Can We Control Our Emotions??

In class this past week, we learned about the different theories of emotion:
James-Lange Theory: our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological response to emotion-arousing stimuli.
Canon-Bard Theory: emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers physiological responses and the subjective experience of emotion.
Schachter-Singer Theory: Two facto theory of emotion - we experience the physical arousal and cognitively label the arousal.

As we discussed specific scenarios in class, we realized that there's no one theory that's correct. Mrs. Perl also explained that we don't know so much about emotion - or atleast as much as we could.

I read an interesting article (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ambigamy/201006/total-control-vs-no-control-theory-emotions-can-you-control-your-emotions-or-no) discussing whether or not we can control our emotions. So first, do you think we can control our emotions? When reading the article I noticed that the writer didn't mention anything about the 3 theories I just mentioned, but I was wondering whether or not we could apply them to this concept.
James-Lange Theory: the James-Lange theory states that we experience an event, it's followed by an arousal, then we interpret that information, and experience emotion. If we can somehow alter our interpretation of that arousal, then it seems like we could alter our experience of an emotion.
Canon-Bard Theory: the Canon-Bard theory states that we experience an event and then we (at the same time) experience arousal and emotion. It would seem to be from that theory that we can't really control our emotions.
Schachter-Singer Theory: the Schachter-Singer theory states that we experience an event, that's followed by arousal, the arousal is followed by reasoning, and then we experience emotion. To me, this one is the one that would make the most sense to control our emotions. We can reason in a way that can influence the way we experience an emotion.

What do you think? Which theory, if any, would explain how we can control our emotions? 

Stress and our Gastrointestinal Health

I decided to talk about a topic that is, er, close to home for me and many people in the world. There is a condition called IBS, which is a disorder that affects gastrointestinal functioning. This makes it difficult to eat certain things, perform certain activities, and affects many different aspects of a person's life. Now, what may or may not surprise many people is that one very interesting and seemingly unexpected factor of this condition is stress. Stressors can trigger flare ups with IBS, and to try to manage these, you have to try to figure out and try to prevent stressful occurrences. IBS and stress have a very interesting relationship: because of IBS, a person can have an increased gastrointestinal reaction to stress.

However, this isn't necessarily just things like getting assignments done on time, although those definitely count. Stress in this situation can be classified as diet, physical activity, psychological stress, and even hormonal changes. This type of stress can even occur without consciously feeling stressed, angry, or nervous. Depending if a person has short lasting or long term stress, this can change how it affects their body. Some worst case scenarios of stress caused problems correlated with IBS include asthma, high blood pressure, and obesity.

Doctors aren't really sure what exactly IBS is, how it works, or how to completely treat it, but they know that it has something to do with a connection with the brain, the gut, and the central nervous system. This just goes to show how everything in our bodies has a direct link with everything else, and our systems rest on such a delicate balance ( be careful not to throw yours out of whack!).

The Epitome of Our Lives

What is the epitome of our lives these days you may ask? Well, I would like to give you answer and attempt to explain it. I think (and probably most of you think) that all we are is stressed. Stressed all the time. I don't know if this is from the overloading of homework, or the many extra curricular programs that we do, or the high expectations put on us, but there has to be an answer to why high schoolers are stressed all the time.

According to an article on webmd.com, it's not only high schoolers who are always stressed. Little kids are also stressed. According to this article, it sounds like a lot of stress early on comes from pressure put on children by their parents, or teachers. It says that the stress levels at this school in Arkansas among the students is high due to fear of failing a simple standardized test. Much of that stress though, comes from nerves and getting nervous of failing. If stress starts that early in a child's life, then it can only get worse as life goes on. This article, while discouraging us that the young public is more stressed than they need to be, give us some great tips on how to relieve stress or prevent it from getting out of hand.

1. Watch for signs of school related stress - Whether it just be a blatant statement of stress, or sadness, it is the people around the stressed person's job to watch out for that. The article explains that many signs in young children are sickness, like headaches, and stomach aches.

2. Teach children time-management skills - Since kids, starting from the age of five, have school, extra curricular activities, and expectations at home, they need to be taught how to manage it all in an organized fashion. Teach them that it's better to space out homework, than cram.

3. Stress relieving homework tips - Since homework is always going to be a part of our busy lives, here are some tips that can help de-stress your homework experience.

1. Keep a planner to manage due dates and deadlines, so you know how to space out your work.
2. Study/do homework in a quiet place, because that will help you get in the flow, and get the homework done more efficiently.
3. Do homework right after school, rather than later in the night. If you wait until later, you will be stressing about until you do it.

I hope this helped explain some of why we are always stressed. It helped me realize that in my life, stress stems from daily struggles and annoyances. 

http://www.webmd.com/parenting/features/coping-school-stress

Your Outside Affects Your Inside.

Everyone knows that when you feel something inside you often express it on the outside. If you feel happy then you smile, if you feel sad you frown and/or cry.
But what about that saying if you smile at someone then you can make them smile and then they will smile at someone who smiles because they saw their smile..... It goes on and on. Is that saying that if you outwardly express one emotion you will feel it on the inside to. In this intsting article that y'all should read it expains it very well. http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/smiling-happy1.htm .
If you did not read it hears what it came down to. The same regions in your brain that emotions trigger causing you to smile or frown etc. work in reverse to. When you smile a region of your brain associated with happiness lights up thus causing you to genuinely feel happy.
So one easy quick to to have when your sad is to smile. The movements on your face will ultimately leed you to actually feel better.  So make sure you walk around with a smile, not a frown!!!
SMILE :) :) :) :)

Facial Feedback

This past week in class, we have learned a lot about emotion. To me, the facial feedback phenomenon is one of the most fascinating things we learned about. The facial feedback phenomenon is what happens when you force yourself to smile. The muscle movements that are associated with the emotion of happiness make you feel happy. The same idea holds true for sadness or anger: the facial movement triggers the emotion.

I initially called this the facial feedback phenomenon, although much of the scientific world knows this as the facial feedback hypothesis. The idea of facial feedback first came up with Charles Darwin, who suggested that physiological changes have an effect on our emotional state. William James, on the other hand, suggested that our awareness of our physiological changes is the emotion and that emotions are devoid of warmth and consist only on intellectual thought. In time, two versions of the facial feedback hypothesis appeared. The first said that facial feedback affected an emotion already there, either positively or negatively. The second said that the facial feedback alone can create an emotion. Most recently, there have been experiments done with patients who received Botox injections. Under fMRI scans, subjects were asked to make angry faces. The activity in the amygdala and brainstem was significantly less than in those who had not received Botox. This led them to conclude that facial feedback can control human emotion and lack of control of the facial muscles (as it happens after Botox) can hinder one's brain's responses to emotion.

The study of psychology is still young. As of right now, we still don't know how exactly this phenomenon works. How do you think it works? Do you agree more with James or with Darwin? Does your personal experience of this phenomenon help or hinder your ability to isolate its effects on your emotion?

Find Your Flow

How do you find flow? When do you feel that flow? Everyone feels their flow at different times. What is flow? It's that feeling when you are so immersed in what you are doing that you lose track of time. You forget about the outside world because you are so focused. You feel in control and at ease. Some feel it when they teach, when they write, when they shop. The goal in life is to find flow. Flow is the ideal in the work place in order to get the best performance out of a worker. It is ideal when it comes to overall happiness. If you can't find your flow then life is just dragging on with no real feeling of content or satisfaction or happiness. And what kind of life is that? Not a good one. Without flow you are constantly being interrupted by all of these devices we can't put down. Your life begins a pause and play pattern with new texts and calls and alerts always causing you to stop, never fully concentrating or appreciating what is around you. Once a time I wrote a post about finding happiness through neurotransmitters, now I'm going to help you find happiness through flow. 

I have looked at some of the best articles on finding your flow and these are the best tips I have found. 

1) Choose a job that you are actually interested in

We've all seen High School Musical and Ice Princess and all of those other movies where the parents want the kid to do X and the kid wants to do Y and at some point the parents say something like, "But this is your dream!" and the kid responds dramatically, "No, this is your dream." What I'm getting at is that all of these Disney movies are secretly trying to guide you to finding your flow. You can't just do what other people want you to. You must choose work you actually love doing. 

2) Get rid of distractions

The best way to get in a state of full on flow is to get rid of all those pesky 21st century distractions. Turn off your beeper and your cell phone and your email. Close up your Facebook and Instagram and lock your iPhone away. Turn off the TV and your iPod and your radio (if you have one of those). You might even want to clear off your desk or organize your things if that helps you. 

3) Choose a challenging task, but not too overwhelming

Stress is good. If you are stressed then you are motivated, too much stress, however, can really damage your flow. You want a task that requires your full attention, all of your skills. If it is too overwhelming for you then you will spend all of your time stressing out about it and trying to plan it out without actually having a flow experience. 

4) Know your flow time

Get to know yourself a bit. Maybe take some yoga classes or travel to Barbados, whatever it takes. You have to find out when it is the best time to flow out. You might need a quiet time, like late at night or early in morning. Some people like the buzz and sounds. Whatever time you choose, it must be the time when you have the most energy and desire to concentrate and let your creative juices flow. 

5) Practice and enjoy your flow

Don't be discouraged if you have a hard time finding your flow. It might take time. Maybe you were too distracted or your task was a bit too hard or boring. Over time you will perfect your flow and you will know what brings you true flow. When you do find it, enjoy it. Don't forget to appreciate your flow because your life will be a lot better because of it. 

I wish you all luck in finding your flow.

PS. Is flow a noun? Adjective? I'm still not sure.

I'm So Scared of Phobias

        This week in AP Psychology we took a turn towards emotion. Emotion, as it turns out, is pretty difficult to explain. While scientists have had an easy time discussing expressed and experienced emotion, it seems that its not as easy to figure out the causes of emotion.
         When researching expressed emotion, scientists came to the conclusion that there are certain facial expressions that are universal throughout all languages and they are used as a form of nonverbal communication. These core emotions were deduced to be inborn, and included: joy, surprise, anger, fear, sadness, contempt, and disgust. Later on, Carol Izard, Robins, and Shaver added the emotions interest/excitement, shame, guilt, pride, and love. Others believed that emotion was not just constricted to those few, but that there are all different degrees of the core emotions, and each can be placed somewhere on the Arousal vs. Valence Continuum, which looks something like:

         Another theory that incorporates emotion is the facial feedback phenomenon. It simply means that when you shape your face to match a certain emotion, neurotransmitters will be released that cause you to feel that emotion. For instance, when smiling, you send messages to your brain which then releases neurotransmitters that cause you to feel better. 

         After learning about emotion as a whole, we started to learn the basics of some of the core emotions. The one that interested me the most was fear. To some, fear is evolutionary, and some fears, like being afraid of the dark and bugs, stem from certain things our ancestors learned to be afraid of. Others believe that fear is learned through observational learning. And still others believe that perhaps some fear comes from a genetic predisposition for an overactive amygdala, which could cause you to feel more afraid of something than someone else. 

         Fear travels along two paths. When the stimulus sends a message to the thalamus, it relays that message to the amygdala to produce an immediate, reflexive reaction and also, at the same time, to the sensory cortex in the brain, which then processes and interprets the situation for cognitive appraisal and future actions. 

         While learning about fear, I couldn't help but wonder  how phobias could be included in the different theories of how fear is formed or learned. According to psychology.about.com, and inadvertently the American Psychiatric Association, a phobia is "an irrational and excessive fear of an object or situation." Apparently, there are three types of phobias- social phobias, agoraphobia (fear of being trapped in a situation with no escape), and specific phobias. Breaking it down even more, there are four major types of specific phobias- fear of nature (lightening, water, storms), animal(s), medical stuff (blood, shots), and situations (bridges, leaving home, driving). 

         While researching around some more, I found on serendip.brynmawr.edu that there is evidence that damage to the amygdala and hypothalamus could be the cause of phobias. Some children who are born with phobias usually have a decrease in activation of neurons in their amygdala and hyptothalamus. Abnormalities in the hippocampus and the frontal lobes could also be a factor. There is also evidence that phobias might be caused by a mutation in chromosome 15, so phobias could be linked to genetics. Either way, phobias are difficult to figure out, much like all emotions. 

Fear: Just Another Story?

Aloha, my friends. Over the past week, we have been learning about the different components of emotions like anger and fear. Fear can be poisonous. It can torment us, rob us of sleep, and preoccupy our thinking. Fear can also be contagious. However, most often, fear is adaptive. It’s an alarm system that prepares our bodies to flee from danger. Fear of real or imagined enemies binds people together as families, tribes, and nations. Fear of injury protects us from harm.

Through conditioning, the short list of naturally painful and frightening events can multiply into a long list of human fears. Learning by observation extends the list. Humans learn fear by observing others, including fears learned from parents and friends.

We may be biologically prepared to learn some fears more quickly than others. Humans quickly learn to fear snakes, spiders, and cliff-fears that most likely helped our ancestors survive. One key to fear learning lies in the amygdala, which plays a key role in associating various emotions, including fear, with certain situations. If an experimenter were to repeatedly blast people with a horn after showing a blue slide, they will begin to react emotionally to the slide. If they have suffered damage to the nearby hippocampus, they still show the emotional reaction-an implicit memory-but they won’t be able to remember why. If they have instead suffered amygdala damage, they will consciously remember the conditioning but will show no emotional effect of it. Patients who lost use of their amygdala are unusually trusting of scary-looking people.

Some people have phobias, intense fears of specific objects or situations, that disrupt their ability to cope. Other are less fearful, and exhibit little fear of a tone that predictably precedes a painful electric shock.

Our genes also influence our fear. Among identical twins, one twin’s level of fearfulness is similar to the other’s-even when they have been reared separately. Scientists have isolated a gene that influences the amygdala’s response to frightening situations. People with a short version of this gene have less of a protein that speeds the reuptake of serotonin. With more serotonin available to activate their amygdala neurons, people with this short gene exhibit an increased amygdala response to frightening pictures.

Over the weekend, I have been reading Divergent, a novel about a dystopian future (think The Hunger Games) where the post-apocalyptic city of Chicago is split into five factions. Long story short, a teenage girl abandons her family in one faction to join another, Dauntless (the brave). Anywho, initiation into Dauntless requires three stages. In the second stage, emotional preparedness, a serum is injected into her skin, which in turn stimulates the amygdala, the part of the brain involved in processing negative emotions-like fear-and then induces a hallucination. The brain's electrical activity is then transmitted to a computer, which then translates the hallucination into a stimulated image that a trainer can see and monitor. After the stimulation, there was something interesting worth noting that was said: "But becoming fearless isn't the point. That's impossible. It's learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it, that's the point."Do you think it could be possible to be fearless? Would it involve just overcoming the fear? Are there more components? Or is it learning to control fear? 

Today, I watched an interesting TED Video entitled, What Fear Can Teach Us." In the video, the speaker, Karen Thompson Walker discusses why we are encouraged to view fear as a weakness. The human brain is wired to think optimistically, as shown through the studies of neuroscientists, which can account for why we perceive fear as dangerous. However, what if we looked at fear as something profound, as part of the imagination?

Fear and story-telling have many of the same components: characters, plots, and suspense. The focus question of fear is what will happen next? What will comprise our future? In fear, one thing always leads to another. And if we think of our fears as stories, we can imagine ourselves as authors and readers. However, how we choose to read fear can have an incredible impact on our lives, and the question then becomes, how do we concentrate on reading the "right fears?" Karen Thompson Walker concludes that read properly, fears can be a glimpse into the future and can offer us wisdom and insight.

So, as my final question, is fear something that you perceive as negative, or an emotion you feel has the potential to teach us something? 

For your viewing pleasure, the video is below:

Stop Trusting Yourself

Hello my dear AP Psychology students. When I was doing my usual snoop of the Times for psychology articles this week, I came upon a lot of awesome articles and I want to blog about all of them! Just this morning I read a piece called "For the Love of Money" (click here to read) written by Sam Polk, a former hedge-fund trader who eventually quit and founded a nonprofit called Groceryships. You have to read the article. I was about to go all into it but then realized that it wasn't the article that I chose for the week. But- I still encourage you to read it. If you did read it- what do you think? Do you think wealth addiction should be considered a real addiction? Do you believe it is destructive to society? (Side-note: If you have seen Wolf of Wall Street, I doubly encourage you to read this article. It serves as a great accompanying piece.) The second article that I urge you all to read is "Why Can Some Kids Handle Pressure While Others Fall Apart?" (click here to read). This corresponds to what we're talking about in class pretty perfectly. If you read this one: Thoughts? Where do you fall on the spectrum?

And now, for the article we've all been waiting for- "Stop Trusting Yourself" by David DeSteno. Trust is a weird thing. It's all nice and well to trust other people, but sometimes they let us down in order to benefit themselves. Many people don't like this drawback of trust and prefer to rely on themselves most of the time. What is your take on trust. Do you believe 'the only person you have to count on is yourself'? Recent findings suggest that you can't really trust yourself more than others. Gasp! 

According to this understanding, trusting yourself actually involves two people (yes, they're both you): present you and future you. Present you might have the best intentions, but future you can't really be trusted. Can you always count on 'future you'? There are two cognitive glitches that result in the misplaced trust in ourselves. Psychologists Daniel Gilbert and Timothy Wilson identified the first: "our predictions for how much we'll want something in the future are often swayed by how we're feeling right now." Has this ever happened to you- you're really full when people are shopping or ordering food, but later, when it comes time to eat, you're starving but without food because you said "I'm sooo full"? You're not alone. We have a tendency to give too much weight to extraneous momentary feelings; this isn't too great for our future trustworthiness. What do you guys think of this first reason? Does it resonate with you? The second glitch: "your mind tends to discount the value of future rewards, meaning that as the time between you and a potential reward shrinks, your desire for it grows."

We have a cognitive bias to trust ourselves for some odd reason. We like to think of ourselves as trustworthy-always- and when our actions don't live up to that ideal, we erase the failure. I thought that coin flip test they brought in was crazy--how 90% didn't even flip it and gave themselves the preferred task...and then they viewed themselves as fair but condemned others for doing the same thing! Have you ever done something like this? Be honest.. Final thoughts: How trustworthy do you find yourself? As for my thoughts, I think that I can always trust myself. I'm totally one of my best friends; we get along swimmingly. I trust myself- past, present, future. (Is this belief perseverance mixed with overconfidence? Nah. I don't see it..) 

Motivation

What motivates me to write this blog post?

There are many different theories of what motivates us to do things. There is the Instinct theory, the Drive-Reduction theory, the Optimum Level of Arousal Theory, and Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Pyramid.

Instinct Theory:

• It is a reflex. 
• It is a response to a behavior that was never taught to you. 
• Your instinct is what motivates your behavior

Drive Reduction Theory: 

• Maintaing Homeostasis: There is a physiological drive in our body that wants the needs to be fulfilled 
• Incentives: Psychological want for something. 
• Our bodies need to be at an equilibrium for us to feel good. 

Optimum Level of Arousal:

• You are motivated by something that makes you feel good.
• What is considered arousing is different for every person
• In truth, it is best to operate at the optimum level of arousal. 
• People want to be at their own level where they feel good. 
• Yerkes-Dodson law/ U curve: The higher the amount of arousal -> more likely you'd do well on a simple task that you already know how to do. 
• Higher the arousal -> more likely you will do poorly on something you don't yet fully know how to do

Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Pyramid 

• There are 5 levels:
• a. Physiological need:
• food, air, water, and sleep: These needs are the most basic because all needs become secondary to these needs. 
• b. Security Needs:
• safety and security: important for survival but not as demanding as Physiological neeeds
• c. Social Needs: 
• belonging, loving, and affection: less basic than physiological and security needs.

• Esteem Needs:
• self-esteem, personal worth, social recognition, and accomplishment: these become increasingly important
• e. Self-actualizing Needs:
• highest level-self-actualizing people are self-aware, concerned with personal growth, less concerned with the opinion of others, and interested in fulfilling their potential. 

Personally, when it comes to homework, I think for me it's more of a Drive Reduction that motivates me. When I finish the work, I get this sense of accomplishment that I have completed what had been stressing me out. There is a level of equilibrium in my body that I am done with what I need to be done with.

A little motivation for your day: