Emotional Responses to News Coverage

"The negative exposure we have in the media makes u s think that the world is more dangerous than it really is. Seeing others' kindness helps us maintain this belief that the world isn't that bad."

"There's something special about kindness in particular. Following news stories that feature others' kindness has a real set of emotional and cognitive benefits for people. It serves as a kind of reset button that allows us to have this faith in humanity."

"[When humans witness an act of kindness], it gives us a special feeling called elevation; [a] warm, fuzzy feeling in the chest, an immediate rush of wanting to be a better person."

"We're inspired to be kind by seeing others' kindness."

Kathryn Buchanan, psychology professor, University of Essex

 

"[Troubling stories are likely to lead to] passive despair [or hopelessness]."

"That's completely contrary to what most people think, which is that you scare people into action."

"[On the flip side], when you see other people behaving well, that gives rise to more hope in human nature, and you yourself will behave more ethically."

Denise Baden, professor of sustainable business, University of Southampton 

Professor Buchanan and her colleague, Gillian Sandstrom began a study in 2017 recently published in PLOS One, that found being exposed to news containing an element of kindness is capable of easing the sobering effects of reading news stories that tend to be distressing. The two researchers split 1,800 study participants into several groups, each of which were given news clips or articles relating to a recent U.K.-based terrorist attack or a similarly-upsetting catastrophic event.

Some groups were exposed singularly to upsetting news, others were subsequently shown stories of a heroic act or one of a more lighthearted subject matter. The group strictly given unsettling news reported increases in negative emotions and decreases in feelings of positivity. They also spoke of feeling more pessimistic about humanity and society in general. Participants on the other hand, shown stories of kindness as well as the shocking stories, reported less negative emotions, along with increases of emotional positivity; they came away with a more optimistic world view.

Two scales were in use by the participants -- 1 meant very slightly or not at all, up to 5 representing extremely -- in assessing the level of negativity and positivity they experienced before and after being exposed to news content. Typically, a participant exposed to only upsetting news rose from a 1.32 to 2.48 on the negativity scale, their positivity level plunging from a 2.59 to a 1.91. Seeing distressing news but also given a kindness story saw the scales move from a 1.32 to 1.77 on the negativity scale, with a 2.89 to a 3.10 on the positivity scale.

Uplifting news, it was demonstrated, can provide an emotional buffer against distressing news. The importance of being informed of current events, including those with a tendency to make one upset is important, the researchers concluded, but a balanced news coverage would mitigate "mean-world syndrome", which is when -- after long-term exposure to upsetting news -- people begin to view the world through a darker prism than reality.

Feelings of cynicism and hopelessness can be lifted on being exposed to positive news, replaced with optimism and action, encouraging people to feel better, and sometimes commit to doing better themselves. Similar conclusions have been yielded through other studies. Dr. Baden, at University of Southampton, researched adverse effects of negative news dominating the media, and benefits of constructive and solution-based journalism. Published in 2019, her research was titled "The Impact of constructive news on affective and behavioural responses".

Videos and stories of acts of kindness had the most positive effect on participants. 22Images Studio/ Shutterstock

Take Your Pick: Dopamine Fasting or Take a Break

"Dopamine fasting is not focused on reducing neuro-transmitters. It is squarely focused on [improving] our relationship with behaviours that are increasingly out of control and returning them to reasonable use."
"Dopamine fasting is based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy [CBT], the gold standard treatment for compulsive behaviours like Internet addiction."
"[It] helps people cut down on the amount of time they spend on impulsive behaviours and regain behavioural flexibility over when they do them, by restricting their use within specific periods of time."
Cameron Sepah, assistant professor, clinical psychology, University of California

Abstinence can trigger more thoughts about the very thing you are trying to abstain from. Photograph: FatCamera/Getty Images

One of many Silicon Valley "biohacks" and wellness trends that is gaining popularity is called "dopamine fasting", touted as a method to allow the brain a break from overstimulation [and the influence of dopamine). The Internet is full of people writing of their satisfaction over having engaged in dopamine fasting, as did Jari Roomer, founder of Personal Growth Lab.

"Never in my entire life did I have a day in which my mind was so incredibly still and focused", he wrote, on completing his first 24-hour dopamine fast. viewers of a YouTube video on the "Improvement Pill" channel were informed how spending a day with as little mental stimulation as possible could rejuvenate the mind: "dopamine fasting".

To that end, viewers were instructed to withhold indulging in food, phones, Internet, videos, music, alcohol, drugs, hanging out with friends, speaking with people, masturbating and reading books -- while on the other hand encouraging them to drink water, take a walk, perform light exercise, meditate and with the use of pen and paper, do some writing.

To some people so inclined the permitted actions might appear far more appealing than the withheld ones.

The assumption here is that one's life has run away, gotten out of control, and to re-establish the direction in which one wishes to travel, the mind should be cleared of all indulgences which produce dopamine -- an abundance of which translates to no longer being motivated by what we crave. This must have impressed at least a proportion of its 1.7 million viewers.

Getty Images

And then a LinkedIn article by Cameron Sepah appeared to give weight to the notion of dopamine fasting with a level of scientific legitimacy when he introduced "Dopamine Fasting 2.0" as a less intrusive way to target behaviours such as addictions, advising people to surrender that problematic behaviour gradually, beginning with abstention for one to four years, working up to one week.

With that instruction in mind, people fasted and his post saw over 100,000 views in a timespan of less than a day, popularizing the idea. Some narratives out of Silicone Valley focus on individuals hitting the disconnect button encompassing just about everything, for 24-hour stretches, including avoidance of normal social interaction to ensure dopamine is kept in check.

Two mid-20s startup founders committed to a dopamine fast during when they abstained from food, from screens, took care not to touch anyone or make eye contact. "A dopamine fast is simple, because it is basically a fast of everything" reported The New York Times in a dopamine fasting documentary. "The point of dopamine fasting is not to encourage monasticism or masochism" Dr.Sepah instructed, however.

Rather than forbidding or prescribing actions, readers of his post were told to fast only from what is highly pleasurable or problematic. Dopamine, referred frequently to as the "happiness" molecule is a neurotransmitter acting as a messenger in the brain, moving from one brain cell (neuron) to another by binding to a receptor on the receiving neuron to control our reward centre, executive functions, and affecting motivation, learning, attention and mood.

The short answer to the question of whether reducing stimuli can reduce the levels of dopamine in our brains is a considered 'no', according to Dr. Philip Seeman, professor emeritus, pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Toronto. Dr. Seeman's experience speaks for itself through his career lifetime spent researching dopamine receptors.

Dr.Seeman points out that a conversion happens when the receptor changes from high (super sensitive and more pleasure yielding) to low (sub-sensitive), which occurs daily. Stimulants such as smartphones and excessive socializing are mediated through the high receptors. Sleep, meditation, rest and quiet periods are able to convert receptors into the low version, making us feel calmer.

While removing stimuli can affect dopamine, it will occur not how its promoters describe on YouTube and social media. It isn't lost on most peoples' sensibilities that putting their phone on silent, spending time performing what feels like nothing, such as reading, cooking, walking, napping, has the value of producing the element of focus and serenity, as their dopamine receptors alter from high to low when obsessive scrolling through social media is set aside.

A Word to the Wise: Be Humble, Forgiving and Kind

Abstract: We review humility, a trait characterized by (a) an ability to accurately acknowledge one’s limitations and abilities and (b) an interpersonal stance that is other-oriented rather than self-focused. We explore two key contexts of humility, intellectual and cultural; explain why humility is important; and identify open questions for future research.
Daryl Van Tongeren and research team, Hope College

Humility: Characterized by an ability to accurately acknowledge one's limitations and abilities and an interpersonal stance that is other-oriented rather than self-focused.

Humility, a vital characteristic, is hard to fake as a personality trait. Francesco Ciccolella, The New York Times

"Research on humility has been growing, and fast."
"It was time to bring people up-to-date and lay out in the open questions to guide further research."
"One of the thorny issues is that the people who are the most open and willing to cultivate humility might be the ones who need it the least."
"And vice versa: those most in need could be the most resistant."
Daryl Van Tongeren, psychologist, Hope College, Michigan

"These kinds of findings may account for the fact that people high in intellectual humility are not easily manipulated with regard to their views."
"[The findings may also] help us understand how humility can be associated with holding convictions."
Elizabeth Krumrei Mancuso, Pepperdine University, Malibu, California

People scoring high on the humility index scored concomitantly lower on measures of political and ideological polarization, irrespective of whether they fall into the conservative or liberal camp. People who score high for humility, according to research, tend to be less aggressive, less judgemental toward those belonging to religious groups other than their own, as opposed to less humble people.

In a series of experiments, Dr. Krumrei Mancuso scored volunteers on a measure of intellectual humility, construed as an awareness of how incomplete and fallible were their personal views on political and social issues. She discovered that this particular type of humility had no relation to IQ measures, nor with political affiliation; rather it was linked to curiosity, reflection and open-mindedness.

The latest issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science published a paper where a research team reviewed studies of the personal trait of humility. It is only relatively lately that social and personality psychology has recognized humility as a trait ripe for study. Its study derives from an effort dating from the 1990s to construct a "positive" psychology, allied with reaching a more complete vision of sustaining qualities like pride, forgiveness, grit and contentment.

Another study still in development by Dr. Krumrei Mancuso linked to questionnaires given to 587 adults for the purpose of measuring levels of intellectual humility where participants rated whether or not they agreed with a number of statements. Such as: "I feel small when others disagree with me on topics that are close to my heart", and, "For the most part, others have more to learn from me than I have to learn from them."

As in: from hubris to humility.

In the review paper of which Dr. Van Tongeren was the lead author, he and his colleagues proposed a number of explanations why humility, intellectual or otherwise, becomes a valuable portion of an individual's personality. Chief among them, that a humble disposition could be critical in sustaining a committed relationship. It may as well, nourish the capacity of a psychological resource to set aside grudges, suffer fools patiently and be kinder to oneself.

With the growing interest in humility as a positive and admirable character trait, Dr. Van Tongeren posits a number of open questions such as whether humility is able somehow to be taught, even integrated into psychotherapy. It is understood that between ten percent and 15 percent of adults achieve high scores on humility measures. Somewhat reassuring for the ability of people to be moderate in their responses toward others.

To expand that trait to others within society through a modulation of character traits, exposing people to the positive elements to be gained by acquiring a more tolerant attitude toward others along with patient perseverance and acceptance would be of huge societal benefit.

Gratuities Or Not?

"Overall, the current findings suggest that, if any restaurants are going to lead the movement away from tipping, it should be upscale restaurants and those restaurants should replace tipping, not with service charges, but with service-inclusive pricing."
"Indeed, the data suggest that only upscale restaurants can abandon tipping without suffering a reduction in overall customer satisfaction and only if they replace it with service-inclusive-pricing."
"These findings indicate that restaurants at all price tiers should expect the elimination of tipping to reduce online customer ratings. The only exception is expensive restaurants replacing tipping with service-inclusive-menu-pricing; in that case only can tipping be eliminated without reducing online customer ratings."
"Many restaurateurs hope to offset such costs [increase in minimum wages] by replacing tipping, which generates revenue management cannot legally access, with service charges or higher menu prices, which generate revenue management can control and distribute more equitably between front- and back-of-house employees."
"[Research] adds to a limited body of evidence that tipping increases overall customer satisfaction relative to that under alternative compensation/pricing systems -- especially when compared to service charge systems at less expensive establishments."
Hospitality research team, lead: Michael Lynn, Cornell University

Tipping benefits customers, while its elimination can harm their sense of self esteem.

We like to feel good about ourselves, and being generous to others helps us feel we're doing the 'right thing', it would seem. And when you're taking a taxi, being served in a restaurant, or tipping a bell-hop for example, it seems the right thing to do in the knowledge that these are low-wage services leaving those being tipped dependent on the generosity of those whom they're serving to supplement their earnings. There is a standard for tipping in the West, and people generally adhere to it, viewing it as a small part of the generalized social contract.

A research paper published in the International Journal of Hospitality Management had those involved in this study convinced that tipping makes people feel they have done the right thing. And that to institute a no-tipping rule would have negative effects. If there is no method by which customers who have been well-served can indicate their appreciation beyond a simple 'thank you', by proffering a cash award to a server, the feeling would be that server would lack motivation to continue providing good service.

So the impulse to tip isn't entirely altruistic in nature, obviously. Customers become concerned that with no incentive to the server through a cash award to provide good service, the level of care in serving would deteriorate. The study authors carried out by researchers at Cornell University point to tipping as a form of "altruistic conspicuous consumption" whose result is that in having the tipper feel good is psychologically beneficial, leaving people with the impression they are generous to others less wealthy than themselves.

Their research also led them to the conclusion that customer satisfaction would be hugely reduced were tipping to be left out of the equation. Customers actually self-report on their eating-out experiences and are inclined to feel better served where tipping is customary, attested to by online ratings. Where restaurants have experimented with alternatives to tipping, the comments tend to be more critical in nature; something is missing, that feel-good attitude.

Implementing a no-tipping policy for a restaurant leads to a reduction in customer satisfaction, according to the research. Which concludes that should eating establishments want to entirely satisfy their clientele, allowing free and voluntary tipping is the key instead of building tips into the meal price or by addition to the bill. The issue is a live one at a time when minimum wages have escalated so that restaurant owners try to make up for added operating expense by absorbing tips into general revenue that otherwise are directed to wait staff.

Data used by the research team was provided by the website ReviewTrackers with about ten thousand ratings of 41 restaurants at all price levels in a two-year period. The ratings gathered there had been posted originally on websites more familiar to must users, such as Yelp, Google, Facebook, or TripAdviser. This, at a time when one in five restaurants had committed to no-tipping policies, and other restaurants are moving in the same direction.

Needless to say the issue of tipping is a cultural one. And not all cultures agree with tipping. In Japan, famously, it is considered insulting to tip anyone in the service industry. There is pride in providing outstanding service, and it is expected by society that service will be outstanding. To imply that someone in the service industry requires an impetus provided by an additional cash reward is not looked on kindly in that culture.

Thinking Young, Extending Life

"Children as young as three or four have already taken in the age stereotypes of their culture."
"These age stereotypes are communicated to children through many sources, ranging from stories to social media. Individuals of all ages can benefit from bolstering their positive images of aging."
"We found those who expressed more positive age beliefs at baseline were less likely to develop dementia ... than those who expressed more negative age beliefs."
"We know ... that exposing older individuals to negative age stereotypes exacerbates stress, whereas exposing them to positive age stereotypes can act as a buffer against experiencing stress."
Becca Levy, professor of psychology, Yale University

"Sixty-year-olds felt like they were 46. Seventy-year-olds felt like they were 53. Eighty-year-olds felt like they were 65. It looks like this is pretty consistent across age groups."
"People know that they are aging, but they are evaluating themselves and their lives and reporting feeling about 20 percent younger than their current age."
"Negative views about aging are communicated to us early in life, through media, books and movies, and what our friends and family tell us. These attitudes are present and pervasive already in childhood, so naturally it's hard to enact meaningful change to these attitudes -- but that's what we're trying to do at the moment."
"Part of that [thinking younger by seniors] might arise from not wanting to be considered an older adult. As a result, people could be perpetually pushing what is considered an older adult into the future."
William Chopik, assistant professor of psychology, Michigan State University

"Aging well is not only escaping or delaying disease."
"Feeling good about your life is important and should be considered an important aspect of healthy aging."
Paola Sebastiani, professor of biostatistics, Boston University School of Public Health

One study on attitudes to aging concluded that as people become older they express the opinion that they find it strange to contemplate how old they actually are, because they feel much younger than their chronological age. And then there was the study that took to examining the attitudes of children of centenarians, making the discovery that those children, if they were healthy and long-lived like their parents share a sense of purpose, finding meaning in their lives, in comparison with the thoughts of the general population.


Evidence exists that positive attitudes about aging may even be the cause of a reduction in the risk of acquiring dementia, arguably among the most apprehensively-viewed consequences of aging. The elderly endowed with their own positive sense of time, place and person share a sense of serenity and pleasure in life. Balanced against the public onslaught of negative messaging about aging in the media, the workplace and pervasive throughout popular culture.

So what makes it fascinating for researchers to study is the elderly who firmly grasp their personal sense of confidence as opposed to the general public firmly entrenched in the belief that to be elderly is to be inconsequential generally. Those who can blithely rise about such widespread cultural views and in fact remain steadfastly oblivious to them, firm in their own beliefs of self-value are healthier both psychologically and physically.

Research shows that older people who have positive outlooks on aging eat healthier, exercise more and recover more quickly from illnesses. Credit Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Dr. Chopik's study incorporates a survey of over a half million Americans through the Internet, finding that irrespective of people aging, they continue to feel themselves younger than their true age. Subjects from the ages of ten to 89 were questioned to determine that as people grow older their views undergo a change in perception. Teens and young adults equate becoming 50 with old age, an attitude that persists into old age. The elderly on the other hand view 80 as old when they are just 70, and when they become 80, it is 90 that appears to them to be 'old'.


Data from the New England Centenarian Study was used in the study of centenarians' offspring, following close to four thousand centenarians, some of their siblings and children, since 1994. Healthy, long-lived children of centenarians with an average age of 82 were compared by researchers from the Boston University School of Public Health. The study subjects were separated into three groups; their 'birth cohort' (a group who lived only to their early 70s); the study subjects' spouses; and those included in the Health and Retirement Study, a U.S.-wide study of over 30,000 people older than 50.


Respondents were asked their opinion, whether to agree or disagree with statements such as: "I enjoy making plans for the future and working to make them a reality", and "My daily activities often seem trivial and unimportant to me", to measure psychological well-being. Children of centenarians were found to express greater purpose in life than any other of the three groups. For her part, Dr. Levy evaluated 4,765 older people with an average age of 72, free of dementia when the study began, and followed them for a succeeding four years. A series of questions were posed to the participants relating to their aging beliefs.

A protective effect was found for all participants inclusive of those carrying the E4 variant of the gene APOE known to raise the risk of dementia and carried by about a quarter of all Americans, though dementia develops in only 47 percent of this group. It is unknown why the remaining 53 percent never develop dementia, but the APOE E4 carriers with positive beliefs on aging had a 2.7 percent risk of developing dementia while carriers with negative beliefs had a 6.1 percent risk of acquiring dementia.

Is Moderate Climate the Matter Over Mind?

Is Moderate Climate the Matter Over Mind?

"Growing up in temperatures that are close to the psycho-physiological comfort optimum encourages individuals to explore the outside environment, thereby influencing their personalities."
Study, Nature

"Overall, it is interesting that although people instinctively believe that better weather results in better moods, the evidence for this assumption is weak. In general, the effects of "better weather" on people's feelings are modest, inconsistent, and at times counter to commonly-held expectations. Moreover, warm weather seems associated with breakups and more antisocial behavior. Yet there can be benefits, not only directly for people who suffer from SAD, but via indirect effects when people get out in nature and exercise more. As with many assumptions in life, presumed cause-effect relations can be wrong. Often, the key to experiencing benefits depends on what people do with their opportunities rather than whether they simply have them in the first place."

Allen R McConnell Ph.D., Psychology Today

Does climate determine personality? I am not sure."
"But from my own research, I do know that weather and climate affect mood, and this may be reflected in some of the [study] authors' assessments."
Alan Stewart, professor of psychology, University of Georgia

So, does geographical climate have an effect on forming peoples' personalities? As in making them happier, more satisfied people, easier to get along with? If, that is, they happen to live where the climate is moderate, not given to extreme swings of warm and cold. We commonly think of people from the Nordic countries as being slightly morose in temperament, and people living say, in Hawaii, light-hearted and stable. These are impressions, they don't reflect actual scientific measurements of human nature being formed by prevailing weather patterns.

People living in northern climes, it is true, tend to fixate on the weather because they live with extremes of temperature and those extremes impose on their style of living, from travelling and communicating to recreational opportunities. In Canada, as an example, there is an outdoor winter culture that impresses people to get out in the snow and the cold because not only is it beautiful in appearance, but these conditions lend themselves to enjoying and taking part in winter recreational habits available to anyone -- and staying fit in the process.

Human beings tend to become bored with any kind of environment that seems static, unchanging. The change in seasons is a natural, unending ritual that brings a changing landscape introducing another chapter to the year's seasons, resulting in anticipation and appreciation of season-appropriate activities. If the transitions are to relatively moderate, albeit vastly different seasons they're more than tolerable. If the transitions herald extremes of alternate weather landscapes they can seem intrusive and unwanted.

If we take a geography like Hawaii as ideal, however, why is it that according to the U.S. Census Bureau there are more people leaving the state daily than there are those moving into it. While the weather may be great, the geological beauty impressive, the unemployment rate low with a robust labour market, and few concerns about cyclones hitting states like Florida, it is an enormously expensive place to live in. So while people living there may be happily satisfied with the climate, they are dissatisfied with the opportunities to forge ahead financially.

And quite the same can be said for Canada's Pacific coast province of British Columbia, a spectacular geography, never too hot and sun-baked in the summer, and with mild winters where snow falls for the most part in the interior and coastal mountains and cities like Vancouver enjoy moderate climatic features. The fly in that particular urban ointment is spectacularly high real estate costs, so much so that even with well-remunerated employment few residents can dream of owning their own homes in the urban core.

Tokyo's situation is much the same, with weather very similar to that of Georgia, for example, where a snowfall is rare, and when it does come down, it is languid and scarce and quickly dissipates as the unusual cold that brought it in leaves. On the other hand, summer heat and humidity in Tokyo can make life uncomfortable for those who prefer dryer, less humid and hot atmospheres. And again, like Hawaii and Vancouver, home ownership and rental costs are phenomenally expensive.

So what does make people happy and content? The researchers in the most recent study cited above conclude that in places where the comfort of warmth prevails for most of the year with an average high temperature about 21C people tend to be agreeable, open and emotionally stable growing up and maturing in a warm climate, as compared, for example to being raised and coming to maturity in Marquette, Michigan with its average high temperature of 10C.

Research has previously linked personality to geography; as in "Midwest nice", and "New York abrasive". But while it can be true that regions appear to have group personalities with social cultures that are recognizably linked to geographies, there is little proof of cause and effect. Yet according to the researchers linked to this new study  the significant factors in personalities are linked to the average temperatures prevailing in the places that nurture us. We are shaped personally by the climate we live with.

That should make Canadians pretty surly people, and they are, in fact, noted for their tendency to be rather moderate in their emotional presence to the point of being boringly predictable in their easy-going attitudes. Still, it is the researchers' contention that people who are raised in regions with average temperatures around 22C tend to be agreeable, conscientious, emotionally stable, extroverted and open; personality traits psychologists identify as "the big five".

Take it with a grain of salt.

Familial Dysfunction

"To the extent you are actively trying to distance yourself and maintain that distance, that makes you estranged."
"Estrangement is a] continual process. In our culture, there's a ton of guilt around not forgiving your family. [So] achieving distance is hard. But maintaining distance is harder."
Kristina Scharp, assistant professor, Utah State University, Logan

"[Estrangement] occurs across years and decades. All the hurt and betrayals, all the things that accumulate, undermine a person's sense of trust."
Kylie Agllias, social worker, Australia

A survey commissioned in Britain by Stand Alone, a charity whose purpose is to give support to estranged people, concluded that of two thousand people interviewed, eight percent claimed they had severed communication with a family member. Adults reported being estranged from parents for three main reasons in a study published in the journal Australian Social Work: abuse, betrayal and poor parenting, with instances where there was overlap between those issues

According to social worker Kylie Agllias who wrote "Family Estrangement" in 2016, most of the participants described their estrangement having taken place after childhoods where they experienced poor connections with their parents. As for Dr. Scharp's study published in June, 52 adults were interviewed and found to have distanced themselves from their parents in a variety of ways over time; some creating a geographic distance, other making no effort to fulfill familial expectations.

An example was given of one 48-year-old woman who had cut off all contact with her father for a 33-year period. When he was ill and hospitalized she made no effort to see him, nor was she interested in attending his funeral. Others interviewed for the study made the decision to limit their contact with family members to superficial conversations, while yet others dramatically reduced contact altogether.

One public servant living in Ottawa, now 47, maintains some contact with most of his family, but a psychologically remote one. He dreaded family holiday meals and spoke in particular of his father's temper, upsetting him from the time he was a child forward. He resented having been entrusted with the care of his two younger siblings, a situation that led in adulthood to disinterest in having any children of his own.

When he decided to have a civil ceremony in marrying his long-term girlfriend he decided not to invite any members of his family, concerned his father might be disruptive. "I agonized over inviting them or not, for a long time", said Nikolaus Maack. "But in the end, decided, 'I can't have them there'." It was through Facebook that his family discovered the marriage had taken place.

This is an instance where a social Internet site has taken the place of intimate family, and it is likely one of countless such instances when personal intimacy and links to family are subordinated to social media sites. Nowhere in the research cited is there even a whiff of a hint that the people who chose to estrange themselves might themselves be afflicted with some minor disorder having little to do with their family other than resentment.

Some children at an early age may very well experience feelings similar to authority affective disorder which grows over time and extends beyond the family, becoming a social incapacity to get along with anyone. That, quite aside from legitimate disruptions in family life and the rejection of parents and/or other family members resulting from unpleasant or imagined early experiences leading to disaffection and emotional dislocation.

That Psychological Trap 

"I often feel that scientific models are decades behind the casinos."
"I don't think it's an accident that casinos are filled with lights and noise."
Catherine Winstanley, neuropsychologist, University of British Columbia

"Then I started using Facebook, and I started realizing that I had it all wrong [that computer users wanted to use their contacts discreetly). It was the opposite."
"People are dying to get notified. [They want to be noticed, valued, part of a social network]."
Roel Vertegaal, head, Human Media Lab, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario

Dr. Vertegaal, an expert on human-computer interaction, studied eye-contact and convinced himself years ago that he could invent a protocol that would be really useful with the growing ubiquitousness of computing devices, that when the "Internet of Things" fully blazed into reality all manner of devices would compete for peoples' attention, and the situation would become unbearably weighty. He felt that controlling when a computer-user was alerted would solve the irritating problem, through eye-contact.

The user's eyes would be recognized, awakening the machine to action and only then would the computer spring into usefulness by following the user's gaze and alerting it to commence activities. With this imagined indispensable protocol he would help to revolutionize social media so people wouldn't be driven to distraction and only be involved when they wanted to be. Turning the situation from being on call at all times to only being alerted when the user is requesting contact.

He hadn't counted on the since-well-illustrated fact that people always wanted to be on call and involved in social networking of every kind. That people would never want to shut off the alert function, that they wanted to have attention focused on them in the immediate presence. And that, simply put, is why the ping of a text message elicits an immediate response. It demands to be answered and the user is only too happy to comply, to feel connected, important, valued.



And while researchers are investigating the ubiquity-compulsion of cellphone use at the most inappropriate times, as a pathology that has afflicted a generation who feel there is no problem in texting while, for example, driving, it seems that Las Vegas with its immense profit orientation motivation had already achieved the kind of manipulative success that smartphone providers were themselves experimenting with, hooking people with ever-more-advanced features to captivate them as users.

At Las Vegas, behavioural psychology finds its perfect laboratory. People are captured by flashing lights, by sounds, by hyper-oxygenated air, and by the alcoholic beverages freely available to help lose all inhibitions and become fully immersed in the environment. The compulsion to respond to these stimuli is all-consuming; excited gaming senses are aroused and restraint disappears. People begin to behave in a predictable manner, impulsively and repeatedly, determined to 'win'.

It seems that researchers are relating the success of this kind of captive marketing with Smartphone companies. Who engage in similar manipulation of human behaviour resulting from studied stimuli proven to work to promote an addictive type of consumerism completely compelled to activation resulting in the kinds of profit that drive manufacturers to use whatever means at their disposal to pump up their bottom line.

Problematic gambling, it appears, has much in common with smartphone use that is turning out to be a social problem; both are addictive, and both result in harm to the users and to those related to the user, whether it is an addicted gambler draining family financial resources, or a committed texter placing him/herself while driving in danger, while at the same time presenting as a deadly danger to all others on the road, unaware of their proximity to an attention-impaired driver.

Each, in aware efforts to wean themselves away from such self-harming and socially-detrimental behaviour undergoes the psychology of fear related to withdrawal from harmful behaviours. UBC neuropsychologist Catherine Winstanley recently published results of a study she named a "rat casino" where rats gambled for sugar treats which held out the risk of being locked out.

Adding lights and sounds, the rats were impelled by excited responses to increase their risky behaviour. At the same time, the rodents learned the game and they learned how to avoid risks. When they were administered a drug that blocks dopamine effects involved in the stimulus-reward cycle, a vital concept in he neuroscience of gambling, the effect vanished.

The theory was that addictively risky behaviour could conceivably have a common chemical cause. Gambling addicts believe random events can affect the trajectory of a cascade of events and eventually favour them with wins. The levers or buttons on slot machines give them the illusion of control. And the faster results manifested, the more often people tended to gamble.

The same urgency and swift response that motivates gamblers appear to stimulate users of smartphones. People responding to these compulsions seem to require newer, faster and more immediate gratification. Leading smartphone designers and manufacturers to produce ever more advanced gadgets creating more hype, anticipation and eager consumption of new products on the market. A hugely profitable production-consumer loop.

An industry that feeds off manipulating peoples' psychology to produce an addictive quality to the use of the product.

Hoarding Disorder

"I don't see it as courage [to tackle hoarding]. I saw it more as desperation. I was so afraid of people finding out that I wanted to stop it before I lost control. Hoarding is an illusion of control. You believe you're the one who is controlling what you get rid of and what you collect. But in actuality, it controls you."
"It's a source of high anxiety for me. When I go into a [remediative] phase of cleaning, I can go for days without sleeping. We [she and her therapist/clutter coach] would pick things up and I would describe my feeling about getting rid of it or putting it away and that would help. I would shake, cry, have dry heaves. It was pretty intense."
Josie (last name withheld) Ottawa

"In the States, most of their intervention is based on enforcement. People are found out and then the enforcement agencies intervene. Easily, 70 percent of my referrals are self-referrals -- that's almost unheard of in the States."
"It [her hoarding counselling service] is not about cleaning up. It's not about getting rid of things. It's about getting that person to change their relationship to those things. That's when the cleaning up happens naturally. ... If you just throw out and they haven't come to terms with letting go, then you've just created a void and they will fill it."
Elaine Birchall, Ottawa therapist, "clutter coach", expert on hoarding

Elaine Birchall is an Ottawa psychologist who treats hoarding disorder. She is seen in a client's home in this 2010 file photo. Ashley Fraser / The Ottawa Citizen

"That inability to process information carefully and quickly contributes to the hoarding problem. People can't distinguish important from unimportant features. So they have difficulty deciding whether to keep it or discard it, and once they decide to keep it, they have difficulty organizing it, so it all ends up in the middle of the room."
"There's nothing here that is not the case with all of us. Our possessions are magical. They have an essence that goes beyond their physical characteristics. Like that favourite ticket stub from a concert. It's the same phenomena, but with these people, it just extends to more things."
Randy Frost, professor of psychology, Smith College, Massachusetts

This 2015 file photo shows an apartment in New York City surrounded by hoarded newspapers, clothes, books and other items. (Jack Sherratt/Associated Press)

The diagnostic-helpful handbook that psychologists depend on titled the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders lists hoarding as a condition that afflicts an estimated two to six percent of any population. A year-long study that took place in Ottawa by Montfort Renaissance and Options Bytown released the results of their investigation into the prevalence of hoarding in the hope that it could be better understood, its motivation and result, and the potential for intervention.

Hoarding can be dangerous. When living spaces are crammed full of objects accidents can occur. Fires can also occur and with so much combustible materials packed into tight spaces such fires can be difficult to control. Jamming all manner of objects from newspapers to bags of durable goods into a living space can also create an obvious hygiene problem leading to the risk of disease and illness. People who hoard know their habit is abnormal and they tend to be ashamed, and become isolated from society.

Moreover, if and when a landlord discovers that a tenant has packed rented space with a plethora of objects making that space both unlivable and potentially dangerous, eviction can follow, and from there homelessness. Hoarding is a pathology where people think of objects that most people will have discarded or feel to be unnecessary or redundant to their needs, as vital to their existence. Hoarders experience great difficulty in objectively considering the absurdity of owning multiple objects with the same function.

Hoarders are very often people who have suffered some kind of trauma in their lives. Hoarding takes their minds away from their pain and gives them something to look forward to. Possessing useless objects that clutter a living area beyond reason, offers a peculiar kind of comfort to hoarders. Depression and anxiety disorder may lead to placing great value on useless objects with little-to-no inherent value, collected in impossible-to-control quantities.

At one time hoarding was considered to reflect a type of obsessive compulsive disorder, but it has now been listed on its own in the reference manual. It was, in fact, an unknown or unrecognized phenomena until 1947 when police discovered a horror story in a three-storey mansion in Harlem. When they entered the building it was to discover that it was packed floor to ceiling with all manner of detritus. And among that junk was the bodies of the two owners of the mansion.

Police detectives examine the mansion of brothers Homer and Langley Collyer in this 1947 photo. The Collyer brothers hoard was a sensation at the time, one of the first cases of hoarding to hit the media. Anthony Camerano / AP

The Ottawa study reached the conclusion that forced cleanouts of "hoarder houses" rarely solve the problem. In fact, it seems to exacerbate the need of hoarders to continue collecting secretively and the problem becomes more difficult to deal with in its aftermath.

"Cleanouts aren't very effective. They are usually very traumatic for the person receiving the cleanout, and they have an almost 100 percent recidivism rate. The person gets very, very traumatized. We find that after three to six months the person is hoarding once again and the problem is worse than it used to be", explained Stephanie Yamin, a psychology professor at St.Paul University who researched the two-year pilot project on hoarding.

The study tracked fifteen people with the hoarding disorder, among them two men, the balance women, all with an average age of 53. Although officially hoarding is said to affect 5.3 percent of the population, researchers feel the actual incidence is higher. It is considered a "hidden disorder", isolating those who are impacted by it, through shame and embarrassment.

People with depression, schizophrenia, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and developmental delays seem most vulnerable to the pathology. And among those studied, 75 percent had other members of their families who also were affected with hoarding disorder.

"We made a tool kit that's made for the people who work one-on-one with clients. They can use it to help make their environment a better place to live in, with less clutter and less risk around fire, infestations or public health issues. Most of our partners have clients who are struggling with these issues", explained Lise Girard, director of Montfort Renaissance.

Physician, Heal Thyself....

"It's still a taboo topic to some degree. Sometimes people are afraid: 'Is this going to affect my licence? Is this going to affect my reputation?' It's a stigma, for sure."
Francoise Mathieu, expert, compassion fatigue Ottawa address, Canadian Medical Foundation

Françoise is director of Compassion Fatigue Solutions inc., whose aim is to offer consulting and training to helpers on topics related to self care, wellness, burnout and compassion fatigue. She is a Certified Mental Health Counsellor and a Compassion Fatigue specialist.

"One of the reasons why I came [annual meeting, Canadian Medical Association] is I'd like some advice with how to deal with it. We're all trying to balance trying to take care of ourselves. I think it's an issue that affects all physicians."
"Sometimes we feel like we need to be stronger than we actually are. You let things go on and on without reaching for help."
Alika Lafontaine, anesthesiologist, Grande Prairie, Alberta

A University of Ottawa medical school teacher, director of physician health at the Canadian Medical Association spoke of the experiences that doctors are often exposed to in their medical practise in empathy with their patients as being "quite horrific". He recalls his feelings when he himself worked in pediatric oncology, twenty years earlier, as a resident. That experience convinced him his medical career would be better spent elsewhere.

'Elsewhere' happened to be in psychiatry where now he treats many other physicians for issues relating to their mental health, namely compassion fatigue and psychological burnout. If left unaddressed, said Dr. Derek Puddester, these issues are capable of turning many doctors' thoughts to suicide. Many physicians are so preoccupied with their professional requirement to care for their patients, they remain in denial about the state of their own health.

"That huge red flag isn't seen until the symptoms are very severe", he explained. Many health professionals, on the other hand, faced with severe burnout or compassion fatigue decide to turn their attention to other types of work. They may take extended sabbaticals, resulting in up to hundreds of millions of dollars in cost for the universal health care system, according to Lee Gould, president of the Canadian Medical Foundation.

Compassion fatigue is characterized as an erosion of the capacity to tolerate emphatic emotions and difficult patient situations which can manifest itself as a seeming desensitization to patient issues and difficulties in adjusting and coping with the emotional strain, at work and at home. Those emotional depressions tend to accumulate over time and successive experience, until they resemble post-traumatic stress disorder.

Compassion fatigue strikes more often those in the health care field working in oncology, child welfare and palliative care, unsurprisingly. Ms. Mathieu, expert in the symptoms and stresses of compassion fatigue, pointed out that people who focus on working with animals also experience similar symptoms of compassion fatigue, much of it caused by the evidence of trauma and abuse of vulnerable animals.

Burnout, prolonged stress, frustration leading to physical and emotional exhaustion are all hallmarks of compassion fatigue. Doctors are particularly vulnerable not only through exposure to the pain and heartache of their patients, but as a result of overwork on their part. A few additional hours of work weekly can increase significantly opportunities of burnout.

Ms. Mathieu pointed out that the five medical groups most affected by burnout tended to be emergency room doctors, internal medicine specialists, general practitioners, neurologists and oncologists.

According to statistics quoted by Ms. Mathieu, about 40 percent of oncologists (cancer specialists) experience profound emotional exhaustion with their work in some form, and about 50 percent of Ontario oncologists specifically reported being overcome with feelings of low personal accomplishment.

Moderate to severe burnout affects roughly 46% of all doctors in Canada. A Canadian Physician Health survey found a third of physicians reported feelings of depression. Canada is hardly alone in recognition of this medical-personal phenomenon.

A recent Australian study found about 54 percent of medical residents exhibited symptoms of compassion fatigue, while 69 percent suffered from burnout, and 71 percent expressed lower-than-average job satisfaction. And a U.S. study resulted in identifying that close to 7 percent of surgeons reported having had suicidal thoughts in the last year. At the same time, 60 percent of those individuals claimed they would not seek help because they feared repercussions at work.

In 2013, the Canadian Medical Foundation and the Canadian Medical Association founded the Canadian Physician Health Institute. It stands as the only institute of its kind in the world, according to Dr. Puddester. "Canada is a global leader in physician health. I think we should be very proud of that." Moreover, the problem is so acute that medical schools now pay attention to physician health, offering increased training to aid doctors to cope with potential emotional stresses.

Coping mechanisms to ward off compassion fatigue and burnout include reducing workload, reducing exposure to trauma, increasing workplace training and engaging in positive habits such as mindfulness-based meditation. All common sense self-help techniques, but for a physician, perhaps difficult to achieve. And according to Ms. Mathieu newer medical school graduates representing the "millennial" generation are aware of and attempting to achieve better work-life balance.

That's one problem afflicting the health community, and here's another, not spoken of too frequently, but equally devastating to those in the professional medical-health field: drug and alcohol abuse. And this is what the US National Library of Medicine

National Institutes of Health has to say about this issue:

The pathways toward development of substance abuse and dependence problems in healthcare professionals (HPs) vary by group. For example, though professionally discouraged, self-diagnosing physicians have reported prescribing controlled substances for themselves [1]. Due to drug access, a significant number of pharmacists tend to self-medicate and have the opportunity to titrate their drug use [2], a practice that can perpetuate the fallacy that pharmacological knowledge of drug action is an effective strategy to prevent addiction. In addition to drug access and a social environment promoting drug use [3] people who choose nursing as a profession may report a higher rate of family history of alcoholism and drug abuse than other HP groups [4]. Finally, perhaps more so than any other group of HPs, the greatest threat in dentistry may be alcohol consumption not controlled substance use [5]. Given the increasingly stressful environment due to manpower shortages in the healthcare system in general, substance induced impairment among some healthcare professions is anticipated to grow [6]. While a number of studies provide some foundation for our understanding of the epidemiologic and etiologic processes contributing to substance use by HPs, rarely have recent studies sought to examine the relative importance of risk factors on alcohol and drug (AOD) use across a sample of major groups of HPs. The major aim of this study therefore was to investigate the risk factors contributing to AOD use by HPs within the context of self-reported past year alcohol and drug use at different levels of use: any alcohol and drug use and a substantial level of alcohol and drug use. Early identification is essential as patient and provider well-being may be at risk [7]. Just like evidence for alcohol [8], cocaine [9], and illicit drugs [10], drug dependent HPs represent a specific subtype of drug abuser who have access to licit drugs. Knowing those HPs who may be at greatest risk for substance abuse, may facilitate the development of more tailored and effective educational and intervention strategies for this subtype of addict

Coping With Fear

"For some people it becomes excessive ... they spiral down, become progressively sad or anxious. People feel paralyzed, they feel like they've got one foot in the grave, one foot here and they don't know how to move forward."
"They get really obsessed. They feel like they're always on guard, because they can be reminded of their cancer any time."
"People talk about dying and leaving young children behind. These can be very sad things to hear. We just have to remind ourselves to not try to jump in and say something positive, which is what everybody does around them, but just stay with them and help them explore."
Dr. Sophie Lebel, psychology professor, University of Ottawa

Nadia Masot / Facebook

A 32-year-old mother-of-four says she has been de-friended by more than 100 people after she posted pictures of her cancer surgery scars on the website.

"It's always in the back of your mind: 'Is it going to come back, how much longer do I have?' There's sort of this niggling worry all the time. Every time you have an ache or a pain, you say, 'Oh, my God, is this the cancer spreading somewhere else?' It's kind of irrational, but you think it just the same."
Jane Rinard, 59, breast-cancer survivor

A group of Canadian psychologists and nurses has developed a program they devised for the specific purpose of targeted counselling, in an effort to bridge the gap between cancer treatment and recovery, and allowing former patients to live a normal life, not one consumed with fear and apprehension. Their goal is to successfully teach patients to recognize which of the symptoms that concern them that they can safely ignore and how to handle their fear.

The reason is to promote to these vulnerable people the universal reality that uncertainty plays a role in everyone's daily life. And to help them to face their own insecurities head on, aiding them in minimizing "excessive body checking". Promising results came out of a pilot study whose results saw publication a month ago describing their technique, published in the Journal of Cancer Survivorship.

A group of forty-four women who had been treated for breast or ovarian cancer completed the six-week course with over 70% of the group expressing confidence in their newfound ability to handle their fears. No one came out of the course any the worse for participation. A nurse is used to educate patients  to identify those symptoms that should legitimately given them concern, and which are to be ignored.

The purpose: to avoid "catastrophic" interpretations of symptoms through "cognitive restructuring".

The compulsive checking of their bodies for the dreaded presence of new tumours is replaced with the use of relaxation techniques, of the repetitive expression of a comforting phrase such as "I'm doing the best I can". Excessive worrying is outlined as ineffective in helping the women achieve optimum psychological health. The women were encouraged to introspection in confronting their worse fears. If they had expressed those fears to family, what they received in return was always reassurances, a kind of support that seemed unhelpful when avoidance of their fears only served to highlight them.

The fears are anything but irrational, particularly for those who have undergone the trajectory of the disease and its treatment and the numbing fear accompanying it all. For a large enough portion of survivors anxiety becomes so oppressively overwhelming it takes over their lives completely. Unneeded trips to the doctor and hospital emergency departments often result, exacerbating the issue, not relieving it when relief is fleeting and the unreasoning fear returns.

Early diagnosis and improved treatment leaves those impacted with cancer a longer life to live than formerly. Roughly 60% of cancer patients now survive at least five years post-diagnosis and treatment, compared with about 25% in the 1950s, noted Dr. Sian Bevan, director of research for the Canadian Cancer Society which is set to fund a larger clinical trial on the template developed by Professor Lebel, McGill University nursing professor Christine Maheu and colleagues in Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto.

Ms. Rinard, as an example, diagnosed in 2010, found her participation in the initial six-week program to be hugely useful. She learned through her exposure to the program to relieve herself of constant trepidation about her future and to advance with her life. The group therapy program, she is convinced, gave her that self-assurance. "I found it so helpful. It was an amazing experience", she stated gratefully.