Comoros landmark

Central African Republic landmark

Thomas Jefferson Was Right: Happiness Comes First.
“Care of life and happiness are the first and only object of good government.”
Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

KEY POINTS-
Honesty and quality of delivery of government institutions is strongly linked to citizens’ sense of well-being.
Whether year to year, or over a decade, when government delivery quality improves, citizen well-being improves.
Trust in one another and government institutions reduces quality of life deficits.

From Aristotle to Thomas Jefferson, the most revered writers of governing documents worldwide maintain that government shall uphold the quality of life of those governed. The American Declaration of Independence summed it up thus, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Jefferson, one of its authors, said, “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.”

Yet, until recently, most studies measuring what most affects citizens’ voting decisions have focused on economic conditions rather than quality of life, according to a 2020 National Bureau Of Economic Research Working Paper Series, “Happiness And The Quality Of Government” by Helliwell, Huang, and Wang.

Until the inception of the UN World Happiness Report in 2006, empirical evidence linking happiness and government quality covered small populations over short time spans. The performance of political institutions was difficult to measure because they are slow to change.

Now more data is available and it replicates frequent earlier findings that the honesty and quality of delivery of government institutions have significant linkages to citizens’ sense of well-being. ‘Quality of delivery’ is defined as the average of four factors in governance: effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and absence of corruption.

Helliwell, Huang, and Wang confirm that changes in government delivery quality, whether year to year or over a decade, improve how citizens feel about themselves and their communities.

Trust and inequality
In 2014 and 2018, the Happiness & Quality of Government authors considered the effect of inequalities in financial status versus inequalities of well-being on citizens’ trust in one another and their government institutions. They found “substantial evidence that high trust societies are more resilient in the face of external shocks including earthquakes, floods, and economic crises. Individuals who feel that others can be trusted, and have a sense of belonging to their communities, are more resilient in the face of hardships ranging from unemployment and ill health to discrimination. Although any of those adverse situations significantly reduces an individual’s well-being, the loss is less for those who live in a high-trust environment."

Trust and belonging not only raise subjective well-being for all, but they also reduce inequality of well-being. Trust in one another and their government institutions upholds people who are subject to conditions that would otherwise be likely to place them at the bottom of the happiness scale.

A 2018 psychology study by Daley, Phipps, and Branscombe supports the positive impact of social and institutional trust, finding that the loss of a sense of well-being of children facing discrimination because of their disabilities is much less for those children who feel a sense of belonging in their local communities.

Also, in 2018 Helliwell, Huang, Wang, Goff, and behavioral economist Mayraz evaluated the sharply growing inequality of income and wealth worldwide over the last four decades. These inequalities have been linked to changes in several measures of well-being.

Considering the inequalities that cause happiness declines, these authors reviewed three large international surveys. They find that the gaps between a sense of well-being more negatively impact overall national well-being averages than widening income gaps.

They also find empirical support that those who favor equality are far more troubled by the widespread occurrence of well-being inequality than the widespread occurrence of economic inequality.

Participating in local government can make you and everyone else happier
There is good news from a 2019 study by Canadian psychologists, “Happiness and Prosocial Behavior: An Evaluation of the Evidence.” These authors find that prosocial actions improve the subjective well-being of both the givers and receivers of kindness, especially of kindness independently generated.

Helliwell, Huang, and Wang suggest, “Changes in the structure of government to increase the options for individuals and communities to share in the design and implementation of their own institutions is likely to improve [well-being] outcomes in several ways because such collaborations encourage engagement, increase the scope for innovation, and build social connections that raise subjective well-being above and beyond what they contribute to solving the specific problems at hand. This may be part of the reason why studies find that people are happier in more decentralized systems. Large negative effects of corruption on happiness may reflect in part that corruption lessens the extent to which citizens see themselves as parts of trustworthy collaborations to improve lives.”

The UN World Happiness Report and the studies that it generates resurrect the vision of the founders of participative democracies: governments of the people, by the people, and for the people can be a path to happiness.

PERSONALITY-
The Role of Autonomy in Moral Behavior.
Autonomy provides perspective that makes moral behavior more effective.
Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

KEY POINTS-
Inner-directed people tend to act in socially conventional ways, while outer-directed people use others to guide their behavior.
Autonomous people reflect on their reasons for following or ignoring moral conventions and social trends.
The perspective that autonomy adds to inner- and outer-directedness can increase one's effectiveness as a moral agent.
Two of my previous posts on moral development described the origins and consequences of following inner expectations and others' expectations. We form our inner expectations (conscience, or what we expect from ourselves) when we unreflectively absorb rules from our parents. Inner-directed people (people who follow inner expectations rather than others' expectations) tend to behave in socially conventional ways. Responsiveness to others' expectations originates in empathy or caring about others and a desire to be well-liked. People who are other-directed use current trends and the opinions of close friends as a guide to right and wrong.

The Four Moral Personality Types
Responsiveness to expectations is a matter of degree. It is possible to be responsive to either inner or outer expectations, or both, or neither, which leads to the four types of moral personalities described by Hogan and Cheek (1983), Rubin (2017), Piaget (1932/1997) and others (see diagram).

However, one element missing from these discussions of responsiveness to expectations is the role of autonomy in moral behavior. Durkheim (1925/2002), Riesman (1961), Piaget (1932/1997), and Hogan (1973) all talk about autonomy as a third stage of development beyond the development of conscience and empathy, so how does autonomy relate to inner and outer expectations?

What Is Autonomy?
Autonomy is often confused with inner-directedness because inner-directed persons seem to be independent and self-sufficient, following their own "internal gyroscope" and not caring what other people think. Even Cheek and Hogan (1983) refer to their Inner-Directed type as autonomous. But this ignores the original source of the inner-directed person's internal gyroscope, which was his or her parents. The Inner-Directed type's internalization of parental rules and values was so successful and so complete, that this type is not aware that his or her strongly held beliefs and opinions are not freely chosen but are the result of early parental influence.

Riesman (1961) wrote extensively about the nature of autonomy and how it transcends both inner-directedness and other-directedness. Autonomy is difficult to define and measure, but it involves the perspective and detachment that arise from self-examination and an awareness of one's reasons for making choices. Whereas inner-directed people unreflectively imitate their parents and other-directed people unreflectively imitate their peers, autonomous people reflect on their reasons for following or ignoring moral conventions and social trends.

Autonomy Makes Our Moral Behavior More Effective
One way of understanding autonomy and its benefits is to look at what can happen when people respond well to moral expectations but lack autonomy. In this analysis, lack of autonomy can make a difference between healthy, effective behavior and unhealthy behavior. Three forms of non-autonomous behavior were described in an article I coauthored with Hogan and Emler (Hogan, Johnson, & Emler, 1978) and in a previous post. Below is the gist of what I had written previously.

Hogan, Johnson, and Emler (1978) outline three patterns of non-autonomous moral conduct: moral realism, moral zealotry, and moral enthusiasm. A moral realist is a former petit saint (inner-directed type) who, even as an adult, never developed an awareness of the purpose of following conventional rules. The moral realist's over-accommodation to authority and institutionalized rules leads to rule following as an end in itself, even when such behavior is self-destructive or harmful to others. Moral zealots are former chic types (other-directed types) who enjoy aggressive confrontations such as mob protest and even terrorism in the name of social justice, unaware that they are partially motivated by hostility toward authority. Finally, we have moral enthusiasts, who are responsive to both inner and outer expectations and are therefore generally good citizens, but they lack the perspective that comes with autonomy. Because of their lack of perspective, moral enthusiasts become swept up in popular moral causes, failing to discern the relative importance of different social issues or the actual consequences of their behavior. This lack of awareness diminishes their effectiveness as moral agents.

What autonomy adds to inner-directedness and other-directedness is thoughtful, deliberate reflection about the likely consequences of one's behavior. Autonomy by itself is passionless and has no motivating force. In fact, an autonomous person unresponsive to inner and outer expectations could be a rebel, delinquent sociopath interested only in personal gain. On the other hand, when a person is motivated by inner or outer expectations (or both), autonomy can help the person to achieve the desired aims of these motives (maintaining the established moral order; promoting social solidarity) by carefully considering the actual likely consequences of different courses of action.

Academic Achievement Isn’t the Only Way to Succeed.
The real road to success is wide open.
Reviewed by Tyler Woods

KEY POINTS-
An increasing number of students feel pressure to get straight A's.
The pressure to excel turns toxic when students feel their self-worth is contingent upon constant academic achievement.
Kids are happier and healthier when they are motivated by their own interests.
I’ve been a lot of things in life.

Afraid of the dark. A war reporter. A jilted bride. A military wife. A mistress. A party-school student. An Ivy League professor. A mom on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

I love to listen. I have a lot to say. But when I meet a mom, the first question she asks is often the only one.

“Where does your son go to school?”
Marty goes to a Montessori school. Most kids who apply get a spot. The only thing that’s wrong with the school is other people’s perceptions.

"The school doesn't seem academic," one mom said.

“Kids play, but what do they learn?"
Source: Becky Diamond
Marty showing us a book he wrote on different species of hawks. At Marty's school, academic demands increase slowly each year.Source: Becky Diamond
It’s not a sought-after school that parents think will put their kid on the path to Harvard or Yale.

Many parents think that the only way their child will succeed is if they go to an elite school, said neuropsychologist Bill Stixrud, an assistant professor at the George Washington University School of Medicine and co-author of the best-selling book The Self-Driven Child.

“There is this message that there's one path to being successful. It's a narrow path and if you [veer] off, you're screwed,” he said. Many parents “are imprisoned by this psychotic thinking that is out of touch with reality.”

But competitive schools are in style.
What seems significant might not matter
When I was in sixth grade, in the 1980s, the popular kids wore the coolest clothes. I wanted what they had.

“Mom,” I said. “I need Gloria Vanderbilt jeans.”
Trendy items were pricey. My mom was a social worker whose clients paid on a sliding scale. My dad was a scientist, not a CEO. We went to Macy’s in the mall. I tried on the $35 designer jeans.

“They’re too expensive,” my mom said. I walked home with $15 Levi’s that felt comfortable. But I cried because they didn’t have the right label.

“Becky,” my mom said. “What matters is how you feel on the inside, not how people judge your outsides.” She was right. But I still wished that my dad worked on Wall Street.

Forty years later, motherhood feels like middle school. When I tell moms the name of Marty’s school, they look at me like I’m wearing Levi’s. I’m surprised at how much I care.

There’s a reason.
“We’ve evolved to go after the wrong stuff,” said Yale Psychology Professor Laurie Santos in this podcast. “Craving is a brain function,” but it doesn’t do us any favors when it comes to feeling satisfied. According to Santos’ research on success, people seek what their mind perceives will make them feel powerful and strong, not necessarily happy.

Maybe that was well-made weapons in the Middle Ages or designer jeans in middle school. Today, it’s selective schools.

Education is a journey, not a brand destination
My dad was a rocket scientist, but I couldn’t care less about calculus. When I got B's in high school, I didn't feel like a failure.

For college, I went to the nation's top party school, the University of Colorado at Boulder,

“You love the outdoors,” my Ivy League-educated dad said. “Follow your passion. You’ll succeed.”

I hiked, biked and learned to rock climb.
“I’m scared!” I said to my partner on a 300-foot route in Eldorado Canyon.
“Trust yourself!” He shouted. "You’ve got this!”
I got comfortable stepping into the unknown and became unafraid of feeling fear. I touched granite so often that my grades weren’t great.

“Find subjects you love," my mom said. I took history classes and got A’s.

According to Dr. Stixrud, when kids are motivated by their own interests, they feel more in control. They are happier, healthier, and work harder.

I graduated with honors and worked at a highly regarded think tank in Washington, D.C. and for top news networks. Now, I teach journalism at prestigious universities, and I write this blog for Psychology Today.

The name of my college has never held me back.

Achievement isn’t only academic
Marty excels, but not on someone else’s terms. Instead of studying for tests, he has other plans.

“Let’s go to the National History Museum and look at fossils,” he said after school recently.
He saw a docent near the dinosaurs.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Is a Stygimoloch a Pachycephalosaur?”
She googled it. “He’s a mini paleontologist!”
He’s a good friend, too. At a birthday celebration, Marty noticed a boy who didn’t get a party favor.
“You seem sad,” he said. “Take mine.”
And he gets people to giggle. One afternoon he wanted me to play with him.
“Stop texting!” he said. I was on a group chat with my besties from Boulder.
I put the phone down to answer the door. When I returned, someone had been added to the chat.
“Becky, who is this person?”
“Sh-t, Marty added my husband’s ex-wife!”

We howled and so did she. I saw her later at a family event. “Your son is really something. Where is he going to middle school?"

Pressure to get on the path
Marty’s school ends in fifth grade. He and his classmates applied to middle schools in a process that felt more like college.

For Marty, there was a snag. As I wrote in this blog, he was recovering from Celiac Disease, which caused debilitating fatigue and brain fog. Marty was catching up while his classmates raced ahead.

After school, kids went to test tutoring, squash, soccer, Russian math and chess. Friends missed birthday parties to practice violin.

“Childhood has been turned into a period of resume building,” said Boston College child psychologist and Psychology Today blogger Peter Gray, who co-authored a recent study published in the Journal of Pediatrics that found kids spend so much time studying and in adult-supervised activities that they aren’t building social and emotional skills.

Anxiety among kids is at record levels, said co-author David Bjorklund, a Florida Atlantic University Psychology Professor. “There has been a lot of pressure toward academic learning and to do well on tests, which is not in a child’s best interest.”

Marty wanted to play but I couldn’t find a friend who was free.
“Billy is busy. He has tutoring and test prep.”
“Sam can’t see friends until the ISEE test is over.”

The ISEE (EYE-see) is the Independent School Entrance Examination, a three-hour standardized test that kids take to get into private schools. Students who compete for spots at the most selective schools must learn 6th and 7th grade material by the middle of 5th grade, according to several educators involved in the application process.

“ISEE test preparation for most students requires a tremendous amount of new instruction,” said Brad Hoffman, a board-certified educational planner who runs My Learning Springboard, a tutoring and education consulting firm. “We remind families who are wading into a private school process [that] it needs to be handled with appropriate balance.”

It's hard to feel steady when parents feel their child’s future is at stake.

We’re giving kids the wrong message
I have nothing against Harvard. But there is a winner-take-all mentality that creates a distorted definition of success and even "winners" lose.

Psychologists who work with top-performing students say their self-esteem suffers. Suniya Luthar’s 2004 study, The High Price of Affluence found that teens attending selective schools were more at risk for anxiety and depression than the national norm.

“They feel a relentless sense of pressure,” Luthar wrote in this article for Psychology Today. Too many kids get the message that they aren’t good enough. When the ISEE was over, Marty and a friend played.

“Where are you going to middle school?” Marty asked.
“My mom wants me to go to a good school,” the child said. “But I’m not gifted.”
“You’re smart.” Marty said.
“No. I needed nines on the ISEE (the top score). I only got sevens."
Later, Marty said: “Mom, I want to go to a good school. What are the bad ones?”

Epilogue
Marty applied to three three middle schools that didn’t require the ISEE. He wrote five essays, took two math assessments, and answered questions about social justice, extra-curricular activities, and life challenges.

“Describe a difficult situation and what you learned,” an admissions director asked.
“Ramen is my favorite food,” Marty said. “But I can’t have it. I have Celiac Disease. I’ve learned that I can be happy when things don’t go my way.”

I don’t know what grades Marty will get in middle school but he’s getting a great education.

STRESS-
It’s Not You. It’s the World.
The power of being distressed in a disordered world.
Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

KEY POINTS-
Humans evolved to survive, not to be happy or calm.
People's current discomfort, despair, rage, guilt, and fear are necessary alarms in an endangered world.
After listening to and validating the distress signals from their body and mind, an individual can better navigate and heal the world.
I’m not supposed to talk about myself. It’s been trained out of me. So has reacting, desiring, hurting, hating, and really, being human. Freud Botoxed the faces and hearts of generations of psychiatrists by preaching we become “blank screens” for you. We must be neutral so we don’t interfere with your process. Who I am on the other side of the couch—with my muted heartbreaks and stifled rages—only obstructs my purpose: I’m here to help you.

Turns out, though, that whittling us into well-trained robots doesn’t create great doctors. Nor does it arm us to heal a diseased world. And ignoring and pushing down all the messy feelings inside awards us many mental health symptoms (I’ve earned more diagnoses than degrees behind my name by now). So, I’m relearning how to be human—and giving myself permission to frown, sob, giggle, and say “No.”

You’re likely not a psychiatrist, but I wonder what’s been trained out of you, too? Perhaps you’ve learned to push things down to cope in this scary world, whether you needed to please, serve, protect, or survive. And maybe you’re now depressed, anxious, sick, or finding yourself numb with all the things society throws at us to tranquilize that voice in your head that screams, “Danger! This is not okay!”

Cure the Coal Mine to Save the Canaries
Because our world isn’t okay right now. If mental health symptoms are the canary, then our coal mine is toxic. Our world is collapsing and combusting all around us, and if we don’t adapt to this challenge fast, it might very well be the end of the world.

So no, you’re not broken or doing it wrong. You’re human. And being human is inherently painful for all of us. Especially now. We’re designed to feel this distress. It’s our alarm system to survive a dangerous world.

This idea might send many of you into existential angst, as I’m asking you to abandon the comfort of believing—or more accurately, the socially applauded epidemic of chastising ourselves in the name of "self-improvement"—that if only we were to just do x, y, and z, or to just be a, b, and c, that we could avoid all the pain and flatline on happy.

So maybe I’m losing you already with no promises of quick fixes. Or maybe you’re noticing relief. Relief that you’re not the only one who hurts, not the only one who lives in your head trying to ruminate a way out of it, who tries every escape hatch possible—for we are exceptionally creative at finding new ways to numb out, despite it only making things worse. Relief that we’re all in this painful, uncertain mess together. Not that misery loves company, but that shame thrives in silence. Relief that, as shame researcher Brenè Brown titled her first book, I thought it was just me, but it isn’t.

Being Human Is Painful on Purpose
Because being human is hard. The Buddha called it ‘dukkha’ (in Pali) as his first Noble Truth to describe the inherent discomfort of everyday life. Freud’s greatest aspiration was to transform hysteric misery into common unhappiness.[1]Evolutionary psychologists teach that we’ve evolved to survive, not to be happy or calm.[2]

If we think back to our predecessors, living thousands of years ago, looking out in the distance, and thinking, “Is that a big, scary beast that can eat me or just a bush?” [3] It wasn’t the chill, effortlessly confident ones who survived. Those naturally selected to become our ancestors were the stressed-out buzzkills who could imagine the worst out of any situation. The most anxious, untrusting, and pessimistic people were the ones who managed to pass on their genes to the next generation.

We’re also wired for connection. So threats to our social status—getting kicked out of the tribe—are equally threatening to our survival. Feeling “not enough,” comparing ourselves to others, fears of rejection—these have also been naturally selected for survival. (Yes, I’m saying my insecurity means I’m highly evolved.)

It Makes Sense That You're Distressed
When dialectical behavioral therapy’s (DBT) creator, Marsha Linehan, began counseling clients as a new, eager clinician, she quickly realized that the more she threw advice and change strategies at her clients, the worse they did.[4] What she realized she missed was validating their pain—simply communicating, “Ouch. That makes sense you’re hurting”—now the foundation of DBT.

We invalidate when we oversimplify the problem (“Why don’t you just think positively?”; “Just breathe”) or reject someone’s inner experience (“There’s nothing to be upset about”; “Just let it go.”)

So, I’m not going to oversimplify our problem. Healing our world will be the battle of our lives. And to do so, we need to relearn how to be human, in all its intensity, pain, and turmoil. We need to feel deep distress when our world is endangered. Because right now, it is. Our discomfort and despair, our rage and our fear; these are the appropriate smoke alarms to a world on fire.

Our Symptoms Are Important Signals for Survival
Before we learn strategies to soothe our symptoms, we need to listen closely to what they’re signaling. We’re not stressed because we’re malfunctioning. Our bodies and minds are doing exactly what they’re supposed to—protecting us by setting off alarms or short-circuiting in toxic environments. This is how we’re built to survive.

We often blame ourselves for being damaged or doing it wrong when we struggle. It’s more comfortable than sitting with the heavy reality that the world around us is broken in overwhelmingly complex ways. If it’s just us, it’s easier to fix. I wish I could tell you to just meditate and think positively and you would magically be cured of this pain, that everything would be fine. But it’s not you that’s the problem.

Our alarms are blaring because we are exposed, relentlessly, to the imbalances in our societies that constantly assault us with toxins and traumas, whether social, psychological, biological, chemical, ecological, historical, or political.[5] Silencing these alarms doesn’t make the distress go away, it just transforms them into louder signals, like sickness in our bodies or mental health disorders in our minds.

We need to feel distress to survive. If we retrain ourselves to listen and validate what our bodies and minds are signaling, we can more clearly navigate and heal the toxic systems we live in. And only when our world begins healing can our alarms finally rest.

ANXIETY-
How Uncertainty Causes Anxiety.
Insights from the neuropsychology of anxiety.
Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

KEY POINTS-
Your brain is a prediction machine, and uncertainty can be quantified in terms of prediction error.
We evolved anxiety as a response to uncertainty.
Mindfulness, gratitude, and routine can help minimize uncertainty and maximize well-being.
Whole or skim milk? Take your normal route home, or an unfamiliar potential shortcut? Flip a hypothetical trolley switch that would kill one person, saving five others?

All of these decisions have two things in common: uncertainty and anxiety.

Whether you consciously feel anxious or not in deciding between two similar options at the grocery store, I mean anxious in the technical sense. Anxiety is your brain’s response to uncertainty, big or small.

The Fantastic Organ
Neuroscientist Karl Friston has called the brain a “fantastic organ.” The brain is not only an organ which is fantastically complex, but one which is constantly generating fantasies. Your brain is a prediction machine—this is the basis for predictive processing theories of consciousness.

Most of what your brain and body does is unconscious: There is high predictability, little uncertainty, and attending to these details would be exhausting. We can choose to take conscious control of our breathing, but can you imagine if we had to do this all the time? How tiring, and perhaps even deadly, would it be to exist in a world where our brain couldn’t take over and regulate our breathing unconsciously?

But when there is uncertainty, prediction becomes much harder. There is no unconscious smooth sailing. The whole reason we have conscious thought is to deliberate between actions when multiple decisions are possible. Our fantastic organ must generate the right fantasy map to navigate us safely to our goals.

Entropy Equals Uncertainty
From a computational perspective, uncertainty increases entropy. You may recognize this term from physics. It is a law of nature that entropy always increases. Entropy is chaos, and disorder. Heat dissipates, the universe expands, and order does not stay ordered. Sandcastles collapse every day, but there is no universe in which sand spontaneously arranges itself into castles.

The caveat, of course, is that it is possible to build sandcastles and to create order in a disordered universe. We cannot create order from nothing; it comes at the cost of energy. Expending energy into work still increases entropy, globally, but we can trade energy from the outside world to maintain order in a narrow context.

This anti-entropic process of consuming energy to maintain order is the whole basis of life. Homeostasis is an organism’s process of expending energy to maintain itself, whether that energy is gathered from photosynthesis, or from eating other organisms.

And at a much higher level, your brain, the prediction machine, is fundamentally in pursuit of minimizing entropy. What does a prediction machine want more than anything else? To be right. What does it need to be right? Certainty. Why does it want certainty? There are two answers to this. From a low-level computational perspective, the less uncertainty there is in a problem, the more straightforward the answer. Your brain saves energy. From a high-level evolutionary perspective, the more uncertain your environment is, the less likely you are to survive. We need certainty.

Of course, if all we wanted was certainty and to minimize brain power, we would be in a constant state of hibernation. This is not a long-term adaptive solution. The best types of prediction machines are those which can handle high amounts of uncertainty, and still come out on top.

Three Types of Brain:
The struggle to navigate uncertainty is the best way to understand the evolution of our large brains, and to understand the neuropsychology of anxiety.

The brain can broadly be divided into three layers:
First there is the brainstem, which governs basic survival processes. This includes largely unconscious processes like breathing, heartbeat, digestion, and reflexive movement. This most ancient brain system is common to all vertebrates and is sometimes referred to as the “reptilian” or “lizard” brain.

Next there is the limbic system. The limbic system controls our emotions, ranging from pain and pleasure, love and fear, and hunger and sex drives. Compared to the basic reptilian brain systems shared across all vertebrates, the limbic system is more developed in social species. Whether predator or prey, parent or child, if your survival depends on receiving care from or avoiding harm from others, it pays to have emotions.
Finally, there is the cortex, or the “rational brain.” (Cortex has the same Latin root as corona, meaning crown; it sits on top of the rest of the brain.) The more intelligent an animal is, the larger its brain (relative to its body), and the more cortex it has. We see the largest cortical brain areas (again, relative to body size) in highly social birds and primates, with humans at the forefront.

Predictive Processing
Looking at this in the context of brains as prediction machines, this makes perfect sense. Think about the primitive lizard brain, or better yet, even more primitive fish vertebrates. Yes, they need to survive and reproduce like the rest of us, but these simple organisms may lay dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of eggs at a time. Their prediction machines are straight and narrow; they live largely by reflex. When prediction fails, they die. But what they lack in cognitive flexibility, they make up for in numbers.

More complex social mammals, like rats, have limbic brain systems (and some cortex) much more similar to us humans. They truly experience anxiety in the face of threat and uncertainty. Their tiny but fantastic organs do have a vested interest in generating fantasies of safety, security, nourishment, and social bonding. We know from decades of animal research that rodents experience anxiety in uncertain environments, and that their anxiety response is very similar to ours. We release the same stress hormone, cortisol, and the same anti-anxiety medications that humans are treated with work on rats. (That is, after all, where they are first tested to make sure they are safe and effective on mammals.)

Anxiety Is Prediction Error
The fact that all ties it together, posed by Friston’s model of predictive processing in the brain, is that anxiety is the felt experience of entropy. Your brain is constantly making predictions about the world, and judging those predictions against what actually happens. The greater the prediction error, the greater the entropy. Prediction error can be as simple as a single neuron firing or misfiring at the wrong time, or as dramatic as an entire belief system falling apart.

This is where humans’ uniquely large prefrontal cortex comes into play for our unique relationship with anxiety. Even for an animal with a sophisticated limbic system, such as a rat, uncertainty is marked by the direct presence or absence of threat. Even for animals with highly developed frontal lobes, such as chimpanzees, uncertainty is marked by uncertainty about the attitudes of others. Where am I in the dominance hierarchy? Is this chimp friend or foe? If I share my food, will the favor be repaid? All of the uncertainty an animal has to keep track of is magnified when living in a social environment. There is uncertainty not only about its own thoughts, feelings, and security, but about everyone else’s as well.

The most socially complex species have had to evolve the most advanced prediction machines in order to keep up with uncertainty. This is the case for humans as well as primates. But where humans excel—and this is arguably our greatest strength and greatest weakness, when thinking about anxiety—is metacognition, or the ability to think about our own thoughts, and to think in terms of abstract symbols.

What other species can have an anxiety attack brought on by existential dread—just thinking about the meaning of life, or what happens after death? Our ancient brain regions respond physiologically to uncertainty with anxiety, just as they evolved to. But we are no longer only dealing with uncertainty about an immediate threat. Uncertainty can mean losing your job, or hearing bad news about stock market futures, or flunking a test. It doesn’t matter; our fantastic brain, the prediction machine, still produces the physiological response of anxiety that is meant to protect us from immediate physical threat: Cortisol levels rise. Your heart rate increases. Your pupils dilate. You begin to sweat. All of these are genuinely adaptive responses when faced with uncertainty, in an evolutionary landscape in which uncertainty means fight or flight.

The problem is that this system is too good at its job. The theory of psychological entropy states that uncertainty is always felt as anxiety, no matter the cause. It does not matter if you are anxious because of prediction error caused by an immediate threat, when you were expecting safety, or because you have begun questioning a worldview that used to give you a sense of security in the world. It does not matter if you are uncertain about something trivial, like whether to buy whole or skim milk. Your brain evolved to deal with uncertainty as a threat, and anxiety is the natural response to that.

Where does this leave us? Are we doomed to become anxious over everything we can’t predict with absolute certainty—which is, literally, everything—like the neurotic philosopher Chidi in The Good Place? Not quite.

Living Out the Fantasy
The optimistic part about the theory of psychological entropy is that it tells us where all emotions are rooted, positive or negative. Fundamentally, it all has to do with prediction error. We inherently experience greater prediction error, greater uncertainty, and greater entropy, as negative. But on the flip side, we inherently experience reduced prediction error as positive. This is why (as mediated by dopamine) it feels so good when you achieve a goal.

This is also why practicing mindfulness and routine improves well-being: It minimizes prediction error, directly or indirectly. Gratitude and humility help rein in your fantasies, leaving less room for disappointment. And journaling and self-reflection help you more clearly map out your thoughts and worldview, leaving less room for error. And healthy habits leave less room for uncertainty. For the fantastic organ, reducing psychological entropy is the key to well-being.

MINDFULNESS-
The Deeper Meaning of Awareness.
From mindfulness to meaningfulness.
Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

KEY POINTS-
Meaning can be defined as resonance with one's true nature, or core essence.
An individual must be aware and fully sense the world in order to find meaning in their life.
Two things that motivate people the most are love and conscience.

In a world that appears to be changing at an ever-increasing rate, it is no wonder why so many people feel lost and stressed. However, it is important to recognize that when we search out and discover the authentic meaning of our existence and experiences, we discover that life doesn’t just happen to us. We happen to life; and we make it meaningful.

Above all else, the human quest for meaning is grounded in awareness. It has been said that “it is more important to be aware than it is to be smart.”1 To be aware is to know meaning. To be aware takes time and effort. If our lives are dominated by too many activities or passive preoccupation with television, smartphones, or the internet, we lose out on the meaning that surrounds us. We must be aware and fully sense the world in order to find the meaning in our lives.

There are as many shades of meaning as there are colors. Nobody can determine meaning for someone else—detecting the meaning of life’s moments is an individual pursuit and responsibility. In other words, we cannot find meaning if we don’t bother to look for it; and we can’t or won’t look for it if we are not aware of its potentiality.

In her bestselling book The Seeds of Innovation, Elaine Dundon notes that the first step in “transformational thinking,” which she describes as one of the building blocks of innovation, is increasing awareness.2 This step includes seeking greater awareness of oneself, of others, and of the environment in which one lives and works. In many ways, this is similar to what in popular parlance has been called “mindfulness”—a form of heightened awareness—although we prefer to build upon this meditative practice with our own concept of meaningfulness.

As Dundon wrote in an article for Psychology Today:
“Meaningfulness encourages us to go further, to transcend to a higher level by connecting with not just our thinking but also with our emotions and, importantly, with our true nature. To know what is meaningful to us, we must discover and embrace our true nature or core essence. Our core essence is what defines us and is at the heart of what makes us a unique human being. It is our core essence that frames our sense of self to help us clarify and understand our purpose, leading to a more joyful and deeply authentic life. Our core essence lies at the deepest origins of our spirit, beyond the cognitive, beyond thinking. Understanding our emotions and our true nature or core essence helps us become more aware or our connections to others, to nature, and to broader universal consciousness.”3

If we open ourselves to being aware of the many possibilities in life, we open ourselves to meaning. Indeed, it is life itself that calls and invites us to discover meaning, and when we live our lives with awareness, we express meaning in everything we do, whether it’s a workout or a work of art. The more aware we are, the more likely we can start to see the patterns in our thoughts, words, and behaviors. In other words, we can start to see patterns in how we deal with challenges in both our work and personal lives.

Among other things, we can start to see patterns in how we deal with our interactions with others. We may, as a result, come to realize that we are attracting the same kind of personal or romantic relationships over and over again, relationships that might be negative or even toxic and therefore not serving our highest good. We may come to realize that we have a habit of wanting to lash out at others or take revenge if they demand too much of us. We may realize that we only like to look at our side of the “story” instead of realizing that there are many sides to the same story or issue.

Similarly, the more aware we are, the more likely we’ll begin to see patterns in how we approach our health. We may realize that we are not expressing our emotions, bottling up our anger or resentment, which leads to more stress. We may realize that our weight gain may be a result of stress and not, directly or necessarily, be a result of our diet even if it includes a craving for sweet foods. In this connection, research has shown that people are vulnerable to increased cravings for foods containing added sugars if they are exposed to stress over a long period.4

On a fundamental level, the more we become aware of the moments in our life, the more we open ourselves to meaning. Many people define meaning as “significance” or “something that matters.” However, as implied earlier, my colleagues and I define meaning as “resonance with our true nature or core essence.” When something feels significant, when we know that it matters, it is because it resonates with who we truly are. Each meaningful moment or meaningful experience teaches us to seek greater awareness and to live in a way that resonates with whom we believe we are at the core.

Knowing why we think, feel, and do things is essential and, importantly, is the beginning of real freedom and meaning in our lives. If we delve deep enough, we’ll reach the two things that motivate us most: love and conscience. The world-renowned psychiatrist Viktor Frankl described these as intuitive capabilities, that is, things we do without thinking, things that define us at our deepest level. “The truth,” Frankl wrote in his classic work, Man’s Search for Meaning, “is that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.”5

As your awareness grows, you can start to see patterns in the meaning in each moment. You can string together these insights to see the bigger picture of your life. You can see all of the roads you have taken, all of the stops you have made, all of the people you have encountered, all of the things you have done or experienced in your life. With greater awareness comes your ability to find deeper meaning in your life.

FORGIVENESS-
The Power of Forgiveness.
New evidence from a randomized trial.
Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

KEY POINTS-
Forgiveness can be understood as replacing ill will towards an offender with goodwill.
Forgiveness is different from excusing, reconciling, or foregoing justice.
A randomized trial of a forgiveness workbook indicates beneficial effects on mental health and flourishing.

We have all been hurt by others. Sometimes those wounds last for a long time.

It can be difficult to know how to deal with such hurts, or with those who have inflicted them. One approach is to bury and suppress the wounds, but often they then remain with us and re-emerge. Another approach is to let the wounds fester, to ruminate upon them and upon anger, and possibly seek revenge. Sometimes that revenge may help pacify one’s outrage; at other times it may not. An alternative approach to dealing with the hurts we all experience is forgiveness.

We might define “forgiveness” as the replacement of ill will towards an offender with goodwill. Conceived as such, forgiveness is distinct from excusing or condoning the action; it is distinct from reconciliation; and it does not require foregoing justice. Forgiveness does not entail ignoring issues of responsibility and accountability. One can forgive an offender and hope for his or her ultimate good, while also pursuing a just outcome. One can also forgive an offender without necessarily seeking a restored relationship. This point is especially important in cases, say, of repeated violence or abuse, wherein the ending of the relationship may be best for the victim and offender alike. Likewise, because forgiveness and reconciliation are not identical, one can also forgive even if the offender has passed away. In conflicts, often both parties are hurt, and forgiveness can be helpful in both directions.

Prior research on forgiveness has included randomized trials of forgiveness interventions and longitudinal analyses of observational data. This research has indicated that forgiveness lowers depression and anxiety. Forgiveness can, over time, help free the victim from the hurt, rumination, and suppression, and from the offender. And again, one can pursue forgiveness and justice simultaneously.

Most prior forgiveness interventions have required many sessions with a trained therapist. In our most recent randomized trial study, we have examined whether the past 30 years of work in clinical psychology on forgiveness could be distilled into a self-guided workbook that could be effective at promoting forgiveness and improving mental health. If so, given the ease of dissemination of such workbooks, the public health consequences could be profound.

REACH Forgiveness Model
The workbook we studied employed Everett Worthington’s REACH model of forgiveness where each letter of REACH stands for a different part of the process:

R: Recall the hurt and let the emotions associated with it surface; do not suppress them.
E: Empathize with the offender, trying to understand their reasons for the action, without condoning the action or invaliding one’s feelings.
A: Altruistic gift; realize that forgiveness is an altruistic gift that can be offered or withheld, and realize also that one has oneself sometimes done wrong and has been forgiven.
C: Commit to forgive, to try to replace ill will with goodwill.
H: Hold on to the forgiveness, realizing that it takes time for emotions to heal and that sometimes the anger will return.

The workbook was developed by selecting the most effective exercises from prior research that could be completed in two to three hours, to help people who want to forgive but were having trouble doing so.

Our Forgiveness Randomized Trial
We carried out a waitlist randomized trial to examine the effectiveness of this forgiveness workbook. The study had about 4,500 participants in five relatively high-conflict countries: Columbia, South Africa, Ukraine, Indonesia, and Hong Kong.

In a waitlist randomized trial design, participants are randomized to receive the intervention either immediately, or after a delay (in this case, two weeks), and then outcomes are measured right before the second group gets the workbook. Given prior research on forgiveness, it seemed unethical to permanently withhold the workbooks from participants in the trial, so a waitlist design seemed best.

Happily, the workbook was indeed effective at increasing forgiveness. Those who received the forgiveness workbook immediately reported experiencing higher levels of forgiveness after two weeks than those who were randomized to delayed receipt. Moreover, there was also evidence from the trial that the forgiveness workbook lowered depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms, and that it increased hope.

There was also evidence that it increased various aspects of flourishing—happiness, health, meaning, character, relationships, and even a sense of financial security—as assessed by our flourishing measure. The formal paper on our randomized trial is currently under journal peer review, but given the importance of this work, and our upcoming forgiveness conference (described below), we decided to release a pre-print on the study and more details are available here.

Public Health Implications
Given the important effects of forgiveness on mental health and well-being, and the existence of an effectively costless, easily disseminated self-guided forgiveness workbook, forgiveness should arguably be considered a public health issue. The public health impact of a particular exposure or phenomenon is sometimes assessed as a function of how prevalent or common it is and the size of its effects on the outcomes that we care about.

Something that is both common and has large effects on health outcomes will shape population health. On these grounds, forgiveness is important. The experience of being wronged is very common; and forgiveness, which can be fostered by the use of the workbook, can itself improve mental health and well-being.

If the workbooks were disseminated in clinical, school, and workplace settings, and if local, national, and international efforts were made to promote forgiveness and utilize such resources, we argue that more people could forgive and reap the benefits of improved mental health. (The forgiveness workbook can be downloaded here and freely distributed. I have personally used it myself and have found it very helpful.)

Difficult Questions, and Our Conference
There are of course difficult moral questions around forgiveness that are important in their own right, but also important in thinking about forgiveness in the context of public health. Are there limits to forgiveness? What are the moral conditions under which forgiveness might be considered appropriate?

While there is certainly no universal consensus, arguments have been put forward that, provided the victim does not deny the wrong that was done or its implications or deny or suppress feelings about it, forgiveness—understood as replacing ill will towards the offender with goodwill—can always be morally appropriate. Again, forgiveness does not entail foregoing justice, and this distinction is critical especially if forgiveness is promoted in clinical or community settings, and in thinking about the morality of forgiveness.

But what if the wrongdoer does not acknowledge the wrong or does not repent? Forgiveness—understood as replacing ill will towards the offender with goodwill—can still take place. And such forgiveness may still help free the victim from the offender. Conversely, if something you say or do deeply hurts or offends another person, even if you believe you did nothing wrong, it can still be helpful to express sorrow for the other’s pain. In some cases, this itself might facilitate healing and might help the other person to forgive.

These are, however, difficult questions, and to help try to address these, the Human Flourishing Program, in collaboration with Harvard’s Memorial Church, the Making Caring Common Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Harvard Catholic Forum, the Religion Conflict and Peace Initiative at Harvard Divinity School, and the Templeton World Charity Foundation, are hosting an Interdisciplinary Conference on Forgiveness to bring together scholars and practitioners from psychology, law, peace studies, philosophy, theology, and public health to ponder these and others important and difficult issues surrounding forgiveness. The conference will be held at Harvard University April 21-22, 2023, and is free and open to the public.

Enmity and Love
Forgiveness perhaps also points us towards the need for love within community, and a restoration of love when things have gone wrong. It arguably even points towards a need for a love of one’s enemies, of those who have a settled ill will towards oneself, or those towards whom one is inclined to have settled ill will.

Our society has become increasingly polarized. We will not agree on everything, and those disagreements can be important. And yet, it is important also to recognize the humanity of those we disagree with, to understand those differences, and to work towards finding those aspects of what is good that we can agree on and seek together. We can at the same time seek to correct the other, while seeking to be corrected ourselves.

There is a paradoxical logic of love for one’s enemies, and forgiveness facilitates this logic and love. By replacing ill will towards another with goodwill, forgiveness may prompt prosocial action that may itself propagate, thereby potentially helping to heal division. Love—love for one's enemy—seeks both the good of the other (sometimes including correction), but also, when possible, a desire for reconciliation. Love extends beyond even forgiveness. Our society needs to foster a greater love of neighbor, and love of enemy.

People in many parts of the world right now are observing “Holy Week,” a remembrance of what Christians believe to be the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The account given in the Gospel of Luke is that Jesus, after having been nailed to a cross, cried out, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” I hope that we may embody that same spirit of forgiveness. However, may we do so also in full recognition that the other side may view us as offenders, as having nailed them to the cross. Amidst our difficulties and tensions, may we pursue a spirit of forgiveness that seeks understanding and love, peace and reconciliation.

The Simulated Friendship of a Psychopath.
The psychopath can appear friendly while preying on her victim.
Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

KEY POINTS-
Female psychopaths often manipulate their victims into a false sense of closeness.
Female psychopaths may seek friendship through flattery, feigned concern, kindness and phony stories.
Psychopaths generally have an insatiable appetite for power and control.
When Lord Chesterfield wrote a letter to his son in 1747, he warned him of an “unguarded frankness” which makes people of his age “easy prey.” “… [T]hey look upon every knave or fool, who tells them that he is their friend, to be really so; and pay that profession of simulated friendship, with an indiscreet and unbounded confidence, always to their loss, often to their ruin.”1

There are many people in this world who may not make for good friends, but there is a certain type of person with a character disorder that is no one’s friend. That person, the psychopath, may very well be the knave in Lord Chesterfield’s admonition.

“Simulated friendship” is a tactic of the psychopath
Who are these people with their “simulated friendships” that can bring us to ruin? Psychopaths have perplexed us since biblical times.2 The very title of psychopathy expert, Dr. J. Reid Meloy’s book, The Mark of Cain3 hints at the problem. In Genesis, the mark God placed on Cain, the first murderer, served to immunize him from harm … analogous to how psychopaths evade detection. How do we make the mistake of letting them get close to us? They often manipulate their victims into a false sense of closeness. Renowned researcher Dr. Robert Hare writes: “If we can’t spot them, we are doomed to be their victims.”4 But how do we spot such people since they pose as “the perfect invisible predator?”5

Connections, not friendships, are the psychopath’s goal
Connections, not friendships, are very important to a psychopath. Psychopaths have an “insatiable appetite for power and control,”6 Each person with whom she connects serves her needs in different ways and must validate her outsized sense of self. The psychopath has a “pathological self-focus.”7 She commands an audience not only in her speech but in her mannerisms. She can use various ploys to get and keep your attention … flamboyant, outgoing, effusive or, conversely, pitiable, “feel sorry for me.” If she uses the victim approach, you may never know that she is on the prowl to take. Whatever ploy she uses, the sad truth is she never gets enough and she is never grateful. She believes she is entitled and constantly demands more. If her lips say thank you, her heart is in a very different place.

Tools to achieve “friendship”
She may seek friendship by flattery, feigned concern, kindness and phony stories to manipulate you and put her in a favorable light. Her effervescent voice sends out a message of just how wonderful you are. Everything she does is designed to further her personal agenda. According to Dr. Carl Gacono, “The female psychopath’s interest in others is not based on a desire for greater intimacy, but rather is motivated by a need to be the center of attention.”8

Spotting these “perfect invisible predators”
How do we spot these “perfect invisible predators” who try to masquerade as “friends?” Dr. J. Reid Meloy offers a suggestion: “Although this information is only intuitive and anecdotal, it is my experience ... to hear descriptions” ... such as "cold eyes" ... "staring, harsh, empty, vacant, and absent of feeling.”9 While true, I can attest, from personal experience with my psychopathic mother and sister, how very difficult this can be to detect. Unfortunately, there is no surefire way to easily spot a psychopath. Even trained clinicians often cannot discern the psychopath. My best advice has always been to let your intuition be your guide. A discerning "sixth sense" should not be ignored. Heeding a gut reaction warning may be your best and only defense.