Generally Thinking

Month: March 2010

  • Who needs self-esteem anyway?

    I discovered an interesting paper by Ryan and Brown (1), which got me thinking. This paper proposes a view of self-esteem that I hadn’t come across before.

    First, they explain their view of the self. Most researchers use the ‘self-as-object’ definition – we have a self-concept, which can be complex, simple, positive or negative based on our own appraisal and evaluation of it. These evaluative ‘schema’ make up self-esteem.

    A second perspective is the ‘self-as-process’ idea, in which the self is not the object of evaluation, but is the process of assimilating and integrating experience. From this perspective, it is not important whether self-esteem is low or high; what is important is what is going on when these evaluations are made.

    Staying with the self-determination theory (SDT) tradition, they argue from the self-as-process position that concern with the worth of the self is a byproduct of psychological need deprivation. In other words, most people don’t sit around thinking “How worthy am I?”; yet many other people obsess over this, and compare themselves continuously. The fact that they do this, Ryan and Brown propose, means there is a psychological need unfulfilled (the three psychological needs being relatedness to others, autonomy, and competence).

    For example, an individual lacking in relatedness with others may try to conform to the standards of other people in order to gain their acceptance. They might get it, but the quest for self-esteem hinders their authenticity and personal growth. Likewise, a person may seek self-esteem in achievement, if they are insecure about their competence.

    So if one has self-esteem, it is because their basic psychological needs are fulfilled. Therefore self-esteem can be beneficial to an individual – but only if they don’t need it! Seeking self-esteem it for its own sake may lead to conflicts in the basic needs, and therefore only temporary satisfaction.

    Ryan and Brown suggest, based on this, that a life lived without concern for self-esteem might be optimal. When something bad happens, we are disappointed, but we do not integrate this into our self-concept and disparage ourselves (“I’m a loser!”). Likewise, when things go well, we are pleased, but again the self is not conceptualised as an object to be praised (“I’m awesome!”).

    This phenomenon of not integrating positive or negative events with the self may be related to another interesting construct – locus of evaluation. This is the degree that an individual has integrated a set of standards or values by which to judge their actions, versus the extent that they rely on an external frame of reference. For example, if I had an internal locus of evaluation for blog writing, it would not matter how much traffic or tweets I got from this post – I do not judge my performance on that, so it would not affect me. Conversely, if I had an external locus of evaluation, I would be highly affected by the traffic I got, for I would need that external reference to know how well I did.

    An external locus of evaluation is correlated with low self-esteem (2), just as the theories of SDT and self-esteem would predict: the need for another person to set the standard for our self-evaluations is a hallmark of the introjected style of motivation – this indicates the deprivation of a psychological need, and hence low self-esteem.

    You can envision a dark side to an internal locus of evaluation too; if your own judgement is just plain wrong, for instance. But, in any case, this just seems to deflect the issue; if an internal locus of evaluation is a buffer protecting self-esteem, it would preserve both the positive and negative forms of self-esteem alike. The problem seems to be with the concept of the self itself.

    To take this further, Ryan and Brown bring in ideas from Buddhist philosophy, which go something like this: when we form a self-concept (self-as-object) we often forget that this ‘me’ is merely a creation of thought, and is only one of an infinite number of possible ways that we can construe the self.

    We know there is some truth to this idea from CBT and Seligman’s explanatory style of optimism – our self-concept, our self-esteem, the emotions we experience – even mental disorder in some cases – can be traced back to particular thoughts, beliefs and judgements we hold of ourselves.

    Here’s the point: if the self can be constructed in any number of ways – which appears to be the case – is this really the self that we want ourselves and others to esteem? Perhaps the fickleness of the self-as-object construction is the reason that self-esteem is not a reliable route to well-being or growth.

    But if not these constructions, then what? Is there a deeper ‘self’, beneath these constructions? Mindfulness is proposed as an answer – as long as we hold to a construction of the self-as-object to esteem, there will always be situations where we do not live up to the values on which the self is based. The idea is to disidentify with the self-as-object, and simply to have awareness of the processes that the self is made up of, without ever saying “That is me.”

    And coming full circle, this is in accordance with the idea of healthy self-regulation – someone who has their basic psychological needs met, does not strive for self-esteem.

    References:

    (1) Ryan, R., & Brown, K. (2003). Why We Don’t Need Self-Esteem: On Fundamental Needs, Contingent Love, and Mindfulness: Comment. Psychological Inquiry, 14(1), 71-76

    (2) Bucus, D. (2008). Defining the self: Locus of evaluation, self-esteem, and personality. Dissertation Abstracts International Section A, 69, 122.

  • Can humour be learned?

    How many therapists does it take to change a lightbulb? Only one, but it takes six months and the bulb has to want to change!

    Humour has a potentially valuable place in therapy; a large number of papers argue for the benefits of it in a therapeutic setting. There is also a lot of information about humour styles out there, and what type of humour is appropriate in different settings.

    BUT… is there any work on how to teach humour skills to professionals? It’s alright to advise a talk therapist to “use humour,” but humour could potentially have a severely negative effect too, if used ineffectively. So it seems that proper training may be needed.

    And also, in a broader sense, humour is useful in sales, business, teaching; even in romance! So what about general humour training? We have comedy improv clubs and what-not, and these might be effective in their own way, but it’s not going to convince the scientists and practitioners to go to a comedy club to help their patients. For that, there would need to be theoretical papers, randomised controlled trials, and so on, which is ironic since these are some of the least amusing things you’re likely to come across. But I decided to see if there was any science in this area. Can humour be learned, or is it just a gift?

    The Controlled Trial

    “When I first said I wanted to be a comedian, everybody laughed. They’re not laughing now.” – Bob Monkhouse

    As I looked through the research, unfortunately, I found very few studies. I managed to found one controlled test of a humour training intervention. Nevo, Aharonson, and Klingman (1) subjected 101 female teachers to a 20-hour humour training program, consisting of 14 individual units. At the end of the test, the treatment group saw greater improvements in measures of ‘humour production’ as rated by peers, compared to pre-test measurements and the control group. And subjectively, the participants felt that the program was moderately effective. So it does seem from this one study, that humour can be learned.

    An interesting finding, however, was that ‘trait-level’ measures of humour were less sensitive to changes following the program; which might question how long these benefits last for. Maybe you have to keep practising to keep your game up.

    The Uncontrolled Trial

    McGhee (2) devised an 8 week humour development program, aimed at the lay audience. Franzini (3) mentions that this program is backed by a self-report follow up, but as yet I have not found it. If anyone knows of it, please let me know.

    General skill or scripted sessions?

    humour_in_therapy
    The local yoga club was in high spirits, despite the horrific Superglue accident. (credit: lululemon athletica)

    Here’s another point – do we train professionals in humour production, then let them loose on their clients? Or do we systematically develop a set of lines and comments, a sort of therapists jokebook, that are tested and proven to be funny, appropriate, non-triggering, and so on? By doing so, we might increase the ‘hit-rate’ of the humour, but we may lose a certain authenticity to the interaction’s normal, organic flow. Carl Rogers and others have suggested that an authentic relationship between client and counsellor is an essential part of the therapeutic process – structured humour may get in the way of this. But in other fields this may work well.

    Theoretical benefits of studying humour training

    As well as looking for practical benefits in applied settings, there might be other uses to studying humour training. One in particular could be in linking the findings with the evolutionary fields. Evolutionary psychologists have been trying to find the adaptive function of humour and laughter for a while, and they’ve focused a lot of attention on attraction.

    They suggest that humour evolved, essentially, as a way of attracting a mate by displaying the health of your brain and your immunity to social pressure through your fantastic wit, hence making your genes something of a commodity to members of the opposite sex.

    So far, researchers have found certain types of humour to be more attractive than others; self-depricating humour is apparently the best one, as long as you’re already high-status (4). If you’re not already seen as high-status, self-depricating humour has the opposite effect on your perceived attractiveness (these researchers are also to be commended for the use of the word “diss” in the title of a scientific paper). But if humour training can be measured somehow, this would be better way to test these theories too – for example are people viewed as more attractive, so they meet more partners, etc., after a humour training program, all other things being equal?

    Overall, there is little research in this area, despite many papers noting the benefits of humour in a range of professional and personal settings, and this could be a fruitful area for future study.

    References:

    (1) Nevo, O., Aharonson, H., & Klingman, A. (1998). The development and evaluation of a systematic program for improving sense of humor. In W Ruch (Ed.), The sense of humor: Explorations of a personality characteristic (pp.385-404). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    (2) McGhee, P.E. (1994). How to develop your sense of humour: An 8 step humour development training program. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt.

    (3) Franzini, Louis (2001). Humor in Therapy: The Case for Training Therapists in Its Uses and Risks. The journal of General Psychology, 128(2), 170-193.

    (4) Greengross, G., & Miller, G.F. (2008). Dissing Oneself versus Dissing Rivals: Effects of Status, Personality, and Sex on the Short-Term and Long-Term Attractiveness of Self-Deprecating and Other-Deprecating Humor. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 6(3), 393-408.

  • The evolution of optimism

    There is a lot of information out there about the benefits of optimism in numerous areas of life. The research shows that optimists aren’t necessarily blind to the world, seeing it with rose-tinted glasses, which is a common criticism of books and programs aimed at developing optimism in people. In fact, optimism seems to be in many cases a highly desirable decision making or belief strategy. And being optimistic implies a positive anticipation of a desired outcome; sometimes when all the evidence points to a different one occurring.

    Rather than writing the “10 steps to optimism”, I want to look into this a little more deeply. Why have we evolved the ability to think this way? Surely the best way to guide behaviour would be to hold beliefs that are as accurate as possible, and making decisions based on them. I would have assumed that these would be the most accurate decisions you could make. So you might argue that natural selection would tend towards accurate thinking, but this doesn’t match up with the evidence base on optimism or other cognitive biases (or simply the experience of being human).

    To explain the ultimate origin of optimism, it is necessary to figure out whether having a system in the brain that allows for overly favourable perception or cognition can be beneficial to survival or reproduction, and also to see how the system would relates to other ideas in evolutionary theory.

    To give a specific example, consider the tendency of men to overestimate the sexual interest of women (1). This is of course an adaptive strategy, because male reproduction is limited only by the number of partners they can meet, and since it costs little or nothing to ‘try it on’, being optimistic and assuming the best means fewer missed opportunities. Natural selection would therefore favour men who are optimistic about women’s interest in them, as opposed to those with accurate perceptions.

    This balance of costs and benefits is how optimism is said to have evolved. In a situation where a caveman or cavewoman has to make a decision, but they are uncertain about the outcome, sometimes they are going to get it wrong. But, is it more costly to make false positive errors, or false negative errors? This problem is called error management theory (1), and it ties in nicely with the idea of positive illusions, which we’ve discussed before in the context of relationships.

    Taylor and Brown (2) propose that positive illusions help motivate people to pursue goals with a low objective level of success, such as the terminally ill individual whose positive illusion about the disease leads her to positive health behaviours.

    In such a situation (and in others), optimism and pessimism can lead to different negative outcomes – optimism might lead to wasting time and energy in pursuits that are not beneficial, and pessimism might lead to passivity and missing out on potential opportunities.

    Reasoning forward we can see a route through which optimism can evolve in a world where the outcomes of decisions are often uncertain – if the cost of trying and failing is low (compared to the benefit of succeeding), then optimism is the best strategy – better, even, than a decision that is made on accurate information (3).

    Coming back to increasing chances of survival and reproduction, we find that positive illusions tend to be aimed toward the self, and particularly about characteristics that other people find desirable – when asked about others, the illusions disappear (4) – with the exception of our positive illusions towards our romantic partners; but we’ve seen that these are ultimately self-serving as they help sustain the relationship.

    Likewise, pessimism is thought to have evolved by the same pressure of natural selection, but this time acting on a different area of the brain. This allows for variation in the things we can be optimistic and pessimistic about, depending on the particular situation (see reference 3 for more info on this).

    Recommended Reading

    References:

    (1)Haselton, M. G. & Buss, D. M. (2000). Error management theory: A new perspective on biases in cross-sex mind reading. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 81-91.

    (2) Taylor, S. E., & Brown, J. D. (1988). Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 193-201.

    (3) Haselton, M., & Nettle, D. (2005). The paranoid optimist: An integrative evolutionary model of cognitive biases. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(1), 47-66

    (4) Campbell, J. D. (1986). Similarity and uniqueness: The effects of attribute type, relevance and individual differences in self-esteem and depression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 281-294.