Remember dial-up Internet and the thrill you got as you explored a virtual universe for the first time? Wasn’t the novelty of having things like Ebay only one click away exhilarating? Back then there was a friend of mine who, having just gotten a “really hot computer,” told me that he could dial-up and surf the web at “lightning speeds.” He loved his hot system and was certain that it was not just good enough, but was truly “as good as it gets.”

This is all pretty funny now that dial-up is a dinosaur. High speed Internet buries it by comparison and that exhilarating feeling of novelty is nowhere to be found in our “load already!” impatience. With the tech we have now, who could happily go back again? 

This is true for a lot of things. Once you’ve been smitten with something great it’s really unlikely that you’ll happily go backwards – having had more makes it really hard to be satisfied with less. Just imagine using that old, once beloved dial-up connection now. That’s how it feels to go backwards – that which once felt so hot now feeling so lame by comparison.

Comparisons like these are everywhere. These standards of comparison, also called “frames of reference,” are defined by experiences. They shape how happy or satisfied you are. They frequently define when things feel “good enough” or “as good as they get.”

But when is it really good enough and when does it truly get as good as it gets? Do these things even exist in a society such as ours that never seems to be satisfied and always appears to want bigger, better, hotter and newer? Are M&M’s truly satisfying when compared to fine chocolate truffles? Can we really say that grilled chuck steak is as good as it gets when compared to a masterly prepared meal of fine dry aged beef? And having tasted the rarefied flavors of the best chocolate mousse prepared to perfection in a fine French restaurant, will you ever be able to taste Jello chocolate pudding in the same way again? With truffle, mousse and dry aged beef as your frame of reference, would you even think of sending an Instagram of your M&Ms, Jell-O or chuck steak to friends and family as a way to proclaim that your life is truly as good as it gets? I think not.

In our society expectations often run high. There are some who, when young, expect to become captains of the universe, write the great American novel, or save the world from hunger or poverty. There are others who expect to always have plenty of time and money for family, fun, travel, hobbies, and a social life both virtual and real. Even those searching for first homes on the HGTV TV network always seem to rhapsodize endlessly about the dream home they are looking for.

But these idealistic dreams often fade into fantasies as reality imposes itself upon you. Work comes before fun. Your champagne tastes cannot be satisfied on your beer budget. Everyone on Facebook blocks you, your wall collapses, and the only thing that your tweets evoke from others is a resounding “uok?”

Unfortunately life is typically full of disappointments and failed expectations, both big and small. Reality is often a very harsh place for most people, but you can forget this and expect that your life will be the exception rather than the rule.

Love and marriage is a lot like all of this – what was hot is now not and the cuddly truffle you thought you fell for looks and tastes a whole lot more like a stale M&M than a rarefied treat. And wanting more you look out there and begin to dream about all those “new and improved” models you see – what you got paling even further by this comparison and the grass seemingly much greener on the other side of the hill.

Love and marriage are always full of high hopes and painful disappointments. But unlike most of the “I’ve moved ahead and can’t go backwards” frame of reference examples I’ve mentioned, in love and marriage you start with truffle, dry-aged beef and mousse and then you go backward from there.

Why? It’s because new love casts a spell that can make love blind. It can make you think that you are eating mousse when all that’s really in your bowl is a dollop of pudding. So blinded by new love, you initially define your lover as your perfect mate or soul mate. But invariably these blinders come off and this newly realized reality challenges you to happily go “backwards” and be satisfied with less. You go from the ideal to the real. And when you compare the real to the ideal – your present love to your idealized love – your present love is likely to pale by comparison and love is likely to feel, for want of a better term, pretty ordinary.

All this is, by the way, just a basic part of the fabric of love and marriage. Time moves on. What was hot is not. And there you sit, your relationship challenged as you compare the reality of your M&M partner to the idealized truffle of a lover that you tasted back when your love was new.

Research shows that about 48 percent of marriages end in divorce and ratings of marital satisfaction have fallen steadily since the early 1970s. There are a lot of things that figure into this, but I think that one of them is that we expect a lot from love and are often disappointed – we expect the ideal but eventually get the real.

That’s why I think that some of the sorry state of love is actually due to the “frame of reference thing” and the fact that things really do change when you marry or partner. But what that common wisdom doesn’t say is that over time the blinders of love will come off and you’re going to have to get your arms around the fact that you’re really not going to dine forever on truffles, dry-aged beef and mousse since it’s much more likely that you’re actually going to spend “the rest of your life” eating M&M’s, chuck steak and a disappointing-by-comparison cup of instant pudding.

Today’s tip: I once read an article, “Good Enough? That’s Great,” in the Modern Love section of The New York Times. Author Daniel Jones, who edits these Sunday Times columns, wrote that he landed on this title after having reviewed more than 50,000 stories of love over the last 10 years for his column. And while I do think that soul mate love can exist and persist, albeit in rare cases, I also think that Mr. Jones is truly on to something.

So what’s my tip? It’s that idealized expectations and rarefied, perfectionistic frames of reference often cloud judgment and that it’s a really a good idea to remember that “good enough” is not just as good as it gets. Good enough can actually be truly great.

[Editor’s note: Richard A. Kolotkin, Ph.D., is a professor in psychology at MSUM, licensed psychologist with a practice in Moorhead, and author of “The Insightful Marriage: What You Really Need to Know and Do to Be Happily Married,” which is available for Kindle.]

To accomplish anything great in life, you must stare fear in the face. You must be willing to accept risk as a part of life and prevail regardless of comfort and safety.

My goal with this post is to share some simple tactics to overcome fear and tell you a story of when I was absolutely horrified.

How to overcome fear

You can overcome fear with one simple method. Look at your situation and the action that you are afraid to take, and then ask yourself this one simple question:

“What is the worst possible outcome that could result from this action?”

Maybe you fail, maybe it doesn’t work. But at the end of the day, you’re not going to end up homeless on the street.

You are going to be OK.

When you realize the worst possible outcome isn’t that bad, you can use that as strength to push forward and take a risk.

When I was afraid

Just over a year ago, I was afraid. I was leaving a company that I had started building when I was 15 years old.

I was afraid of many things during the process. I was afraid I was making the wrong choice. I was afraid I would fail at my new venture. I was afraid I would regret the decision of leaving for the rest of my life.

But I did it; I left the company and went on to start a new venture.

It couldn’t have gone worse.

The startup failed, I depleted my savings and I was left scrambling trying to figure out my next steps in life. Everything that could have gone wrong pretty much did.

But guess what? I figured it out. I didn’t end up on the street or bankrupt. In fact, that experience taught me some of the most valuable lessons of my life.

That experience helped push me to where I am today.

Why fear is a good thing

When we feel fear stopping us from making a decision, it can be a sign we are moving in the right direction.

In his book “The War of Art,” Stephen Pressfield refers to this as resistance. When we feel fear about doing something, it is just resistance trying to stop us from accomplishing our most important work.

Nothing in life comes easy or without some form of risk or pain. When you feel afraid to make a decision, it means you are doing something right. It means you are pushing yourself out of your comfort zone.

Don’t let fear win.

To accomplish anything great in life, you must be a fearless soul.

What are you afraid of?

What life decision are you afraid to make? What do you know you need to be doing, but feel afraid to take the first steps? What is the worst thing that could possibly happen if you did it?

Now quit being so afraid and make a move. I promise you won’t regret it.

If I wasn’t a college professor I would have been a stand-up comic: I spend weeks preparing material for a series of 50 minute monologues; I speak to an auditorium filled with chatty 20-somethings who are mostly there on a recommendation from a friend; audience members often wander in and out of the room, drowsy from being out late the night before; even the content of my lectures is familiar comic-fodder, covering such topics as relationships, love and marriage, divorce, parenting and middle-age decline. I guess the main difference between professor and comedian is that Dane Cook uses more profanity and I receive less applause.

The original “class clown” George Carlin would have been gratified to hear all seven of his “bad words” made it onto T.V.

Entertaining a crowded club or a college classroom also means playing to an audience. The comedian Jerry Seinfeld observed that the fear of public speaking is second only to the fear of death. In other words, he said most of us would prefer lying in the casket to delivering the eulogy. Speaking in front of crowds never bothered me and I often rely on bizarre, memorable stories from my own life and from the classroom to make the material both relevant and memorable.

Growing up I could only begin my homework on the hour or half-hour, an introduction to either obsessive-compulsive disorder or time-management strategy. I remember practically everything from entire ‘80s movie dialogs to random lists of more than 40 words, which I use to demonstrate mnemonic techniques. And I can write with both hands at the same time, one forwards one backwards, a great way to illustrate brain lateralization. My mom insists that these things make me “funny strange, not funny ha-ha”.

Professors, like comedians, also get heckled, but in academia we call it “assessment.” At the conclusion of the very first lecture I ever gave, in a 400-seat auditorium, a student stood up and shouted “So how old are you anyway?” Twenty years later, I have a better appreciation for how informal the relationship between student and professor has become. I receive the occasional email salutation “Hey” or “Dude,” and I keep tabs on my course evaluations at RateYourProfessor.com (I’m more than a little disappointed that there are no hot chili peppers next to my name).

I haven’t received questions about my age in some time. The questions I receive most often these days are: “Did you get my email?” or “Did we do anything in class today?” Of course what this really means is “I emailed you about missing class the other day to ask if you could tell me what I missed?” One way to reply to this question is with a transcript of the entire 75-minute lecture, including slides, videos, recreations of student-discussions and question-and-answers. However, I believe that many students simply hope that I will reply: “No, we didn’t really do anything that day. We just sat quietly with our hands folded in our laps.” This answer is strangely similar to the response my children give when I ask them “What did you do at school today?” This must be where it comes from.

But sometimes the funniest things that happen in class are not a part of a comic routine at all. Following a lecture on the stages of prenatal development, a brave student asked: “What happens to the sperm that don’t fertilize the egg? Where do they go?” Without missing a beat, another student blurted out “Florida!” After the giggling stopped I offered a more accurate answer to the question. To this day I’m sure that the entire class remembers the details of the female reproductive system.

So being a good teacher sometimes means being an entertainer, a comedian who can bring meaning to the material with stories and laughter. I’ve often thought of keeping a journal of my more humorous academic experiences, but with so much of my day spent in class it’s difficult to find the time. As Rodney Dangerfield observed, perhaps I’ll get around to it someday when I have no class (thank you, I’ll be here all semester, please tip your TAs).

[Editor’s note: Dr. Nawrot is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Child Development Lab at MSUM. She earned a Masters degree and a Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley, and has been working on her M.r.s. and M.o.M. degrees for nearly 20 years.]

This weekend, community members will have the opportunity to transform and aspire to do, be and feel great. The Fargo Holistic Expo, this April 26-27, will feature 84 exhibitors, loads of gifts products and workshops and five keynote speakers, including Gary Quinn, Vincent Genna, Cedric Red Feather, Insiah Beckman and Tara Argall.

Those especially interested in animals and alternative forms of therapy will be interested in learning more about Argall, a Fargo-based licensed professional counselor, animal communicator, psychic, reiki master, bodytalk practitioner, numerologist, dowser and artist.

Argall’s talk, Beyond the Leash, this weekend at the expo will explore her work with animals, as well as help others communicate with animals. HPR interviewed the healer to learn more.

HPR: Who are you typical clients?

Tara Argall: My typical clients are usually horse, dog or cat owners (whose pets) are having behavioral issues or health issues and they want to know what’s going on or want to have help knowing what to do.

HPR: What are some of the benefits of seeing you?

TA: (Clients will) understand their pet better. They’ll understand why their animal is doing what it’s doing – the animal will be able to tell them what they are questioning about.

HPR: Tell us about what we can expect from you at the Holistic Expo.

TA: I am going to be doing animal sessions at my booth. And then at my talk, Beyond the Leash, I am going to be talking to people about beyond just the basic stuff of having a pet. They can really help us with life decisions, even after they’ve crossed over, they can still be in our life.

I also teach animal communication, but sometimes it’s hard for people to take the time to practice and hone their skills and so I’ve created a program that’s very simply used and I’ve even had 8, 9-year-old kids use it. But it’s a program that will help anybody and everybody communicate with animals – and nonverbal people … because you can use the same skills to talk to autistic people or people who’ve had strokes, that kind of thing. So that communication is kind of universal between all non-verbals.

So the program that I’ve created, I’m going to be unveiling in my talk and so people will get to see it in action. I’m asking people to bring photos of their animals—we’ll work from photos. And we’ll run through some of the animals and have communication with them through my program too.

HPR: Do you mostly communicate with animals through photos, or do you do it in person too?

TA: I do most of them over the phone now. And the reason I do, when I go to somebody’s home, it’s distracting. There’ll be smells, the new environment, but also the animal is distracted by me … it’s a mind-to-mind communication, so I am getting very focused and opening up all my intuitive channels to communicate; so if I am in the home, what I’ve found when I am trying to hear them is the animal will just come up and give you a big lick or whatever and want to play, and so it’s really hard to kind of stay focused on what they are saying. So I like to do it over the phone for a deeper connection. Not that I don’t like the dog kisses or the cat loves or whatever, but I just think it’s a better communication session.

HPR: As a healer, what is one of the most important characteristics you must have?

TA: I think, for me, in order to be a clear communicator or effective healer, I need to take really good care of myself. I need to eat right, be rested. I need to take care of myself because when you do healing work, you’re just a vessel … you are kind of the channel through which it comes. And when you are a communicator, your need to have clear head and a clear body to be able to process the messages. So I think self-care is ultimately important.

HPR: What is one major goal you have as an animal communicator?

TA: I’d like to have people think a little deeper about why their animal is in their life. We sometimes think of them as a three-wheeler – we take them out and play with them whenever it’s convenient. But they are really fellow souls on the journey. They really like to be a major part of your life and they can contribute a lot more than they could ever imagine.

IF YOU GO:

Fargo Holistic Expo
Fargo Civic Center, 207 4th St N
Sat, April 26, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Sun, April 27, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
edgelife.net

When our oldest daughter was just a newborn, I started to wonder about the ingredients I was putting on her skin while giving her a bath one night. I finished her bath and then proceeded to put baby lotion on her little body, using a product I (then) trusted. It was a bedtime lotion that was supposed to have relaxing properties. I remember glancing at the bottle and was a little disturbed to read the following:

“Keep out of reach of children. Do not use without consulting a doctor if child has asthma or allergies or if there is a family history of either. Serious breathing problems could occur.”

Warning bells began to go off, and I began to investigate the ingredients. I discovered what has become my go-to site for healthy and safe product research: The Environmental Working Group. I checked their Skin Deep Cosmetics Database and discovered that the lotion was listed as a high hazard. It contained ingredients linked to cancer, developmental/reproductive toxicity, allergies/immunotoxicity, neurotoxicity, endocrine disruption and more. What?!

I was horrified that I was lathering this lotion on her tiny body night after night. I immediately took everything out of our bathroom cabinet and looked up the other products we had been using. It was a distressing and eye-opening exercise. I don’t think there was one product left standing at the end of my scrutiny. I felt all the companies I had used for years had led me on with their claims of “natural” beauty.

I’ve since discovered there isn’t much in the way of oversight for ingredients in body care products, and companies don’t even have to list all of the stuff that’s in their products. I began to hunt for products that were better and have been trying different things year after year. We now have two daughters, and I remain vigilant about anything that goes on or in their bodies.

That is why I was over the moon when I discovered The Honey B Soap Company. The Honey B Soap Company is a local company founded by the incredible Brittany Sinclair. This wonder woman is an artisan soaper (I believe I coined the phrase) who really cares about the product she is producing. Sinclair was a high school science teacher who retired to have children and make soap and other natural body care products. I believe I’ve tried them all. Some of my special favorites: the whipped body butter, lotion bars, shampoo bars, shaving soap and — who am I kidding? I love everything she makes.

The Honey B Soap Company produces high-quality, all-natural body care products for everyone: men, women and children. The products contain essential oils and natural mineral pigments and don’t contain sulfates, parabens or other synthetic ingredients. With the growing evidence that parabens and synthetic ingredients are causing long-term health concerns, Sinclair wanted to steer clear of using them. She also labels her products with all the ingredients she’s used so I can tell exactly what is going on my family’s skin. And these products are not only healthy, they also do what they say they’ll do.

The Honey B Soap Company is one of the producers with the Prairie Roots Food Cooperative. If you’re a member (and if you’re not a member, what’s up with that?!), you can find the company’s awesome products every week at the co-op’s online market. Visit http://prairie-roots.coop/ to find out more. You can also find all of The Honey B Soap Company’s offerings at thehoneybsoapcompany.com and at Eco Chic Boutique, which also stocks some of Sinclair’s products.

YOU SHOULD KNOW:

The Honey B Soap Company
TheHoneyBSoapCompany.com
the.honey.b@@hotmail.com

Sometimes I wonder about apparently trivial things—like the idea that we “fall” in love. Initially, as I thought about this, I had the idea that this phrase was particularly oxymoronic. How could the pain typically caused by a fall be connected to the joys of love? The idea of being in love seemed to evoke a joyful state now realized. The idea of falling, like slipping and falling on the ice, conjured up pictures of real pain. Falling, I thought, was very often harmful to one’s health. But then I realized that the same was true for love.

My mind then drifted to the many painful phrases that used the word fall. You can, for example, fall flat, fall into disarray, fall into the wrong hands, fall into decay, fall from grace, and even fall on your sword. Falling in love was clearly not in very happy company, these notions so much less benign than the often dreamt about and frequently longed for fall into love. So off I went to the Internet.

According to Wikipedia, the notion that you fall romantically in love is a particularly Western concept, the implication of which is that something uncontrollable is happening to you that is taking you, like gravity, to a strong and passionate connection with another person. I also found that the use of the term “fall” when used in this context implies that the falling lover tumbles into some undefined state of exposure or vulnerability. So fall when used with love actually does live in the same ballpark as phrases like falling ill or falling into a trap. The idea of falling in love was beginning to make sense to me. 

So then I started thinking about the idea of falling out of love. Back on the Internet I learned that both falling in and falling out of love were similar – both suggesting that you are being taken over by compelling and very powerful forces. But while a fall into love can motivate a desire to marry, the fall out of love gets you the opposite – falling out of love often being a red hot smoking marriage deal breaker.

Exploring this further I learned that falling out of love actually now ranks above things like physical abuse, irreconcilable differences and financial worries as the most powerful marriage killer. Falling out of love is, in fact, so powerful that it has even replaced “my lover had an affair” as the number one reason why people get divorced – many couples now thinking that it’s easier to mend marriage after an affair than it is to fall back into love once having fallen out (psychologytoday.com).

But lest you despair the rise of the “But Judge, I can’t take it, my love has died” reason for divorce, fear not. I did find another reason why people untie the marriage knot. It seems that if you’re lucky enough to live in California you can now list “incurable insanity” on your divorce petition form. But I admit I don’t know if it’s the person leaving, the person being left or both who gets to claim this. Inquiring minds do want to know.

My wife recently gave me an issue of The Atlantic magazine. She, given my interest in love and marriage, thought that I’d enjoy reading an article about “living happily ever after.” Written by Liza Mundy and titled “The Gay Guide to Wedded Bliss” the piece explored the fact that research has shown that same-sex unions are typically more emotionally intimate, happier and have less conflict than those between heterosexual couples.

One focus of this “Guide” was “domestic workload,” this referring to the fact that partnered love involves a lot more than just the love we fall into or out of. It also involves work – one or both of the fallen having to do things like shopping, cleaning, food preparation, budget management and child-care.

The article, starting where many do, accurately reported that though men “are getting better and doing more,” couple workloads are still far from equally divided. Women, it seems, still tend to carry more of the load; the gender stereotypic notion of “it’s women’s work” still permeating the minds of even the most apparently enlightened males. 

In her article, Ms. Mundy asserted that it was often this stereotypic “man’s work – women’s work” based workload inequity that bred relationship dissatisfaction. She then went on to argue that these gender workload stereotypes were typically not so commonly found in gay partnerships and that, because of this, the workload in these relationships was likely to be more equitable than in those developed by heterosexual couples.

Ms. Mundy’s premise was that the gay couples experienced superior relationship quality because, not being burdened by stereotype, these couples were also not so likely to be burdened by the resentment that the lack of work fairness often produced for heterosexual partners. In other words, given the absence of gender stereotypes in gay relationships these relationships felt “fairer” than those between straight partners. Her conclusion was that it was this feeling of equity – this feeling that things were fair – that fostered the increased relationship and marital happiness, freedom from conflict and emotional intimacy typically found in same-sex partners.

Now though you might think that this to a downright ridiculous premise, psychology would suggest that Ms. Mundy is onto something that might actually help you stay in love rather than fall from it. 

Social psychologists have long embraced “equity theory” to better understand all kinds of relationships, not only romantic relationships, but even those at work or between friends. This theory asserts that people will be more satisfied with a relationship if there is a feeling of equality in it – a feeling of equal give and take by both parties. Equity theorists contend that people are more motivated to stay in a relationship and are more satisfied in any relationship – including love and marriage – as long as they feel that what’s happening in the relationship is fair and equitable. 

But take the sense of fairness out of the relationship equation and bad things happen since people resent it when “it’s not fair.” And this resentment, once it develops, will always threaten a relationship, especially when attempts to get fair back fail. In fact, when this happens, resentment just gets worse and worse so that, eventually, the desire to leave the relationship gets greater than the desire to stay. And when this happens in love and marriage, falling out of love will be about as easy as falling off a log.

Today’s tip: Work really hard to keep track of how evenly distributed the workload is in your relationship. One way to do this is for you and your lover to develop specific job descriptions for home just as is done in a work setting. These job descriptions should be negotiated and should define what is done by whom, some time frame in which the job gets done, and an agreed idea of how it’s going to be done. Define these descriptions are something to be discussed again down the road since things can change and equity can be lost as life moves on.

[Editor’s note: Richard A. Kolotkin, Ph.D., is a professor in psychology at MSUM, licensed psychologist with a practice in Moorhead, and author of “The Insightful Marriage: What You Really Need to Know and Do to Be Happily Married,” which is available for Kindle.]

I might be allergic to cashews. This is unusual because I regularly eat all sorts of things that are typically associated with food allergies like nuts, eggs, milk, wheat, soy and shellfish. I am, however, allergic to a variety of antibiotics including penicillin and everything from fish oil to fabric softener makes me so itchy that every long-handled, pointy kitchen utensil gets pressed into service as a backscratcher. Hm. Maybe a cashew allergy isn’t so unusual?

As scientists, my husband and I discussed how to test this new cashew-allergy theory, carefully spelling out the variables, making predictions and creating a plan for the data analysis. Yes, we actually do talk about science over the dinner table, often with loud, animated appeals to this theory or that (when he was young, our son apparently interpreted this as “fighting” and implored us not to get a divorce). I made note of the last few times I had eaten cashews and the onset of ensuing symptoms. The conclusion seemed straightforward enough. Was there really any reason to conduct a scientific experiment?

Years ago when I taught my first class in experimental psychology, I had a student who believed that she had telepathic powers and could cause others to turn and look at her if she concentrated on them hard enough. She demonstrated by sweeping her gaze across the classroom and sure enough one or two heads popped up to look in our direction just as she had predicted. I was never able to convince her to conduct a more scientific test of her power, and she eventually switched majors to political science and landed a job as a Washington lobbyist.

Psychology is a fairly young science. Depending on who you ask, the birth of scientific psychology might be 1879 in Leipzig, Germany with the creation of the first psychology lab. Wilhelm Wundt employed a menagerie of devices including chronoscopes, pendulums and tachistoscopes in an attempt to measure conscious processing. At about the same time, William James (brother to the writer Henry James) started his lab at Harvard. James’ monumental tome “Principles of Psychology” published in 1890 exists in an abridged form still known today as “Jimmy.” But inquiries into the human mind really began with the philosophers as far back as Immanuel Kant and his distinction between what we can and cannot know, and even Descartes and his method for intellectual inquiry, the underpinning all of scientific method (“Cognito ergo sum”).

For experimental psychologists, the first step in determining cause and effect is to control the relevant variables and then manipulate them systematically to measure the outcome. Terms like “control” and “experiment” tend to conjure up images of subjects shackled in straightjackets, rats running mazes or devices that deliver electrical shocks. The truth is that the majority of psychological research is carried out through pencil and paper surveys, tests and psychological scales. Modern neuroscience adds brain-imaging techniques and equipment known by a tongue-twisting array of acronyms like fMRI, PET, TMS, and MEG (we’ve progressed a long way from Wundt’s pendulum).

Even animal research now makes up less than 8 percent of psychological investigation. It’s been more than 50 years since the pioneering behaviorist B.F Skinner’s project ORCON, in which pigeons trained to peck at the image of battleships were strapped inside of missile housings for military strikes. The project was cancelled when electronic guidance systems became available, not because the pigeon-pilots objected to their kamikaze missions (but that wasn’t really psychological research. Now, if Skinner had trained the pigeons to telepathically control the missiles…)

Back to my cashew experiment, I identified alternative possible allergy-inducing agents and ruled them out one by one (low humidity, new flavored lip balm, fancy Himalayan pink salt I discovered in the T.J Maxx grocery aisle). Could I have psyched myself into an allergic reaction? The mere presence of cashews was making me itchy now.

A forerunner to the science of hypnotherapy, Antoine Mesmer was able to induce fits of hysteria and paralysis in his clients by the movement of iron rods near their bodies. He soon abandoned the magnets, believing instead in the power of his own body (that’s right, animal magnetism). Mesmer was investigated and eventually debunked by a panel commissioned by the Royal Academy of Sciences that included Antoine Lavoissier (father of modern chemistry), Benjamin Franklin (founding father), and Joseph Guillotin (father of French Revolution beheadings). Lavossier himself was later guillotined, despite an appeal that his experiments must go on.

Clearly, science demands sacrifice, so it’s time for a more direct test of my theory. With a mouthful of cashews, and a handful of Benadryl, I will keep you posted …

[Editor’s note: Dr. Nawrot is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Child Development Lab at MSUM. She earned a Masters degree and a Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley, and has been working on her M.r.s. and M.o.M. degrees for nearly 20 years.]

True story: A pair of identical twins were separated at birth, adopted by different families, then reunited 40 years later. Despite their different upbringings, they had a lot in common: Both were named James, enjoyed carpentry and mechanical drawing, smoked and drank, loved math and hated spelling. And both married women named Linda, then divorced them and married women named Betty. Weird, right? Forget the gene for alcoholism, is there such a thing as the “divorce Linda/marry Betty” gene? (Or in genetic terminology, the dL/mB gene, which is located on the Y chromosome of midlife men, adjacent to the urological gene PNnoEZ; of course the equivalent urological gene on the X chromosome of midlife women is iP3x/pm).

The question of which has greater influence over our lives—genes or environment—has been presented as a debate between rivals, nature vs. nurture, a sort of boxing grudge match.

In one corner we have heredity: Let’s hear it for genes that give you red hair, freckles, the inability to tan, and a genetic tendency to believe that you’re getting a great deal at the Kohl’s buy-one-get-one 50 percent off sale (the math gene, as we all know, skips a generation). And in the other corner, your environment: Give it up for the effects of peer pressure, Sunday school, toilet training and trying not to turn into your parents.

It was Sir Francis Galton in 1876 who first used the phrase “nature versus nurture” in a scientific paper “The history of twins as a criterion of the relative powers of nature and nurture.” In addition to his research into the genetics of intelligence, Galton was into just about everything. He pioneered fingerprint analysis for identification, devised the earliest intelligence tests, created the first weather maps and calculated the statistical measure of correlation, which his biographer and student Karl Pearson went on to develop into regression analyses (Pearson’s r is the statistic of a correlation coefficient still used today).

And Galton wasn’t even the most accomplished scientist in his family, being the second cousin to Charles Darwin. It was Galton’s investigations into heredity that led him to propose “eugenics,” the sort of genetic engineering that he hoped would lead to improvements in the human condition. His ideas about selective breeding culminated with a scenario where the most genetically ideal man and woman would be married, with the Queen of England presiding over the ceremony!

Galton’s book “Hereditary Genius” gave the edge to genetics when he reported that so much of intelligence is shared within families (score one for nature). But how do you know whether your trouble with math comes from a lack of the math-gene or the fact that you grew up in an environment where dinner table conversations seldom began with “Suppose one train is traveling north at 55 mph …” Heredity is not the only thing that you get from your parents; they often provide the environment, too (nurture scores a one-two punch).

So what if you could separate the effects of nature and nurture by creating a situation where the environment has no effect, and a person’s inborn nature could be revealed? The so-called “forbidden experiment” dates back to 13th century Roman Emperor Frederick II, who wanted to determine what was the “innate” human language by raising children without social interaction. Unfortunately for Frederick, and for the children, humans don’t do well in such situations. Later, such “natural experiments” included Victor, discovered in 1799 roaming a forest in France, and Genie, rescued from extreme neglect in modern day Los Angeles. In both cases, the effects of such drastic social isolation were not easily undone.

Fortunately, there are opportunities to see the effects of nature and nurture through twin studies, especially those like the two Jameses. In fact, these were the first pair of identical twins raised apart that were studied by Thomas Bouchard as a part of an ongoing longitudinal study. Since 1989, the Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research (mctfr.psych.umn.edu) has studied nearly 10,000 pairs of twins, looking at the relative roles of genes and the environment in everything from academic achievement and personality to happiness and even substance abuse.

In the end, nature and nurture work together more like a well-choreographed dance than a knock-out boxing match. Your genetics can influence your environment, a type of “niche-picking” like when a shy person avoids a career in public speaking or a fussy baby elicits anxious caregiving. Likewise, the environment influences the expressions of genes, for example the same genetic predisposition might lead to depression in women but alcoholism in men. Personality, intelligence and much more is the result of our genes working with our environment (like your mother always said, you’re smart but you just don’t apply yourself).

Even Galton believed that genius was a point on the continuum that included insanity. This from a man who once experimented with pharmaceuticals by taking doses of each drug in alphabetical order. He gave up at the letter “C” when the effects of croton oil led to such miserable diarrhea that he still recalled it 60 years later in his autobiography. True story.

[Editor’s note: Dr. Nawrot is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Child Development Lab at MSUM. She earned a Masters degree and a Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley, and has been working on her M.r.s. and M.o.M. degrees for nearly 20 years.]

I recently read that, though income for most Americans stayed basically the same for 2013, spending went up. Americans are apparently once again spending more and saving less even though only 54 percent of us have more in emergency savings than we have in credit card debt (bankrate.com). People, it seems, tend to have compellingly strong needs.

Curiosity piqued, I consulted the Internet and found that we buy a lot of things that we never use. According to one list (msn.com) these include things like Campbell’s canned soup which, though found in 85 percent of homes at an average of six cans per home, is typically left unopened and forgotten in a pantry. Also on this list were things like gym memberships, mobile apps, swimming pools, kitchen gadgets, exercise equipment and clothing.

But my search did reveal a gadget that I’m certain everyone will truly need. This “latest and greatest totally must have” is Google Glass. Glass, as it’s also known, is a wearable – like eyeglasses – computer that has an optical head-mounted display which provides the wearer with a view of an augmented reality even as it is voice command interactive. Think of this as a wearable, hands free Siri that opens windows in the air in front of your face when commanded.

The love and marriage expert in me is “thrilled” about this, mostly because of one “essential” stand-out application called Sex with Glass. And why is this so essential? It’s because this app offers a loving couple the chance to see everything from every angle while having sex.

So, just think about this for a second. With this app you and your romantic partner can actually link your Google Glass headsets. Do this and you can both watch a live feed of the act in progress from your partner’s point of view. Using this app you can actually watch yourself “doing it” and experience having sex with yourself.

But there’s more! According to CNET, to get the sexual live feed started you just say “OK glass, it’s time.” Say this and Glass will stream what you and your partner each see to each other. And to stop the feed all you have to say is “OK glass, pull out.” I kid you not! This is so totally not a forgotten can of soup.

OK, so maybe you aren’t really going to need this gizmo. But you, being a people, do have needs. You, like other animals, have biological needs for all those things that are required for life. Don’t get food, water or air and you’ll die just like any other animal.

But people, though often acting like animals, are different from other animals because people are both biological and psychological creatures. So you, as a people, have both a biology and a psychology, and this psychology insures that you’ll have all kinds of emotional needs that other animals do not, and cannot, have. It’s having this psychology that makes you human and truly unique among the species.

This isn’t a new thought. Way back in 1943, the psychologist, Abraham Maslow, proposed a theory of personality based on a hierarchy of needs. His theory, now commonly taught even in high school psychology classes, states that our needs range from the most basic to the most sublime.

To understand this, think of a triangle with your most basic of needs, these being your physiological needs for things like food and water, firmly planted at the bottom. Get enough of these needs met and you can move up the triangle to the next need – the need for safety. Feeling basically safe and sheltered you can go even higher and address your need for love and belonging. If lucky enough to have these social and romantic needs addressed you get to move up the triangle even further, your need for self-esteem coming into play. Eventually, if you get to feel enough true confidence and respect, you can advance further to the very top of the triangle and tackle your need for self-actualization.

Though self-actualization is the triangle’s pinnacle and the most human of needs, research shows that this need – the need that you have to find yourself, be yourself and reach your full true potential – is very, very rarely satisfied.

For Maslow, life was seen as a process in which these needs called to you, those lower in the triangle always being more powerful than those at the top. Your need for air, for example, will always trump your need for safety. And your need for love will typically be more powerful than your need for self-esteem or self-respect. Many, in fact, know this from sad experience.

So love, unlike canned soup or Google Glass – is actually truly something that you need. But normal needs can become exaggerated. And when this happens it can be really bad, such as when an exaggerated need for food leads to unhealthy, even deadly, obesity.

The same is true for love. Exaggerate your normal need for love and this will always take you to some very unhealthy, unhappy and even deadly places.

It works like this. Imagine that you’re in a desert and are truly over the top in need of water. You’re sure that if you don’t get water you’ll die! Your need is so strong you begin to imagine things. You see a mirage of what you feel you so desperately need. You see water where none exists. And you run to this mirage as if it were real – your desperate thirst clouding your reason. You drink from the well, certain that the liquid you drink will sustain your life. You drink deeply, luxuriating in the sweet taste. But what you find, to your great dismay, is that all you’ve actually swallowed was a mouthful of sand. And then you die.

Love is like this. Need it too much and it will appear to you even where it is not. Need it too much and the love that you see will be nothing more than a mirage. And though it will look and feel real, it won’t be there. You only believe that it’s there because you’re so desperate for it.

Today’s tip: Don’t be desperate for love. If you are it will blind your vision and you will see it in all the wrong places. Know that your need for love is over the top if you’re preoccupied with finding love, getting love or being in love. It’s over the top if love is all you think about and look for. Know that you are way too desperate for love if you organize your life around it and little else or if you feel like you’re going to die without it.

And if you’re over the top about love, then your job is to normalize your need for love so it’s part of your life and not its central focus. Maybe just focus on soup instead. Maybe just get your arms around the fact that desperately needing soup is likely to be way safer and way less painful than any desperate need for love will ever be.

[Editor’s note: Richard A. Kolotkin, Ph.D., is a professor in psychology at MSUM, licensed psychologist with a practice in Moorhead, and author of “The Insightful Marriage: What You Really Need to Know and Do to Be Happily Married,” which is available for Kindle.]

I lost my daughter at the mall this past weekend. Don’t be alarmed; she’s not 4 and adorably curious, pulling me along by the arm and turning bashfully from strangers. She is 14 and has a teenage restraining order that keeps me at a safe distance when dropping her off at the movie theater, following her at the mall or any other situation where there’s an outside chance of my being spotted and identified as her mother. How can a once cute and cuddly toddler transform into a brooding hermit one moment and a bubbly socialite the next? Paradoxically, when it comes to development, one thing that’s constant is change.

Many teens enter a stage where they want to fit in with their peers by conforming to the same behaviors, likes and dislikes, often down to the very clothes they wear. And that’s how I lost track of my daughter. One minute I was trailing behind her and the army of friends she invited over for her birthday party, juggling my coffee along with a variety of coats, wallets, phones and keys. And the next minute she had disappeared into a bobbing sea of ponytails, where throngs of teenage girls sported identical jeggings, Ugg boots and cross-body bags. I false-alarmed to various incarnations of her: the teenage girl pairs walking in lock-step with eyes glued to their phones; the tween-age-girl variety that appears as a miniaturized version of the standard; and the teenage girl in mob form, which included a disturbingly large number of identically dressed girls who moved easily through the crowd like a flock of birds.

Conforming to a standard of behavior or dress might seem counterintuitive during a stage when adolescents are striving for independence and identity. No doubt that’s why psychologist Erik Erikson coined the term “identity crisis” to describe this stage. But identifying with a group is an important way that teens begin the process of separation from their families, leading to young adulthood. I routinely ask my class the question, “Do you consider yourself to be an adult?” The majority of these 20-somethings answer, “Some of the time.” Stages of development don’t follow clear timetables and even Erikson admitted that some themes, like identity, come around again throughout the lifespan.

There’s a certain amount of egocentrism that goes part and parcel with adolescence, which explains why teens have that annoying know-it-all quality. My 17-year-old naturally knows everything and isn’t shy about demonstrating it. It’s been a long time since I have been asked to help with homework. He recently reported that in chemistry lab he learned to synthesize maleimide enantiomers. I blinked an odd mix of incomprehension and pride and stammered, “OK then, be sure to wash your hands after.” So, how long is this stage supposed to last again?

Back at the mall, I was finally able to locate my daughter and claimed her from the stream of lookalikes — like identical roller bags sliding off a baggage carousel. We headed home with her clothing clones in tow to continue the party. I was forbidden from calling it a birthday party and received exaggerated eye rolls when I suggested anything remotely celebratory, such as cake or singing. The girls immediately disappeared into the basement, a troupe of infinity scarves bouncing down the stairs. My daughter wagged her finger in my direction so I wouldn’t follow them and inflict irretrievable embarrassment.

A wise man once said, “(Teenagers) have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”

Sound familiar? It was Socrates and that was more than 2,000 years ago. You know what they say about the more things change ...

[Editor’s note: Dr. Nawrot is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Child Development Lab at MSUM. She earned a Masters degree and a Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley, and has been working on her M.r.s. and M.o.M. degrees for nearly 20 years.]