29. June 2009 by John Schinnerer.

Dr. John Schinnerer

Guide To Self, Inc.

June 30, 2009

As I write this article, I am listening to the new Black Eyed Peas song, ‘I Gotta Feeling’, which begins with the lyrics,

‘I gotta feeling that tonight’s gonna be a good night,

tonight’s gonna be a good night,

tonight’s gonna be a good, good night.’

 The song makes me feel optimistic, energizes me, and gives me hope. This begs the question, how do music lyrics prime the mind to receive and interpret information?

Hundreds of studies have shown that words powerfully influence thinking, behavior, and mood, and much of it occurs without conscious awareness. Favorite songs are listened to over and over hundreds or thousands of times so it makes good sense to speculate that music lyrics may have a profound impact on the listener’s perception of the world, other people, and which emotions are experienced as well as the frequency of those emotions.

In psychology, researchers are beginning to grasp the significance of the workings of the mind beyond the conscious experience. Conscious awareness is merely the jumping off point when exploring the mind. There is now considerable agreement among neuroscientists that most cognitive processing takes place outside of conscious awareness. Roughly 90-95% of mental activity occurs outside conscious awareness. Much of this ‘back office’ activity is automatic and emotional. Much of this activity is taking place just below the level of our awareness.

Despite the lack of awareness, subconscious activity has a tremendous impact on how the world is perceived through the senses, day-to-day behaviors, emotions felt and satisfaction with life. For example, numerous studies have been done on the phenomenon known as priming. Priming is when a person is exposed to certain stimulus, such as words, lyrics, or surroundings, and their subconscious mind is activated. Once activated, the person tends to act in ways that are consistent with the stimulus without awareness of why they are behaving in that manner.  Priming has been shown to influence behavior in dramatic ways. Let me explain these types of studies by way of example. Imagine you volunteered for the following experiment:

You are given four jumbled sentences by a researcher who tells you to come get her when you’ve finished unscrambling them (so that the sentences are meaningful).  There is one extra word in each sentence does not need to be used.  For instance, you may be presented with something such as …‘her  interrupt   bother  usually  they’ As the subject, you would translate this mess into something meaningful such as… ‘They usually interrupt her’ or ‘They usually bother her.’ A few minutes later, you finish the task of unscrambling the four sentences and walk down the hallway to find the researcher. You find her but she’s in the midst of a conversation with a stranger and isn’t paying any attention to you. What do you do?

For those people who unscrambled sentences which contained one word per sentence having to do with rude behavior, such as ‘rash,’ ‘aggressive,’ ‘bother,’ and ‘intrude,’ you are far more likely to interrupt the researcher within 2 minutes and say, ‘Hey, I’m done. What’s next?’ On the other hand, if you unscrambled sentences in which the one rude word was swapped with a polite word such as ‘respect,’ ‘nice,’ or ‘courteous,’ the odds are that you will sit there passively for up to 10 minutes until the researcher finishes her conversation.  And you will have no idea what influenced you to be so docile. These experiments have been replicated over and over.

One experiment had a group of people simply read a list of words where some of the words had to do with stereotypes of elderly people, such as ‘retirement,’ ‘Florida,’ and ‘bald.’  Sure enough, participants who were ‘primed’ with elderly-related words instantly began acting consistent with the elderly stereotype. They walked more slowly down the hallway, they walked with their shoulders slightly more hunched over, and their short-term memory became worse than the control group.  Merely reading the list with words related to old age led to forgetfulness and other behavioral changes.

The frightening thing about these experiments is that the group given the words related to elderly stereotypes could not remember any words about the elderly in the original list of words. So they were influenced by the words and then forgot all about what it was that influenced them. All of this groundwork brings me to the latest research, which came out June 25, 2009, demonstrating that song lyrics prime behavior as well. When asked to fill in the missing song lyrics for different songs, participants’ behaviors and attitudes changed in startling ways.

Donald Saucier at Kansas State University found that when people filled in the lyrics for patriotic songs, such as ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ they became more close-minded, prejudiced and less empathetic. They did not put themselves in the shoes of another person to view the world through different eyes.

What’s more, when folks filled in lyrics to songs such as ‘The Itsy Bitsy Spider’, they became more pro-social, reporting more accepting attitudes towards other people and more empathy. The hypothesis is that this is due to the strong association most people have with such childhood songs to happiness or contentment in their own childhood.

In conclusion, musical lyrics have an impact on attitudes towards others, emotions felt and how frequently they are experienced, and how the world is perceived. Given the research, it makes sense to closely look at the lyrics of the songs you listen to frequently. They may be impacting you more than you ever realized.  To this end, I have created a list of over 600 songs which support and augment pro-social behaviors based on the latest findings of positive psychology. If you’d like a complimentary copy, pick it up at  http://tinyurl.com/n2dtsn.

About the Author

Dr. John Schinnerer

Dr. John Schinnerer is in private practice helping clients learn anger management, stress management, the latest ways to deal with destructive negative emotions and ways to cultivate positive emotions such as love, curiosity and contentment. His practice is located in the Danville-San Ramon Medical Center at 913 San Ramon Valley Blvd., #280, Danville, California 94526. He graduated summa cum laude from U.C. Berkeley with a Ph.D. in psychology. Dr. Schinnerer has been an executive and psychologist for over 12 years. Dr. John Schinnerer is President and Founder of Guide To Self, a company that coaches clients to achieve optimal human functioning using the latest in positive psychology, mindfulness and attentional control. Dr. John Schinnerer hosted over 200 episodes of Guide To Self Radio, a prime time radio show, in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Dr. John Schinnerer sits on the Advisory Board of Positive Music Imperative as well as consults with Resonance Technologies around the latest ways to measure and quantify human emotions for commercial application. Dr. Schinnerer is President of Infinet Assessment, a psychological testing company to help firms select the best applicants. Dr. Schinnerer’s areas of expertise range from positive psychology, to emotional awareness, to moral development, to sports psychology. Dr. Schinnerer wrote the award-winning, “Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide To Managing Emotion and Thought,” which is available at Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com and AuthorHouse.com.  

Posted in Hope, Resiliency, Awareness, Music psychology, Curiosity, The human brain, Subconscious mind, Dr. John Schinnerer, Guide to Self, Happiness, Positive mood music, Positive Psychology | Print | No Comments »

27. June 2009 by John Schinnerer.

Next time you pick up your golf club your brain may do more than look for a long fairway.

Recent studies suggest that the brain views tools as extensions of the body.

The simple act of holding a mechanical tool, such as a golf club, “temporarily modifies the cerebral representation of a subject’s arm,” said Lucilla Cardinali, lead author of the study.

Essentially, individuals think their arm is temporarly longer. The cognitive schema for ‘body’ momentarily adapts and grows in size. And all of this takes place without your conscious awareness.

For more, check out the story on Yahoo…

http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20090626/hl_hsn/grabatoolandchangeyourbrain

John Schinnerer

Posted in The human brain, Mindfulness, Subconscious mind, Emotional mind, Guide to Self, Dr. John Schinnerer | Print | 1 Comment »

24. June 2009 by John Schinnerer.

ScienceDaily (June 23, 2009) — We humans prefer to be addressed in our right ear and are more likely to perform a task when we receive the request in our right ear rather than our left. In a series of three studies, looking at ear preference in communication between humans, Dr. Luca Tommasi and Daniele Marzoli from the University “Gabriele d’Annunzio” in Chieti, Italy, show that a natural side bias, depending on hemispheric asymmetry in the brain, manifests itself in everyday human behavior.

Full story at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090623090705.htm

I didn’t hear this one coming. But when I reflect upon my own experience, I do prefer people speaking to my right ear. And I thought it was just me!

Fight the fear! 

Don’t give up!

Have a thriving, smiling day!

You are worth every breath you take (and that’s saying something!).

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Posted in Emotional mind, Consciousness, The human brain, Rational mind, Emotional IQ, Life coach, Guide to Self, Dr. John Schinnerer | Print | No Comments »

23. June 2009 by John Schinnerer.

“The Music Instinct: Science & Song.” Show time is 9 PM on June 24th.

From PBS…

While listening to music, neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, asks the questions “where do goose bumps come from?” and “what’s going on in my brain that allows the goosebumps to happen?” Levitin leads a group of researchers as they investigate music’s fundamental physical structure; its biological, emotional and psychological impact; its brain altering and healing powers and its role in human evolution. The Music Instinct: Science and Song, a fascinating two-hour documentary on the science of music, premieres Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 9 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings).

The Music Instinct: Science and Song is a production of THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG – one of America’s most prolific and respected public media providers.

Researchers and scientists from a variety of fields are using groundbreaking techniques that reveal startling new connections between music and the human mind, the body and the universe. Together with an array of musicians from rock and rap to jazz and classical, they are putting music under the microscope.

“The brain is teaching us about music and music is teaching us about the brain,” says Levitin.” Music allows us to understand better how the brain organizes information in the world. There are a lot of different factors that go into our emotional appreciation of music [like] the memories we have of a particular song that we heard at a particular time in our lives.”

Internationally renowned performers Bobby McFerrin and cellist Yo-Yo Ma describe the way musical intervals are used or combined to create melody and harmony. McFerrin, together with the “World Singers,” sing a cappella to demonstrate that basic elements of music; pitch, tempo, rhythm and melody create specific reactions in our brains. Yo-Yo Ma plays two notes and then five more notes and then plays different combinations that demonstrate the way musical intervals are combined to create a melody or harmony.

More info below at PBS

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/musicinstinct/about/

Posted in Emotional management, Music psychology, Positive mood music, Happiness, Dr. John Schinnerer, Creativity, Positive Psychology | Print | No Comments »

22. June 2009 by John Schinnerer.

ScienceDaily (June 18, 2009) — Our ability to withstand stress-related, inflammatory diseases may be associated, not just with our race and sex, but with our personality as well, according to a study published in the July issue of the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity. Especially in aging women, low levels of the personality trait extraversion may signal that blood levels of a key inflammatory molecule have crossed over a threshold linked to a doubling of risk of death within five years.

Full article here  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090617123700.htm

Have a fantastic day!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Posted in Relationships, Managing Anxiety, Emotional management, Resiliency, Mindfulness, Gratitude, Hope, Assertiveness, Emotional mind, Depression, Anxiety, Emotional IQ, Managing stress, Staying calm, Social anxiety disorder, Happiness, Tips to help anxiety, Social phobia, Realistic optimism | Print | No Comments »