23. May 2010 by John Schinnerer.

Misery in the Genes

A professor finds DNA that can turn emotional stress into physical illness

By Noah Berger for The ChronicleMisery isn’t just depressing, it’s bad for your health. People going through stressful events, like divorce, are more likely to get sick. People who are HIV-positive see their condition worsen more quickly if they don’t have good social support. But nobody knows exactly how mental stress causes illness and death. 

Now a study by researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles and several other institutions has come up with an actual biological pathway: a chain of molecules that connects stress to disease through genes. The scientists also learned that some people can get through tough times without ruining their health, thanks to a particular genetic variation that breaks the chain. 

The study, published this spring in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is wildly multidisciplinary, spanning psychology, molecular biology, immunology, and epidemiology. That posed challenges in lining up grants, says Steven W. Cole, an associate professor of medicine at UCLA, who led the research. But the study’s success signals the growth and increasing sophistication of Mr. Cole’s field, psychoneuroimmunology, the study of connections between mind and health. 

Robert Ader, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Rochester, coined the discipline’s name around 1980, when he was studying animals that could be psychologically “tricked” into suppressing their immune systems. The animals were fed saccharin-flavored water and simultaneously dosed with a drug that suppressed the immune system. Later, just the taste of saccharin was enough to suppress their immune systems. Psychology appeared to affect biology. 

“That was not received with open arms by the immunology community,” Mr. Ader says. Thirty years later, however, it is more established that the brain and immune system are linked. …

For the whole article, click here to go the Chronice of Higher Education’s website.

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20. May 2010 by John Schinnerer.

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Guide To Self, Inc.

‘Excuse me’, I said in my kindest voice, ‘there is a mistake in this report.’ My coworker, a woman twenty years my elder, reacted with fury, ‘And I assume you’re perfect?! My reports don’t have mistakes in them. Why don’t you take that report and shove it up your a..!’ She continued with her tirade while I did a quick visual scan for any nearby sharp objects she might use on me. After what seemed like ten minutes, she snatched the pages from my hand and stormed away.

 While this took place nearly twenty years ago, I remember it vividly as it was an early lesson that the anger of coworkers is not always directed at the right person, to the proper degree and in the best manner. More often, the anger of coworkers, customers and supervisors is misdirected at people who had no involvement in creating the anger in the first place.   

So how do you handle it when someone else’s anger begins to escalate in the workplace?

The ability to de-escalate the anger of others is a critical political and emotional ability necessary for long-term success. As an executive coach and speaker, I have seen and heard about anger taking on a life of its own, destroying relationships and derailing careers. While we do our best to act the part of rational, reasonable business people, the truth is that we are also emotional beings.

The emotional brain (primarily the limbic system) has been in existence in human beings for 3 to 10 million years. On the other hand, the rational brain (the cortex) has only been around for roughly 50,000 to 1 million years.

The emotional brain has been through countless revisions and is nearly perfect in its ability to keep humans safe and act as a general guidance system (approach vs. avoidance). The emotional brain has the ability to take over the rational brain when someone comes between you and your goal (leading to anger) or when danger is sensed (leading to fear).

The rational brain is still in the earliest stages of revision on an evolutionary scale. It is prone to mistakes in thinking, and can be overpowered by the emotional brain in a matter of .33 seconds.

All of us are simultaneously rational and emotional. So anger is inevitable when you have groups of people who care passionately about their companies, their jobs and a wide assortment of individual, team and corporate goals. As goals come into conflict with others, anger is bound to result.

Anger exists on a spectrum. Think of the intensity of anger along a 1 – 10 scale where 1 is calm and 10 is enraged.

1.      The first step to take when someone is angry with you is to do a body scan. This is simply a mental scan of your body to monitor your own anger level. If your anger gets above a 5 on the anger scale, tell the person that you are getting upset and ask them to continue the conversation later (after you’ve calmed down). In my work helping executives with anger, I’ve found that anytime you get above a 5 on the anger scale, hurtful words are spoken and destructive acts are committed. It becomes highly difficult to manage yourself when your anger level is above a 5. And it becomes nearly impossible to help another person manage his or her anger if your anger spikes.

2.      Be aware that anger is one strategy that people use to get their own needs met. I call the use of destructive emotions to get what one wants ‘emotional bullying.’ Keep that phrase in your mind and see if emotional bullying is taking place in your situation. If so, calmly state to the other person that they cannot use emotions to get what they want.  Or you can choose to tell them that you are happy to speak about the situation further when they have calmed down.

3.      Take a deep breath. Studies show that focused breathing reduces the intensity of negative emotions such as anger, anxiety and resentment. Negative emotions lock the body into certain patterns of movement and thinking. For instance, anger locks you into shallow breathing, tightened muscles, and thoughts which reinforce the anger. Deep breathing into your belly is the most important step in unlocking anger.

4.      Avoid criticizing or blaming the angry person. Criticism, blame and judgment are highly likely to heighten the intensity of the anger.

5.      Look for common ground between your experiences and the focus of their anger. There is usually a kernel of truth in angry statements, even if it is a tiny kernel. Your job is to seek out that truth and magnify it. If you can relate to their experience, let them know, ‘If I put myself in your shoes, I’d be angry too. Let me see what I can do to help you make this situation better.’

6.      Tune in to the early warning signs. These can tip you off that a coworker is getting progressively angry. It’s powerful to know someone is ready to blow their top before they actually lose their temper.  There are physiological indicators of anger for which you can be on the lookout. These include clenched jaw, furrowed brow, upper lip curled up on one side (disgust), muscle tension, narrowed eyes and shallow breathing. Beyond that, you can look for deviations from typical behavior patterns. For instance, when a coworker who is usually boisterous and outgoing turns silent and withdraws, it may be a red flag for anger. When you notice such changes in people, simply call attention to them gently to diffuse them before they erupt. For instance, ‘Hey Jan, I notice you have become quiet all of a sudden. What’s going on for you?’ or ‘Bob, you seem to have an irritated look on your face. Is there anything we may have missed?’

7.      If you cannot prevent the angry party from exploding in rage, there are several approaches of which you will want to be practiced. This includes active listening, apologizing, acknowledging their feelings, and offering to make an attempt to rectify the situation.

8.      Active listening is the process of genuinely and sincerely attempting to truly hear what it is the angry party is trying to convey. It involves listening at several different levels simultaneously including

 a.     the text (interpreting the words they are speaking to you),

b.     the subtext (what is not being said yet is still part of the problem),

c.      the emotional (which emotions are involved in the anger such as resentment, disappointment, fear, sadness, contempt, disgust and more)

d.     the physical (the body language of the angry individual, how agitated are they, how tightly are they holding their hands, how contorted are their facial expressions, etc.).

9.      Attempt an apology if you feel one is warranted or appropriate. Apologies consist of five parts. First, you want to sincerely admit to the wrong doing (assuming you or your company made a mistake). ‘I know that I made an error when I filed the report with mistakes in it.’ Second, you want to apologize, ‘I apologize.’ Third, you want to ask what you can do to make things right. Ask them, ‘Do you have any constructive criticism for me?’ Fourth, let the other party know that you will behave differently next time. ‘Next time, I will make sure there are no errors in the report before I file it.’ Finally, ask for their forgiveness. ‘Will you forgive me for filing the report with errors?’

10.  Acknowledge their feelings. Help the angry party feel heard. Say something along the lines of ‘I think I understand how you feel. You are very upset. I hear you. Your anger makes complete sense to me. What can I do to help?’

11.  Attempts to reason with angry individuals are likely to fall on deaf ears. When anger gets intense, the emotional mind is firmly in control of the angry person and little if any information gets in. The exception to this is information that reinforces their anger. This sort of info will get in, will be focused on and will be magnified.

12.  Act with compassion. Compassion is empathy, the ability to put yourself in another’s shoes. The goal is to understand the situation from the perspective of the other person. The better you get at this learnable skill, the easier it is to unlock their anger.

13.  In some instances, these de-escalation skills will not be enough to defuse a rage. You always want to be aware when dealing with angry individuals that they may not be thinking completely rationally. As a result, you want to ensure your own safety. This means you must be mindful of an escape route should things take a turn for the worse and become violent or abusive. Make sure the angry party is not blocking your path to the door or a window.  Keep this in mind if the conversation escalates and slowly, calmly work your way towards a better escape route. If the situation escalates to a point where you feel it is out of control, do not hesitate to call the police to ensure your safety.

 14.  Learning proven methods to stay calm in emotionally charged situations is critical in business.  Meeting anger with anger is usually a recipe for turning irritation into a full blown rage.

If you are interested in coaching around anger issues or de-escalation skills for yourself or your staff, feel free to call Dr. John Schinnerer at 925-944-3440 or email him at Info@GuideToSelf.com or check out the website at http://www.GuideToSelf.com.

 About the AuthorDr. John Schinnerer is in private practice helping people learn anger management, stress management and the latest ways to deal with destructive negative emotions. He also helps clients discover optimal human functioning via positive psychology. His offices are in Danville, California. He graduated from U.C. Berkeley with a Ph.D. in psychology. Dr. Schinnerer has been an executive, speaker and psychologist for over 10 years. Dr. John Schinnerer is President and Founder of Guide To Self, a company that coaches executives to happiness and success using the latest in positive psychology. Dr. John Schinnerer hosted over 200 episodes of Guide To Self Radio, a daily prime time radio show, in the SF Bay Area.  Dr. Schinnerer’s areas of expertise range from positive psychology, to emotional awareness, to anger management, to executive coaching. Dr. Schinnerer wrote the award-winning, “Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide To Managing Emotion and Thought,” which is available at Amazon.com. His blog, Shrunken Mind, was recently recognized as one of the top 3 in positive psychology on the web (http://drjohnblog.guidetoself.com).

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13. May 2010 by John Schinnerer.

This is an excerpt from a talk I gave last year at a Leadership Summit of 1500 executives and managers. It is critical to begin taking steps to incorporate positive psychology into the workplace to ensure the optimal functioning of your workforce. Parts of the positive psychology puzzle include resiliency, high ratio of positive to negative emotions, realistic optimism, positive communications, the mindful use of emotions so they work for you instead of against you and much more.

Think about it!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Book John Now at (925) 944-3440

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19. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Guide To Self, Inc.

Positive emotions, such as awe, curiosity, love, contentment and pride, act as a hidden reset button for the physiological effects of destructive emotions (e.g., chronic stress, long-term anger, or enduring sadness). Positive emotion undoes the harmful physical effects of negative emotions.

Positive emotions…

·         lower blood pressure

·         increase immune system functioning

·         improve clarity of thought and creativity and

·         decrease cortisol levels (i.e., the stress hormone).

Research has recently uncovered the four best predictors of future positive emotions. They are…

• The feeling that you can count on others
• The perception that you have autonomy and are in control of your own life
• Whether you learned something new yesterday
• Whether you did what you do best yesterday

(E. Diener, University of Illinois, author of Happiness)

If you have loved ones and friends you can count on, if you feel autonomous, if you learn something new daily, and if you use your strengths on a daily basis, you will create more moments of happiness in your life. As you learn to string together fleeting moments of happiness, you will create a contented mood.

According to Barbara Fredrickson (UNC Chapel Hill), author of Positivity, as we learn to unpack happiness, we discover that it is positive emotions that lay at the heart of a number of things such as resiliency, happiness, life satisfaction and subjective well-being.

In other words, when you increase the frequency with which you experience positive emotions, you improve your psychological resources (e.g., resiliency) and subsequently, you become more satisfied with life and physically healthier.

About the Author

Dr. John Schinnerer is in private practice helping individuals learn happiness by mitigating destructive emotions and fostering constructive emotions. 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 10 years. Dr. John Schinnerer is President and Founder of Guide To Self, a company that coaches clients to their potential 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. 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.  

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6. August 2009 by John Schinnerer.

What if ‘cognitive dissonance’ is actually related to subconscious emotional processes? Emotions may be behind the wishful thinking that the researchers relate to cognitive dissonance. Are we getting closer to a quantum theory of consciousness (emotion & cognition)?

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

April 14th, 2009 By Lisa Zyga

‘ (PhysOrg.com) — Humans don’t always make the most rational decisions. As studies have shown, even when logic and reasoning point in one direction, sometimes we chose the opposite route, motivated by personal bias or simply “wishful thinking.” This paradoxical human behavior has resisted explanation by classical decision theory for over a decade. But now, scientists have shown that a quantum probability model can provide a simple explanation for human decision-making - and may eventually help explain the success of human cognition overall.

If you were asked to gamble in a game in which you had a 50/50 chance to win $200 or lose $100, would you play? In one study, participants were told that they had just played this game, and then were asked to choose whether to try the same gamble again. One-third of the participants were told that they had won the first game, one-third were told they had lost the first game, and the remaining one-third did not know the outcome of their first game. Most of the participants in the first two scenarios chose to play again (69% and 59%, respectively), while most of the participants in the third scenario chose not to (only 36% played again). These results violate the “sure thing principle,” which says that if you prefer choice A in two complementary known states (e.g., known winning and known losing), then you should also prefer choice A when the state is unknown. So why do people choose differently when confronted with an unknown state?

In a recent study, psychologists Emmanuel M. Pothos of Swansea University in the UK and Jerome R. Busemeyer of Indiana University in the US have presented an alternative framework for modeling decision-making of this kind, based on quantum probability. As they note, the original motivation for developing quantum mechanics in physics was to explain findings that seemed paradoxical from a classical point of view. Possibly, quantum theory can better explain paradoxical findings in psychology, as well. In recent years, a growing number of researchers have investigated using quantum formalism in cognitive situations, such as in modeling human judgment and perception. Pothos and Busemeyer’s results are published in a recent issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

“A few decades ago, Tversky and Kahneman (1974) challenged ubiquitous assumptions regarding what is the most suitable framework for modeling human cognition,” Busemeyer told PhysOrg.com. “Until then, most psychologists sought to understand cognition using classic probability theory. In our paper we raise the question, which mathematical framework is most appropriate for cognitive modeling? In this article, for the first time, we present a fundamentally different, and more powerful, approach to probabilistic models of cognition, based on quantum principles. Employing minimal assumptions, we derive a Hamiltonian directly from the parameters of the problem (e.g., the payoffs associated with different actions) and known general principles of cognition (e.g., a well known phenomenon of cognitive dissonance); every step in our model is psychologically interpreted and rigorously justified.”

Defecting Dilemma

In their study, the scientists compared two models, one based on Markovian classical probability theory and the other based on quantum probability theory. They modeled a game based on the Prisoner’s Dilemma, which is similar to the gambling game. Here, participants were asked if they wanted to cooperate with or defect from an imaginary partner. Overall, each partner would receive larger pay-outs if they defected, making defecting the rational choice. However, if both partners cooperated, they would each receive a higher pay-out than if both defected. Similar to the results from the gambling games, studies have shown that participants who were told that their partner had defected or cooperated on the first round usually chose to defect on the second round (84% and 66%, respectively). But participants who did not know their partner’s previous decision were more likely to cooperate than the others (only 55% defected). It seems as if these individuals were trying to give their partners the benefit of the doubt, at the expense of making the rational choice.

As the scientists showed, both classical and quantum probability models accurately predict an individual’s decisions when the opponent’s choice is known. However, when the opponent’s action is unknown, both models predict that the probability of defection is the average of the two known cases, which fails to explain empirical human behavior. The problem is that the models are purely rational, meaning they try to maximize utility.

To address this problem, the scientists added another component to both models, which they call cognitive dissonance, and can also be thought of as wishful thinking. The idea is that people tend to believe that their opponent will make the same choice that they do; if an individual chooses to cooperate, they tend to think that their opponent will cooperate, as well. If both partners cooperate, both will receive a higher pay-out than if both defected. (And if an individual thought that his opponent would cooperate and so decided to defect to maximize his own pay-out, he would then be compelled to assume that the opponent would also defect, according to cognitive dissonance.) In other words, an individual views his opponent as a mirror of himself.

The difference between the classical and quantum models lies in how the rational component and the cognitive dissonance component are combined. Even after adding the second component, the classical model predicts that the probability in the unknown scenario must equal the average of the probability for the two known cases. As such, the classical model continues to obey the law of total probability, and fails to explain the violations of the sure thing principle.

In the quantum model, on the other hand, the addition of the cognitive dissonance component produces interference effects that cause the unknown probability to deviate from the average of the known probabilities. While in the classical model an individual is committed to exactly one preference at any given time, in the quantum model an individual experiences a superposition of these preferences. Mathematically, the probability (or amplitude) of defecting in the unknown scenario is obtained from the superposition of probabilities (amplitudes) for the two known cases. These interference effects enable the probability of unknown events to be lower than the probability of either event individually, which is observed in the empirical studies.

“Cognitive dissonance can arise in other decision making situations and is not limited to games with an intelligent opponent,” Busemeyer said. “In the gambling game, you play against nature. In this case, however, your belief that you will win the game becomes coordinated with your intentions to play the game. Cognitive dissonance effects are not even limited to adult humans but have also been found with young children and even with nonhuman primates.” (See Egan, L. C., Santos, L. R. & Bloom, P. (2007). The origins of cognitive dissonance: evidence from children and monkeys. Psychological Science, 18, 978- 983.)’

Full article here

http://www.physorg.com/news158928941.html

All the best,

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Guide To Self, Inc.

Posted in Altruism, Awareness, Emotion & learning, Negotiation and emotion, Consciousness, Guide to Self, Rational mind, Emotional mind, Dr. John Schinnerer | Print | No Comments »