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Study finds teenagers' brains wired for risky behavior


CBS News
Thu, 09 Mar 2017 18:18 UTC
teenagers
© Shutterstock
Most parents of teenagers don't need a study to tell them that adolescents are prone to being reckless. But new research confirms that teenage brains are actually wired to engage in risky behaviors.

However, researchers also found that context matters to whether or not adolescents actually engage in those behaviors.

The study, published in Developmental Science, looks at more than 5,000 teens and young adults from 11 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.

Researchers found that sensation seeking peaks around age 19 worldwide and then declines with age. In contrast, young adults' ability to self-regulate or quash their impulses climbs until the age of 23 or 24 when it fully develops.

These findings can help explain both anecdotal and scientific evidence that risk-taking spikes during adolescence.
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People 2

When dogs are around people are closer, more trusting and cooperative

Jill Suttie
Greater Good
Mon, 06 Mar 2017 00:00 UTC
Casey the dog
Casey the dog
My dog, Casey, is one of my favorite beings on the planet. Not only is he extremely cute, his presence calms me, makes me happy, and helps me to meet new people...especially when I take a walk with him.

My husband and I often joke that if everyone had a dog like Casey, there simply wouldn't be any wars—the assumption being that everyone would just get along if he were around. Now, a new study suggests that we might be onto something.

Researchers at Central Michigan University gave small groups tasks to do with or without a companion dog in the room. In the first experiment, groups generated a 15-second ad and slogan for a fictional project—a task requiring cooperation. In the second experiment, groups played a modified version of the prisoner's dilemma game, in which individual members decide whether to cooperate with one another or to look out only for themselves. All of these interactions were videotaped.
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Butterfly

Feeling authentic in a relationship comes from being able to be your best self, not your actual self

Christian Jarrett
British Psychological Study
Wed, 08 Mar 2017 12:27 UTC
super people
Feeling authentic in a relationship - that is, feeling like you are able to be yourself, rather than acting out of character - is healthy, not just for the relationship, but for your wellbeing in general. This makes sense: after all, putting on a fake show can be exhausting. But dig a little deeper and things get more complicated because there are different ways to define who "you" really are.

Is the real you how you actually think and behave, for instance? Or, taking a more dynamic perspective, is it fairer to say that the true you is the person you aspire to be: what psychologists call your "ideal self"?
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Family

Facebook blues: Spending too much time on social media increases sense of isolation


RT
Mon, 06 Mar 2017 15:42 UTC
social media, isolation
© Christian Ohde / Global Look PressThose who used social media more than two hours daily were around twice as likely to report feeling high levels of social isolation.
Facebook may have revolutionized how we stay in touch with friends and family, but a new study has found that too much time on social media actually leads to increased feelings of isolation.

The study, published Monday in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, examined feelings of social isolation among more than 1,787 US adults between the ages of 19 and 32.

The researchers defined social isolation as the lack of a sense of belonging, true engagement with others, and fulfilling relationships.

Comment: When technology becomes too much of a good thing: Tips for breaking your screen addiction

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People

We can understand people better by putting ourselves in their shoes

Josh Richardson
Prevent Disease
Mon, 06 Mar 2017 15:35 UTC
joined hands
We tend to believe that people telegraph how they're feeling through facial expressions and body language and we only need to watch them to know what they're experiencing -- but new research shows we'd get a much better idea if we put ourselves in their shoes instead. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

All our perspectives help us define our truths. Within this perspective, what is true works for the situation at hand and it is what allows us to assess all our experiences. When we realize that all truths are true, we no longer have a need to be right. So what happens when we consider the perspective of others?

"People expected that they could infer another's emotions by watching him or her, when in fact they were more accurate when they were actually in the same situation as the other person. And this bias persisted even after our participants gained firsthand experience with both strategies," explain study authors Haotian Zhou (Shanghai Tech University) and Nicholas Epley (University of Chicago).

To explore out how we go about understanding others' minds, Zhou, Epley, and co-author Elizabeth Majka (Elmhurst College) decided to focus on two potential mechanisms: theorization and simulation. When we theorize about someone's experience, we observe their actions and make inferences based on our observations. When we simulate someone's experience, we use our own experience of the same situation as a guide.
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Family

The dark side of positivity and the emotional burden of 'happiness'

Olivia Goldhill
Quartz
Sat, 04 Mar 2017 14:02 UTC
smile instruction
© Reuters/ David GrayThe pressure to put on a happy face can make us miserable.
Everyone wants you to be happy: Self-help books dish out advice on how to stop worrying, boost happiness, and banish negative thoughts; bosses want to see smiling enthusiasm in the workplace; and the only way to respond to "how are you?" is with a joyful "great!" But according to Svend Brinkmann, a psychology professor at Denmark's Aalborg University, the culture of positivity has a dark side.

Happiness is simply not the appropriate response to many situations in life, says Brinkmann, whose Danish bestseller Stand Firm: Resisting the Self-Improvement Craze is published in English by international publisher Polity this month. Even worse, faking it can leave us emotionally stunted.

"I believe our thoughts and emotions should mirror the world. When something bad happens, we should be allowed to have negative thoughts and feelings about it because that's how we understand the world," he says.

"Life is wonderful from time to time, but it's also tragic. People die in our lives, we lose them, if we have only been accustomed to being allowed to have positive thoughts, then these realities can strike us even more intensely when they happen—and they will happen."

Comment: Happiness: Enough Already
The drawbacks of constant, extreme happiness should not be surprising, since negative emotions evolved for a reason. Fear tips us off to the presence of danger, for instance. Sadness, too, seems to be part of our biological inheritance: apes, dogs and elephants all display something that looks like sadness, perhaps because it signals to others a need for help. One hint that too much euphoria can be detrimental comes from studies finding that among people with late-stage illnesses, those with the greatest sense of well-being were more likely to die in any given period of time than the mildly content were. Being "up" all the time can cause you to play down very real threats.


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2 + 2 = 4

Interview with great U Texas Austin psych prof JW Pennebaker

Jordan B. Peterson
Youtube
Sat, 04 Mar 2017 18:11 UTC
Peterson interview with Pennebaker
© YouTube/Jordan B Peterson
Dr. James W. Pennebaker is Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Executive Director of Project 2021, aimed at rethinking undergrad education at that university.

I first encountered Dr. Pennebaker's work when I was working on the Self Authoring Suite (www.selfauthoring.com), an online writing program which has helped thousands of college students stay in school and get better grades. He conducted the original work on "expressive writing," starting in the 1980's, showing that people's health and productivity improved when they wrote about traumatic experiences or uncertainty -- particularly if they constructed causal accounts or plans. He has also investigated the psychological significance of patterns of word use (particularly about everyone's favorites, pronouns). We talk about all of this, and much more.


Comment: See also:

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2 + 2 = 4

Pt 1: Freedom of Speech/Political Correctness: Dr. Norman Doidge

Jordan B. Peterson
Youtube
Sat, 04 Mar 2017 17:09 UTC
Norman Doidge
This is Part 1 of a 3-part posting from The Speakers Action Group, who hosted Dr. Norman Doidge, author of the bestselling The Brain that Changes Itself and The Brain's Way of Healing (www.normandoidge.com/) and Dr. Jordan B Peterson Sunday, January 22, 2017 to speak on freedom of speech and political correctness. Dr. Doidge speaks in this first section on the history of the modernist, enlightenment ideals of the West and the recent post-modern assault conducted on those ideals.

Dr. Doidge speaks first in this 3-part series (this video).
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Brain

The coddling of the American mind

Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
The Atlantic
Wed, 04 Feb 2015 14:45 UTC
In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don't like. Here's why that's disastrous for education—and mental health.

Child at college
© Andrew B. Myers / The Atlantic
Something strange is happening at America's colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in "that violates the law") lest it cause students distress.

Comment:

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Boat

How to die well

Jessica Nutik Zitter.
Time
Mon, 27 Feb 2017 23:02 UTC
Beach at sundown
© Adrian Lyon—Gallery Stock
I first met Stephanie in the Intensive Care Unit. She was an urgent admission — in shock, her blood pressure was almost unmeasurable. Over the previous month, the rate of cancerous fluid building up around her lungs had increased. She had used the permanent drainage tube in her chest wall more frequently to manage her shortness of breath. But in the process, she had made her blood pressure dangerously low. She was unconscious and mumbling incoherently. Her kidneys and liver weren't getting enough blood and were effectively dying. We worked quickly. And we were lucky enough to be able to rehydrate her before her organs became permanently damaged. Slowly, she woke up again. We had saved her.

Stephanie was a 60-year-old wife, mother and grandmother. She loved life. Wine tastings, gardening, spending time with her family — this didn't stop when she was diagnosed. When she had learned that the cancer had spread to the other lung and brain, she took a deep breath and went back into the ring to fight. She signed up for more chemotherapy. If she worked hard, she thought, she could beat it.

Comment: Writing your own obituary to inspire others

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