Archive for March 5, 2010
Am happy, will be paranoid/ gullible; am sad, will be realistic
Mar 5th
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Happiness may lead to mood-congruent effects of increasing trust(a positive emotion itself) in interpersonal situations; an alternative theory is that happiness leads to top-down processing , thus relying more on activated schema , stereotypes etc and thus leading to more trust when trust schema or cues are salient and distrust when untrustworthy schema / cues are active.
As per the mood-congruent theory of effect of happiness, surmised that happy people would be more trusting and there would be a main effect of happiness manipulation on trust in experimental settings. As per the assimilation-accommodation theory, viz that happiness leads to assimilation or use of existing constructs (stereotype./ schema etc) while sadness leads to accommodation or bottom-up processing whereby new constructs may be created, the conjecture is that happy people will show trust in trust situations and distrust in distrust situations and thus there would be an interaction effect in 2 (happiness/ neutral mood) x 2 (trust/distrust situation, stereotype or cue) study design.
These above two are competing hypothesis that make measurable and clearly different and distinguishable predictions and can be easily experimentally verified.
Robert Lount, Jr. set out to investigate precisely this piece of puzzle and his data supported the thesis that there is an interaction effect of mood on trust cues and thus happy people are more gullible when trust cues/stereotypes are active; and also more paranoid or distrusting when distrust cues/ schema are active.
He performed a total of 5 different experiments to cement his thesis.
- The first experiment relied on film clips to induce mood and dictator game to measure trust. Trustworthiness of the other party was manipulated by interpersonal vs inter group situation. As per a theoretical framework, by default in interpersonal interactions (say trust games) the other individuals believed to be trustworthy. In contrast in an inter-group interaction, in-group vs out-group psychology comes into play and the other group as a whole is believed to be inherently untrustworthy. thus, in the first experiment they used interpersonal or inter-group conditions to manipulate trustworthiness cues and found the interaction effect of happiness and trust cues as hypothesized.
- The second experiment was carried out to ascertain that it is indeed distrust in inter-group condition that is in play and leads to happy people showing distrust in distrust salient conditions. The paradigm used was modified prisoners dilemma in this case.
- The third experiment did not use ingroup-outgroup factors but instead provided explicit information about the trustworthiness of a person and then measured the effect of mood on trust using the dictator game and found the same interaction effect of mood and trust cues as opposed to a direct main effect of affect on trust.
- The fourth experiment used subtle implicit measures of trustworthiness/ untrustworthiness by utilizing computer generated facial features and used explicit measures of trust like rating the person as trustworthy when subjects mood had been manipulated. Again the interaction effect was observed.
- The fifth and final experiment was performed to clarify that it is indeed the underlying activation of schema/ stereotype that is in play when happy people become gullible/ paranoid in presence of cues; and this was done by showing that normal people too , under cognitive load conditions, when they are known to rely on stereotypes/ schema, show the same interaction effects on trust.
Here are the conclusions from the study:
The results in this article are consistent with work demonstrating that a positive mood increases reliance upon stereotypes (Bless, Schwarz, & Wieland, 1996; Bodenhausen et al., 1994; Park & Banaji, 2000) and scripts in interdependent situations (Hertel et al., 2000). More pointedly, the findings from all five experiments supported the predictions of the accommodation–assimilation model (see Bless & Fiedler, 2006; Fiedler, 2001b, for reviews) over mood-congruency models. This leads to a fairly strong conclusion that the relationship between positive mood and trust depends, in large part, on available schemas, cues, and stereotypes.
To me the evidence is as good as it needs to be. It also fits in my broader context of seeing good/happy mood as a precursor to mania whereby happiness leads to use of stereotypes/schema , leads to becoming more gullible/ paranoid / leading to psychoses. although the present study did not had anything to say about sad mood (the contrast was with neutral mood) it is not unreasonable to extrapolate and claim that sad people are more realistic and depend on behavior of the other party rather than stereotypes to ascertain in whom to place their trust. this too fits in the broader scheme of things where sad mood is a precursor to depression which has been shown to make people more realistic. If there is an upside to depression, the only one may be that it makes us more realistic/ rational.
Lount, R. (2010). The impact of positive mood on trust in interpersonal and intergroup interactions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98 (3), 420-433 DOI: 10.1037/a0017344
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Am Happy, will talk more and deep; am Sad, will make small talk
Mar 5th
- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Happiness and sadness have different effects on verbal behavior. Happiness may either lead to shallow happy-go-lucky, small talk moments or more profound and deep interactions that are meaningful and fulfilling. Sadness similarly may facilitate deep philosophical ruminations and conversations or lead to shallow and trivial small talk. Which of these is the actual scenario is not intuitive, but new research by Mehl et al has come to our rescue and provides a definitive answer.
Meh et al used the Electronically activated recorder (EAR) which is a device that unobtrusively records 30 s snippets of conversation at random times of the day as the subjects as they go about their daily life. As such it is a better measure than experience sampling method (ESM) which is intrusive and relies on self reports.
The coders than analyzed and coded the snippets of conversations as captured using EAR into small talk versus substantive conversations. Also the number of time spent in conversations and socially versus time spent alone was also calculated for the subjects.
The subjects filled self-report satisfaction with life survey as well as other happiness measures which were used to calculate the well being/happiness index for the subjects.
The results were clear. Happy people spent more time talking to others in social settings versus spending time alone. further, happy people spent much more time in substantive conversations than in making samll talk. this was revers in the case of sad people.
However, the authors caution, and I believe it is a reasonable rider. that this study is correlational and does not elucidate the direction of causality. It may be the case that happy people have more substantive conversations to make or t may be the case that just as self-disclosure leads to intimacy having deep and meaningful conversations leads to happiness.
The full text is available for free online and is written in a very lucid manner and I recommend reading it in full. I am including a snippet to whet the appetite.
Together, the present findings demonstrate that the happy life is social rather than solitary, and conversationally deep rather than superficial. What makes these findings especially compelling is the lack of method overlap between the well-being measures (self- and informant reports) and the interaction measures (direct observation). Also, the replication of findings across measures of well-being and across weekday and weekend behavior is encouraging.
Naturally, our correlational findings are causally ambiguous. On the one hand, well-being may be causally antecedent to having substantive interactions; happy people may be “social attractors” who facilitate deep social encounters (Lucas & Dyrenforth, 2006). On the other hand, deep conversations may actually make people happier. Just as self-disclosure can instill a sense of intimacy in a relationship, deep conversations may instill a sense of meaning in the interaction partners. Therefore, our results raise the interesting possibility that happiness can be increased by facilitating substantive conversations (Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2006). Future research should examine this possibility experimentally.
Remarking on Socrates’ dictum that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” Dennett (1984) wrote, “The overly examined life is nothing to write home about either” (p. 87). Although we hesitate to enter such delicate philosophical disputes, our findings suggest that people find their lives more worth living when examined?at least when examined together.
Indeed, a life examined together and being more social/ loquacious and deep
is definitely more happy and worth living.
Mehl, M., Vazire, S., Holleran, S., & Clark, C. (2010). Eavesdropping on Happiness: Well-Being Is Related to Having Less Small Talk and More Substantive Conversations Psychological Science DOI: 10.1177/0956797610362675
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Orchids wither with stress, but bloom with care
Mar 5th
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Traditionally, it has been evident that some children who show high stress reactivity or inbuilt vulnerability to stress (the diathesis of stress-diathesis model) fare badly when exposed to adverse early life circumstances/events. These adverse environmental influences can range from marital discord in family to stress of being born in a low socio economic status (SES) family or the stress of joining a new peer group.
A new theory however has been gaining ground that these children are orchid children who show high biological and behavioral sensitivity to context and thus can wither in stressful situations while at the same time have the capability to bloom far greater than a normal child given supportive and nurturing environments. One way to conceptualize this is to think of these child as showing greater phenotype variability and adaptability and being more plastic- so the underlying genotype manifest itself differently depending on environmental input. Being more plastic the orchid kids are able to use the environment to their best; or get abused by the environment for the worst.
A new study by Boyce et al looks at the interaction between stressful conditions and stress reactivity in 383 pre-primary children (aged 5-6 years) and reached a similar conclusion that there is indeed an interaction between life stress and stress reactivity such that those who are highly reactive are also more prone to developmental extremes mediated by environmental quality. they thus found that the orchid kids with high stress reactivity showed better adaptation in low life stress conditions, but worse adaptation in high life stress conditions, compared to the dandelions kids who had normal stress reactivity and were more or less immune to life stress. The adaptation measures they measured included clinical and pathological indexes like externalizing symptoms, as well as positive indexes like pro-social behavior, school engagement and academic competence.
The authors looked at two measures of human stress reactivity – Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA)(related to heart rate variability and parasympathetic stress response) and salivary cortisol level changes. High resting RSA/ high RSA reactivity is good and indicates buffering against environmental stress; while low resting RSA / low RSA reactivity is bad and indicates high stress response to stressors . the picture with cortisol reactivity is much unclear and it was not clear (before this study) how cortisol reactivity would interact with life stress to affect adaptation of pre-primary children. the main goal of the study was to find how children stress reactivity and overall family adversity interact to affect adaptation of the child.
Here is the hypothesis in authors own words:
Based on the broad literature on risk and adversity, we hypothesized a robust negative main effect of family adversity across all indices of adaptation. We also expected to find main effects of stress reactivity on adaptation, but given the simultaneous test of interactive effects, as well as the paucity of studies examining the effects of RSA and cortisol reactivity, especially for positive developmental outcomes, and some inconsistencies within such studies, we did not hypothesize the directions of these main effects. More importantly, in accordance with the theory of biological sensitivity to context (Boyce & Ellis, 2005; Ellis et al., 2005), we expected to find evidence that ANS and HPA reactivity moderate the effects of early family adversity on various domains of functioning. We hypothesized that in high-adversity family environments, elevated levels of stress reactivity would be associated with maladaptive outcomes, whereas low stress reactivity would act as a protective factor. In the context of low family adversity, on the other hand, we expected high levels of reactivity to be associated with better adaptation. It is important to note that although biological sensitivity to context should be examined in both positive and negative settings, our assessment focuses on six types of family adversities, and a lack of overall family adversity does not necessarily imply a supportive and nurturing environment. In addition to the hypothesized Adversity × Stress Reactivity interactions, we controlled for children’s sex and tested whether main and interactive effects of adversity and reactivity vary across sex.
And this is what they found too! Here are the results:
The study’s most novel and salient findings emerged when adversity and stress reactivity were considered together, as components of interactions between environmental exposures and measures of biological sensitivity. Stress reactivity moderated the negative effect of family adversity across various domains of adaptation. Overall, the findings are consistent with the stress diathesis hypothesis that high-reactive children show worse adaptive functioning in the context of high adversity. Indeed, such children generally evinced the lowest levels of adaptive functioning of the entire study sample.
However, equally reactive children in settings of low adversity showed the highest levels of adaptation, levels even higher than those of their less reactive counterparts. Specifically, in the context of low family adversity, children who showed high RSA reactivity in response to challenges had the lowest levels of externalizing symptoms and the highest levels of prosocial behaviors and school engagement. Although adaptation showed significant stability from fall to spring, high-reactive children showed improvement in academic competence in the context of low adversity and a decline in competence in the context of high adversity, whereas the inverse was true for low reactive children. Similarly, children who showed high cortisol reactivity to the challenge protocol had the highest levels of prosocial behaviors in the context of low adversity. Further, children exhibiting low RSA reactivity in response to challenges were fully or partially buffered against the harmful effects of adversity on externalizing symptoms, prosocial behavior, and school engagement. Likewise, among children who showed low cortisol reactivity, levels of prosocial behaviors did not significantly change across different levels of adversity.
These findings support the biological sensitivity to context (BSC) theory advanced by Boyce and colleagues (Boyce 2007; Boyce & Ellis, 2005) and the concept of differential susceptibility to environmental influences proposed by Belsky and colleagues (Belsky, 2005; Belsky et al., 2007). This study illustrates that high reactivity is not merely a pathogenic, risk-amplifying response to adversity but can also promote adaptive functioning. Corroborating Boyce and colleagues’ theoretical perspective, children exhibiting high levels of biological sensitivity to context, as indexed by high autonomic and adrenocortical reactivity, were more susceptible to environmental influences in the context of both low and high family adversity. Thus, biologically sensitive children showed the highest levels of symptoms in the context of high family adversity but the highest levels of competence in the context of low family adversity. However, a lack of family adversity does not necessarily imply the presence of a nurturing family environment. Thus, future studies will need to further examine the role of heightened biological sensitivity to context across both stressful, health-undermining and supportive, health-enhancing contexts.
The conceptual figure clearly shows that for low Biological Sensitivity to Context (low BSC) children, adversity has relatively no effect on adaptation/maladaptation. However, for high BSC children, there is an inverse relation between adversity and adaptivity. To me this is further proof of the now robust orchid and dandelion theory of child development.
Obradovi?, J., Bush, N., Stamperdahl, J., Adler, N., & Boyce, W. (2010). Biological Sensitivity to Context: The Interactive Effects of Stress Reactivity and Family Adversity on Socioemotional Behavior and School Readiness Child Development, 81 (1), 270-289 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01394.x
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