9 minute read
Lexicon
Go with the Flow
PSYCHOLOGY
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FLOW 'flo / noun, verb (1) Smooth, continuous movement, as of water; (2) the mental state of being completely absorbed in what one is doing.
Origin: From German and Old English flowan, meaning “flood.” The word’s psychological meaning was coined in 1990 by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, whose research subjects used water metaphors to describe states of highly focused, joyful productivity.
Usage: Used literally, flow refers to the movement of water and other fluids. But water is an essential human and environmental need, and it is a universal part of the human experience. So, the idea of flow is also very popular as a metaphor.
“In psychology, flow refers to a mental state where someone is so happily immersed in an activity that they lose all sense of time. As Csíkszentmihályi said, ‘The purpose of the flow is to keep on flowing, not looking for a peak or utopia but staying in the flow.’”
Joe Árvai, Dana and David Dornsife Chair and professor of psychology and biological sciences, is the first behavioral scientist to serve as director of the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies. He studies how people formulate beliefs and make decisions about environmental issues. On his days off, he makes documentary photographs, rides motorcycles and climbs mountains.
Numbers
SUSTAINABILITY AND RESILIENCE Adverse environmental conditions are impacting a growing number of Angelenos, according to an LABarometer survey. “The startling increase in the percentage of Angelenos who didn’t want to leave their homes because of unsafe air resulting from wildfires really speaks to the growing threat wildfires pose to quality of life in Los Angeles. Compared to just a year ago, our results suggest that more Angelenos are feeling the impact of climate change on their daily lives and plans,” says Kyla Thomas, director of LABarometer. The quarterly survey is designed and administered by the USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research and made possible by the financial support of Union Bank.
75 & 77
Percentage of Angelenos who say climate change is mostly caused by humans and percentage who say it threatens their well-being.
1.3X
Factor increase in the number of L.A. County residents who avoided going outdoors due to wildfire-related air quality concerns.
Fraction of Angelenos who say their actions can make a difference in reducing the effects of climate change.
⅔
59%
Portion of L.A. County residents who say their next car is likely to be electric or hybrid.
Ratio of Angelenos who expect their next car to be zeroemission — a 24% increase from 2020.
4IN 10
Rejecting Climate Change Fatalism
Climate change isn’t an inevitable death sentence, and the discipline of psychology must strengthen its ability to act on the issue, a new report says. By Greg Hardesty
Doom and gloom tend to dominate when it comes to news about climate change. Unfortunately, what many articles and reports likely won’t emphasize are the things you can do to keep climate change from getting worse, or how people can build psychological and social resilience to better cope with its impacts.
Enter the American Psychological Association (APA), which recently released a 64-page report recommending steps psychologists can take to address climate change and collaborate with other disciplines to make a meaningful impact.
The report, “Addressing the Climate Crisis: An Action Plan for Psychologists,” is the result of 15 months’ work by a task force led by Gale Sinatra, professor of psychology at USC Dornsife and professor of education at USC Rossier School of Education.
“If there’s too much doomsday information in media coverage about climate change, then people will tune out, and that’s exactly the opposite of what we need,” says Sinatra, who holds the Stephen H. Crocker chair at USC Rossier. “It’s not true that we’re completely doomed. We can make a difference.”
The report contains 12 recommendations — six for strengthening the field of psychology and six for broadening psychology’s impact — while focusing on action. Such steps include building psychologists’ capacities to support people in working against climate change and making changes to live with its effects, and promoting the engagement of psychologists with policymakers, practitioners and the community at large.
Joe Árvai, Dana and David Dornsife Chair and professor of psychology and biological sciences, is an expert on risk assessment and communication who has done work aimed at helping people adopt more sustainable behaviors. He praised the APA report.
“It’s one of the first early steps in mainstreaming behavioral science around climate change,” he said. “I hope it gets the conversation started so others can build momentum to move us from ‘the sky is falling!’ mode to ‘how are we going to prop it up?’ mode.”
Sinatra notes that addressing climate change on a broad scale cannot exclude focusing on its psychological effects. She uses the analogy of developing vaccines for COVID-19, noting that while there was great effort to create and distribute the vaccine, very little was done to address the psychological aspects of vaccine hesitancy.
“Many people are aware of the changes we need to make in how we live and work regarding energy use and consumption to address climate change, but I don’t think people are as aware of the psychological impact,” Sinatra says. “We need to prepare for the massive displacement of people, changes in working and living lifestyles, and how we’re going to adapt psychologically as well as physically.”
Wändi Bruine De Bruin, Provost Professor of Public Policy, Psychology, and Behavioral Science, who has joint appointments at USC Dornsife and the USC Price School of Public Policy, notes that the APA report is in line with other work USC Dornsife is doing aimed at helping people change their climate-harming ways.
“Psychologists are trained to conduct carefully crafted research and test theories of what drives behavior change,” Bruine De Bruin says. “If you apply psychology to realworld problems, that can be very powerful.”
Winning Arguments
Trojan Debate Squad partners persevere through Zoom era to win USC’s biggest title in 30 years.
USC’s recent debating dominance in the Texas Open, a national debate tournament hosted by the University of Texas at Austin, was the biggest win for the Trojan Debate Squad in at least 30 years.
It was especially sweet for debate partners Julian Kuffour and Kevin Sun, who brought home the victory in their final tournament together after surmounting the challenges of Zoom debates for the last two years.
“Debate is a partner activity, and it’s very difficult to communicate with your partner when I’m in Kansas and he’s in California, and we’re debating on Zoom,” said Kuffour, a senior majoring in law, history and culture at USC Dornsife. “We had to text a lot and learn how to communicate nonverbally and learn each other’s patterns.”
But Kuffour and Sun, a junior computer science major at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, are seasoned competitors who spent the last three years joining forces to debate everything from space collaboration to antitrust laws. They were able to adjust to the challenges of the Zoom era and weren’t afraid to put in extra hours to prepare.
After a year perfecting every argument both for and against monopolies, the USC team competed in 22 hours of elimination rounds the weekend before the final debate. Nearly three dozen teams were winnowed down to USC and University of Michigan, the defending champions.
Kuffour and Sun’s historic win — 2 to 1 for USC — was also the culmination of their three years as debate partners, and was Kuffour’s final debate as a Trojan.
“It was a relief to win,” Kuffour said. “There are no words to describe the importance of the win for my career, for Kevin’s career and for the team.” —A.B.
Schizophrenia Source?
Study of a mysterious brain protein points to a possible source of the psychiatric disorder.
The dentate gyrus appears as a thick, mostly yellow, C-shaped body at center-left in this cross section of a rat hippocampus.
Schizophrenia affects about 20 million people around the globe. USC Dornsife scientists recently identified a specific location in the brain where schizophrenia may originate, a breakthrough that could help identify those at risk and lead to new diagnostic, preventive and treatment measures.
USC Dornsife scientists led by Bruce Herring, assistant professor of biological sciences, studied a protein called synapse-associated protein 97, or SAP97, which is found in neurons in the brain. The normal function of SAP97 — what it does and where it does it — has remained a mystery for years. At the same time, research has shown that mutations that inhibit SAP97 are linked to a large increase in the risk of developing schizophrenia.
SAP97 belongs to a family of proteins that regulate glutamatergic signaling — communication between neurons through the release of the neurotransmitter glutamate — and influence how memories are created and stored. Until now, experiements have failed to show that SAP97 plays any significant part in regulating glutamatergic signaling in the brain.
So, Herring chose to look at a different region of the brain, called the dentate gyrus. Studying rats with mutated SAP97, the researchers looked for changes in activity in the dentate gyrus. They found them.
Neurons in the dentate gyrus with reduced SAP97 function showed extremely large increases in glutamatergic signaling. This increase suggests SAP97 normally helps dampen glutamatergic signaling within the dentate gyrus. Also, these large increases produced symptoms of schizophrenia.
The results are the first to confirm where in the brain SAP97 is active and to directly link alterations in dentate gyrus function to the development of schizophrenia.
“Our study reveals where SAP97 functions in the brain and shows exactly what schizophrenia-associated mutations in this protein do to neurons,” said Herring. —D.S.J.
Spotlight
AMMAR DHARANI ’23 NEUROSCIENCE AND HISTORY
The recent winner of a soughtafter scholarship from the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation, neuroscience major Ammar Dharani sees his work as being at the crossroads of several fields that can help advance medicine. Neuroscience lies at the intersection of biology, psychology, philosophy and even history, he says, and studying the workings of the brain is useful as a context for understanding many of the larger issues in medicine and society. In fact, during his sophomore year, Dharani added a history minor to his studies because, he says, it aids his scientific research, enabling him to “imagine alternative ways that people have understood the world.” Dharini’s research at USC Dornsife aims to track the structural and connectivity changes following traumatic brain injury and how these alterations may lead to Alzheimer’s disease. “I am most interested in mapping the biological basis of complex behaviors and how they may be altered in neuropsychological disorders,” he says. —M.M.
