Psychablog

Limitless--NOT!

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:45:00 +0000

I previously wrote a post about one of the themes from the film Limitless: the idea that some pills can make us smarter. That they can enhance our cognitive abilities, such as our ability to pay attention, to learn, to remember, to be creative or think "out of the box." In essence, such pills-cognitive enhancers-hold out the promise of intellectual superpowers, at least for some of us. The film (and the book, The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn, on which it is based) portrays a glimpse of what it would be like to have such seemingly limitless enhanced powers.

In a recent article, psychologists Thomas Hills and Ralph Hertwig suggest that there may well be limits on how enhanced our cognitive abilities can become, or how enhanced they can become without some significant cost or "side effect." As an example they hold up caffeine intake, which can help us focus and stay alert (and so makes caffeine a cognitive enhancer), but too much caffeine can make us anxious or impair our fine motor coordination. In this case, more isn't necessarily better.

Even when a more enhanced ability might be even better, Hill and Hertwig suggest that humans haven't evolved to be more enhanced without a cost. They point to "S," the man with a famous memory. S could remember lists of words or numbers of astounding length, and could recite them from memory backwards as easily as forwards. Once reading or hearing something, S never forgot it. However, S couldn't remember faces very well. He also couldn't shut out the associations and memories that were triggered by things he read and heard. His extraordinary memory came at the cost of other "normal" abilities. (You can read more about S in The Mind of a Mnemonist: A Little Book About a Vast Memory by Aleksandr Luria.)

This seemingly built-in compensation for extraordinary abilities is highlighted in an article by Allan Snyder in which he discusses people who are savants-who have extraordinary pockets of knowledge or skills that contrast sharply with the rest of their abilities. Dustin Hoffman's character in the film Rain Man is an example of a savant. Because of how the brains of savants work, they can access information that most of us can't, but in turn they are less likely to understand the information. Metaphorically, they can see the trees in detail but don't understand that together they create a forest. Snyder proposes that it is the lack of the ability to see the whole-to process that many trees indicate a forest-that gives rise to their being able to see the trees in such detail.

Researchers have temporarily been able to induce savant-like skills in "normal" participants through transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a procedure in which a coil placed on the scalp emits magnetic pulses into selected areas of the brain, briefly inhibiting those brain areas, and allowing other brain areas to become more active. Using TMS in this way, researchers have found that "normal" non-artist participants can temporarily draw better (and are able to pay more attention to detail), become better proofreaders, and become better at guessing the number of elements in a container (e.g., akin to the number of marbles in a jar), among other abilities. The specific ability that improves depends on the exact position of the TMS coil.

The fact that TMS can temporarily enhance a specific ability by briefly disabling another ability is part of the point Hill and Hertwig make: A given ability is only a plus in certain contexts, and the "side effects" or costs of that ability can, in other contexts, create deficits. Being able to remember everything you read is great for law school and being a lawyer, but it creates problems if you can't recognize the presiding judge from last year's case (but she recognizes you!).

It appears that our ability to be enhanced may not be limitless after all.

Copyright 2012 by Robin S. Rosenberg. All rights reserved. Robin S. Rosenberg is a clinical psychologist. Her website is DrRobinRosenberg.com and she also blogs on Huffington Post.Her most recent book is The Psychology of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

References:

Hills, T., & Hertwig, R. (2011). Why aren't we smarter already: Evolutionary trade-offs and cognitive enhancements. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20, 373-377.

Snyder, A. (2009). Explaining and inducing savant skills: Privileged access to lower level, less-processed information. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences. 364, 1399-1405.

Radio Interview about Real Life Superheroes

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 17:06:00 +0000

Click here to listen to an interview with NPR affiliate WFAE's Mike Collins about real life superheroes.

Salander/Secret Lives of Men

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:33:00 +0000

For those of you interested in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, here are links to my interview with Dr. Chris Blazina for his radio show The Secret Life of Men. We discuss the psychology of the character of Lisbeth Salander and raise some of the issues addressed in the book The Psychology of the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

To download and/or share the show, please visit http://www.blogtalkradio.com/thesecretlivesofmen. In addition, each show is also available at Apple Store, available for free download as an iTune. This link is http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-secret-lives-men-blog/id321004067.

Salander as Superhero

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 21:55:00 +0000

This blog post is an excerpt from a chapter in the anthology titled The Psychology of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, published by BenBella Books.

Lisbeth Salander is a captivating protagonist. Her appearance and demeanor lead us-and the characters in her world-to make assumptions about her, to pigeonhole her as a goth, a slacker, a rebel. Over the course of the first novel and the trilogy, Stieg Larsson upends our analysis of her character as he reveals her inner life, her outward behavior, and the choices she's made. We can't help but admire her grit and persistence, her inner strength and commitment, her strong moral code, and her adherence to it.

There's a sense in which Salander is an action hero, even though the action isn't generally hitting, punching, or kicking (though she engages in some of those actions, too). Rather, she engages in hacking, researching, and other uses of her substantial intellect and emotional strengths. Her heroism is demonstrated mentally as well as physically. I'll go one step further: I think that Salander is a superhero. She has the three most important characteristics typical of a superhero: a mission, (super)powers, and a superheroidentity. The fact that she's not explicitly labeled as a superhero-and that we only subliminally come to understand her as one-adds to her appeal. Let's explore her mission in more detail.

The Mission

Every superhero has a mission. Batman seeks to avenge his parents' deaths by "spending the rest of my life warring on all criminals.". Spider-Man's mission is to use his spider-like powers to help others. Superman fights for truth, justice, and-until recently-the American way. Most superheroes don't begin with those missions, though. Their missions arise as a response to events in their lives-most frequently traumatic events. These events steer the protagonist to dedicate him or herself to a (superheroic) cause. The murders of Bruce Wayne's parents steer him to train and study for years and then don the Batsuit in order to reduce crime in Gotham City. The murder of Peter Parker's Uncle Ben leads the newly spider-powered adolescent to dedicate his life and powers to protecting others rather than pursuing fame and glory as an enhanced being. Clark Kent's questions about his place in the world steer him toward his mission as Superman.

Salander, too, has life events that steer her toward a mission. At the beginning of Larsson's trilogy, Salander's work as a private investigator is a job: she does the work she's hired to do and doesn't get involved in her investigations beyond what is required. She doesn't yet have a mission in the heroic sense, but when investigating Mikael Blomkvist for Dirch Frode (Henrik Vanger's attorney), the pieces don't all add up and she's intrigued. Mikael Blomkvist plans to go willingly go to jail without disclosing the sources for his inaccurate reporting on Wennerström. Salander welcomes the opportunity to be paid to find out more about Blomkvist.

During this same general time period that Blomkvist begins looking to Harriet's disappearance, Salander undergoes a new traumatic experience of her own that involves secrets, surviving injustice, and being disempowered: She is coerced into performing oral sex on her new guardian, Nils Bjurman-a man in a position to destroy her life and autonomy. Salander is not willing to remain subjected to Bjurman's torture, so she sets out to entrap him by filming him when he next demands oral sex. He demands more than that, though, and he brutally rapes her.

After being taunted by others and witnessing abuse in her home as a child, as an adult Lisbeth places a high value on being in control of her life-and Bjurman's brutal assault made her feel out of control. Although she gains a hold over him by filming the rape and thereby securing evidence of his crime, this hold came at a great personal cost. Salander is not someone who likes feeling powerless. (As we learn in the second novel, when she was strapped down in the seclusion room as a child, she'd calm herself by imagining being in control-by being able to act on her own behalf.)

It is in the aftermath of her experience with Bjurman that she discovers Blomkvist's new project: to find out what happened to a young woman, Harriet Vanger, who went missing decades ago. When Blomkvist asks Salander to research the case and track down old murders that might correspond to selected biblical passages, Salander is intrigued.

It is while hunting for the details of that first murder case-in which the woman was bound and tortured-that Salander seems to develop the stirring of purpose that Blomkvist already possesses. For her, the investigation shifts from an interesting puzzle that slakes her intellectual curiosity to one of a mission-to uncover the truth and see justice done. Blomkvist's mission becomes her mission, though they have different ideas of what justice might ultimately mean. Salander turns up additional murders that were not on Harriet's list. And when the job for which she was hired is over (but the killer not yet discovered), she wants to continue. Blomkvist says he'll pay her but she would have done so for free.

As she and Blomkvist find and put together the pieces, she also sees Blomkvist's burning passion to discover the person who sadistically murdered young women. Based on her own experience with Bjurman (and as we find out in the subsequent stories, her experiences with child psychiatrist, Teleborian), she can identify with these dead women-these victims-and no doubt views Blomkvist's goal and efforts to solve their murders as heroic. She is transformed by watching him and by taking part in the cause for truth and justice, just as sidekicks are transformed by their mentors (as Robin was by Batman, for instance). We see her channel her sense of agency and self-efficacy (her belief that she can do what she sets out to do), into a desire to fight for justice as she interprets it.

Transformation can also arise in response to trauma. In my formulation, Salander's experience of being raped was the turning point that steered her to her mission. Like other survivors of trauma, Salander found a way to make personal meaning of her traumatic experience. Salander's transformation as a result of her traumatic experience is consistent with the findings of an area of psychological research referred to as posttraumatic growth, in which the stress of trauma challenges people's beliefs-about themselves, the world, and their place in it-and induces them to grow in positive, meaningful ways. (A minority-about 20 percent--of people who experience a trauma go on to develop posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD]; they may not experience posttraumatic growth while their PTSD symptoms are prominent and chronic.) Trauma can leave the survivor wondering "why did this happen?" and when the trauma has a personal element, such as with rape and assault, the survivor may wonder "why did this happen to me?"

As survivors struggle to answer that question, over time most report feeling stronger for having come through their traumatic experience. They make sense of their (senseless) traumatic experience and newly discovered strength by committing themselves to helping others. Sometimes survivors work to prevent what happened to them from happening to others. Candy Lightner and Sue LeBrun-Green, who lit the fire of awareness about drunk driving when they started Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), are perfect examples of this. The seeds of MADD were planted in 1980 after Lightner's thirteen-year-old daughter, Cari, who was walking to a church carnival, was hit and killed by a drunk driver. Another person who made meaning of family trauma is William Minniefield, an African-American man whose brother died waiting for a kidney transplant and whose other brother is waiting for one still. Organ donation by minorities is less common among and leads to even longer wait times for organs that are the best match for African-Americans. Minniefield founded the Minority Organ Donation Education Program to educate minority populations about organ donation, and to try to prevent what happened in his family from happening to others.

Other survivors may develop missions to help people like themselves-survivors after the fact. After David Schury's recovery from the burns that covered over 30 percent of his body, he and his wife Michele started the From Tragedy to Triumph Foundation, which provides support to burn victims and their families.

In a sense, Salander develops a mission after her experience with Bjurman: to use her talents and abilities to figure out who abused, tortured, and murdered young women. Her answer: Gottfried and then Martin Vanger. Like other trauma survivors, Salander acts to prevent further victims. She prevents Blomkvist from being another of Martin's victims, then injures Martin and chases him on her motorcycle at which point Vanger decides to kill himself, steering his car directly into an oncoming truck. Martin Vanger isn't able to harm any more women because of her intervention.

It is during the period of Blomkvist's helplessness-when Martin Vanger holds Blomkvist hostage in the basement room and is about to kill him-that Salander transforms from Blomkvist's sidekick to a (super)hero in her own right. Like any superhero, she saves him at risk to her own life. She's dedicated. Her sense of purpose is so great, in fact, that she becomes a moral leader with a clear vision of the correct path ahead. When she later explains to Henrik Vanger's attorney, Dirch Frode, what was really going on with Martin Vanger, Frode-temporarily unable to decide among untenable moral choices about what to do about Martin's basement torture chamber, how much to tell the police, and what to reveal about Martin's misdeeds-realizes that "here he was taking orders from a child [Lisbeth]."

Salander even espouses to Blomkvist the superhero's credo-that people have a choice in how to behave, even if they had a bad childhood. She challenges him by stating, "So you're assuming that Martin had no will of his own and that people become whatever they've been brought up to be" and "Gottfried isn't the only kid who was ever mistreated. That doesn't give him the right to murder women. He made that choice himself. And the same is true of Martin" (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo).

As with other superheroes, part of Salander's mission is to see that justice is served for others-in this case, the dead women-at least as much as it can be. She wants Frode and Henrik Vanger to do their best to identify the victims and provide their families with "suitable compensation." She also wants them to donate two million kroner each year, in perpetuity, to the National Organization for Women's Crisis Centres and Girls' Crisis Centres in Sweden. Her transformation to hero/moral arbiter is complete. She has made meaning of her own traumatic history and seeks to prevent what happened to her from happening to others.

The first novel is Lisbeth's "origin story," a story that explains who she was "before" (before the events that began her transformation) and who she becomes; superhero origin stories document transformations of personal growth, typically in response to some type of trauma or crisis. This transformation, reflected in her attire and behavior, is clear at the beginning of the second book, The Girl Who Played with Fire. She no longer dresses to give off an angry attitude, and during the beginning of the Caribbean hurricane she put her own life at significant risk to find her young lover George Bland and bring him to safety. On their way back to the hotel, Salander again puts herself at risk to prevent Richard Forbes from killing his wife. Deviating from her normal snarky or defensive attitude, she is polite to the local police investigating Richard Forbes' disappearance, answering their questions without malice. She even allows strangers to touch her without giving them a look or biting their heads off! This is a different Salander than we are introduced to at the start of the first book. She is no longer someone who wants to be left alone and who interferes in other people's lives only through her computer, and only when paid or for her own personal ends. She has become a protector and avenger.

Her most recent book is the edited anthology, The Psychology of the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Limitless: Some Thoughts About the Film

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 19:02:00 +0000

I didn't get a chance to see to see the film Limitless when it was in theatres, but I recently saw it on the small screen. Before I talk about it, though if you haven't seen it, here's an overview, from IMDB:

An action-thriller about a writer who takes an experimental drug that allows him to use 100 percent of his mind. As one man evolves into the perfect version of himself, forces more corrupt than he can imagine mark him for assassination. Out-of-work writer Eddie Morra's (Cooper) rejection by girlfriend Lindy (Abbie Cornish) confirms his belief that he has zero future. That all vanishes the day an old friend introduces Eddie to NZT, a designer pharmaceutical that makes him laser focused and more confident than any man alive. Now on an NZT-fueled odyssey, everything Eddie's read, heard or seen is instantly organized and available to him. As the former nobody rises to the top of the financial world, he draws the attention of business mogul Carl Van Loon (De Niro), who sees this enhanced version of Eddie as the tool to make billions. But brutal side effects jeopardize his meteoric ascent... Written by Relativity Media

Note that the concept that we normally only "use a small percentage of our brains" isn't accurate, so a drug that enables us to use "100%" doesn't make sense. Below is thissummary from Wikipedia about this myth and its inaccuracy (and yes, I know that Wikipedia isn't always correct, but in this case it's close enough. Here's a link to a Scientific Americanarticle about the topic):

Scientific accuracy
At the start of the film a marijuana dealer says that we can only access 20% of our brain (and that NZT lets a person access all of it), referring to a common myth. The mechanism of how the drug actually works is never scientifically explained in the film. Neurologist Barry Gordona describes the myth as laughably false, adding, "we use virtually every part of the brain, and that [most of] the brain is active almost all the time",[9] and neuroscientist Barry Beyerstein has set out seven kinds of evidence refuting the ten percent myth.[10]
Physics professor James Kakalios said it was plausible that medical science could improve intelligence, but that neurochemistry is not advanced enough for it to be achieved currently. Kakalios also said the notion used in the film that human beings can only access 10% of their brains is a myth: 100% of it is used at different times. Kakalios said if such a pill existed, a person running out of the supply could actually experience a rebound effect.[11] This is alluded to in the movie, as the protagonist's ex-wife explains that she can't concentrate for more than 10 minutes at a time after coming off the drug.

But that's not what I want to address. I was fascinated by several aspects of the film, particularly the idea of being able to obtain enhanced mental abilities-in essence, a superpower-and its consequences. Medications for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder are sometimes referred to as cognitive enhancers or neuroenhancers because of their ability to help people focus their attention. To "enhance" their baseline level of attention.

If each person could have his or her mental abilities enhanced with medication, what might that mean for society? If all of us could obtain the same superpower, would it be a superpower? To paraphrase Dash from the film The Incredibles, if everyone is special, then in a way, no one is. Of course if such an enhancement pill or procedure were available, the likely reality is that it wouldn't be available to all of us.

If it's only available to some of us, though, then it's not playing "fair" for those special recipients to use it for an advantage. Yet if it were possible to do mental exercises to enhance mental ability (such as reading, attending classes, doing special logic puzzles), that would probably seem fair to most people, as long as these mental exercises were available to all who wanted them (and cost wasn't a barrier-there could be scholarships). Doing such exercises means earning the enhanced abilities. Putting in time and effort. It's analogous to the practice involved to play an instrument at a high level or to be an elite athlete. Such folks may start out with a certain level of talent, but they earn their way into high level so achievement.

What can rankle about the enhanced ability of the protagonist in Limitless is that he didn't earn the ability. He took a mental "steroid" to boost his performance and took advantage of it. He played dirty.

Copyright 2011 by Robin S. Rosenberg. All rights reserved. Robin S. Rosenberg is a clinical psychologist. Her website is DrRobinRosenberg.com and she also blogs on Huffington Post. Her most recent book is The Psychology of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Flea Market Smarts

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 18:30:00 +0000

Recently, I went to the monthly Treasure Island Flea Market for the first time. I was amazed at the ingenuity and creativity behind some of the items for sale there, some of which were made by the people selling the items. For instance, one woman was selling recycled decorated wine bottles that she heated and reformed as small cheese plates or as bowls for dip, complete with spreader. At another stall the vender sold purses in the shape and appearance of the body of an electric guitar. Still another vender sold pendants in the shape of mah-jong and Scrabble tiles, but each pendant had different artwork on it. I was struck by how clever some of the items were, how they seemed to fill a niche that most of us didn't even realize existed.

For the rest of the post, click here at Huffington Post (or cut and paste the URL below).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robin-s-rosenberg-phd/lowering-anxiety_b_869477.html

A Discussion about Eating Disorders

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 15:39:00 +0000

Here's some information about eating disorders (the beginning of an interview with Psychotherapy.net). Click here for the full interview about eating disorders.

Rebecca Aponte:	When you think about eating disorders, do you think of both anorexia and bulimia? Is there a lot of overlap in people who engage in these behaviors?
Robin Rosenberg:	There are people who engage in both types of behaviors. In DSM-IV, individuals who exhibit all the criteria for anorexia but who also binge and purge would be diagnosed as anorexia nervosa binge/purge type. So diagnostically, anorexia trumps bulimia, if you will. But that is just the DSM-IV; who knows what will happen in DSM-V?
RA:	Are they related?
RR:	They appear to be, at least for a significant subset of people. So in terms of the research, when you look at people who have bulimia versus people who have anorexia, that is not necessarily a helpful distinction. Anorexia has, in DSM-IV, two subtypes. There is the traditional restricting type, which is the people who eat minimally, and then there is the form of anorexia where people are significantly underweight and may be amenorrheic [they have stopped menstruating], but they may also binge or eat without restricting, but then purge in some way, or use other compensatory behaviors. Those people are classified as anorexia binge/purge type, but in studies, those people have more in common with people who have bulimia than they do with anorexia restrictive type. Some of this is a bit of a diagnostic artifact, because it's the way that it has been defined in DSM-IV. The most interesting thing about eating disorders in terms of classification issues is that it is not uncommon for people to move from one eating disorder to another over time. ... Continue Reading Interview >>

Forging Steel, Part 2: Soldiers, Superheroes, and Resilience

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 19:50:00 +0000

In a previous post, I talked about military training, the ways that it "forges" soldiers, and what might be relevant to superheroes. Part of what the training does is it causes reappraisal--the (re)interpretation of stimuli. For instance, boot camp causes the cadet to reappraise what he or she can withstand, and what he or she is capable of. Similarly, the intense physical and psychological challenges that are built in to the Special Forces courses lead the soldiers to re-evaluate how they see themselves, and thus how they see what would otherwise be over-the-top experiences in adversity.

The training process also provides an opportunity for soldiers to do what elite athletes do: direct their attention away from pain (Ochsner & Gross, 2005; Troy & Mauss, 2011). You’ve probably had this experience: You can feel a headache coming on. If you pay attention to the pain, the headache will feel worse. If you try to ignore the headache, it doesn’t seem quite so bad. Athletes learn to direct their attention away from pain and so do soldiers (and superheroes). As former Army officer Craig Mullaney recounts in his memoir The Unforgiving Minute, he learned from his instructors at West Point that pain “is just weakness leaving the body.”

Pain can be emotional as well as physical. For instance, for a moment, think about some life event that upsets you. A breakup, a loss, an experience with failure. If you continue to direct your attention to that upsetting experience, you’ll likely get upset. Of course thinking about an upsetting experience can be an opportunity for learning, but you have to think about it in a specific way, asking yourself “what lessons are there to be learned form this situation?” Just dwelling on the experience, letting it rattle around and around in your mind, fills up the mental space with emotional turmoil. It does the opposite of regulate your emotions—it makes them more likely to feel out of control.

So soldiers, particularly elite soldiers, must learn to control their attention and direct it accordingly—to what is relevant for survival (Abele & Gendolla, 2007; Aspinwall & Brunhart, 1996). If they’re preoccupied with thoughts of missing family, they may not notice that tripwire or mine in the road. It’s the same with superheroes. They are amazingly able to focus their attention to the problem at hand, regardless of what is happening in their personal lives. Mullaney notes that if you aren’t paying attention to the relevant details, people under your command can die.

Controlling your attention also allows you to direct your attention to stimuli that may be less likely to induce counterproductive emotions. In a scary movie, if you find yourself being too scared, you may start to notice the actor’s makeup onscreen, or the temperature of the room, or in some other way direct your attention so that you can be less frightened. That’s adaptive. Soldiers must do this too, since being very scared on a mission isn’t adaptive. Their intensive training can become an anchor point to calm emotions that might get out of control; they might direct their attention to aspects of the current situation that are similar to ones during their training, thus providing a sense of mastery (“I handled a similar situation then, so I can now”) and momentarily diminishing the threat of the situation so that negative emotions don’t spiral out of control and interfere with the mission.

Batman’s years of training likely gave him the experience he needs both to direct his attention and to reappraise threatening situations as less threatening. For instance, when yet again facing off against the Joker, Batman can say to himself “this is just another in the Joker’s long string of plots, and in the end he always loses. That’ll happen again in this situation, one way or another.” Saying something like this makes the situation less scary.

Soldiers, police officers, fire fighters (and yes, superheroes) need either to have the ability to distract themselves from “negative” stimuli and thoughts—things that could induce too much fear, anxiety, or sadness—or develop it very quickly. Psychologists are studying ways to train these abilities associated with resilience in people who don’t naturally come by them. One type of training is called cognitive control training, and occurs as part of mindfulness training as well as cognitive therapy. (Click here for an article about this.)

Resilience doesn’t mean that folks should never focus on negative stimuli, or should never feel afraid. Au contraire! Resilience involves the ability to figure out relevant from irrelevant negative stimuli. If you hear whistling that might be coming from a grenade, you want to pay attention to that sound, not distract yourself from it—even if you get scared in the process. Being scared isn’t a bad thing because it can give you an adrenaline rush that in turn enables you to fight the enemy or flee the scene. Too much anxiety, fear, sadness, though, can paralyze. (Click here for an article that reviews this literature; Troy & Mauss, 2011.)

And with experience, soldiers, and superheroes can develop their own kind of “spider-sense”—a mental tingling sensation when a military situation isn’t quite right. That something is off. You may not know what that something is right away, but time and experience lead you to trust it. (Note, though, that the spider-sense isn’t right 100% of the time, and sometimes relying on previous experience can give way to overconfidence in the spider-sense.)

References:

Abele , A. E. & Gendolla , G. H. E. ( 2007 ). Individual differences in optimism predict the recall of personally relevant information . Personality and Individual Differences, 43 , 1125 –1135.

Aspinwall, L. G. & Brunhart , S. M. (1996). Distinguishing optimism from denial: Optimistic beliefs predict attention to health threats . Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin , 22 , 993 –1003.

Ochsner , K. N. Ray , R. D. Cooper , J. C. , et al. ( 2004 ). For better or for worse: Neural systems supporting the cognitive down and up-regulation of negative emotion. Neuroimage , 23 , 483 –499.

Troy, A. S., & Mauss, I. B. (2011). Resilience in the face of stress: Emotion regulation as a protective factor. In S. Southwick, D. Charney, M. Friedman, & B. Litz (Eds.), Resilience in psychiatric clinical practice. Cambridge University Press.

Can You Stay Off Fat Talk--For a Week?

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 20:16:00 +0000

It's not uncommon for women (or even men) to bond with each other over the travails of their appearance: their hair, their clothes, their weight, their fat. Sound familiar? If so, take note. The week of Oct. 16-22 isFat Talk Free Week. It's a week in which people are encouraged to stop their "fat talk." What is fat talk? It's comments like" I feel so fat in these clothes," or "do I look fat?" It can also be saying to someone else, "You look great, did you lose weight?" This implies that lost weight is the metric of looking good.

Although some women say that such talk makes them feel better, research suggests that in fact the opposite is true. Do you engage in fat talk? If so, here's a challenge: Try not doing it -- for a day, then for a string of days, then for a week. And what better time then during Fat Talk Free week.

If you partake in fat talk, it's in part because our culture encourages it. Through various media (including TV, film, magazine ads and articles), we're all encouraged to think that our bodies should approximate a thin "ideal." And if we don't have that type of body (which the vast majority of us don't), then we shouldn't feel okay about our bodies. Unfortunately, most of us go along with this premise and we dislike our bodies. Fight back against this premise and the way it makes you feel. To help you in this endeavor, Oct. 19 is Love Your Body Day.

Do you love what you see when you look in the mirror? Hollywood and the fashion, cosmetics and diet industries work hard to make each of us believe that our bodies are unacceptable and need constant improvement. Print ads and television commercials reduce us to body parts -- lips, legs, breasts -- airbrushed and touched up to meet impossible standards. TV shows tell women and teenage girls that cosmetic surgery is good for self-esteem. Is it any wonder that 80 percent of U.S. women are dissatisfied with their appearance?

Women and girls spend billions of dollars every year on cosmetics, fashion, magazines and diet aids. These industries can't use negative images to sell their products without our assistance. Together, we can fight back.

While we're on the subject of fat, here's one more thought. Too often in our culture, fat is equated with bad, with being out of shape. But people who are average weight or less aren't necessarily in shape, and people who are heavier aren't necessarily out of shape. For the group Heath at Every Size, the goal is for each person to be healthy and fit, regardless of weight, and to accept their bodies. (Click here to see one overweight woman who is both fit and graceful.)

In fact, a recent study found that overweight adolescent girls who were content with their bodies were less likely to go on to develop binge eating disorder. They were also less likely to gain weight over the 11 years of the followup period. Take home message: Become cynical about the "ideal" body size and shape promoted in our culture and stop your fat talk.

Copyright Robin S. Rosenberg, 2011; first published in The Huffington Post.

Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D., ABPP is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Stanford, Calif. Rosenberg specializes in treating people with eating disorders, depression and anxiety. She often writes about the psychology of superheroes and has co-authored several psychology textbooks, including "Abnormal Psychology" and "Introducing Psychology: Brain, Person, Group." To find out more about Dr. Rosenberg and her work, read her Psychology Today blog and visit her on Red Room. For Dr. Rosenberg's brief, easy-to-read guide Improving Your Relationships with Your Body, click here.

Forging Steel, Part 1: Forging Superheroes Versus Forging Soldiers

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 21:35:00 +0000

I had the opportunity to speak with some former and current Special Forces soldiers about their training and experience; these are real-life heroes (though they wouldn't necessarily use that term to describe themselves). Their missions and actions rival those of fully human superheroes such as Batman, Black Canary, Batgirl, Oracle, Robin/Nightwing, and Avengers Iron Man, Hawkey, some versions of Black Widow, and Nick Fury, among others. But unlike these characters, our real-life military folks are mortal and may not survive a given battle. When killed in action they, and police officers and fire fighters, can't be brought back to life, unlike human superheroes. (One of the soldiers I spoke with, Fernando Lujan, noted that it doesn't take the same type of courage to go into battle if you know that you can't die, as is the case for relatively invulnerable superheroes such as Superman and Wolverine. For more about Special Forces Officer Lujan, click here.)

The soldiers that I spoke with shared some (nonclassified) information about their training. To get a sense of what a soldier must undergo to be picked to be in elite units, click here for an overview; for more detailed information, watch this video (it is the first of six parts; if you are at all interested, I highly recommend that you watch all six parts). In addition to the grueling physical demands of the training, psychological training is a big part of what the soldiers experience.

For instance, the military psychologists who are part of the evaluatingteam help identify each soldier's psychological vulnerabilities. Not as a rationale to send the soldiers home, but to increase each soldier's self-awareness. So that they can know when they are nearing the limit (of pain tolerance, hopelessness, fear, shame, cockiness, to name several dimensions) of being able to maintain and function adequately. In learning where the limit is, they can then learn how to push through that barrier or mentally regroup to be able to go forward and complete the mission. How to withstand interrogation. Not just the physical aspects of interrogation. The mental aspects. How to become stronger and moreresilient. How to regulate their emotions when their buttons get pushed.

Most superheroes do not undergo this type of training. (There is a sense of which it seems ridiculous to compare soldiers and superheroes. I do so here to emphasize the ways in which superheroes are different and arefictional. Nonetheless, we can learn from those differences.) Christopher Nolan's brilliant film, Batman Begins, showed us the ways that Bruce Wayne received some military-like training from Henri Ducard (Ra's al Ghul) and the League of Shadows. It is through this training that Wayne becomes a master at self-control and emotional self-regulation. By self-control, I mean the ability to control one's actions. To act in planned, intentional ways, not impulsively. By emotional self-regulation, I mean the ability to shift one's emotional states. (For more on the definition of self-regulation in general, click here.

From descriptions of the first step of any military training, the discipline and control for some soldiers may come from-and are enforced by-external forces, such as the challenging training schedule imposed on the soldiers, the rigid rules they must follow, the drill sergeant's enforcement of those rules.

Over time and with field experience, the discipline and control of behavior become internal, to a degree that wasn't true before. Self-discipline. Self-control. Moreover, soldiers don't want to put their team members' lives at risk. Self-discipline benefits not just the individual soldier, but the entire unit. They must all depend on one another.As part of the training process, soldiers face their fears, learn to put aside their grief when they need to, to bite their tongue when angry (because it is counterproductive to the mission). Like Batman, then, soldiers acquire the "superpower" of emotional regulation.

More about emotional regulation and resilience in the next post.

Captain America

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 04:06:00 +0000

Perhaps you, like me, enjoyed the two Christopher Nolan Batman films out thus far. One of the reasons that I liked the films was for their sense of psychological realism: I got a vivid sense of what it might be like to live in Batman's world (or have him live in mine). Moreover,Batman Begins provided a very psychologically rich and compelling version of Batman's origin story. It got to the heart of the question of why Bruce Wayne would become the Batman. The portrayal felt psychologically accurate. (As I psychologist, I feel that I can say that authoritatively.)

Although it took me a few weeks to get around to seeing Captain America (something I did this weekend), I was looking forward to seeing it. The movie addresses a part of Cap's history that-to my knowledge-hasn't been explored in comic books. Specifically, it addressed the details of his life from before he takes the serum to when he becomes the Captain America with which-or should I say "with whom"--we are familiar.

As an origin story, then, it must make a compelling case for why the physically slight and asthmatic Steve Rogers volunteers for a radical experimental procedure (and the risk of death) in the hope of becoming a super soldier. In my opinion, the film fails in this regard. Let me explain why.

In the beginning of the film, we learn several things about Steve Rogers:

He's short and slight
He's been rejected by the U.S. Military five times on medical grounds (he was 4F)
He's doesn't like bullies and he believes in standing up to them
He wants to help the war effort

With these tidbits, the film allows us to connect the dots: Rogers is so desperate to join the military because he wants to stand up to the bullies of the Axis forces.

But here's the thing. During World War II, those who wanted to support the war effort could do so in ways other than being in the front lines. Take the father of a friend of mine as an example: He had polio at a very young age, and one of his legs never grew right, so as an adult that leg was a good six inches shorter than the other one. (Although doctors told him he'd never be able to walk, they underestimated him and he walked throughout his life.) He was rejected by the military when he tried to enlist to fight in WW II (he too, was 4F). But he signed up with the Merchant Marines, an auxiliary of the Navy in which civilians serve to help supply navy ships. This was only one possible way to serve the larger military effort. The film doesn't make clear why Rogers didn't join the Merchant Marines or help the war effort in some other way.

And there would have been other ways. The film also tells us that Rogers was a clever guy: When he's in basic training that he's the only one in years who's figured out how to get a stuck flag down from the flagpole without climbing up to it (solution: take out the pin holding the flagpole to the ground. The pole and flag then come fully down to ground level). But if Rogers is so clever, couldn't he figure out a different way to help the war effort than risk his life on a super soldier serum?

For me, then, the film didn't provide a compelling reason for Rogers to serve in this particular way. To be fair, the film tries to get away from the easy brawn > brains play. Rogers (and we the audience) are told that Rogers-rather than a more fit cadet--was picked to be a guinea pig for the serum because "weak men know the value of strength and also compassion." (This may not be the exact quote; I was scribbling my notes in a dark theatre, after all. But the quote captures the gist of the line.) Thus, we are informed, Rogers is the perfect candidate to be a super soldier because his ability to be compassionate is a function of his having been a weakling. Wow-what would Superman (or Ma and Pa Kent) say to that? Or Wonder Woman? (Perhaps the fact that she's female means she's got a leg up on compassion?)

I was also disappointment by the two-dimensionality of other aspects of the film. The bad guys wear black. (And their faces they sport some weird leather pre-cursor to a Darth Vader mask-why are all the evil minions faces hidden behind a what-must-be uncomfortable and vision-obscuring mask?) The evil overlord is a power-hungry megalomaniac whose origin story I'd love to learn about; his dialogue feels like it could date from a World War II-era film. No depth there.

Once I was over my disappointment about the lack of psychologically rich material, I tried to have fun with the film. Yet I kept having moments of déjà-vu-that I'd seen something like this before. There were bits that reminded me of Star Wars (especially the evil minions marching in formation) and of Raiders of the Lost Ark (another film in which Nazi megalomaniacs mess with occult powers they don't fully understand in an effort to be boss of the world). There didn't seem to be a lot that felt unique to the film.

On a positive note, there was one bit that I thought was great: before Cap becomes the soldier he longs to be, there is a montage that showed the commodification of Captain America. He and two dozen dancers in patriotic short dresses do a tour of the US in order to sell war bonds. The montage includes Captain America comic books (yes, they worked in that there were Captain America comic books during the war-brilliant!), which are shown being read by children as well as some soldiers. A cool interweaving of fiction and fact.

We'll see what next summer's crop of superhero films brings.

Women and Fashion

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 00:30:00 +0000

After seeing a preview of the film Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, based on Lisa See's novel about the practice of female foot-binding in pre-revolutionary China, Arianna Huffington recently wrote a post on her thoughts about women's friendships and the ways that women are willing to deform themselves, literally, for fashion. I want to address both topics here.

In a previous post, I wrote about ways that people can improve their relationships with their bodies. To me, Ms. Huffington's post is on a related topic, and highlights additional ways that people can improve their relationships with their bodies: Be a critical consumer of fashion trends that require you to be uncomfortable when dressed, and ask for support from your friends as you try to become more comfortable with your body -- and encourage them to do so too.

Fashion first

What's in style comes and goes, but what's "in" for women typically has at least one element that's not comfortable, as Ms. Huffington's post points to: footwear. High heels have been around for decades (even longer, actually), and they are neither comfortable nor practical. Wear a pair for more than an hour (if that long) and your feet will start to hurt. Walk around in them -- on stairs, on city streets, on a dance floor -- and your risk of falling increases. So why wear them? In my unscientific, nonrandom sample of women I've asked, the answers range from "I like the way they make me look/walk" to "it's expected." (I didn't bother asking men about high heels since they don't wear them. But it's a safe bet that if men were expected to wear high heels, that type of shoe would have long ago gone out of fashion. Can you see Arnold Schwarzenegger or Christian Bale in a tux and heels? That's a funny image. I laughed out loud when I imagined by husband in heels.)

Yes, it's true that high heels, by virtue of the physics of walking in them, lead women to walk differently than in low-heeled shoes; in fact learning to walk in high heels takes practice -- there are many YouTube videos explaining how to do it, but even experienced models sometimes lose their balance. The walk is "feminine" because it's unlike that of a man (although men would walk that way if they got the knack of wearing heels). To which my reply is "So what?" I like dressing up, but dressing up and looking nice are in a different category from enduring pain or discomfort for beauty's sake or because it's expected and part of the conventions of culture. This seems pretty close to the explanation for why (well off) women in pre-revolutionary China broke, bound, and deformed their feet. This process is described in gory detail in Lisa See's novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and I assume will be similarly shown in the film.

From foot fashion, we can go on to other elements of fashion that can be uncomfortable, although perhaps not as physically damaging: panty hose; girdles or their more modern equivalents (which are spiritual descendants of whale-bone corsets in the quest to make a woman's body conform prevailing cultural views of the perfect body); certain kinds of bras, tight fitting clothes of any kind (which make you more conscious of your body when you move and are uncomfortable after eating if not before); heavy pocketbooks (do we really need to carry all that stuff around?).

If your clothes make your body hurt or feel uncomfortable, you're more likely to become annoyed with, or not like, your body. You're certainly going to become more conscious of your body in a way that isn't necessarily positive. If your waist feels uncomfortable because your pants or skirt are a tad too snug, you'll feel as if you're "too fat." (I am aware that for some people, wearing clothes that are snug at the waist helps them regulate their food intake -- they become more aware of when they've had enough. My point is more general.) If you have wide feet and try to fit them in to narrow shoes, then you'll probably dislike your feet and notice them more as they hurt.

With A Little Help From Your Friends

As Ms. Huffington points out, women can serve as wonderful sources of support for each other, sustaining and helping each other grow. I think it would be amazing if women challenged their female friends about some fashion choices. For instance, rather than compliment a friend on her new high-heeled shoes, what if you said, "Those shoes are nice, but I think it will be hard to be comfortable in them. Your feet will hurt and that'll put a damper on things. Why not wear something that looks nice and is comfortable?" or "Your new pocketbook is nice, but it's so big -- it could throw off your balance and hurt your shoulder." See what I mean? And if you decide to wean yourself of damaging fashion trends, let your friends know (and why) and ask for their support.

While we're on the subject of sacrifices for fashion, I've got one more topic to discuss: pockets, or the lack thereof, in women's clothes. Men's clothes have functional pockets, which is why they don't need pocketbooks. (Men might carry briefcases or backpacks for additional items, but their most important items -- wallet, phone, keys -- are likely carried in pockets in their clothes.) Their pants have nice big front pockets, their back pockets may even have buttons so things like a wallet won't fall out, their sportcoats and suit jackets have breast pockets big enough for big wallets, and assorted other pockets. Their coats have pockets.

Women's clothes? I can only wish. Yes, I know that the goal for women's fashion is to make women look sleek and not boxy. But surely there must be a way to design fashionable clothes that look good and have functional pockets somewhere, so we can keep our wallets, keys, and cell phones on our persons without having to wear men's clothes. Then we can have our important stuff with us at all times. Think of the advantages! Less need to guard our pocketbooks. Less rooting around for our cell phones or keys. Less shoulder fatigue. I look forward to those fashion designs.

Superhero Stance

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 04:09:00 +0000

You're probably familiar with what I'll call the "superhero stance": the physical pose in which the superhero stands with legs spread apart, arms on hips, elbows bent. The superhero stance projects "power." The superhero stance is an example of what psychologists refer to as open postures, in which limbs are spread out in a way to take up more space-such as legs apart. Open postures contrast with closed postures, in which the body takes up relatively little space. Numerous psychological studies have demonstrated that open postures convey a sense of the individual having power and closed postures convey a sense of the individual having little power (Carney, Hall, & Smith LeBeau, 2005; de Waal, 1998; Hall, Coats, & Smith LeBeau, 2005).

Can assuming the superhero stance make you feel and act that way, and alter your hormone production? That's what researchers Dana Carney, Amy Cuddy, and Andy Yap wanted to know. (Okay, they didn't examine the exact superhero stance exactly, but they did examine other two other open postures.) Here's what they did. Participants (male and female) were randomly assigned to pose in either two "high power" or two "low power" positions. The experimenter physically posed each participant in the poses.

High-power poses were sitting in a chair, arms behind the head, elbows out, and feet up on a desk (like a boss, "relaxing"), and standing in front of a table, legs about a foot apart, leaning forward and hands on the table bearing weight. Both these poses take up a lot of space for sitting and standing, respectively.

In contrast, the two low-power poses had those participants taking up little space; in the sitting version, the participants sat straight up, feet on the floor, legs at a 90-degree angle and hands on the lap while elbows were in, touching the sides. The low-power standing pose had participants put their legs close together and their arms were placed as if they were giving themselves a hug. Participants in all groups held each pose for one minute.

Low-power poses

Afterward participants moved on to a gambling task, in which they were each given $2, and then had the option of either not gambling (keeping the money, no risk involved) or a risky opportunity to roll a die and either double their money or lose the $2; they were told that the odds were 50/50. What's the purpose of this part of the study? To see whether assuming either a high-power or low-power pose led participants to behave accordingly-to be more willing to assume risk (high power, with the theory that if you're powerful you're more willing to assume risk), or play it safe (low power). Participants were also asked to rate how powerful they felt, on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 4 (a lot).

The researchers also took saliva samples at the start of the study (for the baseline) and 17 minutes after the last pose; through saliva they could measure a hormone associated with power (testosterone) and a hormone associated with stress (cortisol). Why testosterone and cortisol? Previous research on testosterone and power indicates that the testosterone level increases when a person anticipates competing as well as after winning, but the testosterone level drops when the individual loses e.g., Booth, Shelley, Mazur, Tharp, & Kittok,1989),. In other words, testosterone goes up with the possibility of or with actual power, and decreases when power-or the opportunity to attain power-is lost.

Cortisol is sometimes referred to as a "stress hormone" because levels of it often rise with stress; people who are powerful tend to have lower baseline levels of cortisol and when stressed, their cortisol levels don't rise as much as to people who are relatively powerless (Abbott et al., 2003; Coe, Mendoza, & Levine, 1979; Sapolsky, Alberts, & Altmann, 1997).. Chronically high levels of cortisol are associated with various stress-related illness such as high blood pressure (Sapolsky et al., 1997;), and these illness are more common in social groups that have low power than in those who have high power (Cohen et al., 2006).

Based on past findings about testosterone and cortisol, the researchers wanted to see whether assuming a pose for such a short amount of time would lead the brain to shift hormonal gears and create the typical high-power or low-power hormonal pattern. The answer was "yes." Participants who assumed high-power poses had their testosterone levels increase relative to their baseline, whereas participants who assumed low-power poses had their testosterone levels drop. The flipside was true of cortisol levels.

More importantly, the researchers wanted to know whether posing in high- or low-power positions would lead them to adopt the behavioral pattern typical of the power level associated with their pose. This answer, too, was "yes": Whereas 60% of low-power posers chose to risk gambling their $2, 86% of high-power posers risked their $2. (When reading about these results, I couldn't help but think of folks who work in the financial sector who no doubt regularly assume high-power poses as they jockey for promotions, for recognition, or to make a good impression [e.g., "I am powerful]. Perhaps assuming that pose leads them willing to risk too much? Perhaps the culture should encourage a more of a closed position, or at least something in the middle?) High-power posers also reported feeling more powerful than low-power posers, with an average rating of 2.57 versus 1.83, respectively.

So it seems that participants who assume a couple of superhero-type stances for a grand total of two minutes (!) feel more powerful and act that way. Wow. Stand like a superhero, feel like a superhero, act like superhero. Does this mean that when Clark Kent hunches and tries to make himself look unpowerful, his testosterone levels low and cortisol levels high? Does he take fewer risks as Clark than when he's standing tall in his boots and cape? Does he feel less powerful? If he's like us, the answer appears to be "yes."

(There is a wonderful scene in the first Superman film, by Richard Donner, in which Clark Kent and Lois Lane are about to go out and grab dinner; Clark is in Lois Lane's apartment waiting for her to get a sweater and as Superman he has just finished being interviewed by Lois and flown her around Metropolis. She is star-struck. As Clark waits for Lois, he's hunching over, trying to appear timid and unpowerful. He has a moment when he decides to tell Lois his real identity; he stands up tall, takes his glasses off and changes the tilt of his head. His body fully assumes a position of power and it is a pleasure to watch this embodiment of power as he allows himself to take up more space. Christopher Reeve did a fantastic job in that scene.)

References:

Abbott D.H., Keverne E.B., Bercovitch F.B., Shively C.A., Mendoza S.P., Saltzman W., et al. (2003). Are subordinates always stressed? A comparative analysis of rank differences in cortisol levels among primates. Hormones and Behavior, 43, 67-82.

Booth A., Shelley G., Mazur A., Tharp G., Kittok R. (1989). Testosterone and winning and losing in human competition. Hormones and Behavior, 23, 556-571.

Carney D.R., Cuddy, A. J. C., Yap, A. J. (2010). Power Posing: Brief Nonverbal Displays Affect Neuroendocrine Levels and Risk Tolerance.Psychological Science, 21, 1363-1368.

Carney D.R., Hall J.A., Smith LeBeau L. (2005). Beliefs about the nonverbal expression of social power. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 29, 105-123.

Coe C.L., Mendoza S.P., Levine S. (1979). Social status constrains the stress response in the squirrel monkey. Physiology & Behavior, 23, 633-638.

Cohen S., Schwartz J.E., Epel E., Kirschbaum C., Sidney S., Seeman T. (2006). Socioeconomic status, race, and diurnal cortisol decline in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study.Psychosomatic Medicine, 68, 41-50.

de Waal F. (1998). Chimpanzee politics: Power and sex among apes. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Hall J.A., Coats E.J., Smith LeBeau L. (2005). Nonverbal behavior and the vertical dimension of social relations: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 898-924.

Sapolsky R.M., Alberts S.C., Altmann J. (1997). Hypercortisolism associated with social subordinance or social isolation among wild baboons. Archives of General Psychiatry, 54, 1137-1143.

San Diego Comic Convention 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 14:35:00 +0000

If you're going to the San Diego Comic Convention, please stop by for my panels:

Saturday, July 23

1:00-2:00 Comics Arts Conference Session #11: Psychology of the Dark Knight: How Trauma Formed the Batman and Why He's Got a Thing for "Bad Girls"— How realistic is it that a young Bruce Wayne would vow to spend the rest of his life avenging his parents' murders and "warring on all criminals"? How did these seminal events shape the man Wayne becomes? And why is he attracted to "bad girls"? For answers to these and other questions, psychologists Travis Langley (Henderson State University) and Robin Rosenberg (Psychology of Superheroes) ask Batman writer Grant Morrison, one-time Catwoman Lee Meriwether (Batman: The Movie), journalist Jill Pantozzi (Newsarama), and executive producer Michael Uslan (The Dark Knight Rises). Room 26AB

Tags: Comic-Con Special Guest Spotlights & Appearances | Comics | Comics Arts Conference | Superheroes

Sunday, July 24

4:00-5:00 The Superhero Battlefield— What drives superheroes to keep fighting the good fight without getting burned out, disillusioned, or transforming into villains themselves? Trauma psychologist Dr. Andrea Letamendi (UCLA) explores the minds of your favorite comic book heroes and villains, linking them with the very real minds of actual trauma survivors. Alongside Dr. Letamendi are fellow psychologists Dr. Robin Rosenberg (The Psychology of Superheroes) and Dr. Travis Langley (Batman in his Belfry), as well as guest panelists including writer Len Wein (Swamp Thing). Room 4

X-Men First Class: A Psychologist’s Review

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 23:42:00 +0000

Origin stories are about transformation. Superhero origin stories are about the transformation of people (loosely defined: humans, enhanced humans, mutants, aliens) into superheroes. About people who channel their (super)abilities and (super)powers in the service of others. To do good.

X-Men: First Class is a story about multiple transformations of people into superheroes and as such it is a great movie. It shows us not only Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr transforming into Professor X and Magneto, respectively, but also how a range of other mutants transformed into future X-Men or Brotherhood of Mutant members.

From a psychological perspective, the X-Men comic book (and film) stories are psychologically rich material, in which issues about prejudice and discrimination, teamwork, leadership, giftedness (e.g., being "special") and power are explored in ways that are both accessible and thought-provoking. X-Men: First Class continues this fine tradition.

Here are but a few of the "psychological truths" that I saw revealed during the course of the film.

Being Gifted Can be a Lonely Path

As we saw in the first X-Men film, being a mutant can be a lonely path in life. You are different than other people, they don't understand you and in some cases they fear you. In other cases, they want to control you-to use your power for their own ends. The mutants in X-Men: First Class film experience all of this, and because of it, they come to hide their abilities, when possible. Raven (the future Mystique) can change form to appear as other people, but her "self" is blue-skinned. She learns to hide this and expends some effort to shape shift so that she looks normal every waking moment. Angel has wings, hidden behind a harness. These and most other mutants grow up thinking they are each the only ones-that they are alone in being "special." (On one level, of course, they're right, since almost every mutant has a unique set of abilities not replicated by another-the exceptions seem to be telepaths.) But as they discover one another they discover that they share mutated genes that give them special powers and abilities, and the sense of being not "normal." In this sense each of them has trod a lonely path until finding each other.

There is a part of the film when a bunch of teen/young adult mutants are sitting around talking about their powers and abilities, excited to recognize themselves in others, to feel relief at being able to be themselves, not to have to hide. The issue of "hiding one's true nature" has parallels with homosexuality, race, and most any other attribute that leads people to feel different when around "regular" people and thus when people find others like themselves, they feel enormous relief. If each one is a freak, then together they are a band of freaks, no longer alone. Seeing this scene made me think of what it is like for academically gifted children who have hide their talents in order to fit in-to finally find other people like themselves and no longer need to pretend. (Clickhere for more information about gifted children. For readers particularly interested in this topic, I also recommend Ellen Winner's fascinating book on gifted children.)

It's Hard to Look Different

Being gifted-having talents, powers, or abilities significantly above that of the average person-is one way of being different. Another way is to look significantly different, which can range from having a different skin tone, body physique, or facial feature (e.g., "stick-out ears") to an outright physical deformity. People who look different may be stigmatized and experience discrimination. This form of prejudice is intense and western society has become less tolerant of even minor physical differences, like stick-out ears, for which cosmetic surgery in children is now an option. Click here to read some interesting research by Jim Blascovich and colleagues about how people interacting with a stigmatized individual feel threatened when doing so.

In X-Men: First Class, two characters particularly struggle with the difficulty of looking different physically: Raven and Hank (future Beast). Raven's naturally blue skin even has scales. Hank can doesn't have it so bad since his differentness is confined to his feet which are monkey-like. He may be able to hide his feet in shoes, just as Raven can hide her blueness by using her powers to appear "normal." But for most of the film, they share a desire to be normal versus to pass as normal. [Spoiler alert] By the end of the film, they both stop passing as normal, but for different reasons. Hank deals with his physical deformity (which is, after all, what it is) by injecting himself with what he thought would be a cure. Wrong. It amplifies his mutation and turns him into the Beast, a blue-furred ape-appearing person; he has no hope of passing as normal. In contrast, Raven, touched by Erik's belief that mutants should feel proud of their differentness, decides to stop passing.

Their struggles about being physically different highlight real issues about acceptance by others and self-acceptance, and the pressure to conform in order to fit it. Readers interested int his topic can click here to read about Erik Parens's book on this topic: Surgically shaping children: Technology, ethics, and the pursuit of normality.

Optimal Performance Requires Some Arousal

In the film, we learn that Erik was intentionally tortured while growing up because his power only manifested itself when he was either angry or in pain. Thus, to learn more about his abilities his "mentor" Sebastian Shaw inflicts pain on him or makes him angry (mostly the former, it seems). Yet as an adult, Erik is unable to harness his power to move large metal objects: He can't stop Show's submarine from fleeing. Charles Xavier helps Erik harness his power to even greater levels by showing him the sweet spot for maximal power: "between rage and serenity." (That is, the maximal force of Erik's power requires less anger and more calm.)

If you've taken an Introductory Psychology course, this concept may be familiar to you, although with different words. Charles is espousing a variant of the Yerkes-Dodson Law, in which optimal performance on a task occurs with a moderate amount of arousal: not too much arousal will lead you to feel scattered and lose focus, and not enough arousal (because you are understimulated or bored) will cause you to lose focus. (Click here for the original paper.)

Yerkes-Dodson Law

Charles is reframing the Yerkes-Dodson Law so that rage = overarousal and serenity = underarousal. The midpoint between the two is the sweet spot.

The film is full of other psychologically resonant moments about the power of teamwork, how good leaders can persuade, and the importance of belonging. Plus, the film is great fun. If you've seen previous X-Men films, you'll enjoy little prequel connections to the other films (thus allowing viewers to feel a sense of community with the X-Men franchise). If you're an X-Men comic book fan, be prepared for non-canonical stories!

That said, this may be the best X-Men film yet.

De-Stress In 6 Seconds With 6 Simple Steps

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Thu, 26 May 2011 14:59:00 +0000

Most of us are juggling multiple balls throughout the day: work, home, family, relationships. We are "on the go" even when we're sitting down -- dealing with crises, or getting ready for the next thing we have to do. Unless we love what we're doing, these daily challenges can create wear and tear on our bodies, our emotions and our minds. Over the course of the day, the net result is a stress level that keeps on increasing.

Here is a six-step, six-second relaxation technique that can temporarily bring your stress level down; if you use the technique throughout the day, it can help lower your baseline stress level. Steps 2 through 5 each can induce relaxation on their own; together they do so more effectively. Read through each of the steps before you give this exercise a try; some steps may require practice. Some people find that their sense of relaxation is enhanced by closing their eyes when using the technique. Once you've mastered the steps, try them both ways to see whether having your eyes open or closed works better for you.

Read the rest on Huffington Post/AOL Healthy Living.

Thor: A Psychologist's Review

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Sun, 08 May 2011 00:09:00 +0000

Like many people, I saw the film Thor this weekend, in 3-D. Full disclosure: Thor has never been one of my favorite superheroes. Nonetheless, I was looking forward to the film, because film versions of comic book heroes often provide interesting variations on the stories, particularly the origin stories.

The acting was very good, but I was disappointed. The film seemed very formulaic, with a lot of explication at the beginning--so much explaining of the characters and their "mission" that even if you didn't know Thor's origin story when you sat down to watch the film, you could accurately predict the rest of the story.

The adult Thor that we see at the start of the film is full of himself and his power; he is a prince ever ready to fight, caring nothing for diplomacy and little for the lives of others who are put at risk by his adventures. He has power without wisdom. His "friends" may be loyal, but they are sycophantic. (I suppose we can't blame them; Thor will one day be king, so they don't want to give him news he doesn't want to hear.)With this quote and Thor's banishment, the stage is set for his mission, his goal, his task in the story: To become a mensch--a decent, worthy person. The middle part of the film shows us Thor transforming from a privileged jerk to a more humble god of Asgard who, literally and figuratively, serves others. (There is a scene in the middle of the film, as he becomes a mensch, when he serves breakfast to the good-guy team. But serving people breakfast doesn't make someone a mensch.) The story boils down to this quote from the first 15 minutes of the film, said by Odin, Thor's father, to Thor before his banishment: "You are nothing but a boy trying to prove himself a man." That's the rest of the story--he becomes and then proves himself a man.

Thor's transformation from jerk to wise mensch occurs within a couple of days--remarkably fast. What caused the transformation? It's not clear. Yes, there are many possible events that could have triggered or contributed to it: Banishment, losing his superpowers, being unable to use his hammer (when banished, he is unable to wield it because he's not wise enough), the sense of responsibility that he seems to feel after he's told that his father died after banishing Thor, or being in love--or at least heavily in like. All these are possibilities, but we don't get a glimpse of what happens inside of Thor as these events take place. The loss of his powers is played for laughs when that alone might have been a humbling experience. But Thor remains a two-dimensional character.

I contrast Thor's almost miraculous transformation with the Tony Stark's in the first Iron Man film, in which we see another jerk (Stark) transformed into a mensch, albeit it a egomaniacal one. In Iron Man, we see and understand Tony's transformation as arising because he is held captive, his colleague Yinsen sacrifices his own life to save Tony's, and Stark's weapons end up being stolen and used for nefarious purposes. (Click here for my blog post about the first Iron Man film.)

Thor's story is rich with opportunities to plumb the lead character's psychological depths, which were missed opportunities in this case. Here are some examples:

The experience of being raised in privilege and losing that privilege. For Thor, this would mean his powers, his status and role as Prince, and access to his hammer. Given the economic downturn, most people can personally relate to the concept of losing things that you once had and took for granted. Exploring this topic could have been fascinating.
When you lose your place in life, you have to rethink your purpose in life. Ultimately, we can assume that this is what led to Thor's transformation, but it would have been fascinating to see Thor struggle with this issue more: If he's not Crown Prince of Asgard, who is he? Many of us can relate: When our life plans go haywire (we get laid off, a relationship dissolves, we don't get in to grad school, who are we and what is our purpose?
Family secret: Adoption in the family. In the film, the big family secret is revealed that was previously known only to Thor'sparents: Thor's brother, Loki, is adopted (and is of a different race). The issue of adoption, and the revelation of adoption, follows a formulaic pattern: child feels betrayed, get angry and wants to strike back, reconciles. Much more could have been done with the psychological impact of the revelation on Loki, Thor, Odin, and Frigga, Thor's mother.

It's possible that the script allowed for more exploration of these and other issues and that those scenes were cut--either before shooting or on the editing floor.

Speaking of editing, I've been a big fan of 3-D, at least the films I've seen in 3-D. But I don't think that Thor should not have been released in 3-D, and I'm not alone. The beginning of the film was uncomfortable to watch in 3-D, with too many quick cuts; for 3-D to work, shots must be longer, and converting a film shot in 2-D into 3-D, unless a lot of care is taken in the process, doesn't provide a great experience. (Click here for an explanation about this.)

The Christopher Nolan Batman films and Iron Man were such hits, in part, because they allowed us to glimpse what it might actually be like if such characters existed. Thor tells the tale with some modern trappings incorporated into the story, but we never get inside Thor's mind or his heart. Maybe that's the way it is with gods.

"I never lie"

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 18:57:00 +0000

In the 1978 film, Superman, there's a scene in which the guy in the blue tights and red cape is with Lois Lane up on her balcony, giving his first interview. The two have this exchange:

Lois Lane: I mean, why are you here? There must be a reason.
Superman: Yes. I'm here to fight for truth, and justice, and the American way.
Lois Lane: [Laughs] You're gonna end up fighting every elected official in this country!
Superman: I'm sure you don't really mean that, Lois.
Lois Lane: I don't believe this.
Superman: Lois, I never lie. (The last line can be seen here.)

Of course Superman does lie, if not by commission, then frequently by misdirection and by omission--for instance, not telling people that Superman and Clark Kent are the same person.

But his "never lie" statement conveys his boy-scout-like moral code: he tries to be honest and forthright. Is Superman's honesty a superpower--a pattern of behavior that requires superhuman effort? That is, does it require a strong "will" to be honest? Or are people who are basically honest, like Superman, simply not tempted to lie, and so no great effort is required to tell the truth?

This is a question that psychologist Joshua Greene and graduate student Joseph Paxton set out to investigate. In their study, they gave participants an opportunity to make money by accurately predicting the outcome of flips of a coin. For some coin flips, participants were asked to make their predictions aloud; for other coin flips, participants did not but instead after the coin flip reported whether their prediction had been accurate (and thus in this second type of procedure participants would easily lie without anyone else knowing that they were doing so). Here's the twist: all of this was happening while participants were in an fMRI scanner.

Participants should make accurate predictions, on average, in about 50% of the coin flips and that's what happened in the first condition--in which they reported their predictions out loud. In the second condition--in which people didn't make a public prediction before the coin flip but instead reported after the flip whether their prediction was correct-people reported being correct over 80% of the time. As with the first condition, the chance of correctly predicting is 50%, so participants must have been lying about their accuracy some of the time.

Examining the data more closely, it turns out that not all participants lied during the second condition. Some participants (the "honest" participants) reported 50% accuracy rates in the second condition, the same as in the first condition, and what is statistically plausible. It seems that these folks aren't tempted to lie, and their brain scans did not look different between the first and second conditions, which suggests that they weren't tempted to lie when they had the opportunity and motive (remember, the more accurate their predictions, the more money they would receive). Their honesty was relatively effortless, like Superman's appears to be.

In contrast, the folks who lied in the second condition (the "dishonest" participants) had more activity during both conditions in the parts of the brain involved in planning and decision-making. This set of brain areas was activated when participants had to decide what to say. It would appear that for these folks, being honest--at least about coin flip predictions--takes more work.

The study authors suggest that parents may be best off trying to instill honesty in their very young children so that they grow up with honesty that is automatic, effortless, and not subject to temptation. How do you think Ma and Pa Kent instilled honesty in Clark?

Robin S. Rosenberg is a clinical psychologist. Her website is DrRobinRosenberg.com

Catherine Zeta-Jones and Bipolar II—What’s That?

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 18:57:00 +0000

You may have read recently that Catherine Zeta-Jones was briefly hospitalized for the treatment of bipolar II disorder. While you may have heard of bipolar disorder, unless you took an abnormal psychology class in the last decade or so, or had direct experience with bipolar disorder, the numerical designations bipolar I and bipolar II are probably unfamiliar.

Here’s a brief primer: Bipolar I is what most people think of as bipolar disorder: episodes of mania that typically alternate with episodes of depression. During a manic episode, people aren’t simply in an “up” mood. They are euphoric—feeling that they can do most anything, that they’re creative, brilliant, supercompetent. Except that they’re not. Among the symptoms of mania are: less need for sleep, a sense of racing thoughts, beginning new projects (for which they may not have appropriate experience), being sexually promiscuous, going on spending sprees. Some people are extremely irritable during their manic episodes rather than euphoric (click here for the full criteria list).

People may become psychotic when manic; for example they may develop delusions. For a diagnosis of bipolar I, the manic episode must last for at least a week and significantly impair daily life. That’s a long time both for the individual and those living or working with the individual.

People who have had a manic episode typically previously have had and/or will go on to have episodes of depression. The term depression can sometimes be overused, so when mental health clinicians use the term, they mean a subjective sense of feeling “depressed” most of the day for most days and/or significantly less interest or pleasure in activities. Other symptoms of depression include feeling worthless or inappropriately guilty, difficulty making decisions or thinking clearly, and recurrent thoughts of death or of suicide (click here for the full criteria list). These symptoms must last for at least two weeks to be considered a major depressive episode. (People with bipolar I may have mixed episodes, which are symptoms of both mania and depression at the same time, rather than manic or major depressive episodes.)

Bipolar I is the form of bipolar disorder that used to be called manic-depressive disorder. Patty Duke Astin describes their experiences with bipolar disorder in a way that that sounds like bipolar I.

In contrast, bipolar II doesn’t involve manic episodes; instead, its hallmark is hypomanic episodes, which typically alternate with episodes of depression. Hypomania is a less intense form of mania that doesn’t impair functioning significantly. A hypomanic person may be overly talkative, but you can interrupt him or her (which is hard to do when someone is manic); the person may be overly self-confident, but not grandiose, and may even be more creative than in his or her normal state (click here for the full criteria list). For a diagnosis of bipolar II, the hypomanic episode must last for at least four days, and the person must also have had at least one episode of depression. Carrie Fisher reports that she’s been diagnosed with bipolar II.

Bipolar II is more common among women than men, whereas bipolar I is equally common among men and women. Moreover, women with bipolar (I or II) tend to have more depressive episodes than manic or hypomanic ones, whereas men with bipolar (I or II) tend to have more manic or hypomanic episodes, respectively, than depressive ones. When women are premenstrual, their mood symptoms (mania, hypomania, depressive) are likely to be worse than at other times of the month. The good news: Various treatments (e.g., medications, cognitive behavioral therapy) can help.

Being a Superhero--It's About the Costume?

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 21:13:00 +0000

I was at WonderCon--a convention for fans of comic books and related media--this past weekend. While there, I walked the floor of the exhibit hall and interviewed folks dressed in costume. My first question to each superhero was usually "Why dress in costume?" (I've written before about psychological issues related to wearing a costume--see posts here andhere for more about research on wearing a mask.)

People reported a range of reasons, though everyone conceded that there was a bit of an "ego boost" or opportunity for attention that they might not otherwise have.

Some folks in costume are altruistic, like the folks above from the Star Wars 501st Legion and other Star Wars groups (see this post about some folks in that group).

These two gentlemen from the San Francisco Fan Force talked about looking up to (super)heroes themselves, and wanting to give kids an opportunity to have a hero to look up to; they also said that they feel like they "can do more" and can do things beyond themselves when dressed as one of their heroes. These men (and others from Star Wars Fan Force and the 501st Legion) dress up at conventions, but they also go to children's hospitals to put "a smile on the face" of sick children who get to see their favorite hero walk into the room. For these people, putting on the costume of a superhero is a way of becoming a best version of themselves. That's a powerful incentive.

In fact, other costumed folks I talked to also mentioned feeling good when kids at the convention want to have their photograph taken with a "superhero." (The Batman in this photo below mentioned that he doesn't particularly like kids, but when in costume he finds himself more interested in being around kids and more patient with them! This difference he experiences speaks to the power of the situation, and how context can override your "personality.")

The idea that wearing a costume allows the wearer to become someone else-a different version of themselves-was mentioned by many people. The magician Zatanna (standing next to Batman) said that she was usually a very shy person; when in costume, though, she felt more freedom when talking to people.

People also talked about feeling like a part of a community-that costuming enabled them to feel more deeply engaged in the community of fans at the convention. Of course people also talked about it being fun to dress up in this context.

My second question was typically "Why that particular costume?" Many women in particular talked about wanting a superhero costume because they feel empowered when wearing it. They realize they don't become the superhero, but they feel that they become a different person than their usual selves. Other folks talked about feeling that they were honoring the values and actions of a particular hero. Still other people explained that their choice of character was based on a physical resemblance to the superhero (height, for instance, in the case of Hit Girl, below, or skin color in the case of Vixen, above on the left with Zatanna, Batman, and Raven).

Another reason for picking a certain costume among those who have multiple costumes: Because of a particular media event (e.g., an upcoming film release), or physical comfort based on the temperature of the venue.

Do you wear a costume to events (beyond Halloween)? If so, why do you wear a costume, and why the specific costume(s) in your closet? Let me know!

Robin S. Rosenberg is a clinical psychologist. Her website is DrRobinRosenberg.com.

WonderCon 2001

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 04:53:00 +0000

If you're going to be at WonderCon April 1-3, stop by for the panel I'm on:

About Did you ever wonder why experiencing trauma led Batman to become a hero but Harvey Dent to become a villain? Why Superman hasn't given up his Herculean task for good after being exposed to so much loss, stress, and destruction? What makes superheroes keep fighting without getting burnt out, disillusioned, or becoming villains? Join psychologists Andrea Letamendi (UC San Diego) and Robin Rosenberg (Psychology of Superheroes), psychology professor Travis Langley (Henderson State University), and WonderCon special guest Marv Wolfman as they address these questions, applying what we know about trauma in our world to the world of superheroes to better understand why the same types of events can lead some folks to heroism and others to villainy.

Hope to see you there!

The Rush to Diagnose Charlie Sheen

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 14:10:00 +0000

Many articles and blog posts have speculated about Charlie Sheen's recent bizarre behavior, and various possible diagnoses have been mentioned. People want to understand him -- what's wrong with him, why he's behaving this way and what can be done to help him.

Although mental health clinicians might seem to be the perfect folks to opine on Sheen's behavior and its root cause, in fact it is unethical for clinicians to diagnose someone from afar, without actually evaluating the person.

So I won't attempt to put a diagnostic label on him. But I do think it's worth examining some of the larger issues that are at play as we all, yet again, witness a famous person apparently melting down.

Read the rest on AOL News here.

Language Matters

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 04:06:00 +0000

Imagine: You are a superhero (or police officer). You arrive at the scene of an apparent accident, and are trying to find out what's going on. Was it simply that--a fluke accident--or it could have been the result of a nefarious act, an intentional crime? Believe it or not, the specific verb usage of the witnesses and/or victims might sway your judgment. Sounds far-fetched? Read on!

In one study, participants were asked to memorize the floorplan of a house, and then read a story about someone moving around inside that house. Some participants read the story in the imperfective form (e.g., "he was walking from the bedroom to the bathroom"), others in the perfective form (e.g., "he walked from the bedroom to the bathroom"). In the former case, readers were more likely to imagine the protagonist on the path--in the process of getting to the destination; in contrast, the latter case, participants were more likely to imagine the protagonist at his destination. (Morrow, 1990; Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998).

It turns out that descriptions using the imperfective are also better remembered than those that use the perfective. Thus, hearing about the man whose car was pushing another car off the road is more memorable-and will get people more immersed in the description--than will hearing about the man whose car pushed another car off the road. The imperfect verb form helps us imagine ourselves in the situation--to take the perspective of the protagonist.

Researchers William Hart and Delores Albarracín recently undertook a series of studies examining the effect of using the imperfect verb usage. Specifically, participants were asked to read a one-paragraph description about a real crime that occurred as a result of a verbal dispute that ended with the victim being shot. Some participants read the description with imperfect verb usage ("he was pointing his gun"), other participants with the use of the perfect ("he pointed his gun"). Participants were then asked to imagine that they were the judge hearing the case and decide whether the protagonist has criminal intent to harm the victim. It turns out that participants who read the imperfect version--"he was pointing the gun"--were more likely to judge the protagonist as intending to cause harm. These participants also reported imagining the incident in more detail than participants who read the perfect version ("he pointed the gun").

It's not just that we are more likely to imagine ourselves when reading or hearing descriptions that use the imperfect form. With the imperfect form, the action isn't yet completed; "he was pointing the gun" leaves open the possibility that he might put the gun down (in contrast to "he pointed the gun" which is a completed action). And so because the action is still unfolding, the protagonist, in theory, has control over the situation; if the action continues, we are likely to infer intent-he wanted to keep pointing the gun.

This revealing impact of language has implications for our lives:

When reading or hearing about accounts of crimes in the news or as jurors, the verb tense used by the prosecution and/or defense may nudge us in to make judgments that we otherwise might not make, provided that circumstances and evidence are at least somewhat ambiguous.
In novels, we may be more engaged, or more quickly engaged, with stories that use a preponderance of the imperfect verb form; it is easier for us to imagine ourselves in the situation, and to feel that we are watching the novel's events unfold.

References:

Hart, W., & Albarracín, D. (2011). Learning about what others were doing: Verb aspect and attributions of mundane and criminal intent for past actions. Psychological Science, 22, 261-266.

Morrow D.G. (1990). Spatial models, prepositions, and verb-aspect markers. Discourse Processes, 13, 441-469.

Zwaan R.A., Radvansky G.A. (1998). Situation models in language comprehension and memory. Psychological Bulletin, 123, 162-185.

Superheroes Are Everywhere in the News

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:57:00 +0000

Ten days ago, I set up a Google alert for new that contains the word superhero so that I wouldn't miss out on relevant news. I've been surprised by the range of articles I've gotten that contain the word superhero, and what is being associated with superheroes. Of course there's the usual and expected articles related to:

superhero television shows and films, such as the LA Times article about Henry Cavill to play Superman in the upcoming film
comic book characters, such as the death of the Fantastic Four's Johnny Storm (Human Torch) and here
superhero computer- and console games.

There are also articles about other commercial endeavors that involve superheroes, such as a Michigan mom, Holly Bartman, who startedPowerCapes.com, which makes customizable kids' and adults' superhero costumes. Holly and her company not only make people feel good with her products, but she is doing good with her company: she helps nonprofits raise funds through costume orders.

Then there are the broader uses of the term superhero; articles in whichsuperhero is used to describe or inspire others to engage in prosocial behavior; that is, actions that benefit others and may involve some type of sacrifice--of time, energy, or other variables, such as:

The Are You a Librarian Superhero , "to recognize the often heroic efforts put forth by librarians around the country, and to encourage other feats of greatness."
The Tennessee elementary school where the "masked hero was dressed in red, gold and black and visited students during a TCAP pep rally to inspire them to do their best on upcoming state tests, which begin with a writing assessment in early February.
The organization Community Partnership in Springfield, Missouri,"calling all superheroes" to "reach out to children and showcase all the heroes in their lives?"
A group of middle-schoolers who dress as superheroes to try to stop bullying, and "superhero" students who perform acts of kindness
Dying children who wish to be superheroes and do good.

The list of organizations using superheroes to do good, inspire others to do good--or labeling someone who does good as a superhero--goes on here, here,here, and here. And this doesn't include articles about real life superheroes, like this one.

This list is just a sampling from 10 days worth of Google alerts! I knew that superheroes were popular, but I've been astounded by the variety of ways that superhero is used to encourage or highlight doing good. It reminds me of the paired-association word game (if I say salt, you think of pepper). In these non-commercial cases of superherodom, superhero is paired with doing good.
In some of these contexts, where hero would do, superhero is used instead. It's easy to see why. We all have a (relatively) common set of assumptions about what a superhero is: someone who fights for justice and protecting innocent people, who tries to "do good," who sacrifices for others, and who inspires. These are wonderful values and actions, and it's appropriate to want to instill them in children. Plus, superheroes generally have a dress code or uniform (spandex/tights and boots, masks and capes optional) that make them stand out.

Using superheroes to inspire heroism is a way to expand the possible paths to heroism. Just as superheroes have different powers and abilities, we have different powers, abilities, and inclinations that enable each of us to help others in different ways. The superhero ideal has become code for the goal of helping others, and those ways are as varied as the superhero uniforms in comic books: infinite.

Caveat: I'm sorry to say, that superheroes-and the positive associations that go along with them-can be used to pair an unrelated product with those ideals. Case in point is Taco Bell.

Opinion: There Really Is Chemistry Between Us

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:09:00 +0000

Tears collection and sniff test

A fascinating new study just published in Science magazine reveals that a chemical in women's tears decreases men's sexual arousal. Tears, it turns out, are a type of "chemo-signal."

The study is interesting in and of itself, but also raises questions about the way we increasingly interact with one another.

Here's what the researchers did in Phase 1: They collected the tears shed by 12 women as the participants watched the sappy movie "The Champ." They also dripped saltwater on the women's faces and collected those drops of saltwater.

In Phase 2, 100 male volunteers looked at photos of attractive women and watched three types of films: sad, neutral or erotic. During this time, the men had a cotton pad placed under their nose; the pad contained either drops of tears or saltwater collected during Phase 1. (The men couldn't tell which was which because the tears didn't smell different than the saltwater.)

Read the rest on AOL News