Man Enough: An Interdisciplinary New York University Graduate Student Colloquium on Masculinity, presents:

Institution, Work and the Masculine Self.

On Thursday, 19 February 2009, 5-7 pm, in the Great Room, 1st Floor, 19 University Place, New York City

Free and open to the public

What role do work and institution play in the gendered construction of masculine self-consciousness and what are the effects of hegemonic masculinities as constructed through work? How have the changing concepts of “man’s work” or the “all-male sphere”, over the last century or so, operated upon male self awareness, representation and action, and what relationships may be perceived between the construction of masculinity through institution and work, and military interventionism? Centered around a discussion of these and related topics our panel features:

‘The Literary Study of Victorian Masculinities’ – Benedick Turner, PhD, Department of English, NYU

‘Keeping Workers Out of the Spineless Class: Samuel Gompers, the American Federation of Labor, and Masculinity in the Making of Labor’s Foreign Policy, 1895-1918’ – Justin Jackson, PhD candidate, Department of History, Columbia University

Film screening: ‘Debating Masculinity’: A short film of interviews with five leading voices in masculinity studies – Introduced by Josep M. Armengol, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Professor, Department of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, SUNY at Stony Brook

Moderator: Josep M. Armengol

Man Enough Blog

A new psychological study suggests that it is the experience of making certain purchases (like movie tickets, meals in restaurants) that bring us happiness, by satisfying higher order needs for social acceptance and vitality, rather than the actual products involved. "These findings support an extension of basic need theory, where purchases that increase psychological need satisfaction will produce the greatest well-being," said Ryan Howell of San Francisco State University. In his experiment, Howell asked participants to answer a series of questions about recent purchases. The common theme was that people saw experiential purchases as money better spent, regardless of the amount spent or the income of the individual. “Purchased experiences provide memory capital… We don’t tend to get bored of happy memories like we do with a material object”.

Buying experiences, not possessions, leads to greater happiness, EurekAlert.org

A recent article in Psychological Science by Adam Galinsky and others entitled ‘Power and Perspectives Not Taken’ is a fascinating study about the effects of power on perception. The team conducted four experiments, before each the participants were primed with high-power or low-power. In the first, participants were asked to draw an E on their forehead, those with high power were more likely to draw it correctly, while the low would adopt the perspective of the other, thus drawing it backwards. The next two, participants were given a message and asked to interpret how a friend might perceive the message. In the second the message seemed sincere, while privileged background knowledge about the speaker suggested sarcasm; in the third, it seems sarcastic while being sincere. Both cases showed high-power people to be less likely to take into account that other people did not have access to their privileged information. The last experiment involved the participants identifying expressions of happiness, fear, anger or sadness from a set of 24 images. The high-power were more likely to misidentify the emotion. All together, it seems that people with a lot of power see the world very different from the rest, more solipsistically in that they fail to consider the minds of others, instead projecting on them their own privileged states, which may in turn account for why they are worse at empathy. This could have "wide-ranging implications, from business to politics." says Galinsky. "Presidents who preside over a divided government (and thus have reduced power) might be psychologically predisposed to consider alternative viewpoints more readily than those that preside over unified governments." The complete study is up on the Northwestern site, get it quick should they take it down.

Power and perspectives not taken, [doc]

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Stie, Cmabridge Uinervtisy

General Intelligence Factor, Scientific American

Sins of forgetting
Transience: gradual loss of information from short and long-term memory as a result of time.
Absent-mindedness: failure of attention during retrieval or encoding.
Blocking: inability to retrieve previously stored information, "tip of the toungue" phenomenon.

Sins of distortion
Misattribution: failure of source memory, when incorrect source is identified and when it is not.
Suggestibility: influence that things like question phrasing can have on memory. Manifestation of misinformation.
Bias: largely the consistency bias, in which people overestimate the similarity between their current and previous attitudes, allowing their present state alter past memories.

Sin of intrusion
Persistence: inability to forget the things we most want to. Cause of problems like post-traumatic stress disorder.

Daniel L. Schacter, The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers (Paperback), Amazon.com

So it’s Rorschach and Prozac and everything is groovy.
"The Curse of Millhaven," Nick Cave

Back when parlor games were popular, there was one going around Europe called Klexographie. It involved spilling ink on a piece of paper and folding it in half. The sheet was then passed around among people, with each one telling a story based on what they saw in the image. In the early 1920’s, Swiss psychiatrist and proponent of psychoanalysis Hermann Rorschach was the first to apply the same concept to psychology. The Rorschach test was originally meant to test "perception and apperception" - form, perceived movement, color -  rather than imagination. However, its applications soon included using it to probe the subconscious of patients, by seing what kind of images they project on a random splash of color. There are ten official inkblots: five are black ink on white, two are black and red ink on white, three are multicolored, and while the Rorschach Society claims the blots are copyrighted, they should be in the public domain based on when they were first created and how long the creator has been dead. Now, it’s possible to give yourself this classic test in the form of the Klexographie Inkblot Oracle, which works similar to divination by reading tea leaves, coffee grounds, fireplace ashes, or candle wax. Just think of a question and the patterns/symbols in the image should help you with the answer. If there is still something unclear, try another blot. It’s interesting how you can see completely different things in the same image on different days.

Klexographie Inkblot Oracle

Coventry University has started a two-year Masters of Science program in Parapsychology, which aims to examine the middle ground between science and religion through a study of the paranormal. Among the things the first 15 graduate students will do in the Fall will be investigating haunted houses, experimenting with extra-sensory perception and researching the mystery of life after death. Students will also use yoga and meditation to extend and enhance their personal development. At last, a program for aspiring ghost-busters.

Ghostly syllabus for new degree, BBC.co.uk
Coventry University

Foetus: Tough on the outside, sensitive inside. Shy at first, but warm up to people.
Log: Laid back, social types. Trusting of strangers, sometimes gullible.
Yearner: Open but suspicious and cynical. Slow to make up their minds and stubborn to change it.
Soldier: Quiet and reserved. Set high standards for themselves and others.
Freefall: Enjoy the company of others, but can be brash and thin-skinned. Do not like criticism or extreme situations.
Starfish: Open and helpful to others, but do not like to be the center of attention.

Sleep position gives personality clue, BBC.co.uk 

A joint study between the Mayo Clinic physicians and Arizona State school of journalism examined 1,203 newspaper articles about neurological conditions from 2003 and found that 20% of them had medical errors or exaggerations. The articles were taken from the New York Times and eight other regional newspapers with circulation over 200,000. The most common mistake was exaggerating the effectiveness of treatments. Aren’t you glad you get your brain news on the internet?

Newspaper coverage of neurologic conditions incorrect 20 percent of the time, study shows, EurekAlert.org
Mayo Clinic News

Ambien, the most popular sleep medication in the US with over 24 million prescription in 2004, may cause sleep-walking, driving, talking, even stealing. Timothy Morgenthaler of the Mayo Clinic Sleep Disorders Center says he has seen many cases of people sleepwalking and sleep-eating after taking the drug, behavior that stopped when they went off Ambien. He reported 5 such cases in the journal Sleep Medicine in 2002 and others at the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center reported 19 more last year. Reports to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) show more instances of sleepwalking with Ambien than with all the other sleep aids combined.

Somnambulism, or partial arousal, is a disorder in which a person is neither awake or asleep. Ambien might prevent people from waking up completely when something disturbs their sleep, so they end up in partial arousal. This would explain why they are able to carry out routine tasks, albeit imperfectly at times, and why they do not remember doing so when questioned afterwards. The most absurdly hilarious case of Ambien-related somnambulism is probably Lt. Judith Renee Lasswell, 39. Last September, she was arrested for shoplifting after she sleepwalked into a Navy base exchange, picked up an "X-Files" DVD and tried to return it for store credit. As a result, her top-secret security clearance was revoked and, in addition to larceny charges, she could face a dishonorable discharge. "I’ve never had a problem before in my life until I took Ambien, and it’s literally ruined my career and everything I ever worked for," said Lasswell. "I have gaps in memory from the whole time I was on Ambien, which is very terrref=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somnambulism”>Sleepwalking, Wiki
Automatism (case law), Wiki

The free-content multilingual online encyclopedia, Wiki, has launched two new portals: the mind and brain portal started by Lacatosias (Italian philosopher Francesco Franco), the psychology portal started by Zelifg (New York philosophy/psychology student). In addition to the usual reference entries, these portals feature psychology and neuroscience news, as well as recent research. Wikipedia has many other portals, including religion (from Baha’i to Zoroastrianism), history (incl. egyptology, war), arts and culture (anime and manga, fictional countries and worlds), science, sports, and technology. There are also geographically specific portals for a good number of countries around the world.

Mind and brain portal, Wiki
Psychology portal, Wiki

MIT has a free open educational resource, the OpenCourseWare (OCW), where it shares reading lists, lecture notes and problem sets, for many of its undergraduate and graduate courses from an array of disciplines including ‘Brain and Cognitive Science’, ‘Linguistics and Philosophy’, and ‘Science, Technology, and Society.’ Susan Hockfield, MIT’s president, believes the OCW "expresses in an immediate and far-reaching way MIT’s goal of advancing education around the world." Word, I could read this site for weeks, it’s an invaluable resource and I’m beaming I found it. A few of the many available course materials are:

Animal Behavior
Human Memory and Learning
Cognitive and Behavioral Genetics
Language and Thought
Mind and Machines
Cultural History of Technology
Drugs, Politics, and Culture

Full listings at OCW.mit.edu

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a psychological treatment which believes that thoughts are the causes of emotions (not vice versa) and that mental disorders stem from irrational thoughts which can be replaced by more realistic substitutes. Still, therapy takes time, effort and money, meanwhile cognitive therapist are few and far between. Fortunately, now you can be treated for depression over the internet from the comfort of your own home, and the British Journal of Psychiatry will vouch for it. One of the examples of online treatment is Australian National University’s open-access MoodGym, free to use, confidential and backed by several studies. Though it’s recommended that such treatments be used as supplements to normal therapy, people have showed improvement from the internet versions alone.

MoodGym, ANU.edu
Internet-based self-help for depression: randomized controlled trial, British Journal of Psychiatry

Richer people tend to be happier than poorer people, according to sociological researcher Glenn Firebaugh, Pennsylvania State University, and graduate student Laura Tach, Harvard University. Their research is focused on whether the income effect on happiness results largely from the things money can buy (absolute income effect) or from comparing one’s income to the income of others (relative income effect). They present their research in a session paper, titled "Relative Income and Happiness: Are Americans on a Hedonic Treadmill?," at the American Sociological Association Centennial Annual Meeting on August 14.

Firebaugh argues that, in evaluating their own incomes, individuals compare themselves to their peers of the same age. Therefore a person’s reported level of happiness depends on how his or her income compares to others in the same age group. Using comparison groups on the basis of age, the researchers find evidence of both relative and absolute effects, but relative income is more important than absolute income in determining the happiness of individuals in the United States. This may result in a hedonic treadmill, because incomes in the United States rise over most of the adult lifespan.

This seems to be support French philosopher Rene Girard’s theory of mimetic desire. While we assume that desire is either objective or subjective, in reality it usually rests on a third party. We want what others want. Opposition strengthens desire, because rivalry validates the object of desire as something worth pursuing. Inversely, quiet and untroubled possession weakens desire. E.g. The man whose wife I desire had perhaps ceased to desire her over time. His desire was dead, but upon contact with mine, which is living, it regains life.

Money can buy you happiness but only relative to your peer’s income. Eurekalert.org
I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. Rene Girard

A national survey of the general adult population and of adults who have needed or received some form of mental health treatment find that more than a quarter (27%) of all adults have received some form of mental health treatment over a two-year period.

Among those patients who have received treatment in the past two years:
1/3 (34%) received both therapy and drugs.
1/2 (47%) of patients used prescription drugs but did not receive therapy.
1/5 (19%) of patients received therapy but did not use prescription drugs.

A modest majority of those who received treatment were extremely (15%) or very (39%) satisfied with their care, with a much larger share (85%) at least somewhat satisfied. There was little difference in levels of satisfaction among patients who received drugs and therapy, therapy only, or drugs only.

Quarter of US Adults Have Received Mental Health Treatment Over Two-Year Period, MedicalNewsToday.com

"I think we are poised at a wonderful time in our history to be able to explore religion and spirituality in a way which was never thought possible," told Andrew Newberg, a radiologist at UPenn, to BBC’s Discovery program. Using brain imaging, Newberg and friends studied a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks as they meditated for about an hour. When the monks attained concentration they were asked to pull a string that released an injection of radioactive tracer into their blood. The small amount of radioactive marker would be used to see how the die moved to active parts of the brain (this process was repeated in a normal waking state).

"There was an increase in activity in the front part of the brain, the area that is activated when anyone focuses attention on a particular task," Dr Newberg explained. Furthermore, a decrease in activity in the back part of the brain - the parietal lobe - responsible for orientation, reinforced the general suggestion that meditation leads to a lack of spatial awareness. "During meditation, people have a loss of the sense of self and frequently experience a sense of no space and time and that was exactly what we saw."

In an earlier study, Dr Newberg looked at the brain activity of Franciscan nuns during "centering" prayer. Though because of the verbal element additional parts of the brain were used, prayer also "activated the attention area of the brain, and diminished activity in the orientation area," supporting the theory that meditation and prayer have similar effects on the mind. "When someone has a mystical experience, they perceive that sense of reality to be far greater and far clearer than our usual everyday sense of reality. Since the sense of spiritual reality is more powerful and clear, perhaps that sense of reality is more accurate than our scientific everyday sense of reality."

Meditation mapped in monks, BBCNews.com. Listen
Related:
Meditation gives brain a charge, WashingtonPost.com
Meditation changes temperatures, Harvard Gazette

The BBC is running a radio program called All in the Mind. Hosted by Dr. Raj Persaud, it explores current issues in cognitive science, psychiatry, psychology and neurology, bringing together experts and commentators in the study of mind. Here’s BBC’s plug by Persaud: "All in the Mind provides a unique chance to meet the people at the cutting edge of research and development on all aspects of the mind and brain from around the world. Please join me as we attempt to illuminate the most complex and least understood mechanism we have so far found in the Universe - the mind."

BBC - Radio 4 - All in the Mind
Listen to the lates episode (Doesn’t work? Download RealPlayer)

A recent study detailed this week in Psychological Science, suggests that people with a good memory are also more likely to break under pressure. The study took 93 undergrads from Michigan State and devided them into two groups, a high working-memory group (HWM) and a low working memory group (LWM). When they all took a 24 problem math test in a low-pressure environment, the HWM did much better. When they cranked up the pressure by telling the groups that their performance will be evaluated by math professors, the score of HWM dropped to that of the LWM group. This is just one more study to challange the accuracy of high-pressure tests like the SAT, GRE, LSAT and MCAT in predicting who will succeed in acacdemics.

Choking Under Pressure, Sian L. Beilok (Miami U) and Thomas H Carr (Michigan State).

Grasping the Intentions of Others with One’s Own Mirror Neuron System
Abstract: Understanding the intentions of others while watching their actions is a fundamental building block of social behavior. The neural and functional mechanisms underlying this ability are still poorly understood. To investigate these mechanisms we used functional magnetic resonance imaging. Twenty-three subjects watched three kinds of stimuli: grasping hand actions without a context, context only (scenes containing objects), and grasping hand actions performed in two different contexts. In the latter condition the context suggested the intention associated with the grasping action (either drinking or cleaning). Actions embedded in contexts, compared with the other two conditions, yielded a significant signal increase in the posterior part of the inferior frontal gyrus and the adjacent sector of the ventral premotor cortex where hand actions are represented. Thus, premotor mirror neuron areas, "areas active during the execution and the observation of an action," previously thought to be involved only in action recognition are actually also involved in understanding the intentions of others. To ascribe an intention is to infer a forthcoming new goal, and this is an operation that the motor system does automatically.

According to this study by UCLA neuroscientists, specialized brain cells called mirror neurons work in our understanding of others. These cells behave the same when one is performing an action as when they are observing another do it. To identify which areas of the brain are most active for a given task, the study used a brain imaging technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), to subtract the activation patterns from two different stimuli, thereby highlighting brain regions that are activated differentially in response to the difference in stimulus. Basically, fMRI (ephemerai uses a machine that scans the blood flow to functioning areas of the brain and pops out a picture, like this one from the aforementioned study:

The rest of Grasping the Intentions of Others with One’s Own Mirror Neuron System, PLoSBiology.org.

According to cognitive neuroscientists, we are conscious of only about 5% of our cognitive activity, so most of our decisions, actions, emotions, and behavior depends on the 95% of brain activity that goes beyond our conscious awareness (a change from the earlier 10% estimate).

Gerald Zaltman, an emeritus professor at Harvard Business School and co-founder of Olson Zaltman Associates business consulting firm, came up with "a technique for eliciting interconnected constructs that influence thought and behavior." U.S. Patent No. 5,436,830, the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) uses research groups in which participants cut out pictures that represent their thoughts and feelings about a particular subject, even if they can’t explain why. The researchers then deduce the subject’s "core, a deep metaphor simultaneously embedded in a unique setting." Some are drawn to seasonal or heroic myths, or images like blood and fire and mother. Others to deep concepts like journey and transformation. Still it seems that the menu of these unconscious metaphors is limited and universal.

Research has shown that many people with schizophrenia can also suffer from "clinically meaningful olfactory impairment," which includes dysfunction in higher brain centers such as the parietal lobes–the part of the brain that’s responsible for integrating sensory output so as to understand something, like reading social cues or contextualizing those cues. Schizophrenics are unable to manage social relationships or summon a social context for whatever encounter they are experiencing.

Also, research on minimally conscious patients shows that there is significant activity in the language centers of the brain when they hear personal stories recounted by a family member.

Mysteries of the Mind, USNews.