Arthur Brooks launches a happiness column.

It seems a bit strange to launch a column on happiness during a pandemic, but the social isolation that has been forced on us provides us with more time to consider our lives and what really has meaning for us. Arthur Brooks, who teaches a class at the Harvard Business School on happiness, has now offered what is the first in a series of articles in The Atlantic on identifying the building blocks of subjective well-being. (The term well-being is preferred to happiness, because happiness is used to denote everything from a passing good mood to a deeper sense of meaning in life.) I recommend that you read Brooks' article, and pass on here edited chunks of text with three succinct equations he offers for well-being, equations having some variables you can have some influence over, and others that you can not easily change.  

Equation 1: Subjective Well-being = Genes + Circumstances + Habits

Studies of identical twins raised apart suggest that the genetic component of a person’s well-being is between 44 percent and 52 percent, that is, about half. Circumstances—the good and the bad that enter all of our lives—could make up as little as 10 percent or as much as 40 percent of your subjective well-being. Even if circumstances play a big role, however, most scholars think it doesn’t matter very much, because the effects of circumstance never last very long. Genes and circumstances aren’t a productive focus in your quest for happiness. But don’t worry, there’s one variable left that affects long-term well-being and is under our control: habits. To understand habits, we need Equation 2.

Equation 2: Habits = Faith + Family + Friends + Work

Enduring happiness comes from human relationships, productive work, and the transcendental elements of life...many different faiths and secular life philosophies can provide this happiness edge. The key is to find a structure through which you can ponder life’s deeper questions and transcend a focus on your narrow self-interests to serve others...Similarly, there is no magic formula for what shape your family and friendships should take.People who have loving relationships with family and friends thrive; those who don’t, don’t...One of the most robust findings in the happiness literature is the centrality of productive human endeavor in creating a sense of purpose in life...What makes work meaningful is not the kind of work it is, but the sense it gives you that you are earning your success and serving others.

Equation 3: Satisfaction = What you have ÷ What you want

The secret to satisfaction is to focus on the denominator of Equation 3. Don’t obsess about your haves; manage your wants, instead. Don’t count your possessions (or your money, power, prestige, romantic partners, or fame) and try to figure out how to increase them; make an inventory of your worldly desires and try to decrease them. Make a bucket list—but not of exotic vacations and expensive stuff. Make a list of the attachments in your life you need to discard. Then, make a plan to do just that. The fewer wants there are screaming inside your brain and dividing your attention, the more peace and satisfaction will be left for what you already have.

After offering the above three equations as the first class in the mechanics of building a life, Brooks promises in the coming months to offer further installments on the art and science of happiness.

By the way, since this is a post on the subject of happiness,  I want to also point to a recent Sam Harris podcast on the science of happiness - a conversation with Laurie Santos, who  teaches the most popular course offered at Yale, "The Science of WellBeing," and also hosts the popular podcast The Happiness Lab.

Prosocial behavior can increase happiness in the short term but decrease it in the long term.

From Falk and Graeber:  

Significance

Governments around the world increasingly acknowledge the role of happiness as a societal objective and implement policies that target national wellbeing levels. Knowledge about the determinants of happiness, however, is still limited. A longstanding candidate is prosocial behavior. Our study empirically investigates the causal effect of prosocial behavior on happiness in a high-stakes decision experiment. While we confirm previous findings of a positive effect in the short term, our findings distinctly show that this effect is short lived and even reverses after some time. This study documents that prosocial behavior does not unequivocally increase happiness because prosocial spending naturally requires giving up something else, which may decrease happiness in its own right.

Abstract

Does prosocial behavior promote happiness? We test this longstanding hypothesis in a behavioral experiment that extends the scope of previous research. In our Saving a Life paradigm, every participant either saved one human life in expectation by triggering a targeted donation of 350 euros or received an amount of 100 euros. Using a choice paradigm between two binary lotteries with different chances of saving a life, we observed subjects’ intentions at the same time as creating random variation in prosocial outcomes. We repeatedly measured happiness at various delays. Our data weakly replicate the positive effect identified in previous research but only for the very short run. One month later, the sign of the effect reversed, and prosocial behavior led to significantly lower happiness than obtaining the money. Notably, even those subjects who chose prosocially were ultimately happier if they ended up getting the money for themselves. Our findings revealed a more nuanced causal relationship than previously suggested, providing an explanation for the apparent absence of universal prosocial behavior.

Optimism and longevity.

I want to point to recent articles relevant to an issue most of us mull about: "Is my glass half empty or half full?" Jane Brody describes a number of studies linking greater optimism to a lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease and other chronic ailments and to fostering “exceptional" longevity, defined as living to 85 and beyond. And Susan Shain does a self-help piece, citing numerous studies on how to be more optimistic. Finally, Parker-Pope, in the NYTimes Well section summarizes her recipe:  

Spend time with optimistic people. Optimism, like pessimism, can be infectious.  

Reframe negative situations. When something bad happens, ask yourself if there is a potential upside. A setback at work can be an opportunity to rethink your goals. By mindfully looking for a positive, we retrain our brains, and optimism will come more naturally.  

Minimize your exposure to negative news. Don’t bury your head in the sand, but when bad news hits, educate yourself and then turn it off. We don’t need to expose ourselves to a 24-7 bad news cycle just because it’s there.

Start a gratitude practice. Try writing a nightly journal documenting three good things from your day. Or start meals with a family conversation about how you dealt with a daily challenge.

Try meditation. A daily meditation practice is a great way to ease your mind and shift yourself into more positive thoughts.  

Adopt a mantra. When times get tough, fall back on a mantra that can put you in the right frame of mind. “I’ve got this!” or “Accept what you can’t change” can help you get through tough times.

Feeling pleasure from music - brain correlates of why people differ

From Martínez-Molina et al.:

SIGNIFICANCE

Music is one of the most important sources of pleasure for many people, but at the same time there are important individual differences in the sensitivity to musical reward. Previous studies have revealed the critical involvement of the functional connectivity between perceptual and subcortical brain areas in the enjoyment of music. However, it is unknown whether individual differences in music sensitivity might arise from variability in the structural connectivity among these areas. Here we show that structural connectivity between supratemporal and orbitofrontal cortices, and between orbitofrontal and nucleus accumbens, predict individual differences in sensibility to music reward. These results provide evidence for the critical involvement of the interaction between the subcortical reward system and higher-order cortical areas in music-induced pleasure.

Abstract

People show considerable variability in the degree of pleasure they experience from music. These individual differences in music reward sensitivity are driven by variability in functional connectivity between the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), a key structure of the reward system, and the right superior temporal gyrus (STG). However, it is unknown whether a neuroanatomical basis exists for this variability. We used diffusion tensor imaging and probabilistic tractography to study the relationship between music reward sensitivity and white matter microstructure connecting these two regions via the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in 38 healthy human participants (24 females and 14 males). We found that right axial diffusivity (AD) in the STG–OFC connectivity inversely correlated with music reward sensitivity. Additionally, right mean diffusivity and left AD in the NAcc-OFC tract also showed an inverse correlation. Further, AD in this tract also correlated with previously acquired BOLD activity during music listening, but not for a control monetary reward task in the NAcc. Finally, we used mediation analysis to show that AD in the NAcc–OFC tract explains the influence of NAcc activation during a music task on music reward sensitivity. Overall, our results provide further support for the idea that the exchange of information among perceptual, integrative, and reward systems is important for musical pleasure, and that individual differences in the structure of the relevant anatomical connectivity influences the degree to which people are able to derive such pleasure.

Your professional decline.

Arthur Brooks, former president of the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank and New York Times Op-Ed writer, does an essay in the Atlantic in which he contemplates his professional decline, making points that are universally relevant. Some clips:

...happiness of most adults declines through their 30s and 40s, then bottoms out in their early 50s...Almost all studies of happiness over the life span show that, in wealthier countries, most people’s contentment starts to increase again in their 50s, until age 70 or so. That is where things get less predictable, however. After 70, some people stay steady in happiness; others get happier until death. Others—men in particular—see their happiness plummet. Indeed, depression and suicide rates for men increase after age 75...A few researchers have looked at this cohort to understand what drives their unhappiness. It is, in a word, irrelevance.

This is especially an issue in gifted and accomplished people.

...accomplishment is a well-documented source of happiness. If current accomplishment brings happiness, then shouldn’t the memory of that accomplishment provide some happiness as well?...Though the literature on this question is sparse, giftedness and achievements early in life do not appear to provide an insurance policy against suffering later on...abundant evidence suggests that the waning of ability in people of high accomplishment is especially brutal psychologically...Call it the Principle of Psychoprofessional Gravitation: the idea that the agony of professional oblivion is directly related to the height of professional prestige previously achieved, and to one’s emotional attachment to that prestige...the memory of remarkable ability, if that is the source of one’s self-worth, might, for some, provide an invidious contrast to a later, less remarkable life.

In some professions, early decline is inescapable. No one expects an Olympic athlete to remain competitive until age 60. But in many physically nondemanding occupations, we implicitly reject the inevitability of decline before very old age. Sure, our quads and hamstrings may weaken a little as we age. But as long as we retain our marbles, our quality of work as a writer, lawyer, executive, or entrepreneur should remain high up to the very end, right? ...The data are shockingly clear that for most people, in most fields, decline starts earlier than almost anyone thinks...if you start a career in earnest at 30, expect to do your best work around 50 and go into decline soon after that...the most common age for producing a magnum opus is the late 30s...the likelihood of a major discovery increases steadily through one’s 20s and 30s and then declines through one’s 40s, 50s, and 60s. Are there outliers? Of course. But the likelihood of producing a major innovation at age 70 is approximately what it was at age 20—almost nonexistent.

In sum, if your profession requires mental processing speed or significant analytic capabilities—the kind of profession most college graduates occupy—noticeable decline is probably going to set in earlier than you imagine...Whole sections of bookstores are dedicated to becoming successful. The shelves are packed with titles like The Science of Getting Rich and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. There is no section marked “Managing Your Professional Decline.”

Brooks contrasts the declines of Charles Darwin, who became embittered and inactive after his younger most creative period had passed, with Johann Sebastian Bach, who redesigned his life - as baroque music was being replaced by the "classical" style - moving from being an innovator to being a teacher and instructor.

The lesson for you and me, especially after 50: Be Johann Sebastian Bach, not Charles Darwin...How does one do that? A potential answer lies in the work of the British psychologist Raymond Cattell, who in the early 1940s introduced the concepts of fluid and crystallized intelligence. Cattell defined fluid intelligence as the ability to reason, analyze, and solve novel problems—what we commonly think of as raw intellectual horsepower. ...It is highest relatively early in adulthood and diminishes starting in one’s 30s and 40s...Crystallized intelligence, in contrast, is the ability to use knowledge gained in the past. Think of it as possessing a vast library and understanding how to use it. It is the essence of wisdom. Because crystallized intelligence relies on an accumulating stock of knowledge, it tends to increase through one’s 40s, and does not diminish until very late in life...poets—highly fluid in their creativity—tend to have produced half their lifetime creative output by age 40 or so. Historians—who rely on a crystallized stock of knowledge—don’t reach this milestone until about 60...No matter what mix of intelligence your field requires, you can always endeavor to weight your career away from innovation and toward the strengths that persist, or even increase, later in life...teaching is an ability that decays very late in life, a principal exception to the general pattern of professional decline over time...the most profound insights tend to come from those in their 30s and early 40s. The best synthesizers and explainers of complicated ideas—that is, the best teachers—tend to be in their mid-60s or older, some of them well into their 80s.

Most Eastern philosophy warns that focusing on acquisition leads to attachment and vanity, which derail the search for happiness by obscuring one’s essential nature. As we grow older, we shouldn’t acquire more, but rather strip things away to find our true selves—and thus, peace.

At some point, writing one more book will not add to my life satisfaction; it will merely stave off the end of my book-writing career. The canvas of my life will have another brushstroke that, if I am being forthright, others will barely notice, and will certainly not appreciate very much. The same will be true for most other markers of my success.

What I need to do, in effect, is stop seeing my life as a canvas to fill, and start seeing it more as a block of marble to chip away at and shape something out of. I need a reverse bucket list. My goal for each year of the rest of my life should be to throw out things, obligations, and relationships until I can clearly see my refined self in its best form.

Hindu philosophy—and indeed the wisdom of many philosophical traditions—suggests that you should be prepared to walk away from the rewards of success before you feel ready. Even if you’re at the height of your professional prestige, you probably need to scale back your career ambitions in order to scale up your metaphysical ones.

David Brooks talks about the difference between “résumé virtues” and “eulogy virtues,”...Résumé virtues are professional and oriented toward earthly success. They require comparison with others. Eulogy virtues are ethical and spiritual, and require no comparison. Your eulogy virtues are what you would want people to talk about at your funeral. As in He was kind and deeply spiritual, not He made senior vice president at an astonishingly young age and had a lot of frequent-flier miles....To move from résumé virtues to eulogy virtues is to move from activities focused on the self to activities focused on others.

..an abundance of research strongly suggests that happiness—not just in later years but across the life span—is tied directly to the health and plentifulness of one’s relationships. Pushing work out of its position of preeminence—sooner rather than later—to make space for deeper relationships can provide a bulwark against the angst of professional decline.

The aspen tree is an excellent metaphor for a successful person—but not, it turns out, for its solitary majesty. Above the ground, it may appear solitary. Yet each individual tree is part of an enormous root system, which is together one plant...The secret to bearing my decline—to enjoying it—is to become more conscious of the roots linking me to others. If I have properly developed the bonds of love among my family and friends, my own withering will be more than offset by blooming in others.

Changes in well-being measured by massive online choice experiments.

Brynjolfsson et al. (open source) suggest moving beyond using gross domestic product (GDP) and productivity as a proxy for well-being to include the welfare gains from digital goods having zero price that are currently not captured in GDP.:

Significance

Gross domestic product (GDP) measures production and is not meant to measure well-being. While many people nonetheless use GDP as a proxy for well-being, consumer surplus is a better measure of consumer well-being. This is increasingly true in the digital economy where many digital goods have zero price and as a result the welfare gains from these goods are not reflected in GDP or productivity statistics. We propose a way of directly measuring consumer well-being using massive online choice experiments. We find that digital goods generate a large amount of consumer welfare that is currently not captured in GDP. For example, the median Facebook user needed a compensation of around $48 to give it up for a month.

Abstract

Gross domestic product (GDP) and derived metrics such as productivity have been central to our understanding of economic progress and well-being. In principle, changes in consumer surplus provide a superior, and more direct, measure of changes in well-being, especially for digital goods. In practice, these alternatives have been difficult to quantify. We explore the potential of massive online choice experiments to measure consumer surplus. We illustrate this technique via several empirical examples which quantify the valuations of popular digital goods and categories. Our examples include incentive-compatible discrete-choice experiments where online and laboratory participants receive monetary compensation if and only if they forgo goods for predefined periods. For example, the median user needed a compensation of about $48 to forgo Facebook for 1 mo. Our overall analyses reveal that digital goods have created large gains in well-being that are not reflected in conventional measures of GDP and productivity. By periodically querying a large, representative sample of goods and services, including those which are not priced in existing markets, changes in consumer surplus and other new measures of well-being derived from these online choice experiments have the potential for providing cost-effective supplements to the existing national income and product accounts.

"Learned Helplessness" from constant attention to your input stream (email, etc.)?

I'm trying out a 'new rule' for myself (cf. the Real Time with Bill Maher show on HBO). I frequently wake with some new ideas that I want to develop and write about, then let that good intention to do productive generative work be blown away by glancing at and being hooked by emails and text messages that are continually running in background on the MacBook Air that I use for all my writing. The morning becomes submerged in attending to an never ending list of piddly details. I start feeling increasingly helpless and defined by reactivity to unpredictable input streams - like the experimental dogs in Seligman's classic "Learned Helplessness" experiments. My new rule - which I already violated this morning, but only once - is to carry the good ideas I wake up directly into further thinking and writing about them, completely ignoring the emails and text messages that have accumulated over the night. Going offline makes me feel powerful rather than helpless. Only after a significant period of being generative rather than reactive do I go back to glance at the input stream online. What I find is a pleasant simplification: many of the items I would have reacted to now get deleted without reading!

These sentiments are echoed by Goldfarb's recent NYTimes piece on how making yourself inaccessible from time to time is essential to boosting one's focus and effectiveness. I want to pass on clips of that essay, which contains links to the work referenced.

A 2017 survey from the American Psychological Association found that being constantly and permanently reachable on an electronic device — checking work emails on your day off; continuously cycling through social media feeds; responding to text messages at all hours — is associated with higher stress levels.

This phenomenon of always being reachable is what Linda Stone, a former Apple and Microsoft executive, calls continuous partial attention. Unlike multitasking — juggling activities of similar importance that don’t require too much cognitive processing — C.P.A. is a state of alertness during which you’re motivated by the desire not to miss out on anything.

Ms. Stone, who gives lectures and consults on issues relating to technology and attention, describes C.P.A. as an “always-on, anywhere, anytime, any place behavior that involves an artificial sense of constant crisis.” Being distractible — allowing incessant beeps, flashes and trills to shatter any semblance of concentration — contributes to a strained lifestyle, she said. Half-paying attention to everything means you’re not able to fully pay attention to anything.

This kind of task switching comes with a cost. It’s called attention residue, a term established by Sophie Leroy, a professor at the Bothell School of Business at the University of Washington. In a 2009 study, Dr. Leroy found that if people transition their attention away from an unfinished task, their subsequent task performance will suffer. For example, if you interrupt writing an email to reply to a text message, it will take time to refocus when you turn your attention back to finishing your email. That little bit of time of adjusting your focus — the residue — compounds throughout the day. As we fragment our attention, fatigue and stress increases, which negatively affects performance.

More green space in childhood, fewer psychiatric disorders in adulthood.

From Engemann et al.:

Urban residence is associated with a higher risk of some psychiatric disorders, but the underlying drivers remain unknown. There is increasing evidence that the level of exposure to natural environments impacts mental health, but few large-scale epidemiological studies have assessed the general existence and importance of such associations. Here, we investigate the prospective association between green space and mental health in the Danish population. Green space presence was assessed at the individual level using high-resolution satellite data to calculate the normalized difference vegetation index within a 210 × 210 m square around each person’s place of residence (∼1 million people) from birth to the age of 10. We show that high levels of green space presence during childhood are associated with lower risk of a wide spectrum of psychiatric disorders later in life. Risk for subsequent mental illness for those who lived with the lowest level of green space during childhood was up to 55% higher across various disorders compared with those who lived with the highest level of green space. The association remained even after adjusting for urbanization, socioeconomic factors, parental history of mental illness, and parental age. Stronger association of cumulative green space presence during childhood compared with single-year green space presence suggests that presence throughout childhood is important. Our results show that green space during childhood is associated with better mental health, supporting efforts to better integrate natural environments into urban planning and childhood life.

Mindfulness + acceptance training - randomized controlled trial shows prosocial effects, less loneliness

From Lindsay et al.:

Significance

Loneliness (i.e., feeling alone) and social isolation (i.e., being alone) are among the most robust known risk factors for poor health and accelerated mortality. Yet mitigating these social risk factors is challenging, as few interventions have been effective for both reducing loneliness and increasing social contact. Mindfulness interventions, which train skills in monitoring present-moment experiences with an orientation of acceptance, have shown promise for improving social-relationship processes. This study demonstrates the efficacy of a 2-wk smartphone-based mindfulness training for reducing loneliness and increasing social contact in daily life. Importantly, this study shows that developing an orientation of acceptance toward present-moment experiences is a critical mechanism for mitigating these social risk factors.

Abstract

Loneliness and social isolation are a growing public health concern, yet there are few evidence-based interventions for mitigating these social risk factors. Accumulating evidence suggests that mindfulness interventions can improve social-relationship processes. However, the active ingredients of mindfulness training underlying these improvements are unclear. Developing mindfulness-specific skills—namely, (i) monitoring present-moment experiences with (ii) an orientation of acceptance—may change the way people perceive and relate toward others. We predicted that developing openness and acceptance toward present experiences is critical for reducing loneliness and increasing social contact and that removing acceptance-skills training from a mindfulness intervention would eliminate these benefits. In this dismantling trial, 153 community adults were randomly assigned to a 14-lesson smartphone-based intervention: (i) training in both monitoring and acceptance (Monitor+Accept), (ii) training in monitoring only (Monitor Only), or (iii) active control training. For 3 d before and after the intervention, ambulatory assessments were used to measure loneliness and social contact in daily life. Consistent with predictions, Monitor+Accept training reduced daily-life loneliness by 22% (d = 0.44, P = 0.0001) and increased social contact by two more interactions each day (d = 0.47, P = 0.001) and one more person each day (d = 0.39, P = 0.004), compared with both Monitor Only and control trainings. These findings describe a behavioral therapeutic target for improving social-relationship functioning; by fostering equanimity with feelings of loneliness and social disconnect, acceptance-skills training may allow loneliness to dissipate and encourage greater engagement with others in daily life.

A ketamine inspired nasal spray for depression.

I pass on this New Atlas article link on a nasal spray based on ketamine (the party drug PCP or 'angel dust') that is likely to receive FDA approval soon. From the article (which has a link to a series on that site called Psychedelic medicine 101, describing formerly taboo substances now being found useful, cf. Michael Pollan's recent book "Changing your Mind"):

Originally developed decades ago as a novel anesthetic, ketamine has been undergoing a renaissance in recent years... Of course in the world of Big Pharma there is no money to be made investing in clinical trials for a decades-old drug past its patent. So in comes esketamine, a chemical cousin of ketamine with many similar pharmacological actions. Esketamine is roughly twice as strong as ketamine, eliminated by the body faster, and allegedly presents less negative dissociative symptoms when compared to its relative. For the most part, esketamine acts on the brain in similar ways to ketamine, except it doesn't influence a few key neurological receptors.

Johnson & Johnson has been developing an esketamine-based nasal spray to treat depression for several years. The treatment's development process has been undeniably rocky with two major clinical trials failing to prove the drug is more effective than placebo and some experts questioning its ultimate efficacy.

Ahead of a final FDA decision, expected by early March, an independent advisory committee was recently established to offer a recommendation on the treatment's efficacy. After evaluating a multitude of research submitted by the pharmaceutical company, the committee overwhelmingly voted 14-to-2 in favor of recommending the treatment.

Brain biomarkers for resilience - executive frontal lobe activity

Friedman points to several articles demonstrating brain correlates of resilience to social adversity:

 -higher connectivity within the brain’s frontoparietal central executive network.
 -increased activity in prefrontal and anterior cingulate areas of executive self control network after mindfulness training.
-stimulation of brain plasticity and remodeling by BDNF growth factor,whose levels are enhanced by exercise and social support.

Scult et al. do a more detailed look at brain correlates of resilience. Their abstract:

Compared with neural biomarkers of risk for mental illness, little is known about biomarkers of resilience. We explore if greater executive control-related prefrontal activity may function as a resilience biomarker by “rescuing” risk associated with higher threat-related amygdala and lower reward-related ventral striatum activity. Functional MRI was used to assay baseline threat-related amygdala, reward-related ventral striatum, and executive control-related prefrontal activity in 120 young adult volunteers. Participants provided self-reported mood and anxiety ratings at baseline and follow-up. A moderation model revealed a significant three-way interaction wherein higher amygdala and lower ventral striatum activity predicted increases in anxiety in those with average or low but not high prefrontal activity. This effect was specific to anxiety, with the neural biomarkers explaining ~10% of the variance in change over time, above and beyond baseline symptoms, sex, age, IQ, presence or absence of DMS-IV diagnosis, and both early and recent stress. Our findings are consistent with the importance of top-down executive control in adaptive regulation of negative emotions, and highlight a unique combination of neural biomarkers that may identify at-risk individuals for whom the adoption of strategies to improve executive control of negative emotions may prove particularly beneficial.

"Meaningful Life" science - a tonic for our times?

I am a rye crisp empathy challenged old fart, but I try sometimes to kind, generous, and nice. And, I sometimes wonder what planet the Greater Good Magazine people at Berkeley are living on. I wish them the best, and as an antidote to these challenging times in which our country is being run by a president with the emotional maturity of a four year old, pass on "The Top 10 Insights from the “Science of a Meaningful Life” in 2018."  The article describes original research articles relevant to 10 propositions:

It takes 120 hours (or more) to make a good friend

You’re not as good at empathy as you think you are

Mindfulness can help you manage your anger

Sleeplessness breeds loneliness

Smartphones can make in-person interactions less enjoyable

Teen emotions really are jumbled

We can’t assume that SEL (social-emotional learning)programs meet the needs of all students

Americans are divided by identity, not issues

More egalitarian cultures are better for everyone

People may be kinder in racially diverse neighborhoods

Practicing gratitude, kindness, and compassion - can our i-devices help?

My Apple Watch occasionally, and unexpectedly, prompts me to stop and breathe (does it not like the pulse that it is measuring?). Noticing whether you are holding your breath or breathing can be very useful (The title of one my web lectures is “Are you holding your breath? - Structures of arousal and calm). My Univ. of Wisconsin colleague Richard Davidson writes a brief piece suggesting that this sort of prompting might be carried a bit further, to enhance other beneficial behaviors, suggesting that As technology permeates our lives, it should be designed to boost our kindness, empathy, and happiness.

...tech giants Apple and Google recently announced new software improvements to empower iPhone and Android smartphone users to be more aware and potentially limit smartphone use. I certainly think it’s a necessary step in the right direction. But is it enough? I see this as one of the first admissions by these companies that their technologies have powerful effects on us as humans—effects we have been discovering as we all participate in this grand experiment that none of us signed up for.

This admission by the technology leaders opens the door to a huge opportunity to start designing the interactions and the actual contents of what we consume to prioritize the well-being of users. For instance, what if artificial intelligence used in virtual assistants like Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa were designed to detect variations in the tone of voice to determine when someone was struggling with loneliness or depression and to intervene by providing a simple mental exercise to cultivate well-being? Or a mental health resource? This is one idea tech leaders are exploring more seriously, and for good reason.

In our lab at UW–Madison, we’re looking to make video game play a prosocial and entertaining experience for kids. In collaboration with video games experts, our lab created a research video game to train empathy in kids, which has shown potential in changing circuits of the brain that underlie empathy in some middle schoolers.

We’re exploring similar programs in adults that go above and beyond meditation apps for people to participate in bite-sized mental training practices that help them connect with others, as well as deepen their attention and resilience. What if your next smartphone notification were a prompt to reflect on what you’re grateful for or a challenge to take a break from your device and notice the natural environment? We know that activities like cultivating gratitude and spending time in nature or connecting with loved ones can have therapeutic effects. There’s nothing stopping us from integrating these reminders into our digital lives.

Ultimately, I think it will take soul-searching from companies and consumers to get us closer to technologies that truly help and don’t hinder the nurturing of user well-being.

We have a moral obligation to take what we know about the human mind and harness it in this ever-changing digital frontier to promote well-being. I think we can succeed if we can deliberately design our systems to nurture the basic goodness of people. This is a vision in which human flourishing would be supported, rather than diminished, by the rapidly evolving technology that is shaping our minds.

Biomarkers of inflamation are lower in people with more positive emotions

Fron Ong et al.:

There is growing evidence that inflammatory responses may help to explain how emotions get “under the skin” to influence disease susceptibility. Moving beyond examination of individuals’ average level of emotion, this study examined how the breadth and relative abundance of emotions that individuals experience — emodiversity — is related to systemic inflammation. Using diary data from 175 adults aged 40 to 65 who provided end-of-day reports of their positive and negative emotions over 30 days, we found that greater diversity in day-to-day positive emotions was associated with lower circulating levels of inflammation (indicated by IL-6, CRP, fibrinogen), independent of mean levels of positive and negative emotions, body mass index, anti-inflammatory medications, medical conditions, personality, and demographics. No significant associations were observed between global or negative emodiversity and inflammation. These findings highlight the unique role daily positive emotions play in biological health. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)

Might tribal conflict fatigue lead to a contagion of civility and kindness ?

A majority of both republicans and democrats express dismay over the current state of our civil discourse. Continuously stoked arousal of our brains' fear and anger systems is debilitating - a public health crisis. One wonders (hopes) whether that at some point the pendulum will slowly start to swing the other way, with people starting to perceive that the other tribes do not actually present an existential threat, and that starting to feel more civility and kindness toward "the other" can provide a major relief for stress. In this vein, I want to point to several articles on means of enhancing kindness. Schiffman asks "Can Kindness Be Taught?" and points to the Kindness Curriculum developed for preschoolers by the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin, as well to other programs. Zaki describes work on Kindness Contagion showing that witnessing kindness inspires kindness, causing it to spread like a virus. Petrow's article on kindness contagion discusses Zaki's work, as well as that of others, and Bornstein writes on "Recovering the (Lost) Art of Civility."

The Flow Genome Project - modern snake oil? con?

Note added Aug.16, 2019.  Please see this update: https://mindblog.dericbownds.net/2019/08/a-schism-in-flow-land-flow-genome.html

I thought I would point MindBlog readers to comments made on my post of 11/7/2017, where I offered a scathing review of a book, "Stealing Fire" which purports to describe how the Flow Genome Project (for a considerable amount of money) will take you to the next level of human performance. The comments include an exchange between a very dissatisfied customer/student and a staff member in the first two classes offered ("Flow Fundamentals" and "Flow Performance.").   

Comment:

I read your commentary on the Flow Genome Project (FGP) with great interest. Your suspicions about this "effort" are spot on, and I wish that I had your insight before taking two of these classes from the FGP...The first class (Flow Fundamentals) was a great community of people, and I learned much from them, and nothing from the FGP personnel. The second class (Flow Performance) was pseudo-profound BS (PPBS.) There is a great paper that won an Ig Nobel Prize titled "On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit."...The paper perfectly described every aspect of this class!! The instructor - Jamie Wheal - is more interested in impressing people with PPBS than realaying any useful information. Also, each class is prefaced with the promise that "All the secrets of Stealing Fire will be revealed in this next class." I stopped when this promise was not delivered in Flow Performance; but, was promised for private coaching (at an extremely high price).

Response from Flow Genome Project:

We're actually re-launching our new website in the coming month or so to address and make more transparent the research we're working on. As for the links, that was a frustrating mistake with them being published without confirmation on the back end. The correct working links are:  

http://stealingfirebook.com/downloads
http://stealingfirebook.com/research 

[note inserted at this point by Bownds...the corrected links now actually work, but the web page /research contains no research,  and the web page /downloads is simply a sales pitch for buying the book "Stealing Fire"....their "correct working links" yield no relevant information!.].. continuing:
  

Sorry to hear Mike that you're still not satisfied with your experience in the course. Those marketing criticisms are puzzling as we unpacked quite a lot of information in Flow Performance with respect to that topic. The private coaching is not promising to deliver hidden information that Flow Performance does not, but rather the personal 1:1 time with a coach.

Response to the last sentence by commenter:

Here is an excerpt from an email from Jamie Wheal announcing the availability of private coaching to all members of the Flow Performance Class: 

"I’ve only ever done this with CEOs and military leaders, never before to the general public. We’re going to combine deep dive coaching, direct facilitation through some of our highest octane tools and a behind the curtain look at what we covered in Stealing Fire. No filter. Gloves off. The most potent tools and techniques we’ve learned in over a decade of working with the best in the world, and seeing what actually sticks." 

The VERY same promise made for Flow Performance. A promise that was never kept. I rest my case!!

Further comment:

During the Flow Performance Class, Jamie Wheal made the statement multiple times that "Stealing Fire [the book that he co-authored and the foundation for FGP training] is a complete fiction; a Promethean Prank." Taking him at his word, how can such a document have any scientific validity and/or application at all?! In addition, whenever a topic came up - in Flow Performance - in which certain class members had experience and deep understanding (e.g. Breathwork, DNA testing, Microdosing), the lack of knowledge/depth of understanding on the part of the FGP was blindingly obvious given the FGP's responses to deeper inquiries by those experts in the class. It is very telling when one starts addressing questions and concerns about their work with statements about their credentials, listing members of their network/inner circle, and engaging in character assassination against those who question; rather than addressing the questions directly. This was a constant problem during Flow Performance. It was the worst, but not the only, source of pseudo profound bullshit in the Flow Performance class.

The false idols of wellness.

Jen Gunter does an engaging take-down of the wellness-industrial complex in a NYTimes piece. She suggests that the wellness industry is exploiting rather than filling the gaps left by normal medical practice.:

Wellness used to mean a blend of health and happiness...it has become a false antidote to the fear of modern life and death...The wellness industry takes medical terminology, such as “inflammation” or “free radicals,” and levigates it to the point of incomprehension. The resulting product is a D.I.Y. medicine for longevity that comes with a confidence that science can only aspire to achieve.

...take the trend of adding a pinch of activated charcoal to your food or drink...it’s sold as a supposed “detox.”..It has the same efficacy as a spell from the local witch...“Toxins,” as defined by the peddlers of these dubious cures, are the harmful effluvia of modern life that supposedly roam our bodies...for without these toxins there can be no search for purity — “clean” tampons, “clean” food, “clean” makeup. There are also sacred acts and rituals to follow...Medicine and religion have long been deeply intertwined, and it’s only relatively recently that they have separated. The wellness-industrial complex seeks to resurrect that connection. It’s like a medical throwback, as if the halcyon days of health were 5,000 years ago. Ancient cleansing rituals with a modern twist — supplements, useless products and scientifically unsupported tests.

The dietary supplements that are the backbone of wellness make up a $30 billion a year business despite studies showing they have no value for longevity...So what’s the harm of spending money on charcoal for nonexistent toxins or vitamins for expensive urine or grounding bedsheets to better connect you with the earth’s electrons?..Here’s what: the placebo effect or “trying something natural” can lead people with serious illnesses to postpone effective medical care.

Moving the kind of product that churns the wheels of the wellness-industrial complex requires a constant stream of fear and misinformation. Look closer at most wellness sites and at many of their physician partners, and you’ll find a plethora of medical conspiracy theories: Vaccines and autism. The dangers of water fluoridation. Bras and breast cancer. Cellphones and brain cancer. Heavy metal poisoning. AIDS as a construct of Big Pharma.

There are symptoms that I believe have been with us since the beginning of time, so common that they are likely part of the human experience: fatigue, bloat, low libido, episodic pain, loss of vigor. When medicine can only offer a therapy, not a cure, or when doctors give undesired answers — suggesting attention to sleep hygiene, for instance — it isn’t hard to see how the intoxicating confidence and theater of wellness could beckon.

I admit that doctors can learn something from wellness. It’s clear that some people are looking for healers, so we must find ways to serve that need that are medically ethical...We doctors can do more to provide factual information about hazardous substances, such as carcinogens and endocrine disrupting chemicals, in products and the environment from medically vetted sites with no products to sell, such as the National Cancer Institute and the Endocrine Society...Many people — women especially — have long been marginalized and dismissed by medicine, but the answer does not lie in predatory conspiracy theories, a faux religion or expensive magic.

Research on subjective well-being.

Given the drum beat of daily negative news we all face, it is useful to be open to facts about longer term trends showing improvement in different areas of life (cf. my series of posts - starting on 4/1/18 - on Pinker's new book, "Enlightenment Now.") In this vein I pass on an open source review article from Nature Human Behavior by Diener et al. describing recent research on subjective well-being. The abstract:

The empirical science of subjective well-being, popularly referred to as happiness or satisfaction, has grown enormously in the past decade. In this Review, we selectively highlight and summarize key researched areas that continue to develop. We describe the validity of measures and their potential biases, as well as the scientific methods used in this field. We describe some of the predictors of subjective well-being such as temperament, income and supportive social relationships. Higher subjective well-being has been associated with good health and longevity, better social relationships, work performance and creativity. At the community and societal levels, cultures differ not only in their levels of well-being but also to some extent in the types of subjective well-being they most value. Furthermore, there are both universal and unique predictors of subjective well-being in various societies. National accounts of subjective well-being to help inform policy decisions at the community and societal levels are now being considered and adopted. Finally we discuss the unknowns in the science and needed future research.

Two very different worlds to live in.

On the same day that I read yet another depressing article in the New York Times - Thomas Edsall on the increasing polarization and demonization in our society:

Hostility to the opposition party and its candidates has now reached a level where loathing motivates voters more than loyalty. The building strength of partisan antipathy — “negative partisanship” — has radically altered politics. Anger has become the primary tool for motivating voters.

I get an email from the Berkeley Greater Good Science Center that feels like a reality warp to a different world, as they offer a “March 2018 Happiness Calendar” with daily homilies on various topics: mindfulness, kindness, gratitude, relaxation, sociality, resilience, etc.

If only we could salt the first of these realities with a bit of the second....

Culture of Empathy

While approving comments submitted on a MindBlog post, I always go back and read the post. (I have to vet comments, because most are designed to get clicks on links to commercial sites). I sometimes find posts referencing sites that I really wish I had stayed in touch with. This following example is a slightly edited re-posting of an item from 2012:

I have finally taken time to look more thoroughly at a site noted in a comment to my July 25 post on compassion research. The "Culture of Empathy" site is an aggregator of resources and information about the values of empathy and compassion. It makes interesting, if a bit overwhelming, browsing. I feel like a complete trogdolyte as only now do I notice sites like CAUSES that hosts seven different empathy related causes that one can sign on to, listing the very same gentleman who commented on my post (Edwin Rutsch) as leader.  Mr. Rutsch would also like you to join the Empathy Center Page on Facebook, and join him on Facebook Causes. This guy really gets around! The Culture of Empathy website lists summaries of a large number of interviews, book reviews, and conferences involving Mr. Rutsch, noting the neuroscience of empathy (things like mirror neurons, etc.), different cultural aspects of empathy, linguistics.... I guess its gotta be a good thing, but while fully thinking that my own behavior could certainly be leavened by a more empathetic bias, I'm overwhelmed by this web input to the point of inaction regarding social venues to support.