'To suffer is to suffer': Analyzing the Russian national character

The 19th-century Russian scholar and war hero Boris Grushenko had this to say about human suffering: “To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love, but then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love, to be happy then is to suffer but suffering makes one unhappy, therefore to be unhappy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness.”

Pretty heady stuff—and pretty depressing.

There is no Boris Grushenko. Woody Allen fans will recognize Boris as the cowardly anti-hero of the 1975 film Love and Death, the director’s parody of Russia’s brooding national character. Boris represents all Russians in his deep distrust of happiness and his eagerness to indulge his every distressing thought and melancholy emotion.

Woody Allen is not alone in stereotyping the dark Russian temperament. But is this caricature accurate? Are Russians really more self-absorbed than their Western counterparts? Do they ruminate more on the negative, and is such brooding impairing the country’s collective mental health?

Two University of Michigan psychological scientists had some doubts about this caricature, and they decided to explore it in the laboratory. Igor Grossmann and Ethan Kross suspected that, even if Russians as a group are more self-reflective and more preoccupied with negative thoughts, this trait may not necessarily be a bad thing. In other words, all self-reflection may not be the same, and some styles of rumination—including the Russian style—might actually be healthy rather than maladaptive. They tested this theory in a couple of simple experiments.

The first study aimed simply to test whether the stereotype was accurate, and whether or not self-reflection was related to depression. The scientists recruited large groups of both Russians and Americans, and gave them a battery of psychological tests, including tests for depression, for rumination, and for a tendency to self-analyze negative thoughts. The results were clear: The Russians were much more likely to identify themselves as self-reflective, but this group trait was not linked to depression. In fact, the opposite: The self-reflective Russians had fewer symptoms of depression than did the less analytical Americans.

These results raised more questions than they answered—like why? It appears that something about the Russian culture or character or cognitive style reduces distress, but what is the mechanism? Grossmann and Kross had an idea, which they tested in a second experiment. In this study, volunteers—again both American and Russian—were instructed to recall and analyze their “deepest thoughts and feelings” about a recent experience that made them angry. Afterward, the volunteers answered questions about their self-analysis: Did they actually re-experience the distressing events? Or did they see the events as a detached observer, from afar? Did they simply narrate the emotional experience to themselves, or were they looking for insight and closure on the event?

These questions were meant to identify the volunteers’ style of self-reflection. Some people tend to immerse themselves in past negative events, to relive them, while others distance themselves. Some want to put bad things in perspective more than others. These different ways of construing negative experiences determine whether self-reflection is healthy or harmful.

The scientists suspected that the Russians would be more detached than the Americans in their self-analysis—and that’s just what they found. As reported on-line in the journal Psychological Science, the Russian volunteers were not only less distressed while recalling a bad experience, they thought about the event in a healthier way, keeping more psychological distance from the emotional details. They analyzed their feelings, but with detachment, and this detachment buffered them from depression.

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So is there something about Russian culture—and American culture—that leads to these healthy and unhealthy styles of self-indulgent thinking? Grossmann and Kross believe it has to do with the basic nature of Russian and American societies. Russians tend to be more communal, more focused on interpersonal harmony, and this allows them to see their own personal needs in larger context, from an outsider perspective. Americans, by contrast, come from a tradition of rugged individualism, and tend to focus on the personal. With less of a community perspective, they immerse themselves in the emotional details of negative events, and this self focus leads to distress and depression.

So it appears that the stereotype of the brooding Russian may contain an element of truth afer all, but the caricature of the Russian suffering and loving to suffer is a mere fiction from the American cinema.

Wray Herbert’s book, On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind’s Hard-Wired Habits, will be published by Crown in September. Excerpts from his “We’re Only Human” blog appear regularly in The Huffington Post and the magazine Scientific American Mind.

Can negativity save a failing marriage?

Newlyweds are almost always advised to be upbeat—to have positive expectations for their relationship, to put the best spin on their partner’s actions, and to forgive and forget. Marriage counselors also take (and preach) the view that positive attitudes and actions will strengthen a struggling marriage, even when a little negativity might be well-deserved.

So why do half of all couples in therapy fail to save their marriages? Is it possible that this rose-tinted advice is bad advice, that positivity isn’t the cure-all for ailing unions after all? New research seems to suggest that indeed, for rocky marriages, false positivity may actually gloss over issues that need attention, exacerbating rather than solving problems.

James McNulty, a psychological scientist at the University of Tennessee, has been studying newlyweds, following their marriages over years, through thick and thin. He has examined couples’ expectations, their tendencies to blame one another, their problem solving styles, and their readiness to forgive. His overall conclusion is that, while positivity is in fact tonic for couples who are doing okay, it is detrimental for couples who are already on the skids.

Here’s a closer look, as spelled out in the latest issue of the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science. The received wisdom among marriage experts is that having a bleak outlook is a self-fulfilling prophecy—leading to destructive interactions that undermine the partnership. But McNulty found a more nuanced view when he followed 82 newlywed couples over four years of marriage. Being hopeful about the future only helps if those hopes are confirmed by experience, he found. But for many couples—especially those lacking problem-solving skills—those early high hopes are dashed, leading to disappointment. For such couples, realistically anticipating some rough patches may not be a bad thing—and in fact can result in greater satisfaction over the long haul.

Or consider the blame game. Everyone who has ever been married has screwed up sometime, and it seems obvious that cutting your partner some slack would be good for the marriage. And that’s true—for happy couples. Husbands and wives in solid marriages look for alternative explanations when their partner blunders, instead of blaming the blunder on a character flaw. But McNulty found that this strategy—benevolently looking for excuses—can also cause couples to overlook important issues in the marriage, which then go unresolved. Which strategy is best depends on the relationship and the problems. In another of his long-range studies of couples, McNulty found that, when the problems were most severe, holding one’s partner responsible—blaming them—led to greater satisfaction, presumably because a little negativity forced the couples to confront issues.

Partners who routinely blame one another are often rejecting and controlling as well—traits that make for ineffective problem solving. Accordingly, therapists usually counsel couples to avoid these negative behaviors when they’re trying to work something out. Yet again, McNulty found this to be simplistic advice—inapplicable to all couples. Couples who had mostly minor problems did indeed benefit if they were less rejecting and controlling, but couples with knottier and more frequent problems actually did better if they were more negative during discussions. Why? Presumably it’s because rejection and demanding behavior—as toxic as they seem—can actually be effective strategies for forcing a partner to make the changes needed for a marriage to survive.

Wouldn’t a healthy dose of forgiveness trump all the problems that plague marriages? Isn’t that the simplest answer to most of the travails that undermine relationships? Well, yes and no, says McNulty. In his studies, the psychologist found that forgiveness only works for relationships that experience rare marital misdemeanors. In marriages where one’s partner is frequently unkind or insulting, being unforgiving appears to pay off. In such troubled couples, too much forgiveness simply increases the likelihood that the cruelty will continue—and lead to more disharmony over time.

So two cheers for negativity in marriage. McNulty found one notable exception, however—sarcasm. The tendency to be snide is linked to unhappier and less successful marriages, no matter how difficult the problems that couples faced initially. The benefits of negativity appear to require directness; direct negativity provides concrete information to both partners about what changes are needed to save the marriage. Indirect, snarky negativity just creates ambiguity about how to get from here to there.

Wray Herbert’s new book, On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind’s Hard-Wired Habits, will be published by Crown in September. Excerpts from the “We’re Only Human” blog appear regularly in The Huffington Post and in Scientific American Mind.

Does believing soothe the worried mind?

Religious beliefs date back at least 100,000 years. That’s the time when our Neanderthal cousins began burying their dead with weapons and tools—presumably prepping them for the world beyond the grave. And such beliefs persist today, with the vast majority of modern humans in every corner of the globe espousing some kind of religious conviction.

But why? The antiquity and universality of belief suggest that it serves some fundamental psychological purpose, but what would that be? A small but growing number of psychological scientists have been exploring these questions, focusing on the idea that religious belief may be a natural consequence of the human mind at work. According to this view, belief emerged to satisfy a basic human need to comprehend and explain a complex and unpredictable world. By allowing us to impose some sense of purpose and order on the randomness, believing in God and an afterlife helps us cope with uncertainty—and thus relieves anxiety.

At least that’s the theory of Michael Inzlicht and Alexa Tullett of the University of Toronto Scarborough, who study the cognitive aspects of religion. Inzlicht and Tullett have been testing the notion that belief quells anxiety by looking at the brain in action. The brain has a built-in monitor that is constantly on the lookout for mental mistakes, and when any such error occurs, this monitor sends off a neural distress signal. It’s an important job, because it helps us detect and correct bad thinking, but too much vigilance leads to an overly active distress signal—in short, a worried mind. The researchers wanted to see if religious thoughts might dampen this cortical alarm.

So they ran a couple experiments. In one, for example, they recruited a group of volunteers who were all strong believers in God, though they came from varied religious backgrounds. They “primed” religious thinking in only some of the volunteers by having them write about the meaning of their own religion. Others, the control subjects, wrote about their favorite season—also a positive topic, but less meaningful. Then the volunteers attempted a very difficult cognitive task—one deliberately chosen to produce a lot of mental errors. They hooked all the volunteers up to an EEG to monitor their brains’ neural activity while as they monitored these errors.

A milder signal would mean that the religious thinking somehow muffled the natural alarm, in effect calming the brain. And that’s just what they saw on the EEGs: As reported on-line last week in the journal Psychological Science, those prompted to reflect on God were noticeably less anxious than the control subjects.

The scientists reran the experiment in a slightly different way to compare believers and atheists. This time, they had all the volunteers—believers and atheists alike—complete a word task designed to unconsciously prime religious thinking. As before, the religious thinking (even though it was out of conscious awareness) had a palliative effect on the believers, dampening the distress signaling in the brain. But here’s the interesting part: It had the exact opposite effect on the atheists, who actually showed a heightened distress signal. Even though the religious priming was unconscious, the atheists reacted defensively, as if the thoughts of religion were challenging their system of meaning.

This cortical alarm system fires off within a few hundredths of a second following a mistake. But might these finding have long-range mental health implications? If thinking about religion causes this instantaneous calming effect, might religious people live lives of greater equanimity? Might religious people be better able to cope with life’s curve balls?

Yes and no, the scientists say. It certainly appears from these studies that strong beliefs have positive, calming effects, but that doesn’t privilege formal or traditional religious beliefs. Indeed, affirming any cherished values—even atheism—should allow believers to see their world as more stable, understandable and predictable.

Wray Herbert’s book, On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind’s Hard-Wired Habits, will be published by Crown in September. Excerpts from the “We’re Only Human” blog appear regularly in The Huffington Post and in Scientific American Mind.

Does Botox impair human understanding?

Hollywood film directors were among the first to recognize the downside of Botox. Several years ago, Martin Scorsese, whose works include Raging Bull, Taxi Driver and The Departed, became an early and outspoken critic of the anti-aging treatment. The Academy Award-winning director complained that it was becoming increasingly difficult to find an actress who could use her face to express the range of human emotion, especially anger.

It may be worse than the famed director susepcted. New evidence is now suggesting that Botox may harm not only the expression of emotion, but also its comprehension. The facial paralysis that does away with unwanted frown lines may cripple a crucial ability to mimic and process emotional language.

That’s the conclusion of David Havas, a psychological scientist at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. Havas and his colleagues did not set out to study the unintended consequences of the controversial cosmetic treatment. Their goal was to study the role of the nervous system in normal language processing, specifically the idea that people comprehend emotional language in part by involuntarily simulating emotions with their facial nerves and muscles. They used injections of the neurotoxin to disable certain facial nerves as a way of testing this theory.

The scientists studied first-time patients who were scheduled for Botox treatment to get rid of their frown lines—a treatment that works by paralyzing a particular set of facial muscles. Since frowns are an important element in anger and sadness, they wanted to see if disabling the frown muscles impaired comprehension of sad and happy sentences—but not happy ones. They had the patients read dozens of sentences of each kind, both before Botox treatment and two weeks later, timing them to see if there was any slowdown in reading speed as a result of the treatment.

The results were unambiguous. As reported on line this week in the journal Psychological Science, the scientists not only verified their theory of language processing, they also showed that getting rid of frowns selectively impairs the ability to understand angry and sad sentences. In other words, it’s normal to frown—undetectably—when we try to process anger and sadness. If we can’t frown, our emotional understanding breaks down.

The popularity of Botox has of course spread far beyond Hollywood since Scorsese first sounded the alarm about the acting biz. Indeed, the director might now be worried about the emotional depth of his viewing audience as well.

Wray Herbert’s new book, On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind’s Hard-Wired Habits, will be published by Crown in September. Excerpts from “We’re Only Human” appear regularly in The Huffington Post and Scientific American Mind.

The Paradox of Idleness

Would Sisyphus have been happier just sitting in a jail cell, twiddling his thumbs? After all, the punishment Zeus meted out to him was nothing more than make-work: rolling that boulder up the hill again and again and again, without purpose or sense of accomplishment. It couldn’t have been very satisfying. What if Zeus had softened, and granted him a reprieve—and eternal idleness?

An interesting new study suggests that the mythical prisoner would not have liked it in the least. Indeed he would have longed for his days of rock pushing. Make-work may be pointless and demeaning, but at least it’s work; it’s an activity. And people prefer activity—even when they’re forced into it—to sitting around with nothing to do.

That’s the conclusion of University of Chicago psychologist Christopher Hsee, who has been exploring idleness in the laboratory. In one experiment, for example, he had volunteers complete part one of a two-part task. They had to wait a short time before beginning part two, and Hsee gave them two options: They could drop off their work nearby and then wait, or they could drop it at a distant location that required a short stroll. They would receive a piece of milk chocolate, regardless of which option they chose.

Most people chose to stay put. They really had no incentive to walk, so they sat and waited. But here’s the interesting part: If Hsee offered different incentives—a milk chocolate nearby and a dark chocolate if they strolled—most of the volunteers took a walk. Which chocolate was where didn’t matter; they switched them around. Hsee was simply offering them the flimsiest of reasons to opt for activity over idleness—and they grabbed it. What’s more, those who strolled during the down-time reported being much happier afterward than those who sat around.

This is paradoxical. People choose idleness if activity seems pointless, yet they’re less happy when they do sit around. And it’s not that people don’t know this in advance. They do anticipate that being active will be more satisfying, but they apparently are swayed by wanting to make a reasonable choice—not an emotional one. They would feel foolish if they walked just to walk.

Hsee ran another version of this experiment, but this time he eliminated choice. That is, some volunteers were ordered to walk to the faraway location and back, while others were told to sit and wait. The results? As reported on-line this week in the journal Psychological Science, those who walked—even though they were forced to do so—were happier than those who sat waiting.

So people don’t always choose what’s best for them. No shock there. But why this confusion over business and idleness? Hsee believes it is rooted in human evolution. Idleness made a great deal of sense for our ancient ancestors, because conserving energy was crucial to survival. We no longer have the same survival demands, so we’re left with a lot of excess energy—which we like to spend in activity, business. Yet that idleness bias still lingers way down deep. Hence the mixed feelings.

Idleness is not always a bad thing. And being busy isn’t always productive, and indeed can be unsavory. Remember that Sisyphus was a real bad apple—scheming, deceitful, murderous. We wouldn’t want him hanging around with lots of time on his hands. That’s what Zeus concluded—and he found something to keep him occupied.

Excerpts from “We’re Only Human” appear regularly in The Huffington Post and Scientific American Mind. Wray Herbert’s new book, On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind’s Hard-Wired Habits, will be published in September by Crown.

How lucky charms really work

Wade Boggs, the former Red Sox slugger and third baseman, was very ritualistic about his warm-ups. For night games, he took batting practice at precisely 5:17 and ran wind sprints at exactly 7:17. He fielded 150 ground balls before every game, never more nor less, and always ended his infield practice by stepping—in the same order—on third, second and first base, then the baseline, followed by two steps in the coaching box and four more steps into the dugout. He ate chicken before every game, and even though he was not Jewish, he scratched the Hebrew word for “life” in the dirt before every at-bat.

Boggs had a career batting average of .328, earning him a spot on the Hall of Fame.

Coincidence? Most scientists dismiss superstitions as inconsequential fictions, the creations of irrational minds. Yet many people—and not just ball players—firmly believe in lucky charms and rituals, from rabbits’ feet to crossed fingers to expressions like “break a leg.” Boggs may have been more elaborate in his magical thinking, but his belief in the supernatural was far from unusual.

Psychologists have long been fascinated with such thinking, but most research so far has focused on the sources of superstition—where magical beliefs come from. Recently, however, a few scientists have begun to explore the heretical idea that lucky charms may actually work. Is it possible that such irrational thinking really does improve performance? And if so, what is the psychological mechanism at work?

Psychologist Lysann Damisch of the University of Koln, Germany, is among those who believe that lucky charms may indeed be effective, and she has an idea about why. She suspects that the activation of superstitious thinking directly prior to a task may boost a person’s confidence in his or her ability to succeed—what’s known as self-efficacy—which in turn boosts expectations and persistence, thus improving performance. She decided to test this idea in a series of experiments.

The first two experiments were similar. In one, Damisch had a group of volunteers putt golf balls about four feet into the hole—so not hugely difficult but definitely missable. But before they attempted this, she told about half of them that they were playing with a “lucky” ball, while the others just got a regular golf ball. Similarly in a second experiment, the volunteers attempted a difficult hand-held dexterity game; but before they did, half were told: “I’m keeping my fingers crossed for you.” In other words, in each study, only some of the volunteers had their superstitious thinking sparked, while the others simply performed the task. And the results were the same in both tests. Those “feeling lucky” did much better than did those with no magic on their side.

So good luck charms did clearly improve performance, but how? Damisch ran a couple more experiments to test her ideas about confidence, expectations and persistence. She again had volunteers perform difficult tasks—in this case memory and anagram tests. And again, she made only some of the volunteers “lucky”--now by having them bring their own personal charms to the test site. But in these studies she also measured the volunteers’ confidence and effectiveness; their expectations for their performance; and how long they persevered before giving up.

The results were unambiguous. As reported on-line last week in the journal Psychological Science, those with their personal lucky charms in their possession were much more confident going into the performance. This confidence in turn caused the players to set higher personal goals and expectations and to persist longer at the task—all of which added up to excellent performance. In short, nothing magical about it.

Lucky charms are prevalent in most world cultures, and have been for eons. This evidence for their potency may help explain why this is so. All-Star performances no doubt require much more than talismans. Wade Boggs combined exceptional talent and years of hard work, but apparently those chicken dinners and wind sprints at precisely 7:17 didn’t hurt.


Wray Herbert’s book, On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind’s Hard-Wired Habits, will be published by Crown in September. Excerpts of “We’re Only Human” appear regularly in the magazine Scientific American Mind and in The Huffington Post.