Every month since January 2008 The Psychologist has featured a One-On-One interview page in which leading psychologists are asked, among other things, to name one book or journal article, either contemporary or historical, that all psychologists should read. Here’s a handy link-filled list of the answers so far…

Evidence suggests that mind wandering is a frequent accompaniment to an unhappy mood. Building on such work, two laboratory experiments used mood induction to assess whether the greater frequency of mind wandering in a low mood is also accompanied by a shift towards a focus on events from the past. Experiment 1 induced moods via video and induction of an unhappy mood was associated with a greater tendency for past-related mind wandering as measured by a post-task questionnaire. In Experiment 2, negative and positive moods were induced in a group of participants using the Velten mood-induction procedure and the temporal focus of mind wandering was measured using experience sampling probes. Analyses indicated that induction of an unhappy mood led to an increase in past-related mind wandering and the magnitude of this change increased with scores on a measure of depressive symptoms. Together these experiments suggest that when the mind wanders in an unhappy mood it is drawn to events from its past.

(via Psychology Today’s recent cover story, “Are You With the Right Mate?”)

“…Romance itself seeds the eventual belief that we have chosen the wrong partner. The early stage of a relationship, most marked by intense attraction and infatuation, is in many ways akin to cocaine intoxication, observes Christine Meinecke, a clinical psychologist in Des Moines, Iowa. It’s orchestrated, in part, by the neurochemicals associated with intense pleasure. Like a cocaine high, it’s not sustainable.

But for the duration—and experts give it nine months to four years—infatuation has one overwhelming effect: Research shows that it makes partners overestimate their similarities and idealize each other. We’re thrilled that he loves Thai food, travel, and classic movies, just like us. And we overlook his avid interest in old cars and online poker.

When children have been exposed to family violence, their brains become increasingly “tuned” for processing possible sources of threat, a new study reports. The findings, reported in the Dec. 6 issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, reveal the same pattern of brain activity in these children as seen previously in soldiers exposed to combat.

The study is the first to apply functional brain imaging to explore the impact of physical abuse or domestic violence on the emotional development of children, according to the researchers.

“Enhanced reactivity to a biologically salient threat cue such as anger may represent an adaptive response for these children in the short term, helping keep them out of danger,” said Eamon McCrory of University College London. “However, it may also constitute an underlying neurobiological risk factor increasing their vulnerability to later mental health problems, and particularly anxiety.”

Maltreatment is known to be one of the most potent environmental risk factors associated with anxiety and depression. Still, McCrory said, “relatively little is known how such adversity ‘gets under the skin’ and increases a child’s later vulnerability, even into adulthood.”

The new study shows that children with documented exposure to violence in the home differ in their brain response to angry versus sad faces. When presented with angry faces, children with a history of abuse show heightened activity in the brain’s anterior insula and amygdala, regions involved in detecting threat and anticipating pain.

McCrory says the changes don’t reflect damage to the brain. Rather, the patterns represent the brain’s way of adapting to a challenging or dangerous environment. Still, those shifts may come at the cost of increased vulnerability to later stress.

Although the results may not have immediate practical implications, they are nonetheless critical given that a significant minority of children are exposed to family violence, McCrory says. “This underlines the importance of taking seriously the impact for a child of living in a family characterized by violence. Even if such a child is not showing overt signs of anxiety or depression, these experiences still appear to have a measurable effect at the neural level.”

via The Association for Psychological Science:

“Your parents were right: Hard experiences may indeed make you tough. Psychological scientists have found that, while going through many experiences like assault, hurricanes, and bereavement can be psychologically damaging, small amounts of trauma may help people develop resilience.

“Of course, everybody’s heard the aphorism, ‘Whatever does not kill you makes you stronger,’” says Mark D. Seery of the University at Buffalo. His paper on adversity and resilience appears in the December issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. But in psychology, he says, a lot of ideas that seem like common sense aren’t supported by scientific evidence.

Indeed, a lot of solid psychology research shows that having miserable life experiences is bad for you. Serious events, like the death of a child or parent, a natural disaster, being physically attacked, experiencing sexual abuse, or being forcibly separated from your family, can cause psychological problems. In fact, some research has suggested that the best way to go through life is having nothing ever happen to you. But not only is that unrealistic, it’s not necessarily healthy, Seery says.

In one study, Seery and his colleagues found that people who experienced many traumatic life events were more distressed in general—but they also found that people who had experienced no negative life events had similar problems. The people with the best outcomes were those who had experienced some negative events. Another study found that people with chronic back pain were able to get around better if they had experienced some serious adversity, whereas people with either a lot of adversity or none at all were more impaired.

One possibility for this pattern is that people who have been through difficult experiences have had a chance to develop their ability to cope. “The idea is that negative life experiences can toughen people, making them better able to manage subsequent difficulties,” Seery says. In addition, people who get through bad events may have tested out their social network, learning how to get help when they need it.

This research isn’t telling parents to abuse their kids so they’ll grow up to be well-adjusted adults, Seery says. “Negative events have negative effects,” he says. “I really look at this as being a silver lining. Just because something bad has happened to someone doesn’t mean they’re doomed to be damaged from that point on.””

For more information about this study, please contact: Mark Seery at mdseery@buffalo.edu.

via The Association for Psychological Science:

“The ability to trust, love, and resolve conflict with loved ones starts in childhood—way earlier than you may think. That is one message of a new review of the literature in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science. “Your interpersonal experiences with your mother during the first 12 to 18 months of life predict your behavior in romantic relationships 20 years later,” says psychologist Jeffry A. Simpson, the author, with University of Minnesota colleagues W. Andrew Collins and Jessica E. Salvatore. “Before you can remember, before you have language to describe it, and in ways you aren’t aware of, implicit attitudes get encoded into the mind,” about how you’ll be treated or how worthy you are of love and affection.

While those attitudes can change with new relationships, introspection, and therapy, in times of stress old patterns often reassert themselves. The mistreated infant becomes the defensive arguer; the baby whose mom was attentive and supportive works through problems, secure in the goodwill of the other person.

This is an “organizational” view of human social development. Explains Simpson: “People find a coherent, adaptive way, as best as they can, to respond to their current environments based on what’s happened to them in the past.” What happens to you as a baby affects the adult you become: It’s not such a new idea for psychology—but solid evidence for it has been lacking.

Simpson, Collins, and Salvatore have been providing that evidence: investigating the links between mother-infant relationships and later love partnerships as part of the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation. Their subjects are 75 children of low-income mothers whom they’ve been assessing from birth into their early 30s, including their close friends and romantic partners. When the children were infants, they were put into strange or stressful situations with their mothers to test how securely the pairs were bonded. Since then, the children—who are now adults—have returned regularly for assessments of their emotional and social development. The authors have focused on their skills and resilience in working through conflicts with school peers, teenage best friends, and finally, love partners.

Through multiple analyses, the research has yielded evidence of that early encoding—confirming earlier psychological theories. But their findings depart from their predecessors’ ideas, too. “Psychologists started off thinking there was a lot of continuity in a person’s traits and behavior over time,” says Simpson. “We find a weak but important thread” between the infant in the mother’s arms and the 20-year-old in his lover’s. But “one thing has struck us over the years: It’s often harder to find evidence for stable continuity than for change on many measures.”

The good news: “If you can figure out what those old models are and verbalize them,” and if you get involved with a committed, trustworthy partner, says Simpson, “you may be able to revise your models and calibrate your behavior differently.” Old patterns can be overcome.  A betrayed baby can become loyal. An unloved infant can learn to love.

via Psych Central:

“A couple of days ago, Laura wrote a blog on how anxiety can morph into panic. Many people experience episodes of mild to moderate panic here and there—a few of the common triggers for such episodes include looming deadlines, upcoming parties, and presentations to work groups. However, some people experience panic at a much more intense level, to the point that they actually develop a full blown Panic Disorder.

True panic attacks of this sort involve anxiety and fear of stunning intensity. The actual attacks usually peak within ten minutes and slowly fade, but it’s common for people to actually think they could die during one of these attacks. Common symptoms of these attacks include:

• Profuse sweating
• Rapid, irregular heartbeat
• Shortness of breath or sense of suffocation
• A sense of unreality or detachment
• Fear of impending death without any real basis
• Nausea
• Fear of losing control or “going insane”
• Trembling and shaking
• Chills and hot flashes
• Dizziness

When such attacks reoccur, the person worries about future attacks, has considerable concerns about the meaning of the attacks, or changes his or her behavior in order to avoid attacks, the odds are that a Panic Disorder is in play. Frequently, but not always, people with Panic Disorder also have Agoraphobia (fears of being in places that would be difficult or highly embarrassing to leave or escape from), but that’s a topic for another blog.

Trust me; if you’ve never had a panic attack, you don’t want to. But if you have such attacks from time to time or if you worry a lot about getting them, what can you do? Well, there’s a reason we titled our blog Anxiety and OCD Exposed. The term “exposed” or “exposure,” forms the foundation for most treatments of anxiety.

First, as with most emotional problems, you should see a physician to rule out physical problems that could be causing your anxiety. Try to avoid the temptation, however, of going to the doctor over and over and over again. In all but the rarest exceptions, a thorough physical once a year should be sufficient for moving ahead with exposure therapies.

Second, look for a cognitive behaviorally trained therapist who has expertise in treating Panic Disorder with Exposure techniques. That therapist will work with you on developing a hierarchy of items that tend to trigger your concerns about having panic attacks. You will gradually work your way through the easiest items, up to the most difficult.

In addition, your therapist may suggest exposure to the actual sensations of panic attacks themselves. This task is accomplished by intentionally bringing on these sensations by engaging in various tasks such as:

Breathing through a straw: You’ll usually breathe this way for about a minute each time. You feel like you aren’t getting enough air, your heart may race, and you may have feelings of choking, all of which mimic some types of panic for many people.

Spinning yourself around: This strategy induces dizziness and lightheadedness as well as an increased heart rate. Generally, sixty seconds or so works for this technique as well.

Hyperventilation: You breathe in and out very rapidly for about a minute which often induces feelings of shortness of breath, dizziness, of a racing heart.

There are various additional techniques for creating similar sensations. By repeating these exercises over and over again, you gradually learn that you won’t go crazy; you’re not going to die, and most importantly, that you can cope with anxious feelings. That knowledge allows you to quit worrying about having panic attacks which usually helps them fade from the scene.”

Kids don’t generally develop anxiety disorders all on their own. Oh sure, genes and biology have some influence, but these factors largely just predispose kids in the direction of acquiring problems with anxiety. The wrong messages can push both anxiously disposed kids as well as otherwise normal kids in the direction of struggling with anxiety for the rest of their lives.

If you’re a parent or someone who cares about kids, you just might want to know what type of messages instill insecurity. I’ll start by laying out three common mistakes that parents make; in other words, the kinds of messages you “don’t” want to give them:

1. Invalidating or Denying Your Children’s Feelings. If your kids seem worried, fearful, upset, or distraught, sometimes it’s tempting to tell them “there’s no reason that they should feel that way” or even that they “shouldn’t” be feeling what they are obviously feeling. Parents give these messages because they don’t want their kids to feel distress. So, they reason that their kids will understand, if their bad feelings have no real basis, they won’t feel the way they do. Big mistake. Children need to hear that it’s normal and OK to have a little fear or distress sometimes.
   
2. Providing Incessant Reassurance. Messages that “everything will turn out OK” sound so very much like what you should tell kids, and if you don’t say them too often, there’ll probably be no problem. However, when you frequently reassure your kids, you end up giving them the message that they need to turn to you (as an adult or parent) to help them see that things will turn out alright. They fail to learn that they can get through fear on their own. We wrote about this issue in detail in our earlier book, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder For Dummies and if you find yourself reassuring your kids a lot, we urge you to read it.
   
3. Protecting Your Kids from All Harm. No one ever wants to see a child come into harm’s way. However, growing, developing and learning require kids to face challenges and even take a few small risks along the way. Parents that try to constantly clear all dangers and risks that their kids confront teach them that the world is a scary place and that they need their parents to guide them through it. That message hardly fosters the independence and maturity they’ll need as adolescents and young adults.

So what’s a parent to do instead? One of the best ways to help prevent kids from developing anxiety disorders is to model how to cope.

I recommend that parents express when they’re feeling anxious and tell their kids how they plan to cope with it. For example, you might say, “Sometimes I feel nervous when I have to climb a ladder, but I just need to take a deep breath, be careful, and do it. If I get too nervous, I can always climb back down, but it feels good to get through difficult tasks.” Another good strategy is for parents to praise their kids when they make efforts to do things that are a little anxiety arousing for them.

The bottom line: Gently encourage your kids to confront their fears, let them know that a little anxiety is normal, and don’t try to keep them away from all challenges and risks.