Shrinkrap

The dark half

Shrinkrap — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 07:12:03 +0000

Excerpt from “Diary of a (not so) reluctant father…”

15 April

I have great compassion for men who don’t actually know what is going on sometimes. I am one of them. At times no matter what you do (or don’t do) it’s just not ‘good enough’. A client recently recounted his struggle at home (identity and narrative have been changed to protect the identity of the client although he gave permission for me to use this vignette).

“i try and help with the kid, but he just wants his mom, so i’m kinda left feeling really confused, following him from room to room with a nappy in my hand. My wife comes out of the bedroom, looks at the scene and starts shouting at me telling me i can’t do anything right. It feels that way sometimes…i go to work, deal with stress all day and then come home and get shouted at because i’ve misplaced the bum cream. Sometimes i feel like i’m going mad!”

These early days of co-parenting are dangerous, of that there is no doubt. There are so many projections, so many expectations and so much stress about that it is not strange for couples to skirt the “abyss”. Unless couples are able to communicate effectively, take time out for themselves and as a couple, the family system will struggle.

While the mother may project her feelings of frustration and anger onto the father, this does not imply that the father does not carry some ammunition himself. On the contrary, many men carry repressed feelings of anger and disappointment which they are unable to express into the fragile family ecosystem. Where do these unprocessed feelings go? Into work, behaving like a pack-animal, carrying ever increasing levels of stress some men turn to substances and other addictions (sex, money, gambling etc). Unless it is addressed, a man’s Shadow (that which is unacknowledged and repressed) can begin to contaminate the family system leading that which is sacred down a very dark path.

Book review: The better angels of our nature.

Shrinkrap — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:21:18 +0000

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined: by Steven Pinker 2011

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), worldwide military expenditures have been growing annually for the past 15 years, and between 15 and 20 armed conflicts- yes wars- are in progress as you read this. All told, upward of 175 million people died in war related violence during the 20th century, plus another 8 million because if conflicts between individuals.

Even so, according to the weighty new book by Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker, the ‘better angels’ of human nature have actually brought about a dramatic reduction in violence during the past few millenia. Yes, the absolute number of victims has been rising, but relative to the worlds population, the numbers look ‘good’.

The shift towards nonviolence,he says, has been driven by many factors, such as the spread of agriculture and the rise of feminism and democracy. Such trends have led to a reduction in intitutionalised torture and execution and slavery and, especially in recent years, to an increase in the rights of women, homosexuals, children and animals.

Pinker claims that our dark side is driven by an evolution based propensity toward predation and dominance. On the angelic side, we have, or at least can learn, some degree of self control, which allows us to inhibit our darker tendencies. In one disturbing chapter, he describes in graphic detail the savage way in which chimpanzees- our closest genetic relatives in the animal world- torture and kill their own kind. The parallel with the shadow aspects of the human condition is unmistakable.

The biggest problem I had with the book is the assumption that we look at relative numbers instead of absolute numbers in assessing human violence. But why should we be content with only a relative decrease? By this logic, when we reach a world population of 9 billion in 2050, Pinker will conceivably be satisfied if a mere 2 million people are killed in war that year.

Surely this is not the best case scenario we can hope for?

Or is it?

Decoding Sexual Desire: Why You’re Into It—or Not

Shrinkrap — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:07:05 +0000

Desire. When you have it, nobody questions it. When it is absent, it can be tricky to talk about. After all, the subject is delicate, and what is the point? You probably have little clue what is going on anyway. Luckily, scientists are looking out for you—because it is not even close to being just you. An astounding 40 percent of American women between the ages of 20 and 70 have problems with low sexual desire. Men have issues, too, but the numbers are shaky, because, as difficult as this is for women to talk about, men won’t touch the subject. (Even in a doctor’s office, their willingness to address an absence of sexual wants begins and ends with the mechanical issue.)

Plenty of folks have considered the usual suspects in the sapping of sexual desire. A recent study of young women shows the most common factor in females is stress and fatigue, followed by poor self-image and then sexual difficulties such as the inability to reach orgasm. But a lack of desire can stem from conceptual problems involving the way you view sexual experiences, says Syracuse University neuroscientist Stephanie Ortigue. “Desire is more than an emotion,” says Ortigue. “It involves brain areas involved in thinking intellectual things. That is why it’s so personal, so subjective, and so common.”

And although endocrine, genetic and psychological factors can all contribute to desire, or the lack of it, Ortigue’s perspective comes largely from looking at brain circuits.

Several years ago, Ortigue’s team and two others sketched a network in the brain that is always activated when we experience sexual desire. The three research teams independently landed on the same brain regions. These included areas governing emotion, motivation, body image—and, notably, memories associated with life experiences. Memories can affect desire in subtle, subconscious ways. For example, if a person has a feature or personality that reminds you of something positive in your past, a subconscious association between that person and pleasant reveries may trigger desire, Ortigue says. In this way, desire emerges from a collaboration of emotional, motivational and intellectual parts of the brain, she says.

Ortigue and her team recently took a look at these brain regions in 13 women between 26 and 47 who qualified as having hypoactive sexual desire disorder. These women either had no feelings of sexual interest or those feelings had plummeted to a low level of late; many had no sexual thoughts or fantasies. They lacked any impulse to even try to become aroused. And they said the absence of these feelings and thoughts distressed them.

The researchers asked these women—as well as 15 women with no lack of desire–to look at both pictures of male models and nonerotic photos while their brains were being scanned. As expected, the women who lacked desire showed abnormally low activity in the brain network previously linked with that feeling. More surprising, however, was that these same women also showedmore activity in prefrontal brain regions involved in inhibition of action, attention to and judgment of the self, and interpreting the actions of other people. That is, that proverbial headache probably has its roots in this decision-making, self-control, theory-of-mind part of the brain.

The increased activity there suggests that people with depleted desire have two problems. One is that they are spending time trying to interpret the intentions of the other person—and probably coming to incorrect conclusions, says Ortigue. The second is that, they are monitoring or evaluating their own responses to erotic stimuli. They are not “living in the moment,” Ortigue says. Such analysis can interfere with the erotic experience, perhaps in the same way that explaining a joke can sap it of its humor.

The work dovetails with decades old studies by William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson, who coined a behavior called “spectatoring” they found common among people with sexual disorders. In spectatoring individuals become spectators of themselves during intimate encounters, viewing themselves from above and judging the situation.

“People really suffer from this,” says Ortigue, referring to hypoactive sexual desire. And knowing that the cause is less chemical in nature than psychological and intellectual may offer hope. Instead of fiddling with hormones, says Ortigue, teach people to stop judging themselves and others so much.

Sweet Serenity

Shrinkrap — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:38:15 +0000

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

These are the first lines of what’s known as the Serenity Prayer, which is well known to many recovering alcoholics. It’s often recited in the rooms of AA as a reminder of the core principle of successful sobriety: Acceptance of the reality that for addicts, nothing but absolute, lifelong abstinence will lead to healthy and lasting recovery.

As simple as that message is, it’s very difficult for many alcoholics to embrace, at least at first. Most resist the finality of an absolute prohibition, hoping and looking instead for half measures and temporary fixes to the problem—or putting off abstinence for another day. These lukewarm efforts often end in relapse.

What’s actually going on in the mind of an alcoholic as he or she goes through the process of recovery? What are the cognitive mechanics underlying the initial, angry rebelliousness and, later, the genuine commitment to a sober life?

Duke University psychological scientist Aaron Kay has some ideas that may clarify this mysterious transformation. The human mind, he and his colleagues say, sees all restrictions, prohibitions and bans as fundamental limits on personal freedom. Personal freedom is so highly valued, and so important to our sense of identity, that we will go to great lengths to protect it. On the most basic level, when the mind processes “no drinking ever again”—this prohibition is perceived as nothing less than a totalitarian clamp-down on personal liberty, and processed in the same way as any such edict. It’s the cognitive equivalent of “no travel allowed” or “all political speech prohibited.”

We have two ways of dealing with such unwanted restrictions on liberty. The first is what scientists call “reactance,” which really just means shouting, no! People get annoyed, indignant, outraged, defiant; they bridle at the new restriction, and inflate the value of what’s being taken away—in the case of an alcoholic, the freedom to drink without censure. Or—quite differently—people sometimes rationalize the new prohibition. They go through whatever cognitive gymnastics are needed to make this unwelcome restriction okay, to cast a positive light on the prospect of never drinking again.

These two processes are incompatible, so why does one win out over the other? Why do we jealously guard our liberty some times, and other times go through mental contortions to rationalize bans. Kay and his colleagues believe it is a single factor—the absoluteness—that shapes our thinking. When prohibitions are the least bit tentative or vague, if they allow any loopholes, then we plot to get around them and preserve what’s ours. But when restrictions have no shades of gray, and no prospect of bending, we search out ways to make them palatable. The scientists tested this theory in a couple simple experiments.

In the first one, volunteers read about how a hypothetical new city speed limit would improve public safety. Then some of these volunteers read that lawmakers had already acted to lower the speed limit; according to this news story, the law would go into effect on a prescribed date. Others read that it was likely the new law would go into effect, but that it had not been enacted yet. In other words, some were presented with a fait accompli, while others were left thinking about a likely—but not signed and sealed—restriction on their driving rights.

Afterward, all of the volunteers—including a control group—rated their level of annoyance regarding the lower speed limit. They also reported how often they drove in the city, assuming that regular drivers would be more annoyed than infrequent drivers, who might see the restriction as irrelevant.

The results, reported on-line in the journal Psychological Science, supported the scientists’ theory. Those presented with an absolute, written-in-concrete restriction were much more likely to rationalize the change. They had more positive attitudes toward the new speed limit than did controls. By contrast, those who read about a likely new limitation expressed much more annoyance; it was not yet a certainty, so they wanted nothing of it. As expected, the frequent drivers were more likely to rationalize the infringement on their liberties; they were more motivated to make the infringement acceptable.

The second experiment was similar, but with some important differences. In this case, the volunteers read about the dangers of using a cell phone while driving—and a government plan to ban the practice. But the scientists introduced a new twist as well: Some read that it was a done deal; others that there was a small chance it would not be passed; and still others that there was reasonable chance it would be voted down. In other words, they introduced two different degrees of uncertainty.

Again, the volunteers rated how bothersome the new restriction would be, and they also rated how important this particular liberty—driving while talking on a cell—was to them. And again, volunteers facing the absolute certainty of a new ban were more likely to rationalize: They played down the importance of this right. Those who faced the likelihood of a new restriction had a harsher reaction. They claimed that this restricted right was very important to them, and this was the case even if there was only a miniscule chance of the new ban not being approved. These findings boil down to this: We are very reluctant to give up any bit of personal liberty, and will grab at straws before we do.

Kay and his colleagues concede that life is more nuanced than these studies suggest. Some restrictions on liberty, even when they are absolute, may be too sudden or too abhorrent to be rationalized easily. That may be the case with the alcoholic, who certainly faces a horrifying prospect. The alcoholic must also dictate his or her own prohibition and with time come to the realization—or rationalization—that freedom isn’t always liberating, and restriction isn’t always oppressive.

Taming the mad monkey mind

Shrinkrap — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 06:57:05 +0000

TAMING THE MAD MONKEY MIND

Rene’ Descartes’ “ Cogito ergo sum- I think, therefore I am” placed the mind firmly at the forefront of Western philosophy at the turn of the 17^th Century. Unfortunately, Western civilization’s overidentification with this dictum has been a mixed blessing.

There is no doubt that while the mind is infinitely capable of producing great beauty through its capacity to create and relate, when left to it’s own devices it has a tendency to gorge itself. Whether it be on repetitive rumination, projecting itself ceaselessly into the future, or into the past, the result is that many minds are incapable of being present in the present. This lack of attention and concentration, of being unable to hold awareness in the present moment, has been accelerated exponentially through the herculean pace of our modern lives. We now have access to an infinite amount of information through technology and the media, but the quality of what many of us choose to put into our minds is not always healthy.

In a recent report the National Institute of Health claims that Obesity and Depression are two of the fastest growing illnesses in the United States (see www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12893108).

It is possible that our minds, like our bodies are prone to obesity, to becoming ill through a lack of proper mental nourishment and activity. Since the introduction of television, it has become increasingly common for millions of families to switch on the television and watch some mindless program while eating a heat ‘n eat meal rather than connecting and relating to each other around a dinner table. Many of us are to be found on Facebook, or BBM’ing a friend as opposed to reading a couple of chapters of a stimulating book, or just sitting quietly for a couple of moments.

This has had an effect on the way we use our minds, or more accurately, on the way our minds have begun to use us.

A case must be made that while Western civilization has increased access to resources such as education and health care, mental health related difficulties such as stress, anxiety, depression, addiction, poor self esteem and so on, are on the rise. It seems plausible that while the rise in these issues is partially attributable to the context within which we live, some of the struggle is happening because our minds have become ungovernable, constantly agitated, restless, seeking and unable to focus.

The early pioneer, philosopher-psychologist, William James, wrote that being able to control the attentional aspect of mind is at “the very root of character and will”. The problem is that being able to focus one’s attention and concentration is much easier said than done, this is unfortunate because almost every impressive human achievement is, at heart, through the ability to focus the mind on a specific aspect. Another complicating variable is that many minds are addicted to the pleasure principle i.e. it wants to feel pleasure and wants to avoid any discomfort, but as any athlete can tell you, one does not build stamina and strength by just thinking about it and seeking out pleasure. Why then should it be any different for the mind? Is it not possible to train the mind? To build its core strength? Can attention be improved?

Psychologists have become more interested in the claims made for meditation, particularly in its promise of improving attention. It certainly seems intuitively right that meditation should improve attention — after all meditation is essentially concentration practice — but what does the scientific evidence tell us?

Does meditation improve attention?

The problem with attention is that it naturally likes to jump around from one thing to another: attention is prone to restlessness, it won’t settle, something akin to a small child on a lot of sugar. Attention’s fidgety nature can be clearly seen in the phenomenon of ‘binocular rivalry’. If you show one picture to one eye and a different picture to the other eye, attention shuttles between them, wondering which is more interesting.

Carter (2005) had 76 Tibetan Buddhists meditate before taking a binocular rivalry test. In one condition their meditation was ‘compassionate’, thinking about all the suffering in the world while in the other, it was ‘one-point’ meditation focusing completely on one aspect of their experience, for example the breath cycle. Although the ‘compassionate’ form of meditation had no statistically significant effect, the ‘one-point’ meditation reduced the rate of switching in half the participants. Some of the most experienced monks reported complete image stability for a full 5 minutes. When compared to people who do not meditate, these results are exceptional.

Quicker results

Of course we don’t all have 20 years to pass in a mountain retreat learning how to concentrate, so what about the rest of us? A recent study by Dr. Amishi Jha and colleagues at Pennsylvania University (Jha, Krompinger & Baime, 2007) recruited people who had never practiced meditation before and sent them to an 8-week training course in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), a program developed by a group of American and British based brain researchers (see the resource section at the end of this article). This consisted of a series of 3-hour classes, with at least 30 minutes of meditation practice per day.

These 17 participants were then compared with a further 17 from a control group on a series of attentional measures. The results showed that those who had received training were better at focusing their attention for longer periods than the control group. There was also qualitative data suggesting reduced levels of stress, anxiety and improved mood states. This certainly suggests that meditation has the capacity to improve attention bandwidth.

There is evidence that meditation can improve a major limitation of the brain’s attentional system. Attentional blink is the finding that our attention ‘blinks’ for about half a second right after we focus on something. Slagter et al. (2007) gave participants 3 months of intensive meditation training and found that afterwards the attentional blink was drastically curtailed. In other words people were capable of processing information with more speed and accuracy. Other studies have also suggested that meditation can benefit motivation, cognition, emotional intelligence and may even sharpen awareness to such an extent that we can control our dreams (Walsh & Shapiro, 2006). Research on meditation’s effect on attention is in its infancy, but these initial findings certainly look promising.

A beginner’s guide to meditation.

Learning to observe the mind as opposed to attaching ceaselessly to its chattering takes time. I have practiced meditation for 10 years and have certainly not always been consistent in my practice, but the restlessness that has followed a period of non-practice has always brought me back. A simple method that I have used for taming ‘the mad monkey mind’ is the following.

Sit somewhere quietly where you won’t be disturbed for a short time (approx 10 mins). Set an alarm for 10 minutes time (so you don’t constantly worry about how long its taking). Then, settle down (close your eyes if it helps to reduce external stimulation) and bring attention to your breath, breathing…in and out through the nose…try and focus your attention on a normal in breath…and the out breath…the in breath… and the out breath…attempt to breath in for a count of 1…and out for a count of 1….in for a count of 2…and out for a count of 2…until you get to 10….while focusing your attention just on your breath. You’ll notice that it isn’t as easy as it appears, often you’ll lose count…thinking about a thousand different things, judging, planning, worrying…etc. That’s ok, it doesn’t mean you’re failing in any way, it just shows you how busy the mind is! When you notice that your attention is no longer on the breath, gently (important-don’t judge yourself or punish yourself for thinking) guide your attention back to the breath and start again at 1…until your attention can remain stable on the breath until you have got to 10. If you have had little or no experience of focusing your attention in this way, it will take time for you to hold your attention in a stable way for a count of 10. Once your attention is stable, you can increase it to 15…20…etc.

The key is to notice in a detached way what’s happening but not to get involved with it. I often think of meditation, or meta-awareness as being akin to being a member of the audience watching the drama of the mind as opposed to being an actor on stage totally involved in what is happening. Like any type of core strength, or skill, open awareness does not come naturally and takes time to develop. The breath is handy because it is ever-present but you could choose anything to focus your attention on, a candle flame, a rose…whatever it is try to focus all your attention onto it. When your attention wavers, and it will almost immediately, gently bring it back. Don’t chide yourself, be good to yourself. The act of concentrating on one thing is surprisingly difficult: you will feel the ‘mental burn’ almost immediately but this eases with practice.

New ways of being

As William James pointed out attention is so fundamental to our daily lives that sharpening it up is bound to spill over into many different areas of everyday life. In fact attention is so fundamental to consciousness that it’s no exaggeration to say that what we pay attention to makes us who we are. Potentially, then, meditation offers a way to remake ourselves, leaving behind damaging or limiting habits and discovering new ways of being.

Resources:

Kabat-Zinn Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness (Delta, 1991), and Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life (Hyperion, 1994). He co-authored with Myla Kabat-Zinn Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting, (Hyperion, 1997). Other books include Coming to Our Senses (Hyperion, 2005) and his most recent book The Mindful Way Through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness, co-authored with J. Mark G. Williams, John D. Teasdale and Zindel V. Segal (Guilford, 2007), www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nwwKbM_vJc).

The Zeigarnik Effect

Shrinkrap — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 18:36:19 +0000

The Zeigarnik Effect

What can waiters, the TV series ‘Lost’ and the novelist Charles Dickens teach us about avoiding procrastination?

One of the simplest methods for beating procrastination in almost any task was inspired by busy waiters.

It’s called the Zeigarnik effect after a Russian psychologist, Bluma Zeigarnik (above left), who noticed an odd thing while sitting in a restaurant in Vienna. The waiters seemed only to remember orders which were in the process of being served. When completed, the orders evaporated from their memory.

Zeigarnik went back to the lab to test out a theory about what was going on. She asked participants to do twenty or so simple little tasks in the lab, like solving puzzles and stringing beads (Zeigarnik, 1927). Except some of the time they were interrupted half way through the task. Afterwards she asked them which activities they remembered doing. People were about twice as likely to remember the tasks during which they’d been interrupted than those they completed.

What does this have to do with procrastination? I’ll give you another clue…

Almost sixty years later Kenneth McGraw and colleagues carried out another test of the Zeigarnik effect (McGraw et al., 1982). In it participants had to do a really tricky puzzle; except they were interrupted before any of them could solve it and told the study was over. Despite this nearly 90% carried on working on the puzzle anyway.

Got it yet?

Cliffhanger

Here’s another clue: one of the oldest tricks in the TV business for keeping viewers tuned in to a serial week after week is the cliffhanger. The hero seems to have fallen off a mountain but the shot cuts away before you can be sure. And then those fateful words: “TO BE CONTINUED…” Literally a cliffhanger.

You tune in next week for the resolution because the mystery is ticking away in the back of your mind.

The great English novelist Charles Dickens used exactly the same technique. Many of his works, like Oliver Twist, although later published as complete novels, were originally serialised.

His cliffhangers created such anticipation in people’s minds that his American readership would wait at New York docks for the latest instalment to arrive by ship from Britain. They were that desperate to find out what happened next.

I’ve started so I’ll finish

What all these examples have in common is that when people manage to start something they’re more inclined to finish it. Procrastination bites worst when we’re faced with a large task that we’re trying to avoid starting. It might be because we don’t know how to start or even where to start.

What the Zeigarnik effect teaches is that one weapon for beating procrastination is starting somewhere…anywhere.

Don’t start with the hardest bit, try something easy first. If you can just get under way with any part of a project, then the rest will tend to follow. Once you’ve made a start, however trivial, there’s something drawing you on to the end. It will niggle away in the back of your mind like a Lost cliffhanger.

Although the technique is simple, we often forget it because we get so wrapped up in thinking about the most difficult parts of our projects. The sense of foreboding can be a big contributor to procrastination.

The Zeigarnik effect has an important exception. It doesn’t work so well when we’re not particularly motivated to achieve our goal or don’t expect to do well. This is true of goals in general: when they’re unattractive or impossible we don’t bother with them.

But if we value the goal and think it’s possible, just taking a first step could be the difference between failure and success.

How to grab the New Year by the nuts!

Shrinkrap — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 18:32:20 +0000

11 Ways to Achieve Anything!

We’re all familiar with the nuts and bolts of goal-setting. We should set specific, challenging goals, use rewards, record progress and make public commitments.

So how come we still fail?

This psychological research suggests why and what mindsets should help us reach our goals.

1. Stop fantasising

The biggest enemy of any goal is excessive positive fantasising. Research on fantasising in goal-setting shows that positive fantasies are associated with failure to get a job, find a partner, pass an exam or get through surgery. Those whose fantasies were more negative did better. Don’t experience the future positively before you achieve it.

2. Start committing

The reason we don’t achieve our goals is lack of commitment.

One powerful psychological technique to increase commitment is mental contrasting. This involves entertaining a positive fantasy but then pouring a bucket of cold reality over it. It’s hard, but research shows people really respond to it.

3. Start starting

You can use the Zeigarnik effect to drag you on towards your goal. A Russian psychologist, Bluma Zeigarnik, noticed that waiters seemed only to remember orders which were in the process of being served. When completed, the orders evaporated from their memory.

What the Zeigarnik effect teaches is that one weapon for beating procrastination is starting somewhere…anywhere. Just taking that first step could be the difference between failure and success. Once you’ve started, the goal will get lodged in your mind.

4. Visualise process NOT outcome

We’re all susceptible to the planning fallacy: that’s thinking all will go smoothly when it won’t (and hardly ever does). Visualising the process of reaching your goal, helps focus attention on the steps you need to take. It also helps reduce anxiety.

5. Avoid the what-the-hell effect

When we miss our target, we can fall foul of the what-the-hell-effect. It’s best known to dieters who go over their daily calorie limit. Reasoning the target is now gone, they think ‘what-the-hell’, and start eating too much of all the wrong food.

Goals that are vulnerable to the what-the-hell-effect are generally short-term and inhibitional (when you’re trying to stop doing something). The effect can be avoided by setting goals that are long-term and acquisitional. Find out more about thewhat-the-hell effect.

6. Sidestep procrastination

When goals are difficult and we wonder whether it’s really worth it, procrastination can creep up on us. Under these circumstances the key is to forget about the goal and bury yourself in the details. Keep your head down and use self-imposed deadlines .

7. Shifting focus

You can’t keep your head down all the way or you’ll get lost. In the long-term, the key to reaching a goal is switching between a focus on the ultimate goal and the task you are currently completing. Research suggests, when evaluating progress, especially on difficult tasks, it’s best to stay task-focused. But when tasks are easy or the end is in site, it’s better to focus on the ultimate goal.

8. Reject robotic behaviour

Often our behaviour is robotic. We do things not because we’ve really thought about it, but because it’s a habit or we’re unconsciously copying other people (e.g.Bargh et al., 2001). This type of behaviour can be an enemy of goal striving. Ask yourself whether what you are doing is really getting you closer to your goal.

9. Forget the goal, what’s the aim?

Goals should always be set in the service of our overall aims. But there’s a dark side to goal setting. When goals are too specific, it’s easy to get stuck; when they are too many goals, unimportant, easy ones get prioritised over vital, difficult ones; when they are too short-term, they encourage short-term thinking. Badly set goals reduce motivation and may increase unethical behaviour.

Remember to keep in mind the whole point of the goal in the first place.

10. Know when to stop

Sometimes the problem isn’t getting started, it’s knowing when to stop. Psychologists have found that sunk costs make us do weird things (Arkes & Blumer, 1985). ‘Sunk costs’ refer to the effort or money we’ve already expended in trying to reach our goal. So, even when our plan is failing, we keep pushing on.

Research shows that the more people invest in a goal, the more they think it will succeed; irrespective of whether it actually will succeed. Know when to change tack or you’ll end up flogging a dead horse.

11. If-then plans

What all these studies show is the importance of self-regulation in achieving a goal. Unfortunately, as we all know to our cost, controlling the self can be very hard.

One strategy with plenty of research to back it up is forming ‘if-then’ plans (Gollwitzer et al., 2006). You simply work out in advance what you’re going to do in a particular situation. Although it sounds simple, we often prefer to wing it, rather than plan. With a little ingenuity, though, if-then plans can be used to surmount the obstacles described above.

Self defeating strategies to protect self esteem.

Shrinkrap — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 17:47:05 +0000

It’s natural to make excuses for poor performance but they can be dangerous…

Most of us have a strong fear of failure.

It’s partly because we don’t want to look bad in front of others but it’s also about how we see ourselves. We are afraid to fail because it damages our view of ourselves, our self-esteem.

To protect our self-esteem, psychologists have found that people use all sorts of self-handicapping strategies (from McCrea, 2008):

Not trying very hard.
Procrastination.
Listening to music or using another type of distraction.
Drinking alcohol and taking drugs.

The beauty of not trying too hard is that, should we fail, we can always say that it doesn’t reflect our ability. In some ways it’s a rational strategy. If you succeed you look especially gifted, if not then your excuse is already there.

Some people with high self-esteem seem to be more prone to self-handicapping (Tice & Baumeister, 1990). If you can succeed without really trying then you must be super-talented. So the more a person is convinced of their own talent, the more they like to prove how easy it all is for them.

The problem with self-handicapping is pretty obvious, i.e., you don’t give yourself the best chance, so you don’t get the best result. Sure enough self-handicapping behaviours are associated with lower motivation, less persistence at difficult tasks, less self-guided learning and lower performance in general.

Dangerous excuses

The methods of self-handicapping above are pretty obvious, but there is also a more insidious type of mental gymnastics that will cause problems. This is when you make excuses for a poor performance afterwards.

In a series of experiments McCrea (2008) tested the effect of these explanations on participants’ future motivation. What they found was that making excuses made people feel better about themselves because they were shielded from lowered self-esteem. But, on the other hand, the excuses reduced the motivation to prepare properly in the future.

The line between an excuse and an explanation is a fine one, but generally excuses reduce motivation because they tend to:

Blame others rather than ourselves.
Make poor outcomes seem better in comparison.
Lower expectations for the future.

So, the first step in avoiding self-handicapping is noticing and cutting out the most obvious self-defeating behaviours, like not trying very hard. On top of this it’s important to try not to make excuses as they will reduce motivation. It will mean taking a hit to your self-esteem, which will hurt in the short-run, but will allow better performance in the long-run.

A stitch in time saves nine…Part I

Shrinkrap — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 18:47:27 +0000

“Procrastination is like masturbation. At first it feels good, but in the end you’re only screwing yourself.” ~Author Unknown

Procrastination seems to enter into so many of my clients narratives, that I decided to do some research as to why putting important things off until some time in the future is such a popular pastime. An interesting pattern began to emerge, client A, let’s call him John, has low self esteem, he feels a bit depressed and reports chronic procrastination in every aspect of his life, including home (mowing the lawn, taking his wife out for dinner), work (updating his credit facilities and doing his tax return) and socially (making time to see a close mate).

John has a task to do that will increase the cash flow of his business, he repeatedly puts it off because he feels overwhelmed by the sheer administrative enormity of it even though the benefit far outweighs the time necessary to complete it. John then hooks into some self soothing avoidance strategy (men love playing games on their computer), the important task remains undone but blisters somewhere on the periphery of his awareness. John begins to feel stressed, his wife starts to point out his avoidance strategies (gently at first, but with increasing fervor). He then feels overwhelmed on many different fronts and becomes increasingly emotionally reactive, he begins to argue with some colleagues and/or with others involved in his procrastination cycle. John then uses the evidence of his poor task completion (as well as some of the harsh things people have said to him) to puncture his self worth, which in turn affects his mood negatively, which in turn initiates a further round of self soothing avoidance (damn Tetris!). On and on… so the wheel turns.

Procrastination is a curse, and a costly one. Putting things off leads not only to lost productivity, but also to all sorts of hand wringing and regrets and damaged self-esteem. For all these reasons, psychologists would love to figure out what’s going on in the mind that makes it so hard to actually do what we set out to do. Are we fundamentally misguided in the way we think about plans and effort and work? Is there some perverse habit of mind that automatically dampens our sense of urgency? Are we programmed for postponement and delay?

An international team of psychologists has begun exploring these questions in the laboratory. Led by Sean McCrea of the University of Konstanz in Germany, the researchers wanted to see if there might be a link between how we think of a task and our tendency to postpone it. In other words, are we more likely to see some tasks as psychologically “distant” and thus to consign them to some vague future rather than tackle them now?

Psychological distance is a well-documented idea. It’s been shown that people think of geographically distant events and ideas as less detailed and concrete than things taking place nearby. So for example, “locking the door” means simply turning the key here at home, but locking the door 3,000 miles away means security and personal safety. McCrea and his colleagues suspected that this same cognitive oddity might show up in the way we think about time and tasks. That is, vague, abstract tasks might be easier to mentally postpone into the future than concrete tasks. They decided to test this notion in a few simple experiments.

Here’s an example. The psychologists handed out questionnaires to a group of students and asked them to respond by e-mail within three weeks. All the questions had to do with rather mundane tasks like opening a bank account and keeping a diary, but different students were given different instructions for answering the questions. Some thought and wrote about what each activity implied about personal traits: what kind of person has a bank account, for example. Others wrote simply about the nuts and bolts of doing each activity: speaking to a bank officer, filling out forms, making an initial deposit, and so forth. The idea was to get some students thinking abstractly and others concretely.

Then they waited. And in some cases, waited and waited. They recorded all the response times to see if there was a difference between the two groups, and indeed there was — a significant difference. Even though they were all being paid upon completion, those in a what-does-it-all-mean mentality were much more likely to procrastinate — and in fact, some never got around to the assignment at all. By contrast, those who were focused on the how, when, and where of doing the task e-mailed their responses much sooner, suggesting that they hopped right on the assignment rather than delaying it.

This makes sense in an odd sort of way. When you first think about the possibility of trying something new, you’re focused on why: What’s the purpose? Does it make sense for me to do this? It’s still just a distant possibility, and these are the things that matter. Only as you get closer to actually taking on the task do you start to think of the more immediate how-to details. So conversely, thinking about the how-to of a job gives it immediacy — and urgency.

Even so, the scientists decided to double-check their initial findings with a different kind of laboratory technique. In this experiment, the task was to complete sentence fragments, either in an abstract or a concrete way. For example, some might complete this fragment: “An example of a bird is ______.” Others completed this kind of fragment: “A bird is an example of ______.” The first requires a concrete example — an indigo bunting, for example, or scarlet tanager — while the second asks for an abstract category — warm-blooded vertebrates, say. So again the experiment primed one cognitive style or the other, and again the psychologists logged in the e-mail response times.

The findings, reported in the December issue of the journal Psychological Science, were very clear. Even though the sentence fragments really had nothing to do with the actual task, those primed for concrete thinking were much less apt to delay and postpone than were those primed for abstract thinking. They saw the task as more immediate and acted with more urgency. Those prompted to give vague and amorphous answers were indecisive.

Lots of psychology experiments don’t have a practical take-home message, but these do. You know that exercise routine you’ve been talking about starting up in January? Well, forget about how virtuous it is, or how healthy, or how it might boost your confidence. Instead, think about putting on your shoes, tying them, one at a time; entering the front door of the gym and walking to the first treadmill you see; stepping aboard and starting to move your legs, right leg first and don’t forget to KEEP MOVING!

Two Vital Questions

Shrinkrap — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 04:50:50 +0000

When a person meets you for the first time they ask themselves two questions. The answers to these two questions will have all sorts of knock-on effects for how they think about you and how they behave towards you.

Professor Susan Fiske of Princeton University has shown that all social judgements can be boiled down to these two dimensions (Fiske et al., 2007):

How warm is this person? The idea of warmth includes things like trustworthiness, friendliness, helpfulness, sociability and so on. Initial warmth judgements are made within a few seconds of meeting you.
How competent is this person? Competency judgements take longer to form and include things like intelligence, creativity, perceived ability and so on.

Susan Fiske’s research has looked at different cultures, times and types of social judgements, but these two concepts come up again and again in slightly different guises. Not only do we make these judgements about other people, but we frame their behaviour using these two questions; we ask ourselves whether it was friendly, moral, sincere, clever etc..

The primacy of warmth and competence may reflect evolved, instinctual reactions to these two questions about others:

Friend or foe? Is this person going to hurt me or help me?
Capable of hurting or helping? Can this person help me if they’re friendly or hurt me if they’re not?

So how does one project a warm, competent sense of self?

Sometimes in life we get exactly what we expect. Nowhere is this more true than in social relations.

When we meet someone new, if we expect to like them—for whatever reason—then they tend to like us. If we experience apprehension or nascent dislike then things can quickly go wrong. Psychologists have called it the ‘acceptance prophecy’.

The problem is that for insecure or socially nervous individuals it becomes the rejection prophecy. A feeling of apprehension about meeting new people is outwardly expressed as nervous behaviour and this can be a contributing factor in perceived rejection.

A new paper published in Psychological Science provides a simple exercise that helps boost relational security and may help turn the rejection prophecy back into the acceptance prophecy.

Self-affirmation

Stinson et al. (2011) measured the relational security of 117 participants by asking them how much they agreed with statements like: “My friends regard me as very important in their lives” and “My partner loves and accepts me unconditionally”.

Half of them were then asked to do a very simple self-affirmation task. Participants looked down a list of 11 values including things like spontaneity, creativity, friends and family, personal attractiveness and so on. They put them in order of importance and wrote a couple of paragraphs saying why their top-ranked item was so important.

The results showed that this simple task boosted the relational security of insecure individuals in comparison with a control group. Afterwards their behaviour was seen as less nervous and they reported feeling more secure. When they were followed up at four and eight weeks later, the benefits were still apparent.

It appears that focussing on this simple exercise may be enough to boost the social confidence of many of us who are prone to feeling socially insecure and reinforce other peoples perceptions about our warmth and competency.