Not Yet A Dead Blog

I haven't written a blog in a while. I know. I recently moved into a new house, my husband's and my first house, in fact. My family visited three days after we closed, and then the holidays happened. I've spent the past two months going to parties, reading, and catching up with people. Now that I again have my head on straight, and don't feel as if I'm doing rapid-fire fun, I'm ready to get back to writing.

I wanted to write a little bit about memory. You see, memory is malleable. Every time we take a memory out from long-term storage into working memory, we have the ability to change that memory. Our brains are not video cameras. We do not recall events exactly as they happened, not even traumatic events, a point that is beautifully illustrated in the Robin Williams movie The Final Cut. Mr. Williams portrays a character who edits the film of people's lives for their funerals. people's recordings of their entire lives after they die. In one scene, at a funeral, a man comes up to him and asks him if he changed the color of the lamp to be blue. Williams replies, “No, I would never do that.” The man nods and walks away, mumbling something about how he could have sworn that the lamp was green. I'm sure we've all experienced something similar. We were sure we got the milk from the grocery store, or that the driveway was on the left and not the right. The point is, our memory is not perfect. (My own personal grammar Nazi put it beautifully when he said “memory is impressions, not details.”)

Memory is so changeable that even the mere suggestion that an event happened can implant a memory. In a research study done by Loftus and Pickrell(1995), researchers would give a booklet of four situations to the participants. Three of the situations did happen to the participants, the fourth didn't. The fourth situation described the participant as a five-years-old child being lost in a mall. The participants were asked to journal about what they remembered of these experiences, once a day, for five days. What researchers found was that the participants would recall vivid details about being lost in a mall, even though the situation described to them never happened. In essence, the researcher had only had to suggest that this incident did happen, and voila!-- a false memory. (This knowledge, along with a few other psychology tidbits, was enough to make me laugh heartily at the movie Inception).

Interestingly, even vivid events (those in which we are sure we remember exactly where we were, what we were wearing, whom we were with etc...) aren't specially protected by memory. Talarico and Rubin (2001) sent out questionnaires the day after 9/11/2001, asking participants where they were when they heard about the terrorist attacks. Months later, they sent out the same questionnaire and compared the answers. Surprisingly, even with such a memorable event as 9/11, people misremembered where they were when they first heard the news. Yet, over time (the researchers polled the participants a third time) the subjects became more sure of where they were (and with less accuracy). Now, don't get me wrong, there are cases of repressed memories that are true. People can remember traumatic events long after they happened. However, they are few and far between -- not at all the norm.

My point is: memory is malleable.

My second point is a little bit harder to swallow. I have a close personal friend who holds onto memories from her childhood. They cause her a lot of stress (they also strain some of her current relationships). I'll be honest, this is where my thoughts get sticky and hard to communicate fully. I understand that it can be difficult to let go of painful memories and experiences, and, if it were easy to let go, she would. My question to her and to others who are holding onto painful past experiences would be simply this: why? Why make yourself miserable over something that is not even real, anymore, and may be misremembered, anyhow? How does it serve you -- and your life?

When I was in college (although, now that I'm writing it, I wonder if it was when I was in high school) I had a professor talk about a story in which the main character was carrying luggage from one train to the next, and the next, and so on. The luggage was constantly burdening the character. The professor explained that the luggage was a metaphor for memories, memories which burdened the owner. At first I was appalled. I don't want to forget the past! My past is who I am! I've learned from my past mistakes. I need those memories! For me, I can see myself clutching at these memories that were painful and holding me back. Now I can think about my past with less emotional attachment (sometimes, not always), and I feel happier for it.

P.S. A few weeks after I wrote this blog, the universe slapped me in the face. I started to think about a friendship that ended badly. A person whom I considered a close personal friend stopped talking to me because of some drama that was going on with someone else I was close to. She was never mean or told me it was over. She simply stopped talking to me. I found myself thinking about her, wondering if she ever thinks about me. I think ultimately my feeling “stuck” in this past relationship has almost nothing to do with her, and more to do with my own feelings of inadequacy. My point is, I get that sometimes we do get stuck in the past. My question is still the same, though: Why don't we just let it go? It doesn't serve us to hold on.

How to make Friends: Ask for Favors

A few years ago, my husband and I found ourselves trapped in a bad blizzard. We drove over some ice causing our car to careen into a ditch. Worse yet, we learned that there was a ban on towing due to the storm. After a police officer dropped us off at a gas station, our options were simple: call friends and see if someone would pick us up. We were only about 30 miles from home, in a hideous blizzard, around midnight on a Sunday. No problem. We winded up reaching a co-worker of mine, and around 1:30 am on Monday morning she came and got us.

CC BY 2.5 by Ben Britten

What I find interesting about this is that after my co-worker and her boyfriend came to our aid, our friendship became stronger. What had been stop-and-go conversations before became more relaxed and enjoyable talks. We went out to eat together and went over to their place for movie nights, something that hadn't happened before the blizzard. In short, we became closer.

It occurred to my husband and me, that what we were experiencing was a bit of social engineering. We had attended a security conference about a year before the accident. The speaker who presented the talk on social engineering (a topic that can broadly be defined as getting others to do what you want) brought up that if you ask someone a favor, he/she is more likely to become your friend. (Generally speaking smaller favors would probably be better, like asking someone for a ride home or lending you $5. Asking for too big a favor like cleaning your kitchen with someone you barely know probably wouldn't go over so well). The speaker argued that politicians use this technique all the time. Saying that if people feel invested in you, they are more likely to want you to succeed. Now, the other side of that is you should try to return the favor. No one wants a one-way relationship where he or she is the only one giving.

At first I dismissed this idea because I couldn't think of a good example in my life. But now I think the speaker may have been right. As Gretchen Rubin points out in her blog, The Happiness Project, people feel good when you offer them a way to be supportive. Asking for a favor shows that you are comfortable being indebted to them and displays intimacy.

My former co-worker and I still talk occasionally, even though we are thousands of miles away, a fact which is amazing for me, since I am awful at keeping in contact with old friends. I know I personally hate feeling indebted to others, as I think a lot of people do, but I think it might be something I need to get over. It seems silly and unnecessary, since a lot of the time I know I want to help others, but don't always know how, and it seems that other people may have similar feelings. It's an interesting paradox, one I hope you find useful.

What are some of your examples of asking a friend or acquaintance for a favor and becoming closer because of it? Do you have any examples that oppose this idea? Let me know in the comments.

Evolutionary Psychology Tips on How to be Happier

CC BY 2.5 bdking

I've had a very stressful week this week, thus, I'm posting on Saturday, as opposed to Tuesday or Wednesday. I work at a hotline for domestic violence and sexual assault, which is both rewarding and stressful. (It's rewarding knowing I'm helping others; it's stressful constantly having to tell people that there aren't that many resources out there to help them get out of their situation, and the resources that are out there are stretched thin.) Add to that the fact that I'm absolutely failing at my diet, my husband and I are talking about moving and buying a house for the first time, and that the holidays are coming up. Mix it all up, add a dash of sleep-deprivation, and voila! A perfect recipe for a crying girl. 

This week, instead of doing a post about physical health, I thought I'd do a post about psychological health. Because I'm me -- weird, quirky, and downright strange -- I didn't want to do the normal tips on self-care. (I think we've all heard them: take a break, exercise, go for a walk, get a massage, etc...They're good tips, and something to keep in mind, but I've also heard them hundreds of times.) I wanted to give tips that are a little strange, but effective. So what did I do? I went to my college notes on evolutionary psychology. Odd, I know, but what would you have done?

What I found were my evolutionary psychology professor's tips on how to be happier. They basically break down into two categories: progress and expectations.

The basic argument for progress is that our brains are wired to reward progress and punish failure. This is believed to come from the environment of evolutionary adaptation (EEA). The thought is that if you were a caveman (or cavewoman) and you relaxed in a time of abundance you would be screwed when the next famine came. Instead, our reptilian brains give us a short-term dopamine reward when we succeed, like getting a raise, but after a while that reward diminishes, and we go back to trying to get the next reward. This would be useful in the EEA because instead of just relaxing in a time of abundance, you would be working, trying to get yourself ready for the next famine. Not surprisingly, some games use this to keep you addicted to playing. (Think about leveling up in an online game, and how good it makes you feel.)

On the flip side is the fact that our brain punishes us when we fail. We all know the feeling of failure. It sucks. I felt that way this week with my diet and not getting my post out on time. However, the good news is that it is not in our evolutionary interest to be debilitatingly depressed. Thus, our brain eventually turns off the shame, and we go back to the same level of happiness where we were before the failure. A famous example of this is Christopher Reeves. Reeves was asked to rate his happiness before and after his horse accident, the one that left him paralyzed and unable to play Superman. Surprisingly, Reeves rated his happiness as pretty much the same both before the accident and after. The truth is that after some big event (a horrible accident, or even winning the lottery) our happiness level changes, but eventually we level back out again. My evolutionary psychology teacher argued that most people who commit suicide after a horrible event do so within the first week of the event, because they can't imagine ever being happy again.

The second category is about expectation. There is a simple equation that explains this:

Outcome - Expectation = Happiness

I think this is very easy to understand. If you have high expectations for something, and they are not met, you tend to be disappointed. If you have low expectations for something and it turns out to be great, you feel awesome.

Here are six tips from evolutionary psychology on how to be happier:

1. Buy friends and family members small gifts that are not tied to holidays or birthday. The gift receiver will be happier because it surpasses expectations. Yes, giving gifts unexpectedly makes other people happy, which in turn makes you happy. That is, if they don't feel suspicious that you are trying to butter them up for something. 
2. You should change activities in your exercise program when your performance starts to plateau. You will be happier when you are showing progress at an activity. We tend to get a lot of gain in the first few weeks, but then we hit a plateau. Change your activity so you can see bigger results. For example, once you hit a plateau in biking, change to running. There is also the benefit that physical activity releases endorphins and that in itself makes you feel better.
3. On your to-do list, divide jobs into explicit small chunks that will allow you to experience progress. The task pack up the house, is kind of daunting, and will be on your to-do list for a long long time before it's done. Instead, put something like “pack up guest bathroom today”. The knowledge that you have gotten one thing off your to-do list will give you a mental feeling of progress, which will make you feel good.
4. Under promise, over deliver. Tell your boss a project will take two weeks, and get it done in one. Tell your friend you are running 20 minutes late, and get there in 12. 
5. Lying around accomplishing nothing is unlikely to make you happy. Happiness comes from accomplishing goals. Researchers gave participants beepers, and every time their beeper went off participants had to write down what they were doing and how happy they were. Surprisingly, people were most happy when they were at work, especially if they were actively and productively engaged in a project and experiencing flow (if you don't know what flow is, look here for the definition).
6. A career with advancement opportunities will make you happier than a better-paying job with no chance of promotion. Once again, people like progress. If you get a job that pays you well, but you can't go anywhere with it, you're likely not to feel as happy about it down the line as someone who gets a job that doesn't pay as well, but that has growth potential in the job.

Anyway, let me know what you think about the evolutionary tips on happiness. Do you think they are useful? Obvious? Do you think they could help you?

A Bad Reaction to Research: Why Moderation is Important

CC BY 2.5 anacleaver_2000

When I was getting my Bachelors degree in psychology, I had to take a class called “Biopsychology”. The class was very interesting, focusing mostly on how the structures of the brain influence behavior. One of the gems wedged in the book was a chapter on eating and hunger, called “Why Do Many People Over Eat?” Now, I'm kind of a geek, and I'm very curious about health, eating, and diets. When I saw this chapter, I was really excited about going over it in class. I wanted to know why people would overeat, so that I could apply this knowledge to my own life, and, hopefully, lose weight.

The author of Biopsychology, John J.P. Pinel, makes it very clear that our bodies are designed for storing as much energy as they can, not for giving us the ideal amount of energy as we need it, writing, “you may believe your body is short of energy just before a meal, it is not” (1). Pinel points to the environment that our ancestors had to survive in. He argues that if our bodies were designed for using all energy immediately, our ancient predecessors would have starved during long winters or famines.

Now, I will talk about several studies, but stay with me, there's a method to my madness, or at least, there is this time. Other times...I make no promises.

To illustrate his case that hunger is more than a regulation of energy Pinel writes about R.H., a patient with severe anterograde amnesia. Researchers offered R.H. his favorite meal: veal parmigiana and apple juice. Fifteen minutes after R.H. had finished eating (and had forgotten his previous meal), researchers offered him another meal of veal parmigiana and apple juice. Again, R.H. ate it. They offered it a third time with the same result, and a fourth, at which point, he refused saying “his stomach felt a little tight.” Then, only minutes after R.H. had refused, he announced he was going for a walk and some veal parmigiana (2). The message here is clear, hunger is not motivated by a need for energy, but rather other reasons. In the book, Pinel makes the case the our hunger can be motivated by such things as our schedule, simply having food in front of us (would you say “no” to your favorite plate of food pipping hot and inches away from your face, even if you weren't hungry?) or by habit.

In another study on sham eating, Weingarten H. P., & Kulikovsky cut the esophagi of rats, connecting it with an external tube, so that anything the rats ate would not reach their stomachs. The researchers (whom you might be thinking are mad scientists at this point) had two groups: rats that had previously eaten a specific brand of rat chow (group A) and rats that had never eaten that brand of rat chow (group B). Group A was found to eat similar amounts of rat food as they had previously, even though none of the food was reaching their stomach. Group B, on the other hand, was found to eat more rat chow than group A. When researchers reconnected the rats esophagi to their stomachs, they found that group B ate similar amounts of food to when none of their food was reaching their stomach (3). This suggests that we eat based on experience, not based on how much food we need at that point in time.

After reading about these and other studies done on hunger, the message to me was clear: if you are overweight, it is because you eat too much, and in general, people eat much more than they need.

Now, I have always struggled with my weight, and like most women, I am very sensitive about it. Reading this chapter was like someone bashing me over the head with a large mallet while screaming, “stop eating so damn much!” That is to say, it was very unpleasant. Thus I decided that I would reduce my eating to so-many number of calories in a given meal, and I would not eat anything unnecessary (i.e. snacks, desserts, etc...) and I would lose weight. I would ignore my hunger pangs, after all, “the strong, unpleasant feelings of hunger that you may experience at meal times are not cries from your body for food; they are the sensation of your body's preparations for the expected homeostasis-disturbing meal” (1). Translation: eating a meal is rough on your body.

So I did it. I ignored my hunger pangs, ate relatively little, and was absolutely and completely miserable.

For two whole weeks I was grumpy, irritable, and had a headache that would not go away.

Let me repeat that.

It. Would. Not. Go. Away.

Two weeks.

I was miserable. I couldn't sleep at night because I was so hungry. I wanted more food in a way that mentally talking myself out of it couldn't curb. Yet, the research resounded in my head. I was overweight because I ate too much. I did not need more energy. My body had energy to use in the form of fat. I would not die from this diet, I just wished I would.

One day, I was talking to my sister on the phone. I was going on and on about all the research I had recently read, and how I was trying to incorporate it into my life, and how I felt sick and awful. On and on I went, until finally my sister stopped me. “Katerina, eat when you're hungry, stop when you're not.” Simple. Easy. Non-headache inducing. And like that, I was free from my research malaise.

CC BY 2.5 Marcin Wichary

Now, let me be clear. I am not recommending eating large quantities of food every day all day, or that we should not listen to what research has to say. My point is moderation. Research may suggest that we eat too much, or that by reducing the amount of food we eat, the longer our life will be, but really, who wants to live constantly hungry and obsessing over food?

1. Pinel, J. (2009). Biopsychology. (7th ed.). New York: Custom Publishing.

2. Rozin, P., Dow, S., Moscovitxh, M., & Majaram, S. (1998). What causes humans to being and end a meal? A role for memory for what has been eaten, as evidence by a study of multiple meal eating in amnesic patients. Psychological Science, 9, 392-392.

3. Weingarten H. P., & Kulikovsky, O.T. (1989). Taste-to postingestive consequence conditioning: Is the rise in sham feeding with repeated experience a learning phenomenon? Physiology & Behavior, 45, 471-476