Why (some) people drown their sorrows

Imagine that you just lost your job. The bad news came without warning—a company downsizing. You’re one more casualty of the recession. So naturally you’re feeling lousy, and what’s more, you need to go home and tell the family. But maybe, before you do, you’ll stop by your favorite watering hole for a martini—or two or three. You’ve got the time, after all.

That’s called drowning your sorrows—or, in psychological jargon, self-medication. It’s quite normal, really, to try to regulate intense negative emotions in whatever way possible, and liquor is a quick and effective strategy. But it’s not a healthy strategy—and the fact is, not everyone does it. While some of us turn to alcohol or drugs to cope with life’s curveballs, others seem to muddle through their travails in other ways.

So what’s the difference between those who use booze to cope and those who don’t? What’s going on in the mind or your co-worker, who also got a pink slip but drives right past the tavern? Doesn’t he feel bad, too?

No doubt he does, but new research suggests that you and your co-worker may have very different cognitive styles—different ways of appraising the same blunt negative emotions. While you may know that you feel “bad” and leave it at that, others may parse that global negativity: I feel angry at the boss; disappointed in myself; scared for my family. Simply knowing that one feels bad is not very useful, but more precise and fine-grained analysis conveys a richer understanding of bad feelings—and that understanding may actually lower risk of using (and abusing) alcohol as a coping mechanism.

At least that’s the theory, which George Mason University psychological scientist Todd Kashdan has been testing out in the lab. He suspected that people who are unskilled at differentiating their bad feelings would be more likely to dwell on those feelings and misinterpret them—making them worse—and that this would lead to self-medication. Here’s how he tested that idea.

He recruited a large group of social drinkers from the community, and had them monitor their drinking for three weeks using a hand-held electronic diary. They also kept track of their emotions during this time, recording when something made them feel angry or fatigued or anxious or distracted—and rating the intensity of those emotions. They did this when they were randomly prompted, and they also paid special attention to their feelings right before and after drinking. Kashdan used all this data to rate all the volunteers on how coarsely or finely they analyzed their emotions.

The idea was to see if those who were more precise in analyzing their own emotions were also less apt to drown their sorrows. And they were, clearly. As reported in the journal Psychological Science, those with intense negative emotions during the three weeks drank less if they thought about those feelings in more nuanced ways. It appears that people who can deconstruct their bad feelings in times of distress have more self-understanding—making it easier to manage problems and plan real coping strategies—not just numbing.

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 Scientific American Mind.

Are women shunning science?

In 2005, Harvard University president Lawrence Summers got himself into hot water. Speaking at a national conference on Diversifying the Science and Engineering Workforce, the former Clinton treasury official suggested that the relative scarcity of women in science careers might be explained—at least in part—by a gender difference in intrinsic aptitude for the sciences.

Summers mentioned other possible explanations as well, most notably the clash between high-power jobs and family life, but it was his remarks on science ability that grabbed all the attention. Actually, “attention” doesn’t fairly summarize what followed. Summers’ remarks ignited a firestorm of angry dissent—a reaction so intense that it led to a faculty vote of “no confidence” and, ultimately, to the Harvard chief’s resignation.


So where are the women in science and engineering and math? The question remains as politically and emotionally charged as it was five years ago, and it’s still begging for an answer. Even if Summers’ critics are entirely correct—and there is no real evidence that men and women differ in scientific talent—what then is the explanation for the disparity in careers? Is it indeed that the pressures of childbearing and parenting preclude high-intensity careers for women? Is it early socialization and stereotypes? Discrimination at the highest levels of science? All of the above?

Or something else entirely? New research is now pointing to a novel explanation for the discrepancy. According to an emerging theory, there is indeed a gender difference at work, but it is a difference in values rather than ability. What’s more, it’s not that women can’t cut it in math and science; it’s that they reject these fields as too ego- and power-driven for their sensibilities.

According to Miami University psychological scientist Amanda Diekman, women may be opting out of science careers because they perceive these careers as lacking in communal values like intimacy, altruism, and connection with people. If correct, this theory might illuminate another mystery: Why is it that the gender gap has almost entirely disappeared in other demanding careers like medicine and law—but stubbornly persists in science, math and engineering. Medicine is especially puzzling, because it requires the same scientific mastery as careers in research and engineering.

Women embrace communal values more than men, who tend to value individuality and power. That gender difference has been well documented over many years. Diekman and her colleagues wondered if this basic difference in values might shape women’s career choices—leading them away from the lone ranger image associated with laboratory science and toward more nurturing careers. They decided to test this out in the laboratory.

The study was straightforward. They recruited a large group of young men and women from the university’s science classes. They were about 19 years old on average—so just the age to be thinking about career choice. The researchers asked them about their career preferences, and also about their values and goals—whether they were driven by a desire for power and success or by intimacy and altruism. They also asked them to rate a whole list careers according to these values. Finally, they measured their math and science ability—and their confidence in these abilities.

When they crunched all the data together, the results were unambiguous. As reported on-line in the journal Psychological Science, the more strongly the students embraced values like intimacy and human connection, the less interested they were in science and math careers. And these communally-oriented students were mostly women. In other words, young women did see science and engineering careers as isolated and individualistic—and what’s more, as obstacles to finding meaning in their lives. This was true regardless of their past performance in math and science or their confidence in their ability to succeed in these fields. In short, the women were taking charge of their lives by making a values choice.

Here’s the ironic part, though. There is no real evidence that scientists and engineers are selfish rogues, nor that scientific work is bereft of spiritual values. Indeed, science and engineering careers could be seen as highly communitarian, since many scientists do dream of improving the human condition. But that’s not the perception.

And that’s good news, in a way. If science and engineering have a perception problem, perceptions at least can be changed over time. The image of the isolated lone ranger simply needs to be displaced by a new image of the scientist as connected, collaborative and humane—at the earliest levels of schooling.

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 Scientific American Mind.

Pack Up All Your Cares and Woes

Many healing traditions make use of jars—variously called God jars, or resentment jars, or worry jars. The idea is that you can—literally—compartmentalize your troubles, and by doing so take away their emotional power.

If this sounds like a lot of New Age gobbledygook to you, read on.

The practice is a form of metaphor therapy, which sees psychological truth in common metaphors like “bottled-up anger” and “buried sorrows.” These figures of speech are not arbitrary, a growing number of psychologists believe; instead they are examples of the way abstract psychological states overlap with physical experience. Psychological scientist Xiuping Li and his colleagues at the National University of Singapore wanted to explore these ideas in connection with emotional regulation—specifically the possibility that the physical act of enclosing bad feelings might facilitate psychological closure on a difficult emotional experience.

The first experiments were quite simple. In one, the researchers asked a group of volunteers to recall (and write about) a recent decision that they regretted. Half of them sealed the written memory inside an envelope before handing it in, while the others simply handed it to the experimenter. Then they all reported their feelings about the event, including guilt, worry and shame. In a second similar experiment, volunteers wrote about a dream that had gone unfulfilled. Again, only half sealed away their recollections, and again they all later described how emotionally upset they were. The results were unambiguous, and identical in each study: Those who physically sealed away their bad experiences—even though it was just in a common envelope—had many fewer negative emotions afterward. The simple act of containing the emotionally charged memories appears to have defused them.

At least that’s one interpretation. But the scientists wanted to be sure that it was specifically the act of enclosing negative memories and emotions that was alleviating distress. So they ran another experiment to clarify the findings. In this one, volunteers read a news account of a child’s tragic death, and wrote about their emotional response to it. Then they wrote about something neutral—their plans for the weekend, for example. Half the volunteers sealed up the tragic story and their reactions, while the others sealed up their weekend plans, before doing the same kind of emotional inventory.

The purpose here was to see if simply sealing up anything would have the same tonic effect. It did not. Only those who sealed up their shock and sadness about the tragedy got relief from the act. The scientists did one more version of the study where some of the volunteers paper-clipped the distressing memory rather than sealing it up; and again this act failed to alleviate emotional upset. Apparently psychological closure really means closure—not clipping. As reported on-line last week in the journal Psychological Science, only the act of enveloping the emotional content worked.

So how does it work? It’s not known for sure, but here’s a hint. The scientists finished the study of the tragic news study by giving all the volunteers a pop quiz at the end—to see how much of the story they recalled. And guess what. Those who had gone through the act of sealing away the event and their feelings remembered fewer details of the event. That is, sealing up the emotional content appears to have diminished the actual memory of the upsetting event, contributing to the psychological closure necessary for putting the pain in the past.

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 Scientific American Mind.

No Exit: Living With Walls and Fences

The right to move around is a fundamental human right. Back in 1948, in the wake of World War II, the United Nations declared that all men and women have the right to roam freely in their homeland, to leave, to return if they choose, and to exit again. That political vision recognized a basic psychological truth—that it is a violation of human nature to fence people in.

Even so, the global reality never matched the ideal. Citizens of many nations are still denied the basic liberty to pack up and leave for a better place. What are the psychological consequences when this human liberty is violated? When borders are closed and exit papers withheld?

One would think that being penned in would spark resentment at the least, and perhaps even rebelliousness and political unrest. But some new psychological research is suggesting this may not be the case, that indeed the opposite may be true: Denying citizens their fundamental freedom of movement may ironically transform those citizens into passionate defenders of the status quo—including unfair policies totally unrelated to emigration.

A team of psychological scientists at the University of Waterloo—Kristin Laurin, Steven Shepherd and Aaron Kay—wanted to see the lengths to which people will go to rationalize such political repression. They suspected, because restrictions on emigration often lead to all sorts of other punitive policies, that trapped citizens will rationalize the existence of a repressive regime and all its practices. They tested this idea in some interesting laboratory experiments.

In one study, for example, the scientists primed volunteers’ thoughts about either unfettered movement or confinement by having them read futuristic depictions of Canada. Some read of a future with unrestricted travel beyond Canada’s borders, while others read that it would be increasingly difficult to leave and settle elsewhere. Afterward, all the volunteers read an account of gender inequality in their country—including the fact that men earn much more than equally qualified women. They were given the option of explaining such unfairness by either blaming the system or by attributing it to genuine differences between men and women.

The researchers studied only women in this experiment, on the assumption that the gender issue would hit closer to home for them. They suspected that women who felt confined would be more likely to rationalize the negative aspects of their lives at home, even something as emotionally powerful as gender inequality. And that’s exactly what they found. As reported on-line in the journal Psychological Science, the women who felt free to leave home were more critical of their lives at home, blaming gender inequality on an unfair system. Those who felt “stuck” were much less likely to acknowledge the hypothetical Canada’s flaws; they were more tolerant of their underclass status, viewing it as a legitimate result of natural differences.

This is cognitive dissonance writ large. Cognitive dissonance is the theory that humans will rationalize even the most aversive conditions—if they are forced to live with them. These results go even further, suggesting that denial of one liberty can lead victims to rationalize another kind another rights violation altogether—even something as basic as equality under the law—and indeed an entire system. Interestingly, when the scientists reran this experiment with a depiction of Germany rather than Canada, the rationalization of the repressive system vanished. That is to say, the volunteers were motivated not by some abstract belief in freedom, but by the prospect of very personal restrictions on their liberty, at home in Canada. The researchers ran another version of the study, this one involving both men and women, and found the same phenomenon at work.

So how much repression will citizens “make okay”? There may be limits, the Waterloo scientists say. When the former Soviet Union refused to grant exit visas to its Jewish citizens, many of them did the opposite of what these lab results suggest: They formed dissident groups and unrelentingly attacked the repressive regime—not just the Soviet emigration policy but the entire system. Despite the remarkable human ability to rationalize, it may be Soviet repression was too dreadful and immoral to justify.

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.