Self esteem, deconstructed
"We have found little to indicate that indiscriminately promoting self-esteem in today's children or adults, just for being themselves, offers society any compensatory benefits beyond the seductive pleasure it brings to those engaged in the exercise."So say Roy F. Baumeister, Jennifer D. Campbell, Joachim I. Krueger and Kathleen D. Vohs in this week's Scientific American.
Focusing on skills, rather than feelings, seems a key to self-esteem.
.: Posted by Duane Bidwell on Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Race and the human subconscious
Our subconcious mind may have an automatic, emotional response to people of a different race when our culture teaches us to be wary of people unlike us.Yet the conscious mind can "reason through" and moderate these subconcious reactions to race--giving the initial "imprint of culture" less influence on how we behave toward people of different races.
That's one implication of a new study on brain activity and response to faces of other races by researchers at Harvard, Yale, and the University of Toronto.
In the study, responses that brain researchers call "automatic"--that is, sub- or unconcious--seem more connected to and interactive with the brain's controlled, evaluative processes than originally thought. Some scientists have believed these brain activities to be separate.
The initial, emotional response to other-race faces is located in the amygdala, often characterized as the "primitive brain" responsible for the body's automatic fight-or-flight response to threats.
Less-primitive parts of the brain are responsible for the deliberation and evaluation that can counter subconcious responses to race.
I'm intrigued by the idea that humans, as created beings, have been fashioned with an essential, automatic subconcious that seeks to protect us from dangers--but that those subconcious processes are so strongly influenced by culture, a non-essential aspect of human being.
One might say that God has given us the ability to make split-second judgments, but that we, ourselves (as societies, not as individuals), are responsible for the content of those judgments.
.: Posted by Duane Bidwell on Monday, December 20, 2004
"Seeing" feelings
British researchers have identified a "sixth sense" that allows a blind man to distinguish between happy, sad, and fearful faces.While damage from two strokes prevents the man from processing visual stimuli, activity in the amygdala--the "primitive" part of the brain--allows him to correctly identify some emotions using only visual cues.
This suggests, as my colleague Andy Lester has noted, that emotions can bypass the "thinking" brain through a subconscious conscious that mobilizes the body to respond to someone even before we consciously recognize danger or delight.
We are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made . . . and perhaps our ability to "reason through" life and faith isn't as important as some in my branch of the Christian tree have hoped.
.: Posted by Duane Bidwell on Monday, December 13, 2004