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The perils of the ‘halfalogue’
“Class” “Uh-huh” “Seven” (Laughing) “That’s what she said!” “No, not that way” “Yeah” “So you’ll” “So you” “So snacks and” “All right” “All right” “And beer” That’s a snippet of conversation I overheard on my morning bus ride today. A young woman was chatting on her cell phone, and even though she wasn’t especially loud or animated, I found it very distracting. All I wanted to do was read the sports pages, but the fractured dialogue made it very difficult to concentrate. That’s not a literal transcript obviously, but you get the idea. You’ve no doubt heard similar bits of chatter recently, now that cell phones are ubiquitous in public places.
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A new twist on child abuse
Charles Dickens’ 1838 novel Oliver Twist has been called a textbook case of child abuse. The young hero is beaten again and again, locked up in the dark, and starved—for both food and affection. His world is a world of cruelty and alcoholism and crime and domestic violence, and he shows many predictable consequences of such harshness: passivity, fragile self-esteem, depression, delinquency. Dickens was ahead of his time in sounding the alarm about the mistreatment of children. Indeed, the word “Dickensian” is used today to describe the crushing poverty and social dysfunction that can damage the mental health of the young.
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The oil spill, the mapmaker heuristic, and me
It’s easy right now to think that the world is coming undone. The BP oil company has singlehandedly devastated the Louisiana coast. Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano continues to blacken our skies and ground our jets. Terrorists are planting bombs in Times Square. Lacrosse stars are killing other lacrosse stars. Who could blame us for asking: What’s the world coming to? In times like these, I turn to the mapmaker heuristic. That’s just a clever name for the brain’s deep-wired sense of psychological distance. The way we see events in our world depends a lot on how near or far away they are—actually and emotionally.
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The ignorant and the furious: video and catharsis
The Greek philosopher Aristotle had many original and enduring ideas, but he didn’t get everything right. One idea that’s been pretty much debunked by modern psychology is catharsis. Catharsis is the notion that we can purge our negative emotions by acting them out or witnessing them in our arts and entertainment—and that such purging is a healthy thing to do. Not true. Indeed there is evidence that indulging our anger and aggression can increase—not decrease—those destructive emotions. Even so, a lot of people still believe in catharsis. They believe that pummeling punching bags and watching Fight Club and cursing at the universe is cleansing.
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The ironic power of caricature
Brent Staples is an editorial writer for the New York Times and a University of Chicago-trained psychologist. He is also African-American, and back in the 70s, when he was doing his graduate studies, he discovered that he could threaten white people simply by walking down the streets of his Hyde Park neighborhood. When white couples saw him coming, especially at night, they would lock arms, stop all conversation, and stare straight ahead. Sometimes they would cross to the other side of the street. The white Chicagoans were obviously being influenced by the stereotype of the dangerous young black man. But the more sinister effects of the stereotype were on Staples himself.
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Spinning class, the scarcity heuristic, and me
I go to a spinning class a couple mornings a week, and it’s hard. Sometimes my quads burn and I don’t feel like spinning anymore. So over time I’ve developed some psychological tools that help me keep my head down and get the most out of my morning workouts. One of these tools is based on the so-called “scarcity and value heuristic.” Heuristics are the mind’s automatic, hard-wired habits. They are ancient and powerful and, for the most part, unrecognized. The scarcity heuristic is the brain saying, if something is rare, it must be good. The value heuristic says, if I really desire something, it must be scarce.
