven't written a super large number of papers, and I don't follow the habit of writing 20 versions of the same paper, or on the same topic, because I get bored. And the fourth paper on some topic is not nearly as interesting as the first one. So Danny claims that it's my laziness that forces me to work on things that are important rather than unimportant. And that's his story, anyway. DUBNER: And the mechanism of that benefit is what? Because you're lazy, you just don't want to waste time on things that aren't going to be potentially important and/or interesting? THALER: Yeah, that's the idea.
DUBNER: So, I hate to inject our personal history in this, but it does bring up a memory. I remember coming to visit you in Chicago. I think it was the first time we met. And it was probably 15, 16 years ago, and I had really fallen hard for this whole behavioral idea, the Kahneman/Tversky, and Thaler, and I liked the economics. I especially liked the psychology. And I came to you and I said, "Herr Professor Thaler, I - a young and ambitious journalist at The New York Times - would be most interested in writing a book that incorporates your research and incorporates your own view of the world, and I'd love to include you in it as some kind of collaborator, subject," so on.
And if I recall correctly - I'm just curious to know what your recollection is - you basically said, "That sounds like a lot of work. And I've got other stuff going on, so I'll buy you lunch but then, scram." That was my recollection. And I've always been disappointed that we never worked on a book together. I'm curious if that squares with your recollection. DUBNER: Obviously, you did. You had two more, and maybe more beyond. THALER: So, this is the tallest-midget theory, but by economists' standards, I write well. And so yeah, I thought that maybe I should write a book. And that it should probably be in my voice. And it worked out well for all three of us.
DUBNER: I do agree you write well - not even for an economist. You're a good writer, but in economics it especially stands out. I read a piece of yours recently that I would recommend to everybody. It was published in, I believe, J.P.E. - Journal of Political Economy - and it was an essay about the history of behavioral economics. And this was so interesting to me. You write that it nearly got fully underway at the University of Chicago about 100 years ago, but didn't catch on. Can you talk a little bit about that?

THALER: Yeah, so the background is, the University of Chicago house journal, the Journal of Political Economy, one of the top five journals in the world - they were celebrating their 125th anniversary, and they asked a bunch of Chicago faculty members to write short essays on their field and how it's been represented in the journal. And for behavioral economics, there were pretty slim pickings. But there was this article written exactly 100 years ago in 1918 by a guy called John Maurice Clark. He was the son of a more famous guy, John Bates Clark, for whom an award is named. And he writes something like, the economist can try to invent his own psychology, but it will be bad psychology, and if they want to stick to economics, they should borrow their psychology from psychologists.

DUBNER: Clark, you write, ends up leaving Chicago for Columbia. And you write, "it seems fair to say that the subsequent editors of the J.P.E. did not take up his call to arms," which was essentially to integrate psychology and economics. Why did it take so long, do you think?
THALER: Well, I don't know really what was going on in 1918, but it is the case that economics was behavioral. And then what happened is, there was a mathematical revolution that took place right after World War II. And it was led by people like And so starting with that, economists got busy writing down Greek letters and formalizing economics. And it turns out the easiest way to do that is to describe behavior as some kind of optimization problem. Because if you've taken a high-school calculus class, then you know how to solve for the maximum: you take the first derivative and set it equal to zero, and you're done. So it was the bounded rationality of economists, ironically, that led them to make everything rational. DUBNER: It's interesting, because a lot of the hallmark anomalies identified in recent decades by people like you and Kahneman and Tversky - we talk about loss aversion and mental accounting, and the endowment effect; and all the cognitive biases: recency bias and status-quo bias, and the availability bias - it strikes me that none of them actually even seem remotely new. Can't you find most of them in Shakespeare? Can't you find them in Roman and Greek and earlier philosophy? Don't you find them in the Bible and other ancient texts? So if what you're describing now is a kind of mid-century modern renaissance of a more holistic thinking about economics that was there from Adam Smith onward, until World War II - I guess the real question is, is that really worth a Nobel Prize, to have rediscovered this rich tradition of, "people say they want to do one thing, but often do another?"THALER: I think it's the sort of thing that your mother might say, "Really? You make a living doing that?" Much less a Nobel Prize? So I guess it's fair to say that just pointing out that people aren't all that smart would not get you a Nobel Prize. You had to do something with it. And that turned out to be more work than I liked. But there was a long debate. And by no means have I convinced everyone. DUBNER: Well, you were once asked about the degree to which, quote, "mainstream economists" have embraced behavioral economics. And you said, "I don't think I've changed anyone's mind in 40 years. You basically don't change minds. Given that, I've turned to the strategy of corrupting the youth." And indeed, there are a lot of young economists really interested in behavioral stuff. Is that really true? Did you really change no minds? And, if so - or even if not, I guess - what have you learned about the human capacity to change a mind? I mean, we don't want to just write off anyone over the age of 25, do we, as incapable of entertaining new thoughts? DUBNER: It's interesting though, because if you look at the world writ large, political systems and healthcare institutions, and so on - isn't that exactly the same core problem that we're facing? Which is, people come along with what could be really useful solutions but, institutions being what they are, the people with the power to change have often the least incentive to change. Isn't that a huge issue in the lack of progress? THALER: Well, I get what you're saying, which is, if I'm at the top of the heap, why do I need to change? But on the other hand, it's often the C.E.O. that is the most reluctant to change, and that guy - and he's unfortunately still usually a guy - potentially has a lot to gain from changing. If you think of companies that have come and gone, like Kodak, which invented the digital camera, but they had an almost-monopoly in film, and didn't really think this digital thing would go anywhere. Blockbuster Video, which came along and put tens of thousands of mom-and-pop video stores out of business, only to be put out of business by Netflix. Paul Samuelson and Kenneth Arrow. And Samuelson in particular, he was a University of Chicago undergraduate, and then went off to graduate school, and his thesis was called Foundations of Economic Analysis. So all he did was redo all of economics properly. was a behavioral economist, for sure. And Keynes was a behavioral economist. The single best chapter on behavioral finance was written by John Maynard Keynes in The General Theory, which was written in 1936. So I think until World War II, there wasn't something called "behavioral economics," but economics was kind of behavioral.

* * *

In December of 2017, Richard Thaler went to Stockholm for a multitude of Nobel festivities.

THALER: At the Nobel Prize banquet, one winner from each prize has to give a toast. It gives you a glimpse of the grandeur. ANNOUNCER (TRANSLATED FROM SWEDISH): It is a great honor to introduce the laureate of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economics in Memory of Alfred Nobel: Professor Richard Thaler.

Then there were other events, including the Nobel lecture.

Magnus JOHANNESSON THALER: Thanks to all the members of the committee. And thanks for that great introduction. So, I've been interested in gravitational waves for a long time-oh no! DUBNER: In an earlier episode about the Nobel Prize and how to win one, we did speak with your colleague and our friend Steve Levitt, and he said: Steve LEVITT: [From "How to Win a Nobel Prize"] The way I know it's Nobel season is that around Chicago, a lot of people tend to get haircuts in the few days leading up to the announcement of the prize. And so if I see all my colleagues with really short and well-maintained hair, I know that the prize must be somewhere right about the corner. DUBNER: So we have a question here from a listener named Aaron Wicks. He writes to say, "Dear Professor Thaler, did you get a haircut in hopeful anticipation of receiving your Nobel Memorial Prize?"THALER: No, I didn't. And I will also say that I have heard of economists and other scientists who set their alarm. DUBNER: And then do they practice sounding sleepy? DUBNER: In the very near aftermath of having been informed that you won the Nobel, you said this: THALER: DUBNER: And you THALER: Well it's a week-long marathon. The laureates are there for eight days of constant interviews and dinners and talks and various things. And there's a hierarchy in the Stockholm prizes. The Peace Prize is given by Norway, and is done in Oslo. And the hierarchy is: physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, economics. And so my line is that among sciences, the Swedes consider economics just after literature. And that's because, of course, the economics prize, as we know, and as I'm sure some of your listeners will call in and inform, "You idiots, it's not a real Nobel prize."DUBNER: Well, before you go on, let's just get it straight. The Nobel Prize in economics is not what they call an original Nobel. It was established in 1968. It's officially called the Central Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. But, as you point out, a small but vocal contingent always seeks to remind us of this fact whenever the economic prize is referred to as a Nobel Prize. What do you say to that small, vocal contingent that says, "Well, it's not really a Nobel Prize?"THALER: You know, it's a pretty good substitute. And I will say, the Nobel Foundation makes exactly no distinction. So, you're all treated the same way. But, because of this order, I spent a lot of time standing in lines and sitting next to Kazuo Ishiguro, the Literature winner, who was charming and wonderful. But I will say that I found the whole thing to be pretty emotional, partly because of where I came from intellectually. So, as we were saying, I'm not someone that you would have predicted would be a Nobel Prize winner. And when that finally happened, it was an emotional experience. DUBNER: Are either of your parents still alive? THALER: No. They're very slow. DUBNER: They, the Nobel Committee, you're talking about. THALER: Yeah, the Nobel committee - they're working their way through the 1980's. So that means that people are typically in their late 60's and early 70's when they win the Nobel Prize, which means there are very few parents that get to see their children win. DUBNER: Who do you think was most proud of you? THALER: Danny Kahneman. Well, he was happiest. He kept telling me, "Come on, win this before I die!" And he's 84, and he's a friend, so I had to do it. The bribes were finally well worth it. did THALER: The latest number is 200. DUBNER: Goodness gracious, that's a tripling in what span of time, just a year or two? THALER: I don't know, and I'm not the one keeping track, but someone at the O.E.C.D. has a map with 200. Some of these are in-DUBNER: Municipal governments. THALER: Cities - there's one in Chicago, for example. DUBNER: Alright, but what would you say to date has been the greatest kind of specific contribution of behavioral economics? In other words, the greatest instance in which the research and the ideas have been applied to policy in successful measures? DUBNER: So what that means is, you get a raise and you contribute a higher percentage, but because you're getting a raise, you still are bringing home a little bit more money and you don't feel the pain, is that the idea? THALER: Right. And you commit yourself to this off in the future, because we all have more self-control next month, when we're going to start going to the gym every morning at 6:00. DUBNER: You've written that "the subfield of economics in which the behavioral approach has had the greatest impact is finance." I'd love you to talk about that for a minute. One thing I've never understood about behavioral finance is: once the notion of behavioral anomalies is widely accepted - and they seemed to be, now, in finance and in investing - aren't they just subsequently priced out of the market? THALER: Well, that's an interesting question. And the answer is, to some extent, yes. But I've been involved with a money-management firm, called Fuller and Thaler, that's been around for 25 years or so. And the things we do don't seem to work any less well than they did 20 years ago. DUBNER: I know Fuller and Thaler describes itself as having "pioneered the application of behavioral finance to investment management." In what ways is the firm's strategy actually behavioral? THALER: So we're explicitly thinking about, what are a class of situations in which people are likely to make a mistake? So it's like, you go into some restaurant and somebody is leading you to your table, and there's that one step down, and they say, "watch your step." And they say that because if they don't, three people a night will fall down, and they'll have lawsuits. So, you can be a spectator watching that and say, "Oh, that guy's about to make a mistake." Now, you would have made that mistake, too. So, what we try to do is find those steps that are not quite in sight that will throw a majority of market participants off. DUBNER: Let me ask you a related question. This is from Colm Ryan, who writes that he's an accountant in Dublin, Ireland. Related to what we've been speaking about, with very high stakes, I should say. So here's his question: "Given that you could apply behavioral principles to help understand what led to the 2007 crash, do you see any similarities, or, indeed, differences in what's going on in the world today?" And before we let you answer the question, we should say that you, Richard Thaler, would seem particularly well-suited to answer this difficult question because in the film Ryan GOSLING Selena GOMEZ: Okay, so here is how a synthetic C.D.O. works. Let's say I bet $10 million on a blackjack hand. THALER: $10 million because this hand is meant to represent a single mortgage bond. DUBNER: So first of all, was she a pretty good teacher? You understood C.D.O.'s better after that filming? THALER: Yeah, let me just say that Selena, unlike me, was very good at memorizing lines. And I think it's fair to say - she was a very charming young woman, and I'm deeply grateful to her because being in that movie is the only thing that I've done that has impressed my granddaughters, who are big Selena Gomez fans - but I think it's fair to say, Selena knew nothing about collateralized debt obligations nor blackjack. DUBNER: So she's a great actress, then, because the impression is, she knows quite a bit about both. THALER: Yeah, she's much better actor than me. And so a possibly funny story is that in the script, the first hand, she's dealt a 21, which of course in blackjack means you win. And she was dealt 21 and didn't react. And so I had to take over as blackjack coach and director - both of which are uncredited in the movie, I might add - and say, "Selena, when you get dealt 21, that means you win." And there's a shot in there where we're high five-ing, and that's because she had learned in subsequent takes that when she gets dealt 21, that she's supposed to be happy. DUBNER: Okay, so let's get back to Colm Ryan's question about the 2007 meltdown and now - similarities? Differences? What do you see? THALER: Well, I don't think we will repeat that mistake. But that crisis followed pretty quickly after the tech crash in 2000. Right? And it started like in 2006. So we're barely over the tech bubble, and we get this real-estate bubble. And we seem to learn one lesson and then are not able to extrapolate it to the next one. I don't know what the next bubble will be, or whether we're already in one. I do think that we have done some things to make banks less fragile, especially big ones. But, there are things like Bitcoin around -DUBNER: Of which you're not a fan, we should say. THALER: Of which I'm not a fan. DUBNER: You're not not a fan of blockchain itself, correct? But as a currency, not a fan. Is that about right? THALER: Correct. I don't know why anyone engaged in strictly legal activities would want to use a currency that is so volatile. It's just the opposite. Suppose you sell another book and the publisher offers you an advance in Bitcoin. Unless you were trying to cheat the I.R.S., you would say, "No, tell me what it's going to be in dollars. Because I could end up getting half of what you're offering me, and that's not an attractive feature."DUBNER: So have you shorted Bitcoin? THALER: No, because Warren Buffett says a lot of smart things, and one of the things he says is, don't make investments in things you don't understand. And I have no clue. I don't think that the intrinsic value of Bitcoin is worth thousands of dollars. But I also think it's entirely possible that it will go up rather than down. So "stay away" is the best advice.: Well, here is Dr. Richard Thaler, father of behavioral economics, and Selena Gomez to explain: THALER: Well, first of all, when we use this phrase libertarian paternalism, we're using libertarian as an adjective. And so we're trying to say we're going to design policies that don't force anyone to do anything. So the claim that we're trying to tell people what to do, or force them to do things, is just completely wrong. We are also not trying to tell them to do what we think is smart. We're trying to help people do what they want to do. I like to use G.P.S. as an analogy of what we're trying to do. So, I have a terrible sense of direction. And Google Maps is a lifesaver for me. Now, if I want to go visit you, I can plug in your address, and suppose I'm walking across the park, and I see, "Oh, there's a softball game over there. I think I'll go watch that for a while," Google Maps doesn't scold me. It will re-compute a new route if I've gone a bit out of my way. It doesn't suggest addresses to me. It just suggests a route. And if there's a traffic jam, it suggests maybe you should alter your route. So, we don't think people are dumb. We think the world is hard. I mean, figuring out how much to save for retirement is a really hard cognitive problem that very few economists have solved for themselves. And it's not only cognitively hard, it involves delay of gratification, which people find hard. It's just like navigating in a strange city is hard. So, why not try to help? When I first was working with the U.K. Behavioral Insight Team, the first "Nudge unit," the phrase I kept saying in every meeting with some minister was, "If you want to get people to do something, make it easy. Remove the barriers." That's what we're about. DUBNER: Let me go back to you and the Nobel. So, what would you say have been the biggest changes in your life since winning the prize? Both of the observable sort and unobservable? THALER: Well, I think I spend more time talking to people like you. My inbox, my email, is completely out of control. And there are some downsides. The university all of a sudden has a lot of things that they would like you to do. DUBNER: Fundraisers. THALER: Of that ilk. So, I was a pretty happy guy. You've known me for years. And we saw each other recently. Did I seem demonstrably happier? DUBNER: You looked a little taller and better-looking, but otherwise - I think that was my perception. I think you were exactly the same, actually. THALER: No, that was just your jealousy. But look, I absolutely don't want to sound like a sore winner or an ungrateful winner. I'm saying that most of the people who win were already pretty successful people with pretty good lives. And there's what psychologists call a ceiling effect. So I had a pretty happy life, as you know, I have a nice wife and I have kids I love. And yes, this made me happy. And it was very gratifying. But you have this image that you're going to be on cloud nine. And then there is life, you still get flat tires even if you have a Nobel Prize. You still have leaks at home that nobody seems to be able to fix. So they need to fix that and say that if you get a Nobel Prize, nothing can leak in your house. DUBNER: I'll end with where I should have started. Congratulations. THALER: Thank you, Stephen. DUBNER: I know everybody who listens to you is happy for you, proud of you, and most of all, we're pleased in a selfish way to keep learning from you, because we learn a lot. And I thank you especially for that. And I look forward to the next time we speak. THALER: So do I. The Big Short, Selena Gomez helps you explain synthetic C.D.O.'s - collateralized debt obligations. go to Stockholm. Tell us about that experience ... [At University of Chicago post-Nobel conference] And unlike , I do plan to go to Stockholm.: Professor Thaler, please, the stage is yours.
DUBNER: So let's move on to talking about how behavioral economics has been applied by various people in various intensities in many different places around the world. You've said there are roughly 75 what are called "Nudge units" named after your and Cass Sunstein's book Nudge, about using behavioral economics in policy, essentially. Policy-making.

DUBNER: Some people, including some economists, argue that behavioral economics is really just another way to suggest that individuals can't be trusted to make good decisions. And so institutions, particularly the state, should take more control. Indeed, your co-author on the book Nudge, the legal scholar Cass Sunstein, for several years ran a White House unit called the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which sounds about as Orwellian as you can. There are "Nudge units" in dozens of federal governments around the world. You've described your work as libertarian paternalism, and, furthermore, argued that that phrase is not an oxymoron. Why shouldn't we dismiss your work as a kind of new, softer form of statism?

* * *
SOURCES
Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Greg Rosalsky. Our staff also includes Alison Hockenberry, Harry Huggins, Greg Rippin, and Andy Meisenheimer. The music you hear throughout the episode was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
RESOURCES
Here's where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

Richard Thaler, professor of behavioral science and economics at the University of Chicago.

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People Aren't Dumb. The World Is Hard. (Ep. 340) - Freakonomics

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You wouldn't think you could win a Nobel Prize for showing that humans tend to make irrational decisions. But that's what Richard Thaler has done. The founder of behavioral economics describes his unlikely route to success; his reputation for being lazy; and his efforts to fix the world - one nudge at a time.

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"How PTSD Became a Problem Far Beyond the Battlefield"

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If we weed out the malingerers on the one hand and the deeply traumatized on the other, we are still left with enormous numbers of veterans who had utterly ordinary wartime experiences and yet feel dangerously alienated back home. Clinically speaking, such alienation is not the same thing as PTSD, but both seem to result from military service abroad, so it's understandable that vets and even clinicians are prone to conflating them. Either way, it makes one wonder exactly what it is about modern society that is so mortally dispiriting to come home to.

Soldier's Creed

Any discussion of PTSD and its associated sense of alienation in society must address the fact that many soldiers find themselves missing the war after it's over. That troubling fact can be found in written accounts from war after war, country after country, century after century. Awkward as it is to say, part of the trauma of war seems to be giving it up. There are ancient human behaviors in war-loyalty, inter-reliance, cooperation-that typify good soldiering and can't be easily found in modern society. This can produce a kind of nostalgia for the hard times that even civilians are susceptible to: after World War II, many Londoners claimed to miss the communal underground living that characterized life during the Blitz (despite the fact that more than 40,000 civilians lost their lives). And the war that is missed doesn't even have to be a shooting war: "I am a survivor of the AIDS epidemic," a man wrote on the comment board of an online talk I gave about war. "Now that AIDS is no longer a death sentence, I must admit that I miss those days of extreme brotherhood ... which led to deep emotions and understandings that are above anything I have felt since the plague years."

What all these people seem to miss isn't danger or loss, per se, but the closeness and cooperation that danger and loss often engender. Humans evolved to survive in extremely harsh environments, and our capacity for cooperation and sharing clearly helped us do that. Structurally, a band of hunter-gatherers and a platoon in combat are almost exactly the same: in each case, the group numbers between 30 and 50 individuals, they sleep in a common area, they conduct patrols, they are completely reliant on one another for support, comfort, and defense, and they share a group identity that most would risk their lives for. Personal interest is subsumed into group interest because personal survival is not possible without group survival. From an evolutionary perspective, it's not at all surprising that many soldiers respond to combat in positive ways and miss it when it's gone.

There are obvious psychological stresses on a person in a group, but there may be even greater stresses on a person in isolation. Most higher primates, including humans, are intensely social, and there are few examples of individuals surviving outside of a group. A modern soldier returning from combat goes from the kind of close-knit situation that humans evolved for into a society where most people work outside the home, children are educated by strangers, families are isolated from wider communities, personal gain almost completely eclipses collective good, and people sleep alone or with a partner. Even if he or she is in a family, that is not the same as belonging to a large, self-sufficient group that shares and experiences almost everything collectively. Whatever the technological advances of modern society-and they're nearly miraculous-the individual lifestyles that those technologies spawn may be deeply brutalizing to the human spirit.

"You'll have to be prepared to say that we are not a good society-that we are an anti-human society," anthropologist Sharon Abramowitz warned when I tried this theory out on her. Abramowitz was in Ivory Coast during the start of the civil war there in 2002 and experienced, firsthand, the extremely close bonds created by hardship and danger. "We are not good to each other. Our tribalism is about an extremely narrow group of people: our children, our spouse, maybe our parents. Our society is alienating, technical, cold, and mystifying. Our fundamental desire, as human beings, is to be close to others, and our society does not allow for that."

This is an old problem, and today's vets are not the first Americans to balk at coming home. A source of continual embarrassment along the American frontier-from the late 1600s until the end of the Indian Wars, in the 1890s-was a phenomenon known as "the White Indians." The term referred to white settlers who were kidnapped by Indians-or simply ran off to them-and became so enamored of that life that they refused to leave. According to many writers of the time, including Benjamin Franklin, the reverse never happened: Indians never ran off to join white society. And if a peace treaty required that a tribe give up their adopted members, these members would often have to be put under guard and returned home by force. Inevitably, many would escape to rejoin their Indian families. "Thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those aborigines having from choice become European," wrote a French-born writer in America named Michel-Guillaume-Saint-Jean de Crèvecoeur in an essay published in 1782.

One could say that combat vets are the White Indians of today, and that they miss the war because it was, finally, an experience of human closeness that they can't easily find back home. Not the closeness of family, which is rare enough, but the closeness of community and tribe. The kind of closeness that gets endlessly venerated in Hollywood movies but only actually shows up in contemporary society when something goes wrong-when tornados obliterate towns or planes are flown into skyscrapers. Those events briefly give us a reason to act communally, and most of us do. "There is something to be said for using risk to forge social bonds," Abramowitz pointed out. "Having something to fight for, and fight through, is a good and important thing."

Certainly, the society we have created is hard on us by virtually every metric that we use to measure human happiness. This problem may disproportionately affect people, like soldiers, who are making a radical transition back home.

It is incredibly hard to measure and quantify the human experience, but some studies have found that many people in certain modern societies self-report high levels of happiness. And yet, numerous cross-cultural studies show that as affluence and urbanization rise in a given society, so do rates of depression, suicide, and schizophrenia (along with health issues such as obesity and diabetes). People in wealthy countries suffer unipolar depression at more than double the rate that they do in poor countries, according to a study by the World Health Organization, and people in countries with large income disparities-like the United States-run a much higher risk of developing mood disorders at some point in their lives. A 2006 cross-cultural study of women focusing on depression and modernization compared depression rates in rural and urban Nigeria and rural and urban North America, and found that women in rural areas of both countries were far less likely to get depressed than urban women. And urban American women-the most affluent demographic of the study-were the most likely to succumb to depression.

In America, the more assimilated a person is into contemporary society, the more likely he or she is to develop depression in his or her lifetime. According to a 2004 study in The**Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Mexicans born in the United States are highly assimilated into American culture and have much higher rates of depression than Mexicans born in Mexico. By contrast, Amish communities have an exceedingly low rate of reported depression because, in part, it is theorized, they have completely resisted modernization. They won't even drive cars. "The economic and marketing forces of modern society have engineered an environment promoting decisions that maximize consumption at the long-term cost of well-being," one survey of these studies, from the Journal of Affective Disorders in 2012, concluded. "In effect, humans have dragged a body with a long hominid history into an overfed, malnourished, sedentary, sunlight-deficient, sleep-deprived, competitive, inequitable and socially-isolating environment with dire consequences."

For more than half a million years, our recent hominid ancestors lived nomadic lives of extreme duress on the plains of East Africa, but the advent of agriculture changed that about 10,000 years ago. That is only 400 generations-not enough to adapt, genetically, to the changes in diet and society that ensued. Privately worked land and the accumulation of capital made humans less oriented toward group welfare, and the Industrial Revolution pushed society further in that direction. No one knows how the so-called Information Age will affect us, but there's a good chance that home technology and the Internet will only intensify our drift toward solipsism and alienation.

Meanwhile, many of the behaviors that had high survival value in our evolutionary past, like problem solving, cooperation, and inter-group competition, are still rewarded by bumps of dopamine and other hormones into our system. Those hormones serve to reinforce whatever behavior it was that produced those hormones in the first place. Group affiliation and cooperation were clearly adaptive because in many animals, including humans, they trigger a surge in levels of a neuropeptide called oxytocin. Not only does oxytocin create a glow of well-being in people, it promotes greater levels of trust and bonding, which unite them further still. Hominids that were rewarded with oxytocin for cooperating with one another must have out-fought, out-hunted, and out-bred the ones that didn't. Those are the hominids that modern humans are descended from.

According to one study published in Science in June 2010, this feedback loop of oxytocin and group loyalty creates an expectation that members will "self-sacrifice to contribute to in-group welfare." There may be no better description of a soldier's ethos than that sentence. One of the most noticeable things about life in the military is that you are virtually never alone: day after day, month after month, you are close enough to speak to, if not touch, a dozen or more people. You eat together, sleep together, laugh together, suffer together. That level of intimacy duplicates our evolutionary past very closely and must create a nearly continual oxytocin reward system.

Hero's Welcome

When soldiers return to modern society, they must go through-among other adjustments-a terrific oxytocin withdrawal. The chronic isolation of modern society begins in childhood and continues our entire lives. Infants in hunter-gatherer societies are carried by their mothers as much as 50 to 90 percent of the time, often in wraps that keep them strapped to the mother's back so that her hands are free. That roughly corresponds to carrying rates among other primates, according to primatologist and psychologist Harriet J. Smith. One can get an idea of how desperately important touch is to primates from a landmark experiment conducted in the 1950s by a psychologist and primatologist named Harry Harlow. Baby rhesus monkeys were separated from their mothers and presented with the choice of two kinds of surrogates: a cuddly mother made out of terry cloth or an uninviting mother made out of wire mesh. The wire-mesh mother, however, had a nipple that would dispense warm milk. The babies invariably took their nourishment quickly in order to rush back and cling to the terry-cloth mother, which had enough softness to provide the illusion of affection. But even that isn't enough for psychological health: in a separate experiment, more than 75 percent of female baby rhesus monkeys raised with terry-cloth mothers-as opposed to real ones-grew up to be abusive and neglectful to their own young.

In the 1970s, American mothers maintained skin-to-skin contact with their nine-month-old babies as little as 16 percent of the time, which is a level of contact that traditional societies would probably consider a form of child abuse. Also unthinkable would be the common practice of making young children sleep by themselves in their own room. In two American studies of middle-class families during the 1980s, 85 percent of young children slept alone-a figure that rose to 95 percent among families considered "well-educated." Northern European societies, including America, are the only ones in history to make very young children sleep alone in such numbers. The isolation is thought to trigger fears that make many children bond intensely with stuffed animals for reassurance. Only in Northern European societies do children go through the well-known developmental stage of bonding with stuffed animals; elsewhere, children get their sense of safety from the adults sleeping near them.

More broadly, in most human societies, almost nobody sleeps alone. Sleeping in family groups of one sort or another has been the norm throughout human history and is still commonplace in most of the world. Again, Northern European societies are among the few where people sleep alone or with a partner in a private room. When I was with American soldiers at a remote outpost in Afghanistan, we slept in narrow plywood huts where I could reach out and touch three other men from where I slept. They snored, they talked, they got up in the middle of the night to use the piss tubes, but we felt safe because we were in a group. The Taliban attacked the position regularly, and the most determined attacks often came at dawn. Another unit in a nearby valley was almost overrun and took 50 percent casualties in just such an attack. And yet I slept better surrounded by those noisy, snoring men than I ever did camping alone in the woods of New England.

Many soldiers will tell you that one of the hardest things about coming home is learning to sleep without the security of a group of heavily armed men around them. In that sense, being in a war zone with your platoon feels safer than being in an American suburb by yourself. I know a vet who felt so threatened at home that he would get up in the middle of the night to build fighting positions out of the living-room furniture. This is a radically different experience from what warriors in other societies go through, such as the Yanomami, of the Orinoco and Amazon Basins, who go to war with their entire age cohort and return to face, together, whatever the psychological consequences may be. As one anthropologist pointed out to me, trauma is usually a group experience, so trauma recovery should be a group experience as well. But in our society it's not.

"Our whole approach to mental health has been hijacked by pharmaceutical logic," I was told by Gary Barker, an anthropologist whose group, Promundo, is dedicated to understanding and preventing violence. "PTSD is a crisis of connection and disruption, not an illness that you carry within you."

This individualizing of mental health is not just an American problem, or a veteran problem; it affects everybody. A British anthropologist named Bill West told me that the extreme poverty of the 1930s and the collective trauma of the Blitz served to unify an entire generation of English people. "I link the experience of the Blitz to voting in the Labour Party in 1945, and the establishing of the National Health Service and a strong welfare state," he said. "Those policies were supported well into the 60s by all political parties. That kind of cultural cohesiveness, along with Christianity, was very helpful after the war. It's an open question whether people's problems are located in the individual. If enough people in society are sick, you have to wonder whether it isn't actually society that's sick."

Ideally, we would compare hunter-gatherer society to post-industrial society to see which one copes better with PTSD. When the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho fighters returned to their camps after annihilating Custer and his regiment at Little Bighorn, for example, were they traumatized and alienated by the experience-or did they fit right back into society? There is no way to know for sure, but less direct comparisons can still illuminate how cohesiveness affects trauma. In experiments with lab rats, for example, a subject that is traumatized-but not injured-after an attack by a larger rat usually recovers within 48 hours unless it is kept in isolation, according to data published in 2005 in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews. The ones that are kept apart from other rats are the only ones that develop long-term traumatic symptoms. And a study of risk factors for PTSD in humans closely mirrored those results. In a 2000 study in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, "lack of social support" was found to be around two times more reliable at predicting who got PTSD and who didn't than the severity of the trauma itself. You could be mildly traumatized, in other words-on a par with, say, an ordinary rear-base deployment to Afghanistan-and experience long-term PTSD simply because of a lack of social support back home.

Anthropologist and psychiatrist Brandon Kohrt found a similar phenomenon in the villages of southern Nepal, where a civil war has been rumbling for years. Kohrt explained to me that there are two kinds of villages there: exclusively Hindu ones, which are extremely stratified, and mixed Buddhist/Hindu ones, which are far more open and cohesive. He said that child soldiers, both male and female, who go back to Hindu villages can remain traumatized for years, while those from mixed-religion villages tended to recover very quickly. "PTSD is a disorder of recovery, and if treatment only focuses on identifying symptoms, it pathologizes and alienates vets," according to Kohrt. "But if the focus is on family and community, it puts them in a situation of collective healing."

Israel is arguably the only modern country that retains a sufficient sense of community to mitigate the effects of combat on a mass scale. Despite decades of intermittent war, the Israel Defense Forces have a PTSD rate as low as 1 percent. Two of the foremost reasons have to do with national military service and the proximity of the combat-the war is virtually on their doorstep. "Being in the military is something that most people have done," I was told by Dr. Arieh Shalev, who has devoted the last 20 years to studying PTSD. "Those who come back from combat are re-integrated into a society where those experiences are very well understood. We did a study of 17-year-olds who had lost their father in the military, compared to those who had lost their fathers to accidents. The ones whose fathers died in combat did much better than those whose fathers hadn't."

According to Shalev, the closer the public is to the actual combat, the better the war will be understood and the less difficulty soldiers will have when they come home. The Israelis are benefiting from what could be called the shared public meaning of a war. Such public meaning-which would often occur in more communal, tribal societies-seems to help soldiers even in a fully modern society such as Israel. It is probably not generated by empty, reflexive phrases-such as "Thank you for your service"-that many Americans feel compelled to offer soldiers and vets. If anything, those comments only serve to underline the enormous chasm between military and civilian society in this country.

Another Israeli researcher, Reuven Gal, found that the perceived legitimacy of a war was more important to soldiers' general morale than was the combat readiness of the unit they were in. And that legitimacy, in turn, was a function of the war's physical distance from the homeland: "The Israeli soldiers who were abruptly mobilized and thrown into dreadful battles in the middle of Yom Kippur Day in 1973 had no doubts about the legitimacy of the war," Gal wrote in the Journal of Applied Psychology in 1986. "Many of those soldiers who were fighting in the Golan Heights against the flood of Syrian tanks needed only to look behind their shoulders to see their homes and remind themselves that they were fighting for their very survival."

In that sense, the Israelis are far more like the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho at Little Bighorn than they are like us. America's distance from her enemies means that her wars have generally been fought far away from her population centers, and as a result those wars have been harder to explain and justify than Israel's have been. The people who will bear the psychic cost of that ambiguity will, of course, be the soldiers.

A Bright Shining Lie

'I talked to my mom only one time from Mars," a Vietnam vet named Gregory Gomez told me about the physical and spiritual distance between his home and the war zone. Gomez is a pure-blooded Apache who grew up in West Texas. He says his grandfather was arrested and executed by Texas Rangers in 1915 because they wanted his land; they strung him from a tree limb, cut off his genitals, and stuffed them in his mouth. Consequently, Gomez felt no allegiance to the U.S. government, but he volunteered for service in Vietnam anyway. "Most of us Indian guys who went to Vietnam went because we were warriors," Gomez told me. "I did not fight for this country. I fought for Mother Earth. I wanted to experience combat. I wanted to know how I'd do."

Gomez was in a Marine Corps Force Recon unit, one of the most elite designations in the U.S. military. He was part of a four-man team that would insert by helicopter into enemy territory north of the DMZ and stay for two weeks at a time. They had no medic and no backup and didn't even dare eat C rations, because, Gomez said, they were afraid their body odor would give them away. They ate Vietnamese food and watched enemy soldiers pass just yards away in the dense jungle. "Everyone who has lived through something like that has lived through trauma, and you can never go back," he told me. "You are 17 or 18 or 19 and you just hit that wall. You become very old men."

American Indians, proportionally, have provided more soldiers to America's wars than almost any other ethnic group in this country. They are also the product of an ancient and vibrant warring culture that takes great pains to protect the warrior from society, and vice versa. Although those traditions have obviously broken down since the end of the Indian Wars, there may be something to be learned from the principles upon which they stand. When Gomez came home he essentially isolated himself for more than a decade. He didn't drink, and he lived a normal life except that occasionally he'd go to the corner store to get a soda and would wind up in Oklahoma or East Texas without any idea how he got there.

He finally started seeing a therapist at the V.A. as well as undergoing traditional Indian rituals. It was a combination that seemed to work. In the 1980s, he underwent an extremely painful ceremony called the Sun Dance. At the start of the ceremony, the dancers have wooden skewers driven through the skin of their chests. Leather thongs are tied to the skewers and then attached to the top of a tall pole at the center of the dance ground. To a steady drumbeat, the dancers move in a circle while leaning back on the leather thongs until, after many hours, the skewers finally tear free. "I dance back and I throw my arms and yell and I can see the ropes and the piercing sticks like in slow motion, flying from my chest towards the grandfather's tree," Gomez told me about the experience. "And I had this incredible feeling of euphoria and strength, like I could do anything. That's when the healing takes place. That's when life changes take place."

America is a largely de-ritualized society that obviously can't just borrow from another society to heal its psychic wounds. But the spirit of community healing and empowerment that forms the basis of these ceremonies is certainly one that might be converted to a secular modern society. The shocking disconnect for veterans isn't so much that civilians don't know what they went through-it's unrealistic to expect anyone to fully understand another person's experience-but that what they went through doesn't seem relevant back home. Given the profound alienation that afflicts modern society, when combat vets say that they want to go back to war, they may be having an entirely healthy response to the perceived emptiness of modern life.

One way to change this dynamic might be to emulate the Israelis and mandate national service (with a military or combat option). We could also emulate the Nepalese and try to have communities better integrate people of different ethnic and religious groups. Finally, we could emulate many tribal societies-including the Apache-by getting rid of parades and replacing them with some form of homecoming ceremony. An almost universal component of these ceremonies is the dramatic retelling of combat experiences to the warrior's community. We could achieve that on Veterans Day by making every town and city hall in the country available to veterans who want to speak publicly about the war. The vapid phrase "I support the troops" would then mean actually showing up at your town hall every Veterans Day to hear these people out. Some vets will be angry, some will be proud, and some will be crying so hard they can't speak. But a community ceremony like that would finally return the experience of war to our entire nation, rather than just leaving it to the people who fought.

It might also begin to re-assemble a society that has been spiritually cannibalizing itself for generations. We keep wondering how to save the vets, but the real question is how to save ourselves. If we do that, the vets will be fine. If we don't, it won't matter anyway.

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How PTSD Became a Problem Far Beyond the Battlefield

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Though only 10 percent of American forces see combat, the U.S. military now has the highest rate of post-traumatic stress disorder in its history. Sebastian Junger investigates.

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on Emotions

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Explore the emotional landscape of life and identify those hard to define feelings with these fascinating talks.

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Perception refers to our sensory experience of the world. It is the process of using our senses to become aware of objects, relationships. It is through this experience that we gain information about the environment around us.

Perception relies on the cognitive functions we use to process information, such as utilizing memory to recognize the face of a friend or detect a familiar scent. Through the perception process, we are able to both identify and respond to environmental stimuli.

Perception includes the five senses; touch, sight, sound, smell, and taste. It also includes what is known as proprioception, which is a set of senses that enable us to detect changes in body position and movement.

Many stimuli surround us at any given moment. Perception acts as a filter that allows us to exist within and interpret the world without becoming overwhelmed by this abundance of stimuli.

Types of Perception

The types of perception are often separated by the different senses. This includes visual perception, scent perception, touch perception, sound perception, and taste perception. We perceive our environment using each of these, often simultaneously.

There are also different types of perception in psychology, including:

Person perception refers to the ability to identify and use social cues about people and relationships.

Social perception is how we perceive certain societies and can be affected by things such as stereotypes and generalizations.

Another type of perception is selective perception. This involvespaying attention to some parts of our environment while ignoring others.

The different types of perception allow us to experience our environment and interact with it in ways that are both appropriate and meaningful.

How Perception Works

Through perception, we become more aware of (and can respond to) our environment. We use perception in communication to identify how our loved ones may feel. We use perception in behavior to decide what we think about individuals and groups.

We are perceiving things continuously, even though we don't typically spend a great deal of time thinking about them. For example, the light that falls on our eye's retinas transforms into a visual image unconsciously and automatically. Subtle changes in pressure against our skin, allowing us to feel objects, also occur without a single thought.

Perception Process

To better understand how we become aware of and respond to stimuli in the world around us, it can be helpful to look at the perception process. This varies somewhat for every sense.

In regard to our sense of sight, the perception process looks like this:

1. Environmental stimulus: The world is full of stimuli that can attract attention. Environmental stimulus is everything in the environment that has the potential to be perceived.

2. Attended stimulus: The attended stimulus is the specific object in the environment on which our attention is focused.

3. Image on the retina: This part of the perception process involves light passing through the cornea and pupil, onto the lens of the eye. The cornea helps focus the light as it enters and the iris controls the size of the pupils to determine how much light to let in. The cornea and lens act together to project an inverted image onto the retina.

4. Transduction: The image on the retina is then transformed into electrical signals through a process known as transduction. This allows the visual messages to be transmitted to the brain to be interpreted.

5. Neural processing: After transduction, the electrical signals undergo neural processing. The path followed by a particular signal depends on what type of signal it is (i.e. an auditory signal or a visual signal).

6. Perception: In this step of the perception process, you perceive the stimulus object in the environment. It is at this point that you become consciously aware of the stimulus.

7. Recognition: Perception doesn't just involve becoming consciously aware of the stimuli. It is also necessary for the brain to categorize and interpret what you are sensing. The ability to interpret and give meaning to the object is the next step, known as recognition.

8. Action: The action phase of the perception process involves some type of motor activity that occurs in response to the perceived stimulus. This might involve a major action, like running toward a person in distress. It can also involve doing something as subtle as blinking your eyes in response to a puff of dust blowing through the air.

Think of all the things you perceive on a daily basis. At any given moment, you might see familiar objects, feel a person's touch against your skin, smell the aroma of a home-cooked meal, or hear the sound of music playing in your neighbor's apartment. All of these help make up your conscious experience and allow you to interact with the people and objects around you.

Recap of the Perception Process

1. Environmental stimulus

2. Attended stimulus

3. Image on the retina

4. Transduction

5. Neural processing

6. Perception

7. Recognition

8. Action

Factors Influencing Perception

What makes perception somewhat complex is that we don't all perceive things the same way. One person may perceive a dog jumping on them as a threat, while another person may perceive this action as the pup just being excited to see them.

Our perceptions of people and things are shaped by our prior experiences, our interests, and how carefully we process information. This can cause one person to perceive the exact same person or situation differently than someone else.

Perception can also be affected by our personality. For instance, research has found that four of the Big 5 personality traits-openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and neuroticism-can impact our perception of organizational justice.

Conversely, our perceptions can also affect our personality. If you perceive that your boss is treating you unfairly, for example, you may show traits related to anger or frustration. If you perceive your spouse to be loving and caring, you may show similar traits in return.

Are Perception and Attitude the Same?

While they are similar, perception and attitude are two different things. Perception is how we interpret the world around us, while our attitude (our emotions, beliefs, and behaviors) can impact these perceptions.

Tips to Improve Perception

If you want to improve your perception skills, there are some things that you can do. Actions you can take that may help you perceive more in the world around you-or at least focus on the things that are important-include:

Pay attention. Actively notice the world around you, using all your senses. What do you see, hear, taste, smell, or touch? Using your sense of proprioception, notice the movements of your arms and legs, or your changes in body position.

Make meaning of what you perceive. The recognition stage of the perception process is essential since it allows you to make sense of the world around you. Place objects in meaningful categories, so you can understand and react appropriately.

Take action. The final step of the perception process involves taking some sort of action in response to your environmental stimulus. This could involve a variety of actions, such as stopping to smell the flower you see on the side of the road, incorporating more of your senses.

Potential Pitfalls of Perception

The perception process does not always go smoothly, and there are a number of things that may interfere with our ability to interpret and respond to our environment. One is having a disorder that impacts perception.

Perceptual disorders are cognitive conditions marked by an impaired ability to perceive objects or concepts. Some disorders that may affect perception include:

Spatial neglect syndromes, which involve not attending to stimuli on one side of the body

Prosopagnosia, also called face blindness, is a disorder that makes it difficult to recognize faces

Aphantasia, a condition characterized by an inability to visualize things in your mind

Schizophrenia, which is marked by abnormal perceptions of reality

Some of these conditions may be influenced by genetics, while others result from stroke or brain injury.

Perception can also be negatively affected by certain factors. For instance, one study found that when people viewed images of others, they perceived individuals with nasal deformities as having less satisfactory personality traits. So, factors such as this can potentially affect personality perception.

History of Perception

Interest in perception dates back to the time of ancient Greek philosophers who were interested in how people know the world and gain understanding. As psychology emerged as a science separate from philosophy, researchers became interested in understanding how different aspects of perception worked-particularly, the perception of color.

In addition to understanding basic physiological processes, psychologists were also interested in understanding how the mind interprets and organizes these perceptions.

Gestalt psychologists proposed a holistic approach, suggesting that the sum equals more than the sum of its parts. Cognitive psychologists have also worked to understand how motivations and expectations can play a role in the process of perception.

As time progresses, researchers continue to investigate perception on the neural level. They also look at how injury, conditions, and substances might affect perception.

Additional Reading

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Learn about perception in psychology and the process we use to recognize and respond to our environment. We also share types of perception and how to improve yours.

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The Chemistry of Depression - Neurotransmitters and More

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The Chemistry of Depression - Neurotransmitters and More

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There are several theories about what causes depression. The condition most likely results from a complex interplay of individual factors, but one long-prevalent explanation suggested that abnormal brain chemistry played a primary role.

More recent findings indicate that depression is likely not the result of chemical imbalances in the brain. However, the belief that chemical imbalances are responsible for causing depression is widely held by the American public. One survey found that nearly 85% of respondents believed that such imbalances were the likely cause of depression.

Sometimes, people with depression relate the condition to a specific factor, such as a traumatic event in their life. However, it's not uncommon for people who are depressed to be confused about the cause. They may even feel they don't have "a reason" to be depressed.

In these cases, learning about the theories of what causes depression can be helpful. Here's an overview of what is known (and not-yet-known) about how the brain's chemistry may influence depression.

Brain Chemicals and Depression

Previously, it was suggested that, for some people, having too little of certain substances in the brain (called neurotransmitters) could contribute to the onset or worsening of depression. According to this idea, restoring the balance of brain chemicals could help alleviate symptoms.

This is where the different classes of antidepressant medications may come in. Many antidepressants alter levels of certain neurotransmitters in the brain.

The most commonly prescribed class of antidepressants, known as SSRIs, block the reabsorption of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that can affect mood. The "serotonin hypothesis" suggested that low levels of this neurotransmitter were linked to depression. The idea was that increasing serotonin levels could help improve mood and relieve symptoms of depression.

Recent Evidence

The belief that depression is caused by chemical imbalances has been declining in the scientific and medical community for some time. And a study published in a 2022 issue of the journal Molecular Psychiatry found further reason to doubt this explanation. The research indicated there is little evidence to suggest that depression is caused by chemical imbalances in the brain.

While such findings challenge the idea that a serotonin deficiency is responsible for causing depression, it doesn't mean that mental health treatments are ineffective.

Such findings represent a significant shift in our understanding of depression, but this does not mean people taking antidepressants should stop their medication. More research is needed to fully understand what causes depression, how antidepressants affect the condition, and what other treatments may also be effective for managing symptoms of depression.

The 2022 study also found a strong connection between traumatic life events and the onset of depression. This further suggests that depression is caused by complex factors, including environmental variables, and cannot be reduced to simply a chemical imbalance in the brain.

Depression Is Complex

Even with the help of medications that affect specific neurotransmitters in the brain, depression is a highly complex condition to treat. What proves to be an effective treatment for one person with depression may not work for someone else. Even something that has worked well for someone in the past may become less effective over time, or even stop working, for reasons researchers are still trying to understand.

Researchers continue to try to understand the mechanisms of depression, including brain chemicals, in hopes of finding explanations for these complexities and developing more effective treatments.

What Are Neurotransmitters?

Put simply, neurotransmitters are chemical messengers in the brain. The nerve cells of the brain use neurotransmitters to communicate with each other. The messages they send are believed to play a role in mood regulation.

The space between two nerve cells is called the synapse. When cells want to communicate, neurotransmitters can be packaged up and released from the end (axon) of a presynaptic cell. As a packet of neurotransmitters crosses the space, it can be taken up by receptors for a specific chemical on postsynaptic cells (dendrite). For example, serotonin receptors pick up serotonin molecules.

If there are any excess molecules in the space, the presynaptic cell will gather them back up and reprocess them to use in another communication. Each type of neurotransmitter can carry a different message and plays a unique role in creating an individual's brain chemistry.

The chemical theory of depression suggested that imbalances in this brain chemistry were a primary cause of depression. However, recent findings found no evidence to support this idea.

The Role of Key Neurotransmitters

The three neurotransmitters that are often implicated in depression are:

Other neurotransmitters can send messages in the brain, including glutamate, GABA, and acetylcholine. Researchers are still learning about the role these brain chemicals play in depression and other conditions, such as Alzheimer's and fibromyalgia.

Another substance that might play a role in mood is dopamine. Dopamine creates positive feelings associated with reward or reinforcement that motivate us to continue with a task or activity. Dopamine is believed to play an important role in a variety of conditions affecting the brain, including Parkinson's and schizophrenia.

There is also evidence that reduced dopamine levels can contribute to depression in some people. When other treatments have failed, medications that affect the dopamine system are often added and can be helpful for some people with depression.

Norepinephrine

Norepinephrine is both a neurotransmitter and a hormone. It plays a role in the " fight or flight response" along with adrenaline. It helps send messages from one nerve cell to the next.

Schildkraut proposed depression occurred when there is too little norepinephrine in certain brain circuits. Alternatively, mania results when too much neurotransmitter is in the brain.

There is evidence that supports the hypothesis, however, it has not gone unchallenged by researchers. For one, changes in norepinephrine levels do not affect mood in every person. Further, medications specifically targeting norepinephrine may alleviate depression in some people but not others.

Another neurotransmitter is serotonin or the "feel good" chemical. In addition to helping regulate your mood, serotonin has a number of different jobs throughout the body from your gut to blood clotting to sexual function.

In relation to its role in depression, serotonin has taken center stage in the past few decades thanks to the advent of antidepressant medications like Prozac (fluoxetine) and other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). As their name implies, these medications specifically act on serotonin molecules.

Newer antidepressants called serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) like Effexor (venlafaxine) target both serotonin and norepinephrine. Tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) also affect norepinephrine and serotonin, but they have the added effect of influencing histamine and acetylcholine. These substances produce side effects, such as dry mouth, blurry vision, constipation, and urinary hesitancy.

SSRIs, on the other hand, do not affect histamine and acetylcholine and don't have the same side effects, and are safer from a cardiovascular standpoint. Therefore, doctors, psychiatrists, and people with depression tend to prefer them to older classes of antidepressants like TCAs.

Causes of Low Neurotransmitter Levels

While recent findings found no evidence to support the idea that chemical imbalances are responsible for causing depression, many people do find relief from taking antidepressants that impact neurotransmitter levels. An important question is what might cause the low levels of serotonin, norepinephrine, or dopamine in the first place?

Low levels of neurotransmitters can result when there is a breakdown anywhere in the process. Research has indicated several potential causes of chemical imbalances in the brain, including:

Molecules that help make neurotransmitters (specific enzymes) are in short supply

Not enough receptor sites to receive the neurotransmitter

Presynaptic cells are taking the neurotransmitter back up before it has a chance to reach the receptor cell

Too few of the molecules that build neurotransmitters (chemical precursors)

Too little of a specific neurotransmitter (for example, serotonin) is being produced

Several emerging theories are concerned with the factors that promote lowered levels, such as cellular (specifically mitochondrial) stress. But one of the main challenges for researchers and doctors hoping to connect depression to low levels of specific brain chemicals is that they don't have a way to consistently and accurately measure them.

Current and Future Depression Treatments

Understanding the chemistry of depression may help people better understand the treatments available. Psychotherapy is helpful for some people with depression, but others also find greater relief when these treatments are used alongside medications.

To complicate treatment further, medication does not always work for people with depression. One study evaluating the effectiveness of currently available antidepressants found that these medications only work in about 60% of people with depression.

Whatever might be causing your symptoms, depression affects your internal and external life. Therefore, medication alone may not be sufficient to address all the ways in which depression can affect you.

Research suggests that neurotransmitter levels can be affected by factors other than medication and that psychotherapy can help a person learn about them. For example, stress may contribute to low levels of certain neurotransmitters.

While taking an antidepressant medication might help with the symptoms, it doesn't necessarily address the other underlying causes of depression. In this situation, therapy to improve stress management and reduce stress could potentially be helpful.

Depression Treatments on the Horizon

Researchers are studying other molecular pathways in the brain (including the glutaminergic, cholinergic, and opioid systems) to see their role in depression. It may be that rather than a simple deficiency in one specific brain chemical being the causative factor, some depression symptoms could be related to the relative levels of each type of neurotransmitter in different brain regions.

Rather than being a simple equation of some unknown factor causing low levels of one or more neurotransmitters and these low levels creating the symptoms of depression, the actual basis of depression is much more complex.

While this complexity is often evident to people living with depression, medical professionals and researchers are still trying to understand the intricate nature of diagnosing and treating the condition.

For example, in addition to the role of neurotransmitters, we know there are multiple factors involved in causing depression ranging from genetic factors and childhood experiences to our present day-to-day lives and relationships. Even inflammation is being explored as a potential contributing factor.

Combatting the Chemical Imbalance Stigma

Acknowledging the limitations of our current knowledge of depression and its treatment is important. In recent years, some researchers have expressed concerns that pharmaceutical companies marketing antidepressant medications may have misled consumers by oversimplifying or misrepresenting the research into the brain chemistry of depression.

Several studies have found that when told depression is caused by a chemical imbalance, people tend to feel less confident in their ability to manage the condition. Other studies have found that when depression is framed as a disease of the brain, people are more likely to feel the need to avoid a person with depression (usually out of the fear that they are dangerous).

Not all the research has been negative, though. Several studies included in a 2012 meta-analysis indicated that one of the most effective ways to address and challenge social stigma around mental illness is to educate and discuss conditions and treatment-which includes being upfront and honest about what is still unknown or not well understood.

Recap

A Word From Verywell

Accepting how little we truly know about the chemistry of depression can help us maintain perspective and expectations for the medications used to treat depression. For people who are trying to find the right treatment, understanding the complex chemistry can be reassuring when a particular drug doesn't work for them or if they need to try more than one antidepressant.﻿﻿

Understanding the complexity of depression can also be helpful for those who have been offered hurtful advice, such as being told to "just snap out of it." It is no easier for someone to forget they are depressed than it would be for someone with diabetes to lower their blood sugar by simply not thinking about it.

Being realistic about the limitations of our knowledge can help us remember that for the time being, there is no one treatment that will work for everyone with depression. More often than not an interdisciplinary approach is needed. At the very least, every person dealing with depression needs and deserves a support team.

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What Is the Chemistry Behind Depression?

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What is the chemistry of depression? How do changes in neurotransmitters, the messengers of the brain, cause symptoms and respond to medications?

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What are the differences between External and Internal motivation?

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What are the differences between External and Internal motivation?

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I was troubled by a conversation I had with my son this morning. My 10-year-old son came home from swim practice today and told me that he didn't want to swim again and he didn't want to go to another practice this season. When I asked why, he responded, "The coach told us that for each mistake made by any 9 - 10 year old swimmer in the swim meet tomorrow, we'd all have to swim a 100 yard butterfly next week at practice." He was sure there would be at least 10 mistakes made (e.g., taking a breath coming off the wall, etc.). If that came true, then the 9 - 10 year olds will be made to swim 1000 yards (or 40 laps) of butterfly during the next practice.

I've done a number of sports psychology presentations. Part of my presentation focuses on positive versus negative motivation. In my opinion, the motivation discussed above is entirely negative and is punitive in nature. If you have ever swum, I think you'll agree 40 laps of butterfly is punishment for a 9- or 10-year-old child. And the worst part is that an individual swimmer has little to no control over all the behaviors which leads to the outcome. In other words, an individual may swim great races and not make a mistake, and still be punished for the mistakes of others.

This sort of negative motivation does nothing to instill a love of swimming. On the other hand, it does lead to burnout. It will cause a young athlete to turn his back on swimming altogether. This is nearly always the case when values clash.

Ideally, children enter into a sport to build competence, be with their friends, discover a passion for the sport, and have fun. When these values conflict with those of a more competitive environment where the emphasis is placed on beating an opponent, burnout and turnover are the natural consequences. Interestingly, the same holds true for the business world. Human beings respond well to positive motivation. We recoil and withdraw under the thumb of negative motivation.

In general, motivation refers to the start, the direction, the intensity and the persistence of behavior. Motivation means having the passion and the will to undertake some action. Motivation may be internal (i.e., intrinsic motivation) or external (i.e., extrinsic motivation).

Internal motivation is seen when a person undertakes an activity for its own sake without any sort of external reward, such as a hobby. Internal motivation can result from our feelings (e.g., happiness, anger, and sadness), thoughts (e.g., "I better finish the report before the deadline tonight."), values and goals.

External motivation is evident when someone behaves a particular way for reasons external to, or outside of, the person, such as money or coercion. External motivation may come from parents, a boss, coworkers, friends, and siblings. It is most frequently thought of in terms of salary (i.e., money), promotions, grades, praise and punishment.

A second dimension of motivation has to do with the underlying intention of the motivation, as seen in Figure 1 below. Motivation occurs on a spectrum ranging from negative to positive.

Positive motivation is seen when people engage in an activity that has a virtuous end, such as volunteering, athletics, or art.

Negative motivation is evident when individuals act in a manner that is unethical or has a destructive end, such as judging others, physical altercations or vandalism. Negative motivation also occurs when individuals use destructive emotions, such as guilt and shame, to coerce others into acting.

Think of motivation as occurring on a scale that ranges from 1 to 10 with 1 being negative and 10 being positive.

If you are looking for the best results in your workforce, you will focus more of your time and energy on positive, internal motivation for yourself as well as others.

Positive internal motivation begins with a sense of purpose, knowing why you are doing what you are doing. Having a clear idea of your personal core values will help you immensely in answering the question "Why am I doing this?" The amazing advantage of truly knowing your values is that you will experience a tremendous clarity and focus which you can use to make consistently wise choices and take decisive action. So the main reason for becoming aware of your top values is to improve performance in the areas that are most meaningful to you.

For instance, part of the work I do is motivated by my desire to give back to the community. Part of what I do is motivated by the core value of lifelong learning. Some possible core values include concepts such as creativity, open-mindedness, family, wisdom, courage, resiliency, and spirituality. Values change throughout your life, so it makes sense to do a quick values check up every 18 - 24 months. For a list of the top 26 core values that exist throughout the world, regardless of culture, check out the values list at www.guidetoself.com.

Acting in accordance with your values is only one way to tap into the power of positive internal motivation. Another way to harness this power is to lay out your top five short-term and long-term goals and work towards them. Remember as you are in the process of achieving your goals that the enjoyment comes from the doing not the attaining. It is important to find contentment in the act of pursuing the goal while placing less weight on the actual fulfillment of the goal itself. We now know that once we attain a goal, we become accustomed to it. Once we become accustomed to it, we grow bored of it. Then it provides no additional pleasure or motivation. So focus on the pleasure inherent in the task itself.

In closing, there are a myriad of ways that you can inspire action using positive internal motivation. Much of the power of positive internal motivation comes from being aware of your core values then acting in accordance with them. Another major facet of positive internal motivation is the pursuit of meaningful goals. Look for opportunities where you can use positive, internal motivation. You will perform better, be more productive and feel happier.
Internal versus External and Negative versus Positive Motivations

Negative
One's own feelings of guilt, shame, embarrassment, or fear Perfectionism Destructive anger Debilitating stress Need for power Need to please others Worry Low self-esteem

Person yelling at you Person shaming you Person threatening your job security or social status Punishment Withdrawal of love or friendship Aggressive show of strength from another, coercion Expectations of others

Positive
Acting in accordance with your values Satisfaction Sensory pleasure Sense of competence Enjoyment Praise from self Self-respect Fulfillment of aspirations/dreams Sense of achievement Highly engaged in activity Constructive anger or stress Job satisfaction Goal setting Pursuing our natural tendency towards self-development Need for affiliation with others Perception that what you are doing is morally significant

Money (only lasts a short period) Rewards Public recognition Empowerment from others Promotion Praise from others Respect from others Pleasant work environment Challenging work Some autonomy and input into decisions Appropriate responsibility Fringe benefits Friendships at work

John Schinnerer, Ph.D. is President and Founder of Guide To Self, a company that focuses on coaching individuals and groups to their potential using the latest in psychology, psychoneuroimmunology and physiology. Most recently, Dr. John Schinnerer hosted over 200 episodes of Guide To Self Radio, a prime time radio show, in the San Francisco Bay Area. He graduated summa cum laude from U.C. Berkeley with a Ph.D. in psychology. Dr. Schinnerer has been a coach and psychologist for over 10 years.

Dr. Schinnerer is also President of Infinet Assessment, a psychological testing company to help firms select the best applicants. Infinet was founded in 1997 and has worked with companies such as UPS, CSE Insurance Group and Schreiber Foods.

Dr. Schinnerer's areas of expertise range from positive psychology, to emotional awareness, to moral development to sports psychology. He is a noted speaker and author on topics such as emotional intelligence, sports psychology, and executive leadership.

Dr. Schinnerer wrote, "Guide To Self: The Beginner's Guide To Managing Emotion and Thought," which was recently awarded the "Best Self-Help Book of 2007" by East Bay Express. He has written articles on corporate ethics and EQ in the workplace for Workspan magazine, HR.com, and Business Ethics. He has given numerous presentations, radio shows and seminars to tens of thousands of people for organizations such as SHRM, NCHRA, KNEW and KDIA.

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Internal (Intrinsic) Motivation: Examples and Benefits

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I was troubled by a conversation I had with my son this morning. My 10-year-old son came home from swim practice today and told me that he didn't want to swim again and he didn't want to go to another practice this season.

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Prejudice and Discrimination: Crash Course Psychology #39 - YouTube

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Prejudice and Discrimination: Crash Course Psychology #39 - YouTube

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Prejudice and Discrimination: Crash Course Psychology #39

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TED Talks are influential videos from expert speakers on education, business, science, tech and creativity, with subtitles in 100+ languages. Ideas free to stream and download.

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"Know Thyself, With a Brain Scanner"- Ariel Garten

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Ariel Garten: Know thyself, with a brain scanner

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Imagine playing a video game controlled by your mind. Now imagine that game also teaches you about your own patterns of stress, relaxation and focus. Ariel Garten shows how looking at our own brain activity gives new meaning to the ancient dictum "know thyself."

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"How to Trust People You Don't Like"- Adam Grant

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WorkLife with Adam Grant: How to trust people you don't like

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Astronauts on the International Space Station live in capsules together for months. And yes, they can get on each other's nerves. A crew of astronauts from different countries -- and the wilderness trainer who was called in for an emergency intervention -- share fresh insights about handling conflict and building trust.

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"Why do Humans Make Art?"

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One area of the human experience that seems not to have parallels out in nature is the arts. It is difficult to conceive of a pigeon Picasso or a baboon Botticelli. Indeed, only a few animal species have even the faintest hints of the beginning of culture. Without culture, there really can't be art, as we know it, because art cannot exist separate from culture. Art reflects culture, transmits culture, shapes culture, and comments on culture. There is just no way that animals can possibly experience art as we do.

And there is the rub. Of course, they don't experience art as we do because they don't experience anything as we do. And we don't experience anything as another animal does either. But if we really think about what art is and how it first began in humans, we might indeed see budding artists among our animal friends.
Art is about beauty
If we divorce art from its cultural implications, we can agree that art is very often all to do with the expression of beauty. Throughout history, much artwork was made for no other explicit purpose than the production of beauty. Artwork is to be beheld and admired. It is breathtaking and can even make us emotional. It is this beauty that I draw the first connection between nature and art. Nature and art are both beautiful, no matter how you define beauty. They both can dazzle us and hold us breathless. They can inspire us and make us feel connected to something. They both can strike an emotional nerve that leaves an impact on us that is not soon forgotten. Perhaps this connection between art and emotion reveals something about the origin of art.

First, let's consider a specific subset of the beauty we find in the natural world: beautiful animals. From the unmatched colors of a tropical macaw to the flowing mane of an African lion, to the striking features of a mandarinfish, animals are beautiful. But never was the saying, "beauty is in the eye of the holder" more true than in the animal world. The bright and flashy colors that we see in many animals have evolved to be conspicuous, to help the animal "stick out." The most spectacularly beautiful animals are so decorated in order to get the attraction, respect, or fear of other animals. In all cases, the utility of the beauty is found in the reaction it gets from the observer. Can't the exact same thing be said of human art?

Although it's not all about sex, much of animal beauty is indeed about impressing potential mates. To date, scientists have found no other reason that peacocks have those beautiful and intricate tails except that peahens seem to dig them. These tails are not a small decorative adornment, either. The peacock tail is more than 60% of its body length. When they try to walk, let alone fly, with those obnoxious monstrosities, it is a pitiful sight indeed.

Nevertheless, peahens are deeply attracted to this tail, and peafowl are not the only species with a strategy like this. Beginning in the simplest of invertebrates, colorful and striking ornamentation has been used to attract mates. I could give a long list of beautifully colored animals whose intricate visual patterns are designed for no other purpose than attraction of a mate, but I don't think it's necessary.
Art and beauty evoke an emotional response
This beauty-as-sexy phenomenon has a deep biological parallel with human art because it is the connection of a visual stimulus with an inner emotional state. In the case of an attractive animal, the external physical beauty is transformed into a desire, a behavioral impulse in the brain of the observer. When peahens behold a beautiful peacock, they are "moved" by it, in the sense that it affects their current mental state. We know this because it affects their behavior and we assume that behaviors spring from mental states. This is exactly what the fine arts are all about in humans: they employ a visual stimulus to affect the mental or emotional state of the viewers.
Art induces recall of past events or emotions
Admittedly, art and beauty in humans is more than just sex appeal. The effectiveness of art depends on some basic assumptions about the knowledge and experience that is common between the artist and the audience. Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans will probably have very little impact on the bushmen of eastern Africa. Art capitalizes on specific stored memories and associations in the brain of the observer. Here, we have the second clue to the origin of art in humans: visual recall of past events and emotions.

As human brains became more sophisticated over the last million years, we became capable of storing extensive details as memories, a skill that came in handy as our behaviors became more detailed. The hunting and gathering way of life common to all of the various hominid species required extensive visual memory. How else could they have accomplished organized group hunting, fashioning of simple tools, and the deciphering of the migratory patterns of big game on the African savannah? These complicated skills require the comparison of current visual cues with past experience in a computational and predictive way. Pattern recognition is what we are talking about here.

Further still, the ability to make and use tools, a skill that began in apes and exploded in hominids, requires a great deal of visual and tactile memory. As fully modern Homo sapiens began making tools that were more and more sophisticated, we suddenly found ourselves with the ability to depict our memories using primitive painting implements. With our newfound cognitive abilities, our impressive memory-recall, and eventually tools, it is not at all surprising that the first art produced by our ancestors depicted the very subject that probably spawned all of our cognitive abilities in the first place: the hunt.

Cave paintings are the earliest artifacts that anthropologists and art historians agree are truly art, but I find it hard to believe that they didn't also facilitate functions in the communities in which they were created. We could speculate all day about what those functions could have been, but I think the point is that the benefits of being able to create a visual representation was immediately recognized. I also seriously doubt that the cave paintings were the first such attempts at visual representations. They were just the first that ended up surviving through the eons.
Art aids in communication and education
As language was developing in Homo sapiens during the great leap forward, humans began teaching each other about the tools they'd made, the food they found, and the skills they had perfected. This was the beginning of the concept of education. I can't imagine that the education of the paleolothic era didn't also make use of visual aids, like education does today. Whether they were just crude drawings made by dragging sticks in the dirt, or more elaborate representation on stone "canvases," I am sure that drawings accompanied spoken language (or gestures) right from the beginning. Once again, the key feature was the ability to use visual representations to induce memory recall or visual understanding. By drawing something, an early human could make another human remember something.

Various forms of drawing, painting, and other visual depictions almost certainly facilitated communication and education among early humans. That much seems rather obvious. In addition, it seems likely that early humans also used the new innovation of artistic depictions for various efforts of problem-solving and calculation. As cognition continued to develop, it began to grow into consciousness and introspection as we think of them today.

The visual arts were probably right there with us along the way, helping to provide a means to express the complex thoughts that were beginning to materialize in our massive brains. Indeed, appreciation and understanding of art seem to be among the highest-order functions of the human brain.

For these reasons, I tend to believe that artistic expression and reactions to art evolved hand-in-hand with higher cognitive functions in early humans. It is natural that the new richness of our inner experience would also manifest in creative outward expression. In turn, the communication of that inner experience through art would find receptive observers and the phenomenon of art then became ingrained culturally.

I also fully expect that artistic talent would have eventually been transferred from our culture to our genes. After all, during a million or two years of natural selection, artistic ability was likely to confer some advantage on those that had it. This advantage could have come in the form of increased social standing as a leader in the hunt, a prolific teacher of skills, and so on. Any special place in the social structure means greater odds of reproductive success. In this way, I suspect, humanity evolved into a species of artists and art enthusiasts.
Do other animals make art?
Once humanity developed a tendency to produce artistic renderings, there was plenty of biological space for it to flourish and reasons why it would be favored, but how might it have emerged in the first place? Surely the behavior of art production cannot be traced to a singular mutation. What precursors might have existed that allowed art to emerge? Are there any examples of animals making something we would consider artful?

There is an Indian artist named Siri, whose drawings currently go for hundreds or thousands of dollars. She has been written about extensively and featured in publications from Harper's Weekly to the Los Angeles Times. Her work ranges from abstract to highly representational art including landscapes and self-portraits. Of course, she trained for many years to develop this skill, but she can now complete a painting in mere minutes. Siri is a fifty year old Asian Elephant.

Siri is not alone. Scores of elephants have been taught to paint. The art that these elephants produce by holding a brush in their trunks is truly impressive. It's certainly better than anything I could produce. What these elephants are really doing, in terms of producing art or simply repeating a trained task, is the subject of heated debate. I don't intend to wade into those murky waters. Rather, I mention painting elephants here only to indicate that the technical skill set necessary to produce art is certainly not unique to humans. These trained painting elephants can take a visual stimulus, even one that is new to them, and recreate it through artistic techniques that they have learned. They appreciate color, perspective, and proportion, at least in the basic sense. I'm not saying that these elephants are Cézanne, but they're better than Nathan H. Lents, that's for sure.

In species closer to us, orangutans, chimpanzees, and gorillas have all been taught to draw and paint. Like the elephants, some of them are quite good at it. Unlike the elephants, there is little debate that these primates seem to actually enjoy making the art and will do it spontaneously, without reward, and for its own sake. They sometimes make art that they become quite attached to and never actively show to anyone else.

Once again, I don't want to get into a discussion of what this art creation really says about chimpanzee consciousness, although that is interesting to me. My point here is simply that these great apes all have the physical ability to create visual representations, they enjoy doing so, and the art that they produce seems to mean something to them. All of those abilities and features were obviously present in early humans and their ancestors as well.

So it was not really that big of a jump when early humans looked up at the cave wall, dimly lit by a dying fire... and saw a canvas.

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One area of the human experience that seems not to have parallels out in nature is the arts. It is difficult to conceive of a pigeon Picasso or a baboon Botticelli. Indeed, only a few animal species have even the faintest hints of the beginning of culture.

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There are many different theories of emotion that seek to explain the purpose, causes, and effects of the emotional reactions people experience. Emotions exert an incredibly powerful force on human behavior. Strong emotions can cause you to take actions you might not normally perform or to avoid situations you enjoy.

Why exactly do we have emotions? What causes them? Researchers, philosophers, and psychologists have proposed various theories of emotion to explain the how and why behind our feelings.

Emotion is a complex state of feeling that results in physical and psychological changes that influence thought and behavior. Such feelings include physiological arousal, conscious experiences, and behavioral expressions. Emotionality is associated with a range of psychological phenomena, including temperament, personality, mood, and motivation.

Types of Theories of Emotion

The major theories of emotion can be grouped into three main categories:

1. Physiological theories suggest that responses within the body are responsible for emotions.

2. Neurological theories propose that activity within the brain leads to emotional responses.

3. Cognitive theories argue that thoughts and other mental activities play an essential role in forming emotions.

In addition to these three main categories, there are six main theories of emotion that have been proposed by psychologists: evolutionary theory, James-Lange theory, Cannon-Bard theory, Schachter-Singer theory, cognitive appraisal theory, and facial-feedback theory.

Evolutionary Theory of Emotion

Naturalist Charles Darwin proposed that emotions evolved because they were adaptive and allowed humans and animals to survive and reproduce. Feelings of love and affection lead people to seek mates and reproduce. Feelings of fear compel people to fight or flee the source of danger.

According to the evolutionary theory of emotion, our emotions exist because they serve an adaptive role. Emotions motivate people to respond quickly to stimuli in the environment, which helps improve the chances of success and survival.

Understanding the emotions of other people and animals also plays a crucial role in safety and survival. If you encounter a hissing, spitting, and clawing animal, chances are you will quickly realize that the animal is frightened or defensive and leave it alone. Being able to interpret correctly the emotional displays of other people and animals allows you to respond correctly and avoid danger.

The James-Lange Theory of Emotion

The James-Lange theory is one of the best-known examples of a physiological theory of emotion. Independently proposed by psychologist William James and physiologist Carl Lange, the James-Lange theory of emotion suggests that emotions occur as a result of physiological reactions to events.

According to the James-Lange theory of emotion, an external stimulus leads to a physiological reaction. Your emotional reaction depends upon how you interpret those physical reactions.

For example, suppose you are walking in the woods and see a grizzly bear. You begin to tremble, and your heart begins to race. The James-Lange theory proposes that you will conclude that you are frightened ("I am trembling. Therefore, I am afraid"). According to this theory of emotion, you are not trembling because you are frightened. Instead, you feel frightened because you are trembling.

The Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion

Another well-known physiological theory is the Cannon-Bard theory of emotion. Walter Cannon disagreed with the James-Lange theory of emotion on several different grounds. First, he suggested, people can experience physiological reactions linked to emotions without actually feeling those emotions. For example, your heart might race because you have been exercising, not because you are afraid.

Cannon also suggested that emotional responses occur much too quickly to be simply products of physical states. When you encounter a danger in the environment, you will often feel afraid before you start to experience the physical symptoms associated with fear, such as shaking hands, rapid breathing, and a racing heart.

According to the Cannon-Bard theory of emotion, we feel emotions and experience physiological reactions such as sweating, trembling, and muscle tension simultaneously.

Cannon first proposed his theory in the 1920s, and his work was later expanded on by physiologist Philip Bard during the 1930s.

More specifically, the theory proposes that emotions result when the thalamus sends a message to the brain in response to a stimulus, resulting in a physiological reaction. At the same time, the brain also receives signals triggering the emotional experience. Cannon and Bard's theory suggests that the physical and psychological experience of emotion happen at the same time and that one does not cause the other.

Schachter-Singer Theory

Also known as the two-factor theory of emotion, the Schachter-Singer theory is an example of a cognitive theory of emotion. This theory suggests that the physiological arousal occurs first, and then the individual must identify the reason for this arousal to experience and label it as an emotion. A stimulus leads to a physiological response that is then cognitively interpreted and labeled, resulting in an emotion.

Schachter and Singer's theory draws on both the James-Lange theory and the Cannon-Bard theory. Like the James-Lange theory, the Schachter-Singer theory proposes that people infer emotions based on physiological responses. The critical factor is the situation and the cognitive interpretation that people use to label that emotion.

The Schachter-Singer theory is a cognitive theory of emotion that suggests our thoughts are responsible for emotions.

Like the Cannon-Bard theory, the Schachter-Singer theory also suggests that similar physiological responses can produce varying emotions. For example, if you experience a racing heart and sweating palms during an important exam, you will probably identify the emotion as anxiety. If you experience the same physical responses on a date, you might interpret those responses as love, affection, or arousal.﻿﻿

Cognitive Appraisal Theory

According to appraisal theories of emotion, thinking must occur first before experiencing emotion. Richard Lazarus was a pioneer in this area of emotion, and this theory is often referred to as the Lazarus theory of emotion.

The cognitive appraisal theory asserts that your brain first appraises a situation, and the resulting response is an emotion.

According to this theory, the sequence of events first involves a stimulus, followed by thought, which then leads to the simultaneous experience of a physiological response and the emotion. For example, if you encounter a bear in the woods, you might immediately begin to think that you are in great danger. This then leads to the emotional experience of fear and the physical reactions associated with the fight-or-flight response.

Facial-Feedback Theory of Emotion

The facial-feedback theory of emotions suggests that facial expressions are connected to experiencing emotions. Charles Darwin and William James both noted early on that, sometimes, physiological responses often have a direct impact on emotion, rather than simply being a consequence of the emotion.

The facial-feedback theory suggests that emotions are directly tied to changes in facial muscles. For example, people who are forced to smile pleasantly at a social function will have a better time at the event than they would if they had frowned or carried a more neutral facial expression.

A Word From Verywell

Despite the fact that emotions impact every decision we make and the way we see the world, there is still a lot of mystery surrounding why we have emotions. Theories of emotion continue to evolve, exploring what causes feelings and how these feelings affect us.

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What Are the 6 Major Theories of Emotion?

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The major theories of emotion seek to explain the nature, origins, and effects of emotions. Learn more about these theories and how they explain why emotions happen.

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We make countless decisions every day without even realising it. Even as you sit here reading this, you're making decisions. Decisions about the content, the questions being asked of you. And the answers to these are influenced heavily by something researchers refer to as "unconscious bias."
What is "unconscious bias"?
Bias is an inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group. So, unconscious biases are unconscious feelings we have towards other people - instinctive feelings that play a strong part in influencing our judgements away from being balanced or even-handed.

One of the most prominent areas of life where bias can play out is the workplace. For example, one of the strongest biases we have in the workplace is gender bias. Why? Well, our feelings about gender and the stereotypes we've all associated with gender are something we've developed throughout our whole lives. Things like how or where we've been brought up, how we've been socialised, our exposure to other social identities and social groups, who our friends are/were, as well as media influences, all affect how we think and feel about certain types of people.

It's important to mention, however, that most bias stereotypes do not come from a place of bad intent. It's just a deep seated, unconscious stereotype that's been formed in our brains through years of different influences we often had no control over.
How does bias affect our actions?
"Most of us believe that we are ethical and unbiased. We imagine we're good decision makers, able to objectively size up a job candidate or a venture deal and reach a fair and rational conclusion that's in our, and our organisation's, best interests," writes Harvard University researcher Mahzarin Banaji in the Harvard Business Review. "But more than two decades of research confirms that, in reality, most of us fall woefully short of our inflated self-perception."

Biases affects us and our decision-making processes in a number of different ways:

Our Perception - how we see people and perceive reality.

Our Attitude - how we react towards certain people.

Our Behaviours - how receptive/friendly we are towards certain people.

Our Attention - which aspects of a person we pay most attention to.

Our Listening Skills - how much we actively listen to what certain people say.

Our Micro-affirmations - how much or how little we comfort certain people in certain situations.

Whether we are aware of it or not, each and every one of these things will affect who we select to come in for an interview, how we interview them, who we hire and our reasons for hiring them. So, how do you stop yourself from falling prey to the dangers of unconscious bias? The first step is simple - make the unconscious, conscious. By acknowledging the different types of unconscious bias we can start to address them.
Types of bias and how they affect your recruiting process
In recruitment, the following types of bias are all very common:

Based on a famous study that's been around for decades, conformity bias relates to bias caused by group peer pressure. In the study, a group of people is asked to look at the picture above and say which line in Exhibit 2 matches the line in Exhibit 1. One individual is told to say what they think. The rest of the group is told to give the wrong answer.

We can see that line A of Exhibit 2 matches the line in Exhibit 1. But, when the individual who doesn't know this is a test gives the correct answer is informed that the rest of the group has said Line B, in 75% of cases the individual decides to scrap their own opinion in favour of the groups' opinion. Just think how this may play out in a panel talking about a candidate. If an individual feels the majority of the group are leaning towards/away from a certain choice, they will tend to go along with the group, rather than voice their own opinions.

This is the view that we tend to think the most handsome individual will be the most successful. But this can also play out in terms of other physical attributes a person may have.

For example, while 60% of CEOs in the US are over 6 foot, only 15% of the total population is over 6 foot tall. And while 36% of US CEOs are over 6.2 feet, only 4% of the US population is over 6.2 feet tall. So again, this shows some bias in terms of how we perceive a CEO.

It is common that recruiters will look to fill a role with someone who shares similar physical attributes to the person who held that role before, or who they believe looks like the kind of person who should have the role based on their preconceived bias.

Affinity bias occurs when we see someone we feel we have an affinity with; maybe we attended the same college, we grew up in the same town, or they remind us of someone we know and like.

When we interview someone we feel we have some affinity with, our micro-affirmations play out a bit more than they usually would. For instance, if they tell us they're a little nervous we may smile at them more or offer more words of encouragement. Whereas, if a person we shared no affinity with told us the same thing, we perhaps wouldn't be quite as warm towards them as we had been to the candidate we felt we shared a connection with. After the interview, you'd then speak in much higher terms of the first candidate and how much you feel they'd "fit in" over and above the second candidate.

Halo is when we see one great thing about a person and we let the halo-glow of that significant aspect affect our opinions of everything else about that person. We are in awe of them, but due entirely to one thing.

For example, when looking through someone's CV we may see they went to a highly regarded college where they received a certain high grade, or they had undertaken some very sought after work experience program. Due to the halo effect, we may tend to see everything else about that person surrounded by the glow of that singular achievement.

The horns effect is the direct opposite of the halo effect, in that when we see one bad thing about a person and we let it cloud our opinions of their other attributes.

For example, when interviewing someone we might be put off by the fact that they speak very slowly because our unconscious bias has caused us to assume this as a sign of unintelligence. Cast in this light, everything they say or do for the rest of the interview could be tainted by our judgement.

Naturally, we want to surround ourselves with people we feel are similar to us. And as a result, we tend to want to work more with people who are like us too.

In terms of recruitment that may mean that we are more open to hiring individuals we see parts of ourselves in.

This plays out regularly in recruitment, particularly amongst those who spend large amounts of time sifting through CVs or conducting a vast multitude of interviews.

For example, if we're looking at a number of CVs in a row, one after the other, we tend to compare and contrast them. We judge whether or not the person in front of us did as well as the person that came before them. When really, the only thing we should be comparing are the skills and attributes each individual has, to the skills and attributes required for the job, not those of the person that came directly before them.

This is the most common form of bias in the recruitment process. People constantly make attributions regarding the cause of their own and others' behaviours; however, attributions do not always accurately reflect reality.

If we do something well we tend to think it's down to our own merit and personality. When we do something badly we tend to believe that our failing is due to external factors, like other people that adversely affected us and prevented us from doing our best.

When it comes to other people, we tend to think the opposite. If someone else has done something well, we consider them lucky, and if they've done something badly, we tend to think it's due to their personality or bad behaviour.

This is one that recruiters have to be extremely careful about. When we make a judgement about another person, we subconsciously look for evidence to back up our own opinions of that person. We do this because we want to believe we're right and that we've made the right assessment of a person.

The danger of conformity bias in recruitment is that our own judgement could be very, very wrong and could cause us to lose a great candidate for the job.

Now that you're up to speed with the different types of bias and how they can affect the way you recruit candidates, it's time to find out how to build strategies to counteract it in your organisation. That's where our d iversity and inclusion ebook could help! Check it out for free today.

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9 Types of Bias and the Shocking Ways They Affect Your Recruiting Efforts

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We make countless decisions every day without even realising it. Even as you sit here reading this, you're making decisions. Decisions about the content, the questions being asked of you. And the answers to these are influenced heavily by something researchers refer to as "unconscious bias." What is "unconscious bias"?

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Understanding Brain Circuits of Fear, Stress, and Anxiety | Psychology Today

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Understanding Brain Circuits of Fear, Stress, and Anxiety | Psychology Today

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Anxiety disorders (like social anxiety) and stress disorders (like PTSD) are among the most common mental health diagnoses with a lifetime prevalence of almost 30%. New technologies like fMRI, which allow us to scan the brain in real time have vastly increased our knowledge of the brain circuits that underly anxiety and fear. Experts now think of anxiety disorders and PTSD as "whole brain" disorders involving the complex interplay of neurons across different brain areas. More specifically, anxiety and stress disorders seem to involve hyper-activation of brain areas that help us detect and respond to threats, along with reduced activation of brain areas that help us modulate our reactivity to fear and stress. These brain areas and circuits will be described in more detail below.

Two pathways of fear

Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux's research with rodents helped us understand the brain circuitry of fear. LeDoux suggested there was both a "low road" and a "high road" of fear. The "low road" involved activation of the amygdala, a structure in the midbrain that served to detect a threat to our survival and set into motion a biobehavioral response that would facilitate fighting or fleeing. This response involves faster breathing, rapid heart rate, sweating and other physiological reactions that we subjectively experience as fear. This "emergency" fear reaction is very rapid in order to maximize our chances of surviving. LeDoux also identified a "high road" in which information travelled to the prefrontal cortex (the CEO or executive functioning center of the brain) first where it was processed before being relayed to the amygdala. This pathway was slower, allowing time for a more thorough analysis of the situation. In this way, the prefrontal cortex could "reign in" an overactive amygdala, resulting in more modulated and nuanced fear response to varying levels of threat.

In people with anxiety or stress disorders (PTSD) the amygdala is hyper-responsive to threat while the prefrontal cortex is under-active or lacks sufficient neural connections with the amygdala to calm things down. The result is a more intense and/or extended fear response.

Fear versus worry

More recently, brain researchers have found that fear and anxiety/worry may have distinct neural circuitry. Fear can be thought of as the response to an immediate and present danger, while anxiety/worry involves a response to uncertain and possibly negative future events. While fear-arousal comes from the amygdala, it seems that anxiety is associated with a part of the brain known as the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST). THE BNST is a structure in the basal forebrain with extensive connectivity to many other brain regions involved in bodily functions, threat response, memory, attachment, and information processing. The BNST is more active than the amygdala under conditions of uncertainty where something bad could happen (e.g., waiting for the results of a medical test or an employment interview) while the amygdala is more active to present threat.

Other brain areas involved in fear, stress, and anxiety
The medial prefrontal cortex
The medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) is a part of the prefrontal cortex involved in processing information about ourselves and other people. Studies of PTSD patients find less MPFC activation overall in this group compared to healthy controls. However, people with PTSD have more MPFC activation than controls in response to fearful faces. Similar effects are found in people with social anxiety-less activation to threat and more activation to social tasks. Low activation in response to threat can be thought of as a deficit in emotion regulation while high activation may be an attempt to overcompensate for excessive fear responding in the lower brain regions, although more research is needed to clarify this.

Other studies have looked at the degree of connectivity between the MPFC and the amygdala in people with anxiety and stress disorders versus healthy controls. These studies have found less connectivity between the amygdala and MPFC in people with PTSD and social anxiety disorder. This suggests that the MPFC is less able to regulate anxious responding in these conditions.
The insula
The insula is a small area of the cortex located deep within the lateral sulcus of the brain and not visible from the surface. It has a number of functions, including higher-level thinking, emotional responding, and sensory processing. In people with a social anxiety disorder or PTSD, the insula has been shown in fMRI studies to be overactive in response to threats. In social anxiety disorder, both medication and psychotherapy decreased this over activation. Thus, the insula seems to be a fear and threat response generating area and a potentially promising focus when we seek new ways to decrease fear.
The anterior cingulate cortex
The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is situated between the neocortex and the emotional areas of the brain (amygdala, hippocampus). Its functions are complex but seem to include monitoring the outcomes of situations and socially-driven interactions.

Different parts of the ACC seem to have different functions when it comes to fear and anxiety. The dorsal part of the ACC (dACC) seems to be involved in magnifying our response to threat and is hyperactivated in people with panic disorder, phobias, and PTSD. Cognitive-behavioral therapy has been found to decrease dACC activation in people with social anxiety, perhaps by helping to change the way we perceive self and others in social situations (although this is speculative).

The rostral part of the ACC (rACC) conversely, seems to be involved in regulating fear and threat response. Lowered activation in the rACC in response to threat (meaning: less regulation of the fear response) has been shown in people with social anxiety disorder, PTSD, and generalized anxiety disorder
The hippocampus
The hippocampus, which is our verbal memory center, communicates directly with the amygdala and with the prefrontal cortex. Thus the hippocampus can help us damp down fear by producing memories that serve to calm us down or increase our confidence to manage the situation. For example, we may remember that the last time we had a panic attack we didn't die and felt better after awhile, Or we may remember that we survived the trauma and are no longer trapped in a life-threatening situation. On the other hand, the hippocampus can increase our anxiety or worry by reminding us of other negative memories when we faced similar situations. For example, when we are about to talk to a new person at a party we may remember being snubbed or excluded at a previous gathering.

In studies of people with anxiety disorders and PTSD, the hippocampus is smaller in volume and density, compared to healthy controls. The hippocampus is also more activated in response to threats in people with PTSD, phobias, and social anxiety disorder, compared to healthy controls.

Summary

New research using fMRI imaging to scan the brain in real-time has shown that anxiety and stress disorders seem to be "whole brain" conditions, rather than being limited to one or two brain areas. Brain areas involved in generating fear and threat responses are the amygdala, the insula and the dorsal anterior cingulate. Those regions involved in modulating and altering the fear and threat response include the medial prefrontal cortex, the rostral anterior cingulate and the hippocampus. New understanding of the brain circuitry underlying fear should inspire new ways of treating anxiety and stress disorders or at least help us understand which treatments work and why.

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Understanding Brain Circuits of Fear, Stress, and Anxiety

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Anxiety disorders (like social anxiety) and stress disorders (like PTSD) are among the most common mental health diagnoses with a lifetime prevalence of almost 30%. New technologies like fMRI, which allow us to scan the brain in real time have vastly increased our knowledge of the brain circuits that underly anxiety and fear.

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On my running routes, there are a few folks - the regulars - I can always count on seeing. We don't know each other, but we wave and say "hi." I like to add, "Enjoy the run!" for good measure. "Thanks, I always do!" is a typical reply.

I was talking to a friend about exercise recently and how it can be so hard to get yourself into any kind of rhythm that fits into a productive routine. You want to take care of your body and feel your best, but it's damn hard to make the time in your busy life. Or you try a few routines and you just don't like them; they don't work for you.

That reminded me of those daily micro-exchanges:

"Enjoy the run!"
"I l always do!"

That's not just a formality. We really do enjoy running. And the reason we enjoy it is highly dependent on where our motivation to run comes from.

If you've ever struggled to stick to a fitness plan - or any plan, really - the solution could be as simple as channeling your motivation from the right source. Here's how to do it.

Talk to someone who works with drug rehab patients, and you'll hear the same wisdom shared over and over: "Success depends on your motivations." They can instantly tell if their patient will get clean and stay that way. Everyone who overcomes a drug addiction is motivated, but the ones who succeed long-term are the ones who are motivated for the right reasons.

And what are the right reasons? The research shows rehab success lasts when the patient is motivated to make himself better... for himself. Some people go to rehab because they're afraid they'll lose their job, their house, or their family. These patients might get clean, but it rarely lasts. Others go to rehab because they fear they'll lose themselves. These are the people who turn their lives around for good. [1]

That example illustrates the difference between internal and external motivation. When you're externally motivated to make a change, the things that drive that change are outside of you and your control. For an addict in rehab, it could be the loss of a relationship, a job, or something else. For you, trying to get in shape, it could be keeping your partner attracted to you, finding a mate, or impressing friends and colleagues.

All the data say if these are the reasons you do what you do, it probably won't last. External factors change, you can't control them, and trying to keep up with them proves useless over time.

But when you're internally motivated, you're driven by a desire to make yourself better. You're only accountable to you, and that means you control the variables that decide whether you succeed or fail. When those factors are stacked in your favor, the odds say you'll make lasting change.

The most interesting part (perhaps most frustrating for some) is all the outcomes you hope for from your external motivations are often better and longer-lasting when you ignore them in favor of finding the internal ones that drive you.

Let's face it. We're all externally motivated to some degree. But if you struggle to build an exercise routine that will become a part of your life and produce the lasting results you hope for, the trick is in tilting the scale just a little - finding the internal motivations that will produce those external results.

Here are a few things you can try that have worked well for me and millions of others who enjoy the benefits of regular exercise:

Focus on strength, agility, and endurance instead of appearance. Everyone wants to look great, but the only reason to look great is to have others look at you. Instead of making your looks your prime motivator, focus on increasing your strength, becoming more agile, and building more stamina. These are the things you control and, as you improve, the looks will come.

Only do exercise you enjoy. Don't feel pressured to do any specific routine just because you think it will produce results faster. Any gains you do get will be lost when you give up because you don't like it. If you like running, then do a lot of running. If you hate lifting weights, don't lift any weights.

When you try something new, don't give up for at least 30 days. When I started running, I didn't like it that much, to be honest. I was overweight, out of shape, and not very good at it. But I wanted to give it a fair trial, so I stuck with it for a few months. Nearly 1,000 runs later, it's one of my favorite activities. Don't give up on something because you're not good at it. Your skill will improve with time, and you're more likely to enjoy the things you're good at.

Focus on consistency, not results. You have more control over how often you do something than the results you get from doing it. And great results come from great consistency, not the other way around.

These are the primary factors in building an exercise routine that is a natural part of your life instead of one you struggle to implement over and over. When you let your internal motivations guide you, the results you get won't just be better, they'll be more fulfilling.

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Internal Vs. External Motivation: How To Build An Exercise Routine You'll Stick To

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On my running routes, there are a few folks - the regulars - I can always count on seeing. We don't know each other, but we wave and say "hi." I like to add, "Enjoy the run!" for good measure...

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The Psychology of Social Media | King University Online

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The Psychology of Social Media | King University Online

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In today's cultural and technological climate, everyone uses some sort of social media. According to a monumental 2018 Pew Research Center study, 88% of respondents between the ages of 18 to 29 reported using some kind of social media. Seventy-eight percent of 30- to 49-year-olds said the same.

The number of reported users dips for the next age group but not as much as you may think. A stunning 64% of people between the ages of 50 and 64 use social media on a frequent basis. For a generation that didn't grow up with the internet or social media, this statistic is surprising and helps explain the prevalence of social media use in our culture.

With the pervasiveness of social media across all ages, more attention needs to be given to what it's doing to us as individual users. The endless stream of communication and connection provided by social media is changing the way we think and absorb information. As it is, people are currently developing social media habits that can simultaneously benefit and harm their mental health. The question being, what does social media do to your brain?

Because this trend of extended social media use will only continue, more researchers are joining the field to analyze and understand the psychology of social media in our constantly connected culture.

Social Media and The Brain

From a neurological perspective, social media affects different brain functions in unique ways. It contains many combinations of stimuli that can trigger different reactions, and because of this, social media's effects on the brain appear in a variety of ways.

Positive attention on social media, for example, affects multiple parts of the brain. According to an article in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, accruing likes on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram causes "activation in brain circuity implicated in reward, including the striatum and ventral tegmental area, regions also implicated in the experience of receiving Likes from others." This sounds really complicated and involved, but when approached from a different perspective, it becomes a little more digestible.

The ventral tegmental area (VTA) is one of the primary parts responsible for determining the rewards system in people's bodies. When social media users receive positive feedback (likes), their brains fire off dopamine receptors, which is facilitated in part by the VTA.

Another study that employed the use of MRI technology to monitor brain activity found similar results. As researchers analyzed the brains of adolescents browsing Instagram, they found that "viewing photos with many (compared with few) likes was associated with greater activity in neural regions implicated in reward processing, social cognition, imitation, and attention."

Again, with social media so tightly connected to individuals' rewards systems, users should realize the power - and possibility for abuse - of the platforms they use. Things like gambling and narcotic drugs have the power to rule over the brain's rewards system in a similar capacity. Social media users should be aware of these parallels to avoid potential pitfalls.

Outside of the rewards systems, social media stimuli can affect the brain's decision-making and emotional processing functions. In yet another study that observed the brain activity in adolescents, researchers found that parts of the brain that deal with emotional and sensory processing reacted noticeably when participants felt excluded. This study highlighted the effects of "online social exclusion" on the developing brains of adolescents. What this means is that when social media users are excluded from online groups, chats, or events, the brain reacts in these specific regions directly.

The research on social media and how the parts of the brain react to it is still in the early stages. While these studies reflect an effort toward better understanding the effects of social media on different parts of the brain, there's still a lot of progress to be made. Social media is growing by leaps and bounds and these studies are helping us identify more about why people post on social media.

Why We Post on Social Media

People choose different material to post on different social media platforms. When people want to post pictures, they tend to pick Instagram. When they want to post short bits of text like jokes, they go to Twitter. So much goes into deciding what to post where, and that's not even including the psychological factors that determine what gets posted and what doesn't.

Psychological Motivations for Posting

Pinpointing exactly why people post is an impossible exercise. However, by understanding some significant social media behaviors, it becomes easier to grasp general motivations for posting.

A recent Medium article titled "The Psychology of Social Sharing" helped articulate the different tiers of posting motivations. While the writers for this article approached the psychology of posting on social media from a marketing perspective, they tapped into clear psychological incentives for sharing content. They even cleverly adapt noted psychologist Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of human needs to reasons why people post and consume updates. They are:

1. Physiological needs: People sometimes post to benefit the health or well-being of their friends and family.

2. Safety: Physical, mental, and financial security are important for people when they choose to post some material on their social media.

3. Love/belonging: Users generally want to post to feel some kind of social acceptance from a group or a particular individual.

4. Esteem: People want to quell the rewards-oriented parts of their brains, which helps explain why people post "me-centric" content regularly.

5. Self-actualization: As the most important facet of the human needs hierarchy, this aspect of social media posting manifests when people share their successes - getting a new job, completing an arduous project, or graduating from school, to name a few examples.

The psychological world has only recently begun to confront the motivations for posting material on social media. An article titled "Why We Share: A Study of Motivations for Mobile Media Sharing" posed an actual experiment where respondents were asked to record their posting habits and corresponding feelings in a diary and then participate in post-study interviews. After monitoring the media sharing behavior, the researchers found "that social and emotional influences played an important role in media sharing behavior."

Some researchers have looked toward the ways social media has affected the psychological development in children. The article "Growing Up Wired: Social Networking Sites and Adolescent Psychosocial Development" stated that some reasons people share is because they have been reared since childhood to post. The researchers said:

Overall, adolescents and young adults' stated motivations for using (social networking sites) are quite similar to more traditional forms of communication - to stay in touch with friends, make plans, get to know people better, and present oneself to others.

Moreover, the researchers in the study explained that children and adolescents are beginning to have their identities shaped by posting on and engaging with social media.

One reason people post on social media, according to an article in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, is because social media sharing can link to positive social media feedback and self-esteem. More directly, the quest for likes or follows on social media heavily influences why people post. The positive attention some users receive for posting inspires more and more social sharing in many users.

In sum, people generally post from some kind of emotional position that seeks a response. Since the very nature of social media centers on communication, it makes sense that the primary motivation for posting comes from a psychological point to connect with others. But this constant quest for acceptance and exposure on social media can lead to major psychological problems for some.

The Psychology of Social Media

Interested in finding out more about how social media affects brain function? Want to know more about the positive and negative effects of social media on mental health? Download our free guide to start learning about social media psychology today!
Access the Guide
When Social Media Habits Turn to Social Media Addictions

Social media dependency has received more and more consideration in the last five years. The boom of social networking applications has caused many researchers to explore not only why people post the content they choose to share, but also the addictive tendencies in some users.

Specifically, the article "Social Networking Sites and Addiction" pinpointed some reasons people become addicted to social networking sites (SNS). These reasons include lower self-esteem and a general anxiety about being excluded.

The authors were quick to make the distinction between social networking and social media, though, since "social networking is a way of being" while "individuals can become addicted to using social networking sites." They extend social media addiction to connect more clearly to smartphone addiction, and that levels of addiction may depend of sociodemographic information. Further, the researchers conclude that the fear of missing out (FOMO) "may be part of SNS addiction." These are all significant features of how people are more and more inclined to post on or consume social media because of an underlying addictive behavior problem.

Social media addiction is gaining traction in the academic world because a growing number of people are reporting problems of dependence. The article "The Relations Among Social Media Addiction, Self-Esteem, and Life Satisfaction in University Students" detailed a study that explored the consequences of excessive social media use. In it, respondents who reported a moderate use of social media had a much more positive outlook on their social positions. Other participants overwhelmingly reported "addictive use of social media had a negative association with self-esteem." These same respondents in the survey said they lacked satisfaction with their lives, which they directly linked to their lowered self-esteem.

Moreover, the chapter "Social Networking Addiction" from Behavioral Addictions contextualized the significance of social media addiction in a world where it hasn't been researched as much as it should. The chapter explored more directly ways that mental health professionals can conduct effective screening and treatment processes in response to users suspected of having addictive tendencies.

Though this chapter does a good job of providing impressive prospective frameworks for screening and treatment responses, a lot more work needs to be done to confront the problem directly. In order to unpack the psychology of social media more comprehensively, a closer look into preventative measures needs to be taken.

Understanding the Change in Self Concept from Using Social Media

Social media allows users to express their personalities in unique ways. But the ability to create multiple accounts and to curate the material on their profiles has given users an unprecedented opportunity to develop new personae. These new digital identities can align with, be a complement to, or conflict with users' real personalities.

How Social Media Shapes Identity

In order to understand more clearly how social media shapes individuals' identities, it's necessary first to look at the landscape of social media.

The article "Psychology of Social Media: From Technology to Identity" stated the spatial makeups of hybridized social media networks has given a "rise to 'interreality,' a new social space, more malleable and dynamic than preceding social networks." Out of these new frameworks, people now:

Alter their own social identities.

Change the ways others perceive them through curated social media profiles.

Use social media tools to expand their own social connections.

Have their real identities concealed by virtual ones.

As a result of this power through new social media technology, users are in some ways able to have much greater control over their identity formations. The researchers warned, however, that social media tools should be used by older, more mature people because, when "it's used in an irresponsible way by people who are too young, they can cause problems and difficulties that in some cases even time cannot erase."

From a social media psychology standpoint, this new ability to control one's own identity formation is as empowering as it is alarming. Users can build their identities on social media as honest representations of their personalities and traits, and at the same time, they can also create entirely new social media personae. This power has impressive advantages and severe consequences.

The Effects of Self-Perception on Social Media

Social media users' self-image is put under a microscope when they constantly compare their situations with others. And these comparisons happen frequently when they engage with each other. Matthew Pittman and Brandon Reich, both media specialists and academics, have found that people can sharpen their own identities when they engage in intimate, image-oriented social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest.

They stated that "quantitative results suggest that loneliness may decrease, while happiness and satisfaction with life may increase, as a function of image-based social media use. In contrast, text-based media use appears ineffectual." As a result, some users have greater confidence and a stronger self-perception on social media in image-oriented environments.

On the other hand, social media can also motivate people who view themselves negatively to build entirely new identities. The thinking here, though not always malicious, is to trick others into thinking they're someone else. In the context of social media dating services, this practice is known as catfishing. According to Scientific American, "Users may feel pressured to alter (height, weight, and age) information to present what they perceive is their ideal self and maximize their attractiveness." Social media has created an environment where users feel pressured to either lie or fabricate their physical and psychological identities to become more desirable.

These pressures extend far beyond the dating world and into many other facets of social media interactions. The vulnerabilities of some social media users more generally can lead to a " false Facebook-self." According to the study "The 'Facebook-self': characteristics and psychological predictors of false self-presentation on Facebook," researchers were able to highlight that people with low self-esteem on social media were much more likely to create alternate, sometimes conflicting Facebook personas.

Social Pressures to Fit into Social Media Groups

A huge incentive to use social media stems from the acceptance users can receive from various groups. As with practically all aspects of social media, this group-focused direction of social media has benefits and drawbacks.

One major benefit for social media users is they can reach out to and connect with groups of people with similar interests across the planet. People can find more information about niche hobbies, popular pastimes, and general interests. This ability to belong to different groups is excellent for people coming from smaller or distant communities, and the psychological advantages for those individuals are immense.

According to Art Markman of Psychology Today, belonging to a group can dramatically improve a person's drive to complete tasks. Specifically, he stated "that even a simple relationship between people based on arbitrary reasons, like sharing a birthday or being randomly assigned to a group, is enough to increase feelings of warmth and motivation." Social media, thus, offers opportunities for people to form groups for both general and specific interests, which can help improve their overall productivity.

On the other hand, belonging to a group too closely or intimately can change the way the typical social media user thinks and behaves. The academic journal Media Psychology recently published a study that found that when users keep to their social media groups, they begin to mimic the behaviors of those groups. This mimicry results in a social media identity bubble that's reinforced by prolonged engagement with the group.

Social Media and Mental Health

Outside of the ability to dominate emotional and mental states, social media platforms have the power to influence, either positively or negatively, the psychological behaviors of people. Social media can dramatically help to improve users' mental health, but at the same time, it can negatively impact people's psychological well-being.

Mental Health Benefits from Social Media

Though many researchers focus on the cons of social media use, there are several potential mental wellness advantages. The advantages extend across demographics and appear in unexpected ways.

For millennials, who tend to dominate some spheres of social media consumption, the digital world of social sharing poses several mental health and relationship benefits. Psychologists Adriana M. Manago and Lanen Vaughn found there are ample opportunities for friendship and happiness as younger people transition to adulthood. Specifically, they said younger social media users can now create stronger bonds with friends because of the easy access to friends' information and interests.

Further, they found these connections give users an opportunity for greater independence and autonomy, which increases their critical thinking and decision-making abilities. These feelings of community and self-worth will palpably improve the mental health of users over the course of time.

The organization Painted Brain, which combats mental health hardships through advocacy, artistic expression, and business, outlined the ways social media can positively affec t the mental health of users. From a psychological standpoint, they found many positive effects of social media on mental health, such as:

Social integration with similar interest groups.

Healthy and body-positive lifestyle motivations.

The availability of support groups.

Maintaining and building new relationships.

An introduction into new modes of thinking.

Mental Health Consequences from Social Media Use

While there certainly are tangible benefits to social media consumption and engagement, it's been rightly critiqued for its tendency to have toxic effects on users' mental health.

This kind of anxiety manifests much more severely in teens. As licensed clinical social worker Katie Hurley found, teens online must "confront cyberbullying, trolls, toxic comparisons, sleep deprivation, and less frequent face-to-face interactions." In a cultural moment that stresses the importance of staying online all the time, these seemingly disconnected issues can overwhelm users and result in profound anxiety. These negative effects on teens' mental health illustrates the need for parents, educators, and other role models to build better models for social media engagement.

Further, according to a scholarly article published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, higher levels of depression correlate with Facebook use. The study found the subjects' mental health suffered with the more time they spent on Facebook, causing users to feel worse about their own positions when they compared their profiles with others.

Another article by medical doctor and cyberpsychologist Igor Pantic echoed the finding. He stated that "prolonged use of social networking sites, such as Facebook, may be related to signs and symptoms of depression." As people compare their lives to so many others, they will only find their mental health continue to deteriorate.

The Implications of Social Media Psychology

The field of social media psychology has only existed for the past 10 to 15 years, which coincides directly with the rise of social media. As a result, the research being conducted is still in its early stages. In nearly all the scholarly articles featured in this guide, researchers mentioned on the limitations of their own methods so that future studies could explore them further.

Because there are so many gaps in the existing research, new perspectives need to join the field. According to Atlantic contributor and psychologist of 20 years Jean M. Twenge, people need to become much more aware of the consequences of social media dependence for the sake of our children's future. "What's at stake isn't just how kids experience adolescence," she said. "The constant presence of smartphones is likely to affect them well into adulthood."

You can respond to and help solve this overarching problem by continuing your education in the field. There are many levels of career paths in psychology that offer different research opportunities, depending on your own professional and personal preferences. An online B.S. in Psychology will prepare you to analyze and understand the psychological effects of social media on users by studying social psychology, group dynamics, and more.

Gain greater insight on how social media influences, both positively and negatively, the psychology of users with King University Online's psychology degree. Our program is taught by trained and decorated faculty who will prepare you for a successful future. With year-round course availability and a generous credit transfer policy, you may be able to earn your degree in as little as 16 months.

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The Psychology of Social Media | King University Online

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The psychology of social media is being analyzed more every day due to society's social media obsession and how it affects mental health.

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TED Talk Playlist: "Talks to inspire you to go to bed and get a good night's sleep"

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TED Talk Playlist: "Talks to inspire you to go to bed and get a good night's sleep"

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Talks to inspire you to go to bed and get a good night's sleep | TED Talks

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Far better than counting sheep, these talks on the importance of sleep may well help you get your zzzzs tonight.

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Adam Grant is an American psychologist and author who is currently a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania specializing in organizational psychology and the host of the TED podcast WorkLife with Adam Grant. Adam visits the armchair expert to discuss overcoming introversion, being a super taster and the difference between givers and takers. Dax debates Adam on his latest Atlantic article and Adam talks about the importance of criticism. The two talk about growing up in Michigan, the necessity of tenure and how genius is often a result of quantity not quality.

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Adam Grant is an American psychologist and author who is currently a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania specializing in organizational psychology and the host of the TED podcast WorkLife with Adam Grant. Adam visits the armchair expert to discuss overcoming introversio

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"Become an Emotion Scientist with Marc Brackett"

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"Emotion skills are the key to unlocking the potential inside each one of us. And in the process of developing those skills, we each, heart by heart, mind by mind, create a culture and society unlike anything we've experienced thus far- and very much like the one we might dare to imagine." - Marc Brackett
Today it's great to have Marc Brackett on the podcast. Dr. Brackett is founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and professor in the Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine atYale University. His research focuses on the role of emotions and emotional intelligence in learning, decision making, creativity, relationships, health, and performance. Marc is the lead developer of RULER, an evidence-based, systemic approach to SEL that has been adopted by over 2,000 preschool to high schools across theUnited States and in other countries. He has published 125 scholarly articles and received numerous awards, including the Joseph E. Zins award for his research on social and emotional learning. He also is on the board of directors for the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). Marc consultsregularly with corporations like Facebook, Microsoft, and Google on integrating emotional intelligence principles into employee training and product design and is co-founder of Oji Life Lab, a digital emotional intelligence learning system for businesses. His research has been featured in popular media outlets such as the New York Times, USA Today, Good Morning America, and NPR. He is the author of Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help our Kids, Ourselves, and our Society Thrive, published by Celadon Books, a division of Macmillan, which has been translated into 15 languages.

In this wide-ranging episode we discuss:

How Mark is feeling

Mark's rough childhood and how he felt "trapped in his feelings"

Negative outcomes that can ensue when you don't feel you have the "permission to feel"

Some harrowing statistics about how depression and anxiety are on the rise

How does the original Salovey and Meyer model of emotional intelligence differ from Daniel Goleman's model?

The emotion scientist vs. the emotion judge

Skills of the emotion scientist

How Marc's Uncle changed Marc's life forever by giving him permission to feel

The main components of the RULER framework

The many factors that influence how we express our emotions authentically and honestly

The mood meter poster and app that allows you to track your emotions over time and look at patterns

The malleability of emotional intelligence

The difference between temperament and emotional intelligence

The most important thing Marc learned through teaching emotional intelligence

How more emotional intelligence can bring world peace (at least according to a 3rd grader)

Why we need to spend more time cultivating emotional intelligence

FULL VIDEO

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Become an Emotion Scientist with Marc Brackett [VIDEO] - Scott Barry Kaufman

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"Emotion skills are the key to unlocking the potential inside each one of us. And in the process of developing those skills, we each, heart by heart, mind by mind, create a culture and society unlike anything we've experienced thus far- and very much like the one we might dare to imagine."

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A new book uncovers the neurological roots of bias and the ways to combat its effects on society.

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Jordan Raskopoulos "How I live with high-functioning anxiety"

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Jordan Raskopoulos "How I live with high-functioning anxiety"

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Jordan Raskopoulos: How I live with high-functioning anxiety

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As a comedian and performer, Jordan Raskopolous does not suffer from stage fright. Away from the spotlight, however, it's a different story. For her, everyday experiences like talking on the phone produce the kind of anxiety most people feel on stage.

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RSA ANIMATE: Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us

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Aggression vs. Altruism: Crash Course Psychology #40 - YouTube

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Aggression vs. Altruism: Crash Course Psychology #40 - YouTube

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Aggression vs. Altruism: Crash Course Psychology #40

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To Sleep, Perchance to Dream: Crash Course Psychology #9

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WorkLife with Adam Grant: A world without bosses | TED Talk

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WorkLife with Adam Grant: A world without bosses | TED Talk

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WorkLife with Adam Grant: A world without bosses

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Being your own boss can be liberating, but it can also be paralyzing. Adam talks with author Dan Pink about the challenges of working for ourselves and visits a tomato paste company, Morning Star, that has run successfully for decades without bosses. (Audio only)

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"Emotions" w/ transcript

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To learn more about the theory of constructed emotion and the work of neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, check out her book How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain.

Special thanks to the following musicians:

Helena Ahlbäck (formerly of The Broken Assembly) - "Emotional"

Jon Luc Hefferman - "Upbeat"

Note: A previous version of this story stated that Tommy Jarrett had received $50,000 from the court. He actually received $50,000 in an out-of-court settlement.
ALIX SPIEGEL (HOST): There are people who discover new planets. There are people who discover new birds, new flowers. But until Hanna and I talked to the anthropologist Renato Rosaldo, I'd never talked to anyone who had discovered a new emotion. I honestly didn't even know that was a thing.

What is the name of the emotion that you discovered?

RENATO ROSALDO (NEW YORK UNIVERSITY): Liget.

SPIEGEL: Liget.

ROSALDO: Liget.

SPIEGEL: Liget.

ROSALDO: (Laughter) Yes. So it's liget, almost like gut, your stomach, right?

HANNA ROSIN (HOST): Liget. OK.

SPIEGEL: For a small group of communities in the Philippines, this emotion of liget was central, one of the most important feelings in their culture. But liget is not like anger or joy or fear, emotions that pretty easily cross cultural borders. No, liget was way more complicated and disquieting and intense. In fact, liget was so complicated that even though Renato spoke to members of the community about liget over and over and over again for years, he felt he was never able to understand or truly feel what they were feeling.

ROSALDO: Yeah. We were out of our depth.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) SPIEGEL: There was something missing in Renato, something that wouldn't allow him to feel liget - some absence. In fact, it wasn't until about a decade after he was introduced to liget that what the emotion truly was in all of its intensity finally became clear. He finally felt it. It overwhelmed him, just came rushing out.

ROSALDO: (Vocalizing).

ROSIN: And are you glad you have that knowledge?

ROSALDO: (Laughter) My first answer's no.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) ROSIN: Emotions - you don't have to be a professional emotion discoverer like Renato to have thought a lot about them.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: You need to learn how to overcome fear.

ROSIN: These days, our culture spends a ton of time talking about emotions.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Notice the feeling you get.

ROSIN: We think and obsess about them endlessly. And it does often feel like they just come over us. Someone tells us a joke, and we laugh.

(LAUGHTER) ROSIN: We learn about a death and we cry.

(CRYING) ROSIN: We see a cute baby and we melt.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Aw.

ROSIN: They seem so straightfoward...

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: He's a thug.

ROSIN: ...An automatic response, almost like a machine. Put something in, get something out, right?

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Aw.

(LAUGHTER) ROSALDO: (Vocalizing).

ROSIN: Well, today, we introduce a completely different way of thinking about emotion, a way of thinking about emotion that honestly blew our minds.

SPIEGEL: It involves that thing that Renato was missing, the absence that wouldn't let him feel liget.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) SPIEGEL: Welcome to the third season of INVISIBILIA. I'm Alix Spiegel.

ROSIN: And I'm Hanna Rosin. Lulu Miller is mostly off this season writing a fabulous book.

SPIEGEL: INVISIBILIA is a show about all of the invisible forces that shape human behavior, our thoughts, our concepts, our beliefs. And today, we are looking at emotions. We are going to tell you what liget is. In part two of our show, we will return to Renato's story.

ROSIN: But first, we have another story about a very unusual legal case.

SPIEGEL: And this emotion show, it's part of a new experiment we're doing this season. All of the episodes in this season are connected. We're going to take this really provocative idea that we're going to lay out today into all different corners of the world and see if it holds up. We have a bear fairy tale, a musical of umpires, a few sudden deaths, a practical guide to bubble popping...

ROSIN: And a rom-com about puking. We're calling this season the Concept Album for reasons that will hopefully become clear.

SPIEGEL: So pour yourself a drink. INVISIBILIA is back.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) ROSIN: OK. So for our show today, we have a story about this bizarre legal case we heard about, which has at its center this question - where do emotions like pain come from, and how much control do we have over them? Both of us tell the story. Alix begins.

SPIEGEL: If a child dies, who should feel worse - the parent of the child or a complete stranger? The answer to this question might seem obvious, that is unless you start from the beginning when the parent and the stranger were still young.

When you were growing up, did your family talk a lot about emotion or not really?

AMANDA THORNBERRY: No. I can't remember ever talking about my feelings.

TOMMY JARRETT: Emotional guy? Not in the least.

ROSIN: Like, did you ever cry?

JARRETT: No.

ROSIN: Tommy Jarrett and Amanda Thornberry have spent roughly 15 minutes in each other's company, and that was 13 years ago. But their encounter had huge consequences in part because it changed the way the law sees emotion but also because it changed the direction of their own emotional lives.

JARRETT: That's the day everything changed for me - us.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) SPIEGEL: Amanda is 36 now. She's petite with blonde hair and brown eyes and has one of those faces that can shift in an instant. One second, she looks strikingly beautiful, and then her face turns, and she's more plain. She lives in the same town where she grew up - Ozark, Mo. And as a kid, she was bookish. She loved anything having to do with learning, like this box she had.

THORNBERRY: It's called a pickle box. It was a little, green, plastic box. And I loved that.

SPIEGEL: Every month, the pickle box company would send these little stories to Amanda through the mail to file in her pickle box, And she'd file them. But then one day, Amanda's parents were fighting, and the pickle box got in her dad's way.

THORNBERRY: And my dad took my pickle box and threw it up against the wall, and it smashed. And I can see, you know, the papers flying everywhere.

SPIEGEL: Watching her papers rain down, the remains of her pickle box in pieces on the floor, Amanda felt devastated. But she knew to keep her face flat.

THORNBERRY: I knew if I would get upset about that then they would punish me for it. I had to make sure that I didn't show emotion to the fact that something that I adored was now destroyed. I mean, it - it's always been like that. I was raised that emotions are a burden, something that we have to control.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) ROSIN: Tommy Jarrett was also taught that he needed to control his emotions, and he has his own version of the pickle box story, only it's the dude version. He's 51 now and wears a Harley Davidson item of clothing nearly every day. For 40 years, he's been a trucker based in Ohio - CB handle Ninja. Tommy grew up in a farm in Alabama. And one day, when he was a teenager, he decided farmwork didn't do it for him. He was craving something bigger and better.

JARRETT: I said, screw it. I said, I'm running away. And I packed a bag and out the back door I went. I about crossed the field, and that lasted - I don't know - 15 minutes and here come Dad.

ROSIN: What followed was not an exploration of Tommy's internal emotional landscape, how he was frustrated by his inability to live his full truth. Instead, his dad got out of the car.

JARRETT: He's like, OK, you want to be a man? He goes, this is how it is. He goes, stand up here. And I stood up to him. He says, take your best shot, and I did. And that was stupid because he said now it's my turn.

ROSIN: Tommy's dad hit him so hard he blacked out. But Tommy didn't hold it against him. What his dad was trying to communicate was clear to Tommy - don't get carried away by your desires and frustrations. Control your emotions. That's what a man does.

JARRETT: Sometimes you can let emotions control your behavior. Get over it - plain and simple or suck it up (laughter).

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) ROSIN: For a long time, Tommy held onto this view, even passed it on to his kids.

SPIEGEL: But Amanda back in Missouri moved to a more modern way of dealing with emotions. After she got married, she and her husband, Michael Jones, had a daughter, Makayla, a little girl with bright red hair and a lisp. And Amanda says right from the beginning, like a lot of parents these days, she constantly talked emotions with Makayla.

THORNBERRY: Like, if she was upset about something or if she wanted something and she couldn't have it and she got angry, instead of saying, you know, well, you know, just stop acting that way, I would get down with her and say, you know, Makayla, it's OK to be upset.

SPIEGEL: Together on the floor, they would explore Makayla's frustration, speak the emotions out loud, puzzle through what to do with them. And even before Makayla was 3, she says, Makayla stopped throwing tantrums.

THORNBERRY: She'd go, Mom, I'm mad or I'm sad or she would tell me that instead of crying or instead of throwing a fit.

SPIEGEL: So Tommy and Amanda, two strangers in two different parts of the country, both raised to believe that emotions need to be controlled, each experimenting with different ways to control them. And then came June 8, 2004. It was a Tuesday, and Amanda, her daughter, Makayla, her husband, Michael Jones, and their new baby, Hannah, were driving from their home to Columbia, Mo. Amanda was taking classes there because she wanted to be a nurse, so they all loaded into the car.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) THORNBERRY: I had a little green Grand Prix, and that's what we decided we were going to take. So got up, got everybody packed.

ROSIN: A few miles away, Tommy was also loading himself into his rig. He was headed in the opposite direction from Amanda. He needed to get out west.

JARRETT: Got up, nice day, sunny, warm, summertime.

THORNBERRY: I mean, it was probably 65 outside.

JARRETT: Actually, I was still in a great mood because we had just come off of vacation.

THORNBERRY: And I remember Makayla - I was getting ready to sit her in her car seat, and she just gave me the biggest hug. And she goes, Mommy, I just love you so much.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) THORNBERRY: I remember getting on the highway...

JARRETT: Two lanes going west, median, two lanes going east.

THORNBERRY: ...And turning around and both of the girls were asleep. And so I told Mike - I said, hey, the girls are asleep. I'm going to close my eyes.

JARRETT: I was actually, you know, listening to the radio, country - country music. And then.

ROSIN: There was a sudden summer downpour. And Amanda's husband, Michael Jones, driving in the opposite direction of Tommy, lost control of his car, the green Grand Prix. It spun around and skidded across the median into the lane where Tommy was driving.

THORNBERRY: I remember just, like, the flashes...

JARRETT: A black object...

THORNBERRY: ...The car spinning...

JARRETT: ...Trying to take the truck left...

THORNBERRY: ...A shadow of somebody on my right side...

JARRETT: ...Coming across the median...

THORNBERRY: ...Turning around and putting my hand on Makayla.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) ROSIN: When it all stopped, Tommy says he just sat still in his truck for a second.

JARRETT: I'd have to say I was probably conscious but blacked out at the same time. I don't know if that even makes any sense.

ROSIN: But then Tommy snapped back into being Tommy, the man in control and in charge.

JARRETT: That's when I jumped out of the truck and ran back to the car.

ROSIN: Tommy was completely uninjured, but the other car, the Grand Prix, looked like an animal that had been ripped apart by a pack of wolves, totally mangled with its parts all in the wrong places. Michael Jones, Amanda's husband, was trapped under the dashboard, unconscious. And there was an infant, their second child, Hannah, in the back, crying but OK.

JARRETT: I seen Mr. Jones's wife.

ROSIN: Mr. Jones's wife, Amanda. That was the single time that Amanda and Tommy were in the same space at the same time. Amanda was not aware of Tommy. She was in a daze but Tommy was very aware of Amanda. And what was coming off her made it clear to Tommy that nothing was OK.

JARRETT: Mrs. Jones says something about the other child, and we're like, what other child? And that's when I seen Makayla's arm hanging there.

ROSIN: Makayla was dead.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) ROSIN: Horrible accidents like this happen all the time, and they sometimes end up in courts, but there was something unusual about the way this legal dispute played out. Amanda and Michael Jones had suffered an unimaginable loss. Their daughter Makayla had died. And yet, they were the ones who got sued. A year after the accident, Tommy Jarrett sued the Joneses for emotional distress. I'm going to repeat that. Tommy Jarrett, the truck driver who walked away from the accident without a scratch, not a single Band-Aid, sued the family that had lost a child because he suffered emotional pain. The case made it all the way up to the Missouri Supreme Court, and it's an important case because it helped transform the way the law thinks about emotions. You see, Tommy Jarrett won.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) SPIEGEL: INVISIBILIA will be back in a moment.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) ROSIN: In the months after the accident, Amanda hardly knew what to do with herself. Michael had a brain injury, and Makayla was gone.

THORNBERRY: Like, I would get up and, you know, make myself breakfast or whatever. And then I would sit down to eat it, and I just would stare at it.

ROSIN: She would think of Makayla, her red-haired girl, and feel a kind of pain she had never encountered before, a pain so deep it was physical.

THORNBERRY: I felt at times that maybe my feelings were too intense for the situation. I had never felt anything like that before, that loss.

ROSIN: She says it got so bad, she started wondering if her emotions were actually real.

THORNBERRY: I did kind of wonder to myself if the feelings were appropriate for the loss or if I was kind of imagining it to being worse than it really was.

ROSIN: Meanwhile, Tommy was also struggling to understand his emotions because for the first time in his life, he couldn't do what his dad had taught him. His feelings were totally out of his control.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL) UNIDENTIFIED MAN #4: (Unintelligible) have your attention.

ROSIN: The day after the accident, after a tortured night in a motel room, Tommy's trucking company put him on a plane to go home. He got in his seat, fastened his seat belt. Would you like something to drink, sir?

JARRETT: Her little arm hanging out of the car. I couldn't get none of them images out of my mind, her little arm hanging out of the car. I got to get a grip on this.

ROSIN: But he couldn't. On the plane, he was aware of the person sitting to his left, the person in front of him, but he couldn't look any of them in the eye. He thought it was obvious.

JARRETT: They knew I killed the child. I mean, I was a killer. I was like, how could I have done this? I killed a child. And I was a piece of shit for doing it.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) ROSIN: Once Tommy settled on the story, he couldn't shake it. One day, he was a good man, the ninja in control of his truck and his life. Now, he was a baby killer.

JARRETT: I blamed myself because of my inability to control what I had the ability to control, a child lost her life.

ROSIN: His first couple of weeks home, Tommy's buddies came over to see how he was doing. They all said the same thing. It sounds like it wasn't your fault, like there was nothing you could have done. What Tommy heard them say was.

JARRETT: Blah, blah, blah. Pathetic.

ROSIN: He stopped eating or sleeping. He just stayed awake thinking...

JARRETT: I killed a child.

ROSIN: How are you with your own kids during that period?

JARRETT: I didn't want to be around them because I felt at that time when they were looking at me, I felt like they were disgusted at me.

ROSIN: He was sure that come sunrise, he would master these emotions as he'd been raised to do and as he always had. And sometimes for a flash, it would feel that way.

JARRETT: There was mornings I would get out of bed and I'd be like, I'm going to be OK. Cup of coffee and about half a pack of cigarettes, and it just - I didn't deserve to be there. cigarettes.

ROSIN: The emotions just ran over him - one month, two months...

JARRETT: Get over it.

ROSIN: ...Four months, five months. He stopped leaving the house.

JARRETT: I couldn't stop it.

ROSIN: Seven months, and he still wasn't back behind the wheel.

JARRETT: How in-depth are we going on this?

ROSIN: It's up to you. I mean, I'm just trying to understand where your mind was.

JARRETT: There for a while, I thought I should die.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) ROSIN: But then nine months after the accident, Tommy finally turned a corner. He had seen a doctor who explained to him in a way that he could actually hear - Makayla's death wasn't your fault. There's no truth there. What's happening is that your emotions have hijacked your body, and they have taken control, and they are torturing you.

And at first, this was a hard thing to understand because it was the opposite of how Tommy had grown up. His dad with his fist had tried to tell him control it. That's what men do. But the doctor was saying you can't do that, you have no control over how you are feeling. Emotions happen to you.

JARRETT: Emotions are very powerful. They are a very powerful thing.

ROSIN: Tommy had PTSD, the doctor explained. The sight of Makayla's arm had triggered it in him, and it was no more under his control than cancer or diabetes. What Tommy needed to do was recognize that and deal with it. He was a victim.

JARRETT: If somebody has a traumatic experience in their life, it will consume your life.

ROSIN: And that's what the lawsuit was about. After the accident, Tommy had called the insurance company that Amanda and Michael used, and they offered him only $5,000 even though he had lost close to $75,000 in wages.

JARRETT: That sent me over the edge.

ROSIN: Tommy wanted some of those lost wages back. But more important, he'd had his revelation, and he wanted the courts to validate it. The car accident had broken his mind just like a car accident can break a spine.

JARRETT: It became a principle. That emotional distress is the same thing as physical damage. It can wreak havoc on somebody's life, and it can destroy them.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) ROSIN: And isn't that in a way how our culture increasingly thinks about emotions? That they're triggered by events in the world, that we often don't have control over them in the way that they affect us, and that we should take them really seriously. I mean, isn't that where the idea of safe spaces come from, the idea that triggers can happen at any time so people need a place where they're sure they won't be touched?

And if anyone was going to convince the legal system to embrace this idea in the culture, it was Tommy, a trucker in a leather Harley jacket. Nothing off him suggested he was anxious to play the victim but according to his doctor, he was a victim.

Tommy pointed out in his lawsuit that Michael Jones drove too fast for a road that was wet after a summer rain, and he hadn't taken care of his back tires. So Michael had crashed into Tommy's truck and caused his trauma.

JARRETT: Somebody else causes that, then they should be liable for that.

ROSIN: Tommy was nervous about suing Makayla's family, but his attorneys assured him over and over that the insurance company would likely end up paying any damages, so Makayla's parents would in no way be harmed. Still, they warned him that the case wouldn't be easy.

JESSICA OLSHESKI (ATTORNEY): Well, emotional cases are hard. Cases premised on - purely on emotions are hard.

ROSIN: That's Jessica Olsheski, Tommy's lawyer. She and her partner, Tim Boone, recognized that winning Tommy's case wouldn't be easy because the courts were traditionally suspicious of cases based purely on emotional distress. But they ultimately took the case because her partner Tim really liked hard cases.

OLESHESKI: He was a very forward-thinking litigator and was always trying to push the boundaries of case law.

ROSIN: What they could see is that the courts were changing, moving in the same direction as the culture. Emotions are triggered, and people can't control them. The courts just needed another nudge, so they went forward. And though it took three years, he won.

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled that yes, he had technically gotten his emotional injury after the accident was over, but the court chose to think more like the culture - triggers can happen at any moment, and you can't control your emotional reaction.

Victory - or maybe not. We're going to get back to Tommy and Amanda later in the story, but first, that court decision, it might be based on a flawed idea of where emotions come from.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) SPIEGEL: Hi. Is that Lisa?

LISA FELDMAN BARRETT (NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY): This is.

SPIEGEL: Hi.

ROSIN: Hi.

SPIEGEL: Lisa Feldman Barrett is a psychology professor at Northeastern University. And for a very particular kind of person - and I'm going to grant you it is a very, very particular kind of person - Lisa is kind of a rock star because she's someone who has come up with a new mind-blowing way of thinking about emotion. Which is why Hanna and I were super excited to talk to her. And she was excited to talk to us, too - kind of.

BARRETT: Other than the pieces on emotion, I'm on a totally big fan.

(LAUGHTER) SPIEGEL: According to Lisa Barrett, the show that you are listening to right now, INVISIBILIA, has consistently portrayed emotion and how emotions work incorrectly. But in our defense, the reason why we've been wrong, at least according to Lisa, is because the whole culture is wrong. We think wrong about emotions, where they come from and how they work because the way that we experience the world makes it very, very hard to think right about them.

BARRETT: How I would describe what's actually happening will not make sense to people, right? It will seem really counter-intuitive to people.

SPIEGEL: So let's begin the catalogue of wrongness with this, what Lisa says is the very first thing we are taught about emotions that is wrong.

BARRETT: Emotions are built into your brain at birth.

SPIEGEL: We've been told this over and over again, that we are wired to feel X or that evolution has wired us to feel Y because our forbearers on the African savannah had to survive, needed to respond instantly and appropriately to big bad lions and hungry tigers.

BARRETT: So there's a stimulus...

SPIEGEL: Roar.

BARRETT: ...Which triggers a circuit inside you...

SPIEGEL: Holy.

BARRETT: ...Which causes a bodily response in you...

SPIEGEL: (Gasps).

BARRETT: ...Which then causes you to behave in a particular way.

SPIEGEL: Run.

BARRETT: You know, they're not exactly seen as reflexes, but they're as close to reflexes as you might get. If the stimulus is there, the response is obligatory. That's the view. It's an automatic reaction to the world.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) SPIEGEL: Now, according to this view, you can choose how you respond to the emotion that's been triggered. You can suppress it, reframe it, make a photo collage about it. But the initial emotion itself, that is universally programmed. There is nothing you can do.

BARRETT: It just seems absolutely preposterous that an emotion could be anything other than a reaction because in a moment where someone bursts into your house with a gun, there is very little that doesn't seem like a reaction. You know, it's such a strong feeling. It feels like you've been hijacked.

ROSIN: And to me anyway, there is something profound and hopeful in this way of thinking.

SPIEGEL: It's such a beautiful and connecting idea that we all share emotions. I mean, it's the kind of idea if you cut us, we bleed. If our children die, we cry.

ROSIN: That is literally the Coke ad, right? It's the Coke ad which takes you around the world and everybody smiles.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I'D LIKE TO TEACH THE WORLD TO SING - IN PERFECT HARMONY") THE HILLSIDE SINGERS (MUSICAL GROUP): (Singing) I'd like to buy the world a home and furnish it with love.

SPIEGEL: We all smile when we're happy and so know the meaning of a smile when we see it in the face of someone else. Even if their skin is a different color or their culture feels strange, we know what they feel. Emotion is our universal language.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I'D LIKE TO TEACH THE WORLD TO SING - IN PERFECT HARMONY") THE HILLSIDE SINGERS: (Singing) I'd like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company.

SPIEGEL: But this - apparently - is not what 25 years of studying emotion has taught Lisa.

Basically you're saying, not so much?

BARRETT: For every emotion category that we have in the U.S. that we think is biologically basic and universal, there's at least one culture in the world that doesn't really possess a concept for that emotion and where people don't really feel that emotion.

SPIEGEL: Fear, sadness, anger, surprise, disgust, happiness - for Lisa, there is nothing inevitable about these emotions or any emotions, including the emotion of despair. Because one day, you were driving a truck and got into an accident and saw the tiny arm of a toddler hanging from a door.

JARRETT: I couldn't get none of them images out of my mind.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) SPIEGEL: INVISIBILIA will be right back.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) SPIEGEL: How many emotions do you feel in a day? Recently, I found myself wondering. This morning, I woke up insecure about my worth. But by the time I got to the shower, which is about 10 feet away from where I sleep, there had been a subtle shift. I was cycling between regretful and angry.

Later at the coffee store, some music on the speakers above my head during my walk out helped me feel determined. I was energized and ready to take on the world. If I had a square jaw, it would have been set. All day long, these emotions wash over me, hundreds of them - thousands of them? I've never counted but I always seem to be feeling them.

BARRETT: Yes, they're seen as happening to you - right? - not something that you yourself make.

SPIEGEL: But that's not how Lisa sees it. Lisa is one of the most respected researchers in psychology right now, lead editor on an enormous tome on emotion. And her latest book, "How Emotions Are Made," is an attempt to synthesize emotion research from a variety of fields - neuroscience, biology, anthropology.

Which makes it hard to summarize in a pithy way, but if I had to boil it down, here's how I'd do it. The way emotion works is the opposite of what you think. Emotions aren't reactions to the world. Emotions actually construct the world.

I know, at first, it didn't make any sense to me, either. So let's start this explanation where science stories usually start these days, with the 3 pounds of meat between your ears and the very difficult job it must do all day long.

BARRETT: The reason why we have a brain is because we have to control the systems in our body. We have a tremendous number of systems.

SPIEGEL: You mostly aren't aware of all of the systems in your body that your brain is regulating.

BARRETT: Systems for glucose. We have systems for salt, systems for oxygen.

SPIEGEL: But if your brain decided to take a day off, kick back, go to the beach, you would definitely notice because you'd be dead.

BARRETT: A circulatory system.

SPIEGEL: So many systems, and all of them need to be managed perfectly in order for you to do anything - any single thing.

BARRETT: So, for example, your brain starts to change your blood pressure before you stand up because, you know, it has to make sure that blood gets to the brain with oxygen, otherwise you'll faint.

SPIEGEL: Which brings us to the obligatory fancy science word that I spent three weeks trying to pronounce correctly - interoception. Interoception?

BARRETT: Interoception is just your feeling of the sensations that come from the movements inside your body.

SPIEGEL: The easiest way to think about interoception is that it's the thing that senses the status of all these internal systems, monitors all the comings and goings. I think of it like an eye but inside your body, turned so it's looking at you.

In the same way that your eye takes in the world and then communicates what's going on to your brain, the interoception thingy (ph) surveys your body and then communicates what's going on with all these systems to your brain, only it doesn't do as thorough a job as your eye for good reason.

BARRETT: You don't feel these sensations in very high fidelity in the way that you see things in the world with a lot of detail. And you can hear things often with a lot of detail, but you don't feel things from the inside of your body with a lot of detail because if you did, you would never pay attention to anything else in the world ever.

SPIEGEL: So your internal eye keeps things super stupid simple.

BARRETT: So the way your brain is wired is to feel interoceptive sensations - the sensations from our bodies - as simple feelings of pleasantness, unpleasantness, arousal, calmness.

SPIEGEL: That is literally all your internal eye can communicate, those four sensations.

BARRETT: Pleasantness, unpleasantness, arousal, calmness.

SPIEGEL: But all day long, it's sending your brain status updates like a teenager on Snapchat, only worse.

BARRETT: Pleasantness, unpleasantness, arousal, unpleasantness, calmness.

SPIEGEL: Feel sympathy for a moment for your brain. There it is, trapped in the dark, silent box of your skull. It's getting these updates about these important sensations in the body, but it doesn't know for certain what's causing them. That unpleasant loop in the stomach just then, was that because the body was hungry or because the man who just sat down across the table is insanely good looking?

BARRETT: Arousal, calmness.

How does it know what caused something when all it has are the effects of that thing? The answer is it has past experience, so it's guessing.

SPIEGEL: Whatever sensation you have in your body, the brain develops a theory - actually a whole bunch of theories - based on previous experience and then uses them to make a prediction about what is going on.

BARRETT: When you have an ache in your body, it asks the question essentially, you know, in this situation, in this context, the last time this happened, what was the cause of that ache? And that's really what concepts are. Concepts are your brain's using past experience in order to make sense of incoming sensory input.

SPIEGEL: OK. Let's pause on concepts because we need to talk about them and the role they play in how you feel. Your culture has a ton of emotional concepts. When you were little, a toddler, you learn them from your parents.

You feeling a little bit nervous about the big

kids? You went to the park, and your mom and dad carefully explained to you that that feeling that you had when that two-bit kid in the red sneakers shoved you off the swing, that was anger. Acquaint yourself with that emotion, they counseled, it will likely play a major role in your teens.

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #1: You're crying just because you got tagged?

SPIEGEL: Sometimes they told you not to be afraid.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: You scared?

SPIEGEL: Sometimes you simply watched how they responded - the contours of sadness and the things that prompted it, the experience of joy and how it was expressed. These were likely the first emotional concepts you learned but you went on. You learned regret. You learned determination. Then in college, you got introduced to the idea of schadenfreude, which during your 20s you practiced liberally.

BARRETT: That's correct.

SPIEGEL: And these concepts, these emotional concepts, they are the things that shape the raw sensations from your interoception thingy - those raw materials of pleasant, unpleasant, aroused, calm - into the actual emotions that you experience. And without these concepts, Lisa says, you wouldn't have any of the emotions that you think of as hardwired, even sadness, even fear, even all the other things that you think of as fundamental and wired into you.

BARRETT: And it's parallel for vision. For example, if you have no concepts, you will see bright and dark. You won't see objects. You know, we know this for a fact. There are people, for example, who have corneal damage or who have cataracts at birth. And then at some point in their adult life, they have a corneal transplant or their cataracts are removed, and we would imagine from the classical view that they would just be able to see everything, but they don't.

They don't see for days and sometimes weeks. And sometimes years there are things they can't see because they don't have concepts. Their brain has no past visual experience to make meaning of the visual sensations that they receive.

SPIEGEL: So all they see is light and dark?

BARRETT: All they see is light and dark.

SPIEGEL: So if you put an apple in front of them, what would it look like?

BARRETT: They wouldn't see an apple. They wouldn't even see an object.

SPIEGEL: You're saying that emotion works the exact same way? That...

BARRETT: Yes. I'm saying that instead of having blobs of light and dark, without concepts you will feel pleasant or unpleasant. You can feel pleasure. You can feel high arousal, being worked up. You can feel low activation, but you don't really feel anger, sadness, fear, disgust or any of the other emotions that we think of as being given to us by nature.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) SPIEGEL: What Lisa is saying is that our concepts make the world. And it is hard to overstate how much this changes our idea of what is actually going on when we walk down the street. The usual idea is that you are taking in the true world around you and reacting to it, this real thing that exists outside of you.

But what she's saying is that everything around you is a blob until the concepts in your head shape it into a thing, and then you respond to the thing that you just created. The concepts themselves are the key.

BARRETT: Yes.

SPIEGEL: Now, if you watch the news, it's likely you've encountered a more contained version of the idea that concepts literally shape the world you see.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST #1: On the streets of Ferguson, Mo., outrage and anger.

SPIEGEL: We've heard a lot about troubling police shootings of young black men or George Zimmerman pulling a gun on Trayvon Martin.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST #1: It's the story that's ignited fierce passions across the nation.

SPIEGEL: And part of the way that people talk about police shootings is that sometimes police are responding not to the reality of the people in front of them but to a stereotype in their head. Stereotypes are concepts. In this case, the concept that young black men are dangerous. Critics say it's that concept that shapes what the police see and can prompt them to pull the trigger when there is no actual need.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST #2: Family members confirm that 32-year-old Philando Castile has died.

SPIEGEL: But what Lisa is saying is that concepts like these work in all of us all of the time. They take the blobs in front of us and shape them into what we see. And they take the blobs inside us and shape them into what we feel.

BARRETT: For better or for worse, experiences are constructed. And your emotional experience is not an indication of something objective about the event. That's just not true.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) ROSIN: And here is the point of all this, according to Lisa.

BARRETT: That means that you have more control over your emotions than you might imagine. The horizon of control is much broader because.

ROSIN: Because concepts are not hardwired. We can change them. Ultimately, we have control.

BARRETT: Yes.

ROSIN: And this is not just a fun science fact, a trippy nugget you heard on a podcast. That's not what this is.

SPIEGEL: Like, essentially you're saying we have way more control over and therefore responsibility for our emotions.

BARRETT: Yes.

ROSIN: Control and responsibility for our emotions. It's such a puzzle. Control is fun. Who doesn't like control? But responsibility - much less fun, much, much less fun.

SPIEGEL: So if I have post-traumatic stress disorder, say, do I have control over that?

BARRETT: Well...

JARRETT: Her little arm hanging out of the car. I couldn't get none of them images out of my mind.

BARRETT: Well, yes.

ROSIN: Tommy Jarrett, the trucker, was traumatized. And if you look at it the court's way, Tommy's emotions start with Michael Jones, Amanda's husband, who lost control of his car. But if you look at it Lisa's way, they start much earlier with the concepts in Tommy's head. In the culture where Tommy grew up, a farm in Alabama in the 1960s...

JARRETT: A man should be strong enough to protect people.

ROSIN: A man should be in control of his truck and of himself. And if something goes wrong, it's his fault. That was the underlying concept that caused Tommy to think he was a killer. So did the PTSD come from Michael Jones, or did it come from inside Tommy?

Even bringing up a question like this, it feels like a radical thing to do because we all like to assume that if we feel something, it tells us something true about the world, something that happened to me. But Lisa isn't saying that PTSD or trauma of any kind isn't real, or that people suffering shouldn't be recognized and relieved, or that we shouldn't address the individuals and systems that harm people.

She's just saying trauma isn't cancer or diabetes, where cells in your body have gone wrong. The problem has much more to do with concepts in your head created by and based in our culture. And those aren't inevitable. Those can be changed.

Lisa identifies herself as a progressive, so she really struggled when we talked about things like PTSD. But she had to admit that yes, her theory has obvious implications for lots of things in our society, even implications she doesn't like.

BARRETT: I see the risk in what I'm saying - right? - but science is science. And we have to - I feel like it's necessary to draw people's attention to what the science has to say. And in the proper context in society, in culture, people can debate the consequences. But I think, you know, I do think that it's very dangerous to treat things as objective when they're not.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) SPIEGEL: Emotions are not objective. All kinds of emotions are not objective, even the emotions you have in response to a death.

THORNBERRY: I did kind of wonder to myself if the feelings were appropriate for the loss or if I was kind of imagining it to be being worse than it really was.

SPIEGEL: What is the appropriate level of pain in response to the death of your child? This was one of the questions Amanda felt herself asking over and over again in the months after Makayla's death but she went on. She took care of her baby, Hannah, went back to work, had another baby, Ashley. And slowly, the emotions inside her shifted, and the pain became less painful. And then one day, she got a call, a very strange call.

THORNBERRY: I thought it was a joke. I was standing in my kitchen. Ashley was playing on the floor, and Hannah was kind of holding on to my leg.

SPIEGEL: The person on the phone wanted Amanda to know that her family was being sued for the death of her daughter...

THORNBERRY: By the driver for his emotional distress and his pain and suffering. And I can remember thinking, you know, he doesn't know what pain and suffering is.

SPIEGEL: As the person talked, Amanda struggled to make sense of what she was hearing. Tommy, who had never met Makayla, couldn't go back to work for nine months but Amanda, Makayla's mother, went back after six weeks. How could that be?

THORNBERRY: You know, I thought, well, how can I be getting over this but yet he still has all of this emotional distress?

SPIEGEL: After the person hung up, Amanda stumbled into the living room, sank down into a chair.

THORNBERRY: And I kind of put my head in my hands. And I just shook my head. And I can remember thinking, this is unbelievable. I mean, this is, you know, after everything we've been through, you know, and now we get to deal with this.

SPIEGEL: Amanda says sitting there, she was suddenly overcome by fear.

THORNBERRY: What if we lose our house? What if we have to file bankruptcy? You know, all of this stuff, this overwhelming fear of, you know, not being able to cope.

SPIEGEL: But mostly, she thought about Tommy, and it enraged her.

THORNBERRY: He didn't have any right to feel that way.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) ROSIN: So Tommy. How do we think about Tommy, his pain and the lawsuit? Lisa wants us to acknowledge that Tommy's pain, it wasn't an automatic inevitable response. It came from the concepts in his head. So does that mean he didn't deserve to win his case? Well, Lisa's just asking us to be more honest. We can say yes, it partly came from in his own head, but we as a society still think it's fair and just that he be compensated.

BARRETT: The point is that we can acknowledge the perceptions are constructed or we can ignore it and just keep doing what we're doing anyways. I think it would be much fairer if we just acknowledged how our brains actually work.

ROSIN: Our brains rely on concepts, and concepts make our world, our culture, our systems. Which is why it's useful to know which concepts are shaping us and which ones we're passing on to each other and to our children.

(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE) UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST #3: Well, today's news is shocking. And reaction is quickly...

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: You scared? Why?

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) I can't breathe. I can't breathe.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #5: April fool.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #4: But you really feel that way.

KEVIN SPACEY (ACTOR): (As Frank Underwood) For those of us climbing top the top of the food chain, there can be no mercy.

LESTER HOLT (NBC): From England tonight, a video that touched millions of people around the world today.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #6: Janice, I love you. She's like, you're the color of poop.

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #2: Run, sissy, run.

ROSIN: And you know what? If we make these concepts, we can unmake them. But even if we don't choose to do that, even if we decide to build the world just exactly as we've built it down to the very last brick, there in the back of our heads when we experience something that disturbs us can hover a liberating thought - this feeling I have, it doesn't have to be this way. There is nothing inevitable about the world that is.

BARRETT: You have more control over your own experience. You become more the architect of your own experience.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) ROSIN: And that's exactly what Tommy did. We met up with him 10 years after the lawsuit. He ended up getting $50,000 from the court. Half went to the lawyers. And in the end, Amanda's insurance company covered it.

These days, Tommy's feeling much better. His life is great now, he says so himself. About a year after the accident, he started driving again. Now, he has his own trucking company and a motorcycle which he and his wife ride out West when they can. About the whole awful period after the accident, he understands one thing for sure now.

JARRETT: My emotions wasn't being true to me. I had every right to be upset and be hurt and distraught. I didn't need to keep telling myself that I was a killer.

ROSIN: That emotion that the court had validated, it felt real, but it wasn't telling him anything real about the world. Tommy realized that basically because he did exactly what Lisa Feldman Barrett says people should do when they feel like a powerful emotion is controlling them. He took this construct which had been in his head since he was a kid, that as a good man and a ninja of a driver he should have been able to prevent the accident.

JARRETT: A man should be strong enough to protect people.

ROSIN: And he learned a new construct. It took him a long time, more than a year, and a lot of work. And he had help from his family and from a therapist because changing the concepts we've grown up with and absorbed all of our lives is not easy at all. But eventually, Tommy did it.

He replaced his old concept with a new one that led him to the actual truth. He was not a killer. Because when that car skidded across the median, there was nothing he could have done. The new concept? Sometimes a man is not, in fact, in control.

JARRETT: Yeah.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) SPIEGEL: Amanda has healed a lot too since the accident. She and Michael got a divorce but she's remarried now and works as a nurse. She has a beautiful home where birds sing loudly in the morning.

(SOUNDBITE OF BIRDS CHIRPING) SPIEGEL: But it's not so easy to wrap up her story because it's not possible to wrap up the bones of a dead child neatly. So instead of trying, we thought we would spend a moment thinking about the person who hovers over this story and powers so many of the emotions in it, the person who didn't get to fully be.

THORNBERRY: Oh, she was, sweetie. Her face was just very much full expression.

SPIEGEL: During our interview, we spent a lot of time talking with Amanda about Makayla. And here are the words that Amanda said to us - Makayla loved questions.

THORNBERRY: She was always asking, you know, why id (ph) dat (ph)? Why id dat?

SPIEGEL: Makayla had a lisp and an easy way with love. She was good at talking about her feelings and always said the word that as dat with a D. She was buried in a yellow and purple princess costume.

ROSIN: In her princess outfit?

THORNBERRY: Yes 'cause that was her favorite.

SPIEGEL: These are the words that Amanda used. But even at the time, none seemed to fully capture the feelings Amanda has about her child and her child's death. Those feelings were larger than the concepts could contain. They floated in and around her, a great indistinct mass of pleasant and painful sensations.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "EMOTIONAL") THE BROKEN ASSEMBLY (MUSICAL GROUP): (Singing) I'm not going to get emotional. I'm not going to get involved.

ROSIN: That's it for today's episode.

SPIEGEL: Make sure to listen to part two of our Emotions show. You'll hear the rest of Renato's story about discovering an emotion in the Philippines. And stay tuned for the rest of our concept album. We are taking this new way of looking at the world and testing it not just with emotions but with other big, big things like reality and race and the self.

ROSIN: INVISIBILIA is hosted by me, Hanna Rosin.

SPIEGEL: And me, Alix Spiegel. Our senior editor is Anne Gudenkauf. Our executive producer is Jeff Rogers. The INVISIBILIA ninjas are Meghan Keane, Yowei Shaw, Abby Wendel and Liana Simonds.

ROSIN: Our technical director is Andy Heuther. We had help from Micaela Rodriguez, Jon Hamilton, Mark Memmott, Micah Ratner, Nancy Shute, Meredith Rizzo, Maya Dukmasova, Hilary McClellen, Chris Benderev, Nurith Aizenman, Caroline Kubzansky, Maria Paz Gutierrez and our vice president of programming, Anya Grundmann.

SPIEGEL: Special thanks to Jody Madeira (ph), Walker Irving (ph), Alice Gilford (ph) and to The Broken Assembly for letting us use their song "Emotional" to close out the show - and to Jon Luc Hefferman for letting us use his song "Upbeat."

ROSIN: For more information about these artists and to see the amazing original art for this episode and the entire season by the fabulous Marina Muun, go to npr.org/invisibilia. And now for a moment of non-zen.

SPIEGEL: Like, every time you say something that annoys me, I'll just be like, you're a construct.

ROSIN: I can't even hear you.

SPIEGEL: I can't even hear you.

ROSIN: Construct.

SPIEGEL: Join us next time for more INVISIBILIA.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "EMOTIONAL") THE BROKEN ASSEMBLY: (Singing) I'll probably lose control. I'm going to let everything out tonight. This story will soon be told.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio record.

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To learn more about the theory of constructed emotion and the work of neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, check out her book How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. Special thanks to the following musicians: Helena Ahlbäck (formerly of The Broken Assembly) - "Emotional" Jon Luc Hefferman - "Upbeat" Note: A previous version of this story stated that Tommy Jarrett had received $50,000 from the court.

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The Atlantic covers news, politics, culture, technology, health, and more, through its articles, podcasts, videos, and flagship magazine.

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Death, Sex & Money Podcast w/ Trevor Noah and Tressie McMillan Cottom "Optimistic and Depressed"

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Death, Sex & Money Podcast w/ Trevor Noah and Tressie McMillan Cottom "Optimistic and Depressed"

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Trevor Noah shares his struggles and success while living with depression.

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Death, Sex & Money is a podcast about the big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversation. Host Anna Sale talks to celebrities you've heard of-and to regular people you haven't-about the Big Stuff: relationships, money, family, work and making it all count while we're here.
WNYC Studios is a listener-supported producer of other leading podcasts including Radiolab, On the Media, The Experiment, The New Yorker Radio Hour and many others.

Death, Sex & Money is a podcast about the big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversation. Host Anna Sale talks to celebrities you've heard of-and to regular people you haven't-about the Big Stuff: relationships, money, family, work and making it all count while we're here.
WNYC Studios is a listener-supported producer of other leading podcasts including Radiolab, On the Media, The Experiment, The New Yorker Radio Hour and many others.

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Death, Sex & Money is a podcast about the big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversation. Host Anna Sale talks to celebrities you've heard of-and to regular people you haven't-about the Big Stuff: relationships, money, family, work and making it all count while we're h...

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Motivation-- this is GOOD

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Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don’t: Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories -- and maybe, a way forward.

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Social Influence: Crash Course Psychology #38 - YouTube

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Social Influence: Crash Course Psychology #38 - YouTube

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Social Influence: Crash Course Psychology #38

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We spend roughly one-third of our lives sleeping-and during that time, we dream. Many theories exist to explain why we dream, but researchers still don't know for sure. Some believe dreams have symbolic meaning, whereas others believe that they relate to waking life.

What scientists do know is that just about everyone dreams every time they sleep, and those dreams can be fascinating, exciting, terrifying, or just plain weird. Here are 10 things to know about dreams.

We Dream Every Night

The brain is active all night long. Brain activity in the forebrain and midbrain is particularly intense during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is when we dream.

Adults and babies alike dream for around two hours per night, even if they don't remember it. In fact, researchers have found that people usually have several dreams each night, each typically lasting for five to 20 minutes.

During a typical lifetime, people spend an average of six years dreaming.

We Forget Most of Our Dreams

We forget up to 95% of all dreams shortly after waking.

According to one theory about why dreams are so difficult to remember, changes in the brain during sleep don't support the information processing and storage needed to form memories.

Brain scans of sleepers have shown that the frontal lobes-the area that plays a key role in memory formation-are inactive during REM sleep, the stage in which dreaming occurs.

We might also forget our dreams because of changes in the levels of certain neurotransmitters, specifically acetylcholine and norepinephrine, during REM sleep.

Yet another study found a link between dream recall and the brain matter density of the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). Participants with higher white matter density reported higher dream recall.

Not All Dreams Are in Color

Most people report dreaming in color, but roughly 12% of people claim to dream only in black and white.

In studies in which dreamers have been awakened and asked to select colors that match those in their dreams, people chose soft pastel colors most frequently.

People younger than 25 rarely report dreaming in black and white. However, people older than 55 report black and white dreams about 25% of the time. Researchers believe this difference results from childhood exposure to black-and-white television. This idea is supported by an older study, which found that people in the 1940s rarely reported dreaming in color.

Men and Women Dream Differently

Researchers have found differences between men and women in dream content.

In several studies, men reported dreaming about weapons significantly more often than women did, whereas women dreamed about clothing more often than men.

Another study showed that men's dreams tend to have more aggressive content and physical activity, whereas women's dreams contain more rejection and exclusion, as well as more conversation than physical activity.

Women tend to have slightly longer dreams with more characters. Men dream about other men twice as often as they do about women; women tend to dream about both sexes equally.

Animals Probably Dream

Many think that, when a sleeping dog wags its tail or a sleeping cat swats its paws, it's dreaming. Although no one can say for sure, researchers believe that most animals go through REM and non-REM sleep stages, so they probably do dream.

Animals might not experience dreams in the same way as humans, however. In other words, they might not remember images or attach a storyline to them.

You Can Control Your Dreams

A lucid dream is one in which you're aware that you're dreaming even though you're still asleep.

Lucid dreaming is thought to be a combination of consciousness and REM sleep, during which you can direct or control the dream content.

People can learn how to have lucid dreams using various techniques, including mnemonic induction of lucid dreams (MILD) and senses-initiated lucid dreams (SSILD). These involve waking up after five hours and repeating a phrase like "I will remember my dream," or focusing on the stimuli (sights, sounds, sensations) in your sleep environment, respectively.

Approximately half of all people can remember at least one instance of lucid dreaming, and some are able to have lucid dreams frequently.

Negative Dreams Are More Common

Researcher Calvin S. Hall, Ph.D., collected more than 50,000 dream accounts from college students over more than 40 years. Made available to the public in the 1990s by Hall's student, William Domhoff, the dream accounts reported many emotions during dreams.

Several factors affect the emotional content of dreams, including anxiety, stress, and certain medications. One study found that external stimuli, including good and bad smells, can play a role in positive and negative dreams.

The most common emotion experienced in dreams is anxiety. Generally, negative emotions are much more common than positive ones.

Blind People May Dream Visually

In one study of people who have been blind since birth, they still seemed to experience visual imagery in their dreams, and they had eye movements that correlated to visual dream recall.

Although they had fewer eye movements during REM sleep than the sighted participants, the blind participants reported the same dream sensations, including visual content.

You're Paralyzed While Dreaming

REM sleep is characterized by paralysis of the voluntary muscles. This phenomenon is known as REM atonia and prevents you from acting out your dreams while you're asleep. Basically, because motor neurons are not stimulated, your body does not move.

In some cases, this paralysis can even carry over into the waking state for as long as 10 minutes, a condition known as sleep paralysis.

Although the experience can be frightening, it's perfectly normal and should last only a few minutes before normal muscle control returns.

Some Dreams Are Universal

Although dreams are often influenced by personal experience, researchers have found that certain dream themes are common across cultures.

For example, people from all over the world frequently dream about being chased, being attacked, or falling. Other common dream experiences include feeling frozen and unable to move, arriving late, flying, and being naked in public.

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

1. National Institute of Neurological Disorders. Brain basics: Understanding sleep.

2. National Sleep Foundation. How often do we dream? One Care Media, LLC.

3. Farooq M, Anjum F. Sleep paralysis. StatPearls Publishing; 2020.

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Whether we remember our dreams or not, we dream every night. Some dreams are common across cultures, but men dream differently than women. Learn more facts about dreaming.

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80+ Psychology-Related Careers to Consider

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80+ Psychology-Related Careers to Consider

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So you've decided to major in psychology, but what exactly do you plan to do after you graduate? With the number of college graduates steadily increasing, it's more important than ever to carefully consider your career options and select a field that is in high demand.

There are also lots of career paths in psychology beyond some of the "typical" options of clinical or counseling psychology. In fact, some of the most interesting job options might be those that you don't hear much about such as aviation psychology or traffic psychology.

One exercise you may find helpful is to look through a list of psychology careers to see what your options are and then narrow down the list to those in which you are most interested in.

Obviously, the best job is the one that you truly love, whether it involves providing therapy, conducting research, or solving real-world problems. Before you decide on a career, spend some time thinking about what really interests you and the type of work setting you would most likely enjoy.

While this is not a comprehensive list of every single psychology career out there, the following are just a few of the psychology-related jobs that have a strong projected employment outlook or are considered an up-and-coming field with opportunity for growth.

We highlight a few of these careers to help convey the enormous variety of employment opportunities within the field of psychology. Some of these career options are specifically in psychology while others are less related but still rely on the knowledge and skills acquired while earning a psychology degree.

Consider some of these options as you plan your career path.

Psychology Jobs in Therapy and Research

Art Therapist

Art therapists utilize the expressive and creative arts to help clients cope with psychological distress and to enhance emotional well-being. People who work in this field are trained in both psychotherapy and art. By using art, clients can communicate feelings, express creativity, explore different aspects, of personality, and cope with stress.

Art therapy is often used in a variety of situations, including:

Adults suffering from chronic or severe stress

Children with disabilities

People who have suffered brain injuries

People who have witnessed or experienced a traumatic event

Clinical Psychologist

Clinical psychologists assess, diagnose, and treat clients struggling with psychological disorders. These professionals typically work in hospital settings, mental health clinics, or private practices.

Although clinical psychology is the single largest employment area within the field of psychology, there are still plenty of jobs available for qualified professionals. In order to become a clinical psychologist, you must have a doctoral-level degree in clinical psychology and most states require a minimum of a one-year internship.

Counselors help people with a wide variety of problems, including marriage, family, emotional, and substance use issues. While requirements vary, almost all states require at least a master's degree in order to become a licensed counselor. Typical work settings include schools, colleges and universities, hospitals, and mental health clinics.

Geropsychologist

As the population of older adults continues to grow, the demand for professionals to attend to their mental health needs also increases. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, by the year 2030, 21% of the population will be age 65 or older.

"Geropsychologists do everything from keeping older adults mentally and physically healthy and vibrant to working with those who are frail and have cognitive impairments," explains Deborah DiGilio, director of APA's Office on Aging. Geropsychologists can work in a wide range of areas, from providing mental health services to aging adults to designing products that make life easier for the elderly.

Experimental Psychologist

Do you love creating psychology experiments? Experimental psychologists use scientific methods and design research studies that explore many different topics within psychology. Social behavior, cognitive processes, personality, and human development are just a few of the topics that experimental psychologists might investigate.

People working in this field often specialize in a particular area such as cognitive psychology, educational psychology, or personality psychology. They may also be employed in a variety of settings ranging from universities, government agencies, research centers, and nonprofit organizations.

Applied Psychology Jobs

Consumer Psychologist

As retailers become more concerned with attracting new customers, the need for psychologists to understand consumer behavior in order to develop effective marketing campaigns has grown. Consumer psychologists not only study why people purchase goods and services, but they also analyze how family, friends, culture, and media messages affect buying behavior.

Some tasks that a consumer psychologist might perform include:

Working with consumer focus groups to determine how appealing a particular product might be

Developing advertising and marketing campaigns to appeal to a target audience

Conducting theoretical research on shopping and buying behavior

Forensic or Criminal Psychologist

Forensic psychologists apply psychology to the fields of criminal investigation and law. This has rapidly become one of the hottest psychology careers thanks to numerous portrayals in popular movies, television programs, and books.

While the field may not be as glamorous as it is depicted in the media, forensic psychology is still an exciting career choice with a lot of potential for growth. These psychologists often work with other experts to scrutinize insurance claims, perform child custody evaluations, and investigate suspected child abuse.

If you are interested in this area of psychology, you might want to also consider the related field of criminal psychology. Criminal psychologists perform a variety of duties such as developing profiles of criminals, assessing convicted criminals to determine their risk of re-offending, and helping law enforcement catch online predators.

Engineering Psychologist

Engineering psychologists use psychology to investigate how people interact with machines and other technology. These professionals use their understanding of the human mind and behavior to help design and improve technology, consumer products, work settings, and living environments.

For example, an engineering psychologist might work as part of a team to redesign a product to make it more efficient and easier to use in a work situation. Those working in academic settings report the lowest earnings, while those working in the private sector report higher salaries.

Sports Psychologists

Sports psychologists focus on the psychological aspects of sports and athletics, including topics such as motivation, performance, and injury. The two major areas within sports psychology are centered on helping to improve athletic performance or using sports to improve mental and physical health.

Sports psychologists work in a wide variety of settings including universities, hospitals, athletic centers, private consulting practices, and research facilities.

Traffic Psychologist

Traffic psychology is an emerging field that involves applying psychological principles to understanding driver behavior. Some areas in this field include:

Designing vehicles that are safer and more ergonomic

Researching how people use transportation

Searching for ways to improve traffic safety and prevent auto accidents

Studying the relationship between driver behavior and traffic accidents

Traffic psychology often involves a multidisciplinary approach, combining fields such as social psychology, behavioral psychology, and cognitive psychology.

For example, traffic psychologists might assess how perception and cognition influence performance during a driving task. They might also look at how individual personality affects a driver's emotions, attitudes, and risk-taking behavior while driving.

Psychology Jobs in the Workplace

Career Counselor

Thanks to the rapidly changing job market, many people are searching for a new job in their chosen field or even changing careers entirely. Career counselors help individuals make career decisions and utilize tools including personality assessments, interest inventories, and other evaluation measures.

They often start by looking at a client's interests, job history, education, and skills in order to determine which careers are a good match. They also help clients work on building skills, practicing interviews, improving resumes, and locating job openings. Assisting clients who are dealing with job loss or employment-related stress is also common.

Aviation Psychologist

Aviation psychology is a relatively little-known subspecialty area of human factors psychology that involves the study of pilots, air traffic controllers, and other flight crew members. People who work in this field perform a number of different duties, which may include:

Assessing cabin safety

Conducting research on aviation safety

Designing flight decks

Evaluating prospective employees

Investigating aviation accidents

Selecting and training pilots

Training flight crews in communication strategies and ways to assist passengers with in-flight anxiety

Industrial-Organizational Psychologist

Industrial-organizational psychologists (also called I/O or I-O psychologists) focus on workplace behavior, often using psychological principles to increase worker productivity and select employees that are best suited for particular jobs. There are several different specialty areas within industrial-organizational psychology.

For example, some I/O psychologists train and assess employees, while others evaluate job candidates. While there are some job opportunities at the master's degree level, those with a doctoral-level degree in industrial-organizational psychology are in greater demand and command significantly higher salaries.

One sub-specialty area of the field involves working in human resources management to screen and hire job applicants. These professionals are often involved in designing and administering employment screening tests and selecting job candidates that are the best fit for particular positions within a company.

Psychology Jobs in Healthcare

Genetic Counselor

Genetic counselors help provide information about genetic disorders to couples and families. These professionals typically have graduate training in both genetics and counseling, and many have undergraduate degrees in areas such as psychology, social work, biology, nursing, and public health.

Genetic counselors often work with a team of medical professionals, including doctors, nurses, and geneticists to offer support, guidance, and assistance to families who have a family member with a genetic disorder or who may be at risk of passing down an inherited disorder to their offspring.

Health Psychologist

Health psychologists study how psychological, biological, and social factors influence health. Two important areas of health psychology include helping people avoid illness and promoting healthy behaviors. Educating people about the causes of illness and teaching healthier habits are just two things that a health psychologist might do on a regular basis.

These professionals often work in settings such as hospitals, universities, health care centers, and government agencies. Some of the job duties they may perform include helping people to lose weight, stop smoking, eat healthily, and decrease stress.

Psychology Jobs in Education

School Psychologist

School psychologists work in educational settings to help children deal with emotional, academic, and social problems. Thanks to increased interest in the mental health of children and federal education legislation, school psychology has rapidly become one of the fastest-growing fields.

Special Education Teacher

While slightly outside of a traditional psychology career, the field of special education offers a great deal of opportunity for those who enjoy helping children. Special education teachers work with students with a variety of disabilities.

In order to become a special education teacher, you must have at least a bachelor's degree and complete a teacher training program in special education. Because of the increased enrollments in special education programs and a shortage of qualified teachers, demand is strong and expected to grow.

More Career Options in Psychology

Did one of the careers highlighted above catch your eye? Or are you still looking for something that matches your interests and goals? The specific career you pursue will depend largely on your educational background. Some entry-level jobs are open to those with an undergraduate degree in psychology, while others require advanced or graduate-level study.

The following are just a few of the many psychology-related job titles that you might want to explore. Some are directly in the field of psychology, while others require additional training in another field or specialty area.

In either case, having a solid understanding of the human mind and behavior can be beneficial in any of these careers:

Academic advisor

Advanced practice psychiatric nurse

Advertising agent

Animal researcher

Animal trainer

Case worker

Child psychologist

Childcare worker

Cognitive psychologist

College admissions counselor

College admissions officer

College recruiter

Community counselor

Comparative psychologist

Correctional treatment specialist

Counseling psychologist

Criminal investigator

Crisis counselor

Customer service agent

Developmental psychologist

Editor

Education administrator

Educational psychologist

Elementary school teacher

Employment interviewer

Employment recruiter

Environmental psychologist

Family and marriage therapist

Financial aid counselor

Grief counselor

Human factors psychologist

Human resources manager

Human resources specialist

Journalist

Lawyer

Library assistant

Literary agent

Market researcher

Mental health coordinator

Military psychologist

Music therapist

Neurologist

Neuropsychologist

Occupational therapist

Physician

Police officer

Probation officer

Psychiatric aide

Psychiatric social worker

Psychiatric technician

Psychiatrist

Psychosocial rehabilitation worker

Public opinion surveyor

Public relations specialist

Recreational therapist

Rehabilitation counselor

Research assistant

School counselor

Science writer

Secondary school teacher

Social psychologist

Social services specialist

Social worker

Statistician

Substance abuse counselor

Technical writer

University psychology professor

Vocational rehabilitation counselor

Youth counselor

Before You Choose a Career in Psychology

As you can see, employment opportunities in psychology are diverse. Some careers require only a bachelor's degree in psychology, while others require more advanced degrees such as a master's or doctorate degree.

Spend some time researching different options and learning more about what's required to enter into those fields. Ask yourself if you have the commitment and drive needed to pursue the necessary educational training.

As you examine the variety of psychology careers that are available, think about some of the following questions.

How well does the career fit your personality?

What kind of training and education are needed to enter the field?

Are the average salaries in a given field satisfactory?

What kinds of things do people in that particular career path do on a daily basis?

Does the career sound interesting, challenging, and rewarding?

Finding the right career in psychology takes some careful planning. It is important to start thinking about what you might want to do early on. This way you can start planning your educational map in order to achieve your vocational goals.

A Word From Verywell

The job options listed here are just a few of the many different career paths available in psychology. Remember that no list of predicted "hot jobs" can ever highlight all of the many options that are available in psychology. The important thing is to pick a career that is right for you, your interests, and your long-term goals.

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80+ Psychology-Related Careers to Consider

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So you've decided to major in psychology, but what exactly do you plan to do after you graduate? With the number of college graduates steadily increasing, it's more important than ever to carefully consider your career options and select a field that is in high demand.

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A cognitive bias is a systematic error in thinking that occurs when people are processing and interpreting information in the world around them and affects the decisions and judgments that they make.

The human brain is powerful but subject to limitations. Cognitive biases are often a result of your brain's attempt to simplify information processing. Biases often work as rules of thumb that help you make sense of the world and reach decisions with relative speed.

Some of these biases are related to memory. The way you remember an event may be biased for a number of reasons and that, in turn, can lead to biased thinking and decision-making.

Other cognitive biases might be related to problems with attention. Since attention is a limited resource, people have to be selective about what they pay attention to in the world around them.

Because of this, subtle biases can creep in and influence the way you see and think about the world.

The concept of cognitive bias was first introduced by researchers Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1972. Since then, researchers have described a number of different types of biases that affect decision-making in a wide range of areas including social behavior, cognition, behavioral economics, education, management, healthcare, business, and finance.

Cognitive Bias vs. Logical Fallacy

People sometimes confuse cognitive biases with logical fallacies, but the two are not the same. A logical fallacy stems from an error in a logical argument, while a cognitive bias is rooted in thought processing errors often arising from problems with memory, attention, attribution, and other mental mistakes.

Signs of Cognitive Bias

Everyone exhibits cognitive bias. It might be easier to spot in others, but it is important to know that it is something that also affects your thinking. Some signs that you might be influenced by some type of cognitive bias include:

Only paying attention to news stories that confirm your opinions

Blaming outside factors when things don't go your way

Attributing other people's success to luck, but taking personal credit for your own accomplishments

Assuming that everyone else shares your opinions or beliefs

Learning a little about a topic and then assuming you know all there is to know about it

When you are making judgments and decisions about the world around you, you like to think that you are objective, logical, and capable of taking in and evaluating all the information that is available to you. Unfortunately, these biases sometimes trip us up, leading to poor decisions and bad judgments.

Types of Cognitive Bias

Learn more about a few of the most common types of cognitive biases that can distort your thinking.

Actor-observer bias: This is the tendency to attribute your own actions to external causes while attributing other people's behaviors to internal causes. For example, you attribute your high cholesterol level to genetics while you consider others to have a high level due to poor diet and lack of exercise.

Anchoring bias: This is the tendency to rely too heavily on the very first piece of information you learn. For example, if you learn the average price for a car is a certain value, you will think any amount below that is a good deal, perhaps not searching for better deals. You can use this bias to set the expectations of others by putting the first information on the table for consideration.

Attentional bias: This is the tendency to pay attention to some things while simultaneously ignoring others. For example, when making a decision on which car to buy, you may pay attention to the look and feel of the exterior and interior, but ignore the safety record and gas mileage.

Availability heuristic: This is placing greater value on information that comes to your mind quickly. You give greater credence to this information and tend to overestimate the probability and likelihood of similar things happening in the future.

Confirmation bias: This is favoring information that conforms to your existing beliefs and discounting evidence that does not conform.

False consensus effect: This is the tendency to overestimate how much other people agree with you.

Functional fixedness: This is the tendency to see objects as only working in a particular way. For example, if you don't have a hammer, you never consider that a big wrench can also be used to drive a nail into the wall. You may think you don't need thumbtacks because you have no corkboard on which to tack things, but not consider their other uses. This could extend to people's functions, such as not realizing a personal assistant has skills to be in a leadership role.

Halo effect: Your overall impression of a person influences how you feel and think about their character. This especially applies to physical attractiveness influencing how you rate their other qualities.

Misinformation effect: This is the tendency for post-event information to interfere with the memory of the original event. It is easy to have your memory influenced by what you hear about the event from others. Knowledge of this effect has led to a mistrust of eyewitness information.

Optimism bias: This bias leads you to believe that you are less likely to suffer from misfortune and more likely to attain success than your peers.

Self-serving bias: This is the tendency to blame external forces when bad things happen and give yourself credit when good things happen. For example, when you win a poker hand it is due to your skill at reading the other players and knowing the odds, while when you lose it is due to getting dealt a poor hand.

The Dunning-Kruger effect: This is when people who believe that they are smarter and more capable than they really are. For example, when they can't recognize their own incompetence.

At times, multiple biases may play a role in influencing your decisions and thinking. For example, you might misremember an event (the misinformation effect) and assume that everyone else shares that same memory of what happened (the false consensus effect).

Causes of Bias

If you had to think about every possible option when making a decision, it would take a lot of time to make even the simplest choice. Because of the sheer complexity of the world around you and the amount of information in the environment, it is necessary sometimes to rely on some mental shortcuts that allow you to act quickly.

Cognitive biases can be caused by a number of different things, but it is these mental shortcuts, known as heuristics, that often play a major contributing role. While they can often be surprisingly accurate, they can also lead to errors in thinking.

Other factors that can also contribute to these biases:

Emotions

Individual motivations

Limits on the mind's ability to process information

Social pressures

Cognitive bias may also increase as people get older due to decreased cognitive flexibility.﻿﻿

Impact of Cognitive Bias

Cognitive biases can lead to distorted thinking. Conspiracy theory beliefs, for example, are often influenced by a variety of biases.﻿﻿ But cognitive biases are not necessarily all bad. Psychologists believe that many of these biases serve an adaptive purpose: They allow us to reach decisions quickly. This can be vital if we are facing a dangerous or threatening situation.

For example, if you are walking down a dark alley and spot a dark shadow that seems to be following you, a cognitive bias might lead you to assume that it is a mugger and that you need to exit the alley as quickly as possible. The dark shadow may have simply been caused by a flag waving in the breeze, but relying on mental shortcuts can often get you out of the way of danger in situations where decisions need to be made quickly.

Tips for Overcoming Bias

Research suggests that cognitive training can help minimize cognitive biases in thinking.﻿﻿ Some things that you can do to help overcome biases that might influence your thinking and decision-making include:

Being aware of bias:Consider how biases might influence your thinking. In one study, researchers provided feedback and information that help participants understand these biases and how they influence decisions. The results of the study indicated that this type of training could effectively reduce the effects of cognitive bias by 29%.﻿﻿

Considering the factors that influence your decisions: Are there factors such as overconfidence or self-interest at play? Thinking about the influences on your decisions may help you make better choices.

Challenging your biases: If you notice that there are factors influencing your choices, focus on actively challenging your biases. What are some factors you have missed? Are you giving too much weight to certain factors? Are you ignoring relevant information because it doesn't support your view? Thinking about these things and challenging your biases can make you a more critical thinker.

Reducing cognitive bias may also be beneficial in the treatment of some mental health conditions.﻿﻿ Cognitive bias modification therapy (CBMT) is a treatment approach based on processes that are designed to reduce cognitive bias. This form of therapy has been used to help treat addictions, depression, and anxiety.

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How Cognitive Biases Influence How You Think and Act

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Cognitive biases influence how we think and can lead to errors in decisions and judgments. Learn the common ones, how they work, and their impact.

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Crash Course Psychology "OCD & Anxiety Disorders"

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Crash Course Psychology "OCD & Anxiety Disorders"

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OCD and Anxiety Disorders: Crash Course Psychology #29

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Social psychology is a fascinating topic that has yielded a great deal of research on how people behave in groups. In many cases, the results of several famous experiments contradict how you would expect people to act in social situations.

10 Facts About Social Psychology

Here are 10 things that you should know about social psychology:

1. The presence of other people can have a powerful impact on behavior. When a number of people witness something such as an accident, the more people that are present the less likely it is that someone will step forward to help. This is known as the bystander effect.﻿﻿

2. People will go to great lengths to obey an authority figure. People will go to great, and sometimes dangerous, lengths to obey authority figures. In his famous obedience experiments, psychologist Stanley Milgram found that people would be willing to deliver a potentially fatal electrical shock to another person when ordered to by the experimenters.﻿﻿

These are just a few of the fascinating forces that influence our social worlds. Dive deeper into the world of social psychology to learn more about the myriad factors that influence our social behavior, perceptions, and interactions.

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Social psychology is a fascinating topic that has yielded a great deal of research on how people behave in groups. In many cases, the results of several famous experiments contradict how you would expect people to act in social situations.

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Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams was one of the most important books of the 20th century.

First published in 1900, it provides a groundbreaking theory of dreams and an innovative method for interpreting them that captivates readers to this day.

The book represents Freud's first major attempt to set out his theory of a dynamic unconscious, created in childhood, which operates continuously in every human mind.

For Freud, dreaming is a mental activity that follows its own logic. By identifying its mechanisms, Freud also shed new light on the workings of the unconscious and its powerful role in human life.

Freud called dream interpretation the 'royal road' to the unconscious.

It is the 'King's highway' along which everyone can travel to discover the truth of unconscious processes for themselves.

"The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind."Sigmund Freud

Everybody dreams, and because of this it is one of the best ways to grasp Freud's theory of psychoanalysis in a practical way.

Freud was so confident in his discovery that he jokingly wrote to his friend Wilhelm Fliess:
"Do you think that one day there will be a marble tablet on the house, saying: 'In this house on July 24, 1895, the Secret of Dreams was revealed to Dr. Sigmund Freud'?"
Today, there is indeed a commemorative plaque marking the spot where Freud began writing the book.

Commemorative plaque marking the spot where Freud began writing The Interpretation of Dreams.

Unusually for a scientific monograph, The Interpretation of Dreams is a deeply personal book.

"On my way to discovering the solution of the dream all kinds of things were revealed which I was unwilling to admit even to myself."Sigmund Freud

Many of the dreams discussed in it are Freud's own - although he also discusses hundreds of his patients' dreams.

We glimpse in Freud's dreams the impact of significant life events on his inner world.

The death of his father, his marriage to Martha Bernays and the birth of their children all feature prominently, as does the decaying political situation in Vienna and the rise of antisemitism.

In his dreams, details of these experiences combine in unexpected ways with memories going back to his earliest childhood.

Because of this, Freud's book is arguably also the invention of a new literary genre: a life in dreams!

This learning resource will guide you through Freud's theory of dreams.

These chapters closely follow how Freud builds his argument in The Interpretation of Dreams.

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The Interpretation of Dreams - Freud Museum London

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First published in 1900, it provides a groundbreaking theory of dreams and an innovative method for interpreting them that captivates readers to this day. The book represents Freud's first major attempt to set out his theory of a dynamic unconscious, created in childhood, which operates continuously in every human mind.

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A bias is a tendency, inclination, or prejudice toward or against something or someone. Some biases are positive and helpful—like choosing to only eat foods that are considered healthy or staying away from someone who has knowingly caused harm. But biases are often based on stereotypes, rather than actual knowledge of an individual or circumstance. Whether positive or negative, such cognitive shortcuts can result in prejudgments that lead to rash decisions or discriminatory practices.

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Crash Course Psychology "Depressive & Bipolar Disorders"

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Crash Course Psychology "Depressive & Bipolar Disorders"

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Depressive and Bipolar Disorders: Crash Course Psychology #30

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Elizabeth and I now record from our home offices.

Very Special Episode: "For graduates-what's the best advice you ever got, the worst advice you ever got, the advice you always give, or the advice you wish you'd gotten yourself?"

Gretchen: This is the advice I give: Beware of drift.

" Drift " is the decision we make by not deciding, or by making a decision that unleashes consequences for which we don't take responsibility.

You go to medical school because both of your parents are doctors. You get married because all your friends are getting married. You take a job because someone offers you that job. You want the respect of the people around you, or you want to avoid a fight or a bout of insecurity, or you don't know what else to do, so you take the path of least resistance.

The word "drift" has overtones of laziness or ease. Not true! Drift is often disguised by a huge amount of effort and perseverance. For me, law school was drift, and it was hard every step of the way, from the LSAT to my clerkship with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor to the New York Bar exam. In the end, I'm happy I did go to law school-and that's another tricky thing about drift. Sometimes drift does make you happy. But don't count on it.

One of my drift-related aphorisms is " You can choose what you do, but you can't choose what you to do." And here's another one: " Approval from the people we admire is sweet, but it's not enough to be the foundation of a happy life."

One of the problems of drift is that we try to deny we're drifting. To see if you're drifting, take this .

Bonus advice from me: Remember, y ou don't have to be good at something to be good at something. I did an A Little Happier about this advice, with the example of Dolly Parton.

Elizabeth: Our father gave the advice to both of us, "If you take the blame, people will give you responsibility."

Taking the blame shows a willingness to step forward, to take responsibility. You're saying "I will shoulder this" and by saying "it's my fault," you're really claiming power. And you show that you can analyze a situation and figure out how to do better.

LISTENER ADVICE

Use your connections! Ask your career center, alumni organization, supervisors, and professors for advice & job leads.

Don't get caught up in comparisons.

Max out your contribution to your company's 401k plan.

Experience is experience. You won't start out as CEO. Appreciate the value in any job you do.

Never take a job that doesn't intimidate you.

Very few decisions are truly final. If you make one decision and it doesn't work out as you hoped, it's okay to pivot and make another decision.

It's okay to change your mind.

It's okay to outgrow people. Your friends from high school/college might not be on the same path as you as you grow.

When you're in the early stages of your career, where you work matters more than what you do there.

Skim the news every morning. It's a conversation-starter and a way to join in.

Use your Career Services Office!

When there's cake, eat cake. When good times come into our life, enjoy the heck out of them.

Take a basic accounting class.

Remember, your first job is not your last job.

Remember, the only person in charge of your happiness is you.

Take pictures of your home town, your family, of the beautiful things in your life, to take to school with you. This advice reminds me of my Scrapbook of Now from my "20 for 2020 list."

If you're planning on going to grad school, consider applying for a Ph.D rather than a Master's degree.

Figure out if you want to be a big fish in a little pond or a little fish in a big pond.

Study what you find interesting, and the rest will come.

Frame your diploma right away. (When I was writing Outer Order, Inner Calm, I wrestled with the question of what to do with the framed diplomas that Jamie and I have collected.)

Get comfortable with frustration and confusion.

ADVICE ABOUT CELEBRATING GRADUATION IN THE TIME OF PHYSICAL DISTANCING: All this advice reminds me of some terrific advice that our mother once gave me: "The things that go wrong often make the best memories." Although it's disappointing not to have the graduation celebrations as planned, these unusual celebrations can make great memories.

Plan a living-room commencement ceremony and a celebration dinner.

Contact the neighbors to ask if they can put out balloons on the day.

Make congratulatory posters for the path you walk.

Plan a surprise Zoom graduation ceremony where everyone holds up signs and cheers for graduates.

As a keepsake for the student, write a letter to the school to explain why this person is so extraordinary.

Want still more advice? Check out my post My Best Advice for Graduates: 12 Tips for a Happy Life.

Resources

If you want to check out all of the resources I've created related to COVID-19-from blog posts to podcast episodes-click here.

If you're like me, you're using books, TV shows, movies, and podcasts to help distract you from the COVID-19 news. Since we often give a "gold star" to a podcast we love, I compiled a list of podcasts featured on this show.

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Podcast 270: Very Special Episode with Great Advice for Graduates. | Gretchen Rubin

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Elizabeth and I now record from our home offices. Very Special Episode: "For graduates-what's the best advice you ever got, the worst advice you ever got, the advice you always give, or the advice you wish you'd gotten yourself?" Gretchen: This is the advice I give: Beware of drift.

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Episode Archive | Radiolab | WNYC Studios

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The day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, third-grade teacher Jane Elliott gave her class an unforgettable lesson in discrimination.

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Depression is the leading cause of disability in the world; in the United States, close to ten percent of adults struggle with the disease. But because it's a mental illness, it can be a lot harder to understand than, say, high cholesterol. Helen M.

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Making Sense Podcast #201 - May 1, 2020 | Sam Harris

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Making Sense Podcast #201 - May 1, 2020 | Sam Harris

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In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Yuval Noah Harari about the Covid-19 pandemic and its future implications. They discuss the failures of global leadership, the widespread distrust of institutions, the benefits of nationalism and its current unraveling in the U.S., politics as a way of reconciling competing desires, the consequences of misinformation, the enduring respect for science, the future of surveillance, the changing role of religion, and other topics.

Yuval Noah Harari has a PhD in History from the University of Oxford and lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializing in world history. His books have been translated into 50+ languages, with 25+ million copies sold worldwide. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind looked deep into our past, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow considered far-future scenarios, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century focuses on the biggest questions of the present moment.

Website: https://www.ynharari.com/

Twitter: @harari_yuval

Instagram: @yuval_noah_harari

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#201 - A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari

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In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Yuval Noah Harari about the Covid-19 pandemic and its future implications.

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NPR Podcast: "Don't Count Sheep: Better Bedtime Rituals"

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NPR Podcast: "Don't Count Sheep: Better Bedtime Rituals"

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How do you get a good night’s sleep? Many of us have routines we use to try to reach that blissful state of slumber — from meditation to melatonin to putting on a pair of socks. Sleep scientists weigh in on which sleep rituals actually work.

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The Side Effects of Social Distancing (Ep. 409) - Freakonomics Freakonomics

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The Side Effects of Social Distancing (Ep. 409) - Freakonomics Freakonomics

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After a relatively slow and scattered response to the global pandemic known as Covid-19, the U.S. has in the past week assumed what is essentially a wartime footing. The primary focus is on curtailing the spread of the virus and creating capacity to treat those who contract it. To accomplish this, we've been encouraged - all 330 million of us - to keep to ourselves as much as possible, a practice known as social distancing. Schools and universities have been shut down, along with cultural and religious institutions, restaurants, and much more. The same for sporting events, theaters, conventions, and any other large public gatherings. Many office buildings have emptied out, with employees ordered to work remotely. Travel, especially on planes and trains, is being severely diminished.

All this has resulted in the biggest disruption of daily life that many of us have ever known, and it will last for weeks, perhaps months. Will it successfully contain the spread of Covid-19? We'll find out; hopefully it will at least be minimized. If we listen to the public-health people, the virologists and the epidemiologists - and we should, because they've been dreading and studying this kind of pandemic for years - they say the situation will get substantially worse in the U.S. before it gets better.

And what other effects, and aftereffects, will this social distancing produce? There will be many consequences, and certainly some unintended ones. Would anyone be surprised, for instance, to see a baby boom starting around 9 months from now? Entire industries and segments of our society are being upended. The economic impact will be massive. Obviously, some people stand to be hurt, badly. Others are more protected. And some may well benefit, including those who can entertain and deliver and sell to the millions of people who suddenly have few places to go and not much to do. But the overall economic impact will be hugely negative, and will likely require a massive infusion of government aid - everything from industry bailouts to rent and tax relief to emergency aid for laid-off workers. The stock markets fell 30 percent - with one, harrowing, single-day drop of 10 percent and another of 12 percent.Volatility is higher than it's been since the financial crisis of 2008.

Now, to be fair, before the Covid-19 pandemic began - apparently in Wuhan, China - the U.S. markets were at an all-time high. And part of the drop should be attributed to another huge market disruption that sort of slipped in under the radar: an oil-price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia. The fact is, there are a lot of things flying under the radar right now, a lot of consequences that may come out of the global response to Covid-19. So we thought we'd call a few economists whose past research indicates they might have some insights into the future that's being crafted right now by the extraordinary changes we're all living through. They are:

Bloom studies economic uncertainty and the management of firms. Also:

Toby MOSKOWITZ: , I'm a professor of finance and economics at Yale University. And I study financial markets and sports.

And, finally:

Marshall BURKE: My name is . I am an economist at Stanford University. I'm an environmental economist, so I study how changes in the environment shape a range of human outcomes - health outcomes, economic outcomes, livelihoods more broadly.

We'll talk about the sudden spike in working from home and online learning; about the super-volatile stock markets - and, believe it or not, one silver lining in the black pandemic cloud.

* * *

Let's start with an overview of the economy itself in the age of Covid-19. Here's Nick Bloom.

BLOOM: So there are two things that I think are happening now. First is, there's clearly the tremendous negative shock on both demand and supply. Businesses are shutting down. Transportation, tourism is falling. So that's what's called a first-moment effect. We know for sure that's bad news. But there's a second factor thrown on top of that, which is, there's incredible uncertainty, in particular left-tail risk. DUBNER: What does left-tail risk mean, please? BLOOM: Left-tail risk is very bad outcomes. So risk can, in theory, be on both the good side and the bad side. So there's upside risk and downside risk. The Covid-19 really only has, obviously, downside risk. It's hard to see anything good coming out of this. And this additional uncertainty, historically, has turned out to be really costly for the economy because businesses pause hiring or investing. So I'd be pretty confident in saying I suspect we're now already in a recession. How bad it will be is hard to tell. MOSKOWITZ: Some of the latest work in academia is about network effects.

That's Toby Moskowitz.

This past Sunday, after we spoke, the Federal Reserve cut its rates to nearly zero; it also announced it would buy at least $700 billion in government bonds, a move known as "quantitative easing," to try to keep markets from locking up. The stock markets were not mollified: they fell another 12 percent on Monday.

Investing is, of course, a case-specific pursuit. If you are an older investor or if you've been putting money in a 529 plan for your kids' college tuition, and they're already deep into high school, then a 30-percent drop in the market has different implications than if you've got a longer horizon. In any case, we should probably expect stock-market volatility to continue for the near term, especially because Covid-19 has created so much volatility in how the biggest companies in the world are doing business. Apple has closed most of its retail stores around the world. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have enacted mandatory work-from-home policies for most employees. What will the effects of that be? And will Covid-19 provide researchers an opportunity to measure all these effects?

BLOOM: Yes. Much as aircraft engineers investigate crash sites, economists will investigate what happened after Covid-19.

Nick Bloom probably knows more about working from home than just about anyone you'll ever meet. Not just because he's a professor, and not because he's lazy - but because he's studied this very question.

BLOOM: Somewhat coincidentally, six years ago, we ran a out in Shanghai, in China, where a large online travel agent called CTrip, which is really like China's version of Expedia. They decided to allow employees to work from home because they found office space in Shanghai was expensive. So they asked 1,000 employees who wanted to work from home. And interestingly, only 500 of them volunteered, despite the fact employees on average were commuting 30 minutes each way. Of those 500 employees, they then randomized them by birth date.

They randomized them so that the experiment would be truly an experiment, and not an exercise in self-selection.

BLOOM: And then we tracked them for nine months. And what we found were three things. Firstly, employees working from home - so these were people, I should say, were booking telephone calls and making- processing data on computers. So they were kind of individual working jobs. They were 13 percent more productive. I mean, 13 percent is a huge increase. And the reasons they told us was, you know, A, it's quieter at home, so they could concentrate more. But B, actually, they just tended to work their full shift rather than spending as much time at lunch or arriving late or taking long toilet breaks. DUBNER: It sounds like good news that productivity and happiness and all these things can increase. On the other hand, it sounds like that job that you were looking at lends itself particularly well to working from home, yes? Secondly, their quit rates halved. Many of them much preferred working from home and didn't want to leave their job. And thirdly, once you controlled for performance, since they were performing better, they actually weren't getting promoted any faster - so there is some sting in the tail, that being at home seemed to reduce your ability to get promoted. And B, as you say, we tested employees that don't need to spend time together. And most people do. And C, the Covid threat could well go on for months and months. I really worry about a big tick up in people getting depressed, mental- health issues, which leads to health issues, more generally, because of the isolation it could lead to. My prediction is, we will find that people that do routine jobs may perform okay at home but for the majority of us, I think it's going to be pretty painful personally, with all the loneliness. And I suspect will be pretty damaging for productivity, particularly as time goes on. So I think if there's one or two weeks, it wouldn't be so bad. But if it stretches on to three to six months, I think it's going to be hugely damaging economically. MOSKOWITZ: As you gather that data, and I suspect a lot of companies are doing this, you can get a sense of, well, what is the productivity loss, if any, from having people work at home?
BLOOM: Yes. As you said, there's a couple of major caveats. So it's really not a team job. So that's why you can be at home four out of five days a week. The second point was that after the end of the study, they then ask employees to re-decide whether they wanted to work from home or come back into the office. And half of the employees said after spending nine months at home, they didn't like it. They felt isolated and lonely and they volunteered to come back into the office. So for me, the warnings from the Covid experiment is A, the type of working from home we're talking about now is very extreme. It's full-time, five days a week. I should note that less than of Americans currently do that. Lots of people work from home a day a week, but very few people work from home full-time. It's kind of like comparing going to the gym sporadically with marathon training, so it's pretty extreme.

Toby Moskowitz again.

These are just a few, and perhaps the most predictable, of the countless economic and social side effects we'll be seeing from the Covid-19 response. What are you seeing? Let us know at radio@freakonomics.com.

* * *

"Social distancing" to diminish the spread of Covid-19 means that we're all supposed to limit our interaction with other people as much as possible. Some of us, maybe most of us, will find this incredibly hard. The late economist Gary Becker made a career of studying behaviors that most economists didn't think much about, including addiction. And what did Becker argue is the most addictive thing in the world? Other people. We are, for the most part, social animals. What kind of animals will we be without the socializing? We're about to find out. One of the biggest changes right now - one of the biggest unplanned experiments of the Covid-19 era - has to do with remote teaching and learning. Schools and universities across the U.S., and elsewhere, have been shut down.

BLOOM: Yeah, Stanford closed. MOSKOWITZ: Yeah. That's what they've done here at Yale, too.

Those, again, are the economists Nicholas Bloom and Toby Moskowitz.

That's Marshall Burke, the environmental economist at Stanford.

BURKE: So all the conferences I was going to go to this spring have been canceled. I've sent my lab group home. So I hold my lab meetings online. We've had speaker candidates online. And I was skeptical that it would work well, initially, and actually, I think it's working quite nicely. And I really hope that we learn that lesson, and then we do some of these substitutions. There's no reason I need to fly to the East Coast many times a year to give talks. Why can't we just do it remotely? I think this will give us the opportunity to explore the benefits of these other modes of economic production. BLOOM: So I think this is going to generate huge amounts of experimentation in teaching. And in the long run, some of it will be good, but it's very painful right now. DUBNER: When we think about schooling, especially in the early ages, socialization seems to be a big benefit, or at least that's what people say. So right now, we're seeing all levels of schools being closed around the U.S. and in other places, from pre-K up through graduate schools. So I'm curious if you have any thoughts about what kind of unintended or knock-on effects that may have. BLOOM: I think socialization is actually really important. It's also interesting that the American system has been criticized heavily for doing not that well in international comparable maths tests and science tests and reading tests, but Americans are very good at socializing, and I don't think it's a coincidence. There's lots of American startups and successful C.E.O.s and entrepreneurs. It's part of this socialization process. From an early age, American kids are taught to argue, to speak up. And I think that will be lost if we move entirely to online home-based teaching.

Marshall Burke has already moved his own young children to home-based teaching.

Here's how Burke describes the work he does as an environmental economist.

There was another recent example of a sudden drop in air pollution - also in China, in 2008. Chinese officials wanted the air around Beijing cleaned up ahead of the 2008 Olympics.

So when Marshall Burke saw those NASA maps showing a decrease in air pollution across China due to Covid-19, he went to the data. And what kind of drop did he find?

* * *

Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Daphne Chen. Our staff also includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, Harry Huggins, Matt Hickey, Zack Lapinski, and Corinne Wallace; our intern is Isabel O'Brien. We had help this week from James Foster. Our theme song is "Mr. Fortune," by the Hitchhikers; all the other music was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Side Effects of Social Distancing - Freakonomics

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In just a few weeks, the novel coronavirus has undone a century's worth of our economic and social habits. What consequences will this have on our future - and is there a silver lining in this very black pandemic cloud?

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035: Sleep paralysis explained - Professor Chris French - Podcast - Sleep Junkies

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We talk to Professor Christopher French about sleep paralysis - a common, and often frightening sleep disorder - how its symptoms manifest, the fascinating cross-cultural background and some strategies to help manage and cope with sleep paralysis

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Reasons to Be Cheerful (Ep. 417) - Freakonomics Freakonomics

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Reasons to Be Cheerful (Ep. 417) - Freakonomics Freakonomics

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Before we get started: a recommendation. Michael Lewis is one of the most insightful American non-fiction writers of our generation, going back to Liar's Poker, but also , The Big Short, and . We had him on this show to talk about The Undoing Project - episode No. 271, it's called " The Men Who Started a Thinking Revolution." Anyway: Michael Lewis also has a podcast. It is called . It's about fairness, or the lack thereof; and it's excellent. It's produced by Pushkin Industries and season two has just launched. So go listen to Against the Rules; you can find it wherever you listen to Freakonomics Radio.

***

This episode is not about the Covid-19 epidemic - unless you think it is. You'll understand what I mean as we proceed. Let's start with a longtime journalist.

For years, Tierney wrote for the New York Times. He and I actually worked together there for a few years. But way before that, when he was just starting out:

TIERNEY: One of my first jobs- I was a summer intern at the Philadelphia Bulletin, and I was a low man on the totem pole. And there was a heat wave. And they asked me to do the weather story, kind of a dread assignment. You know, what is there to say about the weather? So I was flailing around, and I was calling the police stations at the Jersey Shore, where a lot of people in Philadelphia would go during a heat wave, and I was asking them for news. And nothing was going on, they said, "Except traffic's kind of heavy." And so I started asking them, I said, "Is this the worst traffic you've ever seen?" And the desk sergeant said, "No, you know, it's always heavy in August. It's a normal August." But I finally found one desk sergeant who said, "Yeah, I guess I would say it's the worst I've ever seen." And I never asked him, "Is this your first weekend working?"
And my lead the next day is, "In what police call the worst traffic in history." And even at the time, I realized this was pretty sleazy. And I was just wondering, why did I do that? No one told me to do it. I just instinctively did it. And then I started noticing how easy it was to drum up bad news, to find one bad thing to focus on. And I just wondered: Why do we do this? Why do people want to hear all this bad stuff?

Tierney had stumbled, firsthand, onto the truest truism in journalism: "If it bleeds, it leads." At the moment, there's plenty of legitimately bad news - often terrible news - about the Covid-19 pandemic. But in normal times, which we all hope will resume before too long, the bad news you see is often sensationalized, and arguably not worthy of the bold headlines. But it gets our attention; and it keeps our attention; and it keeps us coming back for more. I probably don't need to tell you this, do I? Not if you've ever read a newspaper or watched T.V. news or have spent five minutes on Facebook or YouTube. But do you know why we're so attracted to bad news, often at the expense of neutral or good news? Psychologists think they know why; they attribute it to what's called the negativity bias.

TIERNEY: It's the universal tendency of bad events and emotions to affect us more strongly than comparable good ones.

The negativity bias is not confined to our media consumption. It works its way into our personal relationships; our work relationships; our very view of the world. Now, how ironclad do psychologists consider this phenomenon?

Roy BAUMEISTER: We don't have any universal laws in psychology, but ironically, the greater power of bad than good is one of the closest things we get to a law.

Is it possible to escape this law? Perhaps. But even very successful people - the music icon David Byrne, for instance - are susceptible.

David BYRNE: Oh, absolutely. There'd be a good review, and there'd be one negative sentence about my appearance, and that would be the thing that I would remember.

Today on Freakonomics Radio: why we're so prone to the negativity bias; how it affects our decisions; and how to escape - even harness - it to rise above the fray.

***

So the journalist John Tierney had known for decades that the best way to get a reader's attention was to focus on the dramatic, the frightening, the violent.

TIERNEY: But I didn't really understand it until I read Roy Baumeister's paper, "Bad Is Stronger Than Good." BAUMEISTER: Roy Baumeister. I'm a research psychologist, professor of psychology at the University of Queensland.

Baumeister is one of the most-cited social psychologists of his generation. He's done research on everything from willpower and self-esteem to decision-making and free will to sexuality.

BAUMEISTER: Most social scientists have to specialize very narrowly. And I'm trying to be a generalist and still come up with a big-picture understanding of human nature.

Roy Baumeister and John Tierney have written two books together. The first, called , was published in 2012. Now they've published a book called The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It. Baumeister's academic paper on the power of bad, published years earlier, grew out of a pattern that he'd noticed in just about everything he read.

BAUMEISTER: So I started noticing over and over again that the impact of bad things seemed to be stronger than the impact of good things. The economists had noticed this with loss aversion.

Loss aversion, first described by the psychologists Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky, notes that people are generally more sensitive to losses than to gains, even if they're equal in magnitude. Economists have tested this by gauging people's reactions to winning and losing money.

BAUMEISTER: Well, losing $50 seemed to be farther away from the control group than the gaining $50. You're happy if you gain $50. But the positive was really no different from the neutral control, like our studies of acceptance and rejection.

And what did those studies of acceptance and rejection look at?

BAUMEISTER: So we'd have people come to the laboratory and interact with someone and either be accepted or rejected or again, a neutral control. And then we measure their subsequent behavior in a variety of contexts. Are they more aggressive toward someone else, or are they more helpful? Do they do more stupid, short-sighted, self-destructive things? Over and over again, the effect of rejection is stronger than the effect of acceptance on all these different variables. So I started seeing this and then went to a couple of my colleagues and students and said, "Why don't we do a literature review? Let's look for this and let's particularly look for exceptions, because it will make a more interesting theory if we can say, 'Well, bad things are stronger than good things in A, B, C, and D, but the exceptions are E, F, and G.'" The problem was we couldn't find exceptions. All different methods and all different sorts of phenomena keep pointing to the same conclusion: the mind just overreacts to bad relative to good.

Baumeister and Tierney, in their new book, try to trace the power of bad to its evolutionary roots.

TIERNEY: Well, the negativity effect evolved because it helped keep our ancestors alive. BAUMEISTER: As we say, "Life has to win every day. Death only has to win once." TIERNEY: It was more important to pay attention to not eating poisonous berries than to really savoring the good ones; you had to pay more attention to predatory lions. BAUMEISTER: If you miss out on a great opportunity for good food or sex or any other life-affirming thing - well, okay, that's too bad. But you might have another one the following day. But if you miss out on a dangerous predator, fail to notice, that will put an end to your life. Part of the psychological mechanism underlying our work is that the mind was shaped by evolution to pay attention to risk.

As Baumeister noted, he thought he'd find areas of life where the negativity bias doesn't hold sway, but he didn't. Even in areas where you'd almost be certain that positivity would rule.

BAUMEISTER: So a very different kind of evidence looked at friendship formation. There was a classic study that took over an entire dormitory and tried to see who would become friends with whom. And they had all sorts of elaborate theories about political and religious similarity and so on. Well, what seemed to work the best- the strongest effect was who lived near each other. So people made friends with the ones who were nearby them. So this went into all the textbooks as: "Just being exposed to someone, being in regular contact produces friendship." But then 20 years later, somebody did a follow-up and also measured who became enemies. And it turns out living near somebody increases the likelihood you'll become enemies even stronger than the likelihood you'll become friends.

Baumeister found another example - a personal example - in parenting.

BAUMEISTER: When my own daughter was born, I went around to the experts on intelligence that I knew and said, "What do I need to do to make her smarter?" I wanted to have a smart child. They said, "Don't drop her on her head." Which- that was already one of my plans. So that wasn't really helpful. But it turns out that good parents that it basically becomes a genetic issue, that the kid's genes determine their I.Q. Whereas bad parenting reduces the link from genes. So the implication is, you can make your kids stupider by being a bad parent, particularly if you're abusive or something like that. You can't make your kid any smarter. All you can do is let the genes shine through.

That's an especially useful insight during the coronavirus pandemic, with so many families locked up at home together. I do feel compelled to mention, however, that this entire argument about the negativity bias is really hard to pin down empirically; it's got a certain squint-and-connect-the-dots quality to it. For starters, "negativity" and "positivity" are pretty broad terms, with a quite permeable boundary. But still, let's assume this negativity bias as described by Baumeister and Tierney is real, at least to a large degree, in many areas. If that's the case, just how much stronger is bad than good?

TIERNEY: In general, it takes about four good things to overcome one bad thing. Now, that's a rule of thumb. It doesn't apply to every kind of thing, but it's a good thing to keep in mind in evaluating the impact of your actions, in evaluating how you're doing in your life. You know that if you're late for one meeting, you don't make up for it by showing up early the next time. Stephen J. DUBNER: So let's say that someone that works for me does something really stupid, makes a bad mistake. Would it be a good idea for me to directly tell them, "Look, that was really bad. You now need to do four really brilliant things just to get back to zero."? TIERNEY: I think their friends should tell them that. That would be a little daunting to tell your employee, though, in order to overcome- well, I mean, for one thing, you're kind of admitting that you're irrational. DUBNER: But on the other hand you could say, "I'm a person just like you."TIERNEY: Oh, that's good. DUBNER: What about the same kind of advice in, let's say, a familial or even more, a romantic - let's say your partner or your spouse or maybe your intended, right? And they do the one bad thing. How do you communicate that that is weighing very heavily on you? TIERNEY: I think the first thing is to try to give them the benefit of the doubt. And don't necessarily ascribe it to some inherent character flaw, or that they're selfish, that they don't care about you. Researchers have found that successful marriages, the people in that practice what are called positive illusions. We quote the advice that Ruth Bader Ginsburg's mother-in-law gave her on her wedding day: "In every marriage, it sometimes helps to be a little deaf."BAUMEISTER: The early version of this was what was called the Gottman ratio. John Gottman was a famous relationships researcher who looked at married couples and so on and came to the conclusion that a relationship will continue as a happy, satisfied marriage if there are five good things for every bad one. This is the F rule. Five fucks for every fight. Or five "fornications" for every fight would be the polite version of it. DUBNER: Uh huh. BAUMEISTER: That couples who do that will succeed. And I don't say that there's anything magic about sex, although there may be, but it's easily measured. If I ask you, "How many positive interactions did you have with your husband or wife in the last 48 hours?", that's probably difficult for you to count. But if I say, "Well, how many times did you have sex and how many times did you fight?", you can probably give a precise number. So for ease of counting, that's a useful index. DUBNER: So I guess if one were to counter or offer a positive spin on the negativity bias, you could say that it seems to be a part of human nature to constantly strive for improvement no matter how much progress you've made. And so to that end, the negativity bias is maybe a useful incentive. Do you buy that idea at all? BAUMEISTER: Well, the desire to improve is shown in - even in the research - as one of the healthiest, and most adaptive, and best ways to approach life. Now, whether you need a negativity bias for that - it may be helpful. I don't think it's necessary.

In fact, Baumeister and Tierney argue that the negativity bias, even more than being not necessary, is rather costly.

TIERNEY: The cost is simply the enormous amount of effort and money that gets spent on non-problems that basically end up enriching special interests, that end up growing lots of unnecessary programs, and that often make things worse.

Let me say here that these conversations with Tierney and Baumeister took place before the Covid-19 pandemic. The kind of "non-problems" Tierney was talking about were things like the fear of overpopulation in the 1960s, the energy crisis in the 1970s.

TIERNEY: Th BAUMEISTER: Overall, there has certainly been progress and life is better overall than it is in the past. DUBNER: But when you make a theoretical conclusion about the state of the human condition, I think it's, at least for me, wise to be skeptical that, well, the people who are making these conclusions like yourself - no offense meant - are university professors who are pretty near the top of the human scale in history in terms of money and accomplishment and education and probably health and so on. I wonder if you ever think that maybe your message is leaving out too many people, that life is truly not really good for a great many people - whether it's economically, health-wise, politically, due to the bad luck of where and when they were born or what kind of situation they're in. And whether, in fact, for them, the power of bad is much more legitimate than you're describing it now, because there is indeed a lot more bad in their lives. BAUMEISTER: All right. Well, in the first place, a lot of the data are based on people like that, too. It's not simply professors asking each other. And incidentally, professors complain a whole lot. I remember visiting a university and I was having a conversation like this. I say, "This is a wonderful job," and so on. And they looked at each other and said, "Well, we never say that out loud. You have to always be complaining. Otherwise, the administration won't give us a raise. We always have to act like everything's awful." And you mentioned income and health. The effects on happiness - the curves are very interesting on those. If you're really sick, it does lower your happiness. But the difference between being moderately healthy and really healthy is almost a negligible effect on how happy you are with life as a whole. The same with income. I think the general consensus is really having serious money problems where you just don't have enough money - yeah, that's a downer. It's hard to be happy with that. But to go from, say, well-to-do to really-well-to-do is a much smaller difference. You just don't notice the positive things. You notice the negative. DUBNER: Now, the implication and really what the book is about is the fact that this useful, I guess, defense mechanism, if you want to call it that, has to some degree outlived its use because a lot of the threats are no longer so prominent, but that we port over this existing power and give bad news a lot of leverage. To what degree would you say we're out of sync? How much surplus do we reward the power of bad? TIERNEY: Well, it's still really important to pay attention to bad things when you're in, you know, because getting along with people, the bad stuff matters much more. It's important to pay attention to that. But life has gotten so much safer than it ever was. It's so much more peaceful than it ever was. And yet we still have this ancient reaction to catastrophize and imagine the worst. And the worst effect is that we live in a high-bad environment. We're just surrounded all day by people trying to get our attention on various screens. And they know the easiest way to do that is to scare us, to tell us bad news, to tell us there's a crisis. So the merchants of bad, as we call them, are just going at us around the clock trying to sell us their wares. And our ancient brain just immediately reacts. e experts told us that we're running out of natural gas, so we have to stop using it for electricity. We have to burn coal instead. So that turns out to be worse for climate change.

This "high-bad environment" that Tierney and Baumeister talk about - you are likely well aware of it. For decades now, there's been discussion about whether the news media is too negative, too problem-based instead of solution-based. One analysis of global broadcasts from 1979 to 2010 showed a steady trend toward more negative tones. What's also different now is how technology has made more news more available, all the time. Virtually inescapable. Even if you don't opt in to every news alert about the latest shooting or political outrage, somebody close to you probably does, and they'll let you know about it. For media outlets, this emphasis on alarming news is a business decision.

BAUMEISTER: So they're dealing with what their customers want. And customers don't want to shell out a lot for a newspaper that says, "Oh, things are pretty good. Everything's fine." They will much more buy an extra edition that says, "A new crisis, and the president has done something, or there is a threat of war, or a danger, the climate is going to melt down." There was just something in the newspaper yesterday that was reprinted from 2004, a prediction that by 2020, several major European cities will be underwater. There'll be global shortages leading to warfare breaking out all over the world. So, no sign of that yet, but it's early in the year.

Recent surveys from the Pew Research Center found that around two-thirds of U.S. adults feel worn out by the news, and nearly half of social media users say that they're worn out by political posts and discussions. So how are you supposed to counteract a high-bad environment? Tierney and Baumeister recommend what they call a low-bad diet.

TIERNEY: I try to follow people on Facebook and Twitter who do positive stuff. I don't really watch the news that much. When there is a terrorist attack or a school shooting, I don't even turn on the news. I'll read one paragraph about what happened. That's all I want to know about it. And I try not to watch the back-and-forth, left-and-right punditry just sliming each other. So I really try to read positive stuff, uplifting stories about science or history. And one of the best tips I picked up was this idea of capitalization, that you should share a joy, that when something good happens, tell someone about it. When someone tells you about something good, respond enthusiastically or at least fake it. But it is amazing how much that helps.

So those are some tips for dealing with the power of bad on the consumer end of things, the demand side. But what about the supply side?

***

I once had an idea - probably not a very good idea - but here it is. It's been shown that saturation media coverage of mass shootings and terrorist attacks can inspire future shootings and attacks. Would-be perpetrators see all the attention, and they want some of that twisted glory for themselves. So what if the media didn't instinctively saturate us with all that coverage? Or what if, at least, you could avoid the saturation? What if every reader or viewer could opt out of the coverage of certain topics, or at least the saturation coverage?

We all know people who say they don't want to read the 57 th article about the latest mass shooting, the one that detailed exactly how that guy got all his guns up into his hotel room and set up the perch where he'd shoot people from. But they do read those articles; they do watch those TV segments. It's tragedy porn - people say they don't partake, but they do. Journalists say they hate to cover it - but when their articles show up on the "most emailed" list again and again, they figure out a way to live with it.

So my idea - to provide this opt-out filter - it wouldn't necessarily reduce the supply of this kind of journalism, but it might moderate the demand, at least a little bit. I've talked to a bunch of people over the last few years, both within the media and outside, and mostly I get blank stares. Like I said, maybe it's just a terrible idea. But, it turns out, there's at least one person who had a similar idea and she doesn't think it's so terrible.

GRANDJEAN: So, my name is Alicia Grandjean, and I'm a software engineer for the Research and Development Department of the B.B.C.

You might not think of the B.B.C. as the kind of company that has an R&D department, but in fact it's a long-standing tradition. They're constantly thinking about new ideas and technologies related to delivering the news.

GRANDJEAN: So you do a lot of prototypes, you do a lot of research and maybe one in, I don't know, 20 will be used. But that's the life of a research-and-development department.

One recent prototype dealt directly with this question of media and negativity. The idea came from something that Grandjean had observed in her own life.

GRANDJEAN: Yes, that for me, regarding my mood of the day, it can be quite challenging maybe to read the news. And from talking with friends, with family, with colleagues, I found out that I wasn't the only one.

In fact, her research turned up a broader trend in terms of engagement and feelings about the news.

GRANDJEAN: So one specific study really caught my attention. It's a Reuters survey, run in 2019, and there we found out that 32 percent of the people worldwide said they often or sometimes actively avoid the news.

So roughly a third of us are actively avoiding the news; this represents a big increase over the past several years. Why this avoidance?

GRANDJEAN: Fifty-eight percent do so because it has a negative effect on their mood. And 40 percent say it's because they feel powerless to change.

One reason these numbers have been climbing, Grandjean suspects, is the means by which the news is increasingly delivered these days, for instance, in staccato alerts via social media. This strips away most of the context; all you get is the alarming headline or summary, often amplified by people in your network who are already angry or frightened. So Grandjean and her team thought of a way they could maybe tone down this dynamic.

GRANDJEAN: And we were thinking about a way to make it less scary to navigate the B.B.C. homepage, and to do so by giving those people more control over what is visible to them.

You could see how getting readers back to the homepage of a media site might moderate the high-bad environment. Rather than only getting alerts about individual articles, you'd also get a sense of the stories you otherwise wouldn't even know about. Social media creates its echo chamber in part by winnowing down the information that you choose to see; by widening the focus, you'll at least get the sense that there are other things going on in the world. So what did Grandjean and her team come up with?

GRANDJEAN: So, first I wanted to remind you that this is not the finished product and service. Absolutely no intention whatsoever for the B.B.C. News to implement it. So this is just a prototype for research purposes only.

Okay, got it. For research purposes only.

GRANDJEAN: So the prototype is a web extension that works in the web browser. It only works in the B.B.C. News homepage. So once you open it, you have two parts. The first part is a text box where you can enter a keyword.

A keyword, for instance, that you are particularly sensitive to.

GRANDJEAN: For example, let's say you are really sensitive to rape, suicide.

So you enter your keyword, which is then fed into the B.B.C.'s experimental algorithm.

GRANDJEAN: And then the algorithm is going to go through to the whole news page, and it's going to blur all the articles that contain this keyword. So it's going to blur the article, including the image, and it's going to display a warning.

Picture the homepage of whatever media site you read the most. It would look pretty much the same, except that the articles containing your keywords would be blurred out. Now, you could override this blurring whenever you wanted.

GRANDJEAN: It's important to say that you can remove this keyword at any time.

So the keyword filter is the first part of the B.B.C.'s experimental project. And the second part?

GRANDJEAN: The second part is some kind of mood slider.

A mood slider that responds to the kind of mood that you tell it you're in that day.

GRANDJEAN: So for example, if you are in a challenging mood, the algorithm is going to filter all the articles that may be tough for you and is going to use the same blur treatment and is going to again display a warning saying this article is not matching your mood of the day. And again, you have this button and you can decide to see it anyway.

After Grandjean's team came up with this prototype, they did a round of testing. A very small round of testing - with seven young users.

GRANDJEAN: Most of them understood what was going on and began to enter some keywords. We were asking them, "What do you think is going to happen once you click enter?" And they were like, "I think the news containing this keyword will disappear, which is really scary. I don't like it." And they were, in fact, really relieved when they realized that no articles were going away. They were just getting blurred. Someone said something I really like. Someone said, "It's like a shield that allows us to be safe on the B.B.C. News homepage," which is exactly what I wanted to create.

But not everyone liked the prototype. One tester told the B.B.C.'s R&D team, "News isn't meant to be tailored to you. We shouldn't be sheltered from it."

GRANDJEAN: I think this point is very valid. This tool is aimed to the people who already cut themselves off from the news. We want to bring back people. And to do so we want to have them decide how they want to engage with the news and do it in a conscious way.

Having that agency - getting to engage in the news in a more conscious way - actually proved valuable to Grandjean herself.

GRANDJEAN: Yeah. In the beginning, I might be sometimes not really wanting to look at news because I'm like, "Oh, this is so depressing." I had to go on the website everyday, all the time, because I was writing the prototype.

But as she started reading the B.B.C. homepage:

GRANDJEAN: I felt more and more comfortable going to it all the time. So I really thought there was something interesting here about the fact that I didn't feel passive and I was more active on it. And it makes me feel like being more comfortable and safe on the home page.

That's the good news. The bad news - at least if you like the idea of this prototype - is that it's still just a prototype. The B.B.C. hasn't yet given Grandjean the go-ahead to make the algorithm live.

GRANDJEAN: As I said, it's not a finished product that will be released one day. It's something to start a conversation. I'm not, in any case, thinking I found a solution. I just found a good opportunity to talk about it.

At some point, maybe the B.B.C. and other news sites will find a way to tone down the high-bad environment they help create. In the meantime, there are other sites that choose to simply focus on good news. Or, if not good news per se, journalism that's more solution-based than problem-based; it's sometimes called "constructive journalism." To be honest, this is something we try to do pretty routinely with Freakonomics Radio. But the fact is, constructive journalism tends to be a pretty hard sell, at least commercially. The reason so many media outlets still focus so much on bad news is that most consumers continue to consume it. So if you want to try something different, it might help to have a patron: someone with a reach, and at least a little bit of cash. Someone like this guy:

Byrne has done many things over a long creative career - in music, film, and writing. Most famously, he was the lead singer and main songwriter for Talking Heads. And most recently:

BYRNE: I just finished a Broadway run of a show called American Utopia.

And also:

BYRNE: And I have a web-based, I guess you'd say, solutions-journalism magazine that highlights things that are showing positive change and hopeful initiatives around the world. It's called Reasons to Be Cheerful, which comes from a song that came out during the punk era.

The song was by Ian Dury and the Blockheads.

BYRNE: It was during the Thatcher era, where everybody was complaining and griping. And then he comes out with a song, "Reasons to be Cheerful," which was not- it's not exactly what I'm doing. I'm talking more about initiatives and policy and grassroots things that are happening. But he was talking about a joint, or get back in bed.

David Byrne conceived of his Reasons to Be Cheerful a few years ago. He had started to notice his own negativity bias.

BYRNE: Well, when I'm reading the news and I'm confronted by a barrage of horrible stuff usually, or things that really bother me. And I thought, "I'm drawn to this. But I know I need to find an antidote. I need to find some way to get myself out of what I appear to be getting sucked into."DUBNER: So what do you do? BYRNE: That's when I started collecting like - oh, here's a positive thing. Let me put that in a little folder.

Byrne's little folder eventually evolved into a full-blown online magazine, with original articles about science and technology, economics and transportation, civic engagement, and more. Byrne himself has written quite a few of these, including a recent article on what constitutes a sensible housing policy.

BYRNE: Oh, yeah. So I spent many days researching the history of housing in Vienna and Singapore. Very different, but in some ways very similar in that the local government, many decades ago, decided to start building housing for their citizens. Singapore did something similar. Singapore had added issues to deal with. They had a multi-ethnic society that Austria didn't have. They had Malaysians, the Chinese, Indians, different religions, all this kind of stuff. Stuff that we have here. And they, being slightly more authoritarian, but kind of a benign authoritarian regime, they said, "Okay, every place has to have a representative percentage of the various ethnicities." So these places have- by solving one problem, they end up solving additional problems. They have no homelessness. It's almost nonexistent. DUBNER: Okay, I don't mean to bring you down, but then the problem is you can identify, as you did, good solutions or where it's done well. But then you say, "Well, okay but in our situation, let's say, where policies are entrenched and every time you want to undo something, there's going to be a group of people over here who profit from it being done the way it's done. So obviously it's easier to do things well from scratch than to undo." Do you get a little despondent when you think about problems that do have solutions but aren't practicable? BYRNE: Yeah, sometimes I bang my fist on the table when the discussion turns to some of these subjects and I go, "It's not unsolvable. These people did it. They have solved, not everything, but some of these problems. Why can't we just do what they do?" But as you say, it's not quite that simple. This was not projects. In Vienna, they got the best architects to build these big housing buildings. They generally were open to lower-income families and people in the beginning, but then if you did well, if you became middle-class or you became upper-class, you weren't required to leave. And because they were really nice buildings and right in the middle of town, people stayed. So you end up with this wide range of people and incomes in the same building and all over town. So one person was quoted as saying, "You can't tell how wealthy someone is by their address," because everything - except for the center of town - everything is all mixed up. And I thought, "That sounds really healthy." BYRNE: DUBNER: But also, it's an- it reminds me of something you wrote in BYRNE: Oh, absolutely. Yes, absolutely. I think it's a self-determining system where it's not always a vast conspiracy that fills up the spaces with bad news. But if that's our tendency, it does it by itself because that's what we're drawn to. But then there are definitely agents, and companies, and whatever who realize this. And that, who- if they make money by having more eyeballs and more clicks and this and that. And they know that to get those, they need to put out more conspiracies and scary stuff, well, they're going to do that. DUBNER: So let me ask you this. A friend of yours told me that they've watched with delight and surprise as you've evolved from a sort of angsty younger person, into someone who's more contented and genial and a happy grandfather, specifically. So I am curious if that assessment is at all accurate. And if so, how did that evolution happen? BYRNE: I think it's fairly accurate. A younger version of myself- I realized years later that I appeared to be somewhere on the Asperger spectrum. Very uncomfortable in social situations, watching people's behavior and going, "How do they do this? How does one do this? How do you get to know someone? How do you have a date?" And trying to figure out human behavior, because it didn't come naturally. Over the years, I realized that slowly that was fading away a little bit and there was like a self-therapy. Some decades ago, the band I was in, Talking Heads, we expanded from a four-piece to a nine-piece or something like that. I found myself in a larger community. The music changed and it became more transcendent and ecstatic and joyous. And that just kept going. I've worked with other musicians. I've had social experiences, got to know people, and I realized that, now, I may not be totally comfortable all the time, but most of the time I'm fairly comfortable, even to the point where now I feel like I'm comfortable with civic engagement, which is essentially dealing with strange people, people I don't even know. Which is- whew, that's a huge step. BYRNE: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It's the bad ones that you'd remember. And- or there'd be a good review. And there'd be one negative sentence about my appearance, or my dancing, or something else, and that would be the thing that I would remember. DUBNER: Was it painful? BYRNE: Oh yeah. Because it's not just a criticism of your ideas, it's a criticism of you as a person, or something you can't change. When they're talking about how twitchy my dancing was, or whatever like that. And you go, "Well, that's just- that's what I do. That's not an idea that I can modify." DUBNER: So one potential downside of everybody being worried about criticism all the time is that it produces a bunch of mediocre people in the middle doing the thing that they know will not get them criticized. Which may be the opposite of anything dynamic or creative or new - but at least they're not getting criticized! So I'm curious: you're a creative person, have been all your life. How do you not let the possibility of negative response affect what you want to do next? BYRNE: I tend to think long-range. If I think long-range, then I can keep evolving and change and try new things. Because my feeling is that the initial reaction was, "Oh, why couldn't you do more of what you did a year ago or two years ago? Do more of that. We like that." But I realized that long-range, if I keep doing that, I'm going to get bored and I'll be left by the side of the road at some point. But if I keep evolving there might be some short-term resistance to that, but long-term, I think the reception will be better. DUBNER: And you are thinking about the reception to the work and not just the work, yes? BYRNE: Yes, to some extent. I never feel like I'm pandering, but I feel like if I keep myself interested, there'll be inevitably some other people who are interested. It may be a small group and then sometimes it may be a large group. Some things will be more successful than others. But I can keep going. How Music Works, about how music evolved with the spaces it's played in. So for churches, obviously, cathedrals, music was written to reverberate and fill the room and create this feeling of, whether it's spirituality or oneness, whatever, right? Well, now let's transfer the music to just information, right? Do you think that information similarly is being created to optimize or take advantage of the way-Good question. I, in a way, I think both. The ability to hear and our innate tendency to be drawn to negative things, and bad news, and conspiracies and all that, is amplified by the world we've created, by the digital world, and online media, and news media, and amplifies it to where it looms so much larger than maybe it used to some time ago.
DUBNER: So you say your Reasons to Be Cheerful project is meant to be "a tonic for tumultuous times," which I like. Do you think that, historically, our time is really so tumultuous relative to the rest of history? Or do we just now have the ability to hear about much more tumult?

DUBNER: So the authors of this book, The Power of Bad, they discuss a rule of thumb and they argue it's - that it takes roughly four good events to outweigh one commensurate bad event. So I wanted to ask you about that, just your personal assessment of that. And I thought one way to think about it is: Talking Heads were generally a very well-reviewed band. I'm sure, however, there was the occasional bad review, whether it was a record or a live show. I'm curious how you assessed. Did you accentuate the negative?

And he has kept going. Lately, in the form of the Broadway show American Utopia, which began life as an album and a tour. The title may sound ironic, but it wasn't intended that way.

BYRNE: We're actually putting this proposal in front of people in a certain kind of way, in a musical way. DUBNER: For someone who hasn't seen it, how do you describe the show? BYRNE: It evolved out of a concert, so it's a lot of songs. But I realized working with collaborators etc. that I can pick those songs, and especially for a theatrical audience, I can talk in between some of the songs in a way that the songs and the talking all starts to tell a story. And it's a story like what we talked about a little while earlier. Someone's journey from being very introverted, looking at the world from outside, to being accepted and part of a small community. And then ending with civic engagement and engagement with the whole world, which constitutes a really nice journey. DUBNER: And that journey in the show is meant to reflect your journey in real life, for the most part? BYRNE: Yeah, yeah. It comes from me, but it's not my biography. Some of the little interludes I talk about voting, or I talk about this or that. And then there's the music and the band. And when you look at the way the band interacts and the makeup of the band, which is-DUBNER: Polyglot. BYRNE: Polyglot. Yes. Many races, many genders, everything, and you realize, "Oh, we really can live together and do things together, because I'm looking at it happening right here in front of me."

There's one moment in American Utopia that happens to distill this idea we've been talking about today, the power of bad. This moment shows how our perception of events can shift the reality. David Byrne is telling the story of this one song:

BYRNE: The song is called "Everybody's Coming to My House." And in my version, it kind of sounds like I'm not sure how I feel about everybody coming over to my house. I'm the maybe slightly socially awkward guy. DUBNER: So this is written in recent years, but this is maybe traveling back to your feeling some years before that. BYRNE: Exactly. Exactly. I'm remembering my younger self and I'm aware that, even if I don't intend it, some of that comes across in my voice, and my delivery, and my word choice, and this and that. I was working with a friend when the record was coming out and we said, "Oh, let's invite other school groups or high school kids or whatever to interpret songs in different ways." The one that got done first was a high school choir in Detroit, Michigan, led by a woman named Miss V. And then I talk about hearing their version, which is just the most joyous thing you can imagine. And it seems to be exactly the opposite meaning to my version. And yet they haven't changed the words. They haven't changed the melody. And I go, "How is that possible? Isn't that wonderful that the meaning of a song, probably other things beyond songs, is not fixed, that somebody can adjust it and it means something really different?"

There's another song from the show - a blatantly hopeful song called " Every Day Is a Miracle."

BYRNE: I pick things that are intentionally funny because it's easy to accept the idea that, okay, if chickens had a concept of heaven, what would it be? It would be roosters and lots of corn. And you realize that yes, that's what it would be, that my perception, my perspective is just one of many. There's lots of ways of being and thinking about things. And I happen to pick chickens and other kinds of stuff. They're slightly absurd. But that's what- the humor is my way of making the point and releasing us, releasing myself, from the trap of my own little world, my own little closed perception.

We're all living in our own little world - occasionally colliding over a cataclysm, a piece of truly bad news like this global pandemic. Even so - and, especially, when it's over - I hope all of you are finding at least a few reasons to be cheerful.

***

Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Daphne Chen. Our staff also includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, Harry Huggins, Matt Hickey, Zack Lapinski, Mary Diduch, and Corinne Wallace; our intern is Isabel O'Brien. Our theme song is "Mr. Fortune," by the Hitchhikers; all the other music was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Before we get started: a recommendation. Michael Lewis is one of the most insightful American non-fiction writers of our generation, going back to Liar's Poker, but also , The Big Short , and . We had him on this show to talk about The Undoing Project - episode No.

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Social psychology is the study of the interplay between an individual and social groups. Social psychologists tackle issues that significantly affect people's health and well-being, such as bullying.

What Is Social Psychology?

According to psychologist Gordon Allport, social psychology uses scientific methods "to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied the presence of other human beings." Essentially, social psychology is about understanding how each person's individual behavior is influenced by the social environment in which that behavior takes place.

You probably already realize that other people can have a dramatic influence on the way you act and the choices you make. Consider how you might behave in a situation if you were all alone versus if there were other people in the room.

The decisions you make and the behaviors you exhibit might depend on not only how many people are present but exactly who you are around. For example, you are likely to behave much differently when you are around a group of close friends than you would around a group of colleagues or supervisors from work.

Social psychology encompasses a wide range of social topics, including:

​It is important to note that social psychology is not just about looking at social influences. Social perception and social interaction are also vital to understanding social behavior.

The way that we see other people (and the way we think they see us) can play a powerful role in a wide variety of actions and decisions. Just think for a moment about how you sometimes act differently in a public setting than you might if you were at home by yourself. At home, you might be loud and rambunctious, while in public you might be much more subdued and reserved.

Why is this? Because the people around us shape our thoughts, feelings, moods, attitudes, and perceptions. The presence of other people can make a difference in the choices we make and the actions we take.

While social psychology tends to be an academic field, the research that social psychologists perform has a powerful influence on our understanding of mental health and well-being. For example, research on conformity helps explain why teenagers sometimes go to such great lengths to fit in with their social group-sometimes to the detriment of their own health and wellness.

Understanding this helps psychologists develop public health programs and treatment approaches for adolescents. These can help teenagers resist potentially harmful behaviors such as smoking, drinking, and substance use.

History of Social Psychology

Plato referred to the idea of the "crowd mind," and concepts such as social loafing and social facilitation were introduced in the late 1800s. But it wasn't until after World War II that research on social psychology began in earnest.

The horrors of the Holocaust led researchers to study social influence, conformity, and obedience. What could explain why people participated in such evil actions? Were people following orders and bowing to social pressure, or were there some other forces at work? By investigating these questions, social psychologists were able to gain a greater understanding of the power of societal forces such as authority, compliance, and obedience.﻿﻿

Social psychologist Stanley Milgram, for example, was able to demonstrate just how far people are willing to go to obey authority figures. In a series of now infamous experiments, Milgram and his colleagues ordered study participants to deliver what they believed was a potentially dangerous shock to another person.

In reality, the shocks were not real and the other individual was only pretending to be hurt by the electrical pulses. But 65% of those who took part in the study delivered the maximum level of shock simply because an authority figure told them to do so.﻿﻿

How Social Psychology Differs From Other Disciplines

Social psychology is often confused with folk wisdom, personality psychology, and sociology. Unlike folk wisdom, which relies on anecdotal observations and subjective interpretation, social psychology employs scientific methods and empirical study. Researchers do not make assumptions about how people behave; they devise and carry out experiments that help point out relationships between different variables.

Personality psychology focuses on individual traits, characteristics, and thoughts. Social psychology is focused on situations. Social psychologists are interested in the impact that the social environment and group interactions have on attitudes and behaviors.

Finally, it is important to distinguish between social psychology and sociology. While there are many similarities between the two, sociology tends to look at social behavior and influences at a very broad-based level. Sociologists are interested in the institutions and cultures that influence how people behave.

Psychologists instead focus on situational variables that affect social behavior. While psychology and sociology both study similar topics, they are looking at these questions from different perspectives.

A Word From Verywell

What makes social psychology such an important topic? Social psychologists focus on societal concerns that have a powerful influence on individual well-being as well as the health of society as a whole, including problems such as substance use, crime, prejudice, domestic abuse, public health, bullying, and aggression.

Social psychologists typically do not work directly in the field of mental health, but the results of their research influence how mental health professionals treat behaviors that are influenced by social factors. Public health programs, for example, often rely on persuasion techniques identified by social psychologists to encourage people to engage in healthy behaviors while avoiding potentially dangerous ones.

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Ever notice how people behave differently in groups? Learn how social psychology studies the way people think, behave, and feel in social settings.

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15 Famous Experiments And Case Studies In Psychology-This source has videos and text.

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15 Famous Experiments And Case Studies In Psychology-This source has videos and text.

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Psychology has seen thousands upon thousands of research studies over the years. Most of these studies have helped shape our current understanding of human thoughts, behavior, and feelings.
The psychology case studies in this list are considered classic examples of psychological case studies and experiments, which are still being taught in introductory psychology courses up to this day.

Some studies, however, were downright shocking and controversial that you'd probably wonder why such studies were conducted back in the day. Imagine participating in an experiment for a small reward or extra class credit, only to be left scarred for life. These kinds of studies, however, paved the way for a more ethical approach to studying psychology and implementation of research standards such as the use of debriefing in psychology research.

Case Study vs. Experiment

Before we dive into the list of the most famous studies in psychology, let us first review the difference between case studies and experiments.

It is an in-depth study and analysis of an individual, group, community, or phenomenon. The results of a case study cannot be applied to the whole population, but they can provide insights for further studies.

It often uses qualitative research methods such as observations, surveys, and interviews.

It is often conducted in real-life settings rather than in controlled environments.

Experiment

An experiment is a type of study done on a sample or group of random participants, the results of which can be generalized to the whole population.

It often uses quantitative research methods that rely on numbers and statistics.

It is conducted in controlled environments, wherein some things or situations are manipulated.

See Also: Experimental vs Observational Studies
Famous Experiments in Psychology

1. The Marshmallow Experiment

Psychologist Walter Mischel conducted the marshmallow experiment at Stanford University in the 1960s to early 1970s. It was a simple test that aimed to define the connection between delayed gratification and success in life.

The instructions were fairly straightforward: children ages 4-6 were presented a piece of marshmallow on a table and they were told that they would receive a second piece if they could wait for 15 minutes without eating the first marshmallow.

About one-third of the 600 participants succeeded in delaying gratification to receive the second marshmallow. Mischel and his team followed up on these participants in the 1990s, learning that those who had the willpower to wait for a larger reward experienced more success in life in terms of SAT scores and other metrics.

This case study also supported self-control theory, a theory in criminology that holds that people with greater self-control are less likely to end up in trouble with the law!

The classic marshmallow experiment, however, was debunked in a 2018 replication study done by Tyler Watts and colleagues.

This more recent experiment had a larger group of participants (900) and a better representation of the general population when it comes to race and ethnicity. In this study, the researchers found out that the ability to wait for a second marshmallow does not depend on willpower alone but more so on the economic background and social status of the participants.

2. The Bystander Effect

In 1694, Kitty Genovese was murdered in the neighborhood of Kew Gardens, New York. It was told that there were up to 38 witnesses and onlookers in the vicinity of the crime scene, but nobody did anything to stop the murder or call for help.

Such tragedy was the catalyst that inspired social psychologists Bibb Latane and John Darley to formulate the phenomenon called bystander effect or bystander apathy.

Subsequent investigations showed that this story was exaggerated and inaccurate, as there were actually only about a dozen witnesses, at least two of whom called the police. But the case of Kitty Genovese led to various studies that aim to shed light on the bystander phenomenon.

Latane and Darley tested bystander intervention in an experimental study. Participants were asked to answer a questionnaire inside a room, and they would either be alone or with two other participants (who were actually actors or confederates in the study). Smoke would then come out from under the door. The reaction time of participants was tested - how long would it take them to report the smoke to the authorities or the experimenters?

The results showed that participants who were alone in the room reported the smoke faster than participants who were with two passive others. The study suggests that the more onlookers are present in an emergency situation, the less likely someone would step up to help, a social phenomenon now popularly called the bystander effect.

3. Asch Conformity Study

Have you ever made a decision against your better judgment just to fit in with your friends or family? The Asch Conformity Studies will help you understand this kind of situation better.

In this experiment, a group of participants were shown three numbered lines of different lengths and asked to identify the longest of them all. However, only one true participant was present in every group and the rest were actors, most of whom told the wrong answer.

Results showed that the participants went for the wrong answer, even though they knew which line was the longest one in the first place. When the participants were asked why they identified the wrong one, they said that they didn't want to be branded as strange or peculiar.

This study goes to show that there are situations in life when people prefer fitting in than being right. It also tells that there is power in numbers - a group's decision can overwhelm a person and make them doubt their judgment.

4. The Bobo Doll Experiment

The Bobo Doll Experiment was conducted by Dr. Albert Bandura, the proponent of social learning theory.

Back in the 1960s, the Nature vs. Nurture debate was a popular topic among psychologists. Bandura contributed to this discussion by proposing that human behavior is mostly influenced by environmental rather than genetic factors.

In the Bobo Doll Experiment, children were divided into three groups: one group was shown a video in which an adult acted aggressively toward the Bobo Doll, the second group was shown a video in which an adult play with the Bobo Doll, and the third group served as the control group where no video was shown.

The children were then led to a room with different kinds of toys, including the Bobo Doll they've seen in the video. Results showed that children tend to imitate the adults in the video. Those who were presented the aggressive model acted aggressively toward the Bobo Doll while those who were presented the passive model showed less aggression.

While the Bobo Doll Experiment can no longer be replicated because of ethical concerns, it has laid out the foundations of social learning theory and helped us understand the degree of influence adult behavior has on children.

5. Blue Eye / Brown Eye Experiment

Following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, third-grade teacher Jane Elliott conducted an experiment in her class. Although not a formal experiment in controlled settings, A Class Divided is a good example of a social experiment to help children understand the concept of racism and discrimination.

The class was divided into two groups: blue-eyed children and brown-eyed children. For one day, Elliott gave preferential treatment to her blue-eyed students, giving them more attention and pampering them with rewards. The next day, it was the brown-eyed students' turn to receive extra favors and privileges.

As a result, whichever group of students was given preferential treatment performed exceptionally well in class, had higher quiz scores, and recited more frequently; students who were discriminated against felt humiliated, answered poorly in tests, and became uncertain with their answers in class.

This study is now widely taught in sociocultural psychology classes.

6. Stanford Prison Experiment

One of the most controversial and widely-cited studies in psychology is the Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by Philip Zimbardo at the basement of the Stanford psychology building in 1971. The hypothesis was that abusive behavior in prisons is influenced by the personality traits of the prisoners and prison guards.

The participants in the experiment were college students who were randomly assigned as either a prisoner or a prison guard. The prison guards were then told to run the simulated prison for two weeks. However, the experiment had to be stopped in just 6 days.

The prison guards abused their authority and harassed the prisoners through verbal and physical means. The prisoners, on the other hand, showed submissive behavior. Zimbardo decided to stop the experiment because the prisoners were showing signs of emotional and physical breakdown.

Although the experiment wasn't completed, the results strongly showed that people can easily get into a social role when others expect them to, especially when it's highly stereotyped.

7. The Halo Effect

Have you ever wondered why toothpastes and other dental products are endorsed in advertisements by celebrities more often than dentists? The Halo Effect is one of the reasons!

The Halo Effect shows how one favorable attribute of a person can gain them positive perceptions in other attributes. In the case of product advertisements, attractive celebrities are also perceived as intelligent and knowledgeable of a certain subject matter even though they're not technically experts.

The Halo Effect originated in a classic study done by Edward Thorndike in the early 1900s. He asked military commanding officers to rate their subordinates based on different qualities, such as physical appearance, leadership, dependability, and intelligence.

The results showed that high ratings of a particular quality influences the ratings of other qualities, producing a halo effect of overall high ratings. The opposite also applied, which means that a negative rating in one quality also correlated to negative ratings in other qualities.

Experiments on the Halo Effect came in various formats as well, supporting Thorndike's original theory. This phenomenon suggests that our perception of other people's overall personality is hugely influenced by a quality that we focus on.

8. Cognitive Dissonance

There are experiences in our lives when our beliefs and behaviors do not align with each other and we try to justify them in our minds. This is cognitive dissonance, which was studied in an experiment by Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith back in 1959.

In this experiment, participants had to go through a series of boring and repetitive tasks, such as spending an hour turning pegs in a wooden knob. After completing the tasks, they were then paid either $1 or $20 to tell the next participants that the tasks were extremely fun and enjoyable. Afterwards, participants were asked to rate the experiment. Those who were given $1 rated the experiment as more interesting and fun than those who received $20.

The results showed that those who received a smaller incentive to lie experienced cognitive dissonance - $1 wasn't enough incentive for that one hour of painstakingly boring activity, so the participants had to justify that they had fun anyway.

Famous Case Studies in Psychology

9. Little Albert

In 1920, behaviourist theorists John Watson and Rosalie Rayner experimented on a 9-month-old baby to test the effects of classical conditioning in instilling fear in humans.

This was such a controversial study that it gained popularity in psychology textbooks and syllabi because it is a classic example of unethical research studies done in the name of science.

In one of the experiments, Little Albert was presented with a harmless stimulus or object, a white rat, which he wasn't scared of at first. But every time Little Albert would see the white rat, the researchers would play a scary sound of hammer and steel. After about 6 pairings, Little Albert learned to fear the rat even without the scary sound.

Little Albert developed signs of fear to different objects presented to him through classical conditioning. He even generalized his fear to other stimuli not present in the course of the experiment.

10. Phineas Gage

Phineas Gage is such a celebrity in Psych 101 classes, even though the way he rose to popularity began with a tragic accident. He was a resident of Central Vermont and worked in the construction of a new railway line in the mid-1800s. One day, an explosive went off prematurely, sending a tamping iron straight into his face and through his brain.

Gage survived the accident, fortunately, something that is considered a feat even up to this day. He managed to find a job as a stagecoach after the accident. However, his family and friends reported that his personality changed so much that "he was no longer Gage" (Harlow, 1868).

New evidence on the case of Phineas Gage has since come to light, thanks to modern scientific studies and medical tests. However, there are still plenty of mysteries revolving around his brain damage and subsequent recovery.

Anna O., a social worker and feminist of German Jewish descent, was one of the first patients to receive psychoanalytic treatment.

Her real name was Bertha Pappenheim and she inspired much of Sigmund Freud's works and books on psychoanalytic theory, although they hadn't met in person. Their connection was through Joseph Breuer, Freud's mentor when he was still starting his clinical practice.

Anna O. suffered from paralysis, personality changes, hallucinations, and rambling speech, but her doctors could not find the cause. Joseph Breuer was then called to her house for intervention and he performed psychoanalysis, also called the "talking cure", on her.

Breuer would tell Anna O. to say anything that came to her mind, such as her thoughts, feelings, and childhood experiences. It was noted that her symptoms subsided by talking things out.

However, Breuer later referred Anna O. to the Bellevue Sanatorium, where she recovered and set out to be a renowned writer and advocate of women and children.

12. Patient HM

H.M., or Henry Gustav Molaison, was a severe amnesiac who had been the subject of countless psychological and neurological studies.

Henry was 27 when he underwent brain surgery to cure the epilepsy that he had been experiencing since childhood. In an unfortunate turn of events, he lost his memory because of the surgery and his brain also became unable to store long-term memories.

He was then regarded as someone living solely in the present, forgetting an experience as soon as it happened and only remembering bits and pieces of his past. Over the years, his amnesia and the structure of his brain had helped neuropsychologists learn more about cognitive functions.

Suzanne Corkin, a researcher, writer, and good friend of H.M., recently published a book about his life. Entitled Permanent Present Tense, this book is both a memoir and a case study following the struggles and joys of Henry Gustav Molaison.

13. Chris Sizemore

Chris Sizemore gained celebrity status in the psychology community when she was diagnosed with multiple personality disorder, now known as dissociative identity disorder.

Sizemore has several alter egos, which included Eve Black, Eve White, and Jane. Various papers about her stated that these alter egos were formed as a coping mechanism against the traumatic experiences she underwent in her childhood.

Sizemore said that although she has succeeded in unifying her alter egos into one dominant personality, there were periods in the past experienced by only one of her alter egos. For example, her husband married her Eve White alter ego and not her.

Her story inspired her psychiatrists to write a book about her, entitled The Three Faces of Eve, which was then turned into a 1957 movie of the same title.

14. David Reimer

When David was just 8 months old, he lost his penis because of a botched circumcision operation.

Psychologist John Money then advised Reimer's parents to raise him as a girl instead, naming him Brenda. His gender reassignment was supported by subsequent surgery and hormonal therapy.

Money described Reimer's gender reassignment as a success, but problems started to arise as Reimer was growing up. His boyishness was not completely subdued by the hormonal therapy. When he was 14 years old, he learned about the secrets of his past and he underwent gender reassignment to become male again.

Reimer became an advocate for children undergoing the same difficult situation he had been. His life story ended when he was 38 as he took his own life.

Kim Peek was the inspiration behind Rain Man, an Oscar-winning movie about an autistic savant character played by Dustin Hoffman.

The movie was released in 1988, a time when autism wasn't widely known and acknowledged yet. So it was an eye-opener for many people who watched the film.

In reality, Kim Peek was a non-autistic savant. He was exceptionally intelligent despite the brain abnormalities he was born with. He was like a walking encyclopedia, knowledgeable about travel routes, US zip codes, historical facts, and classical music. He also read and memorized approximately 12,000 books in his lifetime.

Conclusion

This list of experiments and case studies in psychology is just the tip of the iceberg! There are still countless interesting psychology studies that you can explore if you want to learn more about human behavior and dynamics.

You can also conduct your own mini-experiment or participate in a study conducted in your school or neighborhood. Just remember that there are ethical standards to follow so as not to repeat the lasting physical and emotional harm done to Little Albert or the Stanford Prison Experiment participants.

References

Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 70(9), 1-70. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0093718

Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1961). Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63(3), 575-582. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0045925

Elliott, J., Yale University., WGBH (Television station : Boston, Mass.), & PBS DVD (Firm). (2003). A class divided. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Films.

Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58(2), 203-210. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0041593

Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). A study of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison. Naval Research Review, 30, 4-17.

Latane, B., & Darley, J. M. (1968). Group inhibition of bystander intervention in emergencies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 10(3), 215-221. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0026570

Mischel, W. (2014). The Marshmallow Test: Mastering self-control. Little, Brown and Co.

Thorndike, E. (1920) A Constant Error in Psychological Ratings. Journal of Applied Psychology, 4, 25-29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0071663

Watson, J. B., & Rayner, R. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions. Journal of experimental psychology, 3(1), 1.

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15 Famous Experiments and Case Studies in Psychology (2023)

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Psychology has seen thousands upon thousands of research studies over the years. Most of these studies have helped shape our current understanding of human

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Psychologist Harry Harlow performed a series of experiments in the 1960s designed to explore the powerful effects that love and attachment have on normal development. In these experiments, Harlow isolated young rhesus monkeys, depriving them of their mothers and keeping them from interacting with other monkeys. The experiments were often shockingly cruel, and the results were just as devastating.﻿﻿

The infant monkeys in some experiments were separated from their real mothers and then raised by "wire" mothers. One of the surrogate mothers was made purely of wire. While it provided food, it offered no softness or comfort. The other surrogate mother was made of wire and cloth, offering some degree of comfort to the infant monkeys. Harlow found that while the monkeys would go to the wire mother for nourishment, they preferred the soft, cloth mother for comfort.

Some of Harlow's experiments involved isolating the young monkey in what he termed a "pit of despair." This was essentially an isolation chamber. Young monkeys were placed in the isolation chambers for as long as 10 weeks. Other monkeys were isolated for as long as a year. Within just a few days, the infant monkeys would begin huddling in the corner of the chamber, remaining motionless.

Harlow's distressing research resulted in monkeys with severe emotional and social disturbances. They lacked social skills and were unable to play with other monkeys. They were also incapable of normal sexual behavior, so Harlow devised yet another horrifying device, which he referred to as a "rape rack." The isolated monkeys were tied down in a mating position to be bred. Not surprisingly, the isolated monkeys also ended up being incapable of taking care of their offspring, neglecting and abusing their young.

Harlow's experiments were finally halted in 1985 when the American Psychological Association passed rules regarding treating people and animals in research.﻿﻿

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Controversial and Unethical Psychological Experiments for Reasearch

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Psychologist Harry Harlow performed a series of experiments in the 1960s designed to explore the powerful effects that love and attachment have on normal development. In these experiments, Harlow isolated young rhesus monkeys, depriving them of their mothers and keeping them from interacting with other monkeys.

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5 Psychology Experiments You Couldn't Do Today

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5 Psychology Experiments You Couldn't Do Today

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5 Psychology Experiments You Couldn't Do Today

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Psychological studies can be key to understanding what makes people tick, yet some individuals have gone about their research in rather unusual - and sometimes morally dubious - ways. Furthermore, while these researchers' findings may increase the sum of knowledge on human behavior, the methods that a number of psychologists have used in order to test theories have at times overstepped ethical boundaries or might even appear somewhat sadistic. Those taking part in such studies have not always escaped unscathed, either; in fact, as a result some have suffered lasting emotional damage - or worse. Here are ten bizarre psychology experiments that totally crossed the line.

10. Milgram Experiment (1961)
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Yale University social psychology professor Stanley Milgram embarked on his now infamous series of experiments in 1961. Prompted by the trial of high-ranking Nazi and Holocaust-coordinator Adolf Eichmann, Milgram wished to assess whether people really would carry out acts that clashed with their conscience if so directed by an authority figure. For each test, Milgram lined up three people, who were split into the roles of "experimenter" (or authority figure), "teacher" and "learner" (actually an actor). After that, the teacher - who was separated from the learner and told to comply with the experimenter - would attempt to tutor the learner in sets of word pairs. The penalty for wrong answers by the learner was shocking in more ways than one, as they pretended to receive painful and increasingly strong jolts of electricity that the teacher thought they were delivering. Even though no real shocks were inflicted, the ethics of the experiment came under close scrutiny owing to the severe psychological stress placed on its volunteer subjects.

9. Little Albert Experiment (1920)
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Things were different in 1920. Back then, you could take a healthy baby and scare it silly in the name of science - which is exactly what American social psychologist John B. Watson did at Johns Hopkins University. Interested to learn if he would be able to condition a child to fear something ordinary - if coupled with something else that he supposed triggered inborn fear - Watson borrowed eight-month-old baby Albert for an unethical psychological experiment. First, Watson introduced the child to a white rat. Observing that it didn't scare Albert, Watson then reintroduced the rat, only this time together with a sudden loud noise. Naturally, the noise frightened Albert. Watson then deliberately got Albert to associate the rat with the noise, until the baby couldn't even see the rat without bursting into tears. Essentially, the psychologist gave Albert a pretty unpleasant phobia. Moreover, Watson went on to make the infant distressed when seeing a rabbit, a dog and even the furry white beard of "Santa Claus." By the end of the experiment, Albert might well have been traumatized for life!

8. Stanford Prison Experiment (1971)
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In August 1971 Stanford University psychology professor Philip Zimbardo decided to test the theory that conflict and ill-treatment involving prisoners and prison guards is chiefly down to individuals' personality traits. Zimbardo and his team set up a simulated prison in the Stanford psychology building and gave 24 volunteers the roles of either "prisoner" or "guard." The participants were then dressed according to their assigned roles, with Zimbardo handing himself the part of "superintendent." While Zimbardo had steered the guards towards creating "a sense of powerlessness" among the mock prisoners, what happened was pretty disturbing. Around four of the dozen guards became actively sadistic. Prisoners were stripped and humiliated, left in unsanitary conditions and forced to sleep on concrete floors. One was shut in a cupboard. Zimbardo himself was so immersed in his role that he didn't notice the severity of what was going on. After six days, his girlfriend's protests persuaded him to halt the experiment - but not before at least five of the prisoners had suffered emotional trauma.

7. Monkey Drug Trials (1969)
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While their findings may have shed light on the psychological aspect of drug addiction, three researchers at the University of Michigan Medical School arguably completely overstepped the mark in 1969 by getting macaque monkeys hooked on illegal substances. G.A. Deneau, T. Yanagita and M.H. Seevers injected the unwitting primates with drugs, including cocaine, amphetamines, morphine, LSD, and alcohol. Why? In order to see if the animals would then go on to freely administer doses of the psychoactive and, in some cases, potentially deadly substances themselves. Many of the monkeys did, which the researchers claimed established a link between drug abuse and psychological dependence. Still, given the fact that the conclusions cannot necessarily be applied to humans, the experiment may have had questionable scientific value. Moreover, even if a link was determined, the method was quite possibly unethical and undoubtedly cruel - especially since some of the monkeys became a danger to themselves and died.

6. Bobo Doll Experiment (1961, 1963)
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In the early 1960s Stanford University psychologist Albert Bandura attempted to demonstrate that behavior - in this case violent behavior - can be learned through observation of reward and punishment. To do this, he acquired 72 nursery-age children together with a large, inflatable toy known as a Bobo doll. He then made a subset of the children watch an adult violently beating and verbally abusing the toy for around ten minutes. Alarmingly, Bandura found that out of the two-dozen children who witnessed this display, in many cases the behavior was imitated. Left alone in the room with the Bobo doll once the adult had gone, the children became verbally and physically aggressive towards the doll, attacking it with an intensity arguably frightening to see in ones so young. In 1963 Bandura carried out another Bobo doll experiment that yielded similar results. Nevertheless, the psychology research has since come under fire on ethical grounds, seeing as its subjects were basically trained to act aggressively - with possible longer-term consequences.

5. Homosexual Aversion Therapy (1967)
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Aversion therapy to "cure" homosexuality was once a prominent subject of research at various universities. A study detailing attempts at "treating" a group of 43 homosexual men was published in the British Medical Journal in 1967. The study recounted researchers M.J. MacCulloch and M.P. Feldman's experiments in aversion therapy at Manchester, U.K.'s Crumpsall Hospital. The researchers' volunteers were shown slides of men that they were told to keep looking at for as long as they considered it appealing. After eight seconds of such a slide being shown, however, the test subjects were given an electric shock. Slides showing women were also presented, and the volunteers were able to look at them without any punishment involved. Although the researchers suggested that the trials had some success in "curing" their participants, in 1994 the American Psychological Association deemed homosexual aversion therapy dangerous and ineffective.

4. The Third Wave (1967)

"How was the Holocaust allowed to happen?" It's one of history's burning questions. And when Ron Jones, a teacher at Palo Alto's Cubberley High School, was struggling to answer it for his sophomore students in 1967, he resolved to show them instead. On the first day of his experiment, Jones created an authoritarian atmosphere in his class, positioning himself as a sort of World War II-style supreme leader. But as the week progressed, Jones' one-man brand of fascism turned into a school-wide club. Students came up with their own insignia and adopted a Nazi-like salute. They were taught to firmly obey Jones' commands and become anti-democratic to the core, even "informing" on one another. Jones' new ideology - dubbed "The Third Wave" - spread like wildfire. By the fourth day, the teacher was concerned that the movement he'd unleashed was getting out of hand, and he brought the experiment to a halt. On the fifth day, he told the students that they had invoked a similar feeling of supremacy to that of the German people under the Nazi regime. Thankfully, there were no repercussions.

3. UCLA Schizophrenia Medication Experiment (1983-1994)

From 1983 psychologist Keith H. Nuechterlein and psychiatrist Michael Gitlin from the UCLA Medical Center commenced a now controversial study into the mental processes of schizophrenia. Specifically, they were looking into the ways in which sufferers of the mental disorder relapse and were trying to find out if there are any predictors of psychosis. To achieve this, they had schizophrenics, from a group of hundreds involved in the program, taken off their medication. Such medication is not without its nasty side effects, and the research may hold important findings about the condition. Nevertheless, the experiment has been criticized for not sufficiently protecting the patients in the event of schizophrenic symptoms returning; nor did it clearly determine the point at which the patients should be treated again. What is more, this had tragic consequences in 1991 when former program participant Antonio Lamadrid killed himself by jumping from nine floors up - despite having been open about his suicidal state of mind and supposedly under the study's watch.

2. The Monster Study (1939)
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Appropriately branded the "Monster Study" by its contemporaries, psychologist Dr. Wendell Johnson's speech therapy experiment was at first kept a secret in case it damaged his professional reputation. The University of Iowa's Johnson drafted in graduate student Mary Tudor to carry out the 1939 experiment for her master's thesis, whilst Johnson himself supervised. Twenty-two orphaned children, ten of whom had issues with stuttering, were put into two groups, each containing a mix of those with and without speech disorders. One of the groups was given positive, encouraging feedback about their verbal communication, while the other was utterly disparaged for their - sometimes-non-existent - speech problems. The findings were recorded. This six-month study had a major impact even on those who had no prior talking difficulties, making some insecure and withdrawn. In 2007 half a dozen of the former subjects were given a large payout by the state of Iowa for what they had endured, with the claimants reporting "lifelong psychological and emotional scars."

1. David Reimer (1967-1977)
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Canadian David Reimer's life was changed drastically on account of one Johns Hopkins University professor. After a botched circumcision procedure left Reimer with disfiguring genital damage at six months old, his parents took him to be seen by John Money, a professor of medical psychology and pediatrics who advocated the theory of "gender neutrality" - arguing that gender identity is first and foremost learned socially from a young age. Money suggested that although Reiner's penis could not be repaired, he could and should undergo sex reassignment surgery and be raised as a female. In 1967 Reimer began the treatment that would turn him into "Brenda." However, despite further visits to Money over the next ten years, Reimer was never really able to identify himself as female and lived as a male from the age of 14. He would go on to have treatment to undo the sex reassignment, but the ongoing experiment had prompted extreme depression in him - an underlying factor that contributed to his 2004 suicide. John Money, meanwhile, was mired in controversy.

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10 Bizarre Psychology Experiments that Completely Crossed the Line

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Image Source Psychological studies can be key to understanding what makes people tick, yet some individuals have gone about their research in rather unusual - and sometimes morally dubious - ways. Furthermore, while these researchers' findings may increase the sum of

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This week are beginning  the exploration of the Nature-Nurture Debate in psychology. Essentially, which parts of human behavior can we attribute to our genetics and which can be attributed to our environment?

Use the resources to learn a little more about it, and then write a journal entry. Choose a prompt to answer, or create your own reflection of your learning:

-What physical and personality traits have you inherited from your parents, biological or otherwise?

-How have both nature and nurture affected your own development?

-Do your friends influence your behavior? If so, how? Try to be as specific as you can.

-Are you influenced by what you see and hear in the media?

Describe the impact this has on you. Use specific examples, please.

-Are you influenced by a special adult in your life, such as a relative, a teacher,

or a mentor? How has this person helped shape your personality?

-your general thoughts on the topic

-a fictional story about the topic

- any other reflection you might have.

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Gary Marcus: Nature vs Nurture is a False Dichotomy | AI Podcast Clips-Lex Fridman

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Gary Marcus: Nature vs Nurture is a False Dichotomy | AI Podcast Clips-Lex Fridman

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Gary Marcus: Nature vs Nurture is a False Dichotomy | AI Podcast Clips

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60 Years On, Twin/Triplet Study Still Raises Questions

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60 Years On, Twin/Triplet Study Still Raises Questions

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Nestled in the stacks of a Yale University library rests more than two decades' worth of data from a contentious study examining the likes and differences of twins and triplets reared separately as part of a state-sanctioned experiment.

In the 1960s, clinical psychiatrist Peter Neubauer and a New York adoption agency arranged to place several twin pairs and one set of triplets in different homes in order to prospectively study their lives, as the Yale Daily News recently reported. The study, which has since been criticized for being unethical -- for example, neither the children's biological parents nor the adopting families were informed -- was an attempt to get at the central psychological questions of "nature versus nurture" and the "twinning reaction."

Neubauer, who died in 2008, never published a comprehensive account of the study's findings, although some made their way into a 1996 book he wrote with his son Alexander, titled Nature's Thumbprint: The New Genetics of Personality.

In 2018, the study became the subject of two documentaries: "Three Identical Strangers," which details the story of the study's triplet brothers who coincidentally met on their shared college campus, and "The Twinning Reaction," which tells a pair of twins' similar story.

Central to the documentaries' themes is the air of secrecy surrounding Neubauer's experiment that has inspired some healthcare professionals to demand the research files be released, despite Yale's commitment to keep them sealed until 2065. But according to Leon Hoffman, MD, and Lois Oppenheim, PhD, of the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, writing in a commentary, the "focus on the human costs of the study obscures important historical and scientific misunderstanding that deserve clarification."

MedPage Today spoke with Hoffman about aspects of the study the filmmakers may have gotten wrong and the study's implications for clinical research today. Below is a transcript of his remarks, which have been edited for brevity and clarity.
What should we keep in mind when interpreting the study and these documentaries?
Hoffman: I think one thing is that the idea of secrecy was not done maliciously. The idea of open adoption was way, way in the future. The rule was, you were not allowed to tell the adoptive parents anything about the biological parents. The other thing is that this was early in terms of informed consent. It was just being developed over that time. There were also no [institutional review boards] at the time.

From a contemporary perspective, I think the important thing to learn -- even with all these safeguards that we have now -- is you always have to think about unintended consequences. I think, to me, that's the most important lesson from this. [Neubauer] was really trying to keep the confidentiality of the kids, of the family.

Then the other important thing is in terms of psychoanalytic theory, particularly then, the idea of separation, individualization was very important. The question of the "twinning reaction." There are a lot of articles about this, that twins could either become so opposite to one another or be so identical that their own personalities fuse and merge. The other thing was that there was this data that twins were more difficult for the mother and that it would be easier for the mother to take care of one child instead of two children.
What ideas are brought up in the story that are still relevant today? Why is there this resurfacing of these stories now, some 60 years later?
Hoffman: I think the problem with this and probably a lot of other "exposés" is that we judge the past by our present values. In one of the articles [I wrote] about this study, I think I quote this article by [Samuel] Abrams and his introductory paragraph says there was thought that twins would be better off separated if they're going to be adopted.

I think the main trouble I had with the film was that the real distortion was that it was done in order to experiment on them rather than this was an experiment in nature which then was studied. Back in that time, there were a lot of these discussions about genes versus environment.

I always tell parents of kids that I see, "How much is genetic and how much is environment?" and I always say, "It's 100% of both," because those two are always interacting with one another. More and more data has shown that genetic variations get very much affected by the environment.
Do you think Neubauer was right to seal the study forms? Why or why not?
Hoffman: What would I have done 20 years ago? I really have no idea. Neubauer was very much concerned with confidentiality. That's why they never really published the details because it would be too revealing. Was he right to seal it? I don't know. That's always a question. The triplets, the two surviving triplets and the twins in the other movie, they got access to their papers. He probably thought that would be the safest thing to do, I would say. Whether he's right or wrong, I don't know. We always have 20/20 hindsight, but that I don't know.
What lessons can we bring forward from this study and this story in regards to medical ethics today? How do you think it has shaped clinical research today?
Hoffman: I think it really shows the importance of informed consent, number one. Number two, it also shows us that even when you do get informed consent, you just don't know what's going to happen. It's really hard to predict the future of what would be the consequences of what you do. But the importance of informed consent is really probably the central issue.
What is the most interesting part or most important takeaway in this story?
Hoffman: The filmmaker had an opportunity to explore the whole issue of what is it like to study human activity in a naturalistic way and how difficult it is to study. That kind of study is very different than a more rigorous, controlled trial where a procedure will be implemented with one group and not with another group. Naturalistic studies are very, very hard to do because you have so many variables. Retrospectively, let's say, if that were being done now, people would give you permission to study your family or to study a group of families. That's the way it's done now. How one does "clinical research," you have to think about what the impact might be if the person's identity is revealed inadvertently.

Elizabeth Hlavinka covers clinical news, features, and investigative pieces for MedPage Today. She also produces episodes for the Anamnesis podcast. Follow

Disclosures

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60 Years On, Twin/Triplet Study Still Raises Questions

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Nestled in the stacks of a Yale University library rests more than two decades' worth of data from a contentious study examining the likes and differences of twins and triplets reared separately as part of a state-sanctioned experiment.

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The Age Old Debate of Nature vs. Nurture

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The Age Old Debate of Nature vs. Nurture

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The nature versus nurture debate is one of the oldest philosophical issues within psychology. So what exactly is it all about?

Nature refers to all of the genes and hereditary factors that influence who we are-from our physical appearance to our personality characteristics.

Nurture refers to all the environmental variables that impact who we are, including our early childhood experiences, how we were raised, our social relationships, and our surrounding culture.

Even today, different branches of psychology often take a one versus the other approach. For example, biological psychology tends to stress the importance of genetics and biological influences. Behaviorism, on the other hand, focuses on the impact that the environment has on behavior.

In the past, debates over the relative contributions of nature versus nurture often took a very one-sided approach, with one side arguing that nature played the most important role and the other side suggesting that it was nurture that was the most significant. Today, most experts recognize that both factors play a critical role.﻿﻿ Not only that, but they also realize that nature and nurture interact in important ways all throughout life.

Do genetic or environmental factors have a greater influence on your behavior? Do inherited traits or life experiences play a greater role in shaping your personality? The nature versus nurture debate is one of the oldest issues in psychology. The debate centers on the relative contributions of genetic inheritance and environmental factors to human development.

Some philosophers such as Plato and Descartes suggested that certain things are inborn, or that they occur naturally regardless of environmental influences. Nativists take the position that all or most behaviors and characteristics are the results of inheritance.

Other well-known thinkers such as John Locke believed in what is known as tabula rasa, which suggests that the mind begins as a blank slate. According to this notion, everything that we are and all of our knowledge is determined by our experience.

Empiricists take the position that all or most behaviors and characteristics result from learning. Behaviorism is a good example of a theory rooted in empiricism. The behaviorists believe that all actions and behaviors are the results of conditioning. Theorists such as John B. Watson believed that people could be trained to do and become anything, regardless of their genetic background.

For example, when a person achieves tremendous academic success, did they do so because they are genetically predisposed to be successful or is it a result of an enriched environment? If a man abuses his wife and kids, is it because he was born with violent tendencies or is it something he learned by observing his own parent's behavior?

An example of a nativist theory within psychology is Chomsky's concept of a language acquisition device (or LAD).﻿﻿ According to this theory, all children are born with an instinctive mental capacity that allows them to both learn and produce language.

Some characteristics are tied to environmental influences. How a person behaves can be linked to influences such as parenting styles and learned experiences. For example, a child might learn through observation and reinforcement to say 'please' and 'thank you.' Another child might learn to behave aggressively by observing older children engage in violent behavior on the playground.

One example of an empiricist theory within psychology is Albert Bandura's social learning theory. According to the theory, people learn by observing the behavior of others. In his famous Bobo doll experiment, Bandura demonstrated that children could learn aggressive behaviors simply by observing another person acting aggressively.

Even today, research in psychology often tends to emphasize one influence over the other. In biopsychology, for example, researchers conduct studies exploring how neurotransmitters influence behavior, which emphasizes the nature side of the debate. In social psychology, researchers might conduct studies looking at how things such as peer pressure and social media influence behaviors, stressing the importance of nurture.

Interactions

What researchers do know is that the interaction between heredity and environment is often the most important factor of all. Kevin Davies of PBS's Nova described one fascinating example of this phenomenon.

Perfect pitch is the ability to detect the pitch of a musical tone without any reference. Researchers have found that this ability tends to run in families and believe that it might be tied to a single gene. However, they've also discovered that possessing the gene alone is not enough to develop this ability. Instead, musical training during early childhood is necessary to allow this inherited ability to manifest itself.﻿﻿

Height is another example of a trait that is influenced by nature and nurture interaction. A child might come from a family where everyone is tall, and he may have inherited these genes for height. However, if he grows up in a deprived environment where he does not receive proper nourishment, he might never attain the height he might have had he grown up in a healthier environment.

Contemporary Views

Throughout the history of psychology, however, this debate has continued to stir up controversy. Eugenics, for example, was a movement heavily influenced by the nativist approach.

Psychologist Francis Galton, a cousin of the naturalist Charles Darwin, coined both the terms nature versus nurture and eugenics and believed that intelligence was the result of genetics. Galton believed that intelligent individuals should be encouraged to marry and have many children, while less intelligent individuals should be discouraged from reproducing.

Today, the majority of experts believe that both nature and nurture influence behavior and development. However, the issue still rages on in many areas such as in the debate on the origins of homosexuality and influences on intelligence. While few people take the extreme nativist or radical empiricist approach, researchers and experts still debate the degree to which biology and environment influence behavior.

These influences include genetic factors that interact with one another, environmental factors that interact such as social experiences and overall culture, as well as how both hereditary and environmental influences intermingle. Instead, many researchers today are interested in seeing how genes modulate environmental influences and vice versa.

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The nature versus nurture debate is one of the oldest philosophical issues within psychology. So what exactly is it all about? Nature refers to all of the genes and hereditary factors that influence who we are-from our physical appearance to our personality characteristics.

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Adoption studies help to investigate the nature /nurture debate in psychology, that is they help to explore the extent to which a certain behaviour may be caused by genetic factors as opposed to en…

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What identical twins separated at birth teach us about genetics - BBC REEL

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What identical twins separated at birth teach us about genetics - BBC REEL

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What identical twins separated at birth teach us about genetics - BBC REEL

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How Do Genes Influence Behavior? - Instant Egghead #18

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How Do Genes Influence Behavior? - Instant Egghead #18

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How Do Genes Influence Behavior? - Instant Egghead #18

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By Dr. Saul McLeod, updated 2018

In order to receive information from the environment we are equipped with sense organs e.g. eye, ear, nose. Each sense organ is part of a sensory system which receives sensory inputs and transmits sensory information to the brain.

A particular problem for psychologists is to explain the process by which the physical energy received by sense organs forms the basis of perceptual experience. Sensory inputs are somehow converted into perceptions of desks and computers, flowers and buildings, cars and planes; into sights, sounds, smells, taste and touch experiences.

A major theoretical issue on which psychologists are divided is the extent to which perception relies directly on the information present in the environment. Some argue that perceptual processes are not direct, but depend on the perceiver's expectations and previous knowledge as well as the information available in the stimulus itself.

This controversy is discussed with respect to Gibson (1966) who has proposed a direct theory of perception which is a 'bottom-up' theory, and Gregory (1970) who has proposed a constructivist (indirect) theory of perception which is a 'top-down' theory.

Psychologists distinguish between two types of processes in perception: bottom-up processing and top-down processing.

Bottom-up processing is also known as data-driven processing, because perception begins with the stimulus itself. Processing is carried out in one direction from the retina to the visual cortex, with each successive stage in the visual pathway carrying out ever more complex analysis of the input.

Top-down processing refers to the use of contextual information in pattern recognition. For example, understanding difficult handwriting is easier when reading complete sentences than when reading single and isolated words. This is because the meaning of the surrounding words provide a context to aid understanding.

Gregory (1970) and Top Down Processing Theory

Psychologist Richard Gregory (1970) argued that perception is a constructive process which relies on top-down processing.

Stimulus information from our environment is frequently ambiguous so to interpret it, we require higher cognitive information either from past experiences or stored knowledge in order to makes inferences about what we perceive. Helmholtz called it the 'likelihood principle'.

For Gregory perception is a hypothesis, which is based on prior knowledge. In this way we are actively constructing our perception of reality based on our environment and stored information.

Summary

A lot of information reaches the eye, but much is lost by the time it reaches the brain (Gregory estimates about 90% is lost).

Therefore, the brain has to guess what a person sees based on past experiences. We actively construct our perception of reality.

Richard Gregory proposed that perception involves a lot of hypothesis testing to make sense of the information presented to the sense organs.

Our perceptions of the world are hypotheses based on past experiences and stored information.

Sensory receptors receive information from the environment, which is then combined with previously stored information about the world which we have built up as a result of experience.

The formation of incorrect hypotheses will lead to errors of perception (e.g. visual illusions like the Necker cube).

Evidence to Support Gregory's Theory

Highly unlikely objects tend to be mistaken for likely objects

Gregory has demonstrated this with a hollow mask of a face (see video below). Such a mask is generally seen as normal, even when one knows and feels the real mask.

There seems to be an overwhelming need to reconstruct the face, similar to Helmholtz's description of 'unconscious inference'. An assumption based on past experience.

Perceptions can be ambiguous

The Necker cube is a good example of this. When you stare at the crosses on the cube the orientation can suddenly change, or 'flip'.

It becomes unstable and a single physical pattern can produce two perceptions.

Gregory argued that this object appears to flip between orientations because the brain develops two equally plausible hypotheses and is unable to decide between them.

When the perception changes though there is no change of the sensory input, the change of appearance cannot be due to bottom-up processing. It must be set downwards by the prevailing perceptual hypothesis of what is near and what is far.

Perception allows behavior to be generally appropriate to non-sensed object characteristics

For example, we respond to certain objects as though they are doors even though we can only see a long narrow rectangle as the door is ajar.

What we have seen so far would seem to confirm that indeed we do interpret the information that we receive, in other words, perception is a top down process.

Critical Evaluation of Gregory's Theory

1. The Nature of Perceptual Hypotheses

If perceptions make use of hypothesis testing the question can be asked 'what kind of hypotheses are they?' Scientists modify a hypothesis according to the support they find for it so are we as perceivers also able to modify our hypotheses? In some cases it would seem the answer is yes. For example, look at the figure below:

This probably looks like a random arrangement of black shapes. In fact there is a hidden face in there, can you see it? The face is looking straight ahead and is in the top half of the picture in the center. Now can you see it? The figure is strongly lit from the side and has long hair and a beard.

Once the face is discovered, very rapid perceptual learning takes place and the ambiguous picture now obviously contains a face each time we look at it. We have learned to perceive the stimulus in a different way.

Although in some cases, as in the ambiguous face picture, there is a direct relationship between modifying hypotheses and perception, in other cases this is not so evident. For example, illusions persist even when we have full knowledge of them (e.g. the inverted face, Gregory 1974). One would expect that the knowledge we have learned (from, say, touching the face and confirming that it is not 'normal') would modify our hypotheses in an adaptive manner. The current hypothesis testing theories cannot explain this lack of a relationship between learning and perception.

2. Perceptual Development

A perplexing question for the constructivists who propose perception is essentially top-down in nature is 'how can the neonate ever perceive?' If we all have to construct our own worlds based on past experiences why are our perceptions so similar, even across cultures? Relying on individual constructs for making sense of the world makes perception a very individual and chancy process.

The constructivist approach stresses the role of knowledge in perception and therefore is against the nativist approach to perceptual development. However, a substantial body of evidence has been accrued favoring the nativist approach, for example: Newborn infants show shape constancy (Slater & Morison, 1985); they prefer their mother's voice to other voices (De Casper & Fifer, 1980); and it has been established that they prefer normal features to scrambled features as early as 5 minutes after birth.

3. Sensory Evidence

Perhaps the major criticism of the constructivists is that they have underestimated the richness of sensory evidence available to perceivers in the real world (as opposed to the laboratory where much of the constructivists' evidence has come from).

Constructivists like Gregory frequently use the example of size constancy to support their explanations. That is, we correctly perceive the size of an object even though the retinal image of an object shrinks as the object recedes. They propose that sensory evidence from other sources must be available for us to be able to do this.

However, in the real world, retinal images are rarely seen in isolation (as is possible in the laboratory). There is a rich array of sensory information including other objects, background, the distant horizon and movement. This rich source of sensory information is important to the second approach to explaining perception that we will examine, namely the direct approach to perception as proposed by Gibson.

Gibson argued strongly against the idea that perception involves top-down processing and criticizes Gregory's discussion of visual illusions on the grounds that they are artificial examples and not images found in our normal visual environments. This is crucial because Gregory accepts that misperceptions are the exception rather than the norm. Illusions may be interesting phenomena, but they might not be that informative about the debate.

Gibson (1966) and Bottom Up Processing

Gibson's bottom up theory suggests that perception involves innate mechanisms forged by evolution and that no learning is required. This suggests that perception is necessary for survival - without perception we would live in a very dangerous environment. Our ancestors would have needed perception to escape from harmful predators, suggesting perception is evolutionary.

James Gibson (1966) argues that perception is direct, and not subject to hypotheses testing as Gregory proposed. There is enough information in our environment to make sense of the world in a direct way. His theory is sometimes known as the 'Ecological Theory' because of the claim that perception can be explained solely in terms of the environment.

For Gibson: sensation is perception: what you see if what you get. There is no need for processing (interpretation) as the information we receive about size, shape and distance etc. is sufficiently detailed for us to interact directly with the environment.

Gibson (1972) argued that perception is a bottom-up process, which means that sensory information is analyzed in one direction: from simple analysis of raw sensory data to ever increasing complexity of analysis through the visual system.

Features of Gibson's Theory

The starting point for Gibson's Theory was that the pattern of light reaching the eye, known as the optic array, containing all the visual information necessary for perception

This optic array provides unambiguous information about the layout of objects in space. Light rays reflect off of surfaces and converge into the cornea of your eye.

Perception involves 'picking up' the rich information provided by the optic array in a direct way with little/no processing involved.

Because of movement and different intensities of light shining in different directions it is an ever changing source of sensory information. Therefore, if you move, the structure of the optic array changes.

According to Gibson, we have the mechanisms to interpret this unstable sensory input, meaning we experience a stable and meaningful view of the world.

Changes in the flow of the optic array contain important information about what type of movement is taking place. The flow of the optic array will either move from or towards a particular point.

If the flow appears to be coming from the point, it means you are moving towards it. If the optic array is moving towards the point you are moving away from it.

the optic array contains invariant information that remains constant as the observer moves. Invariants are aspects of the environment which don't change. They supply us with crucial information.

Two good examples of invariants are texture and linear perspective.

Another invariant is the horizon-ratio relation. The ratio above and below the horizon is constant for objects of the same size standing on the same ground.

Are, in short, cues in the environment that aid perception. Important cues in the environment include:

OPTICAL ARRAY: The patterns of light that reach the eye from the environment.

RELATIVE BRIGHTNESS: Objects with brighter, clearer images are perceived as closer

TEXTURE GRADIENT: The grain of texture gets smaller as the object recedes. Gives the impression of surfaces receding into the distance.

RELATIVE SIZE: When an object moves further away from the eye the image gets smaller. Objects with smaller images are seen as more distant.

SUPERIMPOSITION: If the image of one object blocks the image of another, the first object is seen as closer.

HEIGHT IN THE VISUAL FIELD: Objects further away are generally higher in the visual field

Evaluation of Gibson's (1966) Direct Theory of Perception

Gibson's theory is a highly ecologically valid theory as it puts perception back into the real world. A large number of applications can be applied in terms of his theory e.g. training pilots, runway markings and road markings. It's an excellent explanation for perception when viewing conditions are clear. Gibson's theory also highlights the richness of information in optic array and provides an account of perception in animals, babies and humans.

His theory is reductionist as it seeks to explain perception solely in terms of the environment. There is strong evidence to show that the brain and long term memory can influence perception. In this case, it could be said that Gregory's theory is far more plausible.

Gibson's theory also only supports one side of the nature nurture debate, that being the nature side. Again, Gregory's theory is far more plausible as it suggests that what we see with our eyes is not enough and we use knowledge already stored in our brain, supporting both sides of the debate.

Visual Illusions

Gibson's emphasis on DIRECT perception provides an explanation for the (generally) fast and accurate perception of the environment. However, his theory cannot explain why perceptions are sometimes inaccurate, e.g. in illusions. He claimed the illusions used in experimental work constituted extremely artificial perceptual situations unlikely to be encountered in the real world, however this dismissal cannot realistically be applied to all illusions.

For example, Gibson's theory cannot account for perceptual errors like the general tendency for people to overestimate vertical extents relative to horizontal ones.

Neither can Gibson's theory explain naturally occurring illusions. For example if you stare for some time at a waterfall and then transfer your gaze to a stationary object, the object appears to move in the opposite direction .

Bottom-up or Top-down Processing?

Neither direct nor constructivist theories of perception seem capable of explaining all perception all of the time. Gibson's theory appears to be based on perceivers operating under ideal viewing conditions, where stimulus information is plentiful and is available for a suitable length of time. Constructivist theories, like Gregory's, have typically involved viewing under less than ideal conditions.

Research by Tulving et al manipulated both the clarity of the stimulus input and the impact of the perceptual context in a word identification task. As clarity of the stimulus (through exposure duration) and the amount of context increased, so did the likelihood of correct identification.

However, as the exposure duration increased, so the impact of context was reduced, suggesting that if stimulus information is high, then the need to use other sources of information is reduced. One theory that explains how top-down and bottom-up processes may be seen as interacting with each other to produce the best interpretation of the stimulus was proposed by Neisser (1976) - known as the 'Perceptual Cycle'.

References

DeCasper, A. J., & Fifer, W. P. (1980). Of human bonding: Newborns prefer their mothers' voices. Science, 208(4448), 1174-1176.

Gibson, J. J. (1966). The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Gibson, J. J. (1972). A Theory of Direct Visual Perception. In J. Royce, W. Rozenboom (Eds.). The Psychology of Knowing. New York: Gordon & Breach.

Gregory, R. (1970). The Intelligent Eye. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Gregory, R. (1974). Concepts and Mechanisms of Perception. London: Duckworth.

Necker, L. (1832). LXI. Observations on some remarkable optical phenomena seen in Switzerland; and on an optical phenomenon which occurs on viewing a figure of a crystal or geometrical solid. The London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, 1(5), 329-337.

Slater, A., Morison, V., Somers, M., Mattock, A., Brown, E., & Taylor, D. (1990). Newborn and older infants' perception of partly occluded objects. Infant behavior and Development, 13(1), 33-49.

How to reference this article:
McLeod, S. A. (2018). Visual perception theory. Simply Psychology. www.simplypsychology.org/perception-theories.html
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