Day: February 21, 2008

Cracks in Our Rose-Tinted Glasses?

In the last week, several media outlets have addressed research that presents an alternative view on the happy emphasis on positive psychology and self-help that has swept through America in the past few years.  I’ll just excerpt some pieces from each, not a lot of commentary this time. 

First, three pieces from Sharon Begley’s article “Happiness: Enough Already” in Newsweek: http://www.newsweek.com/id/107569 

Excerpt #1: While careful not to extol depression—which is marked not only by chronic sadness but also by apathy, lethargy and an increased risk of suicide—[Diener] praises melancholia for generating “a turbulence of heart that results in an active questioning of the status quo, a perpetual longing to create new ways of being and seeing.” This is not romantic claptrap. Studies show that when you are in a negative mood, says Diener, “you become more analytical, more critical and more innovative. You need negative emotions, including sadness, to direct your thinking” 
Continue reading “Cracks in Our Rose-Tinted Glasses?”

Brain Reading for $299

I was at a talk yesterday on anthropology and genetics, where the presenter argued persuasively that molecular anthropology really took off when the methods of accessing genetic information became easy and cheap enough to use for anthropology–the ability to collect data in the field, the ability to process the genetic sequences quickly and cheaply, and so forth.  Even though brain imaging has gotten a lot more inexpensive, it’s still brain imaging–sticking people in a big tube.  Not the most natural of situations.

I just ran across this article, Brain-reading headset to sell for $299.  Here’s one relevant excerpt about the NeuroHeadset: “The headset’s sensors are designed to detect conscious thoughts and expressions as well as “non-conscious emotions” by reading electrical signals around the brain… The company, which unveiled a prototype last year, says the headset can detect emotions such as anger, excitement and tension, as well as facial expressions and cognitive actions like pushing and pulling objects.”

The headset has been developed by Emotiv Systems primarily for gaming.  So it’s not quite research-ready.  But the price and the portability might soon open the collecting of real-time functional brain data in the near future, permitting us neuroanthropologists to get some important data in the field.

Anger and Healing

“Anger slows healing process after injury: study” is one of today’s headlines.  Here’s the main point:

Researchers at the University of Ohio inflicted minor burns on the forearms of 98 volunteers who were then monitored over eight days to see how quickly the skin repaired itself… The results were startlingly clear: individuals who had trouble controlling expressions of anger were four times likelier to need more than four days for their wounds to heal, compared with counterparts who could master their anger.

 Anger, not surprisingly, is more nuanced than an on/off state.  “Subjects described as showing ‘anger out’ (regular outbursts of aggression or hostility) or ‘anger in’ (repressed rage) healed almost as quickly as individuals who ranked low on all anger scales.”  

Indeed only one group had significantly slower healing:

Only those who tried but failed to hold in their feelings of upset and distemper took longer to heal. This same group also showed a higher secretion of the stress hormone cortisol, which could at least partly explain the difference in healing time, the study noted… High levels of cortisol appears to decrease the production at the point of injury of two cytokines crucial to the repair process, suggests the study. Cytokines are proteins released by immune-system cells. They act as signallers to generate a wider immune response.

 So, it is not so much “anger” that matters, but anger management.  Trying and failing is the key variable, not so much anger itself.  That appears to be what is stressful, the lack of control and the uncertainty, rather than experiencing anger itself. 

Here’s the abstract of the original article.