THE BEANBAG PSYCHOLOGIST 06

On Meaning and Memory

     There works a mysterious mechanism within us which teaches us not to touch a hot iron twice, enables us to calculate forty divided by two, to recall what we first noticed about our favourite teacher, and even form a sense of who we are and what our life is about. It is a curious phenomenon which seems to decay even as it just begins to form! You will be able to understand this statement better if you heard a 10- digit phone number that seems easy enough to remember until when asked to repeat it! This amazing capacity allows you to recall in great detail every colour you saw and every sound you heard on a trip to your favourite amusement park while at the same time, it may fail you when you try to recall some important dates from your history lesson! This indispensable, yet sometimes amusing psychological process is Memory!

     There are many different kinds of information that comes to our attention every day. Some of these we may classify as irrelevant to us and these never get coded in our memory while some other bits of information may be necessary for our functioning and performance in our everyday tasks. These personally relevant information get coded and stored more easily than the peripheral data. Just imagine how much easier it is for you to remember the address of your new house than the birthday of your father’s friend!

     Information that stand out in terms of their novelty and intensity get coded in our memories faster and are retained for longer periods of time! A piercing noise that breaks the silence of your exam hall gets into your memory system more readily and strongly that the sound of a falling pencil. A funny comment in the midst of a serious lecture, for example, makes the information distinct and hence more easily committed to memory! Thus, the mood or the state of mind in which we receive certain information, hugely determines how much we are going to be able to recall later! The context in which we study such as our surroundings, background noise (or music in some cases!) can also facilitate or impede memory.

     Meaningful information get stored more easily than non-meaningful ones. A very interesting experiment by Hermann Ebbinghaus, one of the earliest contributors to research on memory, explained the  remarkable tendency of human beings to induce meaning into seemingly nonsensical information in order to memorise and recall them better! He made a list of what are called “nonsense syllables”, which are words that have no meaning. BAX, TOJ, LIY, DEQ and the like are examples. He also made nonsense syllables using only consonants such as DRW, FXP, KDR which are hard to even associate with words we know already! He found that people still attempt to induce meaning into these words and recall them!

     Imagine the sheer will to meaning that we as human beings have even when faced with recalling non-words! If only we can adopt a more meaningful approach to information in the curriculum so that the drudgery we associate with learning can be replaced with wonderment and enjoyment!

SANGEETHA MADHU & JYOTHI RAVICHANDRAN, THE HINDU IN SCHOOL

THE BEANBAG PSYCHOLOGIST 05

The Time Cure

    Many a sympathetic soul, at our time of distress, croons, “Oh! You will feel better in time!”, “You will get over it in time”, “Time is the best healer!”. If you  had ever cried to a sibling or a parent over a friend who has moved to a different city, and they responded with “Don’t worry! You will stop missing her so badly in a few days!”, the chances that you felt better is less and felt unsure is more. After all, how can mere time heal deep hurt and disappointments? Can time really set our emotions right when we choose to sit and sulk and not DO anything about our situation?

    With passage of time, we tend to forget details of a particular event and the whole memory diminishes in intensity and significance and hence we begin to regain our stability. This is one way in which time takes the credit for making us feel better!

Often times, an effective response that happens unconsciously to a painful experience such as loss and severe trauma is forgetting. Forgetting helps protect our peace of mind and functioning. By pushing disturbing memories into our unconscious mind, we are able to move on with life. But these hidden memories do have repercussions to our behaviours.

     How often has a past difficulty seemed so much better when looked at from our present life situation? When our quality of life and relationships is better than it was in the past, we tend to discount the difficulties we faced earlier on as our perceptions are influenced by our current positive outlook. The opposite can also happen, when we look back and wonder how we ever got through such situations that seemed insurmountable then! In comparison to our present, the past may seem even more difficult than it actually was! Hence, more than just the duration of lapsed time, what we learn and understand about ourselves and our life values determine how much we heal.

     In the heat of any moment, our intellect takes a back seat and our emotions become the ruling factors and it is in this moment of vulnerability that we say or do things which are not particularly well thought out! Once we get a little distance from the time of the emotion-provoking incident, our affective (emotional) reactions quiet down and our  reasoning and thinking processes kick in, enabling us to engage in problem solving!

     Time affords us with opportunities for self-reflection and analysis. It offers us the tool to moderate our extreme emotional reactions and biased thinking, as well as the opportunity for behaviour change to best suit our needs and visions for the future. It sure is a very effective healer provided we put in our share of effort too!

SANGEETHA MADHU & JYOTHI RAVICHANDRAN, THE HINDU IN SCHOOL

THE BEANBAG PSYCHOLOGIST 04

Matters of Friendship

     Of all the relationships that we have in our lives, the one that inspires much emotional investment and kin-like intimacy is friendship. If you listen to stories about how people met their friends, many interesting themes may come to the fore. Some would have started their friendship on a point of shared interest such as an extracurricular passion, some on a give-and-take partnership, and still others purely on the point of a heady game of cricket. 

     Sociologists (those involved in the scientific study of society) and psychologists agree that there are three main foundations on which friendships are built: emotional support, shared interests, and simply, fun and recreation.

     Why does friendship come to occupy such a pivotal role in defining our personal life and success in the social sphere?

Simply because, friendship is a relationship in which we stand to receive validation of the kind of person we are. If we ignore the minor annoyances our friends suffer due to our occasional quirks, it is easy for us to notice that we enjoy a great deal of love and affection for the unique characteristics we hold. Very few people can tolerate the snorts that punctuate your laughter other than your friends, surely! They love us for all the long and tragically non-comical anecdotes that we share with them, while at the same time allowing us to believe we are one of the funniest in the group!

     Friendship is a very enriching relationship as we pretty much navigate this relationship on our own terms with very less interference from other parties. People with close and trusting friendships grow up to be highly empathic and tolerant of differences in ability, culture and background of others.

Our friends form a crucial part of our social support system, on which we can rely at times of distress and difficulty. Such a support system that provides emotional support and hope, boosts our ability to cope with adversities in a resilient and positive manner.

     Having friends with whom we share a certain intellectual and emotional wavelength creates a safe space for us in which to explore our own personalities and values. In order to evolve into a person who enjoys the respect and approval of friends, we adapt certain moral and personal values by which to live and love.

Our conception of the big, strange world out there is formed by the kind of experiences we have with our friends. They form the basis on which we understand the rest of our social world. 

     Let us extend the spirit of friendship by being more courteous and pleasant to all the wonderful people we come across every day, from the auto drivers to the gaggling bunch of classmates!

     Let us hear about how you met your best friend or group of friends! Email us or comment below on what you think is important in a friendship! :)

SANGEETHA MADHU & JYOTHI RAVICHANDRAN, THE HINDU IN SCHOOL

THE BEANBAG PSYCHOLOGIST 03

Helping: A Cost-Benefit Analysis?

     Little Boo liked to collect flowers from the garden in a small wicker basket to give to her Grandmother for her morning prayers. This cute assistance earned her a loving pat on her head and a kiss on her nose every day. This greatly pleased Boo and she would skip away happily.

Then there was little Pummy, who greatly enjoyed painstakingly drawing her favourite animals on her elder brother’s school books, much to his chagrin but also to raucous laughter from her family!

     Boo and Pummy have both been rewarded by their family at an early age for contrasting behaviours. In Boo’s mind, helping behaviour is strongly tied to rewards such as others’ affection, approval, and happiness, whereas for Pummy, no such connection has been established between helping others and favourable outcomes for herself. In fact, she has been rewarded for being a little pest!

     Although much research on the topic consider reinforcements (rewards) offered by parents at an early age as a significant factor in determining our prosocial (helping) behaviours, many other personal and situational factors have also been identified.

     Personal factors are simply those characteristics which a person possesses. Many studies have highlighted the importance that motivation plays in helpful behaviours. If an individual is highly motivated to uphold his values of generosity and consideration for others, the more helpful he will be. 

     Many children also tend to imitate helpful behaviours of their parents or other important adults. The more people we have around us who model prosocial behaviours, more likely we are to be so ourselves. Another crucial personal characteristic is, understandably, empathy, which is our ability to put ourselves in another person’s shoes and understand their emotions and needs with compassion and tenderness. Closeness of relationship that one has with the person in need is also a strong motivating factor to help. 

     When we help out of empathy, where benefits for ourselves are low, this kind of helping behaviour is called altruism, or selfless help! While it is wonderful to indulge in a fantasy where every help is selfless, research shakes us awake with observations that we tend to weigh the cost we will incur (such as time, effort, money) if we extend help against the benefits we stand to gain from the same act. Aid will most likely be extended if benefits outweigh costs! Even if one assesses that a prosocial deed now will later bear fruits, one helps with the expectation of the favour being returned at a later point.

     Situational factors are the characteristics of the situation one is in. It is common for many people to walk on without helping a person who has fallen down on the street because they believe there are other people present who will help and that it is not their responsibility. This shaking off of responsibility can also be seen when a large number of people are caught in a situation and need help! Individuals then assume that their efforts at helping them will be futile as they are only one as compared to the large number of people that need help! 

     This finding is quite important as this explains why entire societies become oblivious to the pain and difficulties of other communities or groups of people in the same society. As you ponder upon this, why not try your own experiment?

SANGEETHA MADHU & JYOTHI RAVICHANDRAN, THE HINDU IN SCHOOL

THE BEANBAG PSYCHOLOGIST 02

The Emotional Body and the Physical Mind

     What would you find in the snapshot of a doctor’s waiting room? Toothy smiles and hearty laughs are far from the picture, surely. Expressions of sickness, fear, apprehensive frowns and screaming kids (and the occasional screaming adult) seem to be a more accurate description of the scene!

     There is such a close relationship between our physical wellness and our emotions and vice versa. Many of us are the very picture of gloom when down with a fever, but a surprise visit from a close friend and fun conversations have the power to instantly make us feel better. This indicates the existence of a two-way passage of information from the body to the mind and the other way around too.

     How do our bodies tell us our mind is feeling something? Many of you must have heard the expressions “butterflies in the stomach”, “giddy with excitement”, “scared to my guts” etc. Through physical sensations such as sweating, giddiness, short and quick breaths, tightened muscles, blood pressure and even acidity, the body is constantly trying to get our attention to the state of our minds.

     Research confirms that our brain releases a hormone called cortisol at times of high stress. Cortisol helps us to gather more energy to either stay and fight or flee from danger. An increased secretion of cortisol takes place when we are made to endure prolonged stress. This can lead to many physical problems such as heart disease, aches and pains, reduced immunity to diseases, ulcers and even aging! This is the extent of the impact our emotional states have on our physical body.

     The good news is it is possible to control our emotional states through our bodies as well. A caring teacher may have advised you to take deep, calming breaths before attempting a difficult task. There is a fantastic scientific logic to this advice. When we are scared or nervous, our sympathetic nervous system is activated, making us breathe in short pants whereas a deep breath activates the opposing system called the parasympathetic nervous system, which reduces the production of cortisol and other stress hormones and thus induces a feeling of calmness and well-being.

     For an overall sense of well-being we should pay attention to the mutual influence of the body and mind on each other so we are better able to control one through the other and achieve balance!

SANGEETHA MADHU & JYOTHI RAVICHANDRAN, THE HINDU IN SCHOOL

THE BEANBAG PSYCHOLOGIST 01

It was almost 1 ‘o clock in the afternoon. Everyone had had their fill at Sunday lunch and was settling down for idle chat and some post lunch belly-rubbing in the living room. Kiran plopped on to his habitual perch, his purple squishy beanbag and lazily looked over at his family. There was Aunty G fretting over the extra salt she had added to the sambhar which had long since been polished off by everyone. Incessant worrier, this one! There was Grandmother R, forever patient and compassionate, listening to the woes of the extra-salt-adder, supplying reassuring comments. She always said the right things! Then there was Uncle A, making inappropriate jokes and provoking others. Moving on, we have Amma and Aunty S talking loudly over the other interspersing conversations, in their own world and so completely relaxed than they have been during the week!

     To Kiran, there was something at once puzzling yet arresting about watching a bunch of people he knew so dearly. People- watching was akin to reading a riddle to him! He loved trying to make-up hypotheses to predict others’ behaviour based on whatever he already knew about them. He enjoyed pondering over why people say the kind of things they said and why they did the kind of things they did!One of the most puzzling questions in his mind was related to what emotions were! Where do they come from and how come the same situation lead to varied emotional responses in different people?!

     Where could an inquisitive young person turn to find an answer to these questions relating to people’s minds? The immensely intriguing field of Psychology would be a great first stop!

     If you were to observe what words come to mind when you hear “Psychology”, you would probably say “human mind”, “behaviour”, “mental wellbeing” and “mental abnormality”! The last response is a particularly frequent association that people make with this field. Sure, studying in depth as to the abnormalities of the mind is a key focus of the subject but it would be completely remiss to make statements about what “abnormal” is without knowing the “normal”, wouldn’t you agree?

     Psychology concerns itself with the scientific study of mental processes (thinking, emotions) and behaviours in both humans and animals. There are some fascinating branches which concern themselves with specific aspects of the mind. Here’s a list of a few of the branches:

1. Experimental psychology for designing research studies to prove or disprove theories of behaviour
2. Physiological psychology to study the role of the brain and other bodily processes on our mental lives
3. Social psychology to study the behaviour of individuals in a group setting
4. Evolutionary psychology to understand how memory, emotions, language and other processes developed as an adaptation to our changing environments
5. Abnormal psychology to study mental disorders, their causes and treatment!
6. Cognitive psychology that exclusively studies higher mental processes such as perception, attention, memory, reasoning, language etc.
7. Developmental psychology to study the psychological development and changes a person goes through from infancy to old age!
8. Neuropsychology to understand the structure and function of the brain in relation to behaviour

     Psychology is not an mysterious subject that is far removed from our everyday lives. We are all psychological beings and the very capacities that we enjoy such as our attention, perception, memory, emotions, social and intimate relationships, motivation and what else have you, falls within the ambit of Psychology!

     If we can open our minds and other senses to observe our personal and social worlds, we can recognize the relevance of psychological principles in our own lives and you could well be on your way to becoming a beanbag psychologist!           

SANGEETHA MADHU & JYOTHI RAVICHANDRAN, THE HINDU IN SCHOOL

YOUNG MINDS 13

On Green Fingers and Pink Hearts

     The glorious vacation time is here! Particularly if glorious means face-melting temperatures and the threat of another long academic year lurking on the other side of the summer. But we’ll deal with potential threats later and possible alternates to have fun this vacation now! Many of you would have a long list of activities planned while some others would simply be looking forward to watch the fan spin its motor off all day. 

     While there are a lot of enjoyable things to do over the vacations, the least considered candidates often would be activities that contribute in some way to the community we live in. Not more than a few students would have planned to be a part of a pro-environment group or a bird-watching group. Why is that so? Simply because playing video-games on the cool floor trumps picking plastic off the hot sands in the beach any day!

     Getting involved in activities that give back to society in some proactive way does wonders for your mental health! Wondering how? For starters, such activities are quite a change from the kind of things many people (adults included, of course) usually engage in. Imagine that you decide to teach the letters of the alphabet to a boy selling sundal on the beach. The novelty of such an experience contributes to expanding your comfort zone. You may learn to speak in a way so that not just your English-speaking, school-going friends understand you. 

     Dialogue with different members of the society will contribute to your understanding of their rather different life situations. With time, you will see that not only will your adaptation to new situations and ideas be a lot easier, but your very perception of people and life will widen, making your mind more open and accommodating of difference in thoughts, opinions and ways of living.

     Suppose you want to get involved in a pro-environment movement. You will get to meet experts from various related fields such as trekkers, scientists, photographers, doctors, educationalists, and what else have you! You will see that your list of interests grows with the number of new things you decide to try, not to mention your repertoire of knowledge and information pertaining to different issues. You ability to connect what you learn at school to community issues you care about will also develop.

     Surely you have heard many professionals who work for the betterment of their community say that the work they do gives their life so much meaning. Such a sentiment stems from the fact that when we reach beyond our private cocoon to other people we feel a strong sense of connection and belonging to a larger human network. We find that we are able to understand others’ emotional and social circumstances better. Such an involvement can inspire us to learn more, give more and do more, which can be a much stronger driving force in our life and careers than simply being ambitious to be the best in something. Imagine the level of service an engineer can offer if he woke up every morning with the drive to create technology that advances living sophistication to all in his country rather than simply wanting to bag an interview in a big magazine!

     If you have ever raised your eyebrows sceptically when an inspired soul said “Nothing is impossible”, you will see that they slowly come back down once you realise that every problem has a solution if you want to solve it passionately enough.

Take ownership of the planet you live on and responsibility for the people you live with. Read to an illiterate, go walking with an elderly person, plant a few trees, and leave out water for the thirsty birds to sip on. The list of small, random acts of kindness is long and its power, immeasurable. Happy holidays!  

SANGEETHA MADHU & JYOTHI RAVICHANDRAN, 

 THE NEW INDIAN EXPRESS- SCHOOL EDITION