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Hey There!
Are you guys all ready for Halloween? It seems like it sneaks up on me every year! On to the Resource! 🙂
While looking for submission calls, I stumbled across an oldie but a goodie. The Classified ads on the Poets and Writers website. They have lots of open calls for various markets and listings for groups, etc. It's a pretty good place to check out once in a while.
Poets and Writers Classifieds
The Classifies page has some different categories to choose from: Manuscript Calls, Conferences, Contests, Publication, Retreats, Residencies, Resources, Services, and Workshops.
Once you make a selection, you can peruse the ads and choose options to pursue. The Contest section is my favorite. It's got tons of resources to choose from. Check it out and let me know what you think.
The information is updated regularly, so I recommend you book mark it, or visit my Resources Page for the link at any time!
Happy Writing!
~ Eileen 🙂


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Human beings are built to learn languages, so I agree with Mr. Wintsch in this video when he says that learning a language is simple: "it's just speaking and doing it in a continuous way."
That is true if you have many people to speak with. English learners who are living in an English-speaking country have millions of people to practice with - in fact, they are forced to speak the language any time they go to a store, or a restaurant, or to work.
However, after living in Asia, I realized that many students who live in non-English speaking countries do not have anyone to practice with. That is why ELLLO was created; to give you a lot of short, natural conversations so you can listen a little bit everyday just like if you were living in an English speaking country.
If you listened to me on TOEFL TV last week, you should know that listening and reading are just 25% of language learning. You also need "output" (speaking and writing), language focus (grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation), and fluency practice (speed training).
Everyone feels shyness when learning a new language. I know I did and I've seen it a million times in my students... but shyness is a bad excuse. Get over it. If you want to learn, shyness is not an option. You WILL make mistakes. It's ok, because, if you are human, you WILL learn quickly.
In the words of Mr. Wintsch, "if one wants to learn the language, one has to speak the language." So far, 28 of you said that you need more output. Here is your chance to practice some speaking. Don't do it tomorrow. Watch the video then click here for some speaking practice.
Hello, my name is Leslie Wintsch and I live in the Canary Islands. I've been teaching for more than 40 years and there is only very few secrets to learning a language. If one wants to learn the language, one has to speak the language. The more contact one has, the better. So it's just speaking and doing it in a continuous way. The most important if you are going to study the language is to come to class regularly. If you are going to study on your own, set up an hour where you are doing it regularly each day.
If you practice the language daily, you will learn the language. I have never had a failure. I have never known anybody who did not learn the language who practiced continuously. Why do people not learn? They don't learn because they stop. But you can learn. All you have to do is say, "This time, I'm going to practice my language. I'm going to do it regularly and I will be successful."

subset: commoncrawl


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This is your very first post. Click the Edit link to modify or delete it, or start a new post. If you like, use this post to tell readers why you started this blog and what you plan to do with it.
This is the post excerpt.
This is your very first post. Click the Edit link to modify or delete it, or start a new post. If you like, use this post to tell readers why you started this blog and what you plan to do with it.
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WALL Street's mettle will be tested this week as traders return from summer vacations to resurfacing signs of weakness after a six-month rally for stocks.

Increased volume last week has investors keen to see what direction the market will take when it opens tomorrow after the long Labor Day holiday weekend. So far, pullbacks have been viewed as buying opportunities by those eager to get a foothold into the market. With only second-tier economic data on tap this week and slim earnings releases until the new reporting season, stocks will be relying on those buying opportunities to move higher.

Last week, the S&P lost 1.2 per cent, the Dow fell 1.1 per cent, while the Nasdaq was off 0.5 per cent.

September has historically been one of the nastiest months of the year, a notoriety solidified last year by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the takeover of Merrill Lynch and the bailout of American International Group.

Analysts point out that autumn's pattern of declines is well known and could already be priced into the market.

Healthcare stocks will be in focus with President Barack Obama set to address a rare joint session of Congress on Wednesday in an effort to reinvigorate his push for healthcare reform.

The insurance industry strongly objects to a proposed government-run health insurance plan and investors have fretted over what the public option will mean for corporate profits.

As popularity for the plan has waned, investors have become less nervous about what the corporate fallout will be. If Obama is able to revitalise the debate and sway public opinion, insurance and other related stocks could face a sell off.

Wall Street faces a lighter week on economic data – reports on initial weekly jobless claims and preliminary September consumer sentiment are readily available.


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1300 36 33 32
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Anthony Powell was born in 1905. After working in publishing and as a scriptwriter, he began to write for the Daily Telegraph in the mid-1930s. He served in the army during World War II and subsequently became the fiction reviewer on the TLS. Next came five years as literary editor of Punch. He was appointed a Companion of Honour in 1988. In addition to the twelve-novel sequence, A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell is the author of seven other novels, and four volumes of memoirs, To Keep the Ball Rolling.
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…has upwards of 65 words in his vocabulary (and seems to be adding a couple every day). i won't bore you with the entire list, but chief amongst them are: car, truck, daddy, mommy, please, nope, and (of course) buckeye.
…and speaking of buckeyes, sam thinks that anything that is red or anything with a logo is a "buckeye." mike's brainwashing has started to manifest. this boy is going to be bleeding scarlet and grey long before he understands football.
…likes to demonstrate his smarts. he never ceases to amaze me with his ability to observe, remember, and make connections. a couple of cases in point:
- one day i was listening to music, and i decided to play "eine kleine nachtmusik" for sam. he recognized the music right away as the song that comes from the "dooba-doo", and went directly over and turned it on so that it would sing along with the what was playing on the computer.
- a couple of days ago i got sam some crackers for a snack. for a table, i took one of his toy baskets and turned it over and set the crackers down for him. the following day mike came upstairs to get sam some crackers for snacktime, and when he went back down to the basement, sam had already turned the basket over, ready for crackers. when mike asked him, "where do the crackers go?" sam walked over to the basket and pointed.
i could probably go on and on (okay, i know i could go on and on), but i won't.
…still loves cars and trucks. he can now identify and say "tractor", "dump truck", and "scoop" (scoop = front loader). he loves the book cars and trucks and things that go (thank you morbecks!) and (still) enjoys looking at his truck board book. he rarely goes anywhere without a vehicle in hand, and he must have at least one or two before he can settle down for bedtime.
…is very outgoing. he has been known to hug strangers. he says hi to everyone. he also plays with anyone and everyone that will give him the time of day at the playground, and he's shown himself to be very good at sharing on at least one occasion. it made me pop my buttons. (you may be surprised that i still had any. i was too.)
*pop pop pop* and there go a few more…


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I was recently talking with a family member about the new SOPA an PIPA laws that they were trying to put into affect...I will not go into my rant {too much} about how awful I think these bills are, but I will give you INFO about these bills...
Although these bills are targeted at websites that allow or discuss piracy, they are also targeting sites that have "user generated content" such as SoundCloud or Etsy. If these bills would have passed 5-10 years ago, we probably wouldn't have youtube right now, that's how BIG of an impact these bills could have on us! If these acts go through, they could even censor our search results!!
YES, sites that break the law should be taken down, but these acts would allow the attorney general or even and INDIVIDUAL person to create a blacklist to censor a website- without having to prove that they have infringed on any copyright laws!
Supporters of PIPA and SOPA: RIAA, MPAA, News Corp, TimeWarner, Walmart, Nike, Tiffany, Chanel, Rolex, Sony, Juicy Couture, Ralph Lauren, VISA, Mastercard, Comcast, ABC, Dow Chemical, Monster Cable, Teamsters, Rupert Murdoch, Lamar Smith (R-TX), John Conyers (D-MI)
Opponents of PIPA and SOPA: Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, craigslist, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, eBay, AOL, Mozilla, Reddit, Tumblr, Etsy, Zynga, EFF, ACLU, Human Rights Watch, Darrell Issa (R-CA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Ron Paul (R-TX)
Last Wednesday there was a HUGE internet blackout where sites like Google, Wikipedia, Mozilla {and many others that opposed this bill} participated in... and it worked! The vote on these bills, that was supposed to take place 1/24/2012, has now been postponed. I truly don't think this is the END of it by any means, but it's good news for now!!!


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There will most likely be a ban on fireworks due to the Texas drought! It's quite hot here. Yet, our gorgeous Dynamite Red Crape Myrtles finally blossomed. We have two - on both sides of the house. We thought something happened cuz everyone else's crape/crepe (sp???) myrtles have been in full throttle. We had our downpour last week and look!
How funny that her name has an explosive connotation. Planted by our homestead - thar she blows! We sure don't need fireworks around here: either the physical OR literal type! Thank you, very much!
On this very day our sermon was on JOY and we're told it's a must, i.e., a command in The Bible. Read 1 Thessalonians 5:16 a few times. Ben Stuart preached on it today. He tells us: "Every time there is a 'when,' we rejoice."
Even today WHEN you-know-who is slipping and we see a shadow of darkness appear?
Ok, Lord....HOW!? Oh, yea. Joy is a gift. We receive this gift through The Holy Spirit WHEN we seek and ask!
...even WHEN the fuse has been lit!
As I tiptoe away from the fireworks of the flesh (it's so dangerous!), I contemplate on a sovereign God! And I am filled with joy at the thought that MY GOD is stomping on that fuse for me!
The joy of the Lord is your strength. (Vava)
Nehemiah 8:10


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At 10:37 a.m., a man or boy was shot in the leg in the 2500 block of East 79th Street. He was not cooperating with police.
The shooting took place at a small food store in that block, but there was no
indication that the victim was a worker at the store.


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Thursday, November 3, 2011
NEW HOME: "Flavors of Asia" is now "Asian Flavors"
Reaching 150,000 readers in the Upper Midwest five state area in print each month from 1991 to 2011, Asia Pages' "Flavors of Asia" column continues here to offer a world of culinary information.
Asia's culinary history dates back 6,000 years to the Nomads in China who stopped wandering and settled down to grow rice and other agricultural products. It is a history rich in the influences of conquerors and the traditions of centuries of cooking. It encompasses a wide variety of food and the people who help shape the culinary arts of Asia.
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This website is archived for historical purposes and is no longer being maintained or updated.
Florida's CDC-funded AI project is the Comprehensive Assessment, Strategic Success (COMPASS) initiative. The main goals of COMPASS are to provide access to tools and resources for comprehensive, systematic community health assessment and health improvement planning practice using theory-based framework guided by NACCHO's Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships (MAPP) framework, and to establish this comprehensive systematic assessment practice across all 67 county health departments in the state. Florida has strengthened its capacity by deploying various assessment models and ensured stability by training staff and community partners. COMPASS has provided mentorship at several U.S. Army bases with plans to adopt Florida's MAPP-based community health assessment framework.
Related Links
- Page last reviewed: August 21, 2014 (archived document)
- Content source:


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While in the middle of teaching class a guy dressed in a black suit, turquoise shirt, black tie, black shoes and no socks starts yelling about his wares which he carried on his head. Both I and the class looked out the window and laughed.
When I asked what the man was selling they mentioned a type of snack I'd never heard of made from sweet plantain and peanuts.
One of the students smiled up at me, shook his head, and said, "Branding."
I was shocked.
Of course I wanted to know what the young man knew about branding, but the lesson about HIV took precedence. None-the-less I let a couple of the students leave the class to purchase the snack because I was so impressed by the man. Unique in every way. Was what he sold fresh or delicious? I don't know. But how he sold his product impressed me.
I've heard a lot about branding since I became an author. The authority for me is Kristen Lamb. She knows how to break it all down. Has this helped me develop my brand?
I know I have one, it's just that I haven't sat down to figure out what I want to portray to the world so they will always link me to it and buy my book. One day I'll figure out how to infuse my kooky, honest, straight to the point, smart aleck, chocolate loving, take no s*&t, kick ass ways into my brand.
Do you have a brand?


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March 15, 2016
Sir, John Thornhill discusses an upcoming book of Andy Stern titled "Raising The Floor". In it the author "argues powerfully for the US government to provide a universal basic income (UBI) of $1,000 a month to every citizen" "A basic income — welfare for the digital age" March 15.
Having seen a real fortune in oil income being wasted and stolen away in my homeland Venezuela, I have for soon two decades been proposing something similar… although clearly there we would be talking about much less money per citizen.
In Venezuela, during the years of XXI Century Socialism I seriously doubt its poor got more than 10% of what would have been their per capita share of the country's net oil revenues.
And lately I have also proposed a Pro-Equality tax on the wealth of all paid out in equal shares to all.
But, when it comes to opposition to the idea, that will surely come the strongest from the redistribution profiteers… those who have a vested interest in doing the redistribution.
@PerKurowski ©


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PHOENIX -- Valentine's Day and chocolate seem to go hand in hand. Just ask the folks at Phoenix-based Fairytale Brownies. They've been baking up a storm and have already shipped some 4,500 gifts all over the country.
3TV's Yetta Gibson stopped by the Phoenix shop Thursday to check out their gourmet brownie and cookie gifts.
Fairytale Brownies is located at 4610 E. Cotton Center Boulevard, Suite #100. The shop is open Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-3 p.m.


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who can argue with strawberries?
probably no one. not you and definitely not me.
after going to a few mountain bike races with dillon and uzo, i decided i wanted to get some embroidery floss to make friendship bracelets a la 3rd grade (and let's be real, most years after that, too). it just seemed like my normal surroundings for making them, sitting in torn pants on the ground in the woods... it brought on such a flood of awesome memories. so yeah, i went on purl soho to get some floss because they basically have EVERY COLOR IN THE WORLD and there's nowhere around here that has any besides michael's (the devil) anyways, but as soon as i hit their homepage i got an eye full of the cutest fabric quite possibly ever. it stole my friendship bracelets' thunder pretty hardcore. first i was like "ok ok ok, i'll get three yards of the orange strawberry, i haven't spent any money on supplies in three months and this is amazing." and then hunted for embroidery floss. alas, i ended up ordering two other prints too... and every few minutes kept upping the yardage haha. hey guys, zero regret, it was a preorder and one doesn't stumble upon awesomeness of this level often.
i figure, i don't have a job for fun! i got enough for a dress or skirt or top of each... and a bit leftover for a quilted pillow. i also got like 15 colors of embroidery floss and some organic white canvas and twill to dye and turn into a box bag tutorial for you guys (hopefully soon!). what a great celebration for my sewing machine finally being in working order again right? i'm really excited!
so, if you have an amazing fabric habit too, here's the goods...
windham fabrics - briar rose: lilac calico, orange strawberry (sold out!) and pink strawberry
if you get any let me know! i'd love to see what you make with it, i don't think you can go wrong :) happy weekend!
by laura at 09:27
Labels: life, pretty things, sewing
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I just finished the first newsletter of 2013 and thought I would go make an attempt of getting a post done for our blog and update everyone on the goings on in Wise County, TX.
DonationsOur guild has been very busy little beavers over the last few months. We presented the CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) center with 122 Christmas Stockings for the children this year. Many of our ladies put in several hours getting the stockings made. Thanks to all of them.
Sunset RetreatBack on the last weekend of November, many of our members attended a retreat out in Sunset Texas. We had been asked to help make quilts for the beds of the retreat in exchange for a weekend of fun and pampering. Let me just say, we ALL had a wonderful time. The accommodations were just great. There, we had more than enough room for our quilting projects.
There were cutting tables, (Karen and Jo Ellen)
design walls, (Kay)
ironing tables, (Kay and Diane)
and two tables (each). (Diane and Karen)
The food was amazing, the bed were cozy and Christy and her staff were there to help us with anything we needed. We were able to get many projects either completed or very close to finished.
Here are some of the projects the ladies worked on.
Debbie stayed busy.
Betty got busy with her sampler.
Jo Ellen was turning projects out right and left.
Diane completed a wall project for a Christmas Present.
Donna was a very busy beaver also.
I was even able to get a few small projects finished.
Now for a few pictures, just for fun.
Join us next time.
That's all for now.


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Boyfriend. He does not yet have a name here. I don't want to name him here just yet. Let's call him "William." After my grandfather and my uncle, who are two of the most warm-hearted and loving people you'll ever know, with just a splash of wicked humor and a lot of reserved spunk.
He listens to me recount the events of my life, and most often shakes his head in disbelief. "Jesus, what did they do to you? You've overcome so much."
In my broken moments, and in the moments when I couldn't see clear of this path, I didn't understand how he could hear these stories and not see me as weak and broken. He has always seen me as strong, smart, and resilient. I was not able to see what he saw.
I was only able to see the wounded little girl, cowering in the corner from life, and everyone in it. I was only able to see the hurt and the abuse and the loneliness. I was only able to see someone weak and sad, broken by a lifetime of abuse and injustice.
And in this past year with him, I have begun to see what he sees. Someone who didn't submit to defeat, no matter how gross it got. Someone who fought, every step of the way. Someone who continually took steps, no matter how small or frightening, to do what needed to be done to survive, overcome, and prevail.
And I have.
I have cut ties with the people who hurt me. I have refused to allow anyone to stay if the couldn't treat me with respect and dignity. I have forgiven, moved forward, and refused to allow a lifetime of cruelty turn me into a hateful, vengeful, or otherwise unpleasant, unhappy person.
If that's not strength, I don't know what is.
And I am so in love with the man who came into my life, and showed me these truths about myself. Who loved me at my weakest, and hung around long enough to see me at my strongest.


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In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours. ~Mark Twain
He must have been talking about Salt Lake City in March. Upon waking this morning & looking out the window, my first thought was, "Snow!?! What the heck!?!" Granted it's mostly melted now & we have joyous slush for the rest of the day; I was amazed that from one day to the next the weather could so drastically change.
But, my favorite part of this in-between weather is getting to wear my new boots. My SIL, Dawn, got some cool galoshes for Christmas this year. Since then I had my eye out for a similar pair. During a recent outing to Target, I found just the pair for me. (You may have seen them featured in an earlier blog post.) While I was there, I couldn't help myself & got a really cute pair for Cassidy as well. They're hidden away in a closet right now but will make an appearance in her Easter basket.
Cassidy is doing pretty well with her potty training. We still do diapers for naps & overnight, but yesterday she went all day with just one accident in the morning. Progress! I mentioned to a friend last night that I don't know if I'm "doing it right" but so far the plan, at current, is that my phone is set to go off every so many minutes (we're up to a half hour today) & she knows to go sit on the potty when she hears the timer go off. So far, so good! We'll keep you posted!


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Wow, I had close to 1,000 entries for this one which just blows my mind. :) Though, without a further ado, the winner is:
Casey of A Passion for Books!
This is actually Casey's second win on my site (first was Boy Toy) which is pretty cool for her, I guess. lol.


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(Reuters) - The city of Oakland has sued to block U.S. authorities from closing down a prominent medical marijuana dispensary that is featured on a reality television show, escalating a long-running conflict with the federal government over pot.
The lawsuit by Oakland's city attorney asks a federal judge to declare as unlawful federal government attempts to close down Harborside Health Center (http://www.harborsidehealthcenter.com/), which is featured in the Discovery Channel reality show "Weed Wars."
The action, filed on Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, follows a forfeiture action against the property where the dispensary is situated that was filed in July by the U.S. Attorney's office, officials said.
"This lawsuit is about protecting the rights of legitimate medical patients," Oakland City Attorney Barbara Parker said in a statement.
"I am deeply dismayed that the federal government would seek to deny these rights and deprive thousands of seriously ill Californians of access to safe, affordable and effective medicine," she said.
The dispute marks the latest clash between the federal government, which holds that pot is an illegal drug, and local officials in California, where voters in 1996 made the state the first in the nation to allow cannabis as medicine. A total of 17 states now allow it, including Colorado, Oregon and Washington state.
Oakland officials are not seeking damages in the lawsuit, which names as defendants Melinda Haag, the U.S. Attorney for the district, and Attorney General Eric Holder. A representative for Haag could not be reached for comment.
Oakland officials in the past have been openly critical of tough federal action against medical marijuana operations, but the filing of a lawsuit represents the city's most confrontational stance to date.
Medical marijuana dispensaries -- which sometimes offer massages and other non-medical services, though some only dispense marijuana -- are issued permits by the city of Oakland, perhaps California's most tolerant municipality when it comes to medical pot. In 2010, the city adopted plans to regulate large-scale cannabis farms, then backed off under threat from the federal government.
The city's lawsuit against the federal government is not completely unprecedented. About a decade ago, the city and county of Santa Cruz in northern California along with a local medical marijuana collective sued the federal government after a raid of that collective, said Tamar Todd, a senior staff attorney with the Drug Policy Alliance.
(Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and M.D. Golan)


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News Channel 3 sent former Scientology marketing director and Portland resident Jeff Hawkins to KATU-TV, the local ABC television station, where he revealed what happened during his years inside Scientology's world headquarters in Hemet, called "IntBase."
His account of what goes on behind these fences is one of religious punishment and imprisonment.
"Within that Hemet compound, they work 100 hour weeks, seven days a week. They have no breaks. They have no vacations of any kind. They work around the clock. They have no private time. They're paid around 40 cents an hour and they're subjected to all kinds of punishments and abuse. If they do things that are wrong or if they don't toe the line, they have to run around the buildings, sometimes for miles in their street shoes, they get thrown in the lake out there which is pretty cold this time of year. And, if they refuse to come around and toe the line and be good members, they can go to these rehabilitation camps that they have in Los Angeles and in Clearwater which are virtual prisons and people have been there for years. They don't go outside. They don't see anybody. They are paid maybe 10 cents an hour for hard manual labor. They make furniture for the churches." - KESQ.com
Monday, March 23, 2009
Exposing Scientology
Posted By Glen Maganzini at 3/23/2009 06:13:00 AM
Labels: Glen Maganzini, national news, scientology
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I excel in procrastinating.
I also excel in obsessively working on a task until complete.
Once I decide to get 'er done.
(Larry the Cable Guy is way overrated. As is his overdone phrase I used annoyingly above.)
Here is the final product of my almost-10-year-old-curious-boy's-bedroom:
Probably the only time it will be a nicely made bed.
Curious and I both stinkaroo at bed making. Workin on it.
Well, he is. Me? Not so much.
I've never really understood the art of daily bed making.
Someday I'd like to learn it. But I've got better things to do for now.
Painted a section of black wall behind the bed to ground it in the room.
Added an old barnwood frame with a display of curiosities.
Wrote some random words around the perimeter of the paint with white chalk.
Next to the bed he has lots of places to store his gatherings:
A view directly across from the bed. His coin collecting desk area.
His favorite coins went into plain frames that he can easily access.
Fake wood clipboards are the el-cheapo version to display stuff.
No need for an expensive built-in window seat.
A set of wood and metal schoolhouse chairs does the job. Scored the whole set for $10:
His collections and curiosities are displayed on the black shelves in front of the black window wall. I wanted it dark so the objects would pop.
The 6 foot antique snakeskin mount became an unusual window dressing.
Not my original plan, but not planning is typical for me.
So is spilling food on myself daily.
I adhered vintage game cards around the window trim and Mr. Puffer hangs from Mr. Snake.
Last, but not least...
This is for the peeps who thought there's no way an old elk leg could look cool:
I know you're out there. And you still may not think dat's cool.
It's okay because I like it. Plus Curious is the only one I need to please.
And Curious loves it.
His room.
All of it.


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Mr. Bercow: The hon. Gentleman talks of the importance of debt reduction, although he does so very much at national rather than local level. If the issue is of importance to him--it is right that it should be--will he tell the House what assessment he has made of the impact on the size of interest repayments on local authority debt of the change in the rules on the use of capital receipts from the sale of council houses?
Mr. Cunningham: The hon. Gentleman should not throw that red herring into the debate. The issue of capital
Lower unemployment means lower social security costs. In the past, the Opposition have criticised social security; they talk about cutting the budget and introducing swingeing measures that would make it almost impossible for people to claim social security. In fact, the cost of social security under my right hon. Friends, is down by about £4 billion--that must be welcome. In effect, it means that in order to achieve our other targets we do not have to make it more and more difficult for people who need social security to claim it.
During the period from 1979 to 1997, 42p in every pound was being used to pay off debt. That is down to about 16p at present. All in all, we must congratulate my right hon. Friends--especially on the reductions in corporation tax and capital gains tax and, more important, the assistance to be given, through reduced VAT, to small businesses with turnover of up to £54,000, and £100,000 for larger businesses. Those reductions should certainly be helpful.
Inner-city regeneration has caused much consternation and debate over the years. Under previous Governments, improvement grants were available, but people in inner-cities would now find it extremely difficult to obtain them because the Conservative Government cut them. I welcome the new initiatives to reduce VAT, to encourage inner-city regeneration--whether of property or by setting up small businesses.
Once again, I congratulate my right hon. and hon. Friends on an imaginative Budget, which gives something to everybody. I hope that they have noted the concerns that I highlighted and that, at some point in the future, they will revisit them.
Mr. Phil Willis (Harrogate and Knaresborough): It was a pleasure to be in the House to listen to the speech of the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major). It was a pleasure to listen to a speech that was part of the debate, that entered into it and offered information and informed opinion. The right hon. Gentleman's speech was in stark contrast to the comments of the Leader of the Opposition--especially the speech about "a foreign land" that he made in Harrogate two weeks ago. The right hon. Member for Huntingdon did not give the House that impression today. It was delightful to hear the right hon. Gentleman forgive his former friend, Lord Lamont--although I suspect that Lord Lamont has never forgiven me for defeating him at the general election.
I want to quote a wonderful remark made by the right hon. Member for Huntingdon--he may intervene if I do not get it right. In 1997, when the right hon. Gentleman was asked to comment on the Labour Government's policy of "education, education, education", he replied that he thought it was a good policy but that he would have put it in a different order. That brings me to a critical comment on the right hon. Gentleman's Government.
Although I would not challenge the right hon. Gentleman's knowledge and understanding of economics, I would certainly challenge the fact that successive
I, too, welcome this debate and echo the comments made at the beginning of the Budget debate by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Inverness, West (Mr. Kennedy), who said:
In terms of my right hon. Friend's comments on 7 March, two main issues were not dealt with in the Budget, and they have been addressed by Labour Members during the debate. First, there was nothing in the Budget on the care of the elderly. That was a huge omission; it is one of the most pressing issues that we face. It is not simply a pensions issue--clearly, we have had many debates about pensions--but one of how we care for our elderly. The way in which the long-term residential care needs of our population are looked after distinguishes a caring from an uncaring Government, an idea to which the hon. Member for Coventry, South (Mr. Cunningham) alluded in his speech.
There was nothing in the Budget to support local authority social service departments, which are desperately struggling with the costs of residential and nursing-care placements. It was rather sad that there was nothing to support the cross-over between health authorities, health care trusts and social services in trying to meet those needs. The Chancellor, who had the resources available, could more wisely have used his money in that way.
Mr. John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings): The hon. Gentleman may want to consider the fact that Library figures show that, in the first two years of this Government, the Chancellor reduced personal social services expenditure to the detriment of the very vulnerable groups that he describes.
Mr. Willis: I accept the hon. Gentleman's comments, but he must accept that, certainly in each of the five years before the new Labour Government's election on 1 May 1997, the resources given to local authorities for social care use were reduced, year on year; and that, more perversely, capping arrangements meant that council tax rises could not compensate for those reductions, so I would say, "A plague on both your houses!"
This debate is primarily on education, so I shall return to education as soon as possible. It was rather sad that the hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) spent virtually
The hon. Lady and the Tory party offer one specific response to our schools' needs--free schools. The response that she gave to my question about funding was appropriate, because it goes to the heart of the debate on the Tories' proposals for free schools. They seem to be suggesting that every school will be funded centrally, so I asked whether every child would receive the same level of funding. Interestingly, the answer was no. There would have to be a formula to distribute resources and that is one of the issues that has bedevilled Governments in their attempts to provide equitable resources to individual schools.
I have often discussed the issue with the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes). The tragedy of the Tories' proposal becomes clear when one considers which of the services that are currently offered by local authorities to schools would have to be offered by the schools themselves as part of the package. The costs for special educational needs for schools in an inclusive education system can be horrendous if they are not largely picked up by the central administration. The idea that each school would have to meet the requirement does not bear the critical examination that such a policy should receive. The idea that head teachers want to be responsible for school transport and want to organise buses and taxis is beyond belief. Again, the suggestion that the service could be provided more cheaply if it were run by each individual school rather than by a local authority does not bear critical examination.
One of the key suggestions that the hon. Member for Maidenhead constantly makes to head teachers relates to disruptive pupils. Under a Tory Government--God forbid--schools would be able to kick such pupils out, but where would they go and how much would it cost to look after them? All the evidence shows that it costs at least five times more to educate a pupil in a pupil exclusion unit than it does in school. Where would that money come from, and what would happen if the number of units were expanded? My authority does not have such a unit. It would have to build one, and that would have to be resourced centrally.
In my role as education spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, for the past two years I have had spats with the Secretary of State and accused him of all sorts of things. However, I would never accuse him of not being interested in, or committed to, education. From the age of four, I have spent my whole life involved with various Secretaries of State in one guise or another. In 1944, my father was presumed killed in the war and that was the year I attended my first nursery school. Since then, I have been involved, in one way or another, with every Secretary of State. Perhaps Butler to Blunkett does not sound as good as Huxley's cradle to the grave, but the Secretary of State will be right to be proud of many achievements if he leaves the Department for Education and Employment and goes to the Home Office.
Sadly, however, the Secretary of State's legacy will not be as good as it should have been. In 1997, the whole education world welcomed a change and expected that things would be different. I was a head teacher in 1997
The Budget was announced as we look forward to a general election and I support much of what the Chancellor said last week. I welcome the fact that much additional money will go to head teachers to spend on books and equipment. When I was a head teacher, I would have welcomed greater flexibility in the spending of part of my resources, and I am sure that most heads welcome the proposal.
However, the Government should not be able to claim that a huge sum of extra money was announced in last week's Budget. The £1 billion was an underspend from previous years. It was not new money, but money that had been regurgitated. If we take account of the Barnett formula and subtract the money for Scotland, we are talking about £800 million over three years, of which £200 million will go towards earmarked recruitment and retention packages. The money for each school will thus be about £10,000 to £11,000 a year, and a school's future cannot be planned on the basis of such funding. That is the huge mistake that the Government continually make. Year after year, they drip-feed money into our schools and they attract major headlines, but they do not attack the root cause of the major underfunding in the resource budgets of all our schools.
Let me give some examples. A head teacher in the royal borough of Kingston upon Thames has written to the chairman of the Conservative-led council. Kingston is reducing school budgets, because it is anticipating the money that the Chancellor will give directly to schools. Exactly the same thing is happening in North Yorkshire--again a Conservative-controlled authority--which is top-slicing its school budgets by £2 million. Although Harrogate grammar school--which, by the way, is a top-class comprehensive school--will receive an extra £12,000 from the Budget settlement, it will lose £40,000 because of the reduction in funding from the county council. I recall what the hon. Member for Coventry, South said, and point to the nonsense of the current funding arrangements and to their lack of transparency.
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Thursday, August 11, 2011
Muga-Mushin, Part 2: Machiavelli's Flood, Two-Factor Theory of Emotions, Bi-Strategic Controllers, Theory of Critical Moments
(Lorenzo Bartolini's sculpture of Niccolo Machiavelli)
I compare her to one of those raging rivers, which when in flood overflows the plains, sweeping away trees and buildings, bearing away the soil from place to place; everything flies before it, all yield to its violence, without being able in any way to withstand it; and yet, though its nature be such, it does not follow therefore that men, when the weather becomes fair, shall not make provision, both with defences and barriers, in such a manner that, rising again, the waters may pass away by canal, and their force be neither so unrestrained nor so dangerous. So it happens with fortune, who shows her power where valour has not prepared to resist her, and thither she turns her forces where she knows that barriers and defences have not been raised to constrain her.
-Niccolo Machiavelli
This post will take a bit of a detour from the martial nature of the previous one and will instead look at how our emotional response mechanisms can aid and sabotage our efforts as we attempt to move through a strategic social environment. One finding is that our experience of significant, emotionally charged events often comes in predictable two-wave emotional sets, with the second wave containing an "attribution" loophole that can be used to manipulate us (alternatively, we could use this loophole to manipulate ourselves by framing a situation so that emotional energy was diverted into a pre-arranged path, as per Machiavelli and his quote about Lady Fortune).
Getting Past the First Reaction
The previous piece considered a very simple and primal flinch/protective reaction that occurred when an individual was suddenly subjected to a physical threat. Two possibilities were explored:
1. The victim's alerting network, which sorts through environmental information to provide warning of a threat, failed to keep on top of the situation. As a result, the threat information arrived via the first incoming punch or thrown object. This visual stimulus triggered a primitive defensive reaction that attempted to protect the eyes/face, throat, and upper spine by forming a protective shield between the threat and the head, closing the eyes, and (frequently) hunching the shoulders.
2. In this case, the victim's alerting network did recognize a problem early on, and handed the information off to the brain's more sophisticated orienting system. The orienting system, lacking a trained reason to do something else, defaulted to an algorithm we will term the 4Fs: Freeze, Flight, Fight, and Freeze (again). As a result, the victim waited, doing nothing particularly useful, as the threat came within range and launched an attack. At that point, an untrained protective motion was attempted.
We also considered how trained responses from well-tested fighting systems such as Western boxing and Muay Thai could be used to provide more effective counters to an initial attack.
Today's entry will look at what happens when our inner worlds must adjust and calibrate themselves to a more subtle---yet still-threatening in many cases---environment. A sudden physical threat that triggers a protective response will not be present in these situations; instead, pressure and stress will be created by emotional threats. We will focus on the orienting system and the role of the brain's emotional circuitry in forming an opinion about a situation (often categorizing it as either "threatening" or "exciting"). The cascade ends with a psychological state being generated that is capable of heavily influencing the subject's subsequent physical performance, often causing him to "choke" and fail to properly execute his learned skills.
A simple model that could prove useful in conceptualizing what is coming next might go something like this:
1. Presence of danger or even novelty creates a general state of arousal in the subject. Figurative result: "I feel physiologically aroused."
2. Subject makes sense of this arousal by linking it to something in the environment, thus experiencing an emotion that can articulated more specifically. Figurative result: "No, not just aroused, I feel angry."
3. Subject's cerebral cortex takes this feeling and rationalizes it by selecting elements of the environment that would correspond to/justify this underlying feeling of anger. Conscious use of evidence is now biased towards legitimizing the anger and alternative explanations will tend to be suppressed or ignored. "I feel angry because..."
Orienting System and the HPA Axis
As discussed in earlier posts, the nervous system is roughly organized to allow the organism to make successful decisions along an approach-withdrawal continuum. Features of the environment that can aid in reproduction and related positive activities are meant to be approached; withdrawal behavior is meant to be linked to threats. The initial, primitive feelings of attraction and repulsion direct our attentional resources towards parts of our environment and have been termed the brain's orienting system. The orienting system's job is to pick up on cues as we move through the world and to point them out to higher brain functions, usually also giving them an emotional tag. This all can happen very quickly and before our neocortical executive centers have had an opportunity to get traction on the situation.
Particularly where threats are concerned, a brain assembly called the HPA axis---hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis---plays a major role. The HPA modulates our responses to threatening situations and is largely responsible for our related feelings of stress. Both physical emergencies and social ones can cause the HPA to get involved and to trigger a stress response---socially dominated fish who are placed in chronic subordinate roles show HPA activation. In human beings, a number of mood disorders are associated with malfunctions or overactivation of the HPAA.
Our stress systems evolved for physical emergencies that lasted a relatively short period of time and then were dealt with, one way or another, in a fairly definitive way. Our modern world features few of these physical crisis points, although people engaged in high-risk jobs may encounter them fairly regularly, but it does tend to stress us in social dimensions. One problem with these chronic social stresses and the constant need to monitor one's position in a hierarchy is that the HPA axis may be overtaxed, resulting in a person's gradual physical and psychological deterioration. Thus, it can become important to have high-performance strategies and skills available to identify and neutralize threats of various stripes before they can cause us to poison ourselves.
Neuroscientists and meditation experts Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius describe the functions of the HPA axis this way:
Suffering is not abstract or conceptual. It's embodied; you feel it in your body because it proceeds through bodily mechanisms (my note: Hanson and Mendius refer to the physiological cascade using Buddhist terminology as the "First Dart", and the avoidable emotional reaction of the self to the cascade as the "Second Dart")...
Suffering cascades through your body via the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPAA) of the endocrine (hormonal) system...while the SNS and HPAA are anatomically distinct, they are so intertwined that they're best described together, as an integrated system.
...the thalamus---the relay station in the middle of your brain---sends a 'Wake up!' signal to your brain stem, which in turn releases stimulating norepinephrine throughout your brain.
...the hypothalamus---the brain's primary regulator of the endocrine system---prompts the pituitary gland to signal the adrenal glands to release the 'stress hormones' adrenaline and cortisol.
Your emotions intensify, organizing and mobilizing the whole brain for action. SBS/HPAA arousal stimulates the amygdala, which is hardwired to focus on negative information and react intensely to it. Consequently, feeling stressed sets you up for fear and anger...As limbic and endocrine activation increases, the relative strength of executive control from the (prefrontal cortex) declines. It's like being in a car with a runaway accelerator: the driver has less control over her vehicle.
The defense against a chronic stimulation of the HPAA axis in everyday social situations has multiple layers, but perhaps the most important one is to be able to identify people who have adopted social strategies that are designed to trigger prolonged HPAA "reigns of terror" in others, and who employ random doses of positive and negative feedback to keep the game going and increase their spheres of influence.
Two Phases of Panic
We will return to toxic social arrangements and those who generate them in a moment, but first let me detour and say a quick word on tactical training and the execution of physical skills under emergency conditions. There has been much debate about whether or not training can be accessed in a fight-or-flight environment, and it is here that we can use the metaphor of a big-wave surfer to look at the difference between survival stress and panic. If a surfer dropping in on some monster wave is able to stay ahead of the wave, he will have access to his learned repertoire of techniques. He can react as a trained and conditioned athlete even though he will certainly be under a certain amount of survival stress the entire time, and he may suffer nervous agitation before he ever gets out in the water. If he slips and falls into the wave and is unable to escape before it crashes, however, he will be sent for a cartwheeling underwater ride that will induce a panic reaction in even the most experienced surfers. To survive, the surfer may now have to successfully suppress a far more acute and blind emotional upwelling than he did when he first confronted the wave.
If training has taken place at a deep enough level and the skills are owned by the cerebellum, technical performance will be accessible under natural stress. We could term these the "win set" skills because they are largely concerned with good performance. If the stress level suddenly spikes upward again because the skills have failed, then a new and stronger wave of panic reaction may set in and have to be confronted. The skills associated with recovering from this secondary panic reaction could be considered "survival set" skills because they normally are recruited when the perfect plan is no longer available. In order words, the shift from a failed Plan A to a contingency Plan B often requires the successful suppression of a panic spike that is greater than the one associated with the original Plan A.
Thus, it is entirely possible for someone to have magnificent win set skills and to coast along on these until a situation does cause the first set of training failures. At this point, the individual may metaphorically drown under the secondary panic reaction. In simple terms, what may be happening is that the initial performance was managed almost entirely by the cerebellum and supporting elements of the brain, all of which were running on a subconscious level. When a failure occurs, the executive center of the brain gets involved and the smooth, continuous flow of deeply trained skills becomes disrupted by new and potentially self-destructive cognitive processes. Recovery from the first failure may require the ability to manage one's emotions and avoid becoming absorbed in the problems that have already occurred.
As we will soon see, this quality may represent a big part of the so-called "mental game" of athletics, and those who are frequently able to prevent precious cognitive resources from being diverted towards rumination are prized for their ability to perform under particularly stressful conditions.
Please also note that the two-tiered panic description normally applies to individuals who are competent. An untrained individual may be swamped by the first wave, go straight to a thermonuclear panic spike, and never recover. The multiple-panics model does assume that the subject is already legitimately skilled, so it is not particularly useful for designing an initial skills exposure program and could be thought of as a beneficial approach for intermediate and advanced students.
Omega Rules and Delta Moments
Some insights into how the autopilot and manual-control decision systems interact in practice can be gained from specialists in neuromarketing, a relatively new branch of applied psychology that seeks to optimize advertising and marketing campaigns by understanding what is really going on in the minds of shoppers.
Two consumer behavior experts at the venerable AC Nielsen market research firm, Alastair Gordon and Duncan Stuart, have developed an analytical framework that they call "DeltaQual." DeltaQual examines shopper behavior by considering two aspects: Omega rules and Delta moments.
Omega Rules are quick, efficient cognitive shortcuts that are based on habits. These habits in turn are founded on repeated exposure to patterns; over time, the link between a scenario context, a decision rule, and an outcome becomes encoded as a heuristic (rule of thumb). A key consideration here is that heuristic-based learning may take place without the customer ever being aware that a learning event has occurred. This type of knowledge can become implicit: customers make decisions in a reliable way, but may not be able to articulate why they do so.
Shoppers who are using Omega rules will tend to move through a store on autopilot, selecting products based on subconscious criteria. Many popular brands such as Coca-Cola have invested decades in forming positive associations in the minds of shoppers, and these associations pay off when customers make purchases based on Omega rules.
In contrast, a so-called Delta moment takes place when one of these conventional habit pathways is blocked or disrupted and a customer pauses to make a conscious decision between alternatives. In marketing terms, the Delta moment is desired by new firms, while older and established firms would probably wish to suppress Delta moments and have customers shop by Omega auto-pilot. Nielsen's consultants believe that these Delta moments tend to motivated by three different conscious goals: bargain-shopping, in which prices of similar products are evaluated to find the best price; variety-seeking, in which a customer decides to try something different; and buzz-seeking, in which a customer is enticed enough by word-of-mouth or a structured product marketing campaign that he or she will look for the product specifically.
Going back to our example of an extreme surfer going out to meet heavy waves, we could consider the normal, prepared behavior as the following of the Omega rules (in many cases, an experienced, sane professional adventurer would not put himself into harm's way unless he could operate via Omega rules) and a failure of the rules as the equivalent to a Delta moment, albeit one that is forced upon the surfer.
The Omega rules/Delta moments framework may also help to conceptualize the underlying cognitive mechanism for the muga-mushin experience: on the battlefield, a superbly trained warrior could be carrying out many tasks by following a tacit set of habitual Omega rules. His ability to perform combat tasks on autopilot thus frees the conscious working memory capacity of his prefrontal lobes to look for Delta moments: particular variations in the emerging scenario that would present opportunities or threats. Once a Delta moment event took place, the warrior could branch to an appropriate contingency plan, staying ahead of the metaphorical monster wave, and "surfing" it to his destination even as it overwhelmed other, less-prepared individuals and pulled them under, drowning them or breaking them.
Amygdala Hijackings, Narcissism, and Social Consequences
Because the brain evolved during a time period in which physical dangers to life and limb were far more common than they are today, there are situations in which the HPA axis may prove to create some reactions that are maladaptive where modern life is concerned. Daniel Goleman, the somewhat controversial author of Emotional Intelligence and popularizer of related concepts, coined the term "amygdala hijacking" to refer to a situation in which a given environmental stress has (in Goleman's normal context) been misdiagnosed by the ancient fight-or-flight system, leading to a socially inappropriate response.
As we discussed in a previous post, a number of non-life threatening threats can still be placed in the fight-or-flight response category; the acronym SCARF---Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, Fairness---has been used to describe social threat triggers that can reliably generate adrenal dumps and cause unpleasant emotions to cascade. When threatened by a SCARF attack in a social environment, the amygdala-modulated survival reaction may actually serve to make things worse by either: A)dramatically escalating the confrontation; or B) forcing the subject to endure continued adrenal stress reactions without recourse to any solution.
There appears to be a certain type of competitive and aggressive human being who learns about SCARF relatively early in life and who develops a social skillset based around using these threats to control resources. Researchers have observed that some young children, typically showing signs of narcissism, learn to manipulate others by using SCARF attacks. For examples, consider the potential impact of kicking another little girl out of the clique one day for some made-up transgression (attack on Relatedness); using public ridicule, usually over appearance, to cause shame and humiliation (attack on Status); and forcing obedience to tightly-controlled fashion trends (attack on Autonomy).
However, this is only half of the story: children who use these tactics will also reward servile behavior by including a new child in the group, presenting compliments or gifts or invitations, and so on (note that Autonomy is rarely encouraged). Because the strategies shift to manipulate both positive and negative social emotions, the manipulative children are termed "bi-strategic controllers" and they are often praised by teachers for showing "leadership qualities".
Unfortunately, the situation seems to be getting much worse: average scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) screen have been steadily increasing over time (bi-strategic control tendencies are highly correlated with narcissism) and there is significant evidence that popular social networking sites can end up rewarding the core skills of the narcissist (aggressive self-promotion; tightly edited and lavishly photojournaled lifestyle descriptions designed to depict achievement, travel, wealth, popularity, and excitement; demanding a self-centered audience-performer relationship within the social network).
An equally troubling finding is that a disproportionate share of the increase in narcissism is concentrated in young girls. I am not a sociologist and tend to favor the reductionist and static view of human nature that is offered by evolutionary psychology, but I have to concede that there does appear to be a significant learned or cultural component to narcissism and that it is shaped by positive and negative feedback loops.
Findings are inconclusive and the research is very controversial, but for argument's sake we can say this: if there is indeed a strong gender-biased aspect to the overall trend of increasing narcissism, then this will have very serious long-term social ramifications in regards to dating norms, divorce rates (which will increase dramatically, thus creating an expectation of divorce among those who are considering marriage), and rates of childbirth.
Rational men, once informed about the data, will react with misogynistic expectations: the anticipation of narcissistic/entitlement trend tendencies among females (which could, among other things, cause women to underestimate the probability of divorce) could combine with the biological fact that the genders have very different reproductive windows to create interesting, extremely cynical game theoretical results where optimal male mating strategies are concerned.
This will be the topic for another day, but one interesting paradox that results is that the most desirable man for a narcissistic woman to get married to under one set of expectations (the idea that marriage is a self-glorifying and glamorous stand-alone public event to attain status within a peer group) may simultaneously be among the least desirable men of all to be married to if marriage comes with a different set of expectations (the idea that marriage is a largely private, long-term process of relationship management in which the ability to put a positive spin on tough conditions, to compromise, and to offer emotional stability will be prized).
In any case, we can safely say that having to deal with emotionally manipulative and self-absorbed bi-strategic controllers in either a childhood or adulthood setting can lead to terrible psychological and physiological costs in the long-run. Remember that aggression triggered by threats to status or self-preservation is associated with a different neural circuit than is the type of aggression triggered by predatory instincts, with the RAGE circuit (reaction to threats) being experienced as emotionally unpleasant while the SEEKING circuits (reaction to a hunting situation) is experienced as emotionally pleasant.
Besides being insulated against SCARF attacks by having fall-back positions in each category, the social operator who must navigate an emotionally treacherous world may decide to acquire skills of offense as well as defense. The trick to dealing with certain types of unavoidable/recurring conflict may be to be able to emotionally reclassify the other party as a prey item rather than a threat, thus creating an emotional landscape of pleasurable hunting and sensation-seeking rather than competition and anger. I believe that this is best handled by what negotiation analysts and decision theorists at Harvard have termed "BATNA dominance" ("BATNA" means "best alternative to a negotiated agreement")in several likely conflict dimensions, but I will leave this for the next post.
Schachter's Two-Factor Model of Emotion
Returning to the Plan A and Plan B cartoon illustration of a double wave of panic responses, we can generalize a bit and turn now to the rich body of experimental results supporting the notion that virtually any substantive emotional response to events also comes in two waves. In the first wave, we react physiologically to the event. This could be termed the "arousal switch" and it is general in nature: the same basic physiological reaction will take place in situations that are correlated with fear, excitement, lust, or anger. The second wave could be termed the "categorization" switch, and this is the component that pushes the general feeling of arousal in a more specific emotional direction.
Because we may not subjectively experience a discontinuity between arousal and categorization, the idea of emotionality starting with a common state and then branching into a specific emotion may be deeply counter-intuitive to us. Psychologist Arthur Aron has done a great deal of work in this area; his research findings are just fascinating to me and I have found that author Ayala Malach Pines provides some of the best summaries:
In (Aron's) study, the male students who served as subjects assumed the role of a soldier who was captured behind enemy lines. The soldier was tortured by an interrogator, played by an attractive female research assistant, who was trying to force him to reveal Army secrets. The interrogator "tortured" the soldier by dropping "acid" (actually water) into his eye. Each subject was told to imagine that acid caused him unbearable pain, that it burned his eye, that if the torture continued, it would burn his brain and eventually result in a horrible death. The subject was encouraged to scream every time the "acid" touched his eye. The students really got into the role. They shook and sweated, later reported that they had felt terrible fear. Even the female assistant had to comforted and calmed after going through the difficult experience of "torturing" six soldiers every day. A control group, also playing captured soldiers, had water dropped into their eyes but were told that the water represented the first, easy stage of interrogation.
What were the results? The young men who went through the hair-raising experience of being "tortured" were far more attracted to their interrogator (!). They expressed a greater desire to kiss her and be close to her. In addition, there were more erotic and romantic themes in the stories they wrote afterward.
("You poor fool, I torture you with electric cattle prods and yet you are still aroused," hissed the Hungarian femme-fatale as she adjusted her necktie).
Similar experiments have been conducted using wobbly, suspended foot bridges and mild electrical shocks that some subjects were told to imagine being vicious forms of torture. In each case, those that were first aroused by fear or anger reported members of the opposite sex to be more attractive than those who were not stimulated first.
Even when we mistakenly believe that we find someone sexually arousing, the person seems more attractive to us. Here is an elegant demonstration of this surprising finding. Male subjects were told that their heartbeats would be amplified and recorded while they looked at 10 slides of half-nude Playboy Bunnies. In fact, the subject heard not his own heartbeat, but prerecorded heartbeats arranged to beat faster when various, randomly chosen, photographs were projected. In other words, the men believed that their hearts were beating faster in response to certain photographs when in fact they were not.
Then, they were asked to rate the attractiveness of the 10 Playboy Bunnies. Results showed that the men rated those women who supposedly made their hearts beat faster as significantly more attractive and chose their pictures when offered a poster of a Bunny as a token of appreciation for taking part in the study. Even a month later, in a totally unrelated situation, when asked to rate the same 10 pictures, they again rated the same women as more attractive.
There are various explanations for these results. The excitation transfer hypothesis states that there is an additive, if not multiplicative, relationship between arousal states. A man aroused by electric shocks and then aroused by the sight of an attractive woman will combine the arousal states for an extreme result. Misattribution is another explanation: a woman goes sky diving or skiing and then reports finding her instructor to be more attractive because she misattributes her fear arousal as a romantic one (note that this is a weaker form of excitation transfer, with one arousal being mistakenly interpreted rather than two different arousals combining to form a super-arousal). Yet a third explanation---response facilitation---suggests that a general physiological arousal created by almost anything---including vigorous exercise---will turbo-boost every subsequent emotional reaction we have. Response facilitation is probably the most gentle of the three in terms of its potentially self-destructive effects.
Individuals who look to use neuroscience and evolutionary psychology to influence or directly manipulate others have a field day with these results. So-called "pick-up artists" and "seduction engineers" who specialize in science-based sexual predation and conquests will no doubt attempt to harness these loopholes in human psychology to piggyback their seduction attempts on top of independently-triggered states of arousal, perhaps by designing first dates to include events that will reliably cause stimulation. It will also generally be desirable for such individuals to isolate the target in order to ensure that the arousal does not get "grabbed" by someone else in the immediate vicinity: a lot of hard work could go down the drain if the intended victim was carefully prepped for physiological arousal and then ran into an ex or a co-worker and linked the arousal to attraction to that third-party rather than the would-be master of puppets.
The goal of many seduction engineers is to obtain sexual access to multiple women by employing tactics and techniques that are normally derived from evolutionary psychology and related fields such as neuromarketing and influence studies. In effect, the egocentric overconfidence and lack of sophisticated emotional self-management or "theory of mind" associated with self-absorbed narcissism are systematically exploited by cynics (who usually feel quite justified in doing so, some even going so far as suggesting that they are providing a socially beneficial vigilante-type service).
On the other hand, those who find themselves on the receiving end of manipulation, whether by chance or deliberate planning, may gain an edge if they can separate the physiological arousal from the emotionality. This would be particularly important for non-reflective, "spontaneous" individuals who were prone to basing important life decisions on fleeting episodes of emotional flooding.
It goes without saying that long-term mate selection based on an initial misattribution or elicitation transfer could be ruinous. The wrong information would be used to inform long-term decisions. Men and women are equally prone to making long-term extrapolations based on initial results, with men typically finding that women are less sexual and carefree than extrapolations suggested and women typically finding that men are prone to provide less emotional and administrative support than extrapolations suggested.
I have routinely been surprised at how often individuals who perform with great competence in certain domains make very poor, unreflective decisions when it comes to critical issues like long-term mate selection, despite the overwhelming evidence about attribution issues and the horribly debilitating effects of a toxic domestic environment.
Pines is clearly very concerned with this same problem and she focuses on the origins of love. She states that:
The two-factor theory of love is a derivation of a more general theory of emotions. According to this theory, like a car that in order to arrive at its destination needs us to start the engine and then determine its direction, to define a certain emotion we also need two things: One (which is analogous to starting the engine) is a general state of arousal; it is similar for all strong emotions and includes such physiological responses as a rapid heart beat and fast breathing. The second (which is analogous to steering the car in a certain direction) is an emotional label that explains the arousal---love, anger, fear, jealousy. We learn the appropriate labels for different states of arousal (which is what we are supposed to feel in different situations) from our parents, teachers, friends, the media, and personal experience...what we are expected to feel has a major influence on what we actually feel.
In other words, our bodies react first to the external stimulus with a blind, universal reaction that is value-neutral (neither good nor bad), then we consciously perceive that physiological arousal and come up with a matching emotion or feeling to explain it in the current context. This initial period of diffuse physiological arousal (DPA) may present a chokepoint or funnel opportunity for a social strategist: perhaps we can, with training, consciously intervene in the interpretation of DPA and look at spin-doctoring ourselves to make sure that the right emotional CEO (using Kenrick's terminology) is put in charge when it comes to taking action.
The Theory of Critical Moments
An intriguing and related concept comes from sports psychologist Roland Carlstedt. Carlstedt's model, which he terms the "Theory of Critical Moments" (TCM), identifies psychological factors that are particularly important during high-level athletic performances. In his words:
Critical moments can be defined as instances or situations that are pivotal to the successful outcome of competition. These moments test athletes' ability to perform their best when it counts the most, demanding extraordinary control over mind-body processes. In a tennis match on a grass court, a critical moment might be a break point opportunity against a good server. In golf, a critical moment might involve having to reach the green with an approach shot in order to have a chance at making a birdie...critical moments can be operationalized quantitatively...using a hierarchical system that rates the psychological effect that critical moments are expected to exert on an athlete's psyche.
Carlsted goes on to discuss the theoretical "High-Risk Model of Threat-Perception", an applied model that seeks to isolate personality components that have been linked to high susceptibility to stress and stress-related physical illness. The three variables that Carlsted focuses on in his own work are absorption, negative affect (also referred to as neuroticism), and repressive coping.
Absorption refers to the athlete's ability to control his or her attention in the face of external information or distractions. This would seem to be a factor in which one would want a high score, but the situation is complicated by the effects of the other two major factors, negative affect and repressive coping. Negative affect is straightforward: a high score in this factor predicts that the athlete would frequently engage in negative self-talk or thoughts that referenced loss or failure. Repressive coping refers to the ability to focus away from negative situations or memories---in other words, to "forget" the bad stuff and move on.
An athlete who has a high score in absorption but an equally high score in neuroticism and a low score in repressive coping could become effectively paralyzed during play, trapped in a depressing inner monologue that ignored the demands of the outside world (thanks to the absorption) and gave preferential treatment to thoughts of catastrophe and humiliation. The lack of repressive coping ability would mean that a single mistake or even departure from technical perfection could initiate a spiral of rumination and negative emotionality that could affect performance for the rest of the game. The result, of course, is a self-fulfilling prophecy in which the athlete's focus on negative potential outcomes sabotages his or her real-time performance and causes those bad outcomes to come true.
Closed and Open Motor Skills
As a general rule, high scores in neuroticism and low scores in repressive coping are not going to be of benefit to an athlete. However, the degree to which higher or lower absorption scores benefits an athlete will depend on whether the athlete's sport is dominated by open motor skills or by closed motor skills. Closed motor skills require the execution of a task that has been choreographed and rehearsed to perfection prior to the event: a ballet dancer or gymnast is normally charged with executing a sequence of closed motor skills. Open motor skills are characterized by a dynamic operating environment and the need to adjust techniques in the face of new information: directly oppositional sports including football, basketball, and tennis demand the employment of open motor skills. As one would expect, the ability to ignore the outside world (i.e., to become absorbed) would be of far greater use during the performance of closed motor skills than it would be during the performance of open ones.
There are also a number of performance environments that impose rapid attention-switching demands on athletes. Rather than fitting fairly neatly into the open vs. closed motor skill schema, these environments force participants to transition from dynamic play and fluid improvisation to ideally becoming machine-like cyborgs---cold, disassociated beings capable of systematic execution of very technical, well-rehearsed movements. Penalty kicks and free throws are examples of how isolated, mechanical techniques can suddenly be imposed on what was previously a very busy game of hustle and scramble.
Thus, the ideal athlete in at least some games will be able to switch between two different regimes: one moment being fully engaged in what his opponents are doing and changing tactics and techniques on the fly as these opponents commit to certain courses of action, while the next moment he can ignore the screaming taunts of the crowd or other distracting elements of the environment and flawlessly execute an isolated motor program that he has rehearsed thousands of times in practice.
(swashbuckling Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo is frequently cited as one of the rare and brilliant athletes who displays great powers of concentration, psychological resistance to stress, and near-effortless mastery in both closed and open motor skill categories within his sport)
At the risk of oversimplifying the process, here's how a TCM intervention might work: high or low score tendencies for absorption, neuroticism, and repressive coping are identified by administering psychological tests on the athlete. Carlsted takes these scores and overlays the athlete's peculiar threat-perception characteristics over a "map" of the stress characteristics that have been identified for that particular sport or activity (this map is created using heavy input from coaches and other athletes).
Those scenarios that would be predicted to reveal the clash between the athlete's psychological weaknesses and the demands of the game would then be specifically articulated and the athlete's mental training plan would be designed to prevent him from choking during these pre-identified critical moments. Highly-salient scenario training exercises and very detailed visualization would probably be used to try to make the athlete mentally "bombproofed" as much as possible and to avoid destructive psychological spirals.
TCM and Interpersonal Relations
I rather like the idea of using the Theory of Critical Moments to make predictions about human behavior outside of sports and war. Extensions of TCM-type testing have been suggested to uncover those who would have great difficulty creating happy and satisfying relationships. While it may be popular to speak of "emotional complexity" and "the need for emotional support" as if these things were benign, an individual who has rapid and uncontrolled mood shifts, emotional incoherence, and a tendency towards negative affect could prove to be a ticking time bomb in a long-term relationship if that relationship requires the application of effective conflict resolution techniques (e.g., most marriages).
At critical inflection points within a relationship, a person who has high scores in negative affect/neuroticism and self-absorption will tend to think that his or her relationship is not ideally represented as a win-win situation based on highlighting the areas of overlapping interest. In contrast, the ideal relationship for such a person would be a sort of pseudo-therapeutic one in which the partner with the most unstable emotional command system apparatus would come to dominate his or her partner, and then the combined psychic resources could be hijacked and dedicated to the afflicted partner's neurotic spirals.
It is worth noting that self-absorbed neurotics do not normally choose other neurotics as partners; they complain bitterly about neurotic or self-absorbed traits in others, and seek those stable types who are seen to have spare, readily-accessible emotional resources. In other words, the possibility of a true win-win arrangement with mutual support may have been rejected from the very start in favor of a form of quiet predation. Some therapists have argued that this is still a workable deal provided that the neurotic partner carry the relationship in other ways, and perhaps there is an opportunity for negotiation if the partner with the emotional condition is conscious of his or her issues and can put in place a process for compensating the stable partner for putting up with it. The problem I see with this form of reasoning is that it once again assumes that the executive centers of the brain are going to be running the show on a day-to-day basis.
Scientists studying marketing campaigns have long been puzzled by the very low correlation between product scores on customer satisfaction surveys and the consumers' actual repurchase rates for the same product. The intuition clearly would be that a satisfied customer would be more likely to buy the same product again, but the relationship between the two is shockingly weak. It appears that people will engage in executive brain-heavy processes when filling out a survey, but will return to autopilot habits when they actually go back to making purchase decisions.
A lesson that we can take from this work and apply to relationships suggests that it is important that our friends and partners are habitually kind people. Waiting to see how someone behaves during a crisis and thinking that this will reflect true colors may not be a safe way to proceed: during a crisis, the executive brain engages and may make very crafty, opportunistic cost-benefit decisions if the future social payoffs from good behavior during the crisis are seen to justify an immediate investment.
Crisis-opportunism is epitomized in the classic "wolf in sheep's clothing" mating strategy, in which a sexual predator, typically male, poses as a considerate and emotionally supportive friend to his target and waits for her to endure a crisis. During the crisis, the predator seeks to outperform his rival(s) and to gain sexual access by being seen as kind, sensitive, emotionally generous, etc. It will be later, perhaps months later, when the true autopilot settings of the predator are revealed.
One possibility for further research would be to combine the TCM testing battery with the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) and a longitudinal study in order to find if strong correlations exist between some of these "high risk" psychological traits and destructive relationship patterns in the real world. The idea here is that a person who is predicted to choke under pressure based on TCM scores and who also possessed a high score on the NPI might: A) be prone to negative moods; B) feel non-reflective about the feedback loops and contagion effects that these negative moods could create within a relationship; and C) could still feel entitled (via narcissistic traits) to force these on another person in a relationship setting. Of course, such a person would likely resent and resist psychological testing batteries and would attempt to make his or her behavior seem normal, perhaps even desirable.
It is also possible that performance arts which typically require dedication to extreme, highly choreographed technical perfection---ballet being one example---could also tend to attract fragile-but-perfectionist "diva" personalities that carry these risk factors. At the other end, a total lack of neuroticism and absorption and a very high score in repressive coping could create a person who is perceived to be detached and to offer a limited emotional range (note that such an individual could do well with another like himself or herself, but the same cannot be said of the self-absorbed neurotic, who by nature would fail the most basic test of Kant's famous categorical imperative to "act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law").
Psychological Assessments for War Zone Deployments
Ironically (?), the best psychological attributes to look for in a potential spouse may be the same ones that you would want in a teammate you were deploying with for dangerous missions overseas. Psychologist Paul Brand, formerly the head of human resources for private military contractor DynCorp, is the CEO of a company called Mission Critical Psychological Services. Brand's group specializes in conducting selection and training programs for individuals who will be deployed to conflict areas (and, more notably, in developing support services for those returning home). His written test and "MCPS" interview methodology apparently are quite good at identifying applicants who will tend fare well when it comes to dealing with the psychological stresses often associated with war zone jobs.
Brand's process selects for traits such as aggression, confidence, ability to be autonomous/self-directed, and novelty-seeking behavior (i.e., EXPLORER personality traits as per the Fisher test battery). National-level military special mission units (SMUs) also have access to trained psychologists and make use of them during screenings.
None of these will catch a clever Machiavellian sociopath (fortunately, such an individual may even have useful traits for this type of work). I have found that many of the popular tests for Emotional Intelligence have obviously correct and incorrect answers from the standpoint of how people are *supposed* to act, and as a result these tests are fairly easy to defeat. A robust exam will expose true tendencies because the person taking the battery will feel that the true answer is also the justified, consistent, or morally correct one.
Any interview process obviously runs the risk of participants gaming the system and telling the interviewer what he or she wants to hear, but perhaps a combination of the Brand pre-mission assessment methodology, standard personality testing (the "Big 5" and so on), and Carlstedt's TCM tests could help to round out a nice psychological battery. Fisher's relationship-type classification system based on brain chemistry and emotional circuits could be used as a second step to look for compatibility (remember that, to Fisher, EXPLORERs tend to do well with other EXPLORERs and BUILDERs with other BUILDERs, but DIRECTOR and NEGOTIATOR types work well in mixed pairings).
At the risk of sounding like an unromantic freak who should be put to use collecting dangerous occult manuscripts or some similar activity, I think the ultimate psychological relationship-fitness battery would probably include Fisher, TCM testing, and a variant on DeltaQual that looked to identify heuristics-based everyday decision rules as used within a relationship (this would mean that a potential mate was seen as a shopper who emotionally, economically, and sexually "purchased" his or her relationship on a daily basis, which is an admittedly cynical way to view such things. I will of course use just such a cynical proposition---a relationship being a lifestyle contract that bundles services and products into a mix of potential benefits for the partner---as the central organizing theme of my next post).
Returning to our DeltaQual discussion, perhaps a similar study could be applied to interpersonal habits. The ideal template may well be a personality that is very easy to get along with as a result of the habitual, subconscious use of positive decision rules (Omega rules) during a normal day. These decision rules would of course be based on emotional systems that whirred quietly in the background. Because habitual behavior must be forcibly brought up into the light for executive review, we would expect the Delta moments in the relationship to correspond to conflicts that inevitably take place. These inflection points in the relationship could be thought of as negotiation opportunities, and more structured skills related to negotiation and persuasion could be used. Deliberate social strategies based on exploiting the underlying mathematics of evolutionary game theory will be the subject of the next post.
Posted by Seb at 11:58 AM 1 comment:
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text:
During Thursday's media day activities at Daytona International Speedway, Johnson said most of the people in the shop will be the same but his over-the-wall crew "will be much different."
"We're in a very fortunate situation in making big changes that we have a very young crop of guys coming along and guys are earning their way on the team by participating in a series of competitions," Johnson said.
Johnson said he witnessed the final day of competitions and was uncertain who exactly got all the positions.
"What I saw was a very strong first and second-string group of guys," he said. "That's our plan - to have depth. If someone is having a bad day we can make changes and not lose anything on pit road."
In last fall's race at Texas, Johnson's crew was a having problems on pit road and after his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, Jeff Gordon, wrecked out of the race, Gordon's pit crew swapped places with Johnson's.
The change remained intact for the remainder of the season and Johnson won his fifth consecutive Cup title.


text:
The combination of good self-help information and working with an experienced anxiety disorder therapist, coach, or counselor is the most effective way to address anxiety and its many symptoms. Until the core causes of anxiety are addressed - we call these core causes the underlying factors of anxiety - a struggle with anxiety unwellness can return again and again. Dealing with the underlying factors of anxiety is the best way to address problematic anxiety.
For more information about our Anxiety Therapy, Coaching, Counseling option; our Available Anxiety Therapists; to Book An Appointment with one of our anxiety therapists; common Symptoms of Anxiety; Anxiety Attack Symptoms; anxiety Recovery Support area; common Anxiety Myths; and our Anxiety 101 section; or click on the appropriate graphic below:
Authors: Jim Folk, Marilyn Folk, BScN. Last updated July 2016.