Read the Shortest Academic Article Ever Written: “The Unsuccessful Self-Treatment of a Case of ‘Writer’s Block’ ”

in Psychology, Writing | January 25th, 2018

We’ve fea­tured impres­sive­ly short aca­d­e­m­ic papers here on Open Cul­ture before, like John Nash’s 26-page PhD the­sis and this two-sen­tence “Coun­terex­am­ple to Euler’s Con­jec­ture on Sums and Like Pow­ers,” but if you’ve set your sights on writ­ing one short­er still, don’t get your hopes up. The almost cer­tain­ly unbeat­able exam­ple of a short aca­d­e­m­ic paper appeared more than forty years ago, in the fall 1974 issue of the Jour­nal of Applied Behav­ior Analy­ses, its main text com­ing in at exact­ly zero words. You can read it, if indeed “read” is the word, above or at the Nation­al Cen­ter for Biotech­nol­o­gy Infor­ma­tion.

Writ­ten, or at least thought up, by psy­chol­o­gist Den­nis Upper, “The Unsuc­cess­ful Self-Treat­ment of a Case of ‘Writer’s Block’ ” has noth­ing but its title, one foot­note (indi­cat­ing that “por­tions of this paper were not pre­sent­ed at the 81st annu­al Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion Con­ven­tion”), and the ful­some com­ments of a review­er: “I have stud­ied this man­u­script very care­ful­ly with lemon juice and X‑rays and have not detect­ed a sin­gle flaw in either design or writ­ing style. I sug­gest it be pub­lished with­out revi­sion. Clear­ly it is the most con­cise man­u­script I have ever seen — yet it con­tains suf­fi­cient detail to allow oth­er inves­ti­ga­tors to repli­cate Dr. Upper’s fail­ure. In com­par­i­son with the oth­er man­u­scripts I get from you con­tain­ing all that com­pli­cat­ed detail, this one was a plea­sure to exam­ine.”

Some describe writer’s block, whether in sci­ence or lit­er­a­ture or any oth­er field requir­ing the prop­er arrange­ment of words, as a fear of the blank page. If look­ing at Upper’s void-like paper fright­ens you, con­sid­er hav­ing a look at the Louisiana Chan­nel series we fea­tured in 2016 where­in writ­ers like Mar­garet Atwood, Jonathan Franzen, Joyce Car­ol Oates, and David Mitchell talk about how they deal with the blank page them­selves. Atwood finds that it “beck­ons you in to write some­thing on it,” that “it must be filled,” but if you don’t hear the same call, you’ll have to come up with an approach of your own. Just don’t try titling, foot­not­ing, and turn­ing in the emp­ty sheet — it’s been done.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

8 Writ­ers on How to Face Writer’s Block and the Blank Page: Mar­garet Atwood, Jonathan Franzen, Joyce Car­ol Oates & More

The Short­est-Known Paper Pub­lished in a Seri­ous Math Jour­nal: Two Suc­cinct Sen­tences 

Read John Nash’s Super Short PhD The­sis with 26 Pages & 2 Cita­tions: The Beau­ty of Invent­ing a Field

When a Cat Co-Authored a Paper in a Lead­ing Physics Jour­nal (1975)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Psychological & Neurological Disorders Experienced by Characters in Alice in Wonderland: A Neuroscience Reading of Lewis Carroll’s Classic Tale

in Literature, Neuroscience, Psychology | January 17th, 2018

Most rep­utable doc­tors tend to refrain from diag­nos­ing peo­ple they’ve nev­er met or exam­ined. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this cir­cum­spec­tion does­n’t obtain as often among lay folk. When we lob unin­formed diag­noses at oth­er peo­ple, we may do those with gen­uine men­tal health issues a seri­ous dis­ser­vice. But what about fic­tion­al char­ac­ters? Can we ascribe men­tal ill­ness­es to the sur­re­al menagerie, say, in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land? It’s almost impos­si­ble not to, giv­en the overt themes of mad­ness in the sto­ry.

Car­roll him­self, it seems, drew many of his depic­tions direct­ly from the treat­ment of men­tal dis­or­ders in 19th cen­tu­ry Eng­land, many of which were linked to “extreme­ly poor work­ing con­di­tions,” notes Franziska Kohlt at The Con­ver­sa­tion. Dur­ing the indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion, “pop­u­la­tions in so-called ‘pau­per lunatic asy­lums’ for the work­ing class sky­rock­et­ed.” Carroll’s uncle, Robert Wil­fred Skeff­in­g­ton Lutwidge, hap­pened to be an offi­cer of the Luna­cy Com­mis­sion, which super­vised such insti­tu­tions, and his work offers “stun­ning insights into the mad­ness in Alice.”

Yet we should be care­ful. Like the sup­posed drug ref­er­ences in Alice, some of the lay diag­noses now applied to Alice’s char­ac­ters may be a lit­tle far-fetched. Do we real­ly see diag­nos­able PTSD or Tourette’s? Anx­i­ety Dis­or­der and Nar­cis­sis­tic Per­son­al­i­ty Dis­or­der? These con­di­tions hadn’t been cat­e­go­rized in Carroll’s day, though their symp­toms are noth­ing new. And yet, experts have long looked to his non­sense fable for its depic­tions of abnor­mal psy­chol­o­gy. One British psy­chi­a­trist didn’t just diag­nose Alice, he named a con­di­tion after her.

In 1955, Dr. John Todd coined the term Alice in Won­der­land Syn­drome (AIWS) to describe a rare con­di­tion in which—write researchers in the Jour­nal of Pedi­atric Neu­ro­sciences—“the sizes of body parts or sizes of exter­nal objects are per­ceived incor­rect­ly.” Among oth­er ill­ness­es, Alice in Won­der­land Syn­drome may be linked to migraines, which Car­roll him­self report­ed­ly suf­fered.

We might jus­ti­fi­ably assume the Mad Hat­ter has mer­cury poi­son­ing, but what oth­er dis­or­ders might the text plau­si­bly present? Hol­ly Bark­er, doc­tor­al can­di­date in clin­i­cal neu­ro­science at King’s Col­lege Lon­don, has used her schol­ar­ly exper­tise to iden­ti­fy and describe in detail two oth­er con­di­tions she thinks are evi­dent in Alice.

Deper­son­al­iza­tion:

“At sev­er­al points in the sto­ry,” writes Bark­er, “Alice ques­tions her own iden­ti­ty and feels ‘dif­fer­ent’ in some way from when she first awoke.” See­ing in these descrip­tions the symp­toms of Deper­son­al­iza­tion Dis­or­der (DPD), Bark­er describes the con­di­tion and its loca­tion in the brain.

This dis­or­der encom­pass­es a wide range of symp­toms, includ­ing feel­ings of not belong­ing in one’s own body, a lack of own­er­ship of thoughts and mem­o­ries, that move­ments are ini­ti­at­ed with­out con­scious inten­tion and a numb­ing of emo­tions. Patients often com­ment that they feel as though they are not real­ly there in the present moment, liken­ing the expe­ri­ence to dream­ing or watch­ing a movie. These symp­toms occur in the absence of psy­chosis, and patients are usu­al­ly aware of the absur­di­ty of their sit­u­a­tion. DPD is often a fea­ture of migraine or epilep­tic auras and is some­times expe­ri­enced momen­tar­i­ly by healthy indi­vid­u­als, in response to stress, tired­ness or drug use.

Also high­ly asso­ci­at­ed with child­hood abuse and trau­ma, the con­di­tion “acts as a sort of defense mech­a­nism, allow­ing an indi­vid­ual to become dis­con­nect­ed from adverse life events.” Per­haps there is PTSD in Carroll’s text after all, since an esti­mat­ed 51% of DPD patients also meet those cri­te­ria.

Prosopag­nosia:

This con­di­tion is char­ac­ter­ized by “the selec­tive inabil­i­ty to rec­og­nize faces.” Though it can be hered­i­tary, prosopag­nosia can also result from stroke or head trau­ma. Fit­ting­ly, the char­ac­ter sup­pos­ed­ly affect­ed by it is none oth­er than Hump­ty-Dump­ty, who tells Alice “I shouldn’t know you again if we did meet.”

“Your face is the same as every­body else has – the two eyes, so-” (mark­ing their places in the air with his thumb) “nose in the mid­dle, mouth under. It’s always the same. Now if you had two eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance – or the mouth at the top – that would be some help.”

This “pre­cise descrip­tion” of prosopag­nosia shows how indi­vid­u­als with the con­di­tion rely on par­tic­u­lar­ly “dis­crim­i­nat­ing fea­tures to tell peo­ple apart,” since they are unable to dis­tin­guish fam­i­ly mem­bers and close friends from total strangers.

Schol­ars know that Carroll’s text con­tains with­in it sev­er­al abstract and seem­ing­ly absurd math­e­mat­i­cal con­cepts, such as imag­i­nary num­bers and pro­jec­tive geom­e­try. The work of researchers like Kohit and Bark­er shows that Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land might also present a com­plex 19th cen­tu­ry under­stand­ing of men­tal ill­ness and neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­ders, con­veyed in a super­fi­cial­ly sil­ly way, but pos­si­bly informed by seri­ous research and obser­va­tion. Read Barker’s arti­cle in full here to learn more about the con­di­tions she diag­noses.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lewis Carroll’s Pho­tographs of Alice Lid­dell, the Inspi­ra­tion for Alice in Won­der­land

See The Orig­i­nal Alice In Won­der­land Man­u­script, Hand­writ­ten & Illus­trat­ed By Lewis Car­roll (1864)

See Sal­vador Dali’s Illus­tra­tions for the 1969 Edi­tion of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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What Is Procrastination & How Can We Solve It? An Introduction by One of the World’s Leading Procrastination Experts

in Life, Productivity, Psychology | December 29th, 2017

I don’t know about you, but my ten­den­cy to pro­cras­ti­nate feels like a char­ac­ter flaw. And yet, no amount of mor­al­iz­ing with myself makes any dif­fer­ence. Feel­ing bad, in fact, only makes things worse. Per­haps that’s because—as Tim Pychyl, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor in Psy­chol­o­gy at Car­leton Uni­ver­si­ty argues—procrastination is not a moral fail­ing so much as a cop­ing mech­a­nism for painful feel­ings, a psy­cho­log­i­cal avoid­ance of tasks we fear for some rea­son: because we fear rejec­tion or fail­ure, or even the bur­dens of suc­cess.

Pychyl should know. He’s made study­ing pro­cras­ti­na­tion the basis of his career and runs the 20-year-old Pro­cras­ti­na­tion Research Group. Pro­cras­ti­na­tion is a “puz­zle,” he the­o­rizes (the title of one of his books is Solv­ing the Pro­cras­ti­na­tion Puz­zle:  A Con­cise Guide to Strate­gies for Change). Solv­ing it involves under­stand­ing how its pieces work, includ­ing our beliefs about how it oper­ates. Pychyl’s lec­ture above address­es grad­u­ate stu­dents charged with help­ing under­grad­u­ates who pro­cras­ti­nate, but its lessons apply to all of us. In his first slide, Pychyl out­lines four typ­i­cal beliefs about pro­cras­ti­na­tion:

It’s me

It’s the task

It’s the way I think

It’s my lack of willpow­er

Pychyl wants to debunk these notions, but he also argues that pro­cras­ti­na­tion is “some­thing we seem to under­stand very well” in pop­u­lar par­lance. One of his slides shows a typ­i­cal “successories”-type poster that reads, “Pro­cras­ti­na­tion: hard work often pays off after time, but lazi­ness always pays off now.” While Pychyl doesn’t use judg­men­tal lan­guage like “lazi­ness,” he does acknowl­edge that pro­cras­ti­na­tion results from ideas about short- ver­sus long-term gain. We want to feel good, right now, a dri­ve com­mon to every­one.

The next poster reads “if the job’s worth doing, it will still be worth doing tomor­row.” The notion of the “future self” plays a role—the you of tomor­row who still has to face the work your present self puts off. “What are we doing to ‘future self?’” Pychyl asks. “If we can just bring future self into clear­er vision, lots of times the pro­cras­ti­na­tion may go away.” This has been demon­strat­ed in research stud­ies, Ana Swan­son notes at The Wash­ing­ton Post, in which peo­ple made bet­ter deci­sions after view­ing dig­i­tal­ly-aged pho­tographs of them­selves. But in gen­er­al, we tend not to have much con­sid­er­a­tion for “future self.”

A final suc­ces­sories slide reads, “Pro­cras­ti­na­tion: by not doing what you should be doing, you could be hav­ing this much fun.” This is one of the most per­va­sive forms of self-delu­sion. We may con­vince our­selves that putting dif­fi­cult things off for tomor­row means more fun today. But the amount of guilt we feel ensures a dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence. “Guilt is a par­a­lyz­ing emo­tion,” Pychyl says. When we put off an impor­tant task, we feel ter­ri­ble. And often, instead of enjoy­ing life, we cre­ate more work for our­selves that makes us feel pur­pose­ful, like cook­ing or clean­ing. This “task man­age­ment” game tem­porar­i­ly relieves guilt, but it does not address the cen­tral prob­lem. We sim­ply “man­age our emo­tions by man­ag­ing our tasks.”

The word pro­cras­ti­na­tion comes direct­ly from clas­si­cal Latin and trans­lates to “put for­ward” that which “belongs to tomor­row.” This sounds benign, giv­en that many a task does indeed belong to tomor­row. But pru­dent plan­ning is one thing, pro­cras­ti­na­tion is anoth­er. When we put off what we can or should accom­plish today, we invoke tomor­row as “a mys­ti­cal land where 98% of all human pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, moti­va­tion, and achieve­ment are stored.” The dis­tinc­tion between plan­ning or unavoid­able delay and pro­cras­ti­na­tion is impor­tant. When delays are either inten­tion­al or the con­se­quence of unpre­dictable life events, we need not con­sid­er them a prob­lem. “All pro­cras­ti­na­tion is delay, but not all delay is pro­cras­ti­na­tion.”

So, to sum up Pychyl’s research on our atti­tudes about pro­cras­ti­na­tion: “we think we’re hav­ing more fun, but we’re not”; “we think we’re not affect­ing future self, but we are”; and “it’s all about giv­ing in to feel good,” which—see point num­ber one—doesn’t actu­al­ly work that well.

While we might min­i­mize pro­cras­ti­na­tion as a minor issue, its per­son­al costs tell us oth­er­wise, includ­ing severe impacts to “per­for­mance, well-being, health, rela­tion­ships, regrets & bereave­ment.” Pro­cras­ti­na­tors get sick more often, report high­er rates of depres­sion, and suf­fer the somat­ic and psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of ele­vat­ed stress. Pro­cras­ti­na­tion doesn’t only affect our per­son­al well-being and integri­ty, but it has an eth­i­cal dimen­sion, affect­ing those around us who suf­fer “sec­ond-hand,” either because of the time we take away from them when we rush off to fin­ish things last-minute, or because the stress we put our­selves under neg­a­tive­ly affects the health of our rela­tion­ships.

But pro­cras­ti­na­tion begins first and fore­most with our rela­tion­ship to our­selves. Again, we put things off not because we are moral­ly defi­cient, or “lazy,” but because our emo­tion­al brains are try­ing to cope. We feel some sig­nif­i­cant degree of fear or anx­i­ety about the task at hand. The guilt and shame that comes with not accom­plish­ing the task com­pounds the prob­lem, and leads to fur­ther pro­cras­ti­na­tion. “The behav­ior,” writes Swan­son, turns into “a vicious, self-defeat­ing cycle.”

How do we get out of the self-made loop of pro­cras­ti­na­tion? Just as in the fail­ure of the “Just say No” cam­paign, sim­ply shak­ing our­selves by the metaphor­i­cal shoul­ders and telling our­selves to get to work isn’t enough. We have to deal with the emo­tions that set things in motion, and in this case, that means going easy on our­selves. “Research sug­gests that one of the most effec­tive things that pro­cras­ti­na­tors can do is to for­give them­selves for pro­cras­ti­nat­ing,” Swan­son reports.

Once we reduce the guilt, we can weak­en the pro­cliv­i­ty to pro­cras­ti­nate. Then, para­dox­i­cal­ly, we need to ignore our emo­tions. “Most of us seem to tac­it­ly believe,” Pychyl says, “that our emo­tion­al state has to match the task at hand.” For writ­ers and artists, this belief has a lofty pedi­gree in roman­tic ideas about inspi­ra­tion and mus­es. Irrel­e­vant, the pro­cras­ti­na­tion expert says. When approach­ing some­thing dif­fi­cult, “I have to rec­og­nize that I’m rarely going to feel like it, and it doesn’t mat­ter if I don’t feel like it.” Feel­ings of moti­va­tion and cre­ative inspi­ra­tion often strike us in the midst of a task, not before. Break­ing down daunt­ing activ­i­ties into small­er tasks, and approach­ing these one at a time, gives us a prac­ti­cal roadmap for con­quer­ing pro­cras­ti­na­tion. For more insights and research find­ings, watch Pychyl’s full lec­ture, and lis­ten to him dis­cuss his research on the Healthy Fam­i­ly pod­cast just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Neu­ro­science & Psy­chol­o­gy of Pro­cras­ti­na­tion, and How to Over­come It

How Infor­ma­tion Over­load Robs Us of Our Cre­ativ­i­ty: What the Sci­en­tif­ic Research Shows

Why You Do Your Best Think­ing In The Show­er: Cre­ativ­i­ty & the “Incu­ba­tion Peri­od”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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How the Japanese Practice of “Forest Bathing”—Or Just Hanging Out in the Woods—Can Lower Stress Levels and Fight Disease

in Health, Nature, Psychology | December 19th, 2017

When the U.S. media began report­ing on the phe­nom­e­non of “for­est bathing” as a ther­a­py for men­tal and phys­i­cal health, the online commentariat—as it will—mocked the con­cept relent­less­ly as yet anoth­er pre­ten­tious, bour­geois repack­ag­ing of some­thing thor­ough­ly mun­dane. Didn’t we just used to call it “going out­side”?

Well, yes, if all “for­est bathing” means is “going out­side,” then it does sound like a grandiose and unnec­es­sary phrase. The term, how­ev­er, is not an Amer­i­can mar­ket­ing inven­tion but a trans­la­tion of the Japan­ese shin­rin-yoku. “Coined by the Japan­ese Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Forestry and Fish­eries in 1982,” writes Meeri Kim at The Wash­ing­ton Post, “the word lit­er­al­ly trans­lates to ‘tak­ing in the for­est atmos­phere’ or ‘for­est bathing’ and refers to the process of soak­ing up the sights, smells and sounds of a nat­ur­al set­ting to pro­mote phys­i­o­log­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal health.”

So what? We already have the exam­ples of thou­sands years of Bud­dhist monks (and Thich Nat Hanh), of Hen­ry David Thore­au, and the saints of the Sier­ra Club. But the old­est and most use­ful ideas and prac­tices can get care­less­ly dis­card­ed in the fran­tic pur­suit of inno­va­tion at all costs. The push­ing of hi-tech out­door gear, wear­able activ­i­ty track­ers, and health apps that ask us to log every move­ment can make going out­side feel like a daunt­ing, expen­sive chore or a com­pet­i­tive event.

For­est bathing involves none of those things. “Just be with the trees,” as Ephrat Livni describes the prac­tice, “no hik­ing, no count­ing steps on a Fit­bit. You can sit or mean­der, but the point is to relax rather than accom­plish any­thing.” You don’t have to hug the trees if you don’t want to, but at least sit under one for a spell. Even if you don’t attain enlight­en­ment, you very well may reduce stress and boost immune func­tion, accord­ing to sev­er­al Japan­ese stud­ies con­duct­ed between 2004 and 2012.

The Japan­ese gov­ern­ment spent around four mil­lion dol­lars on stud­ies con­duct­ed with hun­dreds of peo­ple “bathing” on 48 des­ig­nat­ed ther­a­py trails. In his work, Qing Li, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at Nip­pon Med­ical School in Tokyo, found “sig­nif­i­cant increas­es in NK [nat­ur­al killer] cell activ­i­ty in the week after a for­est vis­it… pos­i­tive effects last­ed a month fol­low­ing each week­end in the woods.” Nat­ur­al killer cells fight virus­es and can­cers, and are appar­ent­ly stim­u­lat­ed by the oils that trees them­selves secrete to ward off germs and pests. See the pro­fes­sor explain in the video above (he trans­lates shin­rin-yoku as tak­ing a “for­est show­er,” and also claims to have bot­tled some of the effects).

Addi­tion­al­ly, exper­i­ments con­duct­ed by Japan’s Chi­ba Uni­ver­si­ty found that for­est bathing low­ered heart rate and blood pres­sure and brought down lev­els of cor­ti­sol, the stress hor­mone that can wreak hav­oc on every sys­tem when large amounts cir­cu­late through the body. Then there are the less tan­gi­ble psy­cho­log­i­cal ben­e­fits of tak­ing in the trees. Sub­jects in one study “showed sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced hos­til­i­ty and depres­sion scores” after a walk in the woods. These find­ings under­score that spend­ing time in the for­est is a med­ical inter­ven­tion as well as an aes­thet­ic and spir­i­tu­al one, some­thing sci­en­tists have long observed but haven’t been able to quan­ti­fy.

In their review of a book called Your Brain on Nature, Moth­er Earth News quotes Franklin Hough, first chief of the U.S. Divi­sion of Forestry, who remarked in a 19th cen­tu­ry med­ical jour­nal that forests have “a cheer­ful and tran­quil­iz­ing influ­ence which they exert upon the mind, more espe­cial­ly when worn down by men­tal labor.” Hough’s hypoth­e­sis has been con­firmed, and despite what might sound to Eng­lish speak­ers like a slight­ly ridicu­lous name, for­est bathing is seri­ous ther­a­py, espe­cial­ly for the ever-increas­ing num­ber of urban­ites and those who spend their days in strip malls, office com­plex­es, and oth­er over­built envi­ron­ments.

What is a guid­ed for­est bathing expe­ri­ence like? You can lis­ten to NPR’s Ali­son Aubrey describe one above. She quotes Amos Clif­ford, founder of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Nature & For­est Ther­a­py, the cer­ti­fy­ing orga­ni­za­tion, as say­ing that a guide “helps you be here, not there,” sort of like a med­i­ta­tion instruc­tor. Clif­ford has been push­ing health care providers to “incor­po­rate for­est ther­a­py as a stress-reduc­tion strat­e­gy” in the U.S., and there’s no ques­tion that more stress reduc­tion tools are sore­ly need­ed.

But, you may won­der, do you have to call it “for­est bathing,” or pay for a cer­ti­fied guide, join a group, and buy some fan­cy out­er­wear to get the ben­e­fits hang­ing out with trees? I say, con­sid­er the words of John Muir, the inde­fati­ga­ble 19th nat­u­ral­ist, “father of the Nation­al Park Sys­tem,” and found­ing saint of the Sier­ra Club: In the eter­nal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go qui­et­ly, alone; no harm will befall you. The quote may under­es­ti­mate the amount of risk or over­state the ben­e­fits, but you get the idea. Muir was not one to get tan­gled up in seman­tics or over­ly detailed analy­sis. Nonethe­less, his work inspired Amer­i­cans to step in and pre­serve so much of the coun­try’s for­est in the 19th and 20th cen­turies. Maybe the pre­ven­ta­tive med­i­cine of “for­est bathing” can help do the same in the 21st.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Walk­ing Fos­ters Cre­ativ­i­ty: Stan­ford Researchers Con­firm What Philoso­phers and Writ­ers Have Always Known

How Mind­ful­ness Makes Us Hap­pi­er & Bet­ter Able to Meet Life’s Chal­lenges: Two Ani­mat­ed Primers Explain

This Is Your Brain on Exer­cise: Why Phys­i­cal Exer­cise (Not Men­tal Games) Might Be the Best Way to Keep Your Mind Sharp

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Depression & Melancholy: Animated Videos Explain the Crucial Difference Between Everyday Sadness and Clinical Depression

in Animation, Poetry, Psychology, TED Talks | December 11th, 2017

“Depres­sion,” the TED-Ed video above informs us, “is the lead­ing cause of dis­abil­i­ty in the world.” This may be a hard fact to swal­low, the prod­uct, we might think, of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal adver­tis­ing. We all feel down from time to time, we think. “Then cir­cum­stances change, and those sad feel­ings dis­ap­pear.” Isn’t it like this for every­one? It is not. “Clin­i­cal depres­sion is dif­fer­ent. It’s a med­ical dis­or­der, and it won’t go away just because you want it to.”

Depres­sion can linger for up to two weeks, and become so debil­i­tat­ing that suf­fer­ers can­not work or play. It inter­feres with impor­tant rela­tion­ships and “can have a lot of dif­fer­ent symp­toms: a low mood, loss of inter­est in things you’d nor­mal­ly enjoy, changes in appetite, feel­ing worth­less or exces­sive­ly guilty,” rest­less­ness and insom­nia, or extreme lethar­gy, poor con­cen­tra­tion, and pos­si­ble thoughts of sui­cide. But sure­ly we can hear a paid pro­mo­tion­al voice when the nar­ra­tor states, “If you have at least 5 of those symp­toms, accord­ing to psy­chi­atric guide­lines, you qual­i­fy for a diag­no­sis of depres­sion.”

What we don’t typ­i­cal­ly hear about in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ads are the mea­sur­able phys­i­o­log­i­cal changes depres­sion writes in the brain, includ­ing decreased brain mat­ter in the frontal lobe and atro­phy of the hip­pocam­pus. These effects are mea­sur­able in humans and rats, in study after study after study. But while most of us know the names of a neu­ro­trans­mit­ter or two these days, not even neu­ro­sci­en­tists ful­ly under­stand the biol­o­gy of depres­sion. They do know that some com­bi­na­tion of med­ica­tion, ther­a­py, and, in extreme cas­es elec­tro­con­vul­sive treat­ment, can allow peo­ple to more ful­ly expe­ri­ence life.

Peo­ple in treat­ment will still feel “down” on occa­sion, just like every­one does. But depres­sion, the explain­er wants us to under­stand, should nev­er be com­pared to ordi­nary sad­ness. Its effects on behav­ior and brain health are too wide-rang­ing, per­va­sive, per­sis­tent, and detri­men­tal. These effects can be invis­i­ble, which adds to an unfor­tu­nate social stig­ma that dis­suades peo­ple from seek­ing treat­ment. The more we talk about depres­sion open­ly, rather than treat­ing as it as a shame­ful secret, the more like­ly peo­ple at risk will be to seek help.

Just as depres­sion can­not be alle­vi­at­ed by triv­i­al­iz­ing or ignor­ing it, the con­di­tion does not respond to being roman­ti­cized. While, indeed, many a famous painter, poet, actor, etc. has suf­fered from clin­i­cal depression—and made it a part of their art—their exam­ples should not sug­gest to us that artists shouldn’t get treat­ment. Sad­ness is nev­er triv­ial.

Unlike phys­i­cal pain, it is dif­fi­cult, for exam­ple, to pin­point the direct caus­es of sad­ness. As the short video above demon­strates, the assump­tion that sad­ness is caused by exter­nal events arose rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly. The humoral sys­tem of the ancient Greeks treat­ed all sad­ness as a bio­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non. Greek physi­cians believed it was an expres­sion of black bile, or “melaina kole,” from which we derive the word “melan­choly.” It seems we’ve come full cir­cle, in a way. Ancient humoral the­o­rists rec­om­mend­ed nutri­tion, med­ical treat­ment, and phys­i­cal exer­cise as treat­ments for melan­cho­lia, just as doc­tors do today for depres­sion.

But melan­choly is a much broad­er term, not a sci­en­tif­ic des­ig­na­tion; it is a col­lec­tion of ideas about sad­ness that span thou­sands of years. Near­ly all of those ideas include some sense that sad­ness is an essen­tial expe­ri­ence. “If you’ve nev­er felt melan­choly,” the nar­ra­tor says, “you’ve missed out on part of what it means to be human.” Thinkers have described melan­cho­lia as a pre­cur­sor to, or inevitable result of, acquir­ing wis­dom. One key exam­ple, Robert Burton’s 1621 text The Anato­my of Melan­choly, “the apogee of Renais­sance schol­ar­ship,” set the tone for dis­cus­sions of melan­choly for the next few cen­turies.

The scientific/philosophical/literary text argues, “he that increaseth wis­dom, increaseth sor­row,” a sen­ti­ment the Roman­tic poets turned on its head. Before them came John Mil­ton, whose 1645 poem Il Penseroso address­es melan­choly as “thou God­des, sage and holy… Sober, sted­fast, and demure.” The deity Melan­choly over­sees the con­tem­pla­tive life and reveals essen­tial truths through “Gor­geous Tragedy.”

One of the poem’s lofti­est themes showed the way for­ward for the Roman­tics: “The poet who seeks to attain the high­est lev­el of cre­ative expres­sion must embrace the divine,” write Mil­ton schol­ars Kather­ine Lynch and Thomas H. Lux­on, “which can only be accom­plished by fol­low­ing the path set out in Il Penseroso.” The divine, in this case, takes the form of sad­ness per­son­i­fied. Yet this poem can­not be read in iso­la­tion: its com­pan­ion, L’Allegro, prais­es Mirth, and of sad­ness says, “Hence loathed Melan­choly / Of Cer­berus, and black­est mid­night born, in Sty­gian Cave for­lorn / ‘Mongst hor­rid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy.”

Rather than con­tra­dict each oth­er, these two char­ac­ter­i­za­tions speak to the ambiva­lent atti­tudes, and vast­ly dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences, humans have about sad­ness. Fleet­ing bouts of melan­choly can be sweet, touch­ing, and beau­ti­ful, inspir­ing art, music, and poet­ry. Sad­ness can force us to reck­on with life’s unpleas­ant­ness rather than deny or avoid it. On the oth­er hand, in its most extreme, chron­i­cal­ly intractable forms, such as what we now call clin­i­cal depres­sion, sad­ness can destroy our capac­i­ty to act, to appre­ci­ate beau­ty and learn impor­tant lessons, mark­ing the crit­i­cal dif­fer­ence between a uni­ver­sal exis­ten­tial con­di­tion and a, thank­ful­ly, treat­able phys­i­cal dis­ease.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stanford’s Robert Sapol­sky Demys­ti­fies Depres­sion, Which, Like Dia­betes, Is Root­ed in Biol­o­gy

How Bak­ing, Cook­ing & Oth­er Dai­ly Activ­i­ties Help Pro­mote Hap­pi­ness and Alle­vi­ate Depres­sion and Anx­i­ety

A Uni­fied The­o­ry of Men­tal Ill­ness: How Every­thing from Addic­tion to Depres­sion Can Be Explained by the Con­cept of “Cap­ture”

Stephen Fry on Cop­ing with Depres­sion: It’s Rain­ing, But the Sun Will Come Out Again

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Why Incompetent People Think They’re Amazing: An Animated Lesson from David Dunning (of the Famous “Dunning-Kruger Effect”)

in Business, Psychology, TED Talks | December 6th, 2017

The busi­ness world has long had spe­cial jar­gon for the Kafkaesque incom­pe­tence bedev­il­ing the ranks of upper man­age­ment. There is “the Peter prin­ci­ple,” first described in a satir­i­cal book of the same name in 1968. More recent­ly, we have the pos­i­tive notion of “fail­ing upward.” The con­cept has inspired a mantra, “fail hard­er, fail faster,” as well as pop­u­lar books like The Gift of Fail­ure. Famed research pro­fes­sor, author, and TED talk­er Brené Brown has called TED “the fail­ure con­fer­ence,” and indeed, a “Fail­Con” does exist, “in over a dozen cities on 6 con­ti­nents around the globe.”

The can­dor about this most unavoid­able of human phe­nom­e­na may prove a boon to pub­lic health, low­er­ing lev­els of hyper­ten­sion by a sig­nif­i­cant mar­gin. But is there a dan­ger in prais­ing fail­ure too fer­vent­ly? (Samuel Beckett’s quote on the mat­ter, beloved by many a 21st cen­tu­ry thought leader, proves decid­ed­ly more ambigu­ous in con­text.) Might it present an even greater oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to “rise to their lev­el of incom­pe­tence”? Giv­en the preva­lence of the “Dun­ning-Kruger Effect,” a cog­ni­tive bias explained by John Cleese in a pre­vi­ous post, we may not be well-placed to know whether our efforts con­sti­tute suc­cess or fail­ure, or whether we actu­al­ly have the skills we think we do.

First described by social psy­chol­o­gists David Dun­ning (Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan) and Justin Kruger (N.Y.U.) in 1999, the effect “sug­gests that we’re not very good at eval­u­at­ing our­selves accu­rate­ly.” So says the nar­ra­tor of the TED-Ed les­son above, script­ed by Dun­ning and offer­ing a sober reminder of the human propen­si­ty for self-delu­sion. “We fre­quent­ly over­es­ti­mate our own abil­i­ties,” result­ing in wide­spread “illu­so­ry supe­ri­or­i­ty” that makes “incom­pe­tent peo­ple think they’re amaz­ing.” The effect great­ly inten­si­fies at the low­er end of the scale; it is often “those with the least abil­i­ty who are most like­ly to over­rate their skills to the great­est extent.” Or as Cleese plain­ly puts it, some peo­ple “are so stu­pid, they have no idea how stu­pid they are.”

Com­bine this with the con­verse effect—the ten­den­cy of skilled indi­vid­u­als to under­rate themselves—and we have the pre­con­di­tions for an epi­dem­ic of mis­matched skill sets and posi­tions. But while imposter syn­drome can pro­duce trag­ic per­son­al results and deprive the world of tal­ent, the Dun­ning-Kruger effect’s worst casu­al­ties affect us all adverse­ly. Peo­ple “mea­sur­ably poor at log­i­cal rea­son­ing, gram­mar, finan­cial knowl­edge, math, emo­tion­al intel­li­gence, run­ning med­ical lab tests, and chess all tend to rate their exper­tise almost as favor­ably as actu­al experts do.” When such peo­ple get pro­mot­ed up the chain, they can unwit­ting­ly do a great deal of harm.

While arro­gant self-impor­tance plays its role in fos­ter­ing delu­sions of exper­tise, Dun­ning and Kruger found that most of us are sub­ject to the effect in some area of our lives sim­ply because we lack the skills to under­stand how bad we are at cer­tain things. We don’t know the rules well enough to suc­cess­ful­ly, cre­ative­ly break them. Until we have some basic under­stand­ing of what con­sti­tutes com­pe­tence in a par­tic­u­lar endeav­or, we can­not even under­stand that we’ve failed.

Real experts, on the oth­er hand, tend to assume their skills are ordi­nary and unre­mark­able. “The result is that peo­ple, whether they’re inept or high­ly skilled, are often caught in a bub­ble of inac­cu­rate self-per­cep­tion.” How can we get out? The answers won’t sur­prise you. Lis­ten to con­struc­tive feed­back and nev­er stop learn­ing, behav­ior that can require a good deal of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and humil­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese on How “Stu­pid Peo­ple Have No Idea How Stu­pid They Are” (a.k.a. the Dun­ning-Kruger Effect)

Research Finds That Intel­lec­tu­al Humil­i­ty Can Make Us Bet­ter Thinkers & Peo­ple; Good Thing There’s a Free Course on Intel­lec­tu­al Humil­i­ty

The Pow­er of Empa­thy: A Quick Ani­mat­ed Les­son That Can Make You a Bet­ter Per­son

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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How Scientology Works: A Primer Based on a Reading of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Film, The Master

in Film, Psychology, Religion | December 6th, 2017

Paul Thomas Ander­son­’s The Mas­ter focus­es, with almost unbear­able inten­si­ty, on two char­ac­ters: Joaquin Phoenix’s impul­sive ex-sailor Fred­die Quell, and Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man’s Lan­cast­er Dodd, “the founder and mag­net­ic core of the Cause — a clus­ter of folk who believe, among oth­er things, that our souls, which pre­date the foun­da­tion of the Earth, are no more than tem­po­rary res­i­dents of our frail bod­i­ly hous­ing,” writes The New York­er’s Antho­ny Lane in his review of the film. “Any rela­tion to per­sons liv­ing, dead, or Sci­en­to­log­i­cal is, of course, entire­ly coin­ci­den­tal.”

Before The Mas­ter came out, rumor built up that the film mount­ed a scathing cri­tique of the Church of Sci­en­tol­ogy; now, we know that it accom­plish­es some­thing, par for the course for Ander­son, much more fas­ci­nat­ing and artis­ti­cal­ly idio­syn­crat­ic.

Few of its glo­ri­ous­ly 65-mil­lime­ter-shot scenes seem to have much to say, at least direct­ly, about Sci­en­tol­ogy or any oth­er sys­tem of thought. But per­haps the most mem­o­rable, in which Dodd, hav­ing dis­cov­ered Fred­die stown away aboard his char­tered yacht, offers him a ses­sion of “infor­mal pro­cess­ing,” does indeed have much to do with the faith found­ed by L. Ron Hub­bard — at least if you believe the analy­sis of Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, who argues that the scene “bears an unmis­tak­able ref­er­ence to a vital activ­i­ty with­in Sci­en­tol­ogy called audit­ing.”

Just as Dodd does to Fred­die, “the audi­tor in Sci­en­tol­ogy asks ques­tions of the ‘pre­clear’ with the goal of rid­ding him of ‘engrams,’ the term for trau­mat­ic mem­o­ry stored in what’s called the ‘reac­tive mind.’ ” By thus “help­ing the pre­clear relive the expe­ri­ence that caused the trau­ma,” the audi­tor accom­plish­es a goal that, in a clip Puschak includes in the essay, Hub­bard lays out him­self: to “show a fel­low that he’s mock­ing up his own mind, there­fore his own dif­fi­cul­ties; that he is not com­plete­ly adrift in, and swamped by, a body.” Sci­en­to­log­i­cal or not, such notions do intrigue the des­per­ate, drift­ing Fred­die, and although the sto­ry of his and Dod­d’s entwine­ment, as told by Ander­son, still divides crit­i­cal opin­ion, we can say this for sure: it beats Bat­tle­field Earth.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When William S. Bur­roughs Joined Sci­en­tol­ogy (and His 1971 Book Denounc­ing It)

The Career of Paul Thomas Ander­son: A 5‑Part Video Essay on the Auteur of Boo­gie Nights, Punch-Drunk Love, The Mas­ter, and More

Space Jazz, a Son­ic Sci-Fi Opera by L. Ron Hub­bard, Fea­tur­ing Chick Corea (1983)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Research Finds That Intellectual Humility Can Make Us Better Thinkers & People; Good Thing There’s a Free Course on Intellectual Humility

in Philosophy, Politics, Psychology | November 15th, 2017

We may have grown used to hear­ing about the impor­tance of crit­i­cal think­ing, and stowed away knowl­edge of log­i­cal fal­lac­i­es and cog­ni­tive bias­es in our argu­men­ta­tive toolk­it. But were we to return to the philo­soph­i­cal sources of infor­mal log­ic, we would find that we only grasped at some of the prin­ci­ples of rea­son. The oth­ers involve ques­tions of what we might call virtue or character—what for the Greeks fell into the cat­e­gories of ethos and pathos. The prin­ci­ple of char­i­ty, for exam­ple, in which we give our oppo­nents a fair hear­ing and respond to the best ver­sion of their argu­ments as we under­stand them. And the prin­ci­ple, exem­pli­fied by Plato’s Socrates, of intel­lec­tu­al humil­i­ty. Or as one punk band put it in their Socrat­ic trib­ute. “All I know is that I don’t know. All I know is that I don’t know noth­ing.”

Intel­lec­tu­al humil­i­ty is not, con­trary to most pop­u­lar appear­ances, reflex­ive­ly accord­ing equal weight to “both sides” of every argu­ment or assum­ing that everyone’s opin­ion is equal­ly valid. These are forms of men­tal lazi­ness and eth­i­cal abdi­ca­tion. It is, how­ev­er, believ­ing in our own fal­li­bil­i­ty and open­ing our­selves up to hear­ing argu­ments with­out imme­di­ate­ly form­ing a judg­ment about them or the peo­ple who make them. We do not aban­don our rea­son and val­ues, we strength­en them, argues Mark Leary, by “not being afraid of being wrong.” Leary, pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy and neu­ro­science at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty, is the lead author of a new study on intel­lec­tu­al humil­i­ty that found “essen­tial­ly no dif­fer­ence between lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives or between reli­gious and non­re­li­gious peo­ple” when it comes to intel­lec­tu­al humil­i­ty.

The study chal­lenges many ideas that can pre­vent dia­logue. “There are stereo­types about con­ser­v­a­tives and reli­gious­ly con­ser­v­a­tive peo­ple being less intel­lec­tu­al­ly hum­ble about their beliefs,” says Leary. But he and his col­leagues “didn’t find a shred of evi­dence to sup­port that.” This doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean that such peo­ple have high degrees of intel­lec­tu­al humil­i­ty, only that all of us, per­haps equal­ly, pos­sess fair­ly low lev­els of the trait. I’ll be the first to admit that it is not an easy one to devel­op, espe­cial­ly when we’re on the defen­sive for some seem­ing­ly good reasons—and when we live in a cul­ture that encour­ages us to make deci­sions and take actions on the strength of an image, some min­i­mal text, and a few but­tons that lead us right to our bank accounts. (To quote Oper­a­tion Ivy again, “We get told to decide. Just like as if I’m not gonna change my mind.”)

But in the Duke study, reports Ali­son Jones at Duke Today, “those who dis­played intel­lec­tu­al humil­i­ty did a bet­ter job of eval­u­at­ing the qual­i­ty of evi­dence.” They took their time to make care­ful con­sid­er­a­tions. And they were gen­er­al­ly more char­i­ta­ble and “less like­ly to judge a writer’s char­ac­ter based on his or her views.” By con­trast, “intel­lec­tu­al­ly arro­gant” peo­ple gave writ­ers with whom they dis­agreed “low scores in moral­i­ty, hon­esty, com­pe­tence, and warmth.” As a for­mer teacher of rhetoric, I won­der whether the researchers account­ed for the qual­i­ty and per­sua­sive­ness of the writ­ing itself. Nonethe­less, this obser­va­tion under­scores the prob­lem of con­flat­ing an author’s work with his or her char­ac­ter. Moral judg­ment can inhib­it intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty and open-mind­ed­ness. Intel­lec­tu­al­ly arro­gant peo­ple often resort to insults and per­son­al attacks over thought­ful analy­sis.

The enor­mous num­ber of assump­tions we bring to almost every con­ver­sa­tion with peo­ple who dif­fer from us can blind us to our own faults and to oth­er people’s strengths. But intel­lec­tu­al humil­i­ty is not genet­i­cal­ly determined—it is a skill that can be learned, Leary believes. Big Think rec­om­mends a free MOOC from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh on intel­lec­tu­al humil­i­ty (see an intro­duc­tion to the con­cept at the top and a series of lec­tures here). “Faced with dif­fi­cult ques­tions,” explains course lec­tur­er Dr. Ian Church, “peo­ple often tend to dis­miss and mar­gin­al­ize dis­sent…. The world needs more peo­ple who are sen­si­tive to rea­sons both for and against their beliefs, and are will­ing to con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty that their polit­i­cal, reli­gious and moral beliefs might be mis­tak­en.” The course offers three dif­fer­ent lev­els of engage­ment, from casu­al to quite involved, and three sep­a­rate class sec­tions at Cours­era: The­o­ry, Prac­tice, and Sci­ence.

It’s like­ly that many of us need some seri­ous prepa­ra­tion before we’re will­ing to lis­ten to those who hold cer­tain views. And per­haps cer­tain views don’t actu­al­ly deserve a hear­ing. But in most cas­es, if we can let our guard down, set aside feel­ings of hos­til­i­ty, and become will­ing to learn some­thing even from those with whom we dis­agree, we might be able to do what so many psy­chol­o­gists con­tin­ue to rec­om­mend. As Cindy Lamothe writes at New York Mag­a­zine’s Sci­ence of Us blog, “we have to be will­ing to expose our­selves to oppos­ing per­spec­tives in the first place—which means that, as daunt­ing as it may seem, lis­ten­ing to friends and fam­i­ly with rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent views can be ben­e­fi­cial to our long-term intel­lec­tu­al progress.” The hol­i­days are soon upon us. Let the healing—or at least the char­i­ta­ble tol­er­ance if you can man­age it—begin.

via Big Think

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry Iden­ti­fies the Cog­ni­tive Bias­es That Make Trump Tick       

32 Ani­mat­ed Videos by Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy Teach You the Essen­tials of Crit­i­cal Think­ing

Why We Need to Teach Kids Phi­los­o­phy & Safe­guard Soci­ety from Author­i­tar­i­an Con­trol

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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