Don't Wait for Governments to Nudge You Healthy

In my Don’t Rest in Peace book and in two previous blog posts (Healthy As an Olympian and Healthful Environments: Where Are You and Who Are You With?) I have referred to nudging which generally refers to efforts by authority persons, such as government officials, to surreptitiously or to overtly manipulate you into doing what the authority believes is "best" for you.  For instance, the United States tries to force its citizens to buy health care by exacting a financial penalty on those who fail to do so.

Because governments world-wide are trying to manipulate their citizenry to become healthier, they are encouraging psychologists to conduct research and to develop models that can be employed to facilitate that nudging toward health.  I thought you might want to know what the governments are learning so that you can nudge yourself and resist “Big Brother’s” unwanted nudges.  I will be providing more information over time but let’s start with the insights gained by the work of Laura N. van der Laan (2016) and her co-investigators.

The van der Laan group set out to discover the means by which food choice can be primed, meaning how exposure to an earlier food-related stimulus predisposes us to respond to a later food situation or food stimulus.  For instance, if before dinner a friend tells you that your host frequently overcooks her food, you are more likely to judge the meal accordingly.

The study in question sought to identify the primes that can lead us to select healthful over nonhealthful foods.  And the modality that they scrutinized was vision - how our visual attention and visual concentration biases us toward some foods and away from others.

One hundred and twenty-five participants were exposed to a simulated online situation wherein they shopped for groceries during a two day period.  Twenty-four screens were shown, each containing six items.  Eighteen of the screens had conventional meal (e.g., bread) and snack (e.g., chips) foods, three foods which had high energy content and three which had low.  The experimenters primed one of their groups with a health and dieting goal, a second group with a non-health relevant prime, and a third group with no prime at all.  The participants’ eye movements were tracked to determine the focus of their visual attention.  As expected, persons primed with healthful messages spent more time visually attending to health-supportive foods and they chose more low-calorie nutritious foods over high calorie non-nutritious foods.

The van der Laan results no doubt will be used to justify more governmental nudging into your dietary choices.  And I presume that their hearts will be in the right place, so to speak.  But, as always, I have faith in your good judgement and in your freedom to do what is best for you.  The visual tracking study affirms that we do well to prime ourselves toward health.  Regarding diet, that means that you can increase the likelihood of making healthful decisions by being aware of how you are directing your attention, visual and otherwise.  If you attend and think rarely or shallowly about the quality of your diet and if you make impulsive food choices, your health will reflect those inclinations.  Conversely, if you attend and think often and deeply about quality eating, you will be priming healthful eating.  And the timing of the primes is important.  Try to the think about the foods that you want to eat just before you go to a restaurant or supermarket and just before you select  your meal.  Make sure the healthful ideas are fresh in your mind so that you are intellectually and emotionally ready to translate your good intentions into your good actions.

Reference:

van der Laan, L.,  Papies, E.,  Hooge, I., &  Smeets, P. (2016).  Goal-Directed Visual Attention Drives Health Goal Priming: An Eye-Tracking Experiment.  Health Psychology, September 15, No Pagination Specified.  doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/hea0000410.

          

Why You Usually Eat As You Do

 Why you usually eat as you do is a massive health-relevant question with massive health implications.  So, you would think that there would be massive psychological research dedicated to the issue.  Unfortunately, not.  As I wrote in my Don't Rest in Peace book and in this blog many times, human behavior is multiply determined. Especially when it comes to important behaviors, we almost always do what we for do for a host of reasons, not for any one single, simple reason.  In any given context there is a hierarchy of reasons for an important behavior to be enacted.

Since eating is one of our most important health-determinative behaviors, we need to investigate eating as best we can to identify psychological factors highest on the explanatory hierarchy.  That is what Richard J. Stevenson (2016) did, and it is his work that forms the basis for what I am about to present.

Stevenson reviewed the psychological literature concerning the habitual diets of healthy adults. Consistent with what I already have suggested, he found a dearth of relevant research.  However, Stevenson did reach some tentative conclusions and offered some informed speculations based on the available data.

The most important conclusion is Stevenson’s belief that all psychologically important realms of life are influenced by habitual diet.  For instance, our cognition, emotion, and overt behaviors are powerfully affected by what we eat.  And what we habitually eat, in turn, is determined to a significant degree by how we think, feel, and act.  Stevenson cites some relationships in particular.  He mentions that impulsive persons tend to follow a diet of substandard nutrition.  Those scoring low on the personality dimensions of conscientiousness and openness to experience are often similarly impaired, as are emotionally distressed or depressed people.

Although the research in question did not assertively suggest specific reasons for the relationships that it uncovered, other studies and clinical experience offer some possibilities worth considering.

First, one certainly would expect poor impulse control to promote a get-it-now-and-worry-about-the-consequences-later eating orientation.  The impulsive person likely would be inclined toward fast food and tasty morsels regardless of their caloric load or nutritional shortcomings. Moreover, an impulsive person would not reflect on the later consequences that eventually flow from harmful food choices.  Second, since conscientiousness is roughly synonymous with self-discipline, a person lacking in conscientiousness would be expected to evidence eating habits similar to an impulsive person.  Third, consider openness to experience; someone low on that characteristic is likely to resist information about healthful eating advice,  Once having developed an unhealthful eating pattern, he/she will be inclined to continue in that mode.  Fourth, an individual who is distressed and/or depressed looks for something to ease the pain.  And, as we all know, many of the least healthful foods are relentlessly marketed to contemporary westerners who have come to regard them as most delectable.

So, to determine your eating habits, introspect about what you think, feel, and do food-wise.  All three are important and all three can help you can gain valuable insights.  Be especially mindful of how your standing relevant to impulse control, conscientiousness, and openness to experience can affect what you usually eat.  Be aware of the possibility that sometimes you might eating in order to assuage your distress or depression.  

Reference

Stevenson, R. (2016).  Psychological Correlates of Habitual Diet in Healthy Adults.

Psychological Bulletin, Sep 12., No Pagination Specified.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/bul0000065.

Is It Grit ?

Could grit be the primary reason why some people succeed when others fail?  In common parlance, “grit” has very positive connotations.  The dictionary extolls the virtues of grit as “courage and resolve; strength of character.”  Even psychologists heap mighty praise on the value of grit, as when Duckworth  et al. (2007) suggest that grit, which they defined as enduring passion for a long term goal plus perseverance toward it, probably is as important for everyday success as is intellectual ability.

Frankly, I am a big fan of grit as defined by Duckworth.  I like the concept because my personal experience, clinical practice, and reading of the professional literature provide substantive support for it.  On the other hand, because I always try to challenge my assumptions, especially my favorite assumptions, I remain alert for valid and reliable information to prevent me from generalizing too far from the empirical data.   That is why I carefully examined the work of Marcus Credé, Michael C. Tynan, and Peter D. Harms (2016) and present it to you today.

Concerned that grit had become an over-hyped construct, Marcus Credé and his colleagues reviewed the literature to determine the evidence for and against its utility.  They prefaced their approach by questioning whether the grit concept is separate from the older, more established notions of perseverance and conscientiousness.   According to them, standard measures of perseverance were sufficient for predicting success; adding measures of goal passion did not improve prediction significantly.  Similarly, the Credé group also concluded that the grit concept was so strongly correlated with conscientiousness that the two are virtually synonymous.  Part of their justification was that standard measures of conscientiousness include the capacity for self-control which obviously is critical for both conventional success and for grit.

Despite their apparent failure to substantiate grit as a special success-inducing entity, the team did acknowledge some benefits of the construct relevant to our discussion.  First, for cognitive or academic tasks, Credé et al. found that persons high in grit retained information better than their low-grit peers.  Second, also in the cognitive and academic realms, the investigators conceded that the effort aspect of grit did account for a measurable advantage over mere conscientiousness per se.

What then is my take and how does it relate to healthful lifestyle? 

I believe that after first minimizing the value of passion for a goal, Credé later revealed its worth.  Since research and commonsense indicate that retention is best for information about which we are passionate, it is reasonable to suspect that the passion dimension of grit accounted for the superior retention advantage of those high in grit.  Moreover, we all know that because conscientiousness is an intention rather than an action, goals will not be reached solely through conscientiousness.  Success also requires overt action—sustained effort—and sustained effort is an essential element to grit regardless of how it is defined.  If you can make grit a prominent feature of your identity, you naturally and relentlessly will exert intensive actions to reach your goals. 

To summarize, healthful lifestyle change is predicated on an individual’s remembering the why, what, when, how and where of his/her goals.  And change endures only through continued passionate adherence to the behaviors that comprise it.  So I still like the notion of grit as Duckworth’s enduring passion for a goal plus perseverance toward it.  What do you think?

References

Credé, M.,  Tynan, M. & Harms, P. (2016).  Much Ado About Grit: A Meta-Analytic Synthesis of the Grit Literature.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, June 16 , No Pagination Specified.doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000102.

 Duckworth, A., Peterson, C., Matthews, M., & Kelly, D. R. (2007).  Grit: Perseverance and passion for long term goals.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 1087–1101. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.6.1087.

Suppressing Emotions Affects Goals

How does suppressing our emotions influence how we approach goals and our capacity to achieve them?  That is a question related to a well-studied area of psychology typically called “ego depletion” (Baumeister, 2002) about which I have written previously.  In brief, ego depletion posits that self-control is a limited resource; when we exert self-control in one situation, there is less self-control energy available to apply toward another situation that occurs in close temporal proximity.  For instance, if hungry but you force yourself to skip lunch to finish a job, you have less self-control to devote to refraining from arguing with an irritating co-worker.

In the above example, you did not suppress your negative emotions, but instead expressed them due to having been depleted by hunger.  You simply lacked the self-control to suppress your negativity because self-control took more energy than you had to give.  What about suppressing emotions while pursuing a goal?  If suppression requires energy, would that suppression deplete your capacity to reach your goal and/or to relate amicably to others?

Rachel S. Low, and her colleagues (2016) pursued that line of research.  Study subjects were told to select personal, current goals and for a two month period to report every two weeks the extent to which they suppressed their emotions both during goal pursuit and when discussing the goals with their romantic partner. 

Consistent with ego depletion theory, subjects who suppressed negative emotion most often were those who also put forth the least goal-directed effort and least attained their goals.  Moreover, they had more depression and perceived the least closeness/support vis-a-vis their partners.  Similarly, their partners rated them in ways consistent with the subjects’ own unsatisfying self-reported limitations. 

All the above was essentially in accord with what the researchers had anticipated given previous studies.  A less expected finding concerned the role of context.  Specifically, Low found that emotional suppression in the context of goal pursuit more powerfully predicted goal achievement that did the subjects' habitual level of emotional suppression. That is, those who suppressed emotion during the execution of their tasks performed those tasks more poorly.  In short, knowing how much an individual is suppressing emotion while performing a specific task is more predictive of their success than is knowing a person's usual but non-contextualized tendency to do so.  

Low and her group suggested that the effort required to suppress negative emotion specifically undermined the individuals' abilities to muster the energy needed to maintain the necessary "approach orientation" and "problem solving" perspective to the goal at hand. The researchers presumed that the failure to rise above goal-debilitating challenges, in turn, contributed to the subjects' depressed mood.  

What implications from the Low group's results empower us to establish and maintain a healthful lifestyle?  I suggest the following:

1.  Problem solving and planning alone will not enable you to reach your healthful lifestyle goals.  Emotions count as well.

2.  Your emotional state while performing a healthful activity, rather than your usual emotional state, is particularly important.

3.  Since you need to expend energy to reach and to maintain your healthful lifestyle goals, you must prioritize your energy expenditure to reach those goals.  Moreover, anything that you do that robs you of your energy will impair your ability to make healthful lifestyle changes.  That of course means that excessive "partying" will be as detrimental as overworking.

4.  Do your best to establish and maintain a supportive context  - place, time, people, and so forth - for your healthful goal pursuits that imposes the least negative emotion and that fosters the greatest energy.      

References    

Baumeister, R. (2002). Ego Depletion and Self-Control Failure: An Energy Model of the Self's Executive Function. Self and Identity, 1, 2, 129–136. doi:10.1080/152988602317319302.

Low, R., Overall, N., Hammond, M., & Girme, Y. (2016).  Emotional Suppression During Personal Goal Pursuit Impedes Goal Strivings and Achievement.  Emotion, April, 29. Retrieved online, No Pagination Specified. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0000218.

Maintaining Competencies Despite Ageing

Do you know where my glasses are?

There’s the guy who used to live across the street from us when we were in Philadelphia.  What was his name? Jack? Jim? What was it?

Can you button my cuff for me?

Anyone could need assistance similar to what is implied above.  But such needs become more frequent as we age.  Are age-related declines inevitable?  How deep will they be? 

Concerns about ageing and competence are very common in 21st Century America where from 1950 to 2010, the age cohort 65 and over increased 213% whereas 15- to 64-year-olds grew only 105%, and the under 15 population, only 45% ( http://www.pewglobal.org/), 

Psychological research provides standard textbook-type answers to age-related decline, asserting, for instance, that "fluid" intelligence is most vulnerable and "crystalized" intelligence is less.  The former refers to capabilities that require more abstraction, novelty, dexterity, and speed, and the latter, more knowledge and experience, such as an extensive vocabulary, corpus of factual details, or armamentarium of well-practiced strategies.

For good reasons, age-related decline has been a frequent subject of scientific investigation. Let’s consider one.

Nemanja Vaci, Bartosz Gula, and Merim Bilalić (2015) investigated ageing though the lens of chess competence by scrutinizing a database containing records of players from beginner to world class.  They subdivided the course of chess competence into three phases: from start of playing to peak performance, from peak to postpeak decline, and from post peak decline to stabilization.  At first glance it was surprising to find that the more expert players’ declines tended to occur earlier than did the declines of less capable ones.  On the other hand, as anticipated, the declines of the more expert ones slowed more quickly than did the declines of the less capable ones.  Not surprisingly, regardless of expertise level, persons who played in the most tournaments decline the slowest and the shallowest.

Why the results?  I have some thoughts and implications for you to consider.  Let's start by having you imagine that you know little about chess and considering some questions from that perspective.

Am I smart enough to learn how to play chess?

Am I willing to put forth the time to become very skillful at it?

Am I good enough to play in tournaments?

Am  I able to tolerate playing against tournament competitors who are very skillful?

The aforementioned questions pertain to your self-confidence, priorities, time on task, determination, and willingness to take risks.  And all of those attributes will be critical for your learning, developing, maintaining competencies, and reaching any goal.  You certainly need self-confidence, priorities, time on task, determination, and willingness to take risks to achieve a healthful lifestyle no less than you do to become chess proficient.

And now, final implications from the chess study of Nemanja Vaci.  I infer that the more expert players declined earlier than less capable ones because the experts high level functioning required much more fluid intelligence skills – the skills most sensitive to ageing - than did their less capable counterparts.  Relatedly, the decline of the former group of chess players probably slowed more quickly because they had “overlearned” chess (Overlearning is a process by which one practices a new skill with such focus and frequency that the skill become habitual, requiring much less conscious effort than otherwise warranted.) to the point that they retained considerable chess-relevant fluid intellectual skills, eventually managing to compensate well for the fluidity that they had lost.  And, of course, the expert and less capable chess players who played in the most tournaments decline slowest and shallowest simply because the old adage of “use it or lose it” undeniably is true.

Repeating my essential point then: To achieve a healthful lifestyle, like an expert chess player, you must work continually toward enhancing your self-confidence, priorities, time on task, determination, and willingness to take health-promoting risks.  Life is the ultimate chess game. Experts know the rules and strategies.  And they know how to execute over the long term. 

Reference

Vaci, N.,  Gula, B. &; Bilalić, M. (2015).   Is age really cruel to experts?  Compensatory effects of activity.  Psychology and Aging, 30, 4, 740-754.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pag0000056