Week 2, all posts for Mrs.dunley
Post 1 week 2-
The Power of Social Connection
-one of the most basic and widely replicated findings from the science of happiness is that our connections with other people are instrumental to our happiness.
Links between social Connection and Happiness
-”connection is why we’re here, that’s what gives us meaning and purpose in life”- brené brown
-very happy people have rich and satisfying relationships and spend little time alone
-”social relationships form a necessary but not sufficient condition for high happiness” -diener and seligman
-again pattern of meaning, meaningful social interactions are more beneficial than superficial ones
-loneliness and isolation have deleterious impacts on the well-being of people both physiologically and mentally,
for example people who are lonely show decreased inflammatory control or hyper inflammation in their bodies worsened immune responses and difficulty sleeping
-being socially excluded light up regions of the brain that light up when people feel physical pain
My response to question: Do you think, as Diener and Seligman suggest, that social connections are a "necessary" (if not sufficient) condition for being "Very Happy"?
I personally feel that they are an integral part of happiness however in my personal experiences, depending on whether someone is introverted or extroverted it has a huge impact on what calms them down, makes them happy, and helps them feel comfortable. I personally am a very extroverted person and am most content when I am surrounded by other people however I need to have set times to be alone because it allows me to reset and figure life out. My best friend of 9 years was introverted and needed her peace and quiet to be a happy person, however the social relationships which she harbored still played a super significant if not more significant role than that of an extroverted counterpart who has many relationships.
Why having a happy childhood sets the stage for a happier adult life
- found from a study done in new zealand taken as the kids grew up- kids who did well in school and those who had a rich network of connections were happier as adults than those who suffered academically and felt alienated from friends. And from the time kids were 15 or 18, being more outgoing, kind, independent, good at sports, and having lots of hobbies—in other words, being more socially connected—was more significant than academic success in predicting later happiness
Why are humans wired to connect
- defining characteristic of our evolution is out social networks and connections
ULTRA-SOCIALITY EVOLUTION
1)Hunter-gatherers
2)Archeology
3)Primate predecessors
DIMENSIONS TO OUR ULTRA-SOCIALITY
1)caretaking, we have very vulnerable offspring
2)flattened hierarchies, pre-industrial/colonial we had a sense of egalitarianism or that idea that we are all fairly similar. We have friends, we gravitate to equality
3)conflict->reconciliation
4)coordination,we are in sync lowkey
5)fragile monogamy, we are pair bonders.
when you consult the social sciences today, there are a lot of data that suggest
that we’ve lost a bit of our ultra sociality and we need to return to some of these
themes throughout this class like generosity, cooperation and the like we know marriages are struggling in terms of their happiness having declined in the past 30 years.
Human attachment-
Three different systems attatch us to family
-reproductive behavior
-attachment system
-caregiving system
working models - which are kind of these deep assumptions that you carry with you from the first moments of life about how trustworthy are people, how much can you be intimate with them, will they stay with you in long term relationships?
Attachment styles:
1)SECURE:loving, warm, trusting healthier, greater happiness, more forgiving, more likely to offer social support
-Easy to be comfortable with others, easy to depend on them and have them depend on me.
-don't worry about being abandoned or others getting too close to me
2)ANXIOUS:worried, intrusive, more likely to have experienced a divorce, abuse, or death of a parent more likely to have depression and Anxiety, abuse drugs, and possibly an eating disorder
-Uncomfortable being close to others
-Difficult to trust completely, difficult to depend on others
-nervous when people get to close and too often
-Have trouble with not wanting to be as intimate as partners may want
Feels that others don't want to be as close to me as I am to them, worried that others don't love me as much as I love them/ won't stay with me, this desire to be with this person so intensely may scare them away.
3) avoidant:cold, aloof, dismissive
How you are attached to things impacts your dopamine, oxytocin levels, as well as reactions in your amygdala
Can We Overcome Insecure Attachment?
-psychologists Mario Mikulincer and Phillip Shaver have found that inducing feelings of attachment security in adults can help overcome some of the negative effects of an insecure attachment history.
-"Highly committed partners, in other words, may diminish an individual's insecurity over time by consistently providing a 'secure base,'" write Simpson and his colleague SiSi Tran of Vassar College.
-"Both secure and insecure individuals benefit from receiving care," write Simpson and his colleagues. "The types of care that work best, however, are quite different."
Ways to overcome it:
-Get to know your attachment pattern by reading up on attachment theory.
-If you don’t already have a great therapist with expertise in attachment theory, find one.
-Seek out partners with secure attachment styles.
-If you didn’t find such a partner, go to couples therapy.
-Practice.
Biology of Connection
*check out when i have time
The Vagus nerve- tenth cranial nerve, "the caretaking nerve" in your body.
Vagus is latin for wandering
it is interconnected, some studies suggest, with oxytocin networks
the vagus nerve is also related to a stronger immune system response
- It’s this amazing bundle of nerves, and given that it helps you communicate, it helps you empathize by orienting gaze because it’s connected up to oxytocin receptors, and because it’s mammalian, a fellow named Steve Porges said, “This is the love nerve in your body.” It is the caretaking nerve in your body
-images of suffering activate the vagus nerve
-having a vagus nerve response creates a common sense of humanity
-can strengthen vagal profile through exercise and meditation
-higher levels of compassion are related
Science of Oxytocin
-a neuropeptide made of nine amino acids
-a neurochemical enabler of trust devotion and kindness
-study where people were given something to give to a stranger and some of these adults were given a nasal whiff of oxytocin and some were given a simple saline solution and those with oxytocin gave more away. Produces trust towards strangers.
-it increases monogamous tendencies among mammalian species
-stimulates caregiving
Oxytocin quiets stress response
-modulates stress hormone levels
-inhibits cardiovascular responses to stress
-lowers amygdala response to emotional stimuli
Engaging in social connection ex. A mother having skin to skin contact with baby it increases oxytocin release in the mother/giver
-There’s studies showing that when fathers are given elevated boosts
of oxytocin levels in their bloodstream their offspring will show elevated oxytocin
levels, which is really remarkable because is showing our neurochemistry contagiously is transmitted to our offspring.
In humans, Intra Nasal Administration of oxytocin increases:
-generosity
-eye gaze
-trust
-ability to infer the emotional state of others
Natural oxytocin levels relate to:
-parent-child bonding behaviors
-feelings of romantic love and trust
-empathy and subsequent generosity toward strangers
-there is a gene for oxytocin!!! On the third chromosome
How oxytocin impacts social life
-oxytocin doesn't just create love and connection but it can do the opposite, playing a role in excluding others from that bond
-”conformity hormone”
- Keeps you loyal to your love- and leery of the rest. commitment/staying faithful too
- Makes us poor winners and sore losers. Oxytocin can make you strengthen social memory
- It makes you cooperative with your group- sometimes a little too cooperative
- It makes you see your group as better than other groups (to a point)
- It makes us trusting- but not gullible
The science of Touch
- The real action of compassion is touch
- A Lot of touch makes you live longer
- The west is the touch deprived culture
- SOCIAL FUNCTIONS -provides feeling of reward, reinforces reciprocity, activates the frontal cortex, signals safety, soothes, promotes cooperation
- TOUCH THERAPIES - increases weight of premature babies some 47 percent, reduces depression in patients with alzheimers, doubles likelihood in children will speak in class, boosts library use and enjoyment
Hands on research, the science of touch
-hands are our primary language of compassion and spreading compassion
-When a woman tried to communicate anger to a man, he got zero right—he had no idea what she was doing. And when a man tried to communicate compassion to a woman, she didn’t know what was going on!, but other than that in the study where humans had a barrier between them and they were able to touch each other to convey an emotion the people got 50 percent and upwords of that without anything but touch
-people can not only identify love, gratitude, and compassion from touches but can differentiate between those kinds of touch, something people haven’t done as well in studies of facial and vocal communication.
-reterm newborns who received just three 15-minute sessions of touch therapy each day for 5-10 days gained 47 percent more weight than premature infants who’d received standard medical treatment.
Response to question about how the happiness exercise went: I had a very busy week so I did not do it as often as I had wished however in the 4 times which I did it I felt like no matter the type of day I had, I was able to finish it out on a happy note, and I felt myself seeking out the positive things in life rather than dwelling on the negative. I feel it helped my mental perseverance and my general outlook on the day.
Active Listening
-15-30 min talk w close person
-paraphrase what they are saying, ex. what I hear you saying or what it sounds like.
-ask them questions, be empathetic
Relationships marriage and happiness
-humans have a tendency to pair bond
-several centuries ago this was for economics and now it is for love and passion
Are there two different passions? Love + passion vs. sexual desire/reproductiveness
Four horsemen of the apocalypse:
-contempt
-criticism
-stonewalling
-defensiveness
Keys to avoiding the relationship “apocalypse”
-Humor: Playful nicknames, laughter, and escapes from negative affect cascades, playful teasing
-Gratitude: Appreciation boosts the happiness of couples
-forgiveness: Letting go of grudges calms stress-related physiology
-Disclosure: suppressing emotion elevates stress-related physiology of others
Parenting and happiness
-Some studies have suggested that parenthood hurts happiness; others suggest the opposite. However, a paper recently published in the journal Psychological Bulletin paints a more nuanced picture: Sometimes parenthood is good for happiness—but not always. The authors suggest that the right question to ask is not whether parenthood leads to happiness but rather when and how it does or doesn’t. Context is key.
WHAT Characteristics influence happiness:
-age
-gender
-parenting style
-emotional bonds
What characteristics of a child might impact a parents happiness?
-temperament problems
-child's age
Families situation and context linked to a parents happiness?
-social support, employment, socioeconomic status
-marital status and child custody
-family structure
Friendships and happiness
Why friendships matter
-practical help
-emotional help
-confiding or sharing as coping
Feeling social support
-There is a special person who is around when i am in need
-I can talk about my problems with my friends
-I can count on my friends when things go wrong
- Food for your happiness to reach out to people in different groups. Decreases our stress levels over time!
My response to discussion question is it good to have more diverse friends?
I feel like it is important to have diverse friends so that you are accustomed to different peoples mannerisms, backgrounds, and struggles, and so that you are open to many different perspectives. It is also important however to not exclude people of your own group just to have those diverse friendships. I feel that it is integral to have both types of friendships which work together cohesively.
Happiness and Empathy
Empathy as “being physically moved by others”
-fellow feeling
-emotion contagion
-simulation
-imitation
-resonance
-mirroring
This mimicry comes initially from the mechanisms of infants, it helps us understand other people's emotions.
Mirror neurons: help to simulate and represent the motion prior to actually doing it
Two types of Empathy
-Affective Empathy
-mentally simulate and feel other people's emotional states
-Cognitive Empathy
-Understand others’ emotional states, take their perspective, put yourself in their shoes (aka theory of mind)
Empathic Concern vs. Empathic Distress
Empathic concern → helping behavior, better emotion regulation
Can it make you happier?
-makes you more capable of sharing joy, achievement, and pleasure
-makes you closer to others, strengthens social connections
-increase likelihood others will empathize with your pain and suffering and support you
Why are we empathetic?
1 we need to be sensitive to raise offspring
2 our species depends on cooperation
Many animals most importantly apes show a lot of empathy.
Since these cells are activated as much by doing as by seeing someone else do, they are known as mirror neurons, or “monkey see, monkey do” neurons, similar to human mirror neurons.
-Our evolutionary background makes it hard to identify with outsiders. We’ve evolved to hate our enemies, to ignore people we barely know, and to distrust anybody who doesn’t look like us. Even if we are largely cooperative within our communities, we become almost a different animal in our treatment of strangers.
-Emotions trump rules. This is why, when speaking of moral role models, we talk of their hearts, not their brains (even if, as any neuroscientist will point out, the heart as the seat of emotions is an outdated notion). We rely more on what we feel than what we think when solving moral dilemmas.
6 habits of highly empathic people
- cultivate curiosity about strangers, “Don’t be an examiner, be the interested inquirer.”
- Challenge prejudices and discover commonalities, HEPs challenge their own preconceptions and prejudices by searching for what they share with people rather than what divides them
- Try another person's life, “Walk a mile in another man’s moccasins before you criticize him.”
- Listen hard and open up, “is our ability to be present to what’s really going on within—to the unique feelings and needs a person is experiencing at that very moment.”
- Inspire mass action and social change, understand that empathy can also be a mass phenomenon that brings about fundamental social change.
- Develop and ambitious imagination, We also need to empathize with people whose beliefs we don’t share or who may be “enemies” in some way.
POST 2 WEEK 2
The function of social connection and empathy is something that has astounding effects on the overall well-being of people. The simple touch of hands or an exchange of glances is enough to formulate an opinion, or understanding of a person or situation. In the modern world many people suffer from loneliness, and the human interaction which they do receive is often superficial. This is problematic because people are biologically wired to connect, care, and depend on other people. While different gene patterns may allow a person to be more or less independent or emotional, human interaction is still integral to the health of every person. To put that into perspective, preterm newborns who received 3, 15 minute touch sessions for 5-10 days, gained 47 percent more weight than babies who got standard medical treatment. That just goes to show how important something as small as human touch can be, especially for babies. However babies are not the only people who lack this interaction in their lives. In western countries people tend to not exchange very many tangible interactions. For example, one study shows that in a cafe in great britain when friends met up to talk at they did not touch at all, and in the united states the friends touched only 2 times when they were greatly enthused, however in places such as central america in a similar situation these friends touched up to 180 times and showed more signs of empathy and happiness. One other study showed that when there was a physical barrier between people, and only their arms could touch, people were able to gauge what emotion people were showing through their touches relatively accurately, and for sure more accurately than when they tried to gauge emotion purely off of looks. This deprivation of simple interactions such as this or meaningful conversations where people truly tune in and listen, has lead to an overall lack of happiness. Humans are mammals and their roots are quite primal so it is no surprise that researchers are able to find similarities between apes, and humans, and apes tend to exhibit high, accurate, reactions to emotion, and tend to show happier tendencies because they are so socially interconnected.
This is why it is especially important in the modern, western world, to seek out relationships and social interactions because no matter if someone is an extravert or an introvert, all people need this interaction to flourish. It not only allows that singular person to feel happiness but it also boosts the happiness, and even oxytocin levels in the entire community which surrounds them. It is important for each and every person to understand why they attach to people, their good and bad habits, their levels of gratitude and understanding, because it is a key tool when working with people and understanding the happiness of oneself. It is also super important for people to have diverse friends and relationships, outside of one's typical circle. Whether that be someone of a different sexual orientation, gender, race, ethnicity, the list goes on and on, it is so important to have those relationships. This is important because it allows people to understand different peoples mannerisms, backgrounds, and struggles so that they can be open to many perspectives. However it is important that in doing this, people don't exclude people of their own orientation because that adds yet another negative division between people. This is a vital part of society which is so undervalued in this day and age, however that also reflects through the widespread negativity, division, and hopelessness which has become very apparent.
Post 3
Over the course of this week, I feel that I was able to see everything through a more educated, understanding lens which I could not do before; at least in relation to understanding the science of interactions. I feel that this course is well suited to me in that I can see its effects in my everyday life, and I feel like it has a lot more meaning to me than many of my other classes simply because I can relate to it and it is able to help me in and out of the classroom. This week the most interesting thing I learned about was about the impact of physical contact, and oxytocin on so many aspects of human well-being. It was also interesting to learn about empathy because it made me think of the many people I know who are not empathetic. It also got me a bit off course because I started reading about narcissism and psychopaths and it was cool to see the science behind cognitive empathy. These people can understand empathy, however it does not emotionally registar which is insane to me because I personally feel everything on a very personal level.
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