Psyche, Science, and Society

Dehumanization and lack of empathy: A neural exploration

A new psychological study explores the psychological/neural mechanisms that may facilitate human rights atrocities. The authors claim that we fail to think about the internal life of those who evoke disgust in us. Here is a press release:

A brain’s failure to appreciate others may permit human atrocities

A father in Louisiana bludgeoned and beheaded his disabled 7-year-old son last August because he no longer wanted to care for the boy.

For most people, such a heinous act is unconscionable.

But it may be that a person can become callous enough to commit human atrocities because of a failure in the part of the brain that’s critical for social interaction. A new study by researchers at Duke University and Princeton University suggests this function may disengage when people encounter others they consider disgusting, thus “dehumanizing” their victims by failing to acknowledge they have thoughts and feelings.

This shortcoming also may help explain how propaganda depicting Tutsi in Rwanda as cockroaches and Hitler’s classification of Jews in Nazi Germany as vermin contributed to torture and genocide, the study said.

“When we encounter a person, we usually infer something about their minds. Sometimes, we fail to do this, opening up the possibility that we do not perceive the person as fully human,” said lead author Lasana Harris, an assistant professor in Duke University’s Department of Psychology & Neuroscience and Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. Harris co-authored the study with Susan Fiske, a professor of psychology at Princeton University.

Social neuroscience has shown through MRI studies that people normally activate a network in the brain related to social cognition — thoughts, feelings, empathy, for example — when viewing pictures of others or thinking about their thoughts. But when participants in this study were asked to consider images of people they considered drug addicts, homeless people, and others they deemed low on the social ladder, parts of this network failed to engage.

What’s especially striking, the researchers said, is that people will easily ascribe social cognition — a belief in an internal life such as emotions — to animals and cars, but will avoid making eye contact with the homeless panhandler in the subway.

“We need to think about other people’s experience,” Fiske said. “It’s what makes them fully human to us.”

The duo’s previous research suggested that a lack of social cognition can be linked to not acknowledging the mind of other people when imagining a day in their life, and rating them differently on traits that we think differentiate humans from everything else.

This latest study expands on that earlier work to show that these traits correlate with activation in brain regions beyond the social cognition network. These areas include those brain areas involved in disgust, attention and cognitive control.

The result is what the researchers call “dehumanized perception,” or failing to consider someone else’s mind. Such a lack of empathy toward others can also help explain why some members of society are sometimes dehumanized, they said.

For this latest study, 119 undergraduates from Princeton completed judgment and decision-making surveys as they viewed images of people. The researchers sought to examine the students’ responses to common emotions triggered by images such as:

• a female college student and male American firefighter (pride)
• a business woman and rich man (envy)
• an elderly man and disabled woman (pity)
• a female homeless person and male drug addict (disgust)

After imagining a day in the life of the people in the images, participants next rated the same person on various dimensions. They rated characteristics including the warmth, competence, similarity, familiarity, responsibility of the person for his/her situation, control of the person over their situation, intelligence, complex emotionality, self-awareness, ups-and-downs in life, and typical humanity. Participants then went into the MRI scanner and simply looked at pictures of people.The study found that the neural network involved in social interaction failed to respond to images of drug addicts, the homeless, immigrants and poor people, replicating earlier results.

“These results suggest multiple roots to dehumanization,” Harris said. “This suggests that dehumanization is a complex phenomenon, and future research is necessary to more accurately specify this complexity.”

The sample’s mean age was 20, with 62 female participants. The ethnic composition of the Princeton students who participated in the study was 68 white, 19 Asian, 12 of mixed descent, and 6 black, with the remainder not reporting.

More information: The study, “Dehumanized Perception: A Psychological Means to Facilitate Atrocities, Torture, and Genocide?” appears in a recent issue of the Journal of Psychology: DOI:10.1027/2151-2604/a000065

 

December 15th, 2011

Xenakis: Healers, Torture and National Security

Gen. Stephen Xenakis (Ret.), psychiatrist, has written a new article on health providers and torture. He succinctly reminds us of the history of the dangers of blurred boundaries and the the reasons to keep health providers far away from participation in interrogations:

Healers, Torture and National Security

by Stephen N. Xenakis

In 2004, the news that Americans had committed abuse and mistreatment in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo was shocking. Even more alarming, were the revelations that physicians, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals had assisted with interrogations that bordered on torture.

In the span of just two generations, the United States had drifted from condemning Nazi physicians at the Nuremberg Trials for their collusion with torture, inhuman experimentation and cruel mistreatment to justifying waterboarding in the pursuit of better intelligence.

As a retired brigadier general and Army psychiatrist, committed to a strong military and national defense, I find these scandals to be most disturbing. The complicity of psychiatrists and other physicians clearly deviated from the fundamental ethical principles of the medical profession and military medicine. My generation of soldiers, who had served during the Vietnam War, vowed not to repeat the misdeeds of the My Lai massacres and rampant indiscipline we witnessed.

However, after the attack on the World Trade Towers, fear and anger dominated the country’s emotional climate and the principles of our profession were hijacked. The incessant drumbeat of political rhetoric that “the war on terror is a war like no other” and that “we must take all measures possible to stop the enemy” made it somehow easier for psychiatrists to apply their skills and training to exploit the vulnerabilities of prisoners. To this day, former government officials justify cruel and inhuman treatment of detainees at Bagram and Guantanamo with unsubstantiated assertions that their confessions led to the trail of Osama bin Laden. The public supported such conduct and the television show “24″ gained wide popularity as viewers were captivated by threats of violence and new gimmicks for bringing the bad guys down. Even the presidential candidates in 2008 were ambushed by questions that judged their fitness to be commander in chief by their willingness to torture a suspect who planted a “ticking bomb.”

But, there is no evidence to confirm the assertions that torture of prisoners has helped the war effort at all.

The plain fact is that nothing that has been claimed in the name of defending our country can justify cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of another man or woman. Torture, in any form – light or heavy – is not a tool of interrogation or useful for gathering good intelligence. It is a propaganda tool and degrades the perpetrator as well as the victim. This is not just the rhetoric of bleeding heart progressives. It is the opinion of over fifty retired admirals, generals(1) and senior government officials convened by Human Rights First to discuss this issue, and our conclusions can be stated simply:

• Torture Is Un-American. Gen. George Washington laid down the directive that American soldiers will treat the enemy humanely and conform to high moral & ethical principles on the battlefield.
• Torture Is Ineffective. Experienced interrogators acknowledge that information extracted by the use of torture is unreliable.
• Torture Is Unnecessary. Veteran FBI agents and military interrogators have spoken out publicly against the use of physical pressure in interrogation.
• Torture Is Damaging. “… a person who is tortured is damaged, but so are the torturer, the nation and the military. [3]“

Torture has long been associated with political repression and with regimes without any semblance of an independent judiciary or media. The Soviet Union’s imprisonment of dissenters and forced use of psychotropic medication on them, the Khmer Rouge’s torture of thousands of people in Cambodia and the Augusto Pinochet regime’s brutality against prisoners in Chile all bear witness to the association between totalitarian or authoritarian regimes and their use of torture.

As the human rights lawyer Leonard Rubenstein and I wrote [4] in March 2010, “the medical staff at the C.I.A. and the Pentagon played a critical role in developing and carrying out torture procedures. Psychologists and at least one doctor designed or recommended coercive interrogation methods including sleep deprivation, stress positions, isolation and waterboarding. The military’s Behavioral Science Consultation Teams evaluated detainees, consulted their medical records to ascertain vulnerabilities and advised interrogators when to push harder for intelligence information. Psychologists designed a program for new arrivals at Guantánamo [5]that kept them in isolation to ‘enhance and exploit’ their ‘disorientation and disorganization.’ Medical officials monitored interrogations and ordered medical interventions so they could continue even when the detainee was in obvious distress. In one case, an interrogation log obtained by Time magazine shows [6] a medical corpsman ordered intravenous fluids to be administered to a dehydrated detainee even as loud music was played to deprive him of sleep.”

We cannot dismiss the psychiatrists and psychologists, who participated in interrogations in Guantanamo and helped devise the abusive practices, as mere rogues or outliers. They were actors on a much larger stage. They were swept up by a pervasive and persuasive attitude that subsumed the country and energized a military plan to “hunt down the criminals wherever they may be hiding.” The Department of Defense (DoD) issued policy accordingly and the Office of Assistant Secretary for Health Affairs contended that the legitimate objective of fighting terrorism trumps the ethical responsibility of the healing practitioner. In their eyes, “the ends justify the means” and a few brutalized prisoners were a small price to pay for protecting the citizens of the United States.

But, in truth, the use of torture and practices of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment detracted from the military mission and compromised the international stature of our country, while also undermining the effectiveness, credibility and ethical foundations of the medical professionals. To a certain extent, the administration realizes this. Now, ten years into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the White House has changed the national strategy and President Obama has insisted, “human rights is both fundamental to American leadership and a source of our strength in the world.” In his words, it “does not merely represent our better angels …” Standing up for human rights has come front and center both as a matter of national strategy and measure of human decency. Historically, the human rights stance against torture has been unequivocal, one of the few absolutes in human rights law: It is never permitted, never excused, never to be balanced against national needs or interests – even in cases of national emergency. Torture is also forbidden under the laws of war. It is considered a war crime under the Geneva Conventions [7].

This is important and good, but it is not enough. The political leadership of our nation does not have an appetite for investigating the misdeeds that were committed in the past ten years. A change for the better that is not informed by an honest assessment of the sins of the past is not likely to be either permanent or fully integrated into the power structure. Several human rights groups have called for a Commission of Truth and Reconciliation to spur corrective action. By this, they are referring to comprehensive programs that were undertaken in South Africa and in the former Soviet Union to bring to justice the perpetrators of misdeeds and examine the range of responsibility that society as a whole had for the injustices of the past. Mental health professionals understand the power of confession and repentance, for individuals, communities and institutions. Something is needed that goes beyond apology, regret or even a vow to do better. A Commission of Truth and Reconciliation is a step toward corrective action.

By reflecting on the ethical principles and traditions of the healing professions, a stronger case can be put forward against torture and mistreatment:

• First, do no harm. The victims of torture and mistreatment breed political instability and discontent, weakening governments and societies.
• Beneficence. Torture and mistreatment violate the intents and purposes of medical healers and participation in any way corrupts the ethical foundations of the practitioners and professions.
• Professional role. Physicians are not interrogators, any more than they are fighter pilots or infantrymen. The military and other governmental agencies have other professionals to do those tasks and calling on physicians to fill such roles is irresponsible and ineffective.
• Trust. Physicians enjoy special trust and confidence across almost all societies. That trust is undermined with participation in harmful, coercive and abusive conduct that is neither doctor-like nor appropriate.

In 1947, our nation and its allies tried and sentenced the Nazi physicians who violated basic principles of medical ethics. In 2003, the political dynamics and national sentiment induced physicians and psychiatrists and other health care professionals to commit actions that violated core ethics. The healing professions can lead corrective action, help the country recover the “high ground” and prevent future lapses in professional conduct and policies that violated human rights. Human rights are vital to national security in the 21st century.

Much has improved since the dark days of 9/11, but our nation has been damaged. Where once the symbol of our great democracy was the Statue of Liberty – it has now become the image of that poor hooded man in detention with wires strung from his hands and feet. Our men and women on the front lines are endangered because of the increased risk of retaliatory measures. We are not safer because of these misguided policies and how we have acted as a country.

1. I have recent experience that confirms my opinions on the ineffectiveness of harsh interrogation techniques, their unethical nature and harmful consequences. In the past five years, I have been asked to assess several detainees and review the medical records of many more on behalf of defense attorneys. Many detainees subjected to harsh interrogation, as designed and approved by clinicians working for the CIA and DoD, still suffer with the prolonged injuries and adverse psychological effects of their treatment. The evidence of negative effects of the harsh interrogations has been compelling. Moreover, the information gleaned in interrogations that involved harsh treatment has not been allowed in court proceedings.

December 15th, 2011

Annul the PENS Report

Read and sign our petition to annul the PENS Report.

November 21st, 2011

Campaign to free Syrian psychoanalyst

Among the horrors of the suppression of protest in Syria comes news that a psychoanalyst has been arrested:

SYRIA: Judge rejects call for release of pyschoanalyst

By Jan Petter Myklebust
21 October 2011

A Syrian judge has rejected international appeals for the release of Dr Rafah Nached (pictured), the founder of the first psychoanalysis school in Damascus, who was arrested last month at Damascus airport and is being held in solitary confinement, according to campaigners.

Twenty-one French intellectuals are supporting an international campaign to free Nached, 66, who was approached by security guards as she was about to board a plane to Paris on 10 September to visit her daughter, who was due to give birth.

Those who signed the petition include philosopher Julie Kristeva, philosopher, writer and director of La Règle du Jeu Bernard-Henri Levy, and former minister of foreign affairs Roland Dumas.

As she was being arrested, Nached managed to telephone her husband, Dr Faisal Abdullah, who is a professor of ancient history at Damascus University. He alerted her colleagues via Facebook, saying he did not know which prison his wife had been taken to.

It has since been revealed that she is being held in solitary confinement in a woman’s prison on the outskirts of Damascus.

Abdullah fears for his wife’s health, since she suffers from hypertension and has recently undergone an operation for cancer.

On 18 October, psychoanalyst Jacques-Alain Miller of the Association Mondiale de Psychanalyse in Paris, which set up the Free Rafah Nached campaign, sent out an email stating that the judge in Damascus had rejected the appeal for her release.

No formal charge has been made by the Syrian authorities, and it appears the only reason for her being held in custody is her profession as a psychoanalyst. She was the first practising psychoanalyst in Syria, having graduated from the University of Paris Diderot, and recently founded the school in Damascus in collaboration with French colleagues.

A statement on the Free Rafah Nashed blog, with an international petition calling for her release, said: “A review of Dr Nashed’s trajectory reveals a woman with a deep commitment to uncovering the secrets of the unconscious, not an insurgent, gangster or Islamist.

“When the revolution broke out in March, she, along with some Jesuit priests, organised support groups open to citizens of all affiliations, with the goal of helping them process the violence around them.”

The appeal asks those who support the release to send an email to this address.

Several hundred people gathered at a protest meeting in Paris organised by ‘Forum des Femmes – Carla, Judith, Isabelle, Julia and Aurelie’ outside the Palais des Congrès on 9 October to call for Nached’s release and hear an appeal by Kristeva, with several videos published on the event on You Tube.

On 2 October Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the French president’s wife, published an open letter to Abdullah, expressing international understanding of the stress he and his family is exposed to, stating that Nached’s work is of no threat to the state and that she therefore expects that she be released without further delay.

Charles Hanley, president of the International Psychoanalytical Association, sent an e-mail to its members on 6 October requesting them to sign the petition for Rafah’s release, as did the European Psychoanalytical Federation and the Société Psychanalytique de Paris.

Catherine Ashton, high representative of the European Union for foreign affairs and vice-president of the European Commission, last month issued a statement calling for the immediate release of Nached “and all of those arbritrarily detained and arrested”.

The British Psychoanalytic Council has urged supporters to show solidarity by circulating information about Nached’s situation widely, and signing an international petition asking for her immediate release, and for the French Embassy to intervene to obtain information about her condition and the reasons for her detention.

October 29th, 2011

Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR) Supports the Occupy Movements

Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR) has issued the following statement in solidarity with the Occupy Movements.

Psychologists for Social Responsibility Supports the Occupy Movements

Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR) – an international organization of psychologists and allies promoting social justice, human rights, peace, and environmental sustainability – expresses its strong support for the Occupy Wall Street and other Occupy movements that have spread to hundreds of cities and towns throughout the United States and the world. From a psychological perspective, this broad and growing movement can serve as a source of inspiration, hope, and unity for millions of citizens both angry and despairing about their own personal circumstances and the country’s social and economic future. These occupations have thus far not coalesced around specific demands. That is neither problematic nor cause for concern. They have already succeeded in highlighting the deep problems facing our society and illuminating possible ways to address them.

The protesters stand for the revival and renewed appreciation of genuine democracy. They remind us that democracy is about the active and daily involvement of all in decision-making, not solely voting every four years for leaders who promise to carry out “the people’s will.” They remind us that democracy is about everyone playing a meaningful role in shaping society’s future. They remind us that democracy is about the voices of people without wealth being as strong as those of the most wealthy. And they remind us that genuine democracy is not about corporations and powerbrokers operating unfettered to benefit the few at the expense of the many, as articulated in a recent PsySR statement against “corporate personhood” (seewww.psysr.org/corporate-personhood).

As psychologists, we know that having an active role in shaping one’s life is an essential component of well-being. A major psychological contribution of the Occupy movement is its ability to galvanize the collective energy, creativity, skills, and perspectives of people across the social spectrum, tapping into the powerful renewable resource of genuine communities of collaboration and of resistance. The elements of self-organization that have rapidly emerged empower both individuals and groups and open a way out of social passivity and its psychological consequences, including fear, loneliness, greed, entitlement, psychic numbing, and violence.

The Occupiers have refused to accept the growing inequality that threatens the democracy and social fabric of our country. A newly released Executive Compensation Survey shows that company executives’ pay increased 20% from the prior year and the national ratio for CEO to worker pay was 325 to 1 – despite massive layoffs and scant hiring since the recession officially ended two years ago. Meanwhile, economic inequality in the United States is now at its highest level since at least the 1920s, and possibly ever. Research shows that extreme inequality in society is associated with a more problematic life for all – not just those living in poverty. More unequal societies have higher rates of severe emotional problems, infant mortality, and substance abuse. They also experience higher rates of violent crime, child abuse, and obesity. Relatedly, poverty increases the risk that children will struggle in school and adults will struggle with work, among other problems. These problems are not the fault of people living in poverty but are symptoms of a social structure that prevents citizens from truly altering that reality for tens of millions of Americans and billions around the world.

The Occupiers’ slogan “We are the 99%” indicates their desire and commitment to speak for and appeal to the vast majority who suffer from a political and economic system that is failing to serve the interests of that majority while showering fabulous wealth upon the most affluent 1%. The Occupy movement challenges the prevailing discourse driving economic and political decision-making, a discourse that has insisted on a scarcity of financial resources for those without work, adequate education, access to health care, and safe environmental conditions. It calls for the more equitable distribution of the world’s resources. The Occupy movement also provides an inspiring model of nonviolent action that highlights the problems in our society and provides a model for social change. Occupiers and their supporters have maintained their nonviolent commitment even in the face of provocation from sometimes brutal police officers, recognizing the humanity and commonality of interests shared with the police.

PsySR thus welcomes and supports the Occupy movements. We encourage our members, our professional colleagues, and all citizens to support occupations in all of our communities aimed at challenging a business-as-usual status quo that harms far too many of the nation’s citizens while only a few truly benefit.

For more information and inquiries, please contact us at info@psysr.org.

October 20, 2011

 

October 23rd, 2011

The Maker or the Tool

Review of The Patriots: An Inside Look at Life in a Defense Plant by Jean Alonso. Leap Year Press, 2011. Available at Amazon here.

Did you ever demand any answers?
The who, the what or the reason why?
Did you ever question the setup?
Did you stand aside and let them choose while you took second best?
Did you let them skim the cream off and then give to you the rest?
Did you settle for the shoddy?
Did you think it right
To let them rob you right and left and never make a fight,
never make a fight, never make a fight?

[From Ballad of Accounting, words and music by Ewan MacColl]

Suddenly jobs are on the political agenda. Politicians from the President on down state that creating jobs for American workers is their top priority. Often any jobs, as with the low-wage jobs that Texas Governor Rick Perry brags he “created.” Sometimes they want to create “good paying” jobs. But in this discourse having a job is everything, because it allows one to pay the bills and avoid poverty.

Those who worked with Jean Alonso making missiles in a Massachusetts defense plant – referred to as American Missile and Communications Corporation but sounding suspiciously like Massachusetts-based Raytheon – knew how important it was to have a job in this society. But they also recognized that ”good jobs” should mean far more than good-paying ones. And they knew, from their own bitter experience, that many jobs can be toxic, destroying the mind and soul, and sometimes the body as well, of those who work them.

Alonso’s book The Patriots: An Inside Look at Life in a Defense Plant begins as the missiles fly at the start of the first Gulf War. The fragile community in the plant is strained by tensions between the patriotic workers and Alonso with her antiwar views and activities. Alonso copes with her own anguish by conducting an informal survey of how her coworkers feel about their work. She learns that these coworkers are filled with a profound sense of hopelessness and despair:

“I feel like a zero.”

“Inferior.”

“Empty.”

“Helpless.”

“I’m very depressed and anxious.”

“I’m so unhappy here I get aches and pains from it.”

“Apathetic. I can’t do anything at home anymore but watch TV.”

“I was a musician, you know, so I still need to write everyday – if you don’t you have no soul. But I go home and I’m too tired.”

“I feel like there’s something crushed inside – I feel really defeated. It’s like giving up on your whole self in order to make a living – you can’t figure a way out.” (pp. 10-11).

These responses, expressing feelings that had never been spoken among these workers, start Alonso and a small group of coworkers on a journey to make sense of what was happening to them at work and why. Through monthly meetings buttressed by Alonso’s library research, they explore the deadening effects of repetitive work accompanied by social powerlessness in the workplace. They try to understand Alonso’s realization that “something in this work is changing us, as if we were living by Love Canal” (p. 37).

Over the next couple of years this group of defense plant workers examine their dashed hopes and dreams as well as an extensive body of social science literature, in an attempt to figure out just how the work was changing them. They confessed to each other that their ability to reason had diminished after years in the plant. The lack of mental stimulation was reducing their very intelligence. And, indeed, as Alonso learned from her reading, a German researcher had found that IQ declines following years of unskilled labor. This cognitive decline didn’t seem so surprising to the workers when one of them recalled being told by a supervisor, “You don’t get paid to think.” These workers discovered through their own experience that mindless work induces mindlessness.

Alonso later realized that the experience of the American Missile workers wouldn’t have seemed strange to Adam Smith, who in 1776 wrote of the mind-destroying effects of unskilled work as an unfortunate but inevitable consequence of the then new industrial system:

The understanding of the greater part of men is necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man’s whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations and he naturally loses, therefore, the habit [of solving problems] and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become… But in every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the laboring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall (p. 180).

In addition to cognitive problems, the plant workers confronted elevated depression, anxiety, and apathy. Alonso’s research convinced her that these symptoms were similar to those experienced by victims of what psychologist Judith Herman called “complex chronic post-traumatic stress syndrome” or CCPTSD. She quotes Herman as saying that those suffering from CCPTSD “have a history of subjection to totalitarian control over a prolonged period of time” (p. 125).

The shop floor environment that Alonso and her fellow workers experienced daily was, indeed, totalitarian. Every motion was monitored. Bathroom breaks were strictly regulated.  Supervisors yelled at workers as if they were disobedient children. Conversations were monitored and often forbidden. Escape, while not impossible, became ever more difficult as years in the plant went by and economic chains bound the workers.

In her efforts to better understand the totalitarian aspects of her work environment, Alonso studied military culture and found many similarities to the culture at American Missile. The similarities were not accidental. She realized that the company deliberately sought out supervisors with military backgrounds. The fact that the company was part of the military-industrial complex, producing missiles for US wars, probably made military culture especially desirable to management.

At the time that Alonso writes about, relations between workers in the plant were especially stressed as many of the workers sought a sense of meaning and community through patriotic identification with the company’s missile-producing mission and with the war in progress and became less tolerant of those questioning the war. Pressure to not rock the boat increased as demand for the missiles rose.

Like many manufacturing companies, American Missile had a union. Unfortunately, this was as much a part of the problem as part of the solution. Union officials refused to pursue cases of sexual abuse, wouldn’t recognize the women’s committee founded by Alonso and others, and systematically harassed militants. Thus, much of the energy to improve the workplace was channeled into often futile attempts at union reform.

Throughout The Patriots: An Inside Look at Life in a Defense Plant Alonso weaves her personal account of nearly two decades in the factory with an account of the research into the effects of the work environment on workers. The result is one of the most thought provoking books you will find to read this year. As the politicians talk endlessly about “jobs” while providing few, Alonso reminds us that a good society will provide not just jobs, or even well-paying jobs, but jobs that enhance the spirit and development of those who work them.

Surely today, 235 years after Adam Smith described the mind-destroying nature of unskilled work, an “improved and civilized society,” – as Smith described the new industrial capitalism – should be one that proves him wrong. Such a society would be one in which all who work find that their jobs enhance their thinking, spirit, and sense of humanity. Such a society would be one in which workers are not merely the tools of the already wealthy and powerful, but makers of a more decent world for themselves, their fellow workers, and the rest of society. While the politicians beholden to the powerful are not likely to be concerned with this goal, surely the vast majority of us ought to be.

What did you learn in the morning?
How much did you know in the afternoon?
Were you content in the evening?
Did they teach you how to question when you were at the school?
Did the factory help you grow, were you the maker or the tool?
Did the place where you were living
Enrich your life and then
Did you reach some understanding of all your fellow men,
all your fellow men, all your fellow men?

[From Ballad of Accounting, words and music by Ewan MacColl]

September 21st, 2011

New York psychology licensing board doesn’t have to investigate torture, court rules

For years we activist psychologists have been trying to get the APA and state licensing boards to act against psychologists allegedly involved in detainee abuse. So far, every venue has refused to act. Lawsuits in several states have tried to compel the state boards to investigate the allegations. With one exception, all boards have failed to conduct any sort of investigation. Today word comes that a New York juge has decided in favor of the board’s right to do do nothing in the case of psychologist John Leso, implicated in the torture of Mohamed al-Qhatani at Guantanamo:

A New York judge has declined to force an investigation into whether an Army psychologist developed abusive interrogation techniques for Guantanamo Bay detainees and should be stripped of his license.

The ruling was made public Thursday. It says another psychologist who brought the case cannot force a state agency to investigate complaints of professional misconduct.

….

The case sought to compel a state licensing office to look into psychologist John Leso. The agency says his Army work fell outside its scope.

The board’s reasoning is that psychology involves helping people. If skills are used intentionally to harm, then that does not involve the practice of psychology and is immune to board action, despite the fact that Army regulations require that their “Behavioral Science Consultants” have state licenses and uses the existence of these licenses as the basis for not investigating the professional ethics of these psychologists. Thus, torture and abuse by licensed psychologists is nobody’s business, constructing a perfect web of protection for torturers.

BTW, the American Psychological Association (APA) has had multiple complaints against Leso since August 2006 and has so far done nothing in the five years since the first complaint was filed. Their last excuse was that they were waiting to see what New York state would do. Now that New York has decided they don’t have jurisdiction, what new excuse will the APA come up with?

August 11th, 2011

Are the rich less empathic?

Another set of studies provides evidence that the wealthy among us have less empathy for others than the less well off.

“We have now done 12 separate studies measuring empathy in every way imaginable, social behavior in every way, and some work on compassion and it’s the same story,” he said. “Lower class people just show more empathy, more prosocial behavior, more compassion, no matter how you look at it.”

An MSNBC article on these studies:

The Empathy Ceiling:
The Rich Are Different — And Not In a Good Way, Studies Suggest The ‘Haves’ show less empathy than ‘Have-nots’

By Brian Alexander

Psychologist and social scientist Dacher Keltner says the rich really are different, and not in a good way: Their life experience makes them less empathetic, less altruistic, and generally more selfish.

In fact, he says, the philosophical battle over economics, taxes, debt ceilings and defaults that are now roiling the stock market is partly rooted in an upper class “ideology of self-interest.”

“We have now done 12 separate studies measuring empathy in every way imaginable, social behavior in every way, and some work on compassion and it’s the same story,” he said. “Lower class people just show more empathy, more prosocial behavior, more compassion, no matter how you look at it.”

In an academic version of a Depression-era Frank Capra movie, Keltner and co-authors of an article called “Social Class as Culture: The Convergence of Resources and Rank in the Social Realm,” published this week in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, argue that “upper-class rank perceptions trigger a focus away from the context toward the self….”

In other words, rich people are more likely to think about themselves. “They think that economic success and political outcomes, and personal outcomes, have to do with individual behavior, a good work ethic,” said Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Because the rich gloss over the ways family connections, money and education helped, they come to denigrate the role of government and vigorously oppose taxes to fund it.

“I will quote from the Tea Party hero Ayn Rand: “‘It is the morality of altruism that men have to reject,’” he said.

Whether or not Keltner is right, there certainly is a “let them cake” vibe in the air. Last week The New York Times reported on booming sales of luxury goods, with stores keeping waiting lists for $9,000 coats and the former chairman of Saks saying, “If a designer shoe goes up from $800 to $860, who notices?”

According to Gallup, Americans earning more than $90,000 per year continued to increase their consumer spending in July while middle- and lower-income Americans remained stalled, even as the upper classes argue that they can’t pay any more taxes. Meanwhile, the gap between the wealthiest and the rest of us continues to grow wider, with over 80 percent of the nation’s financial wealth controlled by about 20 percent of the people.

Unlike the rich, lower class people have to depend on others for survival, Keltner argued. So they learn “prosocial behaviors.” They read people better, empathize more with others, and they give more to those in need.

That’s the moral of Capra movies like “You Can’t Take It With You,” in which a plutocrat comes to learn the value of community and family. But Keltner, author of the book “Born To Be Good: The Science of A Meaningful Life,” doesn’t rely on sentiment to make his case.

He points to his own research and that of others. For example, lower class subjects are better at deciphering the emotions of people in photographs than are rich people.

In video recordings of conversations, rich people are more likely to appear distracted, checking cell phones, doodling, avoiding eye contact, while low-income people make eye contact and nod their heads more frequently signaling engagement.

In one test, for example, Keltner and other colleagues had 115 people play the “dictator game,” a standard trial of economic behavior. “Dictators” were paired with an unseen partner, given ten “points” that represented money, and told they could share as many or as few of the points with the partner as they desired. Lower-class participants gave more even after controlling for gender, age or ethnicity.

Keltner has also studied vagus nerve activation. The vagus nerve helps the brain record and respond to emotional inputs. When subjects are exposed to pictures of starving children, for example, their vagus nerve typically becomes more active as measured by electrodes on their chests and a sensor band around their waists. In recent tests, yet to be published, Keltner has found that those from lower-class backgrounds have more intense activation.

Other studies from other researchers have not produced the clear-cut results Keltner uses to advance his argument. In surveys of charitable giving, some show that low-income people give more, but other studies show the opposite.

“The research regarding income and helping behaviors has always been little bit mixed,” explained Meredith McGinley, a professor of psychology at Pittsburgh’s Chatham University.

Then there is the problem of Tea Partiers’ own class position. While they are funded by the wealthy, many do not identify themselves as wealthy (though there is dispute on the real demographics). Still, a strong allegiance to the American Dream can lead even regular folks to overestimate their own self-reliance in the same way as rich people.

As behavioral economist Mark Wilhelm of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis pointed out, most people could quickly tell you how much they paid in taxes last year but few could put a dollar amount on how they benefited from government by, say, driving on interstate highways, taking drugs gleaned from federally funded medical research, or using inventions created by people educated in public schools.

There is one interesting piece of evidence showing that many rich people may not be selfish as much as willfully clueless, and therefore unable to make the cognitive link between need and resources. Last year, research at Duke and Harvard universities showed that regardless of political affiliation or income, Americans tended to think wealth distribution ought to be more equal.

The problem? Rich people wrongly believed it already was.

 

August 10th, 2011

The dark side of close social connections

Psychologists and sociologists have found many positive effects from being socially connected. But a new line of reasoning suggests that social connection may have a dark side. It may contribute to an increased tendecy to dehumanize outsiders. This finding should not be especially surprising to those who have experienced the strengths and limits of close-knit social groups within a wider culture.

These possible negative consequences of social connectedness poses a conundrum. What conditions will allow us to accomplish both? Are trade-offs necessary?

Given these results it is, perhaps, not surprising that studies of altruists, like those who smuggled Jews out of Nazi-occupied Europe find that a degree of outsider status is common among them. Being an outsider apparently helps one identify with others who are outside the dominant group. Yet, in some instances, such as in Denmark and Holland, whole communities, or at lest major segments of those communities, participated in the rescuing of Jews, often at great risk. We need better understanding of what characteristics of those communities allowed them to resist the tendencies toward dehumanization of outsiders.

A Miller-McCune article summarizes the evidence for the dark side of social connectedness:

Strong Social Bonds Promote Health, Belonging — and Torture
New research finds people who feel a strong connection with their social group are more likely to dehumanize outsiders.

By Tom Jacobs

It was no surprise when a recent meta-study found people with strong social support networks tend to live longer, healthier lives. As the Mayo Clinic notes on its website, having close, lasting relationships strengthens one’s feelings of security, self-worth and sense of belonging.

But there appears to be a dark side to those life-enhancing bonds.Newly published research suggests they may make it more likely you’ll view those outside your social group as less than human —and treat them accordingly.

“Connecting with others brings individuals closer to each other, but moves them further from people from whom they are disconnected,” Adam Waytz of Northwestern University and Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago write in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. “The most tightly knit groups — from military units to athletic teams — may also be the most likely to treat their adversaries as subhuman animals.”

Waytz and Epley are scholars of dehumanization — the tendency for people to think of others as somehow less than fully human. It is at the root of racism (consider the well-documented tendency of many white people to think of blacks as ape-like), and it provides internally permission for both crimes (such as the taking of innocent lives during wartime) and misdemeanors (ignoring the homeless person sleeping on the sidewalk).

The researchers argue that “feeling socially connected to others may enable people to represent more distant others as subhuman.” Since their need for social contact has been satiated, such people are less motivated to consider the “interests, attitudes, feelings and preferences” of those outside the group — commonalities that reinforce our shared humanity.

“Being socially connected not only diminishes the motivation to connect with others, but may also diminish the perceived similarity with more distant others,” they add, “because social connections delineate those within one’s social circle and those outside of it.”

In other words, people tend to identify with their fellow group members, meaning they’re more likely to perceive outsiders as different. And asearlier research has shown, when people are viewed as dissimilar to ourselves, “they are evaluated as less humanlike as well.”

That may sound like a leap, but Waytz and Epley describe four experiments that back up their thesis. In one of them, 35 members of the University of Chicago community completed a “moral disengagement scale,” which included four statements indicating dehumanization. Specifically, they were asked their level of agreement with such propositions as “Some people deserve to be treated like animals.”

Before completing this survey, half of the participants were instructed to “think about going back home to attend a big family Thanksgiving dinner” and discuss the person at the gathering they feel closest to. The other half were told to “think about walking around Hyde Park to do some shopping” and describe shops and restaurants they patronize routinely.

Those who had contemplated someone close to them scored higher on dehumanization than those who had discussed their everyday shopping chores. “These results suggest social connection increases dehumanization specifically,” the researchers write.

If you consider the opinion “some people deserve to be treated like animals” too theoretical to be truly predictive of someone’s behavior, consider another of their experiments. Fifty-nine Chicagoans took part in what they were told was a study of attitudes. Half were instructed to attend with a friend, the others arrived alone.

“Those who arrived with a friend were assigned to the ‘connected’ condition,” the researchers write. They completed the experiment while sitting in a room with their friend (who could not see or influence them). The others were joined in the room by another test participant they didn’t know.

All were presented with 11 photos of men described as terrorists responsible for planning the 9/11 attacks. They then completed the aforementioned moral disengagement scale and answered a series of specific questions, including the degree to which they found acceptable such torture techniques as waterboarding and the application of electrical shocks.

Those who filled out the test with a friend in the room “dehumanized the detainees significantly more” than those who came alone, “and were also significantly more willing to endorse harming them,” Waytz and Epley report.

The researchers do not believe closeness to our own confederates means we automatically feel antipathy toward those outside our group. It’s just that we are more likely to think of them in abstract terms. Rather than individuals with specific needs and wants, they’re lazily lumped together as outsiders. This makes it easier to dehumanize them — and act accordingly.

“Being socially connected to close others has great benefits for one’s own physical and mental health,” the researchers conclude, “but it also satiates the motivation to connect with others.” With that urge satisfied, we’re prone to not give enough time or thought to those outside our social sphere to fully grasp their humanity. As this provocative research suggests, that can be a dangerous thing.

 

August 10th, 2011

Antidepressants may increase depression relapse rates, increasing concerns about psychotropic drug use

A number of recent research studies have raised questions regarding the efficacy of many commonly prescribed psychotropic medications, including antidepressants. In some studies, these drugs do not perform better than placebo, when the placebo is selected to mimic the side effects that frequently allow participants in “double blind” randomized drug trials to tell whether or not they were given the active drug.

Now a new study adds to concerns by suggesting that antidepressant use may cause harm by significantly raising the likelihood of relapse upon cessation of medication in patients receiving them. In a meta-analysis quantitatively combing data from a number of published studies, Paul Andrews of McMaster University found that antidepressant use increased the risk of relapse from 25% among those not receiving drugs to 42% among those who received antidepressants, as described in a McMaster press release.

They [Andrews and colleagues] analyzed research on subjects who started on medications and were switched to placebos, subjects who were administered placebos throughout their treatment, and subjects who continued to take medication throughout their course of treatment.

Andrews says anti-depressants interfere with the brain’s natural self-regulation of serotonin and other neurotransmitters, and that the brain can overcorrect once medication is suspended, triggering new depression.

Andrews, an evolutionary biologist, uses these results as the basis for speculation about the nature of depression and whether it should be conceptualized as a disease or “disorder”:

“There’s a lot of debate about whether or not depression is truly a disorder, as most clinicians and the majority of the psychiatric establishment believe, or whether it’s an evolved adaptation that does something useful,” he says.

Longitudinal studies cited in the paper show that more than 40 per cent of the population may experience major depression at some point in their lives.

Most depressive episodes are triggered by traumatic events such as the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship or the loss of a job. Andrews says the brain may blunt other functions such as appetite, sex drive, sleep and social connectivity, to focus its effort on coping with the traumatic event.

Just as the body uses fever to fight infection, he believes the brain may also be using depression to fight unusual stress.

If these authors’ view that depression is, in most cases, a natural mechanism to deal with stress, then “treating” it with drugs that short circuit the healing process may be counterproductive in many ways.

As with all new research, we should be cautious about interpreting these results until they are critically examined by other researchers. Like with other research methods, there is often no consensus as to whether a meta-analysis has been properly conducted.

If this study holds up after critical examination, these new results should increase concerns that antidepressants are, at best, radically over-prescribed. Physicians, including primary care physicians who often know little about the subtleties of antidepressant use, often use these medicines as the first, and even only treatment for most depressions. Though knowledge about the danger of relapse when discontinuing these drugs has spread among thoughtful psychiatrists in recent years, this knowledge has often not spread to primary care physicians and others who do most of the prescribing of these medications.

Thus, extant evidence suggests that, these medications should be used carefully. This new study ads to evidence that these drugs should be used sparingly and that, once administered, antidepressants should not be discontinued quickly, but should be gradually tapered over a long time to give the brain’s neurotransmitter systems time to adjust.

Current patterns of antidepressant  use may be causing serious harm to public health, this and other studies suggest. Thus, the mental health field should seriously reconsider whether antidepressant use should continue to be the first-line treatment for those suffering from depression. If these drugs increase relapse rates while having uncertain efficacy in many cases, they should be used sparingly and with caution.

Alternatively, first-line use of psychological treatment approaches that aid the body’s natural coping processes may avoid the problems with antidepressant use, including difficulty in withdrawing from the drugs and increased  likelihood of relapse.  Alas, the power of the pharmaceutical industry makes such reconsideration difficult. When there are billions of dollars at stake, science and public health often count for little.

Here is the press release from McMaster University:

Patients who use anti-depressants are more likely to suffer relapse, researcher finds

Patients who use anti-depressants are much more likely to suffer relapses of major depression than those who use no medication at all, concludes a McMaster researcher.

In a paper that is likely to ignite new controversy in the hotly debated field of depression and medication, evolutionary psychologist Paul Andrews concludes that patients who have used anti-depressant medications can be nearly twice as susceptible to future episodes of major depression.

Andrews, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, is the lead author of a new paper in the journal Frontiers of Psychology.

The meta-analysis suggests that people who have not been taking any medication are at a 25 per cent risk of relapse, compared to 42 per cent or higher for those who have taken and gone off an anti-depressant.

Andrews and his colleagues studied dozens of previously published studies to compare outcomes for patients who used anti-depressants compared to those who used placebos.

They analyzed research on subjects who started on medications and were switched to placebos, subjects who were administered placebos throughout their treatment, and subjects who continued to take medication throughout their course of treatment.

Andrews says anti-depressants interfere with the brain’s natural self-regulation of serotonin and other neurotransmitters, and that the brain can overcorrect once medication is suspended, triggering new depression.

Though there are several forms of antidepressants, all of them disturb the brain’s natural regulatory mechanisms, which he compares to putting a weight on a spring. The brain, like the spring, pushes back against the weight. Going off antidepressant drugs is like removing the weight from the spring, leaving the person at increased risk of depression when the brain’s regulating mechanism, like the compressed spring, overextends before retracting to its resting state.

“We found that the more these drugs affect serotonin and other neurotransmitters in your brain – and that’s what they’re supposed to do – the greater your risk of relapse once you stop taking them,” Andrews says. “All these drugs do reduce symptoms, probably to some degree, in the short-term. The trick is what happens in the long term. Our results suggest that when you try to go off the drugs, depression will bounce back. This can leave people stuck in a cycle where they need to keep taking anti-depressants to prevent a return of symptoms.”

Andrews believes depression may actually be a natural and beneficial – though painful – state in which the brain is working to cope with stress.

“There’s a lot of debate about whether or not depression is truly a disorder, as most clinicians and the majority of the psychiatric establishment believe, or whether it’s an evolved adaptation that does something useful,” he says.

Longitudinal studies cited in the paper show that more than 40 per cent of the population may experience major depression at some point in their lives.

Most depressive episodes are triggered by traumatic events such as the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship or the loss of a job. Andrews says the brain may blunt other functions such as appetite, sex drive, sleep and social connectivity, to focus its effort on coping with the traumatic event.

Just as the body uses fever to fight infection, he believes the brain may also be using depression to fight unusual stress.

Not every case is the same, and severe cases can reach the point where they are clearly not beneficial, he emphasizes.

 

1 comment July 20th, 2011