Healthy Skepticism

Experts, experts, experts.  So many to read and hear, so little time.  Empowered by the Internet, millions of us are trying to influence millions of us, myself of course included.  Should you listen to me?  That’s your call.  In fact, I repeatedly have advised that neither I nor any other expert can provide the fine grained advice that any rational person needs to decide whether what is offered is applicable to them.  Everything must be filtered through unique features of yourself and your essential contexts.

To reinforce the reasonableness of my skepticism regarding experts, let’s think about the beliefs of two legendary Nobel Prize winners: Albert Einstein and Paul Krugman.

As many of you know, Einstein vigorously disputed what has come to be called quantum physics.  For instance, in cynically doubting a portion of the theory he infamously wrote in 1926 that God does not play dice with the universe.  At that particular point in time, had interest in quantum physics evaporated, we quite likely would not now have computers, smartphones, the Internet, GPS, or  MRI.     

Paul Krugman, formerly a professor at Princeton University and MIT and presently Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for The New York Times, made some infamous misstatements of his own.  Perhaps the most noteworthy of these was his prognosticating in 1998 that:

The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in "Metcalfe's law"--which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants--becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's.

The Krugman quote is supremely ironic in that he made his prediction in an article that he penned entitled, “Why most economists' predictions are wrong.”  No big thing?  For at least thousand years some of the most learned Europeans asserted that the earth is the center of the universe.  When indisputable evidence accumulated to the contrary I am sure that many resisted admitted their mistake.  But I wonder if they had the unmitigated gall of Paul Krugman who in December, 2013 rationalized:

But the main point is that I don't claim any special expertise in technology -- I almost never make technological forecasts, and the only reason there was stuff like that in the 98 piece was because the assignment required that I do that sort of thing.

Shame on Time Magazine then for forcing Krugman, Nobel prize winner and former professor at  Princeton University and MIT, to make a mistake!  He surely is too brilliant to take responsibility for an erroneous statement made of his own volition.

Given human fallibility then, I encourage you to be especially cautious when exposed to information presented under the guise of expertise.  Too often we are lulled into complacency by fancy titles and prominent people.  To maintain any credibility in all of this I must admit that while cautioning you about experts, I implicitly present myself as having some expertise to dispense.

Certainly I am not arrogant or delusional enough to compare myself to Einstein or even to Krugman.  Even after 40 years of psychological practice, I am reluctant to summarily predict what will be best for you.  And since “healthy” skepticism is my default, I could not criticize you for being equally cautious about anything you read that I write, including today’s post.

References

Einstein, Albert (1926).  "I, at any rate, am convinced that [God] does not throw dice."  Letter to Max Born.

Krugman, Paul (1998).  Why most economists' predictions are wrong.  Red Herring Magazine, June.

Yarow, J. (2013).  Paul Krugman Responds To All The People Throwing Around His Old Internet Quote.  Business Insider.  http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-responds-to-internet-quote-2013-12.

Internal and External Influences on Healthful Lifestyle Decisions

Ultimately our health mostly is impacted by our decisions.  And since our decision making often is flawed, the more we understand our approaches, the better.  For instance, common sense indicates that decisions under stress are qualitatively different from decisions made calmly.  When stressed, we tend to give excessive import to information about rare circumstances and inadequate weight to information from our frequent personal experiences.  For instance, when suffering extraordinary problems at work, a healthy person undergoes a routine physical examination, is told that his heart rate is slightly accelerated, and decides that he needs an immediate cardiac catherization  to stave off an impending heart attack.  By reasoning thus, the frightened person “forgets” the fact that he always has had annual physicals that never revealed any major heart problems.  That is, he discounts the more likely fact that would be based on his personal experiences of past physicals, and seizes upon a more remote possibility based on his immediate interpretation of information just disclosed.

In addition to your personal opinions, health decisions are sometimes based upon information derived from outside yourself,  Such information,for instance, might issue from something that you read, the Internet, a media report, or from face to face interaction.  Your education and personality, including your levels of openness and self-confidence, are critical in determining the balance of looking within or looking without for data to determine your decisions.

Ido Erev and colleagues (2017) concluded that contemporary psychological research points to three major factors that determine most decision making.  First, we depend on our subjective opinions about the probability that given information is accurate.  That means, for instance, that I place more weight on "facts" that I personally have perceived through my life experiences.  Second, we also rely on heuristics - rules of thumb - so that I trust that when in doubt I should choose a less risky option.  Finally, when attempting to reach a decision, I retrieve from memory facts that I deem relevant to the decision at hand.  If I remember having had good results from prescription medication and poor results from generics, that will guide  my current choice.  The three major factors of course need not be mutually exclusive.  Even personal life experiences could have been affected significantly by external influences.

The researchers in question concluded that regardless of the initial source of information, feedback predictably influenced decision makers’ behaviors.  When provided initial information, the subjects’ reached decisions based on four major parameters:  their level of pessimism , their recognition of the likelihood of maximizing a positive outcome, equal weighting (presuming that all outcomes under consideration were at least possible), and their attitude toward the decision regret.   Moreover, the subjects’ pre-experiment life experiences decreased their inclinations toward decision pessimism, likelihood of maximizing  positive outcome, and equal weighting. By contrast, pre-experiment life experiences increased the impact of regret on decision making. Therefore, both initial and subsequent data could enable any or all of the four  parameters to be modified by decision-oriented feedback.

Although factors other than those that Erev investigated can be important for determining health decisions, his study should alert us to the following:  We need to look inward and outward for information related to our health.  We should not delude ourselves into believing the we have all the answers.  But health information must be personalized in a manner that only you can achieve. For instance, only you understand your stressors in enough depth to understand their effects on you.  Only you know your life experiences, customary heuristics, and memories that pertain to any health issue.  Similarly, only you can decode your level of pessimism , expectations of maximizing a positive outcome, appreciation for equal weighting, and attitude toward decision regret.  

The challenge for you and for me is to balance internal and external influences sufficiently to make decisions affording the best chance of achieving our health goals.  Since we all mostly operate on automatic pilot, we first must be conscious of the importance of making deliberate health decisions, and then take the considerable time and exert the considerable effort necessary to timely execute the require actions. 

  

Reference:

Erev, I., Ert, E., Plonsky, O., Cohen, D. & Cohen, O. (2017).  From Anomalies to Forecasts: Toward a Descriptive Model of Decisions Under Risk, Under Ambiguity, and From Experience.  Psychological Review, Mar 09 , 2017, No Pagination Specified. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/rev0000062  

Feeling Well

To say that something is "subjective" often is to imply that it is of questionable validity.  Our culture places a premium on "objective" data.  For instance, virtually all of the behavioral and health sciences insist that only"evidenced-based' research is worthy of dissemination.  Therefore, at first, it seems contradictory to discuss findings derived from studies of "subjective well-being."  Yet, such studies generally are accepted as reasonable by most psychologists.  This perhaps is because the subjective well-being opinions of research subjects are collected and evaluated with scientific rigor and satisfy state of the art academic standards.  For the most part, well-being data is comprised of single or combined assessments of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors elicited from the research subjects and/or from persons who know them intimately.           

Subjective well-being (SWB) data quantify an individual’s general sense of how well their life is proceeding.  SBW, then, depends on relatively chronic, versus episodic, features of life.  Because everyone occasionally has an especially “bad day” or an especially “good day,” SWB must be assessed over time to determine one's modal satisfactions and feelings.

So what is assessed in deciding SWB?  Certainly, the assessment needs to be multifaceted.  Some common, obvious determinants of SWB, for instance, are an individual’s health, income, and sense of competence and control.  The issue of control is quite salient because some psychologists have asserted that much of SWB is genetically determined.  If so, one might conclude that there is little or nothing that we can influence that will make an appreciable difference in our SWB.  If  “It’s all in the genes,” our well-being is preordained.

Recent studies, however, have challenged the contention that genes are primary for SWB.  For instance, Diener et al. (2017) cite research by Nes and Roysamb (2015) suggesting that non-genetic factors account for most of our SWB.  This supports the commonsense notion regarding the importance of health practices, employment, and marital quality.  Relationships are especially central in that good interpersonal relationships facilitate in us a strong tendency to behave in ways that promote physical and mental health.  And the more physically and mentally healthy we are, the more SWB we experience.

The self determination theory (SDT) of Edward L. Deci and Richard Ryan (2002) affords a rather succinct system for understanding and applying much of the SWB research data.  According to SDT, three major relatively controllable factors are critical for SWB: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.  Autonomy of course is synonymous with personal control, and personal control is a prerequisite for both initiating and maintaining efforts that facilitate a lifestyle consistent with SWB. But autonomy alone is not sufficient.  Competence enables one to take prerequisite autonomy and to translate it into actions that actually effect the desired outcomes.  For SWB purposes, relatedness has two aspects.  On the one hand, relatedness refers to an individual's  ability to interact constructively with other people to achieve health and happiness.  But think of relatedness also as the extent to which she/he experiences a compelling attachment not only to people, but also to SWB-related thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.  When relatedness is strong in that sense, the individual better understand what she/he is doing, and, therefore, can make more committed, informed, and integrated SWB-relevant choices.'

The take-away of course is that you you will feel content, and even well, to the extent that you foster your personal competence, autonomy, and relatedness.  Those are health-promoting qualities whether they are subjectively or objectively true.      

References

Diener, Ed; Heintzelman, Samantha J.; Kushlev, Kostadin; Tay, Louis; Wirtz, Derrick; Lutes, Lesley D.; Oishi, Shigehiro.(2017).  Findings all psychologists should know from the new science on subjective well-being. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne,  58,2, 87-104. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cap0000063

Ryan, R. M. & Deci, E. L. (Eds.), (2002). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55, 68-78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68