A Taste for Mastery

Fans of the old British TV series The Avengers will remember the classic wine cellar “duel” scene. Foppish secret agent John Steed and villain Henry Boardman face off in a tasting of rare wines, each one-upping the other with his impressive expertise about vineyards and vintages. After some minutes of sparring, Steed summarily ends the contest with this pinpoint identification of a wine: “1909,” he states drily. “From the northern end of the vineyard.”

Even wine connoisseurs will laugh at this caricature. Nobody understands wines at that level of detail. But the bit is funny precisely because experts do in fact think of wines in much finer categories than the rest of us: Some truly know grape varieties, vineyards, and specific harvests, while others of us settle for much coarser categories, like red and white.

Why is that? Why do some people see nuance where others see gross oversimplification? I know, because they’re the experts—but that’s really not a helpful answer. What is going on in the expert mind when it slices and dices a corner of the world into fine-grained distinctions? What is the engine that drives nuanced thinking?

Psychologists have been studying thinking styles for some time, and one emerging idea is that such thinking is driven by emotions. Forget wine for a second, and think about something you are an expert on—beach volleyball, Alaskan politics, the early novels of Joseph Conrad, whatever. Chances are you don’t get paid to be an expert on this; it’s probably a hobby, a passion. With enough effort, you could probably make yourself an expert on something you don’t like, but why bother? Curiosity and interest not only drive mastery, they make it effortless.

Or at least that’s the theory, which psychologists Rachel Smallman and Neal Roese decided to test in their University of Illinois laboratory. They suspected that the act of liking actually molds the brain’s thinking, opening it to nuances that are unapparent to others. Put another way, preference and taste pave the way for more textured thinking. They ran this experiment to test the idea.

They started by artificially creating preferences in the lab, using hobo symbols. These are the crude symbols that hobos once scratched on to walls and trees to warn other hobos of dangers in particular neighborhoods. This one, for example, meant “unfriendly police here,” but the psychologists assumed that few people would know those meanings anymore. They showed volunteers a collection of these symbols, pairing them with either pleasant or unpleasant scenes. The idea was that they would learn preferences for some hobo symbols and aversion to others.

Then the volunteers sorted a deck of 20 cards, each card picturing one of the hobo symbols. They were told to sort the cards into “meaningful” categories of any size, and to label the categories. When the psychologists crunched the data, this is what they found: Those who had been conditioned to have positive feelings about the symbols sorted them into much finer categories than did the others. In other words, liking influenced thinking. What’s more, the volunteers were clearly guided by their emotions in sorting the symbols, labeling the piles with adjectives like “inspiring” and “ominous.”

These findings, reported in the December issue of Psychological Science,
may explain the power of hobbies. But more than that they sound a warning to those choosing jobs and careers. Hard work and mastery may give us a measure of satisfaction, but pleasure also drives mastery and expertise. There may be good psychology beneath that old saw: Do what you love.

For more insights into the quirks of human nature, visit “We’re Only Human” at www.psychologicalscience.org/onlyhuman. Selections from the blog also appear regularly in the magazine Scientific American Mind and at http://www.sciam.com/.

Ode to Joy and Serenity and Curiosity and . . .

Young patas monkeys love to play tag on the savannahs of West Africa, and they have an odd play habit. When they are being chased, they fling themselves on to saplings, which bend and catapult them in unexpected directions. This exuberant and quirky behavior disappears as the speedy red monkeys grow into adulthood, with one exception: When fleeing a predator, adults will fling themselves on to saplings, which bend and catapult them to escape.

University of North Carolina psychologist Barbara Fredrickson uses the antics of patas monkeys as both an example and metaphor for her “broaden and build” theory of positive emotions. The young monkeys are engaging in pointless fun, just for the sheer joy of it—or so it seems. In fact, their joy and play are creating a reserve of body memories that—way down the line—could keep them alive.
Positive emotions are life savers. That is Fredrickson’s answer to a question that has perplexed psychologists for years: What are positive emotions for? The survival value of negative emotions is obvious: Fear helps us avoid attackers, and disgust alerts us to poisons, and so forth. But what possible good are joy, contentment, gratitude, and curiosity? Fredrickson believes that these emotions increase cognitive flexibility, trump harmful negativity, and create a reservoir of resilience that helps us cope with life’s travails. She pulls together some of her most provocative and convincing studies in a new book, Positivity (Crown Publishers).

Consider this deceptively simple experiment. Fredrickson used lab techniques to “prime” the emotions of a large group of volunteers. Some were primed for amusement, some for serenity, still others for anger or fear or nothing at all. Then she asked them simply to make a list of things they would like to do at that moment. Those who were amused or serene listed significantly more possibilities than the others, suggesting that their minds were more open to ideas, more exploratory. She ran a similar experiment with abstract shapes, and found that the positive thinkers were more apt to see hidden patterns, to make connections. Those who were angry or fearful were too narrowly focused on details to see the big picture.

This is what Fredrickson calls “broadening,” and she had shown this cognitive benefit time and again in a variety of studies. But what is the value of such openness beyond the moment? This is where it gets really interesting. Fredrickson has shown that these moments of serenity or amusement have an accumulative effect over time. They break down the barriers between self and others, and build trust. In short, positivity creates open-mindedness, which sparks even more good feelings, creating an upward spiral of emotions. This is the “building” for the future: Over time, those with the most positive moments become more mindful and attentive, more accepting and purposeful, and more socially connected.

And healthier. This is the hidden and unanticipated benefit of laughter and peacefulness and thankfulness, according to Fredrickson’s studies. Positive emotions apparently work as an antidote to negativity. Fredrickson proved this by stressing people out with a public speaking task; this task made them predictably anxious, and also pumped up their heart rate, their blood pressure, and other signals of stress. Then she had them watch movies: some joyful or serene, others sad. She found that the positive emotions literally trumped the anxiety, undoing the body’s stress response, and returning the joyful and serene viewers to a steady state much more rapidly than the others. Since elevated heart rate and blood pressure can cause a range of serious health problems over time, Fredrickson concludes that positivity is literally life-saving.

Fredrickson has been building her theory for many years, and broadening it with new ideas and rigorous laboratory evidence. Positivity is an accessible and inspiring version of this project.

For more insights into the quirks of human nature, visit “We’re Only Human” at www.psychologicalscience.org/onlyhuman. Selections from the blog also appear regularly in the magazine Scientific American Mind and at http://www.sciam.com/.

An Explanation for Synchronized Swimming

There was a time when soldiers went into battle in columns and rows. They would line up and march in orderly formation toward the enemy, armed with spears or bayonets or some other weapon of close combat. The enemy would do the same thing, and one of these well-oiled formations would kill more soldiers than the other—and win the battle.

Advances in firearms long ago made the marching formation obsolete. It just doesn’t work with machine guns and IEDs. Yet armies all over the world still train for this archaic kind of warfare. Indeed, militaries continue to place high value on precision and synchrony that will never be used on a battlefield.

Why is that? Why do high schools have marching bands? Why do churches have choirs? And perhaps most perplexing of all, why do we have synchronized swimming? What is it about moving and chanting and singing in unison that appears to have universal appeal?

Anthropologists and cultural historians have offered up a variety of theories about synchrony over the years, mostly having to do with group coherence. One theory, for example, holds that various communities benefit from the actual physical synchrony—or “muscular bonding”—which builds group cohesiveness. Another idea is that synchronous activities lead to “collective effervescence”—positive emotions that break down the boundaries between self and group.

But neither of these theories has been proven, and what’s more, neither is complete. Muscle bonding may explain the coherence of the 14th Infantry Regiment, but those guys don’t seem very effervescent—not in the way that, say, carnival revelers are. And gross motor coordination doesn’t explain the almost motionless chanting of Tibetan monks. Psychologists have been looking for a unifying theory for the appeal of synchrony.

One idea, put forth by psychologists Scott Wiltermuth and Chip Heath of Stanford University, is that all synchrony—movement and sound and both together—is an ancient ritual that evolved for the economic benefit of the group. The primary goal of rhythmic dancing and marching and chanting is to solve the problem of the freeloader—the community member who hurts the collective good by taking but not contributing. Muscular bonding and collective joy are mere byproducts of this more fundamental economic ritual.

Wiltermuth and Heath ran a series of lab experiments to test this idea. In the simplest version, the researchers simply took groups of Stanford students on walks around campus; some walked in step—marching basically—while others just strolled the way students usually stroll. Later, after the students thought the experiment was over, the psychologists gave them all what’s called the “Weak Link” test. In this test, each volunteer chooses to act either self-interestedly or cooperatively, depending on what he anticipates others will do. The test basically measures the expectation that others will value the group over themselves.

The marchers acted more cooperatively than the strollers. They also said that they felt more “connected” than did the strollers. Notably, they did not report feeling any happier, suggesting that positive emotions were not necessary for the achieving the boost in group cohesiveness.

The psychologists wanted to do a more fine-grained test of their idea. It’s well known that a sense of common identity and shared fate boosts group cohesiveness, but the researchers wanted to see if synchrony contributes to group cohesiveness above and beyond this. They did a rather elaborate test to sort this out. They had students perform tasks—moving plastic cups—that required differing degrees of coordination with others. While doing this, they listened to “O Canada” through headphones. Remember that these were Stanford students, so the Canadian national anthem presumably had no emotional resonance for them; it was merely a synchronous act.

So some of the students sang and moved the cups in rhythm, while others just sang in unison and others merely read the lyrics silently. Still others sang and moved to different tempos—sort of like a really bad dancer moving at odds with the music. Then they did the same “Weak Link” test on all of them, only this time there was real money involved. As before, those who had experienced synchrony were more economically cooperative than those who had not. The bad dancers were bad citizens, but the physical movement otherwise made no difference; choral singers were selfless with or without the swaying, suggesting that muscle bonding is (like joy) unnecessary to get the desired group coherence. The swaying may be enjoyable, but the group singing was sufficient.

They did this “O Canada” experiment again with a different but similar test called the “public goods game.” This game uses tokens, and participants actually choose whether to contribute to a public kitty or their own private savings account. Self-interest has a higher payoff in the game, but the group benefits more if everyone acts unselfishly. They got the same results as before, but the interesting finding was this: The game has several rounds, and over time the choral singers increased their contribution to the group, keeping less money for themselves. They gave much more to the community fund in the last round than they did in the first, suggesting that the synchrony has persistent and growing effects.

The choral singers also said they felt more part of the team. They felt they had more in common with the others, and they trusted them somewhat more. Interestingly, as reported in the January issue of the journal Psychological Science, they also made more money in the end, because they shared in the group bounty.

Synchrony rituals are powerful So powerful that they may have endowed certain groups with a competitive advantage over the eons, perhaps even causing some cultures to flourish while others perished. It’s no wonder then that such potent impulses remain entrenched in today’s churches and armies—and, yes, could even explain synchronized swimming.

For more insights into the quirks of human nature, visit the “We’re Only Human” blog at www.psychologicalscience.org/onlyhuman. Selections from the blog also appear regularly in the magazine Scientific American Mind and at http://www.sciam.com/.

A Good Cry? Maybe, Maybe Not.

People will pay big bucks to sob uncontrollably.

It sounds twisted, but dollar signs don’t lie. “Tearjerkers” make up a multimillion dollar cinema market. Just think of Old Yeller, Brian’s Song, The Way We Were. The list goes on; pass the Kleenex.

But why? What is the psychological appeal of sniffling and watery eyes? Most people will say that crying feels good, that it’s cathartic, but that still doesn’t really get at the fundamental question of why. Psychologists are very interested in this commonest of human behaviors—and in the widely held belief in the therapeutic benefits of a “good cry.” Does everyone experience crying this way? How does the mind turn sadness into an uplifting experience? Is there such a thing as a “bad cry,” and if so, what’s the difference?

University of South Florida psychologist Jonathan Rottenberg is something of an expert on tears. He and his colleagues have been trying to sort out the crying experience, both good and bad, and they have some interesting preliminary findings from the lab. First of all, crying isn’t the sure-fire, feel-good tonic it’s cracked up to be. The psychologists collected and analyzed detailed accounts of more than 3000 recent crying experiences, and found that the benefits of tears depend entirely on the what, where and when of a particular crying episode. Indeed, fully a third of the criers experience no elevated mood after crying, and one in ten feel worse following a crying spell.

But those who do feel better after crying tend to share certain commonalities that may make their experiences therapeutic: For example, they are more apt to have been comforted by someone after crying; they’re not crying alone. They are also more likely to see whatever made them cry as fixed. And they are less apt to have been embarrassed or shamed by the experience. In short, there is tremendous diversity in the experience of crying—and its effects on mood.

Does this mean we romanticize crying when we look back on the experience? Perhaps, or at least the mind detoxifies the memory. For instance, while it’s true that a vast majority of people recall crying episodes as calming relief, these memories don’t always jibe with the real-time experience of shedding tears. When the researchers get people to cry in the lab, using some kind of sad stimulus, the experience is not all relief and soothing. Criers do show calming effects like slower breathing, but they also experience a lot of unpleasant stress and arousal; their heartbeats go up, and they start to sweat. What’s interesting is that the relief appears to last longer than the arousal. It may in fact come momentarily later and trump the stress reaction, which would account for why people tend to remember mostly the pleasant side of crying.

So do certain people benefit more than others from crying? It’s well documented that women cry more and more intensely than men—but apparently they don’t benefit all that much more than men from shedding tears. The same appears true of people with neurotic personalities; they cry more, but after all the tears are shed, they’re still more negative about life. The psychologists did find one personality trait that appears to diminish the benefits of crying: As reported in the December issue of the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, people who lack insight into their emotional lives actually feel worse after crying. It may be that their lack of emotional insight prevents the kind of cognitive changes required for a sad experience to be transformed into catharsis.

For more insights into the quirks of human nature, visit “We’re Only Human” at www.psychologicalscience.org/onlyhuman. Selections from the blog also appear regularly in the magazine Scientific American Mind and at http://www.sciam.com/.