Where Were the Nudges?

We all know that flu is a killer and that every year we are advised to “get your flu shot.”  A February 26, 2020 Centers for Disease Control report indicated 45 million flu cases in the United States during the 2017-2018 influenza season, including about 810,000 flu-associated hospitalizations and about 61,000 flu-associated deaths.  The flu strains almost never are exactly the same as in the previous year, so the shots are never reliable.  For 2017-2018 the overall vaccine effectiveness against influenza A and B viruses was 40%.

Before continuing with this blog, I need a preface for those who did not read my book, Justifiably Paranoid: Resisting Intrusive and Malicious Influences.  In it I described “nudging” which is the government practice of trying to manipulate the environment to cause people to do what officials believe is “good for them.”  The practice began in England and the United States.  Now there are more than 60 government and international agencies trying to nudge their often unsuspecting citizens.  You probably would agree with some of the nudges, such as ones to “encourage” you to save for retirement.  But you might recoil from others, such as one that imposes an excessive tax on your favorite alcoholic beverage.

Because 2017 motor vehicle accidents in the United States were responsible for about 20,000 less deaths than influenza, one would think that nudging would have focused more vigorously on flu than it has.  Before the current pandemic, never in my life did I hear of any government program that advised hand washing or social distancing during flu season.  That government failure is especially disturbing not only because of the relative ineffectiveness of influenza inoculations, but also because flu onslaughts are inevitable, have occurred every year for centuries, and are significantly mitigated by simple behavioral changes.  Maybe, going forward, governments will do more yearly than ask us to get a questionably useful flu shot.  Perhaps comprehensive, creative healthful anti-flu government nudging will be on the agendas of at least 60 plus governments.

COVID-19, War, and Us

For once, virtually all layers of the United States government and all political parties are speaking with one voice.  They tell us emphatically that we are at war with COVID-19, and that we must sacrifice to defeat this “invisible enemy.”  Like most people, I fully agree with recommendations from those authorities.  You have heard them a thousand times already.  A very abbreviated version of general COVID-19 prevention guidelines, posted on cdc.gov, for instance, advises:  Clean your hands often; Put distance between yourself and other people; Stay home if you’re sick; Cover coughs and sneezes; Wear a facemask if you are sick; Clean and disinfect.   At this point in the pandemic, those nationwide general guidelines have been superseded by more stringent state and local requirements.  According to the New York Times (Sarah Mervosh, Denise Lu and Vanessa Swales, March 31, 2019), “… at least 265 million people in at least 32 states, 80 counties, 17 cities, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are being urged to stay home.”

Predictably, the virus is exacting a significant toll on our mental health.  The deleterious effects are depicted below:

Mental Condition	some, little, or  none of the time
hopeful about the future	51%
nervous, anxious	43%
trouble sleeping	23%
depressed	24%
lonely	21%
physical reaction thinking about the pandemic	19%
United States Pew Research Center Survey	March 19-24, 2020

The Pew study is not surprising.  We have no firm sensed of when this threat will end.  Our incomes have been compromised.  Our freedoms have been restricted.  We cannot recreate or travel as we would like.  We can’t access all the material resources that have come to depend upon So, personal experience and available evidence rationalized our reference to being at war.  But maybe it is time for a little perspective that might provide at least some therapeutic benefit.

I could cite a thousand examples of more difficult situations to make my point.  Because its horrors and hardships are both too familiar and too temporally remote to most Americans, there is little value in mentioning World War II.  Instead, for a people under siege, think about the Kurds, an indigenous Mesopotamian population whose “quarantine” began at the end of World War I after the Allies reneged on their proposal to provide a homeland.  Since then the Kurds have been subjected to never ending battles and persecutions.  David Stavrou made the point in a November 26, 2019 Haaretz article entitled, “The Slaughter in Syria Still Goes On.”  To quote an interview with Bejan Rashid, an eyewitness to the catastrophe, “I saw many who were killed and many who were injured … Most of the injured were missing arms or legs or were hit by shrapnel. I tried to help the children and the elderly people first. The thing that’s hardest to forget was a girl, about 8 years old, who was sitting by her dead brother, trying to wake him up.”

Most Kurds, I bet, would be eager to switch places with me, right now.

There are Americans, too, who have experienced conditions worse than the ones I am now.  The late John McCain was one.  In 2008, he recounted some details of his five and one-half years as POW in North Viet Nam.  I need mention only a few to give you the idea. Consider his physical condition.  As a result of his plane being shot down, McCain suffered a broken right leg, broken right arm in three places, and a broken left arm.  From the time he was captured, he underwent frequent physical abuse and torture, including beatings with and without objects.  Most of his injuries never were treated medically, such that any bone that healed did so without being set properly.  For most of his five and one-half year imprisionment, McCain remained in a windowless, unbearably hot, tin-roofed room, only ventilated by two 6 inch by 4 inch holes.  He was fed a starvation-level diet.  His social condition was not the greatest, either.  McCain often was placed in solitary confinement, once for more than two consecutive years.  His only diversions were the games he played in his mind and the communist propaganda books given to him by his captors.  Just for the record, it was Senator John McCain who in the 1990s successfully lobbied the federal government to reestablish normal bilateral relations with Viet Nam.

Like most Americans, I feel hassled and frightened by COVID-19, and I complain often about how it has interfered with my lifestyle.  We must muster every resource and support every neighbor to counter this pandemic. Some of us also might choose to speak metaphorically about being at war, but we--especially those of us from wealthy countries--should not delude ourselves into believing for one minute that we truly are suffering anything remotely similar to the ravages of war.  When, as it will be, COVID-19 is behind us, our houses and towns will not be rubble.  We will not be starving. We will not be refugees.  To know real war, we would need to live through its longstanding horrors, such as ones endured by the Kurds or by John McCain.  All we need to do right now to control the virus is to follow commonsense mitigation recommendations.  That is tough, but not too tough.      

References

McCain, J. Prisoner of War: A First-Person Account Jan 28, 2008, at 11:00 A.M.

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2008/01/28/john-mccain-prisoner-of-war-a-first-person-account

Mervosh, S., et al.  See Which States and Cities Have Told Residents to Stay at HomeUpdated March 31, 2020  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-stay-at-home-order.html

Stavrou, D.  Nov 26, 2019 4:27 PM.  The Slaughter in Syria Still Goes On
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-the-slaughter-in-syria-still-goes-on-1.8187413

Politicians:Masters of Deceit

It’s my favorite season—voting season—when I’m challenged to find some kernel of truth in the rampant lies voiced by many politicians.  The most entertaining time occurs after primaries when the loser discounts all the scurrilous aspersions that they recently had heaped upon their same-party primary competitors.  In essence, the former candidate implies that they were not being fully honest about their same-party opponent during the campaign, but NOW that the election is over, the citizenry can trust everything they, themselves, say and do.  Could they be hoping to derive some benefit from their political campaign retractions?  Might they, for instance, be pandering for a coveted position in the new administration?  Or am I being too cynical?   

The electorate, too, mostly forgives lies that occurred during the primaries, conveniently forgetting all the preceding “partisan bickering” concerning their party’s representatives and “lining up behind” the party’s general election candidates.  We might conclude that voters ignore the lies to maintain some semblance of their own self-respect, and that would be a reasonable conclusion.  On the other hand, it might not be the gullibility of the electorate so much as the prevarication skills of the politicians that promotes the “all lies are forgiven” orientation.  By looking at research regarding “masters of deceit” we can evaluate whether it applies to professional politicians.

A study called, Lie prevalence, lie characteristics and strategies of self-reported good liars (Verigin, et al. 2019) is instructive.  To extrapolate from that research, we need to entertain the reasonable assumption that successful prevaricating politicians have not recently developed their craft.  Neither should we imagine that their lies are limited exclusively to formal election campaigns and speeches.  They likely practice their deception skills in their everyday lives with everyday people.  If so, that would be consistent with the Verigin results.

The Verigin group, in fact, did find that self-reported good liars have well-practiced, strategic approaches to deception.  As one would expect, they lie more often than average people do, and they lie to a more varied group of people.  Moreover, the lies have become second nature to the point that many of them are inconsequential.  They frequently lie about topics that most people would not consider worth the effort.  Successful liars have implicit and/or explicit lying formulas.  Most present their misinformation in uncomplicated language that appears reasonable.  To make the lies less apparent, they often are preceded and followed by other related information that is obvious and true.

So, it is in character that many politicians who had spoken so convincingly against their competing same-party opponents are quick to reverse themselves afterwards.  And they are as glib in their retractions as they were in their previous indictments.  They certainly seem to embody many of the "good liar" characteristics recounted above.  The most accomplished political liars are well-practiced, lie more often than average people do, and lie to a more varied group of people.  If you watch them carefully, you will notice that they typically have implicit and/or explicit lying formulas.  Most present their misinformation in uncomplicated language that appears reasonable.  Moreover, to make the lies less apparent, they often are preceded and followed by other related information that is obvious and true.

But don't take my suggestions at face value.  Observe the most successful politicians on your own.  See whether they are or aren't good liars.  And if you have the time and inclination, read the section of my Justifiably Paranoid book (McCusker, 2019) that describes the "dark triad" personality type that is very common among powerful politicians.

References

Brianna L. Verigin ,Ewout H. Meijer,Glynis Bogaard,Aldert Vrij (2019).

Lie prevalence, lie characteristics and strategies of self-reported good liars
Published: December 3, 2019https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225566
Plos One 

McCusker, P.  (2019). Justifiably Paranoid: Resisting Intrusive and Malicious Influences.
Seattle: Amazon.

Uncommon Sense

We and others often preface our remarks with "It's a no brainer" or "You don't have to be a rocket scientist" when attempting to underscore the obviousness of an opinion. That tendency is a variant of what Daniel Kahneman (2013) calls System 1 thinking - fast, automatic, sometimes unconscious thoughts.  System 1 thinking is not too distant from intuition.  All of this suggests that we mostly prefer not to think too deeply about things.  And, not thinking too deeply usually is sufficient for coping with routine, low-risk activities of daily life.  On the other hand, System 1-like thought can lead us into trouble when activities are non-routine and/or risky.

Duncan Watts (2011) shares the aforementioned concerns, although he refers to them as errors of "common sense."  He cites, for example, a 1940s study by sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld in which respondents were deceived to believe that most rural recruits adjusted better to the army than did urban ones.  Those thus told concluded post hoc that the result was obvious, mentioning, for instance, rural men's comfort with outdoors and weapons, among other things.  However, the study actually found the opposite - that urban men adjusted better than rural ones.  So, common sense failed the empirical test.

Please do not conclude that Watts endorsed learning from history as an antidote to relying on common sense.  Rather, he wrote, and I agree, that "lessons" from history often are no more applicable than is common sense.  Every event is unique, if only in its context.  You may have heard that generals spend their time trying to prevent the previous war and financial institutions, the previous financial crisis.  And neither succeed in preventing the ones that ultimately occur.

No significant issue that appears in your consciousness is a "no brainer."  You are conscious of the issue because it has the potential to affect your wellbeing.  Even something as routine and trivial as whether you should have a second slice of cake is worth your deliberate consideration.  If you are aware of an impending decision, your choice should follow after you think the issue through.  Thinking about your history of cake eating also is insufficient.  There have been times when your daily diet and/or exercise regimen impacted the second piece of cake decision in a positive direction and others in a negative direction, neither of which might apply currently.  Whether you had a second piece last week might be totally irrelevant presently.

Your current condition is what matters.  The more you mindlessly continue to persist in self-defeating behaviors due to your reliance on "common sense" opinion or your history, the more you reinforce those negative behaviors, and the harder it will be to make healthful choices in the future.  The relevance of common sense and your history should be weighed after, not before, you have thought through the presenting issue within its current context. 

References

 Kahneman, D.  (2013),  Thinking Fast and Slow. New York: Penguin.

Watts, D. (2011). Everything Is Obvious: How Common Sense Fails Us.  New York: Crown.

Football as Metaphor

Because I had tired of hearing relentless chatter, today, for the first time, I watched an American professional football game with the volume muted.  First, a little background for those unfamiliar with televised games.

Each professional football game is explained via commentary from a triumvirate of play-by-play, analyst, and sideline reporters.  Their job is to keep viewers attentive, informed, and satisfied, especially during inevitable lapses in game action.  To do so, often they stretch to fill voids with the most trivial information such as, “This is the first time in three years that a place kicker scored four times in one quarter.”  The triumvirate has conditioned us to depend on them for our game evaluation and viewing pleasure.

By muting the sports reporters, I empowered myself to be the agent who determined what was and was not worth my attention.  In the language of pop psychology, I facilitated my football viewing mindfulness. As a result, I experienced a great sense of relief, and enjoyed the game far more than I had similar games.

Previously, by default, I had accepted triumvirate intrusions as natural, inevitable features of televised professional football.  That attitude implicitly acknowledged that I’m not a football expert; I presumed that I should not question or resist the wisdom of the National Football League establishment and its promoters.  Writing Justifiably Paranoid: Resisting Intrusive and Malicious Influences did not automatically inoculate me from being swayed by firmly entrenched cultural influences, sports or otherwise.  I inadvertently proved, once again, to myself that neither I nor anyone can let their guard down.

You undoubtedly recognize where I am going with this blog. In the 21st century, there are play-by-play, analyst, and sideline reporters of all types, seeking to influence your every thought and action.  They are relentless in directing you toward their self-serving purposes.  As with football viewing, you have been conditioned to listen to the influencers, rather than to depend on your own play by play, analysis, and sideline observations.

The game of football pales in comparison to the game of life that you play minute by minute, day by day, involving such critical issues as your wellness, happiness, and relationships.  And because these issues are the most intimate, personal, and idiosyncratic aspects of life, no one, other than you, can decide what is best in your circumstances.  Sadly, however, those facts do not deter professional influencers, determined to tell you what to pay attention to and what to do.

For me, the trivial event of watching muted football yielded a surprisingly valuable lesson. You quite likely, also, could profit by choosing a common, unexamined life experience of your own about which to introspect.  You might discover that a seemingly routine, unimportant habit can provide insight into taken-for-granted behaviors that you had established long ago.

Be Sure to Know What You Need to Know

Every day you are besieged by people who think they know better than you.  That conviction is especially strong among marketers, and others intent on selling you an item or service.  Three leaders of the most powerful companies on earth have subscribed to the “we know them better than they know themselves" attitude.  One was the late Steve Jobs of Apple who in a 1998 Business Week interview said, “A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.”  The others are Eric Schmidt and  Jonathan Rosenberg of Google who, in their 2014 book, How Google Works, wrote,  “Giving the customer what he wants is less important than is giving him what he doesn’t yet know he wants.”

Obviously all three of the aforementioned technology titans are correct to a point: one certainly cannot want something until she/he becomes aware of it.  Moreover, marketers, and others who sell, sometimes must presume that they know what you will want, otherwise they never would invest the time, money and other resources to develop innovations. 

This blog, however, is not so much about marketers, and others intent on selling you an item or service, as it is about you, and your awareness of what you want.  More specifically, it is about what you must want to become healthier.

Let's suppose for the moment that Jobs', Schmidt's, and Rosenberg's beliefs can be applied to your health---namely, that you actually do not know precisely what you want health-wise.  Now, of course, you know in a very general sense.  For instance, you would like to have an optimal weight, blood pressure, and blood sugar level.  But to achieve and maintain health, you must know more than those health dimensions, and know how to fight continually to maintain a comprehensively healthful lifestyle.  That stance, in turn, requires you to know which specific health obstacles impact you, personally.  If you are content to laze about, over-eat, and over-work, you do not truly know with sufficient specificity what you need to be healthy.

Presuming that you know clearly enough what you want, you then can turn your attention to what Jobs, Schmidt, and Rosenberg types presume that you want.  More important than those three, of course, are the marketers and sellers of "junk foods," edible and inedible.  Junk food can come in many forms, such as mindless television programs that keep you sitting on the couch for hours, or rabble-rousing politicians who add to your stress.  You need to know how to resist junk food in all its manifestations.

So, you should strive to know, as precisely and personally as possible, what you need to know and do to be healthy. With that secure base, you can prioritize your goals and be more discriminating when marketers and others, intent on selling you an item or service, try to exert their influence on you.  You then rationally can decide whether what they offer will contribute to your health or will undermine it. 

References

Business Week (May 25, 1998). Steve Jobs interview.

Schmidt, E., & and Rosenberg, J. (2014).  How Google Work.  Grand Central Publishing

On Track to a Positive Identity

Nothing is more fundamental than our sense of identity.  And identity depends upon perceiving a continuity of self.   When we do not behave consistently with our sense of self, we feel self-alienated and try to remedy the self-continuity dissonance.  Self-continuity is an internal compass that guides our actions, thoughts, and feelings.  Moreover, when our sense of self is unstable, the instability powerfully influences how others regard and relate to us.

Given the centrality of self-continuity, psychologists carefully study the concept and its implications for our well-being.  One such study focused on college student “derailment,” meaning the discrepancy between how they had seen themselves in the past and how they currently see themselves.  Kaylin Ratner and her colleagues (2019) sought to determine the derailment-depression relationship within a sample of 939 undergraduates.  The investigators were especially interested in whether derailment could cause depression or be a consequence of it.

Each quarter of the school year, the students completed measures of derailment and depression.  Over that period, scores on both were relatively consistent within individual students.  In general and overall, the two scores tended to correlate intra-individually – for each person, high or low scores on one predicted a similar level on the other.  However, the Ratner group discovered, to their surprise, that higher derailment scores earlier in the year sometimes preceded lower depression scores at year’s end.  To explain the surprising result, the investigators speculated that the discomfort of derailment probably caused some students proactively to reassess and/or change their behavior.  For instance, those whose depression decreased might have perceived their early-year derailment discomfort and responded by initiating salutary lifestyle changes later in the year.  Presumably that meant that they either tweaked their sense of identity, or found a way to incorporate the new salutary lifestyle changes into it.

The study can alert us to the value of introspection.  We always can find some external reason why we feel down.  We can blame Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Mark Zuckerberg, our spouse, or our boss for our discontent, but there probably is little, or nothing, we can do to change them.  By focusing on oneself, we can determine what we are doing, thinking, and feeling.  Then we can begin to make the behavioral, thought, and emotional changes necessary to turn our lives around, and restore a positive personal identity.  More than anything else, we must focus on what we can control and avoid dwelling on that which is beyond our control.  Of course, that presumes that we are willing to initiate salutary changes for the controllables.   Do your best to recognize when your sense of self is derailed, and get back on track to reclaiming your identity!

Reference

Ratner, Kaylin; Mendle, Jane; Burrow, Anthony L.; & Thoemmes, Felix (2019).  Depression and derailment:  A cyclical model of mental illness and perceived identity change. Clinical Psychological Science, Vol 7(4), 735-753.      http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2167702619829748

Healthful Intentions and Healthful Actions

No literate or electronically-connected 21st century human can pretend not to know the importance of a healthful lifestyle.  If anything, many people might complain that they are inundated with irritating, preachy lifestyle messages from those intent on selling them some device or service.

So, for purposes of this blog posting, I assume that we all, more or less, accept the importance of healthful diet, exercise, stress reduction, and so forth.  I further presume that virtually all of us intend to behave healthfully.  Since many factors contribute to our acting or failing to act upon good intentions, in the interest of time, I have chosen to focus on merely one-- action readiness.

Research endorses the critical role of “action readiness” that Gaurav Sur and associates (2015) define as “the ease with which an action may be initiated given the preaction launch state of the individual.”  Action readiness influences the costs-benefits associated with a behavior. Persons in a high action readiness condition tend to act even when the payoff seems meager, whereas those in a low action readiness condition tend to refrain from acting even when the payoff is substantial.  In colloquial terms, those in a high readiness condition are prepared, willing, and able to act with little provocation.

The action readiness concept, therefore, begs the question: what can we do to become action ready for health-enhancing behaviors.  Among other things, we can think deliberately and comprehensively about the short- and long-term consequences of healthful vs unhealthful behaviors.  Quite often, even most often, the short-term "benefits" of unhealthful behaviors are the more attractive.  A third glass of wine or helping of dessert provides immediate satisfaction.  So we need somehow to project ourselves beyond the moment to recognize the self-defeating nature of our unhealthful choice.

To think "long-term," obviously, requires one to project her- or him-self into the future.  And the more authentic and believable the projection, the more effective it will be.  An especially useful strategy for authentic, believable projection is to employ "constructive episodic simulation" by which we retrieve and incorporate recollections of past experiences into future expectations (Schacter & Addis, 2007). That is, we cull real bits and pieces from our past negative lifestyle choices, to anticipate the future negative consequences of our current choices.  The more precise and detailed this effort, the more likely it is to influence our health.  For instance, you remember instances wherein you felt either sick or incapacitated at work after over-drinking or over-eating the previous night, and you incorporate those recollections into your evaluation of current, on-line expectations.

Hal E. Hershfield and colleagues (2011) used a variation of constructive episodic simulation to investigate the value of the method for promoting retirement savings.  They achieved especially authentic and believable projections by age-progressing photos of their subjects to help them to imagine themselves as elderly, viewing very credible pictures of their future selves. In that manner, the subjects could better contrast how they had been living their lives in the recent past with obvious implications for the quality of their live when aged.  The Hershfield group concluded that “In all cases, those who interacted with virtual future selves exhibited an increased tendency to accept later monetary rewards over immediate ones.”

The take-away lesson is that one must create a favorable pre-action launch state in order to translate healthful intentions into healthful actions.  If you can vividly and realistically project yourself beyond an immediate gratification situation, whether through constructive episodic simulations or otherwise, you can gain the time and space you need to make more healthful choices.  You will be action ready.

References

Hershfield, H., et al. (2011).  Increasing saving behavior through age-progressed renderings of the future self.  J Mark Res. 2011 Nov; 48: S23–S37.

Schacter DL, Addis DR. The cognitive neuroscience of constructive memory: remembering the past and imagining the future. Phil Trans R Soc B. 2007;362:773–786.

Suri, G, et al. (2015) The Role of Action Readiness in Motivated Behavior.  Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Oct 5 , 2015, No Pagination Specified. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000114.

A Fundamental, Unspoken Reason Why America Cannot Control Its Guns

America is treating gun control in the same divisive way that it treats most controversial issues, such as abortion and inter-group bias.  Those who have power and platform try to enforce their positions while demonizing the opposition.  Although there are exceptions, the power and platform holders tend to endorse more extreme—my way or no way—positions.  They are convinced of their righteousness and wisdom, and presume that persons opposed are mad or bad.

Since those with power usually have platform and vice versa, they use money and media in an effort to overwhelm the opposition.  However, the assault merely helps incite and motivate the opposition to redouble their resistance.  Almost never is there a decisive victory on either side.  And the campaigns eventually morph into relentless guerrilla warfare.

Anyone with a functional cerebrum knows that gun control is on most American minds.  We all have an intuitive sense of the scope of the problem.  We all can find enough statistics to reinforce our concern.  For instance, the Pew Research Center cites CDC data indicating that, 39,773 Americans died from gun-related injuries in 2017, and that 60 percent were suicides, 37 percent murder, and 3 percent “other.”

I am a Marine Corps,Viet Nam veteran who had a top-secret security clearance, carried a weapon for almost all of my four-years active duty, and currently am a psychologist with 40 plus years of experience.

Although I do not profess to be a gun control expert, I have some ideas that, I believe, can make a modest contribution to improving our situation.  So, I wrote to my Pennsylvania governor, US senator, and US congresswoman, asking to be heard.  I made it clear that I did not expect to talk directly with them, but would be happy to speak with an appropriate aide.  I emphasized that I have very specific ideas that I have never seen offered by anyone.

How did the office of the Pennsylvania governor, US senator, and US congresswoman respond to me?  You guessed it.  I got a form letter, enumerating all the wonderful things that they had done and expected to do to control guns.  It was quite apparent that no one cared about hearing what I have to say. They wanted only to reinforce their scripted messages that give them political cover.

A week ago, I contacted an investigative reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper, leaving him a voice mail and email about my frustration.  He left me a voice mail, saying that I should call him which I did. I, of course, got his voice mail, and left him another voice message.  The reporter also said that he will respond to my email.  He has not.  Let’s see if he does.

It's Not What You Say, But How You Say It

As children, many of us chanted, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”  Parents encouraged the chant in order to help fortify their children against verbal assault.  But as the children matured, they realized that words sometimes can be more powerful than either sticks or stones.  They ultimately discovered not only that the pen is mightier than the sword, but that the spoken word can be mightier than the sword.

Since words are delivered by a sender and interpreted by a receiver, both determine the impact of the words spoken and heard.  You cannot control what others say, but you do have at least some control on what you hear.  That is, you can interpret another's remark many different ways.  Some of those interpretations will have a neutral or salutary affect on you, and some will have a neutral or negative affect.

Psychologists often use the term "construal" to describe how an individual interprets that which she/he hears.  Sometimes people construe in an abstract fashion, and sometimes, in a concrete fashion.  For instance, if I say that you did a great job when remodeling your kitchen, you might construe it abstractly as my referring to "a shiny, roomy cooking space," or more concretely as an expensive stainless steel oven, dishwasher, and refrigerator, and an attractive granite counter and back splash."

Of course, some construals regard more weighty matters, and such was the focus of a study by A. B. Carter and colleagues (2019).  The investigators focused on workplace decisions that negatively impacted the workers, with the specific negative consequence concerning layoffs from the company.  Half the experimental sample were provided reasonable reasons WHY the layoffs had been necessary.  And half the sample were told HOW the company respectfully conducted the layoffs.  As predicted, those in the WHY group with an abstract construal orientation regarded the company decision as more fair and held a more positive view of the company than did those with a HOW orientation.  Conversely, the other half of the group who were told HOW and who had a concrete construal orientation regarded the company decision as more reasonable than did those with a WHY orientation.

We can apply the Carter study WHY and HOW insights to our own situations.  If we do our best to analyze bad personal experiences in terms of why they happened, we might be able to distance ourselves, at least somewhat, from the negative outcomes.  And if we do our best to analyze good personal experiences in terms of how they happened, we might be able to feel closer to the experiences, and derive greater satisfaction from them.  

The WHY and HOW strategy admittedly is simplistic and reductionistic, but sometimes simplistic and reductionistic thoughts, at least, confer a placebo effect.  And that placebo effect can be palliative.  It can't hurt to try the strategy. That  said, I certainly would not limit my processing and problem solving efforts solely to a WHY and HOW approach.  

Reference

Carter, A. B., Bobocel, D. R., & Brockner, J. (2019). When to explain why or how it happened: Tailoring accounts to fit observers’ construal level. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. Advance online publication.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xap0000236