Viewer Discretion is Advised

Imagine that you just got home. You turn the light switch on and off, but nothing happens. You start thinking to yourself, “Wow, this is exactly like that movie I watched last night when that woman’s power was cut and there was a killer in her house.” You look at the windows on the other houses on your street and all their lights are on, so you go to the basement to check the breaker.  On your way down the stairs you hear sounds that someone is following you, so you move faster and your heart starts racing.  You get to the breaker and turn your electricity back on. You quickly turn around and see that this whole time you were just scared of your cat, Fluffles.

This is an example of how horror movies can be applied into our real life situations, even if we know that the likelihood of a killer in our house is slim.  Bodo Winter recently analyzed several horror movies and noted that these movies consistently rely on two basic metaphors: “evil is down” and “evil is dark”.  This is demonstrated in many old and recent horror movies, such as Evil Dead (1981) and Cabin in the Woods (2012), the evil in the movie is depicted as dark and is usually encountered or comes from below the surface.  These stated metaphors feed off of our evolutionary survival mechanisms; in other words, historically, human beings came across more threats to their survival in the dark.  However, in our present day society we do not experience similar historic threats.  Rather, we are more likely to die in a car accident or from heart disease than from an attack in the night.   

The primary issue that this can lead to is an irrational fear, such as the scenario at the start.  While some people find horror movies entertaining, for others these movies reinforce and maintain emotional (fear) and visual memories that can be translated into our everyday lives.  If we watch movies in which something scary always occurs in the dark or underground, we are training ourselves to be fearful in those same situations, even if there is no “evil” present.  This demonstrates the importance of what we expose ourselves to.

In my own life, I am petrified of being home alone during the night.  Every sound I hear in the house I assume to be some deranged serial killer, but this scenario is highly unlikely. Luckily, I don’t have any personal experience of there being a stranger in my home while I was alone. Instead, this idea has largely stemmed from horror movies teaching us that we will likely meet our demise in a dark underground cave, or other equally frightening situation.

So while horror movies may not be the most mentally beneficial form of entertainment, does this mean we should stop watching them? I believe that we should all be at least a bit more mindful and critical towards what we expose ourselves to.  So the next time you’re watching a horror movie, try and think to yourself: “How is the evil portrayed?” or “Is this a situation I should be scared of in my life?”, because these situations have a greater probability of occurring in your dreams than in real life.   

 Olivia Wassing 

Winter, B. (2014). Horror movies and the cognitive ecology of primary metaphors. Metaphor and Symbol, 29, 151-170. doi: 10.1080/10926488.2014.924280

Stay Active, Feel Good

Everyone knows that staying physically inactive can have severe health consequences. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 3.2 million deaths a year occur due to health issues maintained by physical inactivity. This is a growing cause for concern, and many people don’t realize that staying physically active can not only improve physical health, but mental health as well. While many people often think about staying physically active, they push it off until a more convenient time. People often get into a routine where they tell themselves that they will start at the beginning of the next week, month, etc. This is a constant cycle of broken promises that negatively impacts the individual.

Conveniently, every single New Year’s thousands of people make a resolution that they are going to become more fit over the coming year. People sign up for gym memberships, purchase exercise equipment, and get motivated. Then, about a month into the New Year, they stop going. Why? Everyone knows that staying physically active is good for them. Maybe if people realized that staying active not only makes them look good, but also feel good, they would change their minds about quitting.

Joseph, Royse, Benitez and Pekmezi undertook a study which analyzed what impact staying physically fit has on students. Data from the study revealed that students who took time out of their day to be physically active have a better quality of life. Physically fit participants reported having a higher physical self-esteem, as well as a better positive self-image compared to those participants who did not stay physically active. This means that not only does staying physically active boost your health, but it also boosts your mental health.

            Therefore, it is important to include physical activity into one’s life. While there are many excuses for not staying physically active, none are justifiable. In the aforementioned study, college students were of particular interest because of the massive transition they experience as they move from high school to post-secondary. Out of the population, one could imagine how many excuses students have to not stay physically active. “I have to study,” “I have a project due,” “I don’t have any money,” “I don’t have anyone to go with,” are just some of the excuses commonly heard. Ultimately, the responsibility of keeping one’s body healthy comes down to the individual.

            If you are sick and tired of making excuses and delaying physical activity, it is time to act now. One of the biggest reasons for people not to stay physically active is because they say they have no time. What is the solution? Find time! Take a planner out and set aside time each day to physical activity. Keep in mind that this doesn't require you to go to the gym for hours. Simply going on a walk or a run around the neighborhood will put you in better shape. Additionally, for your next New Year’s resolution, make it meaningful. Instead of telling yourself that you are going to exercise more, make a plan to actually do so. Even better, cancel out a negative with a positive. Replace that show you always watch when you get home with a short jog.

Remember, only you are capable of making the change. If you want to improve your health, as well as feel more positive, make the change. Become physically active and see the rewards. 

Author: John Nowak

References

Joseph, R. P., Royse, K. E., Benitez, T. J., & Pekmezi, D. W. (2014). Physical activity and quality of life among university students: Exploring self-efficacy, self-esteem, and affect as potential mediators. Quality of Life Research: An International Journal of Quality of Life Aspects of Treatment, Care & Rehabilitation, 23, 661-669. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11136-013-0492-8

Doctors, they are just like us: Media’s Influence in Diagnostic Decisions

Imagine being told you have cancer based on finding a lump on your torso. You proceed onwards with the course of treatment; chemotherapy and nearly die from it. Just to find out you don’t have cancer after all but rather panniculitis (skin inflammation of fat cells) and all you needed was antibiotics to treat it. 

That is how Trisha Torrey felt, after being told she only had a short while to live. Luckily for her, she sensed something was not right because she had no other symptoms except for hot flashes, which could be attributed to menopause (she was 52), and decided to get a second opinion as well as do her own research. Unfortunately, misdiagnosis like this happens quite often. In fact, Trisha is not the first person thought to have cancer only to be an illness that has a simple and easy cure. She was lucky, however, others in the same situation are not as fortunate. There are people who get diagnosed with cancer, undergo chemotherapy and die, only for an autopsy to reveal that they never had cancer to begin with (plus side, the families won a lot of money from law suits). This happens more frequently than we realize. Although

  they may not all die from a misdiagnosis, some live their entire lives taking medication for an illness wondering why they do not get better. This realization got me to ponder on why it is people get misdiagnosed so frequently? Aside from the possibility of it being a new and unknown disease, why would doctors who are trained to detect, assess and diagnose patients with the appropriate illness, instead, make such life damaging decisions? It turns out like everyone else, doctors are subject to media influence. Specifically, they are influenced by what is called an availability bias. (Here we go ladies and gentlemen, the evil social media strikes again!)

Availability bias is what influences people to overestimate the probability of events associated with memorable or vivid events (Schmidt, Mamede, Van, Van Gog, Van Saase, Jan, & Rikers, 2014). Because memorable events are further intensified by media coverage, we believe it to be more frequent and common. So when we see or hear things that may share similarities with something we perceive to be common, we are more likely to judge that new information to be the same as the information already in our minds. This idea was the bases of Schmidt and colleagues (2014) study on whether exposure to media reported diseases could bias doctors’ diagnoses and cause them to use that information, leading to diagnostic mistakes. The study instructed 38 doctors to evaluate the accuracy of two diseases (legionnaires disease and q fever) found on wikipedia. Six hours later the doctors were asked to diagnose 8 cases (all had different diagnosis, however, two had similar symptoms to the two wikipedia entries). What they found was that, the doctors misdiagnosed cases with similar symptoms to the two wikipedia diseases more frequently when they had read the wikipedia information similar to that disease. However, because their decision were not based on analytical reasoning, when the doctors were given 4 of the 6 cases (2 were the previously misdiagnosed cases with symptoms similar to the wikipedia diseases) and were able to reflect on the case studies, the accuracy of the diagnosis of the 2 cases influenced by the media exposure improved. 

What this study essentially says is that availability bias can emerge from a doctor’s exposure to information about diseases in the media. For example; when there is a disease outbreak, and there is lots of media coverage on it (e.g. the Ebola crisis happening right now), it is more likely to come to mind when we see similar symptoms. This information while diagnosing patients, could be used by doctors unconsciously to make diagnostic errors especially when they have some shared symptoms.

Why do doctors succumb to this bias?

 An explanation by Schmidt et al., (2014) is that it could have an evolutionary standpoint. We look for similarities to make easy and quick decisions in our environment. As well, it could be how our memory works; how we think. This is called a top down process; we look for similarities, cues in our environment and memories that will help us understand and make sense of our surroundings. The downfall of this is that our memory treats indirect events in the same way as it would treat events actually experienced by us. Our memory can be deceitful, it makes these impersonal events available to us when something similar is encountered. This idea is called pattern recognition, and is often used by doctors when making a diagnosis. Doctors diagnose diseases in an automatic way, through recognition of patterns between the current case and previous cases of patients. This type of reasoning according to Schmidt et al., (2014) is fast, requires little effort, and is only effective in common illnesses like the common cold or flu. 

If this is the case then what can doctors do about it?

The authors found that when the doctors were given time to reflect on each case separately and to look at the symptoms individually, the accuracy of their diagnosis improved. This suggests that, if the doctors are able to reflect, and critically assess each case on it’s own there would be less room for diagnostic mistakes. Even with this, one must keep in mind that medicine is based on trial and error. It is far from being a perfect science and this applies to the wonderful people who practice this flawed science. Even when reflection is done on their part, there is still a chance of mistakes happening.

So then what can you the patient do?

Firstly, no, you cannot disregard everything your doctors tell you. 

What you can do is: 

1. Be cautious: pay attention when the doctor goes over your diagnosis with you. 
2.  If there is something that doesn’t make sense to you, ask for clarification. 
3. Do your own research to learn more about your diagnosis (note: reading something online does not equate to actual professional opinion). 
4. When in doubt seek multiple opinions, after all,  the worst that could happen is that they tell you what you already know. 

References

Schmidt, H. G., Mamede, S., van, d. B., van Gog, T., van Saase, Jan L. C. M., & Rikers, R. M. J. P. (2014). Exposure to media information about a disease can cause doctors to misdiagnose similar-looking clinical cases. Academic Medicine, 89(2), 285-291. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0000000000000107

Torrey, T. (2014). A storey of misdiagnosis: how a wrong diagnosis became a source of motivation. Retrieved fromhttp://patients.about.com/od/yourdiagnosis/a/How-Common-Is-Misdiagnosis-Or-Missed-Diagnosis.htm

She's Just Not That Into You

Men and Women are attracted to each other it’s no secret. Throughout processes of complex social interaction Men and Women must be able to properly gauge the interest of one another; it’s actually a complicated process. There’s more going on than meets the eye and you might not be as competent as you tell your friends you are. Such a process is not surprisingly riddled by inaccuracies and we can see one of the sexes doing more poorly in this respect. It has been shown that males are culpable of committing consistent errors in their perceptions of attraction from females. Remarkably, most of them think females are much more attracted to them than what’s actually the case, an unexpected finding indeed! The actual case is that, men are committing a specific type of bias on a consistent and regular basis. The first study to observe the effect was by Abbey in 1982. Findings showed that men found women more promiscuous and more seductive than did their female counterparts; observed in 5-minute conversations.

A multitude of studies explored this idea further and a theory was set forth to try and rationalize the phenomenon. The most popular theory, namely Error Management Theory, posits an evolutionary mechanism in regards to possible errors that could be made by Men. For example, a Male can make the critical error of missing a sexual opportunity. Therefore, a bias arose in order for Men to make the error of over perceiving attraction from women as opposed to under perceiving, that way there would be no missed opportunities for sex. In other words, underestimating a Woman’s sexual interest in them may cause a costly missed mating opportunity.

There is another piece to this puzzle though. Certain males are more likely to engage in the bias. Presumably upon reflection it can be reasonably assumed that men who think they are less worthy a mate may be more likely engage in the biased behavior right? This makes sense using the ideas of error management, where a male that is less attractive to females has much more to lose when missing a sexual opportunity; the following study attempted to find out.

The study first gauged the men’s ratings from a jury of 10 females; they viewed and rated males in terms of attractiveness. They then asked the males all sorts of questions about what they think of themselves and their attractiveness. The male opinions of female interest were measured by asking men to respond to an ambiguous situation that stated:

“In a nightclub, you notice a group of girls across the room. One of them particularly catches your eye. There is something about her that you feel drawn to. As you are looking, she turns round and catches your eye. Rather than look away, she holds your gaze and smiles at you ... “ (Kohl, 2014).

Depending on the answer, researchers could tell whether the men thought the female was into them. The researchers believed that men who assumed that they weren’t very attractive would have been most likely to think that the females were attracted to them. They were wrong.

It turns out that males who were assured of their attractiveness and masculinity, were most likely to mistakenly believe Women were interested in them. However, the same men were fairly accurate at judging their own looks as the study showed their ratings to be fairly close to the female judge ratings. The researchers were surprised that their predictions were wrong.

What could lead to such an effect? Why were the more attractive males more likely to overstate female interests in them? It is thought that these males were more successful in the past, reaffirming their own ideas about their looks. These past experiences led them to believe in the fact that they were attractive, so they are more likely to think women are more attracted to them than they actually are. It’s a sad reality for countless Men but in the evolutionary sense, maybe it’s best. All jokes aside, these findings are not meant to dictate the way we should live, they are just insights into evolutionary workings and not meant to guide our behavior. It could even be problematic when men cross boundaries set by females. They sometimes mention females are playing “hard to get” and continue to persist even though there are clear signs. Maybe this finding will help some men realize when to back off.

Kohl, C., & Robertson, J. (2014). The sexual overperception bias: An exploration of the relationship between mate value and perception of sexual interest. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, 8(1), 31-43. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0097247

What We Need Versus What We Want

You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes well you just might find. You get what you need. You have probably heard this Rolling Stones song before, but have you ever taken the time to reflect on its meaning? Mick Jagger conveys through these lyrics the message that what we want and what we need are two distinct matters. However as a result of living in a society saturated by advertisements and the desire for immediate gratification, we have come to see these two matters as one and the same. The repercussions of this are severe, affecting our physical, mental and financial wellbeing. Of most concern is the detrimental effect this mindset may have on our food choices and overall diets.

You may need lunch, but do you need to take that midnight drive to McDonalds because you’ve had a rough week so you deserve it? No. Do you need that Tim Horton’s donut you suddenly crave when pulling an all-nighter before your 9am calculus exam? No. Do you need that Häagen Dazs tub of ice cream after your boyfriend of two years leaves you for your best friend? No. (Well this may be the one exception). Unfortunately for many of us (myself included) making this type of distinction is difficult, if not impossible. Acting on this distinction is even more difficult, especially for individuals (such as myself) who use food to cope with stress. Treating yourself once in a while to a chocolate bar is not detrimental to your health, however giving into these cravings on a consistent basis may lead to weight gain. In extreme cases, consistently ‘giving in’ to these cravings may lead to obesity. 

The repercussions of a poor diet extend far beyond simply weight gain: previous literature has identified an association between obesity and mental health disorders, specifically depression. In a study conducted in the Netherlands, scientists discovered that obese individuals have a 55% increased risk of developing depression in comparison to individuals who are not obese (Luppino, de Wit, Bouvy, Stijnen, Cuijpers, Penninx, & Zitman, 2010). Most of us are aware of the association that exists between what we eat and how we feel, yet we seldom apply this knowledge to our own lives. A first step towards becoming more ‘mindful’ when it comes to our eating habits is learning how to distinguish the food our body needs from the food our body wants. By making this distinction, we may potentially be able to diminish the frequency with which we ‘give in’ to the food and beverage cravings we experience.  

The game 'Tetris'

Scientists Skorka-Brown, Andrade, and May from Pylmouth University in England (2014) were interested in discovering techniques that may help individuals be more mindful and in control of what they eat. Specifically, these scientists were interested in seeing if playing the computer game ‘Tetris’ for three minutes when one experiences a craving helps reduce the intensity of the craving. In order to investigate this, they conducted a study in which participants were asked to report the food and/or beverage cravings they were currently experiencing. Half of the participants were then randomly assigned to play Tetris for three minutes. The other half of the participants were also instructed to play Tetris for three minutes, however it (purposely) never loaded on their computer screens. Instead, these participants sat facing what appeared to be a ‘frozen’ computer screen for three minutes. Following this, participants were again asked to report the cravings they were currently experiencing. From the participants who reported a craving at the beginning of the study, those who played Tetris reported significantly less intense cravings at the end of the study than those who did not play Tetris. 

You might be thinking why Tetris of all games???

Scientists have found that humans may not be able to play Tetris and think about what they're craving at the same time. Here's why: Playing Tetris is a 'visual activity' and is said to activate the same region in our brain that is activated to produce and maintain food/beverage cravings, which is also a 'visual activity'. The region of our brain that is activated during these 'visual activities' is referred to as our 'visuospatial sketchpad'. What is interesting about this region of our brain is that it can only perform one 'visual activity' at a time, such as maintaining a craving or playing Tetris. Because of this, playing Tetris when we are experiencing a craving is said to 'cancel out', or at the very least diminish the intensity of our craving. Simply put, something’s gotta give.

Tetris eh? Who would have thought it could help us practice mindful eating! As intriguing as this finding is, it is important to keep in mind that because playing Tetris was only found to be associated with diminishing the intensity of food/beverage cravings, it is not guaranteed that it will work. Nonetheless it is worth the try! So the next time you are craving that chocolate bar, or McDonald's fries, why not play Tetris for even as little as three minutes before you make the decision to ‘cave in’ to your craving. Who knows…it might just work! 

Luppino, F. S., de Wit, L. M., Bouvy, P. F., Stijnen, T., Cuijpers, P., Penninx, B. W., & Zitman, F. G. (2010). Overweight, obesity, and depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Archives of general psychiatry, 67(3), 220-229.

Skorka-Brown, J., Andrade, J., & May, J. (2014). Playing ‘Tetris’ reduces the strength, frequency and vividness of naturally occurring cravings. Appetite, 76, 161-165.