Stress

What is stress? One way to define stress is as a state of mental or emotional strain resulting from differing or very demanding circumstances. This week I had to watch a Ted Talk video titled How to make stress your friend, in which Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist, discusses not only how stress can be positive and but ways in which stress can positively influence a person’s body and daily life. In that video, Kelly McGonigal was able to completely turn my point of view on stress around. There were several tests performed that shows people who view stress and the reactions that it causes as beneficial, not only did better in the tests but apparently Kelly McGonigal also stated lived better and lived longer. And all individuals have to do is view stress and all of its reactions as good and not negative.

 

As I was watching this video I went through several phases of reactions. At first I was confused about how stress can actually be good for people’s health; then I become startled by the research that proves that stress can be healthy; and lastly I became hopeful and elated because I go through so much stress and it frustrates me and the thought that I can actually make stress a positive influence on my life just sounded miraculous. And to add to my happiness I discovered that the information that Kelly McGonigal discussed is actually very credible. In the footnotes of this Ted Talk she referenced several website sources that not only support her findings, but also contain the information in which she was discussing in her presentation.

 

After watching Kelly McGonigal Ted Talk video I plan on implement some of the ideas into my life. I am usually become very stressed in my daily life as a college student because I just have so much to do, very little time to get it all done, and then finding time to the other things I need to accomplish. This is video is helpful because it can teach me to be more positive, change my perspective on stress, try to become closer to my friends and family, and be more willing to help others when they are in trouble, instead of just focusing on the mountain of paper work I need to complete. By implementing viewing stress as a positive reaction, I can hopefully become healthier, more social, and live longer. On a ending note I found this Ted Talk video be very reasonable but also very inspiring and educational.

 

 

Works Cited

 

McGonigal, Kelly. “How to Make Stress Your Friend.” Kelly McGonigal: How to Make Stress Your Friend | TED Talk | TED.com. TED Talk, June 2013. Web. 15 Apr. 2017. <https://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend?language=en&gt;.


The Keys to Success

In today’s competitive society, students are constantly searching for ways to succeed.  Researchers have determined that students who possess self-compassion and a growth mindset will be the best equipped to face challenges.  What is a growth mindset you may be wondering? This phrase was coined by Carol Dweck of Stanford University.  A growth mindset belongs to those who believe they can always learn even from mistakes, while those with a contrasting fixed mindset believe their knowledge and abilities are limited and may be critical of themselves, especially when they make mistakes.  Recently, two psychological studies were published which address the impact these factors have on students.

The first study, from Michigan State University, “Neural evidence for enhanced attention to mistakes among school-aged children with a growth mindset,” was published online in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. The second study, from the University of British Columbia, was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, “Don’t be so hard on yourself! Changes in self-compassion during the first year of university are associated with changes in well-being.”  I happen to be a college freshman therefore the focus of this article will be on the UBC research on first year college students, with a quick overview of the MSU study.

The MSU research came from Jason Moser’s Clinical Psychophysiology Lab, evaluating the benefits of a growth mindset and the significance of young students learning from their mistakes. This study observed seven-year-old students and then classified them into two groups: fixed or growth mindset.  The researchers then used an EEG to measure the brain waves of the students when they made mistakes playing a computerized game.  The children who had higher brain activity when making a mistake were more likely to have greater success when continuing to play the game and were dubbed to have a growth mindset. This higher brain activity signaled their focus on attempting to understand what they had done wrong while looking for ways to improve their performance.  The researchers stated that parents and educators should encourage students not to ignore their mistakes or believe they are bad, but rather to utilize them as a learning opportunity.

The second psychological study was performed by researchers from the University of British Columbia.  The UBC study tied the success of college freshman to how they handled themselves in times of stress.  They focused on the “self-compassion” of college freshman and how it corresponded to their attitude and adjustment to changes and failures in their first semester. The research built upon several prior studies.  One showed college freshman students experiencing declines in their psychological and social well-being as their living arrangements, responsibilities, and social interactions change during their first year at school leading to increased stress levels.  However, self-compassion during times of stress could be one factor helping students.  Self-determination theory is a set of principles used by the researchers to understand the association between self-compassion and well-being.  What exactly is self-compassion?  It is defined as self-kindness (not being too critical of yourself), common humanity (understanding that we all make mistakes), and mindfulness (keeping balance in your life).  But exactly how self-compassion equates to a student’s well-being has not been examined.  So, the UBC researchers’ intent was to evaluate if changes in self-compassion were somehow related to changes in an individual’s personal needs satisfaction (PNS).  If personal needs were being met, then maybe this could lead to improved well-being.  PNS is defined as competence (one can complete difficult tasks), autonomy (being in charge of yourself), and relatedness (connecting with others).

The research took place at a Canadian university in which 189 freshman college students, recruited through course websites and recruitment booths, participated in the study.  Most of participants were women, 77.2%, including a wide range of ethnicities, 50% of which lived on campus, 49% knew their roommates before school began, and 99% were single. These individuals took an online questionnaire their first month of school and another five months later.  The questionnaire consisted of three self-assessments. The first measured mindfulness, self-kindness, and common humanity; the second was a basic psychological need satisfaction questionnaire; and the third was a subjective vitality scale measuring well-being of the students.  Each of these questionnaires allowed the students to rate their responses on a numeric scale.  The researchers did not assign the participants into groups, nor did they observe the students over the course of their school year.

The results of the study validated the researchers’ hypothesis proving that if a student experienced an improvement in their self-compassion, they also had an improvement in their personal well-being because self-compassion improved their psychological need satisfaction.  Those who were kinder to themselves, or less critical, were able to better adapt to changes and setbacks. While the research is insightful, it does have several limiting factors.  Research was only conducted at one university.  Having a larger and more diversified group of students from different universities would make the data more meaningful.  Also, how accurate is self-reporting by students?  The researchers stated their study design did not allow for causal claims and that the results cannot imply self-compassion leads to an increase in well-being.  So in future research, the study design should be enhanced to determine if one does directly impact the other.

Although the UBC study does have limitations, it makes one step back and conduct a self-examination.  Do we treat ourselves with compassion? Or do we get mired in frustration at our failures?  Hopefully, the research will make students examine their attitudes as well as push researchers to conduct further studies to aid educators in helping students cope with stress.

The Process of Writing a Psychological News Article

 

THE CHALLENGING

Writing a news article summarizing a psychological study is challenging!  My article is based off of Christopher Bergland’s psychological news article “Self-Compassion, Growth Mindset, and the Benefits of Failure.”  I appreciate the art of creating an article that is both informative and entertaining for the reader.  Research materials are factual and parts can be difficult to understand.  Bergland’s article was entertaining but left out numerous important facts that I believe the readers need so they can draw their own conclusions.  He had many quotes and antidotal information that was interesting, but it took away from the actual research findings.  So, my challenge was to include sufficient information for the reader in an understandable format.   It is a difficult balance to include enough information without bombarding the reader with facts. The previous research included in the UBC study was a building block to their research but included so many citations for researchers, acronyms and definitions that putting all of that information into a concise format was challenging.

 

MUCH NEEDED SACRIFICES

In order to provide details left out of Bergland’s article, I did not include the various quotes or the Ted Talk video.  These were informative but did not leave sufficient space for every piece of information needed from the scholarly research. I did attempt to provide a good overview of the research; however, I did leave out details surrounding how the data was analyzed. I believe the readers would want to have all of the facts on the participations, the questionnaires, and the results, and not the details of analyzing the data. A short article does not allow for all of the details to be presented.

 

A WHOLE NEW PERSPECTIVE

After reading the research materials and writing my own article, my perspective of journalists has changed.  Before this project I was too trusting towards journal articles believing they correctly summarized the material, but now I have learned to be more cautious.  I realize that journalists do not include all the information that they should.  They are focused on delivering an entertaining message rather than an in-depth report.  After reviewing the scholar research, I realized how much information was missing from Christopher Bergland’s article.  He did not include all the information necessary that I needed to make my own assumptions on the research studies. I also learned how difficult it can be for journalists to include and exclude certain types and amounts of information, for it to not only sound accurate, but for it also to be relevant. Overall, this project provided a valuable learning experience that was challenging yet enlightening.

 

 

Works Cited

 

Bergland, Christopher. “Self-Compassion, Growth Mindset, and the Benefits of Failure.” Psychology Today. N.p., 30 Jan. 2017. Web. 4 Feb. 2017.

file:///Users/MatthewBMonter/Downloads/For%20Matthew%20M%20(2).pdf

 

Gunnell, Katie E., Amber D. Mosewich, Carolyn E. McEwen, Robert C. Eklund, and Peter R.E. Crocker. “Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself! Changes in Self-compassion during the First Year of University Are Associated with Changes in Well-being.” Personality and Individual Differences. N.p., 17 Nov. 2016. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201701/self-compassion-growth-mindset-and-the-benefits-failure


Stress

          Kelly McGonigal is a health psychologist who discusses stress in her TED talk. She says that she used to see stress as an enemy, but she has changed her perspective. She cites a study that tracked 30,000 people throughout a year. In the study, people who had a high level a stress and also believed stress was bad for your health were 43% more likely to die, but people who had high levels of stress and did not consider stress to be bad for you did not have a higher rate of death. The study estimated that over the eight years they tracked deaths, 182,000 people died prematurely from believing stress is bad for you. She also discusses the social stress test which involves a speech and a math test while people are giving negative feedback. People who viewed their body’s responses as helpful were less stressed out and their physical stress response changed. Normally, people’s blood vessels constrict when under stress which is bad for the person’s health, but if a person saw their stress as helpful, their blood vessels did not constrict.

          She then discusses oxytocin which is a stress hormone that promotes social contact. In the stress response, it directs you to find support. It is an anti-inflammatory hormone, and it helps heart cells to regenerate and heal from damage from stress. The benefits of this hormone are increased from social support. She then discusses another study that tracked 1,000 individuals. They found that every major stressful experience increased the rate of dying by 30%, but the people who spent time with others found no stress-related increase in dying. She concludes that choosing the way we view stress and act can change our lives for the better.

          I really enjoyed this TED talk. I thought the speaker was credible since she is a health psychologist and backed her claims up with scientific studies. I think for me to fully believe her claim that your perception of stress can change your physiological reaction to it, I would need to see more studies done, but she points out something really interesting that I had never considered before. I found the message to be reasonable, and I want to believe her claim. It seems evolutionarily beneficial for the stress response to help, rather than to hurt you, and I thought the studies she cited helped her claim to seem reasonable. She did not discuss how these findings may differ for people with anxiety or depression, and I would imagine that having a mental disorder would make it much more difficult to simply change the way you view stress.

          I definitely want to try having this more positive outlook on stress! I find myself being so stressed out that I become stressed about having stress, which is a cycle I would like to break out of. There is no harm in viewing stress from a more positive angle, and I hope this helps me to use stress to my advantage.

 


First Impressions: Emotions

This week we were asked to watch a Tedx talk and share our reactions as well as commenting on the credibility of the presenter. https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy. In this talk by Dan Gilbert, a professor from Harvard university, it is proposed that the way our emotions work and the way in which we perceive our emotions may be different than we think. In particular, this talk focuses on synthesized happiness which refers to a defense mechanism innate in human beings. When humans do not get exactly what they want or are forced to make a choice between two things, we can not only convince ourselves that the choice we made was correct, but there can actually be changes in our opinions of things that are involved in this choice. Gilbert studied this by presenting a person with some prints of some paintings and asked the person to rank the paintings based on which one the person liked the best/was the better painting. Then the researcher told the person that they only had the ones the person ranked third and fourth and asked the person to choose between those two. The vast majority of people chose the third one and then weeks later were asked to rank the paintings again based on which ones they like the best. Almost all the subjects ranked the one that they received higher than 3, and the one that was in the 4 spot lower than 4. But this was just because they convinced themselves that it was better and they just wanted to be consistent right? Gilbert did the exact same test but on the elderly who had Korsakoff’s syndrome, which causes problems forming new memories. The subjects chose the 3rd painting just as the other set of subjects had, but then the researcher said they had to go get the painting. They stepped out for thirty minutes and then returned and asked the person if they wanted their painting. The subject of course did not remember the researcher or the conversation where they made the decision for the 3rd painting on their list. The researcher then asked the person to order the paintings again, and the results showed the same trend as those from the other group even though the person had no memory of the previous interaction. This suggests that “settling” can actually cause changes in our brains that cause us to like the thing that were are forced into having more than we did before. Or in other words, we can synthesize happiness. I thought this talk was incredibly interesting, and Gilbert seems to be very credible as he is a well known professor from Harvard who presented data, and has gathered data that supports his theory.


Happiness :)

happiness

“Not getting what we want can make us just as happy as getting what we want” (Dan Gilbert).

In the Ted Talk given by Gilbert, I discovered that over time human beings evolved not only physically to adjust to their physical environment, but they have also evolved to mentally cope with the everyday mental hardships in life. There were two main types of happiness that Gilbert discussed: synthetic happiness and natural happiness. In the above quote, natural happiness would be described as the joy we get from “getting what we want” while synthetic happiness is described as the joy we get from “not getting what we want”.

Initially, while listening to the speaker discuss synthetic happiness I immediately asked myself, “Why would anyone want to be synthetically happy”? As he continued to discuss how synthetic happiness was a defense mechanism that allows us to remain happy in times of stress or misfortune, I realized that it would be reasonable to incorporate this form of happiness into my everyday life. There are many ways that we seek happiness from misfortune. For instance, when an exam doesn’t go as planned, we always keep in the back of our minds that the next exam will be better. Or maybe if we lose a significant other, we may tell ourselves that we are better off without them and that the right one will come along soon. This way of thinking is what helps us remain happy when things do not go our way. I didn’t realize until now that I had been healing emotional wounds by falsifying my happiness. To my surprise, synthetic happiness is just as effective as natural happiness.

In my opinion, Dan Gilbert is a credible source when discussing this topic due to the extensive research that he and his lab partners have been conducting overtime. I would say that the study is considerably reliable in that it included random sampling in participants. The amnesiac and non-amnesiac participants do differ in a major way which helped the final results of the study due to different outcomes when questioned/examined by the researchers.

Furthermore, Gilbert discusses how “some things are better than others”. Preferences that drive us “too hard and too fast” could cause us to be at risk. He added, when our ambition is unbounded we are liars, cheaters, and etc. When our fears are unbounded we are cowardly, reckless, and etc. However, when our ambitions and fears are bounded we are cautious, joyful, prudent, and thoughtful. Living a life that is bounded and free of unrealistic expectations allows us to manifest our “synthetic” happiness into “natural” happiness that will last a life time.


Happiness

For this weeks blog I watched A Ted talk by Dan Gilbert which covered ideas about happiness. I found the Talk to be quite enjoyable and thought provoking. I have always believed happiness is what you make of it and that nothing can truly get in the way of a person’s ability to be happy. Being able to come to terms with our actions and the situations we are in and letting ourselves be happy despite how bad thing may seem may seem bleak, but I have always found that I was happy whenever I accepted the worst of a situation and moved on. For instance, I have been through two tornadoes which both took my entire house away, but I found that after the shock went away I was still happy. Looking back at it now, I would never change what happened to me and my family, because It is what lead me here and I have accepted it and moved on. So the message that we can create synthetic happiness by accepting our situations at face value seems reasonable to me from my experience. Dan Gilbert seemed very credible and his experiments were very well thought out and support his interpretations very well. I believe that I incorporate a good amount of synthetic happiness in my life already and I just didn’t realize it because I accept the outcomes in my life and move on pretty easily.


First Impression Post: Stress

 

In the Ted talk video, Kelly McGonigal: How to make stress your friend, she talks about the topic of stress and how the body of an individual can make stress their friend not an enemy. KellyMcGonigal is a health psychologist who has experimented with stress and advising people how to prevent stress but she learnt that stress can also be good.Kelly  talks about the hormone oxytocin that is released in the body when experiencing stress and how this hormone interacts with social interaction in the real world.I was shocked with the number of deaths of people dying because of the belief of stress. The numbers of people dying from the belief of stress was 182,000 that 43% of the USA population and is ranked 15 in the top causes of death in the United States. Kelly researchers have researched stress over the past 8 years which leaves me questioning how reliable and accurate are the results and statistics of the test.

Kelly McGonigal informs the audience that believing in stress is what causes negative performances in life but if you change your thought of stress then it will let your body change the response to stress. Stress can be help with a person’s social life by seeking help or helping a person out, be more outgoing, and it can help a person with giving them the energy to finish work before a deadline.I would use stress in a positive way by giving me the determination to finish my work before a deadline and to do better with my school work.


Making Stress Your Friend

In her TedTalk, health psychologist Kelly McGonigal says she wants to make you “better” at stress, as she claims stress makes you social. She discusses 3 studies in the talk. The first study was what caused her to change her mind about the way she viewed stress. The study involved tracking the stress levels of 30,000 adults in the U.S. for 8 years. The results showed people who were stressed while finding stress to be harmful had a 43% greater chance of dying. Those who were stressed but did not find stress to be harmful had the lowest risk of dying, even compared to those who experienced little stress. Basically, the study revealed one becomes more vulnerable to premature death by being stressed about stress. Although the study revealed interesting results and had a large sample, it may not be completely trustworthy. The way the researchers operationalized their variables in terms of how they actually measured stress and risk of death was not mentioned. I was surprised at how she made it appear that this one study alone caused her to change the way she looked at stress for herself and for others. This lack of triangulation does not add credibility to her ideas. In addition, the large sample used in the study took place on people in the U.S., which shows the results are not completely generalizable. I think she should have searched for/mentioned other studies which could have supported the idea. Claiming that being stressed about being stressed increases the risk of premature death is a big thing to say and I think multiple supporting sources are needed before you can just preach something like that.

The second study she mentioned was a social stress test done at Harvard. Results showed that when participants viewed stress responses as helpful,  their blood vessels stayed relaxed and refrained from constricting. Again the way the researchers defined their variable was not mentioned. I think this study is more easily supported by scientific methods. I also liked this study because it indirectly showed how each and every one of us has self-control over our stress. I believe you only succumb to stress when you allow yourself to. The study showed that by not allowing yourself to view stress in such a negative way, you can in fact control the effects of stress on your body.

She discussed the way in which Oxytocin promotes a stress response which makes you feel the need to be surrounded by people who care about you. I do not completely agree with this. Based on personal experience and the experiences of others in my life, being stressed may make you purposely try to isolate yourself, especially if the stress comes from school. The final study she mentioned concluded that caring creates resilience, which ties in to the prior discussion about Oxytocin. Finally, when being interviewed after the talk, she stressed the importance of meaning in life decisions. She basically stated that meaning facilitates your trust in thinking you can handle stress. I agree with this because meaning plays a strong role in many psychological aspects, such as memory.

 

 


Happiness.

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy#t-221337

 

In Dan Gilbert’s TED Talk, he brought out many different points as to how and why people make their own happiness. He highlights the ideas that can abrupt our happiness, which is mostly our own choices. We are the ultimate ones who are in charge of our own happiness, and must make our own decisions to choose happiness. However, it is difficult to do so when we are given so many options. As Gilbert had talked about in his TED Talk, when we are given an overwhelming amount of options to choose from we tend to sabotage our own happiness by picking an option that, in the end, ends up not being the best one. It was surprising to me whenever he showed his audience that statistically people who win the lottery and paraplegics are rated to have about the same happiness. The studies that he presented were interesting, however I do not know if they were legitimate enough to claim that these people displayed true happiness. I believe that there is a difference between being truly happy and making the best of the situation. Because of this reason, I do not quite agree that his statistical methods to back up his reasoning’s are all that reliable. However, I did enjoy his talk. I thought he brought out interesting points of how we can bring synthetic happiness into our lives by dwindling down our choices and going after the one that will make us the happiest in the long run.


Psyched to be Stressed Out

Before watching the TED Talk video “Making Stress Your Friend”, I read the title thinking that having the ability to change our relationship with stress in a way that helps us is a little too good to be true. I agree with the statement that stress is not all that bad. For me personally, I have found that stress is a way to motivate me and remind me of an approaching deadline. If I didn’t have any stress or if I just pushed my stress aside and went along with my life in denial or suppression of the approaching exams, my exam scores would be very, very poor if we’re going to be honest.

Kelly McGonigal, the speaker, describes that stress does not  have to lead to harmful effects. Instead, how we view stress and how we act towards it, can lead to a positive or negative experience. If we choose to think about our bodily responses to stresses as natural processes, a way for our body to energize and prepare us in meeting our challenges, then Kelly claims that we should have more confidence and better performance. As we hear our heart pounding, we are told to think of this as we are breathing faster to get more oxygen to our brains. I could believe the part about participants of this study feeling less anxious and stressed, but the part about the blood vessels being less constricting as a result, was hard for me to believe. This could be true, but she did not mention the statistics of this as random assignment to conditions and how many people had this relaxed vessel.

The statistics that she had made me a little skeptical. For example, “ researchers estimated that over the eight years they were tracking deaths, 182,000 Americans died prematurely, not from stress, but from the belief that stress is bad for you” I would like to see the study they did, and if there were others to back this one up. Another claim she made was another study, I presume, “tracked about 1,000 adults in the United States, and they ranged in age from 34 to 93″ and “for every major stressful life experience, like financial difficulties or family crisis, that increased the risk of dying by 30 percent” but for those “who spent time caring for others showed absolutely no stress-related increase in dying.” To me, it sounds more like people who took care of others had no increase in dying because they were spending time with others and helping them, not asking people around for help and support. I think she would have to clarify and explain that more.

Also, I understand that Kelly is a health psychologist, but how did she just recently find out about these findings, and how much evidence did it take for her to fully believe all of these stats and interpret in ways that make it seem like the solution to not dying early from stress, is to think of stress as helpful? It all seems a little counter intuitive to me. If you don’t think of stress and anxiety to be negative, would you even consider being stressed anymore? To me, stress indicates a feeling of high pressure and resulting panic, not something that gives me courage. I believe that preparing myself mentally for a performance of some sort such as swimming, singing, or playing violin, and having enough practice to back me up is the only way to help calm my nerves. Tests are a whole other monster for me, because I am very much affected by my old test scores and performance, and have my goals and aspirations in the back of my mind. So, telling myself during a test that my sweaty palms and aching back is actually there to help me is very hard to do, especially if it gives me pain.

Another point mentioned in the video, was the idea that we seek others in times of stress and need. This was interesting, as I do this all the time. I feel as if this is very much dependent on personality type however, so it varies person to person. There are some people who just do not want to get help or choose to deal with their stress on their own in their own way and it works for them. I wish it worked that way for me. Kelly goes on to saying that stress makes us more compassionate and seeking to connect with others. But, what if the people you are trying to seek help from do not want to give it, or what if they are too busy and stressed out themselves? That’s a problem I often run into.

However, it still feels pretty good as the speaker ends by saying that if we do think of stress as a not-so-negative thing, “You’re saying that you can trust yourself to handle life’s challenges. And you’re remembering that you don’t have to face them alone.” Maybe I can try to apply this in my own life and tell myself the next time my heart races a million times a second that my body is doing this to help me in this endeavor and that it will help me instead of harm me when taking this test. We will see!