Rewriting Your Thinking

Today I heard this story from the New Year's Day edition of NPR's "All Things Considered":
Lulu Miller's Editing Your Life's Stories Can Create Happier Endings

Or, as I'll definitely remember it, I Peed on Frankenstein!

In the piece, Miller and psychologist Tim Wilson discuss how "editing" one's own storytelling can help resolve issues and lead to happier endings.  In particular, the work of psychologist James Pennebaker who has pioneered this work in life story editing.

Here's Pennebaker's page on "Writing and Health." It is a simple "how to" guide.

They also discuss how Miller's nephew rewrote his story of his Frankenstein encounter.

!

This method of revision makes sense on sooooo many levels.

First, consider how neural patterning occurs:   neural pathways become more strongly connected (patterned) with use over time.  This is how the brain creates thought, memory, and learning.  The more a person does something -- or the more associated that learning is with something else, such as a strong emotion at the time of learning (or see this talk for more) -- the more this brain patterning (way of thinking) becomes the norm. 

Second, consider learning at more "macro" levels, such as morning routines or driving routes which have become routine and not "consciously" thought about.  This automaticity makes many other functions possible.  (Seriously, how many of us really would want to have to discuss all the steps in tooth-brushing each and every day?)  While it took deliberate conscious effort (that neural patterning again) to create some of these routines -- for example, it took one father and three boyfriends to teach me to drive stick -- they stick, once they have been successfully repeated enough times.

(This reminds me of the chapter about learning to drive from Patty Chang Anker's Some nerve: lessons learned while becoming brave.  Read it for a great appreciation of what happens when emotion and learning conflict, resulting in a lack of automaticity!)

Third, we do this socially all the time.  Revise ourselves, our stories, and our view of the world, I mean.  Think about all the things you have said to yourself in front of the mirror before a date, a job interview, a dinner with the relatives....

For example,  I have a girlfriend who believes strongly in affirmations, which seem like the verbal effort to positively edit the stories she tells herself about herself.   She is always stronger and more capable in her affirmations.  Actually, she is that in real life as well.  Here is a woman to traveled to India and Tibet by herself!  Yet, somehow, she learned the version of herself that is the opposite.....

The repetition makes the story part of you.

Finally, as any Southerner would tell you:  why ruin a good story with the truth?  A tale should get taller, i.e. better, with each retelling.  And Southerners stand testament to revising themselves.  See RuPaul for one example.  Tullalah Bankhead for another.  John Shelton Reed's chapters on "Editing the South" in Whistling Dixie: Dispatches from the South stand as a case in point for an entire region.

As we launch into a New Year, like the NPR piece noted, it is time to address both what is troubling and what is possible....

So why not rewrite your thinking?

For the good!


Image from Wikimedia Commons

The Physicality of Emotions

Listening to WBUR's Here and Now promo a couple of weeks ago had me perking up at the mention of a story about Botox being an anti-depressant of sorts...

Seems that limiting the range of facial expressions that the forehead is able to produce means that there are corresponding changes of experienced (i.e., felt) emotions as well.

In other words, "freezing your face" makes you feel fine... ?

There is something to this  -- thinking of mirror neurons and the mind-body connection.

At the same time, I really want to see quantified experimental studies.

I will say that my "theory of mind" of Botoxed faces is that emotional empathy and creative thought seems to be limited....

But mainly, the body can influence the mind.

Read more here.

"The Inner Chimp"

Serendipity is the harmonic convergence of unexpected events or objects at an expected time (or place) to the benefit of those witnessing the event.

Serendipity happens.

Like yesterday (March 10, 2012). I was driving back from the fencing club -- a usual occurence for a Saturday afternoon -- and tuned into the local public radio station (WGBH) into the middle of an RadioLab episode, something I occasionally do. The episode was one I had never heard before: "Morality."

In particular, it was the segment "Chimp Fights and Trolley Rides," an interview with neuroscientist/philosopher Josh Greene about whether or now morality is biologically and evolutionarily based.

Greene argues "yes."

It seems that there are some basic, emotional decisions which correspond to activity parts of the brain corresponding to the instinctual, primate parts that have helped us as a species survive.

This emotional part, in the words of host/commentator Bob Krulwich, is the "inner chimp."

Based on his brain scans of people making moral decisions of varying degrees of complexity, Greene has found that different centers of the brain "light up" in response to different types of questions. For really complex questions that involve a "moral calculus" -- such as deciding to sacrifice one for the good of the many -- brain activity is fast, furious, and wide-spread. As Greene and Krulwich described it, the brain is "at war with itself." The frontal lobe, the area that develops later in a person's life, registers more activity when the decision-maker is counting how many others would be affected by the choice. It's "the thinker" vs. the "the inner chimp."

I love the term "inner chimp." It seems so right.

Later in the episode, the RadioLab team discusses actual primates -- with an interview with primatologist Frans de Waal at the Yerkes Center -- and their consistent moral behavior. Chimps and other primates are social animals with moral systems, as de Waal's examples show. (Click here for a 2005 article, too.) Empathy is a significant part of being a primate -- and it seems to be the moral core of the "inner chimp."

The research into what works in the brain when also is fascinating. And the issue of how people make decisions based on their emotionally-held beliefs is one of current importance.

Now, the serendipity:

1) See above. Although I have been a fan of Robert Krulwich since about 1990, I don't catch RadioLab often and this episode I had not heard before.

2) Although this episode was broadcast in 2007, on the day that would have been my mother's birthday had she not passed away earlier in the year, this episode coincides with a my current inner discourse about education and how to help adolescents grow up. More on that in a future post.

3) Joshua Greene is now a professor at Harvard, the site of my own cognitive science training. You can read much more in depth about the moral dilemmas Greene poses for research at his homepage.

4) Today's newspaper published a piece that connects to this RadioLab episode. More on that next post....

Fascinating stuff, serendipity!

Below is an embed for the podcast of the RadioLab episode "Morality":




image credit: Chimpanzees at Gombe Stream National Park, 2010, by ikiwaner, at Wikimedia Commons.

Touching Objects

"Sentiment" is a funny word....

It's first definition in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary online is "an attitude, thought, or judgment prompted by feeling."

In this dictionary definition, that means emotion.  Emotion, however, can be provoked by physical sensation, such as touch.  Touching objects therefore lead to the experience of both the physicality of the object, an emotion, an invoked memory, and additional thoughts -- all within the same tangled neural network.  


A web of emotion, memory, sensation, experience, and conceptualization if you will.


At this time of year, the word "sentimentality" also comes to mind.  The holidays put many of us into a state of heightened emotionalism.  Movies such as "It's a Wonderful Life" or "A Christmas Story" are one way that many people become sentimental in December.  Yet, sentimentality has a negative connotation.   Its Merriam-Webster definition is "resulting from feeling rather than reason or thought."  Feeling and thinking should go together; they do not have to presented as binary opposites.  Touching objects link "sentiment" the noun with "sentimentality" the noun, but the net results are so different! 

Speaking of "touching...."  In fencing, there is sentiment de fer -- the fencer's understanding of the tangible aspects of blade positioning, control, and interaction with their opponent's weapon.  This term also refers to the instinctual understanding of what feels right to do within the context of a bout (situated knowing, anyone?).  Here's another definition of "sentiment de fer" which focuses more on the tangible, but emphasizes the importance of sensation.   Thus from this example, it is can be said that sentiment is not necessarily something to be scorned.  It is a way of knowing.


(We could have some extended fun with sentience and "women's ways of knowing" but really, I'm not trying to have an orgy of post-modern reflexivism here, really...)

Sentiment also connects past to present.  It is not only an old-fashioned term, but it implies remembering the past.   For example, consider the article "5 Surprising Objects with Sentimental Value" from RealSimple Magazine. As the introduction to the piece says, "Sometimes an object is just an object, and sometimes it’s so much more. Five writers describe the sentimental value within the everyday things they cherish."   These stories reveal how the physical objects manifest the memories and emotion of a life well-lived.

As so many people rush around this week, acquiring more objects to give to others as expressions of their feelings, consider the power of things to convey sentiment. 

Think as well on how many objects do not carry much emotions and memories at all.  How many things do we need, cherish, sentimentalize?

Then, please, think of others who have few of the things they need.   Consider a passing on something that is more a sentiment than an object, but will touch the lives of others in a positive way.  Here's a suggestion of one way.  Click here for additional possibilities.

So, sentimentality can be a powerful way this season to reflect on the past, embody the present, and connect to a better future. 

Happy Holidays!

Ethics as Embodied

Every Sunday the Boston Globe has a column in the "Ideas" section that's pretty useful:  "Uncommon Knowledge" by Kevin Lewis.  This section has paragraph blurbs about the key ideas from recent research.

On Sunday, July 31, 2011, "Uncommon Knowledge" had an entry titled "For an ethical decision, don't think." (It's the third paragraph down.) It's about a study that tested what happened when people thought about the right thing to do, or just acted on their feelings. Turns out people do right more often then they don't think about it!

In other words, as study author Chen-Bo Zhong states in his abstract: Recent developments in moral psychology, however, suggest that moral functions involved in ethical decision making are metaphorical and embodied. The research presented here suggests that deliberative decision making may actually increase unethical behaviors and reduce altruistic motives when it overshadows implicit, intuitive influences on moral judgments and decisions.

So, DO what FEELS right -- you've got the gut sense to know better!


Original study by Chen-Bo Zhong: The Ethical Dangers of Deliberative Decision Making in Administrative Science Quarterly (March 2011).

Is returning to the sensory "short-circuiting evolution"?

In an op-ed piece for the NY Times on August 8, 2011, Diane Ackerman reports on a recently reported study in the Journal of Consumer Relations by Dan King and Chris Janiszewski called "Affect-Gating," which will appear in the Journal of Consumer Research in December, 2011.

A JSTOR press release summarizes their findings: "Animal instincts: Why do unhappy consumers prefer tactile sensations?"
(link to press release published online June 7, 2011 here)
[Note -- the article has yet to appear]

Apparently, when we feel bad, we want the comforts of touch and looking around at the wide, wide, scary world has less appeal.

Well, no duh.

Not only does most personal experience confirm this, but a combination of cognitive research about emotion and behavior and standard psychological studies do too. (Antonio D'Amasio and Harry Harlow's baby monkeys may come to mind here.) The study authors link primed visual sensory systems with emotional confidence and tactile priming with negative emotive states.

In other words, "I'm writing a paper and I want my binkie!" (Seriously, this blog was typed while a paper was due... at least the sensation of typing was soothing...)

But, of course, modern marketing, along with behavioral economics, has taken using the results of such research in a new direction.

Thus King and Janiszewski correlate their mammalian research to consumer behavior -- a product's sensory attributes need to feel just right to the buyer, and that depends on how the shopper feels.

(Ok, how do they know how Consumer Goldilocks is feeling when she's shopping? What if her shoes are pinching? How would the store try to control for emotional state? What about other cultures, when gaze is conditioned differently? Just wondering...)

As Ackerman explains, making comfort foods and other consumer materials just right is terribly important in order to increase sales.

This also makes sense.

Ackerman's connection to evolution and how humans override it, however, isn't terribly well-made. If she's trying to score a point in the ongoing nature vs. nuture debate, or the mind-body controversy, or the intellectual vs. capitalist games, it went past me. She seems to be saying that we are at the mercy of our bodies, emotionally and physically. Hmmm.

Well, this may explain why I -- and other academics -- want to eat nonstop when writing research papers...

Potato chip anyone?


Originating article:
Evolution’s Gold Standard
By DIANE ACKERMAN
Published: August 8, 2011
"Why we humans seem to want for little but are craving nonstop."