the psychocurator

I don’t personally take enough time to read good psychology books. Back in graduate school, looking for a good way to kill time over winter vacation, I asked a favorite professor of mine, Tom Bouchard, to make a few recommendations. It was a special treat to get a handpicked list of books from one of the greatest luminaries in the field of behavioral genetics. I devoured three of the books in rapid succession. Thanks goes to the people over at Mind Hacks who point out that you can get book recommendations from leading psychologists from the BPS Research Digest.

Every month since 2008 The Psychologist magazine has run an interview with a leading psychologist where they ask them to name one book or journal article, either contemporary or historical, that all psychologists should read. The BPS Research Digest has compiled all the answers into handy and fascinating list.

 

A few of the answers:

 

Mistakes Were Made But Not by Me by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. “You’ll get to understand why hypocrites never see their own hypocrisy, why couples so often misremember their shared history, why many people persist in courses of action that lead straight into quicksand. It’s lucid and witty, and a delightful read,” said Elizabeth Loftus, Oct 08.

 

“Muriel Dimen’s Sexuality, Intimacy, Power, which offers one feminist’s journey from dualism to multiplicity, questioning and making more complex all the accounts we have of how you grow up to become a sexed person,” said Lynne Segal, Jan 09.

 

“B.F. Skinner’s The operational analysis of psychological terms Psychological Review 52, 270–277, 1945 is rarely read and even less often understood. Contrary to some misrepresentations of his position, Skinner never doubted that we can describe internal states such as thoughts or emotions, but he wondered how we are able to do this. His answer was surprising, relevant to the practice of psychotherapy, and a challenge to all those who like some unsophisticated therapists assume that we can know our own feelings by a simple process of self-inspection,” said Richard Bentall, Apr 11.

 

I loved the Social Animal books from Aronson, and anything recommended by Elizabeth Loftus has to be good. Check out the BPS Research Digest for a rather lengthy list of these books. Quite amazingly, some people have recommended books by their spouses or even ones they’ve written (!). I am intrigued by the older ones – quite possibly the book that sparked the individual’s interest in pursuing psychology in the first place.

via A connoisseur’s list of essential psychology « Mind Hacks.

Adapt » Blog Archive » Mental disorder posters.

Very cool graphical depictions of various mental disorders.

Reblogged from Psychology Today.

If you desire to live a long, healthy life, you will be interested in the research results described in a new book, The Longevity Project, by Howard S. Friedman and Leslie R. Martin.

According to the authors, there are some things, however valuable in other ways, which do NOT lead to longevity:

• Taking life easy–being carefree.  (Carefree people often don’t pay attention to health matters.)
• A sociable personality.  (Extroverts are more likely to cave in to social pressures toward drinking and smoking.)
• Cheerfulness and excessive optimism. (Rose-colored glasses make real threats harder to see.)

If you were searching for the fountain of youthful old age, where would you look? Friedman and Martin’s springboard was an eight-decade study–the Terman study, initiated by psych researcher Lewis Terman in the 1920s.  The authors mined mounds of data that had been accumulated from Terman’s 1500+ subjects who had been studied from childhood to old age and death.  They also re-analyzed the data using modern research methods and the results of other long-term studies.

So, what was the one factor that turned out to be the main highway to longevity? As an avid reader of health and psychology news, even I was surprised at the answer.  It turns out to be a personality trait rather than a particular behavior.  Can you guess what it is?

The surprising answer is: Conscientiousness.  Conscientious people are dependable, hard-working, persistent, and well-organized–even a little obsessive.  Amazingly, conscientiousness was the best predictor of longevity when measured in childhood, AND it was also the best predictor of longevity when measured in adulthood.  As the authors point out, good people DON’T die young, despite what Billy Joel sings in his alluring song.  Virtue is not just its own reward–you get long life as well.  This is a satisfying result.

Now that I’ve revealed the answer, it seems so obvious.  Of course conscientious people would live longer!  As the authors point out, they are more likely to take actions to protect their health, and they engage in fewer risky activities: “They are less likely to smoke, drink to excess, abuse drugs, or drive too fast.  They are more likely to wear seat belts and follow doctors’ orders.” (15-16)  Every day they make decisions that keep them on a healthy life path.

Plus, conscientious people are drawn to other conscientious people.  Their personality leads them into healthier relationships and situations, including happier marriages, good friendships, and healthy work situations.

The researchers found other predictors of long life as well.  People who are probably destined for a long life do these things:

• Connect with others.
• Associate with healthy people.
• Develop healthy habits.
• Help others.
• Stay physically active throughout life.
• Are moderate worriers, but not catastrophizers.

There’s much more. The Longevity Project also asks and answers numerous burning questions, like these:  Does playing with a pet help you live longer?  Does extreme exercise like running help?  Do religious people really live longer?  Does marriage contribute to long life?  For the detailed answers, read this fascinating and enjoyable book!

What does all this mean for you?  There are many lessons in The Longevity Project, but there’s one especially to take to heart. To live a long life, become the kind of conscientious person you would want as your own best friend.

(c) Meg Selig.  All rights reserved.

Source:  Friedman, H.S. and Martin, L.R. The Longevity Project (2011). NY: Hudson Street Press.

via What Is the One Essential Key to Long Life? | Psychology Today.

New research findings hot off the press:

• Adults with ADHD show similar language difficulties to those observed in children with ADHD. Children with ADHD tend to talk excessively, blurt out answers, and interrupt others. A new study compared language production in adults with and without ADHD during a task in which they were asked to describe a network of colored dots. Adults with ADHD produced more words overall and also produced more disfluencies (pausing, repetitions, and repairs) compared to those without ADHD, suggesting that language production issues remain in adults with ADHD, similar to the issues commonly reported in children with ADHD.
• Playing a musical instrument may have protective properties for the aging brain. Researchers studied a group of older healthy adults (ages 60–83) varying in the extent to which they engaged in musical activity. The adults were separated into three groups: nonmusicians, low, and high activity musicians. Low activity musicians were those who spent less than 10 years playing a musical instrument; high activity musicians were those who had at least 10 years playing an instrument. The researchers found that the high activity musicians showed better performance in nonverbal memory, naming of objects, and executive processes relative to nonmusicians.

Sources:

Paul E. Engelhardt, Fernanda Ferreira, , Joel T. Nigg (2011).Language production strategies and disfluencies in multi-clause network descriptions: A study of adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Neuropsychology.

Brenda Hanna-Pladdy, Alicia MacKay (2011). The relation between instrumental musical activity and cognitive aging. Neuropsychology.

 

Available on the NPR website is an interview with Marc Maron, a comedian who hosts a podcast by the name of WTF. The format of WTF is that Maron rants for awhile and then he brings in a guest (usually another comedian) whom he simply has a conversation with. The conversation might last well over an hour. He’s met with the likes of Joe Rogan, Louis CK and Conan O’Brien, and even less fashionable Robin Williams and Gallagher (newsflash: Gallagher is not dead!).

Checking out iTunes, he’s up to 163 episodes. That is a lot of time spent talking with comedians. It better be funny or at least a good excuse for killing an hour. But it should be – comedians are usually very interesting types with thoughts and emotions that run deep. There is an element of truth to the ‘sad clown‘ stereotype (pay no attention to definitions 2 and 3 in the sad clown link!! Good thing I clarified that). Following are snippets from the NPR interview.

It’s hard to miss how many of Maron’s guests, most from the world of comedy, have a lot of anger, or hurt feelings, or broken relationships — not necessarily more tragedy than most people, he says, but a way of paying attention to it and exposing it in a way that a lot of people don’t.

Talk therapy continues to be the most effective nondrug therapy available but it is falling out of favor as it is replaced by pharmaceuticals, while insurance companies dictate shorter and shorter courses of therapy for treating mental illness. This erosion in conversation doesn’t seem to be just a problem for the depressed masses, however. Maron believes this to be a cultural phenomenon as well.

…”One of the things that has been lost in this culture is the ability for people to sit and talk for real, you know, for an hour. When was the last time you just sat and talked to someone for an hour? It’s something that people can do. Is that therapy, or is that just some sort of human pastime that has become lost?”

At any rate, Maron hears from listeners who find his openness about his own troubles refreshing. “‘Your neurotic rage, your neurotic rants relax me,’” is the sort of thing he hears. “I’m having a Ritalin effect on introspective, neurotic people, and I couldn’t have hoped for that, and it’s very gratifying. It’s very moving to me.”

My guess is that listening to two professional comedians banter back and forth could be pretty therapeutic as well. I plan on downloading a few episodes and checking it out.

New research findings hot off the press:

• Whether you are right or left-handed might have something to do with the type of mental illness symptoms you exhibit (if you are prone to that sort of thing). So, right handers are more likely to have symptoms associated with OCD, anxiety, depression and hostility. Left handers are more prone towards depression, psychoticism, paranoid ideation, anxiety, interpersonal sensitivity, phobic anxiety, hostility, and somatisation. Huh. That’s interesting.
• People who believe they have lived once before in a previous life apparently feel more meaning in their (current) life and are less distressed while thinking about death compared to the rest of us one-lifers.
• In newest Facebook research, feeling disconnected from others may be a reason that people are compelled towards using Facebook. The impetus for logging in to connect with others may be a direct reaction to feeling disconnected. And you know what? After a little Facebook therapy, people do report feeling more connected with others than before logging on.
• Insecure romantic partners are energy vampires to those who care about them. The necessary heroics of keeping the partner happy by remaining vigilant to when the partner is feeling insecure, trying not to upset the insecure partner, responding with exaggerated forms of affection, and sheltering the insecure partner from any negative feelings, apparently contributes to dissatisfaction in the relationship on the part of the caregiver. You don’t say?

Sources:

Ion N. Beratis, Andreas D. Rabavilas, George N. Papadimitriou, Charalabos Papageorgiou (2011). Eysenck’s model of personality and psychopathological components in right- and left-handers. Personality and Individual Differences, 50 (8), 1267-1272.

Cynthia A. Meyersburg, Richard J. McNally (2011). Reduced death distress and greater meaning in life among individuals reporting past life memory. Personality and Individual Differences, 50 (8), 1218-1221.

Kennon M. Sheldon, Neetu Abad, Christian Hinsch (2011). A two-process view of Facebook use and relatedness need-satisfaction: Disconnection drives use, and connection rewards it. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(4), 766-775.

Edward P. Lemay, Jr., Kari L. Dudley (2011). Caution: Fragile! Regulating the interpersonal security of chronically insecure partners. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(4), 681-702.

File this under the ‘Good Research Finding Crushed by Excessive Academic-Speak’ category. I subscribe to a number of TOC alerts for various academic journals, and once in awhile a catchy title grabs me and I have to know more. Take for instance the following title: ‘From “Oh, OK” to “Ah, yes” to “Aha!”: Hyper-systemizing and the rewards of insight’, published in the latest issue of Personality and Individual Differences (C. Fields, Vol 50, Issue 8). Now that sounds worth reading because it’s bound to contribute valuable knowledge to the thought processes of systemizers.

Now I know what systemizers are – they are those people who when they find their soulmate (likely another systemizer) – are more likely to have offspring that are high on the autism scale. They themselves might be somewhere along the spectrum. According to Simon-Baron Cohen,

Systemizing is the drive to analyse or construct a system. A system is anything that follows rules and is thus lawful. It might be a mechanical system (e.g., a machine or a spinning wheel), an abstract system (e.g., number patterns), a natural system (e.g., water flow, or the weather), or a collectible system (e.g., classifying objects such as DVDs by author or toy cars by shape, colour, size). We have found that people with autism or Asperger Syndrome may have unusual talents at systemizing (e.g., in physics), that people who are gifted mathematicians may be more likely to have a diagnosis of autism or Asperger Syndrome, that even among the low-functioning individuals with classic autism, ‘obsessional’ narrow interests tend to focus on systems, and that their excessively repetitive behaviour and interest may be signs of strong systemizing.

Makes sense. Thank you, Baron-Cohen. So what does the article have to say? Here’s the abstract.

Hyper-systemizers are individuals displaying an unusually strong bias toward systemizing, i.e. toward explaining events and solving problems by appeal to mechanisms that do not involve intentions or agency. Hyper-systemizing in combination with deficit mentalizing capability typically presents clinically as an autism spectrum disorder; however, the development of hyper-systemizing in combination with normal-range mentalizing capability is not well characterized. Based on a review and synthesis of clinical, observational, experimental, and neurofunctional studies, it is hypothesized that repeated episodes of insightful problem solving by systemizing result in attentional and motivational sensitization toward further systemizing via progressive and chronic deactivation of the default network. This hypothesis is distinguished from alternatives, and its correlational and causal implications are discussed. Predictions of the default-deactivation model accessible to survey-based instruments, standard cognitive measures and neurofunctional methods are outlined, and evidence pertaining to them considered.

Snooze. Can I ask…Does one have to be a systemizer to understand what the hell was studied and found?! So the editors of the journal said, “Yup, this is definitely good and makes an important contribution to the literature. That is, if anyone can understand it. Doesn’t matter though! Publish it!” No offense to the author – the research is important and the paper is likely the fruits of hours of dedicated study, and he/she is certainly not alone in obscuring findings underneath impenetrable language  - but would it have hurt to make the language just a bit more accessible? Where’s Malcolm?

Contained within a research article in the November 2007 issue of Psychological Science is a great recommendation for protecting yourself before doling out criticism or rejection to your favorite narcissist – point out how the two of you are similar. In a clever study, narcissists were lead to believe that an essay they had written had been criticized by their partner. Aggression was measured by the willingness to deliver a loud blast to their critical partner’s ear via headphones.

If the researchers had pointed out to the narcissist in advance a similarity between them and their partner (either that they shared the same birthday or had the same fingerprint type), they were able to influence the amount of decibels that the narcissist subjected their partner to in retaliation for the negative feedback about their essay. The key take-away from this clever piece of research is that if you sense the person you are about to criticize is a narcissist, better find a way to make a connection first.

I just got done listening to a webinar by Ari Tuckman and in addition to learning about a different way of understanding ADHD, I now think I am more ADHD than I previously thought.

A few interesting nuggets:

People with ADHD tend to have stronger emotional reactions, and are more likely to wear their emotions on their sleeve. These emotions tend to come very quickly and go very quickly (this I have seen!), and compels ADHDers to act impulsively. They simply get caught up in the emotions of the moment and away they go. This can be a bit shocking for people around them, as the emotions are loud, intense and then, without warning, they are gone. The whole family can get spun up around the ADHD family member’s drama, and it’s a big intense thing for everyone, but suddenly, without notice, the person with ADHD is done with it and ready to move on. Family members are left stunned.

Another interesting tidbit: Apparently working memory is a keystone executive function (who knew?). Poor working memory is a hallmark of ADHD that can manifest in a number of ways: issues with long term memory, reading comprehension, following multi-step directions, holding a thought (ADHDer’s interrupt others a lot because they are worried that if they don’t get it out NOW it will be forgotten!), as well as sticking with a plan.

I found it interesting that he mentioned Cogmed. This has been getting more publicity lately around the ADHD community. It’s a computer-based training program that is supposed to improve working memory.  I’ve been meaning to look into this program and track the reviews. Now that it’s in the hands of a publisher it will be interesting to see how it gets marketed.

For those of you living in the Twin Cities area, Tuckman will be speaking at the Spring LDA conference in Minneapolis on Saturday, April 16th.

Authors in a recent article published in the October issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science (http://www.psychologicalscience.org) identified five existential concerns that link humans across race, geography, and time. These concerns are: death (an awareness of inevitability of death vs. desire for continued existence), isolation (need to feel connected to others vs. experiences of rejection and the realization that one’s subjective experience of reality can never be fully shared), identity (a clear sense of who one is and how one fits into the world vs. uncertainties because of conflicts between aspects of self, unclear boundaries between oneself and others, or limited self-insight), freedom (experience of free will vs. external forces on behavior and the burden of responsibility for one’s choices in response to a complex array of alternatives) and meaning (desire to believe one’s life is meaningful vs. events and experiences that appear random or inconsistent with one’s basis of meaning). The authors believe that these “givens of existence” (and the struggles that they create) pose a pervasive, if not unconscious, influence on human behavior. Understanding these fundamental human concerns with regards to their own existence, may lead to a greater “authenticity and benevolence in human affairs.”