Bored to be Wild

 Last weekend I was assigned to  watch my two youngest grandchildren, while my wife Diane and our daughter went shopping. This has become a more or less a routine procedure, intended to weed out the especially cranky and whiney members of our party. I’m sorry,  but  too much shopping hurts my knees and makes me crabby.

I did my level best to entertain the little nippers, including a lengthy cartoon quiz and discussion session  regarding  the relative merits of Spongebob Squarepants as compared to  Patrick and Squidward, innumerable  games of Stupid Zombies on my cellphone, and watching most of an old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie  on You Tube.  Despite these desperate measures, blonde-haired, blue-eyed,  four-year-old Rosie turned to me and said dismally, “I’m bored.” Surprised that she  knew what that meant, I was forced to agreed, saying, “Yeah, me too”. With two older sisters I’m sure Rosie’s heard that phrase quite often.

I have always thought that being able to tolerate a boring situation with patience and equanimity was a sign of maturity. Since such circumstances are inevitable, it is an important life skill that children are seldom taught.  Of course, with today’s frenetic and over stimulating technology, entertaining yourself has become considerably easier, although some may argue that these same digital  advances,  have  resulted in shorter attention spans,  aggravating instead of ameliorating the problem.  

The first recorded use of the English word “boredom” was, appropriately enough, in Charles Dickens’ exceedingly boring novel “Bleak House”  back in  1852. Psychologists believe that there are three basic types of boredom stemming from:  1.  Being prevented from engaging in some desired activity,  2. Being forced to engage in some undesired activity, and 3. For no apparent reason, being unable  to remain engaged in any activity.  All of these are related to problems in focusing attention.

Boredom is usually described as an unpleasant emotional state,  experienced when an individual has nothing  in particular to do  and lacks  interest  in their surroundings. It is generally seen as the opposite of arousal and may occur when all immediate challenges   are either incomprehensible or conversely, too simple or monotonous.  Additionally boredom has been found to appear at times when all perceived needs have been fully met and overall motivation is low.

Relativity  may also be a factor in boredom,  as people who have just returned from a very exhilarating or stimulating environment may find their usual  surrounding dull and boring in comparison. Veterans, for example who return from combat, may have difficulty at times adjusting to the calmer environment of civilian life.   Inveterate thrill-seekers who engaged in highly exciting recreational  activities (such as sky-diving)  or occupations (such as fire-fighting) may also start to find everyday activities exceptionally  mundane and boring.          

Boredom also seems to be related to the fatigue that stems from engaging in repetitive activity. A 1926 study in Britain demonstrated individual differences in the amount of boredom reported by workers assigned to perform the same repetitive  and monotonous task.  When we are bored we generally experience a lack of interest,  poor concentration, and temporal distortion,   as time seems to crawl along.  

In 1986 Richard Farmer, from the Oregon Research Institute,  and  Norman D. Sundberg, from the University of Oregon, developed  the  Boredom Proneness Scale to measure how likely people are to feel bored.  Subsequent research has shown that boredom proneness is related to depression,  hopelessness, perceptions of increased effort, loneliness, and poor motivation.  Other studies have  found  it to be a significant factor in depression,  anxiety disorders,  alcohol and drug abuse (especially as professed by teens),  pathological gambling, as well as eating disorders. Individuals who are  easily bored,  also have reportedly more hostility, anger,  less career success,  and poorer social skills,  than people not prone to boredom.

I’m afraid that I fall into that high boredom prone category. When I’m in a situation that  I find boring  where there is  little activity  going on,  my mind is  like a computer that automatically shifts into sleep mode.   I find that I have   these attentional lapses  especially at   continuing education seminars.  I used to embarrass Diane by bringing along a big stack of paperwork to do during these workshops to keep myself occupied. Now it’s even worse with  laptops and smart phones. I’m afraid that I’ve turned into  one of those insufferable people  who sit near the wall so they can plug in and pretend they are taking notes, when they are really reading their e-mail,   watching You Tube, checking their bank balance, or making grocery lists.

I suppose my worse attentional lapse took place a few years ago at a department  store. There were a lot of bargains and sales that day and   Diane and I had been shopping for quite a while. After an exhausting search,  Diane had found several items of clothing that she wanted to buy. I was tasked with watching over her intended purchases while she tried on some other things. I found an empty chair and put the clothing on the chair next to me. With nothing to do, except to sit there,  my attention started to wander.  Eventually the lack of activity caused my internal  screensaver to  kick  in, I shut down,   and  must have  nodded off. When I was roused by a rude shake, I discovered, to my horror, that all the clothes had disappeared. Some overzealous clerk had taken the entire pile of clothing and hung them back up on the racks, literally under my nose. Suffice it to say that Diane was less than pleased with my dedication that day.

            According to educational researcher Ulrike E. Nett  from  The University of Konstanz in Germany  there are  three psychological strategies that people  typically use to cope with boredom. 1. They reappraise the situation and try  to increase the relative importance of the boring situation or activity. 2. They actively make changes to the situation to make it less boring. and 3. They evade the boring situation by seeking out a more interesting activity or diversion.  

Generally boredom is seen as a negative force in people’s lives, however,  like any situation that causes discomfort,   it also can serve as an impetus for positive change by increasing our motivation to act. For example,  an individual with a very boring job,  may use the boredom as a catalysis to seek out a more challenging and ultimately rewarding position.

Finally, existential philosophers have viewed boredom, which they have called “a muffling fog”,   as a fundamental dimension of human existence.  In situations lacking any stimulation, the individual must confront “nothingness”.  Directly experiencing this lack of meaning creates existential anxiety.   Using  “waiting at the railway station”  as an example,  philosopher  Martin Heidegger wrote over  100 pages on the topic of boredom, which, either ironically or perhaps  fittingly, are  themselves incredibly boring to read. 

I had no idea Rosie could be so profound in her observations about spending time with me. I’m just afraid she might agree with Danish existentialist Søren Kierkegaard, who once   famously wrote “…there is a sense that any immediate moment of life may be fundamentally tedious [especially when spent with grandpa].”

Based on a column in the Southern Indiana News Tribune.

A Ticklish Issue

Aristotle, Socrates, Galileo, Da Vinci  and Darwin  are just a few of  history’s  great minds who  have speculated  about the origin and purpose of tickling.  My four-year-old grand-daughter, Rosie,  is an inveterate tickler. She revels in the power that tickling gives her over  older and larger  people. I also think she does it  because she likes to be tickled herself.  For some reason, however, she has picked me  as the primary target for her assaults, as small children and dogs often do.

I must have victim written all over my face, as I  can hardly visit anywhere,  without  some child or dog giving me the business. Little dogs, like my daughter’s Bichon Frise, jump on my lap and try to lick my face.   Our niece’s  Siberian Huskies slobber on my hands,  steal my fur hat, or try to bury  a bone (the one in my arm). I’m also a prime target for mimes. For her part Rosie never misses an opportunity to tickle me.

Today evolutionary psychology may be close to finding some answers regarding why people tickle.   Robert R. Provine,  a psychologist at the University of Maryland says that  tickling is a “mechanism for social  bonding between close companions. It helps forge relationships between family members  and friends...”

According to Provine, infants begin laughing in response to tickling  within the first few months of life. He says “It’s one of the first forms of communication between babies and their caregivers…”   Parents tickle because they are so reinforced by the baby’s laughter.

Back in the 1980’s University of Iowa  psychiatrist Donald Black  noted that the most ticklish parts of the body  tend to be where we have protective reflexes.   He believed that children learn to protect their necks, ribs, feet, and armpits as they wrestle and  tickle each other. In 1924, J.C. Gregory proposed that ticklish places on the body were those most vulnerable in combat and learning to guard them conveyed an evolutionary advantage. Laughter in response to such tickling may be seen as a sign of submission or a way to say “uncle”.

 Besides possibly developing self-defense skills, tickling among children can reinforce sibling and/or peer bonding.  It also may be an alternative to  violence intended  to hurt or  dominate each other.  When one sibling tickles  another  relentlessly,  to point of  unpleasantness it is called “tickle torture.”

Based on his observations of chimpanzees and orangutans, Provine also believes that the “ha-ha” of human laugher most likely evolved from the inevitable panting  that takes place  during prolonged tickle fights. 

Some experts  believe  that tickling  requires  social interaction and that’s one reason why  you can’t tickle yourself.  University of California psychologist Christine Harris, however, believes that tickling is more like a automatic reflex. To test her hypothesis,  she built a robotic arm that looked like a tickling machine. She christened her creation — Mechanical Meg. Subjects were blindfold and then tickled by what they thought was Mechanical Meg. Actually they were tickled by a human assistant hiding under a table (Meg didn’t actually work).  The subjects laughed and squirmed anyway, demonstrating that   tickling did not require the perceived presence of another human being.

I personally believe that you can tickle someone without actually touching them. When our kids were preschoolers I would sometimes tickle them on the knees (a much neglected tickle target). Then I would sit across the room and tell them that I could tickle them by remote control. I would stare seriously at their knees and wiggle my fingers and they would invariably start laughing and grab their knees.

Around the turn of the century scientists classified tickling into major categories. “Knismesis” is  evoked by a very light touch on the skin. It may produce an itching sensation, but not laughter. It is the sensation you get when an insect crawls on you and may have evolved in mammals to help them keep rid of parasites. 

The other class of tickling is called “gargalesis” and is achieved by repeatedly applying pressure to sensitive areas. Gargalesis is generally met with uncontrollable laughter.  It is generally   pleasurable, but can be extremely uncomfortable when it involves persistent involuntary tickling. Gargalesis was once believed to be the exclusive province of primates,  but more recent research suggests that rats can also be tickled. I pity the poor graduate assistant who  had that  job.

Charles Darwin  theorized that tickling was related to the anticipation of pleasure. He based this on the observation that ticklish people often  laugh before  being actually  tickled . In addition unexpected tickling from a complete stranger is generally perceived as an assault and no laughing matter.   Darwin believed that in order to laugh at a tickle, you cannot know the exact location where you were going to be touched. Knowing where the stimulation was going to take place removes all anticipation and that’s why people cannot effectively tickle themselves.  More recent research seems to confirm this notion.      

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and her colleagues at University College London analyzed   self-tickling  using sophisticated  brain imaging studies.  Her studies show your brain can predict sensations when your own movements are the cause, but not if someone else does it. She says, “When you try to tickle yourself, the cerebellum predicts the sensation and this prediction is used to cancel the response of other brain areas to the tickle. Knight Ridder newspaper reporter Usha Lee McFarling says,” the cerebellum acts as a killjoy, squelching the tickling response if the tickling doesn’t come from an outside source.

Research also suggests that tickling is a young person’s game and often between four and seven years of age many children no longer see it as pleasurable.  A survey of college students found that that only 32%  reported that they enjoy being tickled and about 36% said  they didn’t  like the experience at all. .  It probably has a lot to   do with   the wide variability in different peoples’ pain and pressure thresholds.  Provine says that interest and   participation in tickling drops off significantly after the age of forty. I must be an exception, since I have to frequently use tickling in self-defense. I think it must be like jumping into an ice cold swimming pool. Young children have no problem doing it,  but the older you get the harder it becomes. 

Some authorities say that if you shut your eyes tight and concentrated real hard during a tickle attack, you can stop the sensation. I think I’ll try that next time, but I’m skeptical.

 

Based on a column that originally appeared in the Southern Indiana News Tribune,

Hit the Road Shaun!

Halloween is a distant memory and the scary costumes are long gone , but most childhood fears are not so easily left behind. Our five-year-old grandson and his little sister spent the night with us last Saturday. That meant that we had to exile“Shaun the Sheep” to the trunk of our car. Shaun is a character from a stop-action BBC children’s series. The show was a spinoff from the popular Wallace and Gromit films. My wife Diane bought a “Shaun the Sheep” hot water bottle cover, while on a trip to England. To most people, Shaun is an adorable little stuffed lamb with big eyes. But that’s the problem. Shawn’s plastic eyes are rather large and protruding. For some reason, these “google eyes” really scare our grandson.

We promised to take Shaun out of the house before he came to stay. I suggested that we could put Shaun in a box and then put the box on a back shelf in the closet, but he said he was still afraid that Shaun would “pop out” of the box, so we put Shaun in the car trunk instead. At first I thought this innocent expression of childhood fear was rather endearing, but the more I thought about Shaun’s cold dead eyes, the more they bothered me. I started fantasizing about it and imagined that maybe late Saturday night I would heard a loud knocking sound. I’d look out the window and see that the car trunk was open and when I reached the door, all I would see was those big “google eyes” staring back at me through the window.

None of us ever fully recover from our childhoods. Our deepest pleasures and fears reside there. Film director Steven Spielberg managed to successfully tap into his childhood fears creating scenes like the threatening trees and the terrifying clown under the bed in the movie, Poltergeist. I also remember a childhood nightmare about being chased by a Tyrannosaurus, that could have been a scene right out of Jurassic Park. Especially in his book, “It”, Stephen King exploited many of our earliest fears with another horrifying clown and a monstrous spider-like creature.

Researchers at the University of Sheffield in England were seeking data in order to update the decor of a children’s hospital. They surveyed 250 young hospital patients and found that all the children even the older ones disliked clowns. The technical term for fear of clowns and mimes is “coulrophobia” and psychologists believe that the exaggerated expression seen in traditional clown make-up is the main reason that children fear them. Being able to recognize familiar faces and interpret emotional expressions is an important developmental task for children. The grimacing clown face presents an unexpected and unwelcome enigma for kids.

When they were little, our two youngest sons were given a pair of handcrafted large and small Raggedy Andy dolls for Christmas. Our youngest son never like them and over time he started to be afraid of them. He may be our most creative child and he developed an interesting coping mechanism. Every night before he would go to bed, he would thoroughly beat up each of the dolls and then he would make them face the wall, so they couldn’t stare at him while he was sleeping.

As for our granddaughters, they seem especially frighten of spiders and bugs and they have a thing about “beetles”. They are even afraid of killing them, because they might be “stinkbugs” and smell up the place. Even our three-year-old granddaughter picked up on her sisters’ hysteria and screamed when she saw a “spider” on the floor near her toys. I was impressed by her eyesight since this “spider” was the tiniest of specks and was barely visible. I squashed it for her and she seemed satisfied and momentarily grateful.

As a child our middle son, Andy also had a fear of insect. We lived in Florida, which is well known for its palmetto bugs. Dave Barry once said, “We call them palmetto bugs because if we called them ‘six-inch-long flying cockroaches’, we’d all have to move out of the state.” In elementary school Andy had a terrible conflict. He wanted to ride his bicycle to school more than anything, but it was outside in a shed, teeming with palmetto bugs. From inside the house we could hear him scream every time he saw a bug (about every 2 seconds). Despite all the screaming, he still managed to get out his bike and ride to school.

According to psychologist Jodi Mindell from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, childhood fears stem from two major sources: real life experiences and internal feelings. She believes that the childhood fear of monsters, for example, comes from personal experiences that show children that people behave destructively towards others. These experiences might include being actually injured, observing others being hurt, or being shown or told of scary possibilities.

Stories and movies are common sources of childhood fears since they often employee archetypical images and characters that have historically engendered feelings of terror. For example, as a child Diane was afraid of the witch and the flying monkeys in the classic movie, “ The Wizard of Oz”. Like many children, our oldest son was afraid of witches when he was little. Witches are archetypal and symbolize ambivalence towards the mothering figure, as well as, the fear of the dreaded “Bad Mother”. As for me I was thoroughly terrified by the old Universal Studios’ Frankenstein and Wolfman movies that my older brother insisted on watching every Friday night when my parents went out.

The second source of childhood fears is the child’s own unacceptable internal feelings. Such feelings, such as intense anger, can be extremely frightening and children often employ the defense mechanism of externalizing to help control them. Mindell says, ” Externalization refers the remarkable and normal capacity of children to create the illusion that their own unwanted feelings belong to something else rather than themselves.

Even schools can serve as an unintentional source of childhood fears. Once our middle son was frightened at school because they talked about devastating mudslides taking place “far away”. All he knew was that his grandma lived “far way” and therefore conceivably might be harmed.

When I was in elementary school our teacher taught a social studies lesson that told us the alarming story of Pedro. Pedro lived in some Central American country. One day he was out in a beanfield with his father, when all of a sudden, rocks started spontaneously floating in the field. Pedro had left his sombrero on the ground and one of the rocks even made it fly around scaring everyone. The villagers thought that the field must be haunted. It turns out that Pedro and his family didn’t realized that a full-fledged volcano was forming in the beanfield. Within a couple of weeks, a massive lava-spewing, smoke-belching volcano completely covered Pedro’s home and we never heard from poor Pedro again. Where was FEMA when you needed them?

I personally found this tale terrifying. I even had nightmares about volcanos starting up in my own backyard. The story strikes at the core of my greatest fear, namely how life is so unpredictable. A spontaneous disaster can strike at any moment. Just when you think that things are going fine, a Frankenstorm or Shaun the Sheep can pop up out of nowhere.

Origionally Published in the Souther Indiana News Journal

Causal Comments

When people offer  spontaneously, without thinking, their offhanded remarks   possess a special kind of power.  We frequently assume that extemporaneous comments are  truthful, or at least that they honestly reflect the way the speaker feels. Unintentionally overheard comments can be especially influential, since we assume they were frank expressions,  not tailored specifically for our ears, just ask Mitt Romney.

For example, our five-year old grandson prefers to wear button-up shirts  instead of the polo variety. We believe that’s because of a remark that some sweet nursery or Sunday School  teacher once made  that   resulted  in him referring to button-up shirts as “Mr. Handsome Shirts”.  After all, what male wouldn’t want to wear a “Mr. Handsome Shirt”.

Of course such statements are not always positive.  At a parent-teacher conference   my wife Diane once overheard her Kindergarten teacher tell her mother,  “Don’t bother ever giving Diane  dance lessons, because she has no rhythm at all.” This has stuck with her for all these years and made her feel inhibited and avoid dancing. Some people may say perhaps for the best.

In his book Uncommon Therapy famed hypnotherapist  Milton Erickson  describes how he once treated  a young woman who was convinced that her perfectly normal   feet were grossly oversized  and ugly. This belief kept her from ever going outside the house.  On pretense  Erickson made a  home visit ostensibly  to see the young woman’s “sick” mother.   He acted quite annoyed and grumpy and  “accidentally on purpose” stepped on the  young woman’s foot. As she recoiled in pain he said loudly, “If only you could grow those feet big enough for a man to see!”.  His crabby and spontaneous statement had more credibility with the young woman,  than all the reasoning in the world would have had,  and  ultimately  did the trick as,  she re-shuffled her thinking about her self-image.

Over the years Diane has prepared and given children’s sermons in various churches we’ve attended. She always says that the children’s sermon is an excellent way to communicate with the adults in the audience.  Since the message is not intended specifically for them, their defenses  are down.  Also their critical judgment is often suspended, as they are distracted and  charmed  by the youngsters’ response to the message.

Such casual messages function similar to what are called indirect or embedded suggestions in hypnosis. An indirect suggestion is a type of instruction phrased as an offhand comment, used during hypnosis to encourage patients to follow a desired course of action without specifically telling them to do so. The power of   indirect and embedded suggestions lies in their ability to by-pass normal conscious resistance and influence people on an unconscious level.

An embedded suggestion is another special kind of a hypnotic suggestion that is usually buried in some sort of mind-numbing context,  like a boring conversation.  The suggestion is typically repeated, but since it doesn’t stand out dramatically,   it is usually not consciously perceived.

I once attempted to use a variant of these techniques with a young woman I was seeing for counseling. Outside my immediate family,  she was probably the most argumentative person I had ever met. Even when I was repeating back exactly what she just told me, she would disagree.  Most of all she was highly self-critical and  I was trying to help her  realize that she did possess some positive features.  One day I was talking to her and the secretary called me  out of my office,   to handle an  emergency.  When I returned the  chart containing my progress notes was in a slightly different position. It was hardly noticeable,  but I realized that she had must been reading my notes. For the next session, I carefully prepared a fake progress note to put in a dummy chart that looked just like the real thing.  This note contained all the positive messages that I wanted her to realize. If I had said these things to her, she would have just argued with me and rejected them.  When she came in for her session, my secretary made a prearrange call to my office,   and I excused myself, claiming that it was another emergency. After about 15 minutes I returned. The client seemed both pleased and frustrated. She obviously liked what she had read, but seemed bursting,  wanting to argue the points. She was not able to, however, because she was loathe to admit she had been surreptitiously reading my notes.

Back in  June,   Ann Von  Brock, a blogger  with United Way in Asheville, North Carolina wrote a   piece entitled,   “Can One Passing Comment To a Child Really Make a Difference?”  It was about the power of adult influences on a young people’s lives.  She describes how her 7th grade biology teacher once wrote “has potential”  as  remark  on her report card.  Although  Von Brock  admits  she was a an underachiever for much of her school career  she  says,  “… somehow I hung onto the comment of that one teacher and always believed that I was a smart kid.”   She concluded that  seemingly casual comments can be   “powerful”, “ motivating  and inspiring”,  but  just as easily   “crushing”     depending upon the people, the setting, the tone,  and the context.

I suppose there are two important lessons you  can draw from  the power of passing comments.  First, if some casual comment is hurtful or discouraging, then reengage your  critical thinking  and challenge it. If parts still seem true, then use it as a motivator for positive change.  Second use your own casual remarks constructively. You can never really know how much influence a word of encouragement or a positive comment can have in the long run. We  are constantly confronted with  opportunities that can change people’s lives with very little effort or cost to ourselves.

I respond to  casual remarks as much as anyone.  When I was   in high school,  the first day of varsity football practice,  the coach looked at me  and realized  my brother had played for him a few years earlier.  He said   to the people standing around, “Stawar’s brother was an All Conference Guard, but Terry here  isn’t good enough to carry his cleats”. I suppose that was meant to be inspirational but it ended up being more prophetic.  Was it important to me or did it affect me?  I would like to say no, but then I do remember it,  48 years later.

On the other hand many years ago I   attended a two-day training workshop. It was in a resort area and everyone dressed very casually. On the first day I wore a tan jacket. On the second day  I overheard   people at  nearby table talking about what people were wearing. One of them said, “You should have seen this tan jacket some guy was wearing yesterday. It was really cool.” I don’t think I had never heard a spontaneous positive comment about my apparel before. I believe I wore my “Mr. Handsome” tan jacket for at least the next decade.

Carrying a Secret can be a Heavy Load

With the recent news of finding bodies buried in backyards in our region , a lot of people are probably wondering what other secrets are out there, just waiting to be discovered.  Personally I’ve always been terrible at keeping secrets. In the past, even after   a friend    would solemnly swear me to secrecy, I’d usually blab to  the next person I’d see. I just couldn’t help it. Maybe this was because in my professional role as a therapist, I had to be especially careful about always maintaining confidentiality.   I’m a little better now, but not much. I hope I’m never captured by   enemies, I’d probably tell them more than they wanted to know, even before they asked. No need for water boarding with me.

People keep secrets for a lot of reasons, but mainly I think it is to avoid looking bad  in front of other people or to escape the consequences of our behavior.   Sometimes we keep secrets just  to avoid conflict with others, or to prevent our  enemies from using  information against us.

In literature keeping a secret   usually leads to something bad.  New York City writer Maria Konnikova   points outs how keeping a terrible secret takes it’s deadly  toll on the health of the fictional  Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale (father of Hester Prynne’s  illegitimate baby)   in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter.  She wonders if a terrible  secret could actually do that much damage  to someone.  She says,  “The Scarlet Letter gets one thing so incredibly right   that it almost…  makes up for everything it gets wrong: it’s not healthy to keep a secret.”

It seems, however, to depend on the nature of the  secret.  Gail Saltz, a psychiatry professor at Cornell Medical School,  says that  secrets can be either  ”benign” or “malignant,” depending on the scenario.

Harvard psychologist Daniel Wegner and  his colleagues found that secret thoughts tend to  be  very  accessible.  People can recall memories, which  they had been asked to keep secret, better than memories which  they had been instructed to tell the truth or lie  about.   Secrets come to mind much more often than almost any other kind of thoughts. They frequently preoccupy us, contrary to  our conscious wishes.  Wegner found that in his experiments people were   likely to give  unintentional hints about things they were supposed to keep secret.  Wegner  also found that personal secrets often  result in outward signs of distress, and  that secrecy can itself create further unwanted thoughts,  continuing  the cycle.

Knowing how difficult it can be to keep secrets, Wegner his  colleagues  give the following common sense suggestions: 1. Avoid  alcohol since it diminishes inhibitions.  2  Reduce stress, since it  decreases  conscious control. 3. Write the secret down (in a symbolic way this disclosures the secret  and relieves some of the   pressure, even though     no one actually reads the secret  and finally  4. Avoid situations where being asked to keep a secret is likely to occur.

When we speak about secrets we use a special vocabulary and we often say things like, “We carry (or hold)  a secret”   as if where an actual physical object. Our language also refers to   “being weighed down” or “carrying a heavy  burden ,”  and confession is said to “lighten our load”.  Researchers  have investigated how our bodies may literally interpret  such  metaphorical descriptions.   For example, the importance or seriousness of information is often associated with weight. A serious persons is said  to have “gravitas”, or an intellectual work may be  said to be quite “weighty”. Dutch  studies have shown that when subjects learn  that a certain book is  important, they begin to   perceived that book as physically weighing more.

Along similar lines,  Michael L. Slepian from Tufts University and his colleagues found that bodily  states, associated with physical burdens, may be simulated when  people have important personal secrets. In this study they looked at the behavior of people who harbored important personal secrets, such as infidelity or sexual orientation. In a series of studies,  they found that subjects, who were currently held an important personal secret, perceived hills to be steeper, distances  longer, and  physical tasks  requiring  more effort than they would otherwise. Participants were also significantly less  inclined  to help other people with physical tasks. It was as if their own energy reserves were depleted.  The more subjects thought about the secret,  the more the secret   influenced   their perceptions.

The researchers found that   concealments are   perceived at a somatic level as physical burdens,   they can result in actual physical overexertion and exhaustion. This exhausting effort required to maintain secrets over many years,  may also explain why criminals sometimes suddenly confess,  despite years of previous  silence.

Psychologist James Pennebaker, from the  University of Texas, found  that people who had a serious trauma before age 17 were much more likely to have health problems as adults. The majority of these people kept the trauma secret. Pennebaker had   subjects visited his lab each week to  write about their  traumatic experiences. Some subjects talked about the trauma, while others just wrote about it, showing their writing to  no one.   Divulging the secret to others or simply writing it on a piece of paper that is later burned,   were both highly  correlated with physical and mental  health improvements.  People who continued to conceal  their traumatic secrets showed more  hypertension, influenza,  and even cancer.  The subjects, who wrote about their secrets demonstrated, enhanced immunity and in some cases, T-cell counts in AIDS patients even increased.

In similar research studies, holocaust victims who finally disclosed secrets   demonstrated a marked improvement in their health status,   after the interviews.  The more they disclosed, the more their health improved.

How the disclosure of personal secrets creates such health benefits is rather complicated.    Pennebaker says that writing about a secret helps label and organize it, which in turn helps subjects better understand and master aspects of the secret that had been hidden. Disclosure can become a habit, leading to more openness in relationships. Revealing secrets can also reduce obsessive ruminations and their accompanying anxiety. Without   anxiety and self-absorption,  people become better listeners and have more opportunities for richer social relationships.

Notre Dame psychology professor Anita Kelly and her colleagues   examined people’s health statuses and found that secretive people, tend to be sicker than other people. She found that  ”self-concealers,”, were often   more depressed, anxious, and shy, and have discomfort.  She believes there may be a genetic link  between   secretiveness and   vulnerability to illness.

Kelly  also believes that  keeping  benign secrets can have  positive aspects,  providing personal boundaries or avoiding  unnecessary social conflicts.  Disclosing  a   malignant secret, may have a positive outcome, but that  depends on having a safe confidant.   If such a confidant is not available, Kelly takes a cue from Pennebaker and   suggests writing about the secrets, which  simulates the benefits of disclosing the secret  to others.

So, it you have some deep secret that is troubling you, spend some time  writing about  it  down,  or  find someone that you trust and take a chance. You may find that a large burden is  finally lifted.  Just don’t tell me anything,  if you know what’s good for you.

From a column that appeared in the Southern Indiana News Tribune

Magic Cookies: The Placebo Effect

 

 Our expectations  can be remarkably  powerful.  The magic feather that Dumbo, the flying elephant, was told would help him fly,  is a classic example of what is known as a placebo.  The word placebo is Latin for “pleasing” and refers to an object that has no actual effect, other  than to bolster our expectations.  

In the early 70’s when I was a brand new psychology  student,   my study group was assigned to devise  an experiment involving preschool  children. I believe it was Thurmond Culpepper, a member of our  group, who proposed that we study expectations and  preschoolers’ memory for  pictures.  This evolved into the “Magic Cookie Study”.

In step one of our study,  all the children were to be given a rather  odd looking cookie to eat. This sugar cookie, covered with  marshmallow and sprinkled with pink  coconut, was to serve as the  placebo. 

Half of the class was to be  told that the cookie was magic and would help them remember things perfectly.  The other  half of the kids  were told that  it was just a snack.  Then we planned  to  test them  by  showing    pictures of   animals , and then recording how many  of the animals they could  recall five minutes later. 

It turned out that most of the kids hated the cookies and not only  refused to eat them but  physically  threw them at Thurmond while making  fun of his name. Evidently coconut is not very popular with the  preschool set,  as  many complained vocally  about the pink  hair on their cookies.

Also, it was  nearly impossible to get them to  sit down long enough to  look at the animal pictures. And when it came  time to telling us what animals they remembered,  few subjects  felt that this boring  task was  worth their time or effort, especially compared  to throwing cookies or  grabbing  the experimenter’s stopwatch and dashing madly  about the classroom. We did  not demonstrate  the  placebo effect,  but  we did  discover that   our study group needed someone who actually knew something about kids.     

Newsweek magazine science editor Sharon Begley has reported on a  new placebo study  published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.    Daniel Cherkin  at theGroup Health Center in Seattle  compared the effectiveness of  acupuncture,   simulated acupuncture,  and  standard treatment on back pain. The researchers found that pain decreased  significantly for 60% for both acupuncture groups,  but only 39 % for the standard care patients.  Although the results  were used to support alternative  approaches, like acupuncture, the most intriguing  finding, as Begley points out,  is  that   fake acupuncture (randomly getting poked with toothpicks)  worked as well  as real acupuncture,  and twice as well as standard procedures.   

A survey of Chicago area internists   revealed that half  of  them  used   placebos with their patients. Twelve per cent, however,  had ethical qualms and said that placebos should never be used. Most physicians, who used placebos, were somewhat  cagey in what they actually told their  patients– not wanting  to lie outright, but also not wanting to diminish  the benefits of  positive expectations.

According to Fabrizio Benedetti of the Universityof Turin, a pioneer in placebo pain research, positive expectations  can lead to the release of natural pain killers in the brain. The greater the expectations, the greater the  relief  that people feel.  About 30% of the population  appears  capable  of a   strong placebo effect and   magic cookies not withstanding, children have a greater response than adults.

 According to MIT behavioral economist  Dan Ariely,  we  associate the cost of medicines  with their  efficacy and this  may be why expensive placebos work best and  people  claim that generic medications do not work as well as brand names.   Placebo effectiveness is also  related to factors such as  exoticness,  intrusiveness,  and technological sophistication.   Injections, for example  are more potent that capsules, which in turn  are better than tablets. Procedures   associated with   elaborate scientific looking equipment or arcane devices, also tend to have greater credibility. 

One mental hospital used an impressive looking electroconvulsive shock machine to successfully  treat depressed patients for many years. However a technician found  that the  machine had never been plugged in properly and it’s success was purely placebo effect.        

 The size of a  pill is also related to its  placebo value. As you  might  expect,  if a  little is good,  a lot is great.  When they feel bad,  most people want the maximum strength  possible.  As comedian Jerry Seinfeld said,   “We want them to figure what dose can  kill  us and then back off just a little.”     

Placebo saline injections even helped some Parkinson  patients in  a study at   theUniversityof British Columbia.  The very brain chemicals that placebos stimulate, may actually help  reduce some  Parkinson Disease  symptoms, such as stiffness and rigidity.  

Placebos  may also be  effective  when people  learn, through association, that a particular experience is routinely followed by a  specific  response. This is known as classical  conditioning.   In a 1999 study,  patients   received several  injections  of a substance  that quickly depressed their respiration. Later  the  injection of an inactive  substance produced the same results. The  nervous system  had learned to associate all  injections with the depressive response.  

Similarly  when kidney transplant patients were repeatedly given a strong  anti-rejection medication, along with a  distinctly flavored drink,   the drink alone began to have the same beneficial effects as the medication.   Begley says  that this “was like finding that Kool-Aid can prevent organ transplant rejection”.  

            Harvard psychologist Robert Rosenthal and school principal Lenore  Jacobson  wrote a controversial book in 1968 entitled  Pygmalion in the Classroom about their  study  in which teachers were told  that certain (randomly selected) children had been  scientifically identified as  “late  bloomers”  and would show tremendous academic  progress  in the next school year . The teachers’ expectations were a self-fulfilling  prophecy and the designated  children  showed a tremendous gains in achievement.

This  research demonstrates that, not only our own expectations, but those of others, can result in a significant placebo effect. The story of the unplugged  shock machine also dramatically displays this effect.   In addition to the machine, the expectations of the attending staff  influenced  patients to the point that they  exhibited sham seizures, when they thought shock was bring administered.

The placebo effect is a real testament to the  power of our expectations. It also explains why I still want a big  antibiotic pill every time  I catch a cold,  even  though I know it doesn’t work on viruses.  Maybe I should just eat a cookie instead.

There’s No Castle in My Room: I’m not Jealous, I’m Envious

“In America, happiness is making $10 more a week than your brother-in-law.”                                                                                                     H.L.  Mencken   My son-in law, Jeff recently got a new computer. This, of course, means that I now have to upgrade mine. Regardless of  expense, or the features that I might actually need, my mantra when it comes to such things is simply that it must be “Better than Jeff’s”  (BTJ).  I don’t really care what I get, or how it works,  just  so long as it is BTJ.  Such competitive envy is sometimes considered to be the deadliest of the seven deadly sins. It’s  certainly the most pervasive. In his 2003 book entitled  Envy,  former editor of  The American Scholar, Joseph Epstein, explains that sins like anger, sloth, gluttony, pride, and lust  usually have at least some modicum of pleasure attached to  them, but envy is entirely  “mean-spirited” and almost  always has malice behind it. When it spins out of control,  it  leads  to other antisocial behavior,  such as theft, fraud, and even murder. In Genesis, Cain’s murder of Abel is secondary to his original sin of intolerable envy. My wife Diane claims that I’m quite the  jealous person. For example,  if she orders  something at a restaurant that  looks good,  I automatically covet  it. If she buys a new book, I want a new book. Actually  this is envy, rather than jealousy, because in such cases I   want another person’s possessions.  Jealousy is when you already have something, but are distressed about the possibility of losing it to a rival.  Envy involves two people and is  accompanied  by feelings of inferiority, longing, and resentment, while  jealousy typically involves three people,  and is characterized by  distrust, anxiety, and anger. I would  point out this distinction to Diane,  but I’m not sure  she would appreciate it and might conclude, as Hoosier writer Kurt Vonnegut put it,  that I’m “ somebody who thinks he’s so damn smart, he never can keep his mouth shut.”  In the larger sense,  Diane  is still technically correct,  since I’m often  jealous, as well as envious,  a rather dubious distinction.            In many respects contemporary culture cultivates envy.  Epstein has written  that the American advertising industry is a “vast and intricate envy-creating machine.”  The 1980s  ”Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful” advertising campaign by Pantene,  is perhaps the most overt example  of envy-based advertising,   Modern marketing aims at convincing people to compare their situation with that of others,  opening wide the  door to envy.                       Envy and jealousy are among the first complex  emotions that children display and infants and  toddlers  show their jealousy in both regressive and aggressive behavior.    Children  cannot take on other’s viewpoints  and have a very difficult time developing the ability to share gracefully. I remember one Christmas when our youngest granddaughter received  a fabulous pink play castle, which irked her older sister  to no end. When they moved the castle from under the Christmas tree to the younger girl’s bedroom, our oldest granddaughter could be heard walking around the house muttering, in  an exasperated  fashion, “I don’t see a castle in my bedroom!”                 The German philosopher Schopenhauer once wrote  ”Because they feel unhappy, men cannot bear the sight of someone they think is happy.”   Frequently we tend to be so  envious, we can hardly bear the pleasure of others. People are often willing to sacrifice a great deal, rather than see someone else gain even a little.  A Russian folktale describes how  God  appeared to Ivan and told him  that he would grant him anything he wished.  However, there was one catch,  whatever he did for Ivan,  he would  do  double for Ivan’s despised  neighbor and rival,  Vladimir.  Ivan  brooded over this and finally asked God  to put out one of his eyes.               Those tabloid newspapers at the grocery checkout, that emphasize the travails of celebrities, allow  us to  make favorable comparisons with the  beautiful  people,  so that we appear to be doing better than them,  in at least in some areas of life.  Epstein says we should call such  publications,  The National Schadenfreude, after the German word for taking pleasure in the pain of others.         If there is an  upside to  envy,  it  is that it  occasionally  serves as  a catalyst for us to accomplish more and lead better lives.    Doreen Virtue, Ph.D., author of I’d Change My Life If I Had More Time  says,  “When you realize you are capable of achieving what the other person has, envy can motivate.  Envy can be either a tool for destruction or a great gift.”   The  Greek philosopher  Aristotle described what he called “emulative envy”, which drives  us to imitate  the noble, the good, and the  just in other people.

            Envy strikes those aspects of our lives, in which we feel  most challenged and those that are most important to us. Competition and  pride are key factors. Freud wrote that envy is essentially  a “narcissistic wound”— a  major  threat to our self-esteem.

          Envy is also bound up with the childish notion that things always have to be fair. At Diane’s recent birthday celebration, that included four young grandchildren, there was nonstop squabbling and complaining about the size of the pieces of birthday cake. I’m sorry, but I just don’t think it’s fair that children should always get the biggest pieces.   To reduce the likelihood of  envy among siblings,  parents often go to great pains to try to keep everything equal. Back in Florida Diane did groups with emotionally handicapped children in  public schools. When she used snacks for rewards,  she was always extremely careful to assure that each treat bag contain exactly the same amount, because even a single microgram difference had the potential to set off a major incident.

          Novelist Bonita Friedman has called envy,  ‘the writer’s disease’.  When writers read anything good,  they invariably think, “What’s the big deal, I could have done that myself.”, sort of the way your dog looks at you, when you’re driving the car.   Friedman bravely  admits  to going  into bookstores and immediately flipping to the  back of best sellers,  just to compare ages with   the author. Some people read obituaries just to make similar comparisons.  I’m reaching  that age when you start  thinking  about how nice it would be to  outlive,  rather than out-achieve your rivals, since that seems easier.  

Once I was looking at books at a supermarket and  sudenly  there was a picture of someone I knew. As if this wasn’t bad enough, several months later I saw her on a television show. All this  left me muttering,  “Where the heck is  the castle in my room?”

What Makes Your Favorite Place, Favorite?

                                                                                                                  

              Most of us have  a favorite place, whether it’s an easy chair at home, a lakeside cabin, or that little coffeehouse around the corner.  Growing up, one of  my wife Diane’s favorite places was her grandmother’s cottage inDoor County,Wisconsin. I suppose mine  was our garage, where I could play with hazardous tools,  make  toy soldiers out of molten lead, and avoid the persecution of my older brother, Norman.  My mother always preferred the hills of Southern Missouri, where she grew up.  My father’s special place, however, was  the basement. It was, damp,  isolated,   and cool and  had an old refrigerator full of beer.  For most of the summer  he lived under our house like a troll.

             As an adult,  Diane has been on an unrelenting  quest to find the ideal place to get away— the most comfortable hotel or most fun vacation spot– one that we could return to every year.  A beautiful log cabin on a creek in  mountains ofNorth Carolinadid not measure up and Diane has continued searching all overFlorida,Georgia,Kentucky,  andIndiana. She now intends to investigateMyrtle Beach.  I think this must stem  from her  Norwegian ancestry.  One of  our son’s friends fromNorwaytold us  that  almost everyone there  has a get-a-way cabin or cottage,  where they spend a great deal of time. It’s like some kind of Scandinavian law. Diane  must not have found the perfect place  yet,  since our granddaughter asked  her why we never go back to the same place twice.  

               Finnish psychologist Kalevi Korpela, who specializes in the study of   favorite places, says that most people  employ  such places   to  mentally and emotionally restore themselves.   This restorative capacity of  favorite places is  rooted in a few basic qualities. (1)  Favorite places are  removed or distanced from everyday stresses and worries. (2) Such places  have desired features that hold a personal fascination for us.    (3) Finally our  unique emotional needs  are addressed by  aspects  of the  environment. For example, if we require  peace and quiet, our favorite place provides it. If stimulation and excitement is called for, then those features are present.

               Korpela found that adults who regularly visited their favorite places report having  more energy and fewer physical complaints, than people who were instructed to avoid their favorite places.

                 Just imagining favorite places  can elicit feelings of  relaxation and comfort. Therapists often utilize  these images to treat pain and anxiety disorders.  Diane used the image of  floating in an inner tube, when she practiced hypnotic relaxation for the birth of our last child. On the other hand, while I was  recovering from surgery a few years ago, I  focused on the image of a big bottle of Oxycontin.  

                Many people are especially attached to the area where they grew up.  Like salmon swimming upstream, we may periodically feel a need to return to our place of origin. A friend once observed  that even if there was nothing left but a single tree standing in the place where you grew up,  you would be compelled to periodically check the tree,  just to see if it was still there. This may be true as I recently heard a fellow say that every time he drove over a certain  interstate overpass he had   a warm feeling because he could  see the site where his childhood home was located.

              University  of Warwick psychologist Patricia Newell asked residents fromSenegal,Ireland, and the United States to identify their favorite  places, in order to determine whether people from different cultures share  similar preferences.  The study found far more commonalities in place preference than differences.  People from around the world generated almost identical categories of favorite places.  Overall, 61% of them identified some part of the natural environment as their favorite place and 38%  chose their own home. Of course,  it is not surprising that we selected our own homes, since we often go to great lengths to make sure they have  those features we most desire. Our preferences for natural environments may be based in our need to reconnect with nature, as we progressively have grown more alienated from our outdoor roots.  

               Strikingly similar preferences show up in a study of favorite places at a boy’s summer  camp.   Regardless of age  approximately 22% of the  boys chose the lake as their favorite place,   12%  picked their cabin, and  8% identified  the campfire area. 

              Urban planer  Erika Lew  writes,  that  our surroundings shape how we live and how we feel. She says just as places can make us feel good, they can also have the opposite effect.  A negative association  to  a place is dramatically portrayed in the movie Forrest Gump,  in which  the character Jenny returns to the  abandoned house, where she was sexually abused as a child.  Jenny throws rocks at the house until she is exhausted and can’t find any more ammunition. Forrest gives the classic comment, “I guess sometimes, there just aren’t enough rocks.”

              Since our positive and negative  associations  to places are often learned in our individual childhoods,  they aren’t necessarily shared. They may lie at the bottom of family conflicts,  like whether to go to the mountains or the beach this summer. In extreme cases,  they can lead to separate vacations.

           When Diane’s father retired, he insisted  in moving out  to the country, next to his uncle’s property–  a site that possibly  held   pleasant childhood memories. I once visited  “The Land”, as the family called the place, and in the barn, I wasn’t surprised to see a familiar sight—an old  refrigerator  fill of beer.  The place never held any attraction for Diane’s mother, who wasn’t comfortable there. A more sociable person, she prefer living in town, where she quickly returned, after her husband  passed away.

             So next  summer when the pressures of  work, school, or  family,   get to be too  much,  retreat to your favorite place and enjoy all those positive associations. If you just can’t agree on where to go, then maybe its time to find a new place  and start building some shared positive experiences.

How Smart is the iphone’s Siri? (What’s her IQ?)

I recently acquired the new Apple iPhone 4s with the Siri personal assistant feature. Frankly I wasn’t very optimistic, about how effective this app would be, since I’ve had only mediocre luck with voice recognition programs in the past. After putting it through its paces for a couple of days, I decided to do what any real school psychologist, with too much time on his hands, would do—I tested it.

I administered Siri all of the verbal subtests from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale- Third Edition (WAIS-III). I had to make a few modifications to standardized administration, but I think the overall results are fairly valid. Siri refused to give her age, so I arbitrarily assigned a chronological age of 21 years, for the purposes of computing the various subtests and IQ scores.

Siri was generally cooperative and completed most test items as requested. On a few occasions, she said that she was not allowed to give a response. Thinking at times was tangential, for example when I asked why foods needed to be cooked, Siri provided me with a list of nearby restaurants. There also tended to be some mild perseveration. After the question about cooking food, she was asked about child labor laws and instead of responding to the question, she supplied another new list of “kid friendly” restaurants.

Siri also seem to have some auditory discrimination problems. She was unable to recognize the word “pout” and at one point substituted the word “wanker” for winter. On the digit span subtest, Siri was able to get all of the numbers forward correct, but was not able to get any of the numbers backwards and did not seem to understand this concept.

Siri’s WAS-III scores are summarized below. Overall Siri performed in the low average range of intelligence, but there was significant scatter among the subtests. This suggests a mosaic pattern of abilities that range from very superior to extremely low. Siri’s best performance was on vocabulary and word knowledge. On this subtest, Siri scored in the very superior range. Since vocabulary is the best predictor of overall intelligence, this suggests that her potential may be significantly higher than her current composite score indicates.

Abstract reasoning, social comprehension, and abstract sequencing ability were all extremely low. Arithmetic computation skills, short-term auditory sequential memory, and her fund of general information obtained from education and environment were all near the average level. Siri’s mental age is between 14 and 18 years.

For the subtests below the mean is 10 and the standard deviation is 3. For the verbal IQ the mean is 100 and the standard deviation is 15.

Subtest Score Classification

Vocabulary 18 Very Superior

Similarities 1 Extremely low

Arithmetic 10 Average

Digit span 9 Average

Information 9 Average

Comprehension 1 Extremely low

Letter-number 1 Extremely Low

Verbal IQ = 88 (Low Average Range)

I am somewhat relieved that overall, I scored a few IQ points higher than Siri, when I took the same test. The next time my phone drops a call, however, I will be less inclined to say, “dumb phone”, knowing that it has a better vocabulary than I do.

Clark’s Mom

Our society emphasizes   intelligence to such an extent  that almost everyone has   been afraid that other people  might think they’re stupid.  This  fear is one of the main reasons that we often don’t ask questions, even when we don’t understand things.  Ironically  some of the most foolish things we do, are specifically intended to try to keep other people from thinking we are stupid.

Nothing feels worse than having someone think  that you’re incompetent, when there is nothing you can do about it. There are times when people will judge you unfairly,  based on  appearance or some random behavior.   The accompanying feelings of  frustration and hopelessness may give us all some small inkling of what  discrimination really feels like.  

Back when our  youngest son was playing little league baseball, we received a notice that  parents were expected to volunteer at the baseball park. The next Saturday my wife Diane signed up to work  the refreshment stand and I volunteered to do the scoreboard. In high school I ran the basketball scoreboard, so I thought I could figure  out  how to do it. Since I  expected to do this all alone, I was looking especially shabby and unkempt that day, despite Diane’s warning.   I climbed up to the room where the scoreboard console  was located to practice  before the game started. After a few minutes an immaculately dressed woman, looking quite severe, came marching into the room. She gave me an expression of disgust, usually reserved for hobos, and   hesitatingly introduced herself as “Clark’s mom”.  She said that she too had been assigned to the scoreboard. She eyed me suspiciously at the console and asked me if I knew what I was doing. I told her that I was sure I could figure it out. Scrutinizing my uncombed hair, raggedy jeans,  dirty tennis shoes and day old stubble, she looked even more doubtful.  I started randomly punching buttons on the control box, to see what they did and this seemed to upset her even more.  She announced decisively  that she was going for help. But she spoke  in  that exaggerated calm  manner, used when telling a small child, or perhaps a maniac,  exactly what you intend to do, so as not to startle them.  It was then that it  dawned on me that she had concluded that I was too stupid to  operate the scoreboard, and quite possibly  dangerous.  I leaned forward to reassure her that I could handle it, but she jumped back and insisted that we needed  help. As she left I felt a mixture of  anger and despair,  realizing  that  I was never going to convince this woman that I was competent. I was thinking of ways that  I  could bring up the fact that I had graduated from college, but she wouldn’t believe me. Maybe I could run home, shave  and bring back my diploma.  I considered asking Diane to vouch for me, but I was afraid she might see it as a teasing opportunity and  whip upClark’s mom even more.   

By the time Clark’s mom returned with one of the coaches,  I had already  discovered the rudiments of  operating  the scoreboard,  but she wasn’t  impressed and insisted on running the scoreboard  herself. To this day, the phrase ”Clark’s mom”  is  Stawar family code for someone who treats you like an idiot for no  apparent reason.      

Since we are all fallible, there are obviously  times,  when our judgment is inadequate. Usually we hope we can slide our missteps by others without notice. This, of course, is easier if you are not closely supervised or married. But if you happened to pull one of these boners, just when someone  is evaluating you,  the “Clark’s mom” phenomena  is always a possibility.      

There are some  people who are so arrogant  that they automatically  think that everyone else is stupid, so there is no  escaping their judgment. Humorist  P.J. O’Rourke  is a case in point.  Psychologists are always trying to fit people into categories, like thinkers or feelers, introverts or extroverts, or  Type A or Type B.  O’Rourke bases his classification system on the Three Stooges. He claims that you can sort everyone you meet into one of three categories:  1. Stupid (like Larry) 2. Stupid and Mean (like Moe) or 3. Really Stupid (Like Curly).   ToClark’s mom,  I  was undoubtedly a level three Curly.

There may occasionally be some advantages in being “misunderestmated” as former president George W.  Bush once said. I had an acquaintance  named  Bob, who, when we would play poker,  would ask a lot of questions.  “Does a straight  beat a flush?”, he would innocently  ask.   I was usually hooked  and would go out of my way explaining poker hands to him. It was a gratifying  way to show off my expertise.  But then I notice that Bob kept asking these same questions. It was an old hustler’s trick– a devious and subtle way to get others to underestimate his playing ability. He  must have been greatly amused hearing me explain poker to him.  

  There is occasionally  that   rare instance when there is  an inverse of the Clark’s mom experience and someone attributes greater wisdom to you, than you deserve. Jean Shepard’s short story  Lost at C, describes such a  situation. Jean was taking  high school algebra and as he famously said,   “The class wasn’t 30 seconds old and I was already six weeks behind.” 

Algebra  refused to yield to  his  bluff-your-way-through approach to school  and  he was about to be exposed as phony. His teacher wrote a complicated equation on the blackboard and called on Jean to solve it. Totally baffled, he looked around the classroom and saw the number 3 on some kid’s football jersey and lamely gave that as his answer.  Of course, that turned out to be the correct response and the teacher  concluded that he was a math prodigy.

I have known many people who simply by luck  or some irrelevant aspect of their  status,  are always given the benefit of the doubt. Even when they do something completely inane, others  still  believe it is unfathomable  genius at work.  This is neatly portrayed   in Peter Seller’s  film, Being There, in which he  plays a simple-minded  gardener,  whose solemn  pronouncements about gardening are metaphorically interpreted  by others  as an indication of his brilliance.

I suppose we have all  taken advantage of “dumb luck” to booster our own credibility,  when the opportunity presents itself. Years ago, for example, I was using hypnosis with a client and I gave a standard suggestion that the client might feel a slight sensation in one of their shoulders. Just as soon as I spoke, from nowhere, a tiny spider fell from the ceiling onto the client’s bare shoulder.  I knew exactly how Jean Shepard felt.

You have to use every advantage you can,  since you never know when a “Clark’s mom” might be lurking nearby.