Category Archives: Science

Arts, Mental Health, Psychology, Science

Positive emotions create additional personal resources

POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

In Scripture, we read: ‘A joyful heart is good medicine.’ – Proverbs 17:22

Positive psychology’s leading researcher in the field of positive emotions is Barbara Fredrickson. She has devoted her academic career to investigating the nature and purpose of positive emotions and testing out her theories under laboratory conditions. We’ve all come across the “fight-or-flight” response which accompanies negative emotions. This automatic response mechanism has the effect of narrowing down our thoughts and behaviours to very specific, self-protecting actions; in the case of anger it’s to fight, and in the case of fear, to run. But positive emotions are relatively under-researched and not as well understood. There are thousands of academic psychology papers devoted to the experience of fear, for example, and only hundreds on the subject of positive emotions such as compassion.

Fredrickson’s goal has been to find out if positive emotions have a purpose apart from making us feel good. Her “broaden and build” theory suggests that, in contrast to negative emotions which focus us, positive emotions lead to more expansive and creative thoughts and behaviour which create additional personal resources over time. These are identified in four main categories:

. Intellectual – for example, developing our problem solving skills

. Physical – for example, developing our physical strength and cardiovascular health

. Social – such as facilitating the quality and quantity of our friendships and other relationships and connections

. Psychological – Developing resilience and optimism.

In short, the experience of positive emotions creates “upward spirals” of thought and action which prepare you for future challenges.

Other psychologists suggest that experiencing positive emotions also allows you to seek out and work towards new goals.

Fredrickson’s research shows that positive emotions don’t just feel good, they do us good too.

. Positive emotions good, negative emotions bad?

No one should fall into the trap of thinking that positive emotions are always good and that negative emotions are always bad, as this is simply not the case. For example, getting angry at an injustice can spur you into action. Recent research in positive psychology has started to stress the importance of understanding context.

In the early days positive psychologists were excited by Fredrickson and Losada’s discovery of the so-called “3:1 Positivity Ratio”, that is the ratio of positive to negative emotions above which flourishing occurs, and below which we languish. However, more recent research at the University of East London have demonstrated that the science on which the Positivity Ratio was based is flawed, much to the disappointment of many positive psychologists. All we can say at the moment is that positive emotions are generally more fleeting whereas negative emotions are more “sticky”, experiencing more positive emotions is better (but we cannot put a number on it) and that the frequency of positive emotions is more important than their intensity.

(Podcast ends)

LET’S now think of ways in which we can increase the number of positive emotions we experience. Psychologist Michael Frisch suggests creating a playlist of all the activities which interest you and which you’ve enjoyed in the past. His work lists over 200 simple activities including writing poetry, singing or dancing by yourself, getting up early in the morning, playing board games, and doing something outside.

You might also like to consider keeping a well-being journal noting down when you were creative, when you didn’t worry, where you have learned something new or contributed to your community. Recording your most positive experiences, in particular those which give you a boost, will greatly help as you develop your “upward spirals”. These are crucial for positive emotional stability.

– Good luck to Scotland in the Six Nations tournament 2023 which begins today
Standard
Books, Health, Medical, Research, Science

Book Review: A Silent Fire

THE FLAMES WITHIN

Intro: A fascinating primer explores the crucial role of inflammation in our bodies and how it can go awry. What you need to know about inflammation in the body

INFLAMMATION is a crucial tool of the body’s immune system. As the first line of defence against injury or invaders, it traps bacteria and viruses, heals wounds and signals to other cells for help. It results in symptoms such as pain and swelling. Once a threat is remedied, inflammation, along with its ensuing discomfort, disappears – or at least it should.

In her debut book A Silent Fire: The story of inflammation, diet and disease, gastroenterologist Shilpa Ravella explains how inflammatory responses can turn against us. Crucially, she shows how chronic inflammation plays a role in many common conditions such as heart disease and cancer, and why Western diets are at least partially to blame.

This primer sees Ravella start with some fascinating history, travelling all the way back to the 1st century, when Aulus Cornelius Celsus first described four of the five main signs of inflammation: pain, heat, redness and swelling. The fifth, a loss of function, was identified in the mid-1800s.

Ravella spends a lot of time examining the work of Victorian scientists, such as Élie Metchnikoff, who won a Nobel Prize in 1908 for discovering immune cells called phagocytes that engulf pathogens and particles. Eventually, she moves on to modern-day researchers like Charles Serhan, who helped identify molecules known as resolvins that turn off inflammation.

This lays a proper foundation for the book’s second section, which connects these discoveries to inflammation’s possible role in disease. Low levels of inflammation have been found in people with conditions such as cancer. While inflammation is a normal response to injury and disease, persistent inflammation is now being viewed as a potential cause of illness.

Ravella further speculates that inflammation can contribute to conditions like depression and Alzheimer’s disease, though as a responsible medical professional, she provides important caveats and stresses the need for more research.

The most damning evidence links inflammation to autoimmune conditions – which occur when the body damages its own cells – such as rheumatoid arthritis. Characterised by long-lasting, low levels of inflammation, these conditions increase susceptibility to other problems like bone loss, heart disease and kidney disease.

The book wraps up by detailing how factors like diet and exercise can contribute to inflammation as well as help dampen it. For many, this won’t be new, but what may be illuminating is Ravella’s explanation of lifestyle significance.

For instance, she devotes a whole chapter to the gut microbiome, describing how processed foods and animal products, like red meat and dairy, disrupt microbial composition, setting off a chain of events that leads to increased inflammation. She then explains why fruits, vegetables and whole grains can help undo these effects.

A Silent Fire is no quick read: it is packed with information, combining medical history, innovative research and first-hand clinical experiences. At times, it feels over-ambitious, as Ravella crams in as much as possible rather than clearly connecting the various topics. It can also be difficult to keep track of all the different microbes, scientists and immune cells involved, especially if you lack a scientific or medical background.

But Ravella’s writing style keeps even the most dense page engaging. She breathes life into biological function, at one point describing types of white blood cells as “sophisticated warriors” that “voraciously gobble up” particles. Ultimately, the book is perfect for those looking to delve deeper into the history and intricate workings of immunology, diet and disease.

– A Silent Fire is published by Bodley Head

– Rheumatoid arthritis, as shown in this X-ray, is a chronic inflammatory condition
Standard
Arts, Philosophy, Psychology, Science

Philosophy: David Hume

EMPIRICIST & ESSENTIAL THINKER (1711–1776)

– A narrative and critique on the philosophy of David Hume

David Hume is the philosophical hero of modern day sceptics and empiricists, renouncing all knowledge except that which can be gained from the senses. Alas, as Quine would later famously say, echoing Hume, what can be garnered from the senses is, after all, not much.

From Locke, Hume had drawn the conclusion that all human knowledge is based on relations amongst ideas, or “sense impressions”. Anything not given in experience is mere invention and must be ruthlessly discarded. As a result he denies the existence of God, the self, the objective existence of logical necessity, causation, and even the validity of inductive knowledge itself. His aim is twofold: at once demolitionary – to rid science of all falsehoods based on “invention rather than experience” – and constructive, to found a science of human nature. Much impressed with how Isaac Newton had described the physical world according to simple mechanical laws, Hume had a mind to do something similar for the nature of human understanding. His Treatise on Human Nature is a painstaking study in experimental psychology in search of general principles. In this, however, Hume can be seen as being spectacularly unsuccessful, primarily because his whole taxonomy of “impressions” and “ideas” is derived from the much discredited Cartesian model. Nevertheless, Hume’s negative program is a devastating example of the power of logical critique. His sceptical results, especially regarding induction, remain problematic for modern philosophers.

Hume observes that we never experience our own self, only the continuous chain of experiences themselves. This psychological fact leads Hume to the dubious metaphysical conclusion that the self is an illusion, and in fact personal identity is nothing but the continuous succession of perceptual experience. “I am,” Hume famously says, “nothing but a bundle of perceptions”. Following a similar line of thought, Hume notices that the force that compels one event to follow another, causation, is also never experienced in sense impressions. All that is given in experience is the regular succession of one kind of event being followed by another. But the supposition that the earlier event, the so-called “cause”, must be followed by the succeeding event, the “effect”, is merely human expectation projected onto reality. There is no justification for believing that there is any casual necessity in the ordering of events.

Hume’s scepticism does not stop there, and the belief in causation is just a special case of a more general psychological trait: inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning is the process that leads us to make generalisations from observing a number of similar cases. For example, having observed many white swans but no black swans, one might seemingly be justifiably led to the conclusion that “All swans are white”. Equally, being aware that men often die, we conclude “All men are mortal”. But such generalisations go beyond what is given in experience and are not logically justified. After all, black swans were found in Australia, and there is always the logical possibility of coming across an immortal man. Hume claimed that inductive reasoning could not be relied upon to lead us to the truth, for observing a regularity does not rule out the possibility that next time something different will occur. Since all scientific laws are merely generalisations from inductive reasoning, this so-called “problem of induction” has been pressing for philosophers of science. Trying to show how induction is justified has taxed them throughout the 20th and 21st Centuries. Karl Popper is notable for offering the most promising solution to Humean scepticism. Popper’s brand of scientific method, ‘falsificationism’ gave rise to a whole new area of debate in the philosophy of science. According to Popper, the mark of a scientific theory is whether it makes predictions which could in principle serve to falsify it.

Standard