Issue 1
November 26, 2013
humani Mental Health in Prison | Ghost Phones | Abuse in Development
humani
From the Editor.. Welcome to our first issue of Humani Magazine! It’s a great honor and excitement to be able to share this with you. Humanuiis the Latin word for human, which is exactly what this magazine is all about. Humani features information and studies about the way the human body and mind work and the psychology behind every action and thought. The magazine is laid out for easy access to whatever topic in psychology is interesting to you. There are five categories to Humani: Back to Basics is a section focusing on the history and founding fathers of psychology. In this section you will find information about the psychological field and modern takes on infamous studies from decades past. Growing Pains is a section focusing on child and adolescent psychology. In this section you will find everything about childhood, adolescence and the psychology of growing up and growing older. Mental Check-up is a section focusing on mental health and abnormal psychology. In this section you will find studies on disorders and new discoveries in the mental health field, as well as information on how best to treat mental disorders and live a healthy mental life. Psyched. is a section focusing on personality and neuropsychology. In this section you will find information pertaining to personality and how psychology affects the
personality and how psychology affects the human mind in everyday situations, showing how this relates in both mental and physical ways. Let’s Get Technical is a section focusing on the advancements of psychology related to technological fields. In this section you will find all forms of technology and new ideas and concepts that allow psychology and mental health to be treated and observed as technology advances into the future. You can decide whether to observe each section carefully, or to pick and choose what interests or fascinates you most. We wanted to create something that interested young adults who loved the field of psychology. This isn’t your college textbook; this is something completely different and exciting. Humani is filled with information and knowledge, displayed in an intriguing way for you to experience and learn. We set out and accomplished something great with Humani, and we hope you enjoy what we deliver to you each month. We will always take suggestions, because we want this to be your magazine, not ours. Humani Magazine is something we want to be around for years and years to come, and we hope you help it to stick around. New information and advancements are always around the corner and we hope to bring them to you. We are honored and privileged to present the work of many committed people in the field of psychology. Please write us at staff@humanimag.com to receive more information about a particular writer, photographer or graphic artist featured in an issue, and feel free to ask any questions. Also, check out humanimag.com for other articles and ideas not in the magazine, as well as interactive and education features. We appreciate the support of you and everyone who generous grabbed Humani and brought it home to enjoy. Thank you, Kailey Jewell, Editor Issue 1 staff@humanimag.com 74 King St Saint Augustine, Fl 32085 credits: Allen J Frances MD,Larry Rosen PhD, Douglas LaBier PhD, Sarah Kershaw, Timothy A Pychyl PhD, lorablog.com, Sevan Matossian, Donald Palansky, Ryan Arter, innocentjustice.org, Angie Hattery, EHE&me, Monacares, Brenda’s Food, thedrum.com, Uhuru Design, Material Views, Nash Plateful, Tampa Massage, Penn Live, Alana de Hinojosa, Shannon Stapleton, Mohammad Asghar
Table of Contents Back to Basics How Not to be Pavlov’s Dog Individual differences in resisting temptation. Timothy A. Pychyl Ph.D. ..................................................................................... pg 4
Growing Pains The Impact of Child Abuse into Adulthood Child abuse harms mental and physical health in adulthood. Douglas LaBier Ph. D. ..........................................................................................pg 8
Mental Check-up Prison or Treatment for the Mentally Ill We should be supporting mental health,not punishing patients. Allen J. Frances M.D. ...........................................................................................pg 12
Psyched. Using Menu Psychology to Entice Diners Chicken liver is what restauranteur Danny Meyer calls a torpedo. Sarah Kershaw .....................................................................................................pg 16
Let’s Get Technical Phantom Pocket Vibration Syndrome What does it tell us about our obsession with technology? Larry Rosen Ph.D. ................................................................................................pg 20
How to:
Not be
Pavlov's
Dog
“I couldn’t help it. I can resist everything except temptation” Oscar Wilde “Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained” William Blake
What do we know about individual differences in resisting temptation?
T
he quotes above were strategically placed at the beginning and the end of a new paper in the journal Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. In this paper, Benjamin Saunders and Terry Robinson (Psychology, University of Michigan) review what we know about why some people succumb to tempting foods or drugs, while others do not.
Saunders and Robinson focus specifically on something everyone learned in first-year psychology, the notion of Pavlovian conditioned responses. You remember some version of a story about dogs salivating to bells that were paired with food presentation over a few days. The unconditioned salivation became cued by the bell (conditioned stimulus) which became the conditioned response (CR) or conditional reflex.
The complete reference is below in case you want to delve into the neuroscience of classical conditioning. For now, I want to focus on some of their general conclusions about individual differences.
Of course, what we want at any time is also affected by our overall state at the present time. Had we been conditioned to salivate for food for a bell ourselves, we may be less motivated to seek or eat food if we’re stuffed from a previous meal. However, if we’re hungry, the motivational strength of that CS will be even stronger than usual. The power and effects of a stimulus depends on the individual too, and individuals vary.
Third, those of us for whom these Pavlovian reward cues are powerful incentives may be at higher risk for various impulse-control disorders. The authors list two such disorders, binge eating and addiction. Of course, I would suggest that procrastination is also a greater risk for those of us for whom reward cues hold special power.
First, they note from the outset that “we are just beginning to understand the factors underlying individual differences in the extent to which reward cues acquire powerful motivational properties, and therefore, the ability to act as incentive stimuli” (p. 1). In other words, there are many things What you may not have learned is that yet to understand about this complex system. these conditioned stimuli (CS) do more than elicit the CR (bells do more than elicit salivation). These Second, despite the inherent complexity and early stimuli take on incentive or motivational properties state of knowledge claims, it is clear that some of us also known as incentive salience. They acquire the (and a variety of other animals) are more “cue reacability to activate many complex emotional and mo- tive.” That is, certain reward cues, those CSs I noted tivational states in us. A strong CS is attention grab- above, are more likely to attract us and motivate us bing. We want it! They act as rewards in themselves. to act to get the potential rewards that they signal.
This is an interesting paper that reviews a variety of non-human and human studies to individual variation in responsivity to potential rewards with a particular emphasis on drugs and addiction.
Finally, although this research is in its early days (as noted), the authors conclude that “preliminary evidence suggests that manipulating attentional bias to drug cues via attentional control therapies may be an effective method for reducing some of the behavioral control drug cues have over addicts.”
IMPLICATIONS Stated another way, training ourselves to explicitly avoid paying attention to cues for reward is a potential route to regaining self control. We may even want to think of using “reappraisal” strategies to reinterpret the meaning of a cue thus making it less motivationally salient. How generalizable these strategies may be for addicts remains to be seen, however I think they will go a long way to helping reduce the maladaptive short-term reward seeking in procrastination. While our smart phones may be a powerful CS that motivates us to seek social contacts, we can learn to recognize how disruptive, distracting and unnecessary this behavior is at times. We can learn to stay on task, not seeking the cued social rewards of Web 2.0 apps, if we can recognize that our behavior is less about making social contact and more about being controlled by powerful conditioned stimuli. Years ago, I made friends chuckle when they got my message machine instead of me when they called (at a time when even this answering machine technology was relatively new).
The message went something like: “Hello, I’m not available to take your call. Did you know that as a student, I learned that Pavlov made dogs salivate to the sound of a bell? That’s nothing, I’ve learned that I can make people leave messages to the sound of tone. Watch this!” And, of course, then the beep would sound. Ok, maybe it was just funny for me then, but you get my point. The point is that we have many conditional reflexes as Pavlov noted back in the 1920s, and many of these are undesirable, even maladaptive behaviors. I think if we can see some of our behaviors for what they are, we might put the energy into cognitive control strategies to help reduce the motivational power that these cues have over us. We know from experience that these cues, particularly for some of us, are difficult to suppress, so being strategic in reducing their salience, perhaps even extinguishing them as conditioned stimuli altogether, may be our best route to less compulsive behavior and more autonomous agency as we may desire. Blogger’s Note: Back in the 1970’s, I was a student of Dr. Herbert Jenkins at McMaster University. It was nice to see his work cited in this paper, and it brought back many memories of my studies of animal conditioning and learning.
Why the
Impact of
Child
Abuse
T
he words “child abuse” are likely to conjure up horror stories that appear from time to time – physical beatings, a child locked in a closet or tied up for long periods; or the unimaginable – like Ariel Castro’s imprisonment of young girls. But in fact, abuse takes many forms, beyond the physical. Recent research finds that its impact is long lasting. It extends far into adulthood, where it affects both physical and mental health. As Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” But this same study, combined with the findings of some other recent research, contains hopeful signs for healing and healthy growth following early abuse. First, consider some less visible forms of abuse, beyond the physical, that can create lasting consequences. For example, parental neglect; indifference to the child’s needs or temperament; outright humiliation; deliberate denigration. All may be fueled by the parent’s own self-hatred, jealousy, or narcissism.
Extends
Well Into
Adulthood
Examples range from the parent who leaves a child in the car or home alone for hours. Or the parent who rebuffs the child who excitedly says, “look at my new drawing!” or “see what I wrote for this school project!” and who receives a curt, “Don’t bother me now. I’ve got to finish up this report.” Or the parent who consistently and vocally praises one child, while ignoring or criticizing the child’s sibling. And there’s the classic, “You’ll never amount to anything!” Or, why can’t you be more like your sister/brother?” I’ve heard them all, and more. All take a toll, and this new research study confirms that abuse has a long shelf life. It takes a continuing toll on both physical and mental health well into adulthood. The study, conducted by researchers at UCLA and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined the effects of abuse and corresponding lack of parental affection across the body’s entire regulatory system. It found strong links between negative early life experiences and health, across the board. The effects permeate one’s entire mind-body system This study of 756 subjects suggested that “biological embedding” occurs through programming brain circuitry in ways that shape response patterns to subsequent stress. That causes wear and tear extending across multiple mind-body systems, and creates adverse health outcomes decades later. The researchers suggest that toxic childhood stress alters neural responses to stress, boosting the emotional and physical arousal to threat, and making it more difficult for that reaction to be shut off. SIGNS OF HOPE And yet, sometimes ecouraging emerged from the
study, and it joins with findings from two other studies about parents and children. The UCLA study found that the presence of a loving, parental figure can provide protection to the abused child. According to the study’s report, “It is well recognized that providing children in adverse circumstances with a nurturing relationship is beneficial for their overall wellbeing. Our findings suggest that a loving relationship may also prevent the rise in biomarkers indicative of disease risk across numerous physiological systems.” According to Judith E. Carroll, the study’s lead author, “If the child has love from parental figures they may be more protected from the impact of abuse on adult biological risk for health problems than those who don’t have that loving adult in their life.” That is, those who reported higher amounts of parental warmth and affection in their childhood had lower multisystem health risks. Moreover, the researchers found “a significant interaction of abuse and warmth, so that individuals reporting low levels of love and affection and high levels of abuse in childhood had the highest multisystem risk in adulthood.” Their findings suggest that “parental warmth and affection protect one against the harmful effects of toxic childhood stress.” That’s good news, and it links with another recent finding that touching and stroking contribute to a healthy sense of self. That is, according to this study, affectionate physical contact, “…characterized by a slow caress or stroke -- often an instinctive gesture from a mother to a child or between partners in romantic relationships -- may increase the brain’s ability to construct a sense of body ownership and, in turn, play a part in
creating and sustaining a healthy sense of self.” Such touching seems to play a role in how the brain learns to construct a mental picture and an understanding of the body, which ultimately helps to create a coherent sense of self, according to a summary of the findings. On the negative side, the absence of such experiences are linked with various physical and emotional disorders. “As affective touch is typically received from a loved one, these findings further highlight how close relationships…play a crucial role in the construction of a sense of self,” said Laura Crucianelli, the lead researcher. Another illustration of the interconnections between the mind, body, and the network of relationships of which one is a part, is a study finding that a positive, mutually supportive and sensitive love relationship was associated with positive, supportive and nurturing behavior towards one’s children. The study’s lead author, Abigail Millings of the University of Bristol, commented in a research summary that researchers sought to examine how caregiving plays out in families: “…how one relationship affects another relationship. We wanted to see how romantic relationships between parents might be associated with what kind of parents they are. Our work is the first to look at romantic caregiving and parenting styles at the same time.” The research found – no surprise – that “a common skill set underpins caregiving across different types of relationships, and for both mothers and fathers. If you can do responsive caregiving, it
seems that you can do it across different relationships.” Millings added, ”It might be the case that practicing being sensitive and responsive — for example, by really listening and by really thinking about the other person’s perspective — to our partners will also help us to improve these skills with our kids.” I think the upshot of this and other findings is that they provide more empirical confirmation that everything is connected in our lives. How we think, feel, relate, and behave are all part of an interconnected whole. To that point, evidence continues to mount that humans are hardwired for empathy and connection. It’s our natural state, but its expression may become stunted or deformed by our life experiences. One example is a recent University of Virginia study, published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging brain scans (fMRIs), if found that we experience people who we become close to as though they are our own selves. “It’s essentially a breakdown of self and other; our self comes to include the people we become close to,” said lead research James Coan. The problem is that our life experiences often generate diminished self-worth, fragmentation, isolation, or retreat into ego attachments that disconnect us from ourselves, within; and from others. Despite our surface differences and conflicts we are one, beneath those differences, like organs of the same body. That reality – if we practice it – has the power not only to heal damage to young lives, but also to enhance greater health and wellbeing for all lives, young and old.
Prison
Treat
or
ment?
T
he public revulsion over repeated mass shootings has placed mental health in the spotlight. This is both good and bad. Bad because focusing on the mentality of the shooter diverts attention away from the lethality of the weapon – and from the fact that many mass shooters had no history of mental health involvement. We will never be able to predict who will commit random acts of violence, but we can reduce our ridiculously high rates of gun death by having a sane gun control policy. Good because our current (non)system of mental health care is badly broken and cries out for fixing and better funding. The problems are spelled out by Amanda Pustilnik, associate professor of law at University of Maryland and an expert on the relationship of law, neuroscience, and mental
ability of medication and improved outpatient treatment, but most of the change is no more than a switch of institutions from hospital to prison.” “Every year, tens of thousands of people try in vain to get access to mental health treatment. It can take months just to get an outpatient appointment and people desperately in need are routinely turned away at the hospital door because there is so little funding for psychiatric beds.” “Where has the money for treatment gone? Much of it has been funneled directly into, and wasted on, our prison system. Prisons and jails have taken on behemoth proportions, bloated with nonviolent and even non-offending people who in earlier times would have been treated in hospitals- we are the poorer for it and no safer.” “The mentally are far more likely to be the victim of a crime or to harm themselves. Their over-
health policy. She writes: “Today, our largest mental hospitals are our jails. The jail at New York’s Rikers’ Island functions as the nation’s largest psychiatric facility. Los Angeles’ jails – not its hospitals – are California’s largest providers of mental health care. State prisons alone spend nearly $5 billion annually to incarcerate mentally ill inmates who are not violent.” “According to the Department of Justice, nearly 1.3 million people with mental illness are incarcerated in state and federal jails and prisons – compared to only about 70,000 people being served in psychiatric hospitals.” “The current psychiatric hospital inpatient population is only 5% of what it was at its height. We have about the same number of psychiatric hospital beds now as we did in 1850. Some of this ‘deinstitutionalization’ comes from the avail-
representation in the criminal system results from their poor ability to communicate with police, lack of adequate legal representation, self-medication with drugs and alcohol, enacting symptoms in public, and lack of any other place to put them. As a Florida judge pointed out- jails are the one institution that can’t say no to admitting someone – so the mentally ill are dumped there, often without treatment, and then have a criminal record to boot.” ”And some mentally ill people spend time in jails without having committed any offense at all. Several states authorize the police to arrest mentally ill people who have not broken any law, simply to promote public order. More commonly, hospitals transfer patients to jails to handle overflow. Even children may be confined in criminal detention centers because there are so few treatment facilities for severely mentally ill children. This reliance on the criminal justice system as a surrogate mental health
system wastes life and treasure, and conflicts with basic notions of justice.” “So, why are we so irrational in our misallocation of resources? Why don’t we invest instead in proven alternatives to prison, like assertive community-based treatment programs and access to supportive housing?” “The problem is that housing and treatment sound like ‘entitlements’- while prison sounds like (and is) punishment. As a culture that prizes self-reliance, we are cautious about extending benefits and suspicious of rewarding people for what looks like bad behavior. The punishment of people with mental illnesses who act out in public might also seem to fit with a certain notion of public order and personal responsibility.” “And it fits with our fears: We look at a handful of national tragedies and conclude that
ask how we can protect mentally ill people from our dangerous preference for punishment over treatment, for prisons over hospitals, for cleaning up tragedies rather than preventing them.” “Let’s provide effective treatment for people with mental illnesses, not make them the stalking horse of our fears. If we focus on access to treatment instead of punishment, we may all be safer and live in a better society.” Thank you, Professor Pustilnik, for a compelling presentation of a national nightmare. “A society will be judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members.” We are failing that judgment in the most shameful and costly way possible. To reduce gun violence, we must have saner gun control policies AND saner care of the mentally ill. These are not competing alternatives – they are both desperately needed. My fear is that we will get
mentally ill people are irresponsible and dangerous – that a law-and-order response is appropriate and necessary. With visions of school shooters before our eyes, we don’t see the typical mentally ill person – someone who is mostly likely to be poor, female, and non-violent.” “According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, three out of four women in state prisons have a mental health problem, compared to just over half of male prisoners. Yet women are not driving the mass violence problem in our country. “Our current moment is reminiscent of 1998, when New York State Governor George Pataki responded to the tragedy of a schizophrenic man pushing a woman to her death in front of a subway train. ‘What can we as a people,’ the governor asked, ‘do to protect individuals from themselves and to protect us as a society?’” “It’s time to turn that question around and
neither. As Mark Twain said, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.” The rhyme here is political inaction. After each tragedy, the politicians hypocritically mourn and harrumph, but wind up buckling under pressure from the NRA, fiscal constraints, and the prison and gun lobbies. We now have the best chance in decades of breaking out of the all too familiar past patterns, but the smart money is that the politicians will once again take no, or only symbolic, actions and that we will continue the insane military arming of the civilian population and the cruel shunting of the mentally ill to jail. If mass incarceration of the mentally ill could solve mass gun violence, we’d be safe already. But we aren’t. It seems that only the constant toll of repeated dramatic tragedies will eventually shake the complacency and cowardice of a stalemated Congress and the backward looking state legislatures.
Menu
Using
C
hicken liver is what the restaurateur Danny Meyer calls a torpedo. Left to its own devices, it may be unappetizing and unpopular, but when paired with what he calls an enhancer — applewood smoked bacon in the case of the chicken liver on the menu at Tabla, Mr. Meyer’s Indian fusion restaurant in the Flatiron District — it not only excites the taste buds but goes to work on the mind.
Psychology
to
After Tabla merged with its downstairs sibling, the Bread Bar at Tabla, in October, Mr. Meyer and his team spent months pondering such matters before unveiling a new menu earlier this month. The price of Boodie’s chicken livers, for example, is $9, written simply as 9. This is a friendly and manageable number at a time when numbers really need to be friendly and manageable. Besides, it has no dollar sign. In the world of menu engineering and pricing, a dollar sign is pretty much the worst thing you can put on a menu, particularly at a high-end restaurant. Not only will it scream “Hello, you are about to spend money!” into a diner’s tender psyche, but it can feel aggressive and look tacky. So can price formats that end in the numeral 9, as in $9.99, which tend to signify value but not quality, menu consultants and researchers say. Tabla is just one of the many restaurants around the country that are feverishly revising their menus. Pounded by the recession, they are hoping that some magic combination of prices, adjectives, fonts, type sizes, ink colors and placement on the page can coax diners into spending a little more
money.“There is constant tinkering going on right now with menus and menu pricing,” said Sheryl E. Kimes, a professor of hospitality management at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration. “A lot of creative things are going on because the restaurants are trying to hold on for dear life to make sure they get through this.” For the operators of most high-end restaurants, the menu psychology is usually drawn from instinct and experience. Mr. Meyer, for example, said he had developed most of his theories through trial and error. “We thought long and hard about the psychology because this is a complete relaunch of a restaurant entirely through its menu and through the psychology of the menu,” Mr. Meyer said. “The chefs write the music and the menu becomes the lyrics, and sometimes the music is gorgeous and it’s got the wrong lyrics and the lyrics can torpedo the music.” The use of menu engineers and consultants is exploding in the casual dining arena and among national chains, a sector of the business that has been especially pinched by the economy. In response, they are tapping into a growing body of research into the
Entice
Diners
the science of menu pricing and writing, hoping the way to a diner’s heart is not only through the stomach, but through the unconscious. Huddle House, the family-dining chain with more than 400 restaurants in 17 states, is rolling out a test menu at 20 restaurants next week. The company hired Gregg Rapp, a menu engineer and consultant who holds “menu boot camps” for restaurants around the country. He said he had been “taking dollar signs off menus for 25 years,” Susan Franck, vice president of marketing for the chain, said she was intrigued about the four types of diners Mr. Rapp had identified. The customers he calls “Entrees” do not want a lot of description, just the bottom line on what the dish is and how much it is going to cost. “Recipes,” on the other hand, ask many questions and want to know as much as they can about the ingredients. “Barbecues” share food and like chatty servers who wear name tags. “Desserts” are trendy people who want to order trendy things. “We can’t do much of a price increase, yet we’re searching for ways to increase our profit for the franchises,” Ms. Franck said. “If you have a signature item, make a logo for it, put more copy to it, romance the description with smokehouse bacon, country ham or farm fresh eggs.” She said the chain took dollar signs off the menu in 2007, and now on the test menu, instead of an omelet and orange juice, there is “the light and fluffy Heavenly Omelet” and “Minute Maid orange juice.” In the “Ten Commandments for Menu Success,” an article published in Restaurant Hospitality magazine in 1994, Allen H. Kelson, a restaurant consultant, wrote, “If admen had souls, many would probably trade them for an opportunity every restaurateur already has: the ability to place an advertisement in every customer’s hand before they part with their money.”And like advertisements, menus contain plenty of subliminal messages. Some restaurants use what researchers call decoys. For
example, they may place a really expensive item at the top of the menu, so that other dishes look more reasonably priced; research shows that diners tend reasonably priced; research shows that diners tend to order neither the most nor least expensive items, drifting toward the middle. Or restaurants might play up a profitable dish by using more appetizing adjectives and placing it next to a less profitable dish with less description so the contrast entices the diner to order the profitable dish. A study published in the spring by Dr. Kimes and other researchers at Cornell found that when the prices were given with dollar signs, customers — the research subjects dined at St. Andrew’s Cafe at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. — spent less than when no dollar signs appeared. The study, published in the Cornell Hospitality Report, also found that customers spent significantly more when the price was listed in numerals without dollar signs, as in “14.00” or “14,” than when it included the word “dollar,” as in “Fourteen dollars.” Apparently even the word “dollar” can trigger what is known as “the pain of paying.” Mr. Rapp, of Palm Springs, Calif., also says that if a restaurant wants to use prices that include cents, like $9.99 or $9.95 (without the dollar sign, of course), he strongly recommends .95, which he said “is a friendlier price,” whereas .99 is “cornier.” On the other hand, 10, or “10 dollars,” has attitude, which is what restaurants using those price formats are selling. A dash or a period after the number appears to be more of an aesthetic choice than a psychological tool, according to one of the authors of the menu pricing study, Sybil S. Yang, a doctoral student at Cornell. Numbers followed by neither a dash nor a period are most common. Mr. Meyer said that in his view, adding zeros to the price, as in 14.00, is not a good idea because “there’s no reason to have pennies if you’re not using pennies, and it takes the price from being two digits into four digits, even if the two last digits are zeros. It’s irrelevant, and the number could feel more
important, which is not a menu writer’s goal.” Other research by Dr. Wansink found that descriptive menu labels increased sales by as much as 27 percent. He has divided descriptions into four categories: geographic labels like “Southwestern TexMex salad,” nostalgia labels like “ye old potato bread,” sensory labels like “buttery plump pasta” and brand names. Finding that brand names help sales, chains are increasingly using what is known as co-branding on their menus, like the Jack Daniel’s sauce at T.G.I. Friday’s and the Minute Maid orange juice on the Huddle House menu, Dr. Wansink said. Dr. Wansink said that vivid adjectives can not only sway a customer’s choice but can also leave them more satisfied at the end of the meal than if they had eaten the same item without the descriptive labeling. Indeed, restaurants like Huddle House and Applebee’s are adding language that suggests a rush of intense satisfaction. At Applebee’s, dishes are described as “handcrafted,” “triple-basted,” “slowcooked,” “grilled” and “slammed with flavor.” BUT many higher-end restaurateurs say they are paring the menu by using cleaner and simpler copy. In those cases, many of the items are inherently descriptive, like the Roasted and Braised Suckling Pig at Craft in Manhattan. There, the left side of the menu lists the farms and other sources of its ingredients. Those names were removed from the individual item descriptions in a streamlining effort, and the serving staff is required to explain many of the accompanying ingredients, including sauces, so the copy is spare.
Mr. Meyer decided there were too many unusual Indian terms that were alienating customers, so they kept only the most recognizable words, like tandoori, paneer and tikka. Tabla experimented with several different fonts and colors before settling on the final version. At one point, the cost of the liver and other prices were shaded navy blue, and some menu headings were orange. While the final version is in black and white, Mr. Meyer said he was thinking about adding orange and red. He remembers, from a hospitality management class he took years ago, what he learned about the gospel on color: red and blue stimulate appetite, while gray and purple stimulate satiation. You will not find a shade of gray or purple on any of the menus at his 11 restaurants, he said. He said he wanted the menu to resemble sheet music, so it has a line of bubbles snaking through the copy. The bigger the bubble, the more bites it takes to consume that dish. When Alinea opened in 2005 it gave out menus at the start of the meal, like other restaurants. But they were of limited use to diners, Mr. Achatz said, because “our food is so manipulated that even if I wrote ‘venison, cranberries, lentils and beets,’ it’s not going to look like they think it’s going to look anyway.” Now Mr. Achatz has adopted a practice that turns the world of menu psychology upside down: his customers do not get them until after they eat.
H
ave you had this experience? If you keep your phone in your pocket you sometimes (maybe even often) feel a vibration in the skin adjacent to your pocket and pull out your mobile phone, assuming it is a text or some sort of notification, only to discover that it was a phantom vibration. Or, if you keep your phone in a purse or satchel you imagine that you heard it vibrating, or even ringing, only to discover that it was a false alarm. According to Dr. Michelle Drouin, a professor at Indiana University-Purdue University in Fort Wayne, Indiana, 89% of the undergraduates in her study had experienced these phantom vibrations about every two weeks on the average although only one in 11 classified them as “bothersome.” Those who reacted more emotionally to text messages and were more dependent on text messaging were more bothered by them. If they were not bothersome, then why would anyone worry about them? The issue is not whether we are consciously bothered by a phantom vibration but, rather, I believe, if our brains are unconsciously bothered. I
I am not a neuroscientist (although I am embarking on research paradigm that assesses prefrontal cortex activity, so perhaps in the future I may classify myself as a “pseudo” neuroscientist) but I do read a lot of neuroscience research and what strikes me is that much of what appears to be happening in our outward behavior can be traced to neurotransmitters in our brain. For example, for decades now psychiatrists have been prescribing a class of psychotropic medications called SSRIs or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors whose sole purpose is to maintain a high level of a neurotransmitter called serotonin in the brain with the result (hopefully) being increased positive affect or, perhaps, reduced feelings of depression. Whether you agree with the actual impact of SSRIs is irrelevant. Just the fact that psychiatrists prescribe them to manipulate the amount of a neurotransmitter means that they are part of a paradigm that deals with brain chemistry. I talked about phantom vibrations in my book, iDisorder, and in our research we now always ask our participants about how often they check in with their devices or websites and their perceived anxiety about not being able to check in as often as they would like. The table and figure below, taken from a recent article
Vibration
P hantom
syndrome
entitled, “Is Facebook Creating ‘iDisorders’? The Link Between Clinical Symptoms of Psychiatric Disorders and Technology Use, Attitudes and Anxiety” published in Computers in Human Behavior by my colleagues and I, plus data from some yet unpublished additional research, provides a glimpse of why so many younger people—and some older people, too—are feeling these phantom vibrations. The table below shows how often members of four generations of Americans—iGeneration (born in the 1990s), Net Generation (born in the 1980s), Generation X (born between 1965 and 1979) and Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964)— check in with various technologies every 15 minutes or less. As you can see, the two out of three members of the two youngest generations are constantly checking in with their text messages (and thus, their smartphones) and one in three are checking their cell phone calls and social media equally often. These estimates may even be a bit low according to a recent Nokia study that found that the average mobile phone user checks their phone every 6.5 minutes during the day or 150 times during their waking hours. The figure below shows the percentages of each generation who get moderately-to-highly anxious if they can’t check in as often as they would like. It is clear that half of the two younger generations are anxious if they can’t check those vibrating text messages and many even get anxious if they can’t check in with their phone calls or social media. It appears, from the tall yellow bar at the far right, that Baby Boomers like myself only get anxious if we can’t check in with our voice mail. In addition, that same study found that those who were more anxious about not being able to check in with Facebook and/or text messages showed more symptoms of major depression, dysthymia, mania, antisocial personality disorder, narcissism, compulsive personality disorder, and paranoid personality disorder. So, it is clear to me that while phantom vibrations may not be overtly bothersome—after all how long does it take to check your phone?—they are potentially increasing the flow of neurotransmitters such as norepinephrine, dopamine, epinephrine and cortoctropin-releasing hormone and decrease the flow of serotonin, and gamma-aminobutyric acid. Although our lab does not have the ability to measure the release or suppression of neurotransmitters my colleague Dr. Nancy Cheever recently completed a study that sheds some light on what may be going on. Dr. Cheever recruited 163 college students who were told to report to a large room. Half were directed randomly through
one door and told to put their books, phones and anything else they had with them away under the desks and tables while the other half were told to relinquish their phone and stow their books and other materials. All students were then told they were to do nothing but wait for further instructions. Every 20 minutes, for an hour, each participant completed the state portion of the State-Trait Anxiety Scale. As you can see from the figure below, the control group, the ones who were allowed to keep but not use their phones, did show a slight increase in anxiety from the first testing (20 minutes into the session) but their anxiety appeared to level off and not increase between the second and third measurement points. The group that had their smartphones taken away showed a more drastic increase both between the first two measurements and the second and third measurements. An even more interesting result was discovered when the participants were separated, based on their self-reported use, into heavy and light smartphone users. The next graph shows the increase in anxiety for these two groups separated by those who had their phones taken away (white bars) and those who were allowed to keep but not look at their phones (green bars). As you can see, it is those heavy smartphone users who showed the greatest increase in anxiety across the 60 minutes. Recently I wrote a blog post on a phenomenon called FoMO or Fear of Missing Out. I think that these two phenomena, FoMO and phantom vibration syndrome, both capture the same prevailing issue. We are now so primed with anxiety about our electronic world (and particularly that which involves communicating such as text messages and social media) that we misinterpret a simple signal from our neurons located below our pocket as an incoming message rather than an itch that needs to be scratched. As we are finding out, it really seems to be all about anxiety that builds up when we are not allowed to check in with our social media which young people appear to check extremely often.
In a recent interview for Computerworld, I was asked “Talk about the phantom vibration syndrome, where it feels as if the cell phone is vibrating but it isn’t. Why does this happen?” My response sums up what I think is happening to young people and really to anyone who is constantly checking in with their technologies all day long: Our body is always in waiting to anticipate any kind of technological interaction, which usually comes from a smartphone. With that anticipatory anxiety, if we get any neurological stimulation, our pants rubbing against our leg for example, you might interpret that through the veil of anxiety, as “Oh, my phone is vibrating.” If you believe, as I believe, that anxietyrelated neurotransmitters are making us interpret random neurological signals as potential cell phone transmissions, then we must start taking steps to retrain ourselves and reduce these anxiety reactions. They are not good for us and will end up potentially keeping us so keyed up that we will not be able to focus or even rest. The last chapter of my iDisorder book takes the approach that we must learn from neuroscience research what calms our brains. Some of the suggestions include the following which each need to be done for 10 minutes every couple of hours:
Take a short walk in nature or just go outside Do a short mindful meditation session Exercise Listen to music Sing Practice a foreign language Read a joke book Talk to someone in person or on the phone Actually you probably already know what it takes to calm YOUR brain. About every 90 minutes to two hours do something for 10 minutes away from technology and your anxiety levels should decrease. Another hint is to only access your electronic communications websites (e-mail, texts, social media) on a schedule, say every 15 minutes, and then turn them off during the down times. Unless it’s an emergency, nobody will freak out if you don’t get back to him or her within 15 minutes. If you are concerned about missing a “real” emergency from someone, arrange a special communication channel for that person and leave that one active while silencing all the others.
November 26, 2013
Ed Sheeran +
humani
Issue 1
Out Now! Š2013 Kailey Jewell