Science and Religion Today » Positive Psychology

Why Betty White Is Happier Than Ever

Heather Wax — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 14:43:27 +0000

I’m coming a little late to this, but a 13-year study by Laura Carstensen, a psychologist and director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, found that as we get older, we become more emotionally stable, making us “better able to solve highly emotional problems,” she says, and happier.

Her research showed that older people report feeling more positive emotions and less negative emotions than when they were younger. Yet they’re also more likely than younger people to report feeling a mix of positive and negative emotions—probably because older people are more aware of their own mortality, meaning that happy moments are tinged with the realization that life is short and time is limited. According to Carstensen, this is “a signal of strong emotional health and balance.”

Older people experience less stress than younger people do, she says, since they face less uncertainty over how their lives will turn out and have usually made peace with their successes and failures. And when people realize that time is running out, she adds, they tend to invest in the things that really matter to them, an effect she calls “socio-emotional selectivity.”

If people become more emotionally stable as they age, “older societies could be wiser and kinder societies,” Carstensen explains in a write-up of her research, and as the baby boomers get older:

We may be seeing a larger group of people who can get along with a greater number of people. They care more and are more compassionate about problems, and that may lead to a more stable world.

Why Relationships Get Better With Age

Heather Wax — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 14:57:03 +0000

Here’s a lovely thought: Your friendships and relationships with family members should get better as you get older.
Why? According to research led by Karen Fingerman, a professor of gerontology at Purdue University, we change the way we behave depending on age, and we’re often more likely to forgive older people or give them a pass when they commit a social faux pas.
Past research has also shown that younger people are more confrontational than older folks—and expecting this might make older people more cordial to those who are younger. Older people also appear to be better at regulating their emotions when they’re upset. At the same time, younger people tend to think they should be more patient and respectful toward those who are older and that the elderly are so stuck in their ways, there’s no point trying to change them.
Overall, Fingerman explains in a write-up of her recent research:

Older adults report better marriages, more supportive friendships, and less conflict with children and siblings. While physical and cognitive abilities decline with age, relationships improve. So what is so special about old age? We found that the perception of limited time, willingness to forgive, aging stereotypes, and attitudes of respect all play a part. But it’s more than just about how younger people treat an older person, it’s about how people interact.

Superstition Improves Confidence and Performance

Heather Wax — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 15:15:54 +0000

Bruce Hood, an experimental psychologist at Bristol University and the author of The Science of Superstition (the softcover release of SuperSense), reports:

A team from Köln in Germany has shown that university students of whom more than 80 percent believe in luck, perform significantly better on a putting task if they think they have been handed a “lucky” golf ball. They also did significantly better than controls on a second experiment if they were told that someone was crossing their fingers for them. In a third experiment, students who had brought their lucky talisman along to the testing session did better when it was in the testing room. The fourth experiment demonstrated that these lucky students attributed their better performance to improved self-efficacy. So there we have it. If you believe in lucky charms then you perform better because of perceived self-efficacy.

And this greater confidence, the researchers found, leads people to set higher goals and work harder at achieving them. But the team, led by social psychologist Lysann Damisch, didn’t test the effects of superstitions linked to bad luck (which they plan to do next) or the negative effects of superstitions. As Ed Young points out:

the big worry is that superstitions, while potentially providing temporary benefits, could prevent people from taking responsibility for changing their own fates or even form the basis of catastrophic decisions. Clearly, the effects described by Damisch’s study need to be considered as part of a bigger psychological canvas. The effects of crossed fingers on anagram tasks is one thing, but the effects of conspiracy theories or religious traditions on our ability to understand the world around us and to make decisions in our lives is another matter entirely.

Oxytocin Promotes Parochial Altruism

Heather Wax — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:36:42 +0000

Researchers have long known that oxytocin, often called the “love hormone,” is linked to our sense of trust and the desire to connect with others. But according to researchers at the University of Amsterdam, oxytocin also appears to lead to “defensive” aggression—acts of of aggression against threatening outgroups.
A team of psychologists asked male volunteers play an economic game and found that those who received a nasal spray of oxytocin made financial decisions that were more altruistic toward members of their own group, keeping less money for themselves and donating more to the communal pool. Yet they were also more likely to punish members of a competing group—taking money away from them—when there was the possibility their own group could lose money if the other group chose to punish first. Because this type of aggression helps the ingroup become stronger—in the same way a soldier who risks his life fighting an enemy helps his country survive and thrive—researchers see it as an indirect form of cooperation they call “parochial altruism.”
As the researchers conclude:

Our findings show that oxytocin, a neuropeptide functioning as both a neurotransmitter and hormone, plays a critical role in driving in-group love and defensive (but not offensive) aggression toward out-groups. Perhaps offensive forms of out-group hate have their biological roots elsewhere, or perhaps these tendencies are primarily grounded in perceived in-group love and protectionism in competing out-groups. After all, if competing out-groups become strong and powerful, they become a threat to the in-group, and this in and of itself not only motivates in-group members to display in-group love but also motivates protectionism and preemptive strike. As shown here, this “tend and defend” form of parochial altruism is precisely what oxytocin modulates.

How to Motivate Yourself

Heather Wax — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:34:44 +0000

Want to do something well? You might try asking yourself if you can do it rather than telling yourself that you can.
In a new study, a group of researchers found that when people spent a minute wondering if they would complete a task (in this case, rearranging the letters in words to create new words), they then performed better on the task than if they spent a minute telling themselves they would complete it. People also performed better if they wrote the phrase “Will I” before trying the task than if they first wrote the phrase “I will.”
As Dolores Albarracin, a professor at the University of Illinois who worked on the study, concludes in a write-up of the research:

The popular idea is that self-affirmations enhance people’s ability to meet their goals. It seems, however, that when it comes to performing a specific behavior, asking questions is a more promising way of achieving your objectives.

Nature Makes Us Feel More Alive

Heather Wax — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 15:12:57 +0000

This should come as no surprise: Spending time in nature makes us feel more alive, according to a batch of recent studies. Past research has already shown that people on excursions in the wilderness feel more alive and merely thinking about past outdoor activities makes us feel happier and healthier. Just last month, a study showed that exercising outdoors for just five minutes could improve our mood and self-esteem.
But this new research shows that the increased vitality we get from being in nature goes beyond the boost we get from the physical activities and interaction with others that often accompany our time outdoors. According to Richard Ryan, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester who worked on the study, just 20 minutes in nature a day can significantly lift our energy levels. As he explains in a write-up of the research:

Nature is fuel for the soul. Often when we feel depleted we reach for a cup of coffee, but research suggests a better way to get energized is to connect with nature.

When a Song Gets Stuck in Your Head

Heather Wax — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 16:46:01 +0000

It tends to happen when we’re in a good mood and doing something that doesn’t require a lot of concentration, according to University of Montreal professor Sylvie Hébert and doctoral student Andréane McNally-Gagnon. As Hébert suggests in a write-up of their research:

Perhaps the phenomenon occurs to prevent brooding or to change moods.

The researchers did find that most people still report being in a positive mood after they’ve gotten the song out of their heads, but many describe their mood as neutral once it’s gone —though so far it’s unclear whether the song kills the mood or vice versa.

What Is Happening in This Picture?

Heather Wax — Wed, 26 May 2010 14:38:08 +0000

As British psychologist Richard Wiseman explains:

The picture is the type of thing that you might find in the Thematic Apperception Test. According to those who support such tests, the story that you created reflects your conscious and unconscious needs, motives, emotions, and conflicts. Is that the case for your story? Or is it all rubbish? Either way, don’t take the results too seriously!

Oxytocin Raises Emotional Empathy in Men

Heather Wax — Tue, 04 May 2010 16:37:39 +0000

A team of German researchers decided to see what would happen if they gave men a nasal spray of oxytocin and then had them look at photos of emotionally charged situations (like a girl hugging a cat or a grieving husband). As regular readers of this blog will remember, oxytocin—often called the “love hormone”—has long been shown to play a key role in our sense of trust and the desire to connect with others.
When the men were then asked to express the depth of their feelings for the person in the photo, “significantly higher emotional empathy levels were recorded for the oxytocin group than for the placebo group,” according to René Hurlemann of Bonn University’s Clinic for Psychiatry, who worked on the study.
But they also found something fascinating: While the men in the placebo group showed less emotional empathy, they appeared to be just as good at rationally interpreting facial expressions. What’s going on here?
It turns out that the brain appears to processes rational inferences about what someone is thinking and emotional inferences about what someone is feeling in different ways. When another team of researchers interfered with a part of the brain thought to be involved in rational inference—the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex—they found that it affected men’s rational inference abilities but not their emotional inferences. According to neurologist Elke Kalbe, who led the research, this shows that the two processes “are functionally independent and that these subcomponents are mediated by at least partly different neural pathways.”

Does Mindfulness Training Help Protect Marines?

Heather Wax — Mon, 03 May 2010 15:52:03 +0000

Past research has shown that mindfulness training—learning to deliberately stay in the moment without judgment or emotion— can protect people in high-stress situations, affecting how traumatic the experience becomes. Now, a new study shows that mindfulness training might even help soldiers perform under the extreme stress of combat—and better deal with the aftereffects.
For eight weeks, Amishi Jha, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Elizabeth Stanley, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University and a former U.S. Army officer, gave mindfulness training to a group of Marines preparing for deployment to Iraq. The training taught the Marines skills they could use to manage stress, regulate symptoms in their body and mind after a stressful experience, increase their psychological resilience, and improve their performance—making it particularly relevant to their lives. The researchers found that the training improved their working memory and how well they regulated their emotions, and the more time the Marines spent practicing the mindfulness exercises, the more their mood, problem-solving abilities, and emotional control improved.
Jha’s conclusion is that:

just as daily physical exercise leads to physical fitness, engaging in mindfulness exercises on a regular basis may improve mind-fitness. Working memory is an important feature of mind-fitness. Not only does it safeguard against distraction and emotional reactivity, but it also provides a mental workspace to ensure quick-and-considered decisions and action plans. Building mind-fitness with mindfulness training may help anyone who must maintain peak performance in the face of extremely stressful circumstances, from first responders, relief workers and trauma surgeons to professional and Olympic athletes.