TresSugar

Are Facebook and Twitter Making People More Narcissistic?

TresSugar — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:00:00 -0800

I love my Twitter and Facebook as much as the next gal, but there might be some truth to this Venn Diagram.

Perhaps our inner self-promoters and oversharers would have found another way to self-promote and overshare, but these social media platforms sure have made it easy for everyone to get up-to-the-minute updates on how we're feeling and what we're doing - whether they like it or not!

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Curmudgeons, Rejoice: Being Grumpy Might Be Good For You!

TresSugar — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:05:00 -0800

Australian psychology professor Joe Forgas has concluded through his research that grumpy people tend to think more clearly, and because of their skepticism, they also make better decisions than their more cheerful and gullible counterparts.

Cheerfulness isn't all bad, though. Forgas says it encourages creativity. Bad moods, however, incite "attentiveness and careful thinking."

How did he figure this out? He asked volunteers to watch films while thinking of either positive or negative events in their lives, in the hopes they'd be put into good or bad moods.

Then, to test their powers of analysis, he had them judge the truth of urban myths and provide eyewitness accounts of events. The results: the grumps made fewer mistakes and were better at communicating.

"Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, co-operation and reliance on mental shortcuts," said Professor Forgas, "negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking, paying greater attention to the external world."

If you see a smile on my usually grumpy face today, it's temporary - I'm just gloating.

Do You Think You're Emotionally Intelligent?

TresSugar — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

In some ways, this is a trick question, because if you're not emotionally intelligent - defined very broadly as someone "particularly good at establishing positive social relationships with others, and avoiding conflicts, fights, and other social altercations" - you might think you are anyway!

But October is Emotional Intelligence month, and it seemed a good time to remind people, as Emotional Intelligence author Daniel Goleman claims in his book subtitle, that "it can matter more than IQ." We've all known the brilliant boss or friend who had a horrible temper or little ability to empathize and couldn't figure out why, in the case of the boss, no one ever stuck around for long, or, in the case of the friend, people had to break up with them they were so toxic.

Some traits of emotional intelligence?

1. Having the ability to accurately perceive emotions in oneself and others.
2. Using emotions to facilitate thinking.
3. Being able to understand emotional meanings, being sensitive.
4. Being able to manage emotions.

So if you're paranoid everyone's out to get you, or that everything someone says is a perceived slight justifying angry outbursts, but nothing you say or do should bother others . . . you might need a higher EQ. (Some believe this can be worked on, others say it's inborn.)

Say What? Glenn Close Speaks Up About Sister's Mental Illness

TresSugar — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:00:00 -0700

"We didn't know that it wasn't Jess just being wild, there was something going on there. . . We come from the tradition that you hardly ever went to a psychiatrist - it just wasn't done. You certainly don't talk about depression, or alcoholism, or any mental illness. It's just not done, and I think a lot of people still feel that."

- Glenn Close went on Good Morning America today to discuss her family's struggle to understand her sister Jessie's mental illness. Jessie was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when she was 47-years-old. The actress and her sister have filmed a public service announcement with hopes of challenging the stigma attached to mental illness.

Are People With Sensitive Noses More Empathetic?

TresSugar — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:00:00 -0700

Are you cursed and blessed with a good sense of smell? Cursed because you smell every ungodly stink no matter how far away, and blessed because lovely smells affect you deeply?

Psychology professor Denise Chen at Rice University thinks you may also be more empathetic than your olfaction-challenged neighbor.

Sense of smell and emotions come from the same area of the brain (the limbic system), and Chen set out to test their connection. In an experiment with 22 pairs of dorm-dwelling women, Chen asked them all to sleep in identical t-shirts. The next morning, she presented each person with three t-shirts: one worn by her roommate, and two others worn by other people in the dorm. The women who were able to identify their roommates' t-shirts by smell alone also scored high in emotional tests.

"The olfactory brain overlaps with the emotional brain," said Chen, "and is believed to have contributed to its evolution." Do you have a good sense of smell or wish you did?

Politicians, Narcissism and Cheating - Oh, My!

TresSugar — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 06:00:00 -0700

There's been no shortage of politicians in the news who cheated on their wives (Sanford, Spitzer, Clinton - we're talking about you), and the television show The Good Wife is even dramatizing this all-too-familiar story. Most social scientists and psychologists are not surprised; many of the traits that are required for political leadership are prevalent in narcissism: ambition, risk-taking, and charisma. You don't need to be a narcissist to be a political leader, but it doesn't hurt.

So what is narcissism exactly? We all have self-love on some level, but in the '80s, the American Psychiatric Association argued that it can become pathological enough to be considered a personality disorder. They claimed that one percent of the population has NPD (narcissistic personality disorder); it's since been revised by The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, which said that 6.2 percent of the population has NPD. To find out about NPD, read more

According to the DSM-IV, here are the traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder:

"A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

1. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance
2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty or ideal love (megalomania)
3. Believes they are 'special' and can only be understood by, or should associate with, people (or institutions) who are also 'special' or of high status
4. Requires excessive admiration
5. Has a sense of entitlement
6. Is interpersonally exploitative
7. Lacks empathy
8. Is often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her
9. Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes"

Most of us will never date or marry a narcissistic politician, but some of us will have the misfortune to date narcissists, who have a tendency to cheat. "Infidelity," says Stanley Renshon, a political psychologist at City University of New York and who writes about psychology and political behavior, "is a byproduct of narcissism."

Do you know any narcissists or have you ever dated one?

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Do Tell: What Do You Do to Lift Your Spirits?

TresSugar — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:00:00 -0700

I'm a fan of motivational tips because even though some of them may seem corny and random, they can be helpful in a pinch.

I needed a picker-upper the other day and was reminded of this list of things to do to ensure a better life. It may sound silly, but doing two things on the list - eating almonds and taking a walk while grinning like a weirdo (OK, that's not how he put it!) really did boost my mood.

I'm all about being proactive. What do you do to lift your spirits?

Are You a Fan of the Surreal? It May Make You Smarter

TresSugar — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:00:00 -0700

Franz Kafka, David Lynch, and Rene Magritte were my Kevin, Joe and Nick Jonas as a teenager. (Yeah, I was a weirdo.) So imagine my delight when I read a study that claims that surrealism may be good for the brain.

Research psychologists at UC Santa Barbara and the University of British Columbia concluded that exposure to surrealist art, film or literature, because it puts you in worlds whose elements don't make sense, drives you to look for structure and sense elsewhere, hence raising "the cognitive mechanisms that oversee implicit learning functions." Want to hear the details of this study? Then read more.

To reach this finding, they had two groups of people read Kafka. One group was given Kafka's story "The Country Doctor," which in typical Kafkaesque fashion, goes from normal to weird in no time at all. The other group was given a rewritten version so that nothing was odd about the plot or narrative. After they finished their respective Kafkas, they were asked to find patterns hidden in strings of letters. Those who read the original Kafka stories were both more motivated to find patterns and more accurate in their findings than those who read the normalized Kafka.

It's their second experiment that is almost more interesting to me - they divided groups between those who felt alienated by things they'd done in the past and those who didn't. "You get the same pattern of effects whether you're reading Kafka or experiencing a breakdown in your sense of identity," said Travis Proulx, a postdoctoral researcher at UCSB and co-author of the article. "People feel uncomfortable when their expected associations are violated, and that creates an unconscious desire to make sense of their surroundings. That feeling of discomfort may come from a surreal story, or from contemplating their own contradictory behaviors, but either way, people want to get rid of it. So they're motivated to learn new patterns."

So, basically, feeling alienated and consuming alienating art and literature drives you to make sense of things, giving your brain a workout. That would finally explain my motivation to find meaning in the world after watching The Hills, a surrealist masterpiece if I ever saw one!

Source

News Flash: Men Are Bigger Liars

TresSugar — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:00:00 -0700

After scrutinizing 2,000 Britons, researchers found that in general, men lie twice as much as women. On average, they lie six times a day and women lie "just" three times a day.

The most common lie told by both men and women is, "Nothing's wrong. I'm fine." Men, however, tend to lie about how much they've had to drink, and women lie about how much they spent shopping.

Although 83 percent of adults said they can tell if their significant other is lying, body language expert Richard Newman thinks most people can't tell what signs to look for. "They assume that if someone is hiding the truth," he says, "they would hide their face and avoid eye contact. In fact, the opposite is true. Liars usually do everything they can to convince you of the truth, sitting still and looking at you to watch your reaction."

Now I'm trying to think if I've lied yet today . . .

Do You Have a Hard Time Apologizing?

TresSugar — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 09:00:00 -0700

Some people have a hard time apologizing. They'd rather pretend nothing happened and evade responsibility for actions that hurt someone else.

Others fudge and deliver the classic non-apology apology, which might be more frustrating than not getting any apology at all. It's usually a variation on the "I'm sorry you feel that way" theme, deflecting the wrong-doer's responsibility and putting the focus on the recipient and her flawed or misguided reaction. Ultimately - it's not an apology.

There are lots of reasons apologizing is hard, according to Psychotherapist Dr. Robi Ludwi. It's a blow to our egos to apologize, because we are admitting weakness, because we're asking for forgiveness (which puts the other person in a power position and makes us feel vulnerable), or perhaps it reminds us of being the child to a critical parent. And then there are those who are in total denial completely: if I don't acknowledge I did anything wrong, the thinking goes, I must not have done anything wrong.

As anyone who was on the receiving end of bad behavior will tell you, an apology is crucial. You can't regain trust or respect from a person you hurt if you don't acknowledge what you did, make amends, so that the relationship can move forward.