Week 5 post 1

Week 5 post 1

Wont let me join discussion

Midterm exam this week, reviews given. 

Doing midterm practice questions, will note questions i miss.

Practice Question 5: Checkboxes

Which of the following describe accurate scientific findings related to apology?

People who receive an apology report better psychological health.

People who apologize report better psychological health.

People who receive an apology are less likely to forgive the person who committed the offense.

Leaders who apologize in the workplace experience greater levels of authentic pride.

WEEK 1

1. How have scientists defined happiness, and what have researchers discovered about the role happiness plays in physical health, relationships, and psychological well-being?
2. How do positive emotions and one’s sense of meaning relate to happiness?
3. What are some of the challenges and misconceptions people face in pursuing happiness?

WEEK 2

1. What evidence suggests that connections with others are key to happiness? Relevant here is the evidence indicating the perils of disconnection or isolation.
2. What are the main biological systems that support connecting with others via social affiliation, the formation of long-term trusting relationship bonds, caregiving, and nurturance behaviors?
3. What is empathy and what has science discovered about its biological underpinnings?

WEEK 3

1. What are some of the challenges to being compassionate, and why might it be good for people to be more compassionate?
2. How have scientists shown that kindness relates to happiness?
3. What makes the inclination towards kindness, both across people and within a person, stronger and more widespread?

WEEK 4

1. What scientific evidence from behavioral, biological, and observational studies supports the claim that cooperation and reconciliation of conflict are as important to our survival as competition (i.e., "survival of the fittest")?
2. How do apology and forgiveness relate to happiness, relationship satisfaction, and physiological metrics of stress and well-being?
3. What inspires trust between people, and what kinds of social experiences or behaviors foster interpersonal trust

Basically this week There isn't anything covered so I'm going to review and look into Why american society doesn't touch as much.

• https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/07/crisis-touch-hugging-mental-health-strokes-cuddles
• Touch is the first sense humans develop in the womb, possessed even of 1.5cm embryos.
• doctors were warned last month to avoid comforting patients with hugs lest they provoke legal action, and a government report found that foster carers were frightened to hug children in their care for the same reason.
• *points to the idea that people might just not want to be called out in a wrong way and be convicted of something that isn't true*
• In the US the Girl Scouts caused a furore last December when it admonished parents for telling their daughters to hug relatives because “she doesn’t owe anyone a hug”. Teachers hesitate to touch pupils.
• At Cuddle Up To Me, a cuddle “retail centre” in Portland, Oregon, clients browse a 72-cuddle menu.
•  Francis McGlone, a professor in neuroscience at Liverpool John Moores university and a leader in the field of affective touch. He is worried. “We have demonised touch to a level at which it sparks off hysterical responses, it sparks off legislative processes, and this lack of touch is not good for mental health.”
• Touch is commonly thought of as a single sense, but it is much more complex than that. Some nerve endings recognise itch, others vibration, pain, pressure and texture. And one exists solely to recognise a gentle stroking touch.
• c tactile afferents
• By watching the nerve’s discharge behaviour while the skin is stroked, scientists have learned that the optimum speed of a human caress is 3cm to 5cm a second.
• When a parent strokes a child, for instance, “they are writing out the script that was laid down by 30 million years of evolution,” McGlone says. “We are destined to cuddle and stroke each other at predetermined velocities.” 
• us to keep touching, nourishes babies and binds adults, and threads wellbeing into the fabric of our being.
•  researchers from University College London showed that slow, gentle stroking by a stranger reduced feelings of social exclusion.
• Barack Obama when he stooped to let a young black boy pat his hair, so that he could feel his own potential in the palm of his hand.
•  Touch Research Institute at Miami Medical School 
• “We know from the science of what goes on under the skin that when the skin is moved, pressure receptors are stimulated,” she says. This “slows down heart rate, blood pressure and the release of cortisol”, which gives people better control over their stress hormones.
• Being touched increases the number of natural killer cells, “the frontline of the immune system. Serotonin increases. That’s the body’s natural antidepressant. It enables deeper sleep,” tiffany Field says
• “with the amniotic fluid washing over it, the brain inside begins to realise, ‘I’ve got my body, and that’s somebody else’s.’ That developing brain has that sense of me rather than something else out there. If that doesn’t happen, you get this almost locked-in syndrome.”
• In his laboratory, she witnessed monkeys that as infants had been deprived of their mother’s touch. In social groups, they would “go off in a corner, self-grasping, staring into space.” She saw similar patterns of behaviour in humans three decades later when she visited orphanages in Romania, a legacy of Ceausescu’s regime, where tens of thousands of infants were raised with minimal human touch
• Could lack of touch be to being absorbed in social media/technology
• (Getting touch from their touch screens.) 
• NOTE; this did not start when technology started
• Field, meanwhile, is worried about the rise in paediatric pain syndromes, such as irritable bowel syndrome and fibromyalgia, previously common only in adults. She thinks this is due to stress and the absence of touch, and is also worried that “kids are getting more and more aggressive because there is less and less touch”.
• Humans love touch. We love it so much that the word has the power to sell a heap of products from soft-touch pillows to velvet touch tights, expert touch saucepans and even smooth, perfecting touch face creams. But touching each other in an age of pervasive and historical sexual abuse and harassment no longer feels safe.
• The so-called “Midas touch” studies which have shown that diners gently touched on the arm by their server will leave a generous tip, or that people in a care home eat more if touched, illustrate the power of touch to persuade.
• Touch can retract – as well as confer – agency.
• “Don’t touch the opposite gender!” This taboo is based on the belief or worldview that sexualizes all or most forms of touch.
• “Don’t touch same gender friends!” This boundary is primarily based in the homophobic fears prevalent in our culture.
• “Don’t touch yourself!” This injunction stems, in part, from some religious and puritanical doctrines and phobias around self-pleasure and masturbation.
• “Don’t touch strangers!” This command is based on a cultural fear of “the other,” a paranoid attitude towards unfamiliar persons and those who are outsiders of one’s own group.
• “Do not touch the elderly, the sick and the dying!” This reflects a negative attitude in American culture towards the elderly, the sick, and the dying that manifests itself by segregating them from the rest of the population. The sick and the elderly are often housed away in specialized board and care facilities, where much of time hospital staff do not value touch as an essential part of care.
• “Do not touch those who are of higher status!” This unspoken rule is prevalent in our culture, where it has been documented that people of higher status or power touch those of lesser status significantly more frequently than the converse.

THESE RULES AND CONCERNS WERE NOT CREATED RECENTLY

https://www.zurinstitute.com/touch-in-therapy/