Bad Behavior Has More Impact than Positive Gestures

August 14, 2018 at 01:35PM bp Magazine
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by esperanza

Being ever-connected comes at a cost, studies find.

 

SAN FRANCISCO — Our digital lives may be making us more distracted, distant and drained, according to research presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association.

For instance, even minor phone use during a meal with friends was enough to make the diners feel distracted and reduced their enjoyment of the experience, one study found.

“People who were allowed to use their phones during dinner had more trouble staying present in the moment,” said Ryan Dwyer, MA, of the University of British Columbia, lead author of a study that was presented during a symposium on how digital technology is affecting relationships. “Decades of research on happiness tell us that engaging positively with others is critical for our well-being. Modern technology may be wonderful, but it can easily sidetrack us and take away from the special moments we have with friends and family in person.”

Dwyer and his colleagues conducted two studies – a field experiment in a restaurant and a survey. The restaurant experiment included more than 300 adults and university students in Vancouver, British Columbia. Participants were either asked to keep their phones on the table with the ringer or vibration on or to put their phones on silent and place them in a container on the table during the meal.

After eating, the participants filled out a questionnaire detailing their feelings of social connectedness, enjoyment, distraction and boredom, as well as the amount of phone use and what they did on their phones during the meal.

The researchers found that people who had their phones easily accessible during the experiment not only used them more than those with their phones put away, but they also reported feeling more distracted and enjoyed the experience less.

The survey portion included more than 120 participants from the University of Virginia. Participants were surveyed five times a day for one week and were asked to report on how they were feeling and what they had been doing in the 15 minutes before completing the survey.

Results showed that people reported feeling more distracted during face-to-face interactions if they had used their smartphone compared with face-to-face interactions where they had not used their smartphone. The students also said they felt less enjoyment and interest in their interaction if they had been on their phone.

“The survey findings were especially notable because of the negative effects of phone use among university students, who are commonly known as digital natives,” said Elizabeth Dunn, PhD, of the University of British Columbia and co-author of the study and symposium presenter. “We assumed that this generation would be more adept at multi-tasking between using their phones and interacting with others, but we found out even moderate levels of phone use undermined the benefits of engaging with others.”

Another study presented in the session found that compassionate people spend less time on social media than people who are more self-centered and narcissistic.

In addition, people with lower emotional intelligence, or those who have difficulty identifying, describing and processing their emotions, used social media more often than those who are more in touch with their feelings, according to the study.

“People who are uncomfortable with their own and others’ emotions may be more comfortable online,” said Sara Konrath, PhD, of Indiana University. “We think that they may prefer text-based interactions that allow them more time to process social and emotional information.”

This study built upon previous research that has shown that more narcissistic people use social more often than less narcissistic people. Virtually no research has been done on how emotional intelligence relates to social media use, according to Konrath.

She and her colleagues analyzed data from four studies of more than 1,200 adult participants and used existing scales that assessed narcissism, empathy, emotional intelligence and emotion recognition. The studies also asked questions about how frequently participants checked and posted on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

More empathic people used Twitter less frequently than those who were not as caring and compassionate toward others, the researchers found. Also, people who were more likely to be able to see the world from another’s perspective did not spend as much time on Facebook and Instagram. Another interesting finding was that people who scored high on a test of reading others’ emotions used Twitter and Facebook less often.

Conversely, more narcissistic people and those who feel overwhelmed by the emotional experiences of others spent more time on all three social media sites.

“Does being more emotionally intelligent and empathic cause people to avoid social media, or are lower empathy people more drawn to it? It could also be the opposite: Perhaps frequently using social media can impair empathy and emotional intelligence,” said Konrath. “We cannot determine causality with this study. We need more research to better understand how online digital technology affects people, for better or for worse.”

Other research presented found that pre-teens became better at reading non-verbal cues from their peers after five days with no screen time and college-age participants bonded better with their friends during in-person interactions versus video chat, audio chat or instant messaging.

Session 2164: “How Smartphone Use Spreads and Undermines Enjoyment in Face-to-Face Social Interactions,” and “Emotional Intelligence and Social Media Use,” Symposium, Friday, Aug. 10, 11 a.m. PDT, Room 308, Level Three-South Building, Moscone Center, 747 Howard St., San Francisco, Calif.

 

Source: NewsWise

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Treating depression in teens may benefit parents’ mental health, too, study finds.

 

SAN FRANCISCO, August 1, 2018— The bond between parent and child extends far beyond sharing similar looks or behaviors, as symptoms of depression in teens and parents appear to be linked, according to research presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association.

When a teen’s depression improved through treatment, so did depression experienced by his or her parent, according to Kelsey R. Howard, MS, of Northwestern University, who presented the findings.

“More young people today are reporting persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness and suicidal thoughts,” said Howard. “At the same time, suicide rates have climbed in nearly all U.S. states. This research may help health care providers as we grapple as a nation with how to address these alarming trends.”

A total of 325 teens who had been diagnosed with depression and 325 of their parents or caregivers participated in this long-term study. The teens were randomly assigned to one of three groups: those who received cognitive behavioral therapy, those who took an antidepressant or those who used a combination of both. The first treatment period ran for nearly one year, with an additional year of follow-up visits.

One-quarter of the parents who participated also reported moderate to severe levels of depression before the treatment period, according to Howard.

The treatment process was not family-based, though some portions included the parent. Nonetheless, the results showed a positive ripple effect because when the severity of a teen’s depression lessened, so did similar symptoms in the parent, regardless of what treatment was used.

“Depression is a massive public health concern that will take a variety of approaches to better manage. We believe our study is among the first to evaluate how the emotional health of a child can impact that of the parent,” said Mark A. Reinecke, PhD, a co-author of the study.

The findings could be useful for clinicians, as they may wish to assess a parent’s level of depression when treating his or her child, or provide appropriate referrals, according to Howard.

“The concept of emotions being ‘contagious’ and spreading from person to person is well-known by psychologists,” Howard added. “This work opens up a range of possibilities for future research on the family-wide effects of treatment for adolescent depression.”

 

Session 1205: “Parental Depressive Symptoms Over the Course of Treatment for Adolescent Depression,” Poster Session, Saturday, Aug. 11, 9 a.m. PDT, Halls ABC Exhibition Level-South Building, Moscone Center, 747 Howard St., San Francisco, Calif.

 

Source: Newswise

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by esperanza Magazine

Individuals deficient in a single molecule more often have severe depressive symptoms, or treatment-resistant depression.

ScienceDaily, July 30, 2018— Depression is not a single disease. The term refers to a cluster of feelings and behaviors, brought on by a variety of underlying causes. And, unfortunately, it is often difficult to determine which type of depression a person has: a physician cannot take a mouth swab or a blood sample to diagnose the nature and severity of a patient’s psychiatric condition — at least not yet.

According to a new multi-institutional study, published in PNAS, doctors may one day be able gain insight into an individual’s depression by analyzing his or her blood. Rockefeller scientists Bruce McEwen and Carla Nasca, in collaboration with Natalie Rasgon, psychiatry professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, show that patients with a particular type of depression have decreased blood levels of the molecule acetyl-L-carnitine (LAC) — a finding that may lead to improved diagnosis and treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD).

 

When LAC is lacking

Naturally produced by the body, LAC performs a number of crucial tasks in the brain. For example, the molecule regulates energy metabolism and interacts with DNA to promote the expression of important genes. Specifically, it acts on a gene that controls levels of the neurotransmitter glutamate — a chemical implicated in almost everything that the brain does.

McEwen, the Alfred E. Mirsky Professor, and Nasca, a postdoctoral fellow of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, have studied the link between LAC and mood disorders using animal models. In one study, they showed that LAC supplements ameliorate depressive symptoms in mice by reversing brain-cell impairment caused by an excess of glutamate. In a separate rodent study, they observed that LAC treatment reduces depressive behavior and stress-associated neural dysfunction in the medial amygdala, a brain region involved in social interactions. These findings strongly suggest that LAC deficits contribute to a depression-like state in mice, leading the scientists to wonder whether the molecule plays a similar role in humans.

“Our laboratory has a long history of studying the effects of stress on brain circuits implicated in depression,” says McEwen. “When Carla brought her initial LAC findings to the lab, this project seemed like an ideal way to combine our expertise with that of clinical researchers at Weill Cornell, Mount Sinai and Stanford.”

In the latest study, the scientists measured levels of LAC in blood samples taken from people diagnosed with MDD. They found that levels were significantly decreased in these patients, as compared to age-matched individuals without depression. Additional analysis revealed that patients with very low LAC exhibited more severe depression and were more likely to develop MDD early in life. Finally, the researchers found that decreased LAC was associated with having a history of childhood trauma and treatment-resistant depression, particularly in women.

“In patients with depression, something is causing a problem in the mechanisms related to the biology of LAC,” says Nasca. “And, surprisingly, the deficiency in LAC is even stronger in patients that don’t respond to standard antidepressants.”

These results suggest that LAC levels may be used as an effective biomarker — meaning, a measurable physiological trait that can indicate the presence of disease (sometimes in combination with other diagnostic techniques). In recent decades, physicians and researchers have been eager to identify biomarkers for psychiatric disorders, with limited success. This study represents unique progress, as it points to LAC screening as a potential tool for diagnosing a specific subtype of depression — a type that is highly severe, treatment-resistant, and that may stem, in part, from exposure to trauma early in life.

“These findings should motivate research into the action of LAC on glutamate function and behavioral states,” says McEwen. “Additional research into other novel biomarkers to more precisely pinpoint MDD diagnosis could ultimately lead to a different way of thinking about treatments for MDD and other disorders.”

Rasgon adds: “We are excited about this first translational study in humans, and poised to build on our results to identify new treatment targets in the brain.”

 

Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

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by esperanza Magazine

People struggling with motivation benefit more from giving advice than receiving it.

 

Newswise — People struggling with motivation will benefit more from giving advice than receiving it, although most people predict the opposite to be true, according to new research from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

In the paper , “In Giving We Receive: A Counterintuitive Approach to Motivating Behavior,” forthcoming in Psychological Science, Chicago Booth Professor Ayelet Fishbach and University of Pennsylvania’s Lauren Eskries-Winkler and Angela Duckworth find that people struggling to achieve goals incorrectly assumed that they needed expert advice to succeed, when in fact they were better helped by doling out advice.

Giving advice motivated givers by raising their confidence, a reality that people struggling to reach their goals failed to anticipate.

The findings were consistent across a series of experiments including improving study habits, saving money, controlling tempers, losing weight and looking for jobs.

“In the process of giving advice, advisors may form specific intentions and lay out concrete plans of action — both of which increase motivation and achievement,” the authors write.

The reason that giving advice may boost motivation starts from a bump in confidence that comes with simply being asked to deliver the advice, according to the researchers. In order to give advice, you need to sort through your thoughts and make a recommendation. That requires givers to search their own brains for examples of behavior that has worked successfully for them in the past, an exercise likely to boost confidence as well.

“In one experiment with public school middle-schoolers (6^th-, 7^th– and 8^th-graders), researchers asked one group of students to give advice to younger students about staying motivated in school. They asked another group of students to get advice about staying motivated in school from a teacher. The advice sessions occurred once a week over three weeks.”

The very act of giving the advice makes the giver feel powerful and confident, an effect the predictors of behavior didn’t account for.

Before, during and after the intervention, the middle-schoolers could sign into a vocabulary program online. An invisible timer tracked minutes spent with the program.

Researchers found that the group giving advice studied vocabulary 38 percent more in the four weeks after the intervention than did the middle-schoolers who received advice about schoolwork from a teacher.

The very act of giving the advice makes the giver feel powerful and confident, an effect the predictors of behavior didn’t account for, Fishbach and colleagues wrote. Giving advice also restores some of the confidence lost when people have routinely fallen short of goals. Confident people set higher goals for themselves and remain more committed to them over time, the researchers say.

Conversely, “when people lack motivation, receiving advice may actually be harmful. Receiving help can feel stigmatizing because it undermines feelings of competence,” the paper states.

The findings have implications for programs that promote weight loss, academic achievement or better job performance, because those programs typically rely on participants receiving rather than giving advice.

“We hope our findings, which illuminate the motivational power of giving, do just that: goad scientists and practitioners to consider the ways in which struggling individuals benefit from giving,” the authors write. “Indeed, our research provides empirical support for an age-old aphorism: it is in giving that we receive.”

 

Source: University of Chicago Booth School of Business

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The neural link between depression and sleep problems has been identified for the first time in a new study by researchers at the University of Warwick and Fudan University.

 

EurekAlert!, July 25, 2018— The neural link between depression and sleep problems has been identified for the first time in a new study by researchers at the University of Warwick (UK) and Fudan University (China).

Professor Jianfeng Feng and Professor Edmund Rolls from Warwick’s Department of Computer Science, with Dr. Wei Cheng from Fudan University, found functional connectivity between the areas of the brain associated with short-term memory, self, and negative emotions – causing sufferers to dwell on bad thoughts and leading to a poor quality of sleep.

This research could lead to better sleep quality for people with depression, and opens up the possibility of new targeted treatments.

Analysing data from around 10,000 people, the researchers examined the neural mechanisms underlying the relation between depression and quality of sleep.

In the brains of those living with depressive problems, they discovered a strong connection between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (associated with short-term memory), the precuneus (associated with the self) and the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (associated with negative emotion).

The analysis showed that these functional connectivities underlie the relation between depressive problems and sleep quality.

The researchers conclude that increased functional connectivity between these brain regions provides a neural basis for how depression is related to poor sleep quality.

Professor Jianfeng Feng, from the University of Warwick’s Department of Computer Science, said:

“The understanding that we develop here is consistent with areas of the brain involved in short-term memory (the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex), the self (precuneus), and negative emotion (the lateral orbitofrontal cortex) being highly connected in depression, and that this results in increased ruminating thoughts which are at least part of the mechanism that impairs sleep quality.”

Professor Edmund Rolls also commented: “This study may also have implications for a deeper understanding of depression. This important cross-validation with participants from the USA provides support for the theory that the lateral orbitofrontal cortex is a key brain area that might be targeted in the search for treatments for depression.”

Professor Jianfeng Feng comments that these findings could have important public health implications, as both sleep problems and depression affect a large number of people. He commented:

“In today’s world, poor sleep and sleep deprivation have become common problem affecting more than a third of the world’s population due to the longer work hours and commuting times, later night activity, and increased dependency on electronics. The disorder of insomnia has become the second most prevalent mental disorder.”

“And major depressive disorder is also ranked by the World Health Organization as the leading cause of years-of-life lived with disability. According to a recent statistic, it affects approximately 216 million people (3% of the world’s population). So almost everyone in the world is related to these two problems, as a sufferer or a relative of a sufferer.”

Professor Jianfeng Feng further commented: “The relation between depression and sleep has been observed more than one hundred years, and now we have identified the neural mechanisms of how they are connected for the first time. These findings provide a neural basis for understanding how depression relates to poor sleep quality, and this in turn has implications for treatment of depression and improvement of sleep quality because of the brain areas identified.”

Depression and sleep problems often go hand-in-hand. About 75% of depressed patients report significant levels of sleep disturbance, such as difficulty of falling asleep and short duration of sleep (insomnia). People with insomnia also have a higher risk of developing depression and anxiety than those who sleep normally.

 

Source: JAMA Psychiatry

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