Quotes from psychologists

The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness. -Abraham Maslow

Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations. - Alfred Adler 

The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook. - William James

The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination - Carl Rogers

Well-being cannot exist just on your own head. Well-being is a combination of feeling good as well as actually having meaning, good relationships and accomplishment. - Martin Seligman

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over the other. - William James

Depression

I guess with the passing of one of my favorite actors Robin Williams now is a good time to educate about depression.

Depression is a type of mood disorder marked by emotional, physiological and cognitive symptoms. These may include sadness, sleep disturbance, feelings of worthlessness and irritability. 

Depression is more common than most people think with 40 million suffers in the US alone.The average onset of depression is in the early 20's.

Depression isn't something that a person can just snap out of. In most cases it needs to be treated by a professional.

So what causes depression? Well...depression is complex..there is no one trigger. However, research has identified factors that seem to increase the chance of developing depression. These include stressful life events such as past abuse. This can lead to a faulty way of processing the world around us (known as negative automatic thoughts). Depression has also been linked to differences in brain structures such as reduced size of the hippocampus. It has also been suggested may be somewhat  genetic. Some models suggest that it is the interaction of a number of these factors that result in the onset of depression. 

The good news is that depression is treatable. Some of these treatments include medication that blocks re-uptake of serotonin to increase levels in the body. There are also therapies such as CBT which have strong evidence behind them. A good place to start may be speaking to your GP about how you are feeling. You can then go on to find the treatment that is best for you.

If you are going to take away anything from this post please let it be that depression exists, it isn't something to be ashamed of or to hide. It is a common disorder that can be fixed if you reach out and ask for the help. 

Stress

We have all been there....whether it is because of that assignment that is due tomorrow morning, the overload at work or family issues. So...what exactly stress? Why does it happen? and more importantly...how can we reduce it?

Stress can be defined as a series of physical, biochemical and behavioural changes that occur due to a perceived threat in the environment. This response occurs because in the short term it is useful to allow for rapid response to threat. This is known as the fight or flight response. However, long term stress is damaging to health. One hormone that plays a large role in this is Cortisol. In the short term it gives a short burst of energy and reduces sensitivity to pain. However if this hormone is long lasting in the body due to continuous stress it causes damage such as high blood pressure, suppression of the immune system and infertility. 

...Needless to say...long term stress is not good for you....

Unless you do not care about anything at all in life, stress is pretty much unavoidable. So...that just leaves one question....how can we reduce stress?

I could  list off a million and one studies that give many different ways that have been suggested to reduce stress. These include different medications, mindfulness, meditation...the list goes on and on... Here are some common and relatively easy methods of stress often suggested.

1. Get a good night's sleep

Sleep is a crucial human function. It has many important roles such as allowing for the consolidation of memories, repairing of cells and allowing us to recharge. Adults need roughly 7-9 hours of sleep per day. Poor sleep for even one night has been found to impact memory, mood and judgement. A better night's sleep leaves you better able to tackle the challenges of the following day. 

2. Exercise  

Exercise increases the levels of the hormone endorphin in the body. This hormone reduces perception of pain and have been linked to feelings of happiness. Regular exercise is positive both physically and mentally. Exercising as part of a group can also have benefits in terms of social support as well. 

3. Cut down on caffeine.

Caffeine has been found to increase both adrenocorticotropin (ACTH) and cortisol secretion. You may recall where I mentioned above that cortisol plays a major role in the activation of the stress response in the body. High amounts of caffeine on a regular basis have been found to be related to health effects similar to that of long term elevated cortisol levels. Caffeine can also affect your sleep by keeping you awake at night. Therefore, cutting down on caffeine can be beneficial for your physical and mental health.

4. Try relaxation exercises 

Breathing and muscle relaxation exercises can be done anywhere, whether it is sitting at your desk in the office or on the couch at home. These are good ways to relieve feelings of tension and to focus on the present moment. They are worth giving a try.

Beauty

What do people consider beautiful? Why do so may people strive for beauty? Is beauty a good or a bad thing?

This collage of celebrity body parts was put together recently to display what men and women considered to be the perfect female body.

According to research males find women most attractive when they have big eyes, high cheekbones and a big smile. According to the picture above Megan Fox's face must tick all of those boxes. The reason for this has been suggested to be because these features are all a sign of youth and health.

Here is a random and interesting twist that is known as 'The Averageness hypothesis'. This states that the average of two or more pretty faces is perceived as prettier than just one of those pretty faces.

This is an example that was used in class,Taylor Lautner and Robert Pattinson's faces merged into one.

Personally I think this isn't a great example because I would still be Team Jacob on that one! But i have seen other examples that really display it well! 

So what is it about beauty that makes people want a slice of it? What is it that has men and women running to the plastic surgeon for a little nip and tuck? 

You may recall 'The Halo Effect' (also known as 'the what is good is beautiful principle') in one of my previous blog posts. This is the tendency to attribute other positive traits to attractive people. For example, they may be assumed to be intelligent, successful and talented as well as pretty. This certainly has a role to play in the desire for beauty, after all..we all want  others to think well of us. I guess that could be perceived as one of the good things about beauty (for attractive people that is).

It is safe to say that there is an unrealistic portrayal of what people actually look like put forward by the media.Some examples include singer Lorde calling out on one photo of herself that had been photo-shopped. Another is this magazine that worked so hard to give Adam Lavigne a good figure that they actually photo-shopped half of him out...

Adolescents that suffer from eating disorders often report being influenced by images presented by the media. Unfortunately, media images can lead to negative perceptions of one's own body and be a contributing factor to the development of  eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. They can also lead to social pressures and expectations that have men in the gym and women exercising and dieting to the extreme competing to look better than each other. This is one of the nasty sides of beauty, the desire to hold it can lead to unhealthy behavior.

  

So is beauty a good or bad thing? At this moment I honestly don'y know so I guess I will leave that for you to decide....

                                                   

Obedience

So...after watching the movie Conformity I decided to look into obedience abit more.

Obedience is a type of social influence in which an individual carries out orders from an authoritative figure.
If you have ever taken out the trash because a parent told you too or done something at work because your boss told you to then you have experienced obedience to authority. This isn't really a big deal, it's just something we have to deal with in life. BUT...when the authoritative figure takes it too far then it becomes an issue...

For those of you who have not watched Conformity, it is a pretty accurate recollection of what actually happened in a McDonalds restaurant in Mount Washington, Kentucky in 2004. A prank phone call was made to manager Donna Jean Summers telling her that an employee had stolen money. The man on the phone claimed to be the police and asked that Louise Ogborn who was accused of stealing the money take part in a strip search. Long story short the requests made by the prank caller got increasingly weird and messed up and ended with Louise being sexually assaulted because the 'police officer' told the manager's fiance to do it. Similar prank calls were made in 70 other restaurants across the U.S and the managers of those restaurants complied with his requests every time. The employees then complied with what the manager told them to do as a result. 

Below is an actual picture of CCTV footage of Louise in the office when this was happening.

Not really sure its was okay to make a move about this but there ya go...

This is a perfect example of when obedience to authority goes too far...

I'm sure that you are thinking to yourself 'that is ridiculous, why didn't Louise leave and why didn't Donna see how messed up this was and stop following the orders of 'the police man'??'

The scary thing is that research into obedience actually suggests that if put in this situation, most people would do the exact same thing. 

Milgram's study of obedience in 1961 is well known whether you study psychology or not. Basically he got normal everyday members of the public to administer a fatal shock (450 volts) to a person who they thought was another a member of the public. The shocks weren't real but the member of the public didn't know that. The other person was screaming in pain and begging the researcher to let them go but the member of the public still continued to shock the person...all because the researcher told them to. The members of the public who were the giving the shocks were clearly distressed and did express that they did not want to do it...but over 60% of people went all they way and administered the fatal shock just because the researcher said they had to.

I am reading about these incidents and thinking to myself that I definitely would never do anything like this but the research and evidence says that we would. 

The incidents discussed above were small in scale but serious.....put this on a larger scale and you have stuff like the holocaust going on...

Where do we draw the line?? How far does an authority have to push you before you say no??

Self-pesentation

Self-presentation is a type of impression management, an attempt to influence other's perceptions of of you.

People present themselves in a particular way for many reasons. They may do it to facilitate social interaction. In a social group everyone has their own role to play. You may be 'the funny guy', or 'the smart one.' So consciously or unconsciously you act in a certain way around others to portray yourself as whatever role you think is yours. For example, I know someone that if I was talking to them one on one they would be calm and speak in a normal tone. However, put them in a group and they act the clown. Within the group they play the role of the funny one so they take on that behavior.

Mostly people do it in order to create a certain impression of themselves. This is in an attempt to convince others that we posses a certain trait or are of a certain character. Adolescents often try portray many different identities throughout their teenage years in an attempt to discover 'who they are'. Again, I know somebody who has done this. They tried out the 'emo' look, the 'chav' look, the 'druggie kid'...They tried out every identity going throughout their adolescent years, behaving in a certain way in to portray themselves as whatever character they were playing at that time.  

Self-presentation has become more and more common along with popularity of social media. This is because social media makes it very easy to only portray one side of yourself. We post certain statuses and tweets to display ourselves in a certain way. You might share all your success stories on Facebook but not mention a word if you loose. People post funny photos and stories to their page to seem like a person who is good fun. Others post 'selfies' in order to portray themselves as attractive. At the same time 'untagging' any picture of themselves that looks in anyway embarrassing or unattractive. Social media allows us to put our 'best face forward.'

However, it is important to note that we all present ourselves in a certain way but we differ in the amount we to this and in what way we present ourselves.

Studies have shown that the most popular identities that are portrayed are 'likable', 'competent', 'moral' and 'powerful'. Also, the most common impression management strategy is ingratiation. This is an attempt to get others to like you. We say nice things about others and do favors for others as a method of making them think that you are a likable person. 

I don't want to say much more on this topic right now because i'm pretty sure I have an assignment coming up on this and I don't want to increase my similarity mark. The last thing i need is to get done for plagiarizing my own stuff...

Á bientôt. 

The Barnum Effect

If you enjoy horoscopes, fortune-telling, online personality tests and all that sort of stuff look away now......
'The Barnum Effect' is often used by those mentioned above to make you think that they are correct and have some physic power. The reality is they don't.....

The Barnum Effect is when a person is given vague statements and descriptions but they see it as a very accurate reflection of themselves. The statements are so vague that no one can disagree with that description. People don't seem  to realize that the statements are vague and instead search for anything that may reflect them.
For example, psychologist Bertram Frorer had his students take a personality test. He gave them back a result with statements such as 'you can sometimes be critical of yourself' and 'at times you can be an extrovert, sociable, but at other times you can be introverted, reserved.' The students were satisfied with the description they got of themselves reporting it as very accurate. However, Frorer had actually given every one of them the exact same description. The statements in the description were so vague that they could apply to everybody at one point or another. This is how horoscopes work.

A horoscope for Scorpio, which I just looked up, contained statements like 'sometimes when the phone rings you already know who it is going to be' and 'articles about people's experiences that are similar to yours increase your understanding of that person'. Statements like this mean that reader is looking at it thinking it sounds exactly like them when actually it sounds like everybody.  Statements of  'you are sometimes X but you can also be Y at time's are a dead give away....they are giving you both options so you can't possibly disagree.

Fortune-tellers use the barnum effect in relation to predictions about the future. They provide a sense of control over the unknown. Again, the fortune-teller will give a broad statement knowing that what they say will most likely happen to the person at some stage. Also, people tend to read too much into what they are told and see the statement as true for some reason that doesn't really match up to what they were told. Lets say you are told that something bad will happen, the next day you can't find your car keys. You will tend to think that this must have been the bad thing when realistically losing your keys isn't really that bad. 

Is the horoscope that you are reading suddenly sounding very broad and vague? There are valid and reliable personality tests out there should you be interested in learning more about yourself. 

The Lucifer Effect

It is not uncommon that the actions of an individual shocks those who knew them before hand.
A recent example of this is the bombing of the Boston marathon on April 15th 2013. That afternoon I was flicking through the tv channels out of boredom when i came across CNN news. I immediately had a flashback of when I returned from school 12 years earlier and my dad called me into the living room to watch the events of 9/11 unfold. This time I was the one calling him into the room and we watched in disbelief and wondered what sort of a monster could do this.

Ex classmates of one of the accused culprits, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, described him as 'a nice guy ', 'an ordinary kid', one that 'you would never suspect anything out of the ordinary from'. Those who knew him before this were stunned by what appeared to have done (and is now convicted of doing).

Philip Zimbardo investigated what it was that made people do evil. He looks at whether those that do evil are actually evil or are they ordinary people responding to extraordinary situations. He demonstrated this in the infamous and disturbing Stanford Prison Experiment. 

In this experiment 24 male students from Stanford University were randomly assigned to the role of prisoner or guard. Every one of the participants were tested  before hand to ensure they did not have any psychological disorders. The prisoners were arrested and processed then placed into a makeshift prison in the basement of the university. They wore an inmate uniform with their own inmate number on it as a method of removing their student identity and replacing it with that of a prisoner. The guards were not given any specific training, they were told to do what they had to in order to maintain order. The guards had their own khaki uniform, again, removing any identification as the students the were. Prisoners were often told to do push-ups as punishment for disobedience. On day two the prisoners rebelled by ripping off their numbers and barricading themselves in their cells. In retaliation the guards stripped the prisoners naked and placed the rebellion ring leaders in solitary confinement. In order to maintain control the guards decided to try psychological tactics and create a privilege system involving privileged inmates getting food, clothes and a bed to sleep in. The other inmates had all these basic needs taken away from them. They turned the prisoners on each other by giving random prisoners privileges to make them look like informants. At this point non-privileged prisoners were even denied access to the toilet. Some prisoners began to show signs of emotional disturbance. Six days into the 14 day experiment it was called off as people began to express concerns about it. 

Below is an actual picture of  prisoners in the experiment.

This experiment demonstrated the importance of situation in the behavior of  individuals. Ordinary students who had no prior psychological issues began to do acts of evil such a removing the basic human needs of their fellow students. Even when fellow students started to display signs of emotional disturbance they did not stop the sadistic behavior. Afterwards  the participants reported feeling committed to their roles which felt real to them.

Philip Zimbardo's 'The Lucifer Effect' demonstrates that good people can do evil things in certain circumstances.

Bystander effect.

Picture this....you are walking down the street and you see a child being dragged away by a man. The child is visibly in distress, kicking and screaming saying 'Somebody help, you are not my dad'.What do you do?? The answer for the majority of people is...nothing.
Here is a short video of an experiment that tested this scenario.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1_JMPYxIzg

Most people did nothing. This is known as the bystander effect. The people around that are witnessing a person in distress do nothing in the assumption that somebody else will.

While the above example was only an experiment and no body was in real danger. This was not the case with 28 year old  Kitty Genovese. It was her case that led to the research on what was named the bystander effect. While she was walking home Kitty Genovese was stalked and stabbed for over half an hour by Winston Moseley. Numerous people knew there was an attack taking place and did nothing. Needless to say Kitty Genovese died in the attack. Similar incidents to this one have occurred since with no body coming to the help of the victim.

In general, the more people that are witnesses to a crime the less likely they are to help. This is called diffusion of responsibility. If you are one of five people that witness the crime then responsibility to help is only 20% yours so you are less likely to help. However, if you are the only witness responsibility to help is 100% yours.

How many times have you witnessed a person in need and just walked away? Just a few weeks ago I witnessed a woman fighting with a man over a bike. They were right beside me and the woman was saying 'Give me my bike back, please do not steal my bike' while the man struggled with her. Concerned for my own safety, I walked away. About 10 minutes later I saw the woman again cycling her bike. She had clearly won and did not have her bicycle taken from her in the end. Though that did not stop me feeling guilty about not going to help her.

So what would you do if you were in that situation? Would you go to the aid of the victim or would you walk away?

Over and out!

Alteration of memories

Events that occur after a memory is formed have to ability to alter that memory.
For example, lets say that you were best friends with somebody for a couple of years, then you had a fight and fell out. When thinking about that person again, you are more likely to remember them as that jerk of an individual that you fell out with rather than that nice individual you had all those fun times with.

This occurs because your memories are now biased by your beliefs about that person, this is known as confirmation bias. The act of remembering things about this person is filtered by a process called 'selective recall' wherein you only remember the things about that person that match your beliefs.

Here is a short Youtube video that pretty much sums up confirmation bias.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xMaR8au-YU

Memories are not reliable. This can pose great issues for eyewitness testimonies in court. I watched a documentary on this over the Christmas and was surprised by how easily an account of whole group of witnesses could be changed by one person confidently providing wrong descriptions. They went from recalling the crime they witnessed pretty accurately to giving a completely wrong description the next day. The person who committed the crime was even in the room with them and they did not notice a thing!! The confidence of that one individual was enough to get them to believe statements about the crime that were not true at all and thus bias their memory of the event.

This just goes to show, you may think you remember what a person is like or an event that occurred but your memory of this could be very wrong indeed!