The Power Of Positive Thinking (aka The Placebo Effect)

Now before you go thinking that i'm going to be all negative on the subject, i'll start by saying that i think the placebo effect is highly underrated. If someone was to tell you that in a reasonable number of cases a sugar pill could be as effective in treating illnesses as an expensive medication you'd be pretty impressed. You might even ask why we don't try to treat everything with sugar pills instead of spending lots of money on pharmaceuticals. Alas the placebo per se doesn't do anything and the effect relies on the patient believing the sugar pill will improve their condition, therein lies the link to positive thinking.

I suspect that most of the cynicism about 'positive thinking' is based on the screeds of pseudo-scientific books which propose a variety of far-fetched mechanisms for how it works from auras, to spirits or even quantum mechanics. Some of these mechanisms are occasionally covered in a thin veneer of real science (yes, there is a zero point field) but invariably the mechanism cannot be scientifically proven (there is no hard evidence to indicate that people can manipulate the zero point field with their thoughts). On the other hand there are a number of scientifically proven theories which can shed some light on the benefits of thinking positively.

Psychological - This one is obvious, if you frame everything in a positive light you will be happier; threats become opportunities, something going wrong becomes a chance to do something different. It doesn't take a genius to see that if you choose to perceive things in a positive way you will feel more positively about things, it's simple tautology (circular logic). Furthermore there are a number of cognitive biases which are likely to amplify the feeling that if you think good thoughts, good things happen. The most relevant in this case is Confirmation Bias; "the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.". In other words if you believe something, you are more likely to accept evidence that agrees with your belief and ignore evidence which does not agree with your belief. So if you think positively and believe it makes your life better, you will be more inclined to notice and remember positive things that happen and dismiss any negative things that happen. Now if you want to make optimal decisions or become a being of pure reason and logic, tautology and cognitive bias are to be avoided. On the other hand if you want to be happy, thinking positively is bound to help.

Physiological - Thinking comes from the brain, the brain controls a lot of the processes in the rest of the body, so there could be a link between positive thinking and physical wellbeing. Please don't ask me to dig up the research, but there is ample evidence linking mental state with physiological effects. One example is that if you are stressed (a mental state), your brain triggers your adrenal gland to release cortisol (a physiological response). Now in some ways cortisol is great; in the short term it helps you metabolise protein, carbohydrates and fat, which is pretty useful if you are stressed because you are being chased by a tiger. On the other hand in the long term it suppresses your imune system and slows bone growth, both of which are less than ideal. I don't propose that we fully understand how mental state effects physiology. However given that your brain regulates a large number of hormones and systems, from an evolutionary standpoint there is a good chance that being happy and relaxed is better for you than being depressed and stressed.

Interpersonal - So the above covers why thinking positively can be beneficial to your mental state and physical wellbeing, but if it doesn't translate beyond you as an individual then it is borderline delusion. Fortunately there is scientific evidence which supports emotions - and hence positive thinking - being contagious between people. Let's try an experiment; the next time you are outside, smile at a random person. Nine times out of ten they will smile back, unless of course they are in a really shitty mood. While that of itself is quite impressive, what is even more impressive is that by the mere action of smiling that person will feel slightly happier. This reciprocation is caused by mirror neurons in the brain, you don't just mirror movements but emotions as well. There is no need to invoke spirits or psychics or quantum mechanics, it is simply neurobiology. Humans are social creatures and have been long before the advent of language, it makes sense that our ancestors would have had an evolutionary advantage if they could understand and influence other individuals. So if you think positively and are therefore happier, that happiness/positivity is likely to rub off on people you meet, which will result in better outcomes from those interactions.

The three paragraphs above are my best attempt at remembering and summarising the science at 3am after a few beers. The examples are limited, the explanations imperfect and they are distinctly lacking in citations. If you would like more detailed information on anything above, or suggested reading, please leave a comment.

Conclusion - Do i think that peoples positive vibes somehow propagate out through the zero point energy field and change the universe? Or that you can manifest a new Lexus by thinking positive? Hell no. On the other hand i do think that there is good scientific evidence for why people with a positive outlook on life are happier, healthier and have better relationships.


Some related Wikipedia links:
The Placebo Effect
Physiological Effects Of Cortisol
Tautology
List of Cognitive Biases
Mirror Neurons

WSIDWML? - Typical Example

Last week I wrote about trying to work out what I should do with my life [WSIDWML?]. While I outlined, in general terms, my problems with answering the question, I didn’t provide any actual examples. This week I will run through an example of my typical train of thought, from inception to dismissal.

Inception
A common suggestion for how to decide what to do with your life, is to think back to what you wanted to be as a child and do that. I presume the theory is that what you wanted to be as a child is more reflective of your true desires, unencumbered by adult worries like pay, practicality and status.

As a child I used to love to draw and in particular draw things that I had designed, so architecture seemed like a logical career choice. At the start of secondary school I tried to work out what the best architecture course was by researching which one had the highest entry requirements - Strathclyde - and I decided that I was going to apply there. The entry requirements drove which subjects I would take in school and what grades I would need to get in exams. When I was 14 I spent a week in an architects office for work experience and loved it. Then when I was 15 I applied to the architecture course at Strathclyde, attended an interview and was offered a conditional acceptance (i.e. if I got the required grades I was in). However at the interview they recommended that I wait a year as I would only be 16 when the course started. Waiting a year would make it easier to live away from home and avoid the isolation of not being able to socialise with peers who would mostly be 18 and over. Both of those points made sense, so I decided I would stay at school for another year.

Somehow during that year I convinced myself that Architecture wasn’t technical and scientific enough - too much airy fairy subjective art - and I would rather study Physics. It turned out that Physics was a little too ‘technical and scientific’ and not practical enough, so I ended up switching to Mechanical Engineering.

In retrospect, throwing away 10+ years of aspiration seems like a rather rash decision, so maybe I should go back to university to study architecture ...

Excitement
Once I have an idea in mind I quickly move to thinking of all of the great reasons to follow through with it. In the example above I would quickly imagine:
That I would love to go back to university and make the most of the opportunity: actually turn up to lectures, study, go to the library, take more varied elective classes etc.
I still really enjoy designing things and I think my broader perspective from the last 11 years would be useful for designing buildings.
How great it would be to design something that everyone can see and will probably still be standing after I’m gone.

Depression
Just as I am getting really worked up to follow through on the idea, somehow everything flips and all of the positive things from the excitement phase are cancelled out by negatives that spring to mind:
Will my enthusiasm fade and I therefore end up as lazy a student as I was the last time?
Would I be able to cope with the artier less technical aspects of the course?
How would I support myself financially?
What would I do after the course, do I really want to be an architect?
The most depressing thought of all is; what if applied and didn’t get accepted? What would it say about how I had spent the last 12 years, if they would have accepted me on the course back in 1998 and wouldn’t now ...

Dismissal
By this point I have totally talked myself out of the idea. If there are that many reasons against doing it, how can it be something that I could conceivably spend the rest of my life doing? So I dismiss the idea and start the cycle again.

No sooner have I talked myself into a direction, than I talk myself out of it. Most of the reasons against pursuing the idea could theoretically - and often easily - be overcome, but I just can’t muster the same enthusiasm for it anymore. Hopefully the above should illustrate why I am having such a hard time narrowing my options.

[740 Words]

What Should I Do With My Life?

A couple of weeks ago I read What Should I Do With My Life? by Po Bronson. While I enjoyed the stories and it was vaguely inspiring, I was initially disappointed that it didn’t help me answer the question posed in the title. Throughout the book the author emphasised that answering the question was not something that could be achieved by reading a book, but I still held out hope that somehow it might. Sure enough when I reached the end - regardless of the frequent warnings - I felt slightly cheated that I was no closer to working out what to do with my life. Having reflected for the last couple of weeks, I still don’t know what I should do with my life, but I think I have worked out what the first step is.

The first step for most of the people profiled in the book was to reduce the number of options of things they could do. “Keeping your options open” is something that a significant number of people seem to aspire to. Having ‘infinite possibilities’ is appealing in the same way that buying a lottery ticket is and is flawed for the same reasons. As things stand my options are about as open as they possibly could be; I have very few commitments tying me to a specific path or location. Unfortunately I am also naive and arrogant enough to think that I could try to do just about anything with my life if I wanted to, I might not succeed but I could try. With that many options, working out what I want to do - and more the point, what I could be good at - is rather difficult.

In hindsight a quote from High Fidelity seems apt:

“I can see now I never really committed ... I always had one foot out the door, and that prevented me from doing a lot of things, like thinking about my future and... I guess it made more sense to commit to nothing, keep my options open. And that's suicide. By tiny, tiny increments.”

Everything I have done in the last decade, I have stumbled into on a whim and had one foot out the door. From university, to hobbies, to jobs, to geographic locations, I never set out intentionally and always had an exit strategy. Maybe I committed for the first few months, but then found that I could successfully coast along without trying which meant I ended up bored. After a while being bored I would stumble off to the next option.

There has also been an element of fear of failure in my decisions or lack thereof. If I didn’t try, then when I succeeded it felt like luck and when I failed it didn’t matter because I hadn’t tried in the first place. Either way I was damned: Attributing success to luck is a surefire way to feel like you don’t deserve what you have achieved. Attributing failure to not trying means you will always wonder what would have happened if you had tried. This has been true for me, both on the scale of micro-decisions and also on the largest scale of working out what to do with my life. By not narrowing my options and by not deciding what I really wanted to do, I made it impossible to fail, but also impossible to succeed.

Now that I have worked out that I need to narrow my options, the hard part is working out how to actually do that. The two obvious ways - deep analysis or random chance - both seem like cop-outs. Deep analysis seems like a cop-out because it would be very easy to spend a lot of time analysing as a way to avoid making a decision. Random chance seems like a cop-out because random chance is always a cop-out. There are other ways ranging from mixing analysis and random chance, to asking people who know me well what they think, to trying to remember what I wanted to be as a child, but again none of those options seem quite right... I know what the first step is, I just don’t know how to take it.

If anyone has any suggestions for how to start narrowing my options or what I should do with my life, I would be really grateful if you could leave a comment.

[731 Words]

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems impossible to turn on the news without seeing a story bemoaning the decline of some institution or another. From local shops, to community groups, to companies, there is never a shortage of members of the public prepared to whinge about how things are changing. The typical interview is so common and frequent that it has become a cliche; “Oh it’s terrible that < insert institution here > is closing”. However what most of the interviewees seem ignorant of, is that in a majority of cases they - and people like them - are the ones causing the decline.

I will never forget an interview for a news report on the decline of local shops. The reporter stopped a woman outside a new supermarket and asked her what she thought about the loss of local shops. Of course the woman spoke at length about how awful it was that high street shops were closing and that local jobs were being lost. Finally the reporter asked her whether she would continue to shop at the supermarket. To which the woman replied; “Of course, it is more convenient, cheaper and there is better parking”. She showed no inkling that there was a complete disconnect between what she claimed to believe and her actions.

The bottom line is that - as in the example above - there is normally a good reason for the change. Supermarkets take business away from local shops because they have everything under one roof, they are cheaper and they have more space for parking. Community groups break up because people aren’t prepared to put effort in to maintaining them. Steel mills close because they are more expensive than their rivals and customers demand the lowest prices regardless of where the money goes. Complaining about changes is not going to reverse them, only action will and it seems as though a lot of people are not prepared to back up their words with actions.

If someone is not prepared to put their money where their mouth is, then they should lose the right to complain.

I try to put my money where my mouth is. A recent example of this is the Art Space Tokyo project. I might not know much about art, or plan to go to Tokyo any time soon, but I was still prepared to spend $100 to back the project. I believe in the publishing model, I believe in high quality books and I believe in supporting people who provide excellent free information online. A couple of years ago The Flashbulb offered their latest album for download on a bit torrent website, but asked that you buy the CD if you enjoyed the music. I downloaded the album, enjoyed the music and bought the CD. I paid for something I could have had for free because I believe that people should pay for content they enjoy, even if they can get it for free. In both instances it would have been easy to avoid spending money, but I would have felt like a hypocrite for not acting in line with my beliefs. Last week I was tempted to complain that a book shop had gone out of business. Then I realised that if I had cared about it that much, I would have shopped there more and in reality it was not that big a loss. In that instance I changed a belief because the evidence showed that the belief was incorrect.

I urge you to look at your beliefs and ask yourself; am i prepared to put my money where my mouth is? Maybe you are unhappy about the decline of newspapers, but don’t buy newspapers regularly. Maybe you hate the boring hollywood blockbusters that monopolise cinema screens, but don’t go to see independent films when they are shown. Maybe you claim to support local music, but only go to see international bands. If your actions don’t reflect your beliefs, then you either need to change your actions or your beliefs. In an age when most non-essential needs can be met for free or very cheaply, it is important to put your money where your mouth is and support good ideas, even if they aren't perfect.

Like democracy, a small contribution to what you believe in might not make a difference alone. But if enough people put their money where their mouth is and actively support what they believe in, the things that really matter to society will be improved.

[750 Words]
Image by danielle bigtooth. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

A Story Of Unconventional Publishing

A couple of weeks ago I read an article on Signal Vs Noise about two people who were self-publishing books. The first book had an interesting story behind it. It had sold out of it’s initial print run, however the publisher wanted to release the next edition as a cheap paperback. As the book contained numerous maps, illustrations and had been designed as a hardback, the author was reluctant to release it this way. Instead he decided to purchase the worldwide publishing rights, so that he could reprint as it was originally intended.

I followed a link to get more details about the project and ended up on Kickstarter. The idea of Kickstarter is quite simple; creators post projects with a minimum amount of money to be raised before the project will go ahead. They also offer various rewards for individual pledges above certain thresholds. In this case, due to the expense of printing a high quality physical book, the minimum pledge total was set at $15,000. Normally the creator would have to get this money from a bank, venture capitalist or publisher in exchange for a share of the profits, or at least interest payments. With Kickstarter the middleman is cut out, the customers put up the money, all of which goes to fund the project.

    

I love books, so I was blown away when I saw the photos of the first edition of Art Space Tokyo. From the silk screened cloth cover, to the impeccably set glossy pages, I knew I wanted a copy. I might not be terribly knowledgeable about art (far less Japanese art) and I have never been to Japan. At this point, even the prospect of going to Japan is a vague thought for the future, rather than a firm plan. So based on the subject matter of the book, I knew that justifying the purchase was not going to be easy.

I loved the idea of someone self-publishing to maintain the integrity of a book and I loved the idea of using Kickstarter to raise the money, however I couldn't quite bring myself to order a book I only had a tangential interest in. The average book I buy is around $20, so spending $65 on Art Space Tokyo seemed a little excessive. I read the Kickstarter page a few times, looking for an excuse to stump up the cash for the book, but it wasn’t until I realised who the author was that I knew I had to back the project.

Just after I finished my Books Vs E-Readers series of posts, I came across an article on Books In The Age Of The iPad. In an eloquent way it laid out the primary problems with e-book readers and the instances where physical books would still be the medium of choice for reading. It was presented in a very well designed manner, with custom diagrams to illustrate key points. Even the webpage containing the article supported the points being made. I also discovered that the author had written the best product review I have ever seen on the web: GF1 Field Test - 16 Days In The Himalayas. The review was interesting, engaging and presented in a very different way to most product reviews. The quality of the content and design of both of these web pages made the decision to back Art Space Tokyo obvious, so I pledged $66.

The interesting thing about Kickstarter is that the backers are almost as invested in the project as the creator. As a backer I want the project to go ahead, so I checked in regularly to see how the pledge total was progressing. After 15 days of hitting ctrl+r on the Kickstarter website and watching the total steadily rise, finally it broke the minimum funding. There are still 8 days before the deadline and because the minimum amount has been achieved the book is definitely getting made. Right now I am debating whether to increase my pledge to $100 so that I can get my name in the credits ... I think it would be really cool to have my name in a book. Unfortunately I am not sure if ‘being cool to have my name in a book’ is worth an extra $34. Thoughts?

The book is scheduled to be printed next month and dispatched in June, so not too long to wait. Check out the Kickstarter Page.

[746 Words]

Shocking Book Piracy Exposed!

I am posting today, to tell you about an insidious and terrible threat to the publishing industry.

I was wrong in a previous post, when i said that book piracy was currently very low. It turns out that book pirates have been operating with impunity for decades, costing the publishing industry trillions of dollars in lost sales. These terrible crimes against intelectual property, are committed every day of the week around the world, often in full view of law enforcement and nothing is done. In plain sight, they offer people access to entertainment and information for free. No-one gets paid; not the publishers, not the distributors, not the authors - think of the poor starving authors. How can the publishing industry hope to survive in the face of such institutionalised theft?


Ladies and gentleman, who are these scurrilous villains, freely roaming the streets? I give you librarians!