The Narcissus in All of Us

Prior convictions and the end of ideology

Ilan Shrira — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 20:34:47 +0000

People get set in their ways as the years pass by. When we get older, we settle into routines, our beliefs crystallize, and we adhere more strongly to our ideological worldview (our personal set of beliefs and values). When we're young, by contrast, we need to be open to possibilities. A great deal of flexibility is necessary, for example, if we're to learn a first language and adapt to a million other things in our environment.

But flexibility becomes less important once we develop a stable understanding of the world. We then have years to build up justifications for our beliefs; we fill our lives with spouses and friends and role models who share and validate our worldview; and our beliefs eventually become a major source of psychological stability for us. Hence, our beliefs get reinforced and solidified throughout our lives.

This developmental sequence has always struck me as wrong. Rather, it seems like the opposite is true: that our ideologies are actually more rigid when we're younger. Indeed, it's our earliest years that instill our most fundamental convictions: whether life is fair or unfair, whether other people are trustworthy or treacherous, whether the world is safe or dangerous, and whether things like destiny, true love, and God exist. We don't normally think of these perceptions as ideological, but they're certainly the basis for all ideologies that follow.

Our first realizations that the world doesn't work the way we expect it to can elicit powerful resistance. This resistance, for example, is often the basis for large-scale societal changes, spearheaded by young adults who refuse to accept a world that doesn't conform to the way they think it should. In fact, seeing young people behave so stubbornly is often endearing because their certainty and passion appear to be genuine.

However, our ideologies tend to soften in adulthood, the more our assumptions clash with our experiences. Childhood myths, which serve important protective functions when we're younger, become difficult to maintain when we're no longer sheltered from many of life's contradictions and complexities. For this reason, seeing older people behave stubbornly can be exasperating because we think they should know better.

When adults do express their views with absolute confidence, their goals seem to be more instrumental (e.g., to reassure others, to influence others). Consider politicians and protestors who defend their positions, lawyers who argue their case, or parents who warn their children about the dangers of drugs. Do their words usually correspond to what they really believe?

There's an unforgettable scene in Don DeLillo's novel White Noise, in which the main character, Jack Gladney, seeks refuge in a church after sustaining an injury. One of the elder nuns tends to his wound, and they begin to talk. Jack, who is agnostic, asks her about the church's current view of heaven. To his shock, the nun tells him that she doesn't believe in heaven - nor in angels, saints, or even in God. Nor, she reveals, does anyone else in the clergy.

"But you're a nun. Nuns believe these things," he protests. "Faith, religion, life everlasting...Are you saying you don't take them seriously? Your dedication is a pretense?"

"Our pretense is a dedication," she explains. "Someone must appear to believe. Our lives are no less serious than if we professed real faith, real belief. As belief shrinks from the world, people find it more necessary than ever that someone believe...Those who have abandoned belief must still believe in us."

Stunned, Jack questions her further, but we soon realize that she's being completely serious.

Now this isn't to say that everybody's convictions are destined to fade away. Many of them don't.

It's just easier to be confident in your assumptions when they haven't yet been put to the test. This is what makes the ideology of youth, our first ideology, the most enduring one.

(This post was co-authored by Josh Foster.)

Increasing self-control by appreciating nothing

Joshua D. Foster — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:00:23 +0000

Here’s a very scrumptious dilemma for you:

Would you rather have:

a) One cookie now?

b) Two cookies an hour from now?

Most people faced with this sort of dilemma have difficultly resisting the immediate reward. Researchers Eran Magen, Carol Dweck, and James Gross recently suggested a novel explanation for this type of self-control failure (here's a link to the article). They call it the Hidden-Zero Effect. According to the hidden zero effect, presenting options such as whether to have a smaller amount of something (good) now versus a larger amount later on obscures the downsides to both options. The downsides are that you will not get anything either (a) later on if you choose the first option or (b) right now if you choose the second option. In other words, the zero amounts associated with each option are not explicitly stated.

Here’s a version of the above dilemma that is logically identical, but also makes the zero amounts explicit.

Would you rather have:

a) One cookie now and zero cookies an hour from now?

b) Zero cookies now and two cookies an hour from now?

Even though these options are basically the same as those in the first example, explicitly stating the zero amounts makes people much more likely to choose Option B. What’s going on? Mentioning the zeros focuses our attention on the costs of each choice, not just the rewards. Option B also conveys that things are going to get better over time (0 then 2), whereas Option A suggests just the opposite (1 then 0). Not surprisingly, we like the idea that our fortunes are improving rather than getting worse. Both of these elements are missing in the opening example where the zeros are hidden.

To demonstrate this effect in the lab, participants in Magen et al.’s studies were given a choice between getting a certain amount of money now or a larger amount later on. Participants were significantly more likely to choose the immediate reward when the choice was presented with the zero amounts hidden (you can have $5.00 now or $6.20 in 26 days), than they were when the zero amounts were explicitly stated (you can have $5.00 now and $0.00 in 26 days or $0.00 now and $6.20 in 26 days). This effect was pretty reliable – it didn’t matter whether choices were between hypothetical amounts of money or real sums of money that participants were allowed to keep at the end of the study. Regardless, making the zero amounts explicit made people more likely to delay gratification to get the bigger reward.

We think this research has enormous real-world implications. One of us (JF) has a 10-month old son at home who at this stage cannot resist ANYTHING, much less understand that sometimes it is best to delay gratification in order to get larger future rewards. He just wants whatever happens to be in his field of vision – and he wants it RIGHT NOW. But before too long, he will be faced with exactly the sort of dilemmas that are influenced by the hidden zero effect. For example, he will make decisions about whether to spend his allowance on a small toy today or wait a week to save enough money to buy a much bigger toy. If he is anything like his father, he will almost always choose the small toy today, sometimes making him very sad later on when he considers the much larger toy he could have had if only he had waited. Perhaps this can be avoided by making the zeros associated with his decisions more explicit. What will he choose if he is presented these options:

a) You can get a small toy today, but then you will get no big toys next week.

b) You get no toys today, but then you will get a big toy next week.

OK, we realize that the first option doesn’t technically have a zero amount (assuming he continues to get an allowance, he can always buy another small toy next week), but you get the idea. Now, if son is like father, then unfortunately he will continue to make the impulsive decision no matter how the choice is presented (Daddy has serious problems with impulse control). But assuming that some of Mommy’s genes got into the mix, then maybe, just maybe, presenting choices with explicit zero amounts will lead him to make decisions that are less impulsive and more satisfying in the long-term.

(This post was coauthored by Ilan Shrira)

The occupation with the highest suicide rate

Ilan Shrira — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:29:17 +0000

For many years now, physicians have had the highest suicide rate compared to people in any other line of work. Is this surprising? Does this happen because doctors are continually exposed to other people's problems? Because of something about a physician's lifestyle? Looking at these suicides more closely provides some answers.

To begin with, their methods of suicide follow a different pattern than those of the average person: physicians are far more likely to commit suicide by overdosing on medication (as opposed to, say, using a gun). So part of the reason for doctors' high suicide rate is their easy access to powerful, very lethal drugs. Furthermore, doctors know better than anyone which types of medication to take and what dosages to take them in to get the job done. Hence, physicians are more successful in their suicide attempts than other people.

A more unexpected finding concerning physician suicides is that there's no difference in the rates between male and female doctors. This is surprising because in the general population, men commit suicide at much higher rates than women. For example, in the United States, men commit suicide at nearly 4 times the rate of women, but women constitute about half of all physician suicides.

Several explanations have been proposed for the high rate among female doctors. First, while being a physician can be stressful for anyone, it may conflict with the life goals of women more than men. Given that women, on average, tend to place more value on spending time with family, friends, and engaging in other social activities, the amount of hours physicians work takes away from all these things. For example, the long hours make it more difficult to maintain stable relationships, to have children, and to be a parent. Women may be more negatively affected by the social isolation than men.

Another stressor for women is that, like in many male-dominated fields, female physicians are probably exposed to greater levels of sexual harassment than male physicians. This may not be a problem for doctors who have their own practice, but could be for those who work at large hospitals.

Unfortunately, male and female doctors who are suicidal encounter several obstacles to getting effective treatment for these problems. One issue is the stigma associated with these symptoms. Suicide and depression are already stigmatized within the general population, but this stigma is even stronger if you're a doctor, a person who is expected to be physically and mentally healthy. Thus, doctors are probably reluctant to seek treatment for suicidal tendencies, because doing so would be bad for their reputation and bad for business, should word get around. (Ask yourself, would you continue to get treated by a doctor who you knew to be suicidal?)

For doctors who do seek help, the quality of treatment they get is often not as good as it should be. Therapists who treat physicians may assume that their patients know how to take care of themselves, being that they're doctors, so the therapy tends to be more hands-off and less helpful. Suicidal physicians, in response to these difficulties in getting help, may thus turn to self-medicating with alcohol or prescription drugs, increasing their risks of drug addiction and a further downward spiral.

In sum, there are several reasons for the higher suicide rates of physicians: greater stress, social isolation, access to powerful drugs, barriers to getting treatment -- and especially for women -- greater role conflict and sexual harassment.

Having said all this, here's one more fact: physicians live longer and are generally healthier than people in most other professions. Even if you include physicians who commit suicide or suffer from depression, life expectancy and well-being are still very high amongst doctors. But how can this be if they also have such high suicide rates?

Keep in mind that only about 1-2% of the population dies by suicide, and perhaps (this is just an estimate) 2-4% of doctors. But doctors who don't fall into this minority tend to have very healthy habits: they exercise more, eat better, smoke less, earn more money, and receive better medical care than the average person. Thus, although there is definitely an elevated suicide risk for physicians, the vast majority of physicians are not suicidal and actually do things that lead to healthier and longer lives.

Their higher suicide levels make sense when you consider that, as in other professions that demand long hours and involve a great deal of responsibility, there are more potential rewards but a greater risk of burnout.

(This post was co-authored by Josh Foster.)

Sunshine and suicide

Ilan Shrira — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 06:28:57 +0000

If you ever want to stump someone with a trivia question, ask this: "In which month are suicide rates highest?"

After you receive an (incorrect) answer, you can assert that suicides are highest in June. (This assumes you're in the Northern Hemisphere; in the Southern Hemisphere, suicides peak around December.) Indeed, there's a strong relationship between the amount of sunlight and suicide - it's just in the opposite direction we expect.

Yes, dark days can make us feel depressed, but they rarely drive us to suicide. Most people who attempt suicide already suffer from severe depression, regardless of the weather. Extremely depressed people, though, have difficulty formulating any kind of concrete plan to kill themselves; carrying out such a plan is even tougher because they rarely have the energy to do so. If anything, a lack of sunshine further saps their motivation.

According to one theory, exposure to sunlight increases the risk of suicide because sunshine first boosts energy and motivation, and only later improves mood. This means that there's a brief period -- perhaps a few days to a week -- when a person still feels horrible but now has the motivation to do something about it.

Some suggest that a similar process is behind the FDA's warnings that antidepressants raise the risk of suicide. Like sunshine, antidepressants may give people a quick surge of energy before they can feel better or think clearly. This explains why patients have to be closely monitored when they begin a new treatment regimen. (We should mention that this short-term increase in suicide risk is very, very small and only relevant to certain types of antidepressants.)

Unfortunately, this whole sunshine/suicide misconception has probably reinforced a couple of other myths about suicide:

Myth #2: Scandinavian countries -- such as Sweden and Norway -- have the highest suicide rates.

This isn't true. In reality, suicide is highest in Eastern European countries like Russia, Belarus, and Lithuania.

Myth #3: Suicide increases around the Christmas holidays.

Sure, we can all think of times when we felt blue around the holidays, but again, this is very unlikely to trigger suicide. Quite the contrary: suicide actually decreases around Christmas and other major holidays, when most people are reconnecting with family and friends.

FYI: Two of the best sources of information on suicide and its prevention can be found at the CDC and the World Health Organization websites.

(This post was co-authored by Josh Foster.)

Mass Murder is Nothing to Fear

Joshua D. Foster — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 21:14:59 +0000

Two terrible incidents of violence occurred last week. Michael McLendon went on a killing rampage in Alabama that took the lives of 10 people before he killed himself. Half a world away in Germany, at about the same time, Tim Kretschmer attacked a school and murdered 15 people before killing himself. All told, 27 people died in these two incidents of mass murder.

The news media in the United States has spent enormous amounts of time covering both incidents. We have not watched the German media, but it too has probably focused a lot of attention on the two incidents. It is probably safe to assume that news watchers in both countries have received a healthy dose of mass murder during the past several days.

It will be interesting to see what results from these two incidents. To the extent that the past is prologue, we should expect to see plenty of public fear and extreme reactions from officials and politicians. Both can be traced, at least to some degree, to a cognitive shortcut called the availability heuristic.

We use the availability heuristic to estimate the frequency of specific events. For example, how often are people killed by mass murderers? Because higher frequency events are more likely to occur at any given moment, we also use the availability heuristic to estimate the probability that events will occur. For example, what is the probability that I will be killed by a mass murderer tomorrow?

We are especially reliant upon the availability heuristic when we do not have solid evidence from which to base our estimates. For example, what is the probability that the next plane you fly on will crash? The true probability of any particular plane crashing depends on a huge number of factors, most of which you're not aware of and/or don't have reliable data on. What type of plane is it? What time of day is the flight? What is the weather like? What is the safety history of this particular plane? When was the last time the plane was examined for problems? Who did the examination and how thorough was it? Who is flying the plane? How much sleep did they get last night? How old are they? Are they taking any medications? You get the idea.

The chances are excellent that you do not have access to all or even most of the information needed to make accurate estimates for just about anything. Indeed, you probably have little or no data from which to base your estimate. Well, that's not exactly true. In fact, there is one piece that evidence that you always have access to: your memory. Specifically, how easily can you recall previous incidents of the event in question? The easier time we have recalling prior incidents, the greater probability the event has of occurring - at least as far as our minds are concerned. In a nutshell, this is the availability heuristic.

Of course, any rational person understands that this method of estimation is flawed. Just because you happened to see a clown get run over by a dump truck yesterday and you can now easily recall this event, this doesn't mean that this sort of thing happens all of the time. Likewise, just because a plane crashed recently or two mass murders occurred last week, this doesn't make these events any more likely either. Nevertheless, studies on the availability heuristic consistently show that we estimate the probability of events occurring based in large part on how easily these events come to mind.

As this relates to the recent mass murders, it is likely that people will become, at least for a time, more fearful that they or someone they know will be the victims of the next shooting incident. Politicians, whose jobs depend upon being in tune with the concerns of their constituents, and who are likely themselves to overestimate the likelihood of the next mass murderer coming to their towns, will probably introduce heavy-handed policies, such as banning literature that might incite the next perpetrator (police in Alabama discovered a stash of videos in the home of the gunman that instructed how to, for example, shoot from a moving vehicle). While these interventions will likely have little to no effect on future occurrences of mass murder, they will make people feel like something is being done to protect them from the boogeyman that now seems certain to live in their neighborhood.

Although there are many problems associated with the availability heuristic, perhaps the most concerning one is that it often leads people to lose sight of life's real dangers. Psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer, for example, conducted a fascinating study that showed in the months following September 11, 2001, Americans were less likely to travel by air and more likely to instead travel by car. While it is understandable why Americans would have been fearful of air travel following the incredibly high profile attacks on New York and Washington, the unfortunate result is that Americans died on the highways at alarming rates following 9/11. This is because highway travel is far more dangerous than air travel. More than 40,000 Americans are killed every year on America's roads. Fewer than 1,000 people die in airplane accidents, and even fewer people are killed aboard commercial airlines. The bottom line is that being a passenger on a plane being flown by trained professionals who are being guided by a team of professionals (i.e., air traffic control) is much safer than driving your own car on streets surrounded by other amateur drivers who may or may not follow the rules of the road (and whose cars may or may not be fit to drive). Nevertheless, I (JF) almost always worry that my plane will crash, but I rarely even consider the dangers of driving - and I teach the availability heuristic every semester! It just shows how powerful this cognitive shortcut really is.

Back to the killings in Alabama and Germany...The probability that any of us or anyone we know will ever become the victim of mass murder is almost too low to imagine. If we focus too many resources on trying to prevent this from ever happening again, we will likely expose ourselves to more mundane but much higher probability dangers, such as accidental shootings (which take far more lives than all of the mass murders put together). And this goes for anything whose probability is influenced by the availability heuristic (which is just about everything).

Consider, for example, that the 2009 budget for homeland security (the folks that protect us from terrorists) will likely be about $50 billion. Don't get us wrong, we like the fact that people are trying to prevent terrorism, but even at its absolute worst, terrorists killed about 3,000 Americans in a single year. And less than 100 Americans are killed by terrorists in most years. By contrast, the budget for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (the folks who protect us on the road) is about $1 billion, even though more than 40,000 people will die this year on the nation's roads. In terms of dollars spent per fatality, we fund terrorism prevention at about $17,000,000/fatality (i.e., $50 billion/3,000 fatalities) and accident prevention at about $25,000/fatality (i.e., $1 billion/40,000 fatalities). This huge imbalance tells us that our priorities are seriously out of whack. (And don't even get us started on bigger killers like heart disease!)

The take-home message of all of this is that we should be a lot less afraid of many of the things that scare us. Yes, terrible things such as plane crashes, terrorism, and mass murder do happen. Likely each of these things will happen several more times before the year is finished. But the good news is that the chances that any of us will be affected by any of these events are so remote that we can safely relax and not worry about them. To the extent that we do try to prevent scary things from happening, we should put forth more effort to prevent real dangers like car accidents, heart attacks, and diabetes. Interestingly, many of the real dangers are things that we have a lot of control over (unlike mass murder). Therefore, to the extent that we try to prevent them, we might actually improve our quality of life.

(This post was co-authored by Ilan Shrira)

History’s mysteries: Why do birth rates decrease when societies modernize?

Ilan Shrira — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 04:02:10 +0000

Starting in Europe in the late 1800s and continuing today, birth rates have been declining in societies as they become more affluent, industrialized, and technologically advanced. In fact, fertility output is dropping so precipitously in some countries -- such as Japan, Germany, and Italy -- that their total population is now in decline. This is a major cause of concern in these countries, whose leaders try figure out, for example, how a shrinking workforce will be able to support a growing elderly population. Some governments have even launched programs that award their citizens money (payoffs?) to have more children.

Many things change when societies modernize, but it's not clear which factors directly cause the declining birth rates. Is it because birth control methods are more effective and readily available to people? Because parents no longer need children as extra hands on the farm? Or has raising children just become too expensive in modern societies?

There have been no shortage of reasons proposed, but unfortunately, many of these explanations are unconvincing. For example, it's not about better birth control technologies; these were developed long after birth rates started dropping in Europe. Also, the idea that children can be financial commodities to their parents is largely a myth: the cost of raising a child vastly exceeds what the child could ever pitch in, even in agrarian societies of the past.

A more reasonable possibility is that parents limit their family size in order to allocate more resources to each child. Parents may have adopted this strategy because the relative cost of raising children in modern societies has skyrocketed. For example, education is now perceived to be a vital component of a prosperous life, so parents don't let their children drop out of school to help support the family; indeed, they're more likely to encourage their children to pursue optional forms of education such as college. Modern societies also have higher standards for what parents are expected to provide: a safe home and neighborhood to grow up in, good health care, healthy food, and plenty of parental attention. This theory of allocating more resources to fewer children, however, doesn't explain why so many modern couples decide not to have any children at all; it's not because they can't afford it - usually it's wealthier people who decide to stay childless. Perhaps people who enjoy a great deal of freedom in their lives are more reluctant to let go of it.

The newest explanation for declining birth rates, called the kin influence hypothesis, focuses on how people's social networks have expanded. In traditional (pre-modern) societies, social networks were relatively small and consisted almost entirely of genetic relatives (kin). But because family ties are generally weaker in modern societies, our social networks have come to include a large proportion of non-kin (e.g., friends, co-workers). As a result, family members now constitute a smaller part of people's social interactions than any time in our evolutionary history. According to the kin influence hypothesis, this change is the critical factor in decreasing birth rates because family members encourage each other to have children, whereas non-kin don't. Without this pro-reproductive encouragement coming from family, people are less likely to have children.

Think about it in evolutionary terms: if an organism's ultimate "goal" is to pass down his or her genes -- to maximize one's reproductive fitness -- then it should be in each person's interest for their kin to have children as well. When your siblings, or your cousins, or your own children have kids, part of your genetic heritage is being passed down and surviving. Just as we tend to help relatives more than non-relatives - because doing so increases our own reproductive fitness - we should also try to influence family members to have children.

A classic example is when a parent says to her married daughter, "I'd really love to see some grandchildren before I die." Usually, though, these messages are more subtle. For instance, parents and other family members may promise to help with any childcare that's needed. Or they'll reward higher status to family members who have children and accord lower status to those who don't. If you think about it, kin influence is a standard feature of the family environment. From an early age, most of us are socialized to get married and have children when we grow up - we are raised to believe that this is something we should do. Much of this socialization comes from parents and other family members.

In traditional societies, where family makes up a majority of a person's social world, youngsters are probably exposed to pro-reproductive messages on a regular basis. But when family is more distant and our interactions with them less frequent, this encouragement loses much of its power. As a result, there are weaker norms, attitudes, and values toward having children. The farther away people move from their families and the less contact they have with them, the fewer children they produce.

We should be clear about one thing though: it's not that friends discourage each other from having children; they typically don't. It's just that friends have no direct incentive to encourage it. In most cultures, reproductive decisions are considered private issues, not something for friends to be meddling into.

Of course, other changes in society contribute to lower birth rates as well. Religion is one of the few cultural institutions that still encourage people to reproduce ("Be fruitful and multiply"), but this influence tends to diminish as societies modernize. Instead, society has created other rewarding goals to pursue -- e.g., financial success, a meaningful career, leisure activities -- which are often hindered by having children. The allure of these pursuits has only been getting stronger, perhaps at the cost of birth rates.

Whatever conditions cause people to limit their family size, once this norm is established it spreads readily to other places. Traditional cultures, after merely being exposed to practices such as contraception and smaller family sizes in the mass media, begin to adopt these practices themselves. Today, as the mass media infiltrates new areas of the globe and more countries begin to modernize, this has significant implications for world population growth. Despite the familiar doomsday scenarios of overcrowding and unsustainable resources, current projections indicate that these low-fertility norms will greatly reduce population growth in the decades to come.

(This post was co-authored by Josh Foster.)

When Parents Play Favorites

Ilan Shrira — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 07:02:27 +0000

A large proportion of parents display consistent favoritism toward one child over another. This favoritism can manifest in different ways: more time spent with one child, more affection given, more privileges, less discipline, or less abuse. Research by sociologist Jill Suitor examines some of the causes and consequences of parental favoritism, which occurs in 1/3 to 2/3 of American families.

Despite its taboo in our society, we consider some cases of parental favoritism to be fair and even necessary. For example, parents give more attention to newborns than they do to their older children. The same goes for children who are sick or disabled. In these situations, parents often discuss the unequal treatment with the disfavored children in order to assure them that it's nothing personal.

Other reasons for parental favoritism most of us would judge as unfair, yet they don't surprise us much. Parents might spend more time with and feel closer to same-gender children than to opposite-gender children. In mixed families, parents favor their biological children over step-children. In patriarchal cultures, parents simply favor boys over girls.

There are several additional factors that predict favoritism, one of which is birth order: parents favor first- and last-born children over middle children. This occurs in part because middle children will never be the only child living at home - at some point first-borns and last-borns will have their parents all to themselves. Overall, first-borns get the most privileges and last-borns receive the most parental affection.

A child's personality and behavior can also affect how parents treat them. Parents behave more affectionately toward children who are pleasant and affectionate, and they direct more discipline toward children who act out or engage in deviant behavior. Because girls tend to be warmer and less aggressive than boys, parents generally favor daughters over sons (but only in non-patriarchal cultures).

Favoritism is also more likely when parents are under a great deal of stress (e.g., marital problems, financial worries). In these cases, parents may be unable to inhibit their true feelings or monitor how fair they're behaving. Evolutionary theorists argue that when emotional or material resources are limited, parents will favor children who have the most potential to thrive and reproduce.

Unfortunately, the consequences of parental favoritism are what you might expect - they're mostly bad. Disfavored children experience worse outcomes across the board: more depression, greater aggressiveness, lower self-esteem, and poorer academic performance. These repercussions are far more extreme than any benefits the favored children get out of it (negative things just have a stronger impact on people than positive things). And it's not all rosy for the favored children either - their siblings often come to resent them, poisoning those relationships.

Many of these consequences persist long after children have grown up and moved out of the house. People don't soon forget that they were disfavored by their parents, and many people report that being disfavored as a child continues to affect their self-esteem and their relationships in adulthood.

To make matters worse, parents are even more likely to play favorites once their children are grown up, sustaining the toxic family dynamics (e.g., bad feelings, sibling resentment). The causes of the favoritism, however, are a bit different once the children become adults. Parents still favor daughters and less deviant children, but they also give preference to children who live closer, share the parents' values, and, not surprisingly, have provided the parents with emotional or financial support.

It's important to keep in mind that parental favoritism is only problematic when there are consistent and arbitrary differences in treatment. In cases where favoritism is unavoidable (e.g., with newborns, needier children), parents who explain its necessity to the other children can usually offset any negative consequences.

Interestingly, children's well-being is highest when parents exhibit no favoritism toward anyone, even higher than the well-being of children who are favored by their parents. This disparity may occur because favored children have to contend with sibling hostility, or perhaps because families that practice favoritism tend to be dysfunctional in other ways.

Nearly all parents worry about whether they play favorites. But even when parents vow to treat their children equally, they soon find that this is just not possible. Every child is different and parents must respond to their unique characteristics appropriately. You shouldn't react to a 3-year-old's tantrums in the same way as you would to a 13-year-old's. You can't deal with aggressive children in the same way as passive children. Even identical twins can't be treated identically. When it comes down to it, every child wants to feel like they're different, not clones of their siblings. The best parents can do is stay aware of any differential treatment they give and try to be as fair as possible.

(This post was co-authored by Josh Foster.)

What we see when we see movies

Ilan Shrira — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 12:00:34 +0000

Which of these groups is portrayed most favorably in American movies?

a) Smokers

b) Psychiatrists

c) CEOs

d) P.E. teachers

Read on...

A study published in the journal Pediatrics this month showed that exposure to sexual content in the media predicted a greater risk of adolescent pregnancy. Researchers followed teenagers over a 3-year period, finding that those who watched a great deal of sex on TV were twice as likely to get pregnant or to impregnate someone else, compared to those who watched only a little. These results could not be explained by the teenagers' family environment, performance in school, history of deviant behavior, or any other factor.

Parents have always raged against the media for bringing taboo topics and explicit material closer and closer to the mainstream, from sex and violence to unsavory role models who use drugs or embrace "alternative lifestyles". Though it's debatable how much these images affect the average person, studies like this have been confirming parents' fears -- these images can have a profound impact on behavior. We want to focus on portrayals in mainstream American movies, in part because many of these films are distributed worldwide and seen by millions of people outside the country too.

Early criticisms of film content were based on the observation that movies depicted women and minorities in ways that reinforced negative stereotypes. Since then, much research has shown that the way different groups are portrayed on-screen influences viewers' beliefs and attitudes about those groups.

Although parents may be concerned about their children believing inaccurate stereotypes, parents are far more worried about which behaviors their children will want to imitate. Keep in mind, the film industry's primary target audience is young people, who look to movies to discern norms about what is fun, what is acceptable, and what is or is not dangerous.

One group of researchers, concerned about the safe sex messages movies communicate, examined all of the sex scenes in the highest grossing films between 1983-2003. They found that in most of these sex scenes: the characters having sex were not well-acquainted with each other, they didn't use a condom or any other form of birth control (nor was it discussed), and there were no negative consequences of their behavior.

Other research, like the teen pregnancy study, has linked movie portrayals to viewers' actual behavior. For example, exposure to smoking in films leads teenagers to have more favorable attitudes toward smoking and to start smoking cigarettes at an earlier age, especially when they see their favorite movie stars smoking on screen.

Whether we like to admit it or not, we're all affected by what we've seen in the movies, probably far more than we realize. Consider the results of these other studies. How do you think the following portrayals have contributed to your own beliefs, attitudes, and stereotypes? How well do these portrayals correspond to reality?

• More than two thirds of G-rated animated movies released between 1937-1997 featured either alcohol or tobacco use by one of its characters. "Good" characters were just as likely to use these substances as bad or neutral characters, and few films depicted any negative consequences of their use.

• Most Disney animated movies have some reference to characters with mental illness, and these depictions tend to be negative. Across all other movie genres, characters with any kind of mental illness are usually portrayed negatively (e.g., as homicidal maniacs, simpletons, victims).

• People with physical disabilities are practically non-existent in movies.

• Characters who drink alcohol are more physically attractive, more romantically and sexually active, and wealthier, compared to non-drinkers.

• Older characters (over 35) -- especially older women -- are portrayed as less friendly, less intelligent, less moral, and are less likely to have positive outcomes in the story.

• Almost half of all psychiatrists/therapists in movies violate professional boundaries with their patients, such as inappropriate sexual involvement. Female psychiatrists in movies are twice as likely as male psychiatrists to have sex with patients.

• Films also project three dominant stereotypes of psychiatrists, each with their own nickname: "Dr. Evil" is refined and cultivated on the outside, but sinister, deranged, and manipulative at heart (think Hannibal Lecter and Jonathan Crane); "Dr. Dippy" is the incompetent, ineffective buffoon who can't shake his own insecurities (think Niles and Frasier Crane, Tobias Funke); and "Dr. Wonderful" is the caring, insightful, dedicated super-therapist, but gets overinvolved with patients and has a chaotic personal life (think Jennifer Melfi and Susan Lowenstein).

• Movies depict business executives as villains who don't mind hurting people in order to make money (e.g., Gordon Gekko, Obadiah Stane, corporate suits in films like Syriana). Such characters sometimes turn out to be "good", but only when they abandon their concerns about making money (Tony Stark, Edward Lewis). This anti-business bias applies to people in the upper echelons of a corporation, rather than people at lower levels or people who run small businesses.

• And yes, P.E. teachers get a raw deal as well - they're portrayed as bullies and are rarely shown teaching students anything. Their gender is also relevant: Female P.E. teachers are depicted as "butch" and male P.E. teachers are hyper-masculine skirt-chasers.

Few of these themes should surprise us. At some level, these stereotypes are already steeped in our subconscious, even if we reject them consciously. The troubling thing about these depictions is just how pervasive they are and how deep they run. In real life, for example, how do jurors regard defendants who have some form of mental illness? How many positive stereotypes of elderly people are there? How many people don't trust psychiatrists? How many men assume that their psychiatrist must be coming on to them? And how many aspiring P.E. teachers choose a different career path because of the stigma associated with the job?

Of course, there are many other groups that get shafted by the media. We're curious...what are some other groups that you've always felt get a bad rap, maybe ones that we don't hear much about?

(This post was co-authored by Josh Foster.)

Narcissists Don't Make Love

Joshua D. Foster — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:03:49 +0000

Take a few moments to think about what sex means to you (sexual intercourse that is).

…and…STOP.

Now go ahead and rate each of the 14 words below in terms of how important they are to your concept of sex, that is, what sex means to you. A rating of 1 means it's not important at all and a 9 means it's extremely important. Of course, you can also use any number between 1 and 9. Don't worry if some of the words seem a little strange. Just go with your gut instinct.

1. Loyalty

2. Power

3. Love

4. Domination

5. Trust

6. Ego

7. Closeness

8. Influence

9. Honesty

10. Leading

11. Respect

12. Manipulation

13. Happiness

14. Daring

Now add up your scores. You should get two scores. One will be for the odd numbered words and one will be for the even numbered words. Let's call your score for the odd numbered words Communal Sexuality and your score for the even words Agentic Sexuality.

People who score high relative to other people in communal sexuality tend to view sex as an act that is mutually rewarding (i.e., both partners receive something positive from it) and relationship-enhancing. People who score high in agentic sexuality tend to view sex as personally rewarding and self-enhancing. To some degree, sex is more about "we" to people high in communal sexuality and more about "me" to people high in agentic sexuality.

A few years ago we (i.e., Joshua Foster, Ilan Shrira, & Keith Campbell, 2006) gave this test to 272 University of Georgia students. So you can get some idea about where you fall, students in this study scored an average of 57 for communal sexuality and 23 for agentic sexuality. Women scored a little higher than men in terms of communal sexuality (59 vs. 53) and men scored a little higher than women on agentic sexuality (27 vs. 21).

What we were most interested in, however, was how these conceptualizations of sex related to the personality construct of narcissism. Consistent with what we predicted, and probably what you’d expect as well, narcissists (i.e., people who scored high on a measure of narcissism) tended to score higher on agentic sexuality and lower on communal sexuality compared to less narcissistic folks. What this suggests is that, much like everything else in their lives, narcissists view sex as being “all about me.”

To some degree, we suspect that narcissists view their sexual partners as objects that satisfy their needs for pleasure, status, and power. As you might imagine, this kind of attitude probably doesn’t bode well for long-term relationships. In fact, one thing we suspect, but have not tested, is that more frequent sexual activity might actually harm relationships involving narcissists.

Here's why. Sex generally acts to bring partners closer together (both physically and psychologically). In other words, sex can be thought of as a mechanism for enhancing relationships, For narcissists, however, who view sex more in terms of personal gratification, sex might actually cause increased separation. Think of it like this. It’s hard to imagine that a marital therapist would suggest that a couple engage in more frequent isolated activities in the hopes that they will grow closer to one another. Certainly, this would instead lead to further separation. Likewise, if sex is essentially an isolated activity (albeit in the presence of another person), then one can imagine how more frequent sexual activity might actually cause relationship partners to feel more separated from each other.

Granted, we are taking the perspective of the narcissist in terms of our speculation. It’s certainly possible that the (less narcissistic) partners of narcissists grow more and more attached with each sexual act. This would be particularly cruel because while sex works to make one partner more attached, it pushes the other partner away. It’s possible that to some degree this might even account for findings from our labs showing that ex-romantic partners of narcissists report being particularly unsettled by their relationships. Again, we haven’t tested this idea directly, but it certainly seems like a logical possibility.

If one accepts the idea that sexual activity might undermine relationships involving narcissists, then we might ask: Can anything be done to change this? The short answer is nobody really knows. One might try to withhold sex from narcissistic romantic partners, but other research we’ve done leads us to believe that narcissists would simply look elsewhere to get their sexual needs met. See, narcissists tend to take a "what have you done for me lately" approach to their relationships and are quicker than most to abandon relationships that don’t satisfy their needs (Foster, 2008). Another option would be to somehow make narcissists adopt a more communal view of sexuality. Neither of us are exactly sure how to go about doing this, or whether it’s even possible, but if one could encourage narcissistic romantic partners to view sexual behavior in terms of the “we" then perhaps their long-term term relationships would function a little better.

(This post was coauthored by Ilan Shrira)

Further Reading (both of these articles can be retrieved here.)

Foster, J. D. (2008). Incorporating personality into the investment model: Probing commitment processes across individual differences in narcissism. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 25, 211-223.

Foster, J. D., Shrira, I., & Campbell, W. K. (2006). Theoretical models of narcissism, sexuality, and relationship commitment. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 23, 367-386.

The unseen dynamic of good parenting

Ilan Shrira — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 18:02:36 +0000

There's a long-standing and sometimes contentious debate in psychology about the degree to which parents play a role in the way their children turn out. Although many have claimed that parents are not the most important factor in who or what their children's grow up to be, clearly parents are an extremely influential factor in this equation.

In some respects, however, being an effective parent today is more difficult than it was, say, 50 years ago. The average parent today works more hours than ever before, and more than half of all children in the U.S. will live in a single-parent household at some point in their childhood. Parents still interact with their children a great deal, but the growing infrequency of these occasions has made them that much more important.

For this reason, we think the writings of psychologist John Gottman are especially relevant. Although Gottman is best known for his research on marital interaction and his uncanny ability to predict which couples will get divorced, we believe his research on parenting is even more significant. We thought we'd offer a brief (and radically condensed) overview of Gottman's observations here.

Gottman has found that some parents are remarkably adept at helping their children deal with difficult emotional experiences, providing their children with the skills necessary to regulate their emotions as they get older. As a result, these children grow up to be more resilient, socially skilled, and emotionally mature, while still maintaining a rich emotional life. "Emotion coaching" parents, as Gottman calls them, use a number of different strategies in response to their children's negative emotions (e.g., fear, anger, sadness).

As a general principle, emotion coaching (EC) parents teach their children that feeling a certain way or having certain thoughts is never wrong; only particular behaviors can be wrong. Thus, it should always be okay for people to talk about how they feel.

Rather that viewing their children's unpleasant emotions as something to be avoided or distracted away from, EC parents see these experiences as opportunities to teach their children how to manage their emotions. Negative emotions are an inescapable aspect of being human. When parents dismiss or disapprove of their children's feelings, they signal that there's something wrong with their child for feeling that way and leave the child ill-equipped to deal with these feelings in the future.

Instead, EC parents: 1) are attuned to what their children are feeling, 2) encourage their children to express their emotions, 3) validate these emotions, and 4) help them cope with these feelings or find appropriate solutions to a problem.

First and foremost, being aware of a child's emotional state allows a parent to address any negative feelings as they arise. Very young children don't yet have the ability to label their emotions, and older children often aren't aware of which emotions they're experiencing or what triggered them. EC parents help them identify these feelings in a way that the child can understand.

The nature of a child's emotions won't always be obvious, though. In these cases, EC parents give their child the opportunity to describe her feelings and what might have brought them on. This can be done with simple observations that prompt the child to say what's on her mind ("You look upset"; or "Is everything alright? You seem sad today"). It's important that this probing doesn't come across as confrontational ("What's wrong with you?"), which may convey that she should know how she feels or that there's something wrong with the way she feels.

Once it's clear what she's experiencing, EC parents communicate that they understand what she's going through and that it's okay to feel like that ("I'd be upset too if someone took my toy away" or "I used to get nervous myself before the first day of school"). These responses are critical to early emotion coaching because they affirm that the child is not wrong for feeling a certain way. In addition, the child learns that her parent understands her, takes her feelings seriously, and can be trusted to be there when she's distressed. For these reasons, emotional disclosures are an excellent chance for parents to connect with their children.

Sometimes listening and validating a child's feelings are enough to allow the emotions to pass. However, very often the negative emotions will have arisen in response to a particular concern or an ongoing problem. At this point, parents can offer advice or work with the child to come up with solutions. If possible, encouraging the child to think of ways to deal with the problem and then guiding her toward appropriate courses of action are ideal because they cultivate her ability to solve problems for herself.

Lest we give the impression that EC parents are overly permissive or indulgent, we should emphasize that setting limits on inappropriate behavior is an essential part of emotion coaching. EC parents tend to have well-defined rules about what is and what is not acceptable behavior. These rules are enforced with a high degree of consistency, but with some flexibility to accommodate special circumstances. Anger, when expressed honestly by parents, can be an effective means of discipline, as long as the anger is aimed at the problem or the misbehavior, and not at the child's character or personality. When children have a genuinely strong attachment to a parent, the parent's anger and disappointment alone will pain the child, which is sometimes punishment enough.

It's difficult to overstate the importance of successful emotion coaching. Children will not only function better psychologically and socially, but by maintaining closer and more authentic bonds with parents, they'll carry a lower risk of depression, substance abuse, violence, premature sexual behavior, and other problems. The good news is that parents have a tremendous amount of sway over their children's future well-being, and these strategies can be adopted by anyone, regardless of the child's age.

We can't nearly do justice to Gottman's complete perspective here. His book discusses each of these points more comprehensively, with detailed examples of how parents can handle a variety of different circumstances. Our hope is that we've stimulated your curiosity enough for you to investigate matters further!

(This post was co-authored by Josh Foster.)

Gottman, J. M., & DeClaire, J. (1997). Raising an emotionally intelligent child: The heart of parenting. New York: Simon & Schuster.