Help, p.23
HELP!, page 23
The new frugality movement is centred on several popular blogs, including getrichslowly.org, thesimpledollar.com, and frugal.families.com, but owes much of its modern-day popularity to the 1992 book Your Money or Your Life (Penguin), by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin (not to be confused with other books of the same title). Rather than urging strict budgeting and self-denial, Dominguez and Robin encourage you to see your spending as an expenditure of ‘life energy’ – the time and effort involved in working to amass money in the first place – and therefore to realise that spending less, and quite possibly working less, may be the path to a more enjoyable and more leisure-filled life.
The always-connected, information-overloaded society that prompts some people to recommend going on a news diet is usually seen as a modern phenomenon. But as William Powers shows in his entertaining book Hamlet’s BlackBerry (Harper), the idea that we might need to manage, consciously, the daily onrush of information is one that has concerned philosophers and scholars for centuries. Powers offers, in the words of his book’s subtitle, ‘a practical philosophy for building a good life in the digital age’.
E.M. Cioran’s unconventional views on insomnia are discussed at length in Gordon Marino’s essay ‘Counting the “Blessings” of Insomnia’, at opinionator. blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/29/counting-the-blessings-of-insomnia. For more practical advice, it’s worth tracking down Lawrence Epstein’s The Harvard Medical School Guide to a Good Night’s Sleep (McGraw-Hill), while Sara Mednick’s book Take a Nap! Change Your Life (Workman) makes the case for Winston Churchill-style midday sleep catchups. It comes with a moveable ‘nap wheel’ on the cover, designed to help you calculate when best to grab a few minutes’ rest on the sofa, or under your desk, for maximum effectiveness.
Doug Dyment’s website onebag.com remains the (slightly obsessive) ultimate source on travelling light, while the equally irrepressible Tim Ferriss has a video tutorial entitled ‘How to Travel the World With 10lbs or Less’ at fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/07/11. Travellers share their tips at http://www.ricksteves.com/graffiti/graffiti82.html, while a US-published book, Judith Gilford’s The Packing Book: Secrets of the Carry-On Traveler (Ten Speed) offers many more pieces of advice. If you buy it, though, be sure to digest its wisdom and then leave it at home, or you’ll make your bag heavier, not lighter.
8
FOLLOW ME: GURUS, GOD-MEN AND
OTHER QUESTIONABLE CHARACTERS
Perhaps unsurprisingly for a controversial system that claims to offer a ‘revolutionary’ approach to almost every aspect of human interaction, the world of neuro-linguistic programming has splintered into a feuding cacophony of rival organisations and experts, but there are some saner voices to be heard amid the noise. A widely respected introductory book is NLP: The New Technology of Achievement (Nicholas Brealey), edited by Steve Andreas and Charles Faulkner, while there’s plenty of level-headed material on the website of NLP School Europe at nlpschooleurope.com. George Miller’s celebrated (and funny) paper on the strange ubiquity of the number seven, entitled ‘The magical number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information’ is available online at psychclassics.yorku.ca/Miller.
Alan Watts’s autobiography In My Own Way (New World Library), though hardly a neutral source on Watts’s own life, is excellent on the subject of gurus and fraudsters, and the perhaps unavoidably blurred line between the two. Anthony Storr’s Feet of Clay: A Study of Gurus (HarperCollins) identifies intriguing commonalities among history’s high-profile gurus, from Gurdjieff, Freud and Jung to the likes of the messianic cult leader David Koresh. For a significantly more easygoing account of life among the gurus, see Mick Brown’s The Spiritual Tourist (Bloomsbury).
9
ROADS LESS TRAVELLED: SOME
UNLIKELY PATHS TO HAPPINESS
The surprisingly deep insight contained in the old cliché ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ is explored at length in Barry Magid’s book Ending the Pursuit of Happiness: A Zen Guide (Wisdom); it’s aimed primarily at Buddhist meditation students, but don’t let that put you off. There’s an interview with Magid at sweepingzen.com/2009/12/25/barry-magid-interview.
The idea that it’s more beneficial to focus on process rather than outcome is one of the key messages of John Eliot’s book Overachievement (Portfolio), which applies the lessons of sports science to performance in all areas of life. It’s also an implicit message throughout The Power of Full Engagement (Free Press), by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, which seeks to replace the notion of ‘time management’ with ‘energy management’. The Japanese industrial strategy of kaizen – which focuses on continual improvements in process rather than an unrelenting fixation on goals and outcomes – is relevant here, too; a book that applies its principles beyond management to daily life and personal psychology is Robert Maurer’s One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way (Workman).
Robert Anton Wilson’s characteristically wild-eyed but still highly thought-provoking essay on E-prime, or writing without using the verb ‘to be’, from his book Quantum Psychology (New Falcon), is available at rawilson.com/quantum.html. And on the topic of embracing imperfection, see the essay ‘The Elegance of Imperfection’, by David Sherwin, at alistapart.com/articles/the-elegance-of-imperfection – it’s explicitly about designing websites, but it’s also really about designing life. The aesthetic of wabi-sabi, in particular, is explored in ‘Wabi-Sabi: The Art of Imperfection’, at utne.com/2001-09-01/Wabi-Sabi.aspx. ‘Wabi-sabi is the art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in earthiness,’ the author writes. ‘[It] reminds us that we are all transient beings on this planet – that our bodies, as well as the material world around us, are in the process of returning to dust.’
NOTES
1 Research on the fixed aspects of personality is discussed in Sonja Lyubomirsky, The How of Happiness (New York: Penguin Press, 2007), chapter one.
2 See Carol Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (New York: Ballantine Books, 2007).
3 David Schkade and Daniel Kahneman, ‘Does living in California make people happy? A focusing illusion in judgments of life satisfaction’, Psychological Science 9 (1998): 340–346.
4 The research on self-deception and denial is voluminous. One recent example is Nina Mazar et al, ‘The dishonesty of honest people: a theory of self-concept maintenance’, Journal of Marketing Research 45 (2008): 633–644.
5 Jennifer Gregg et al,‘Improving diabetes self-management through acceptance, mindfulness, and values: a randomized controlled trial’, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 75 (2007): 336–343.
6 Lawrence Tabak, ‘If your goal is success, don’t consult these gurus’, Fast Company (December 1996).
7 Kim Baskerville et al, ‘Reactions to random acts of kindness’, Social Science Journal 37 (2000): 293–298.
8 Much of the research on the benefits of novel experience is collected in Todd Kashdan, Curious? Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life (New York: William Morrow, 2009).
9 Mark Easton, ‘Britain’s happiness in decline’, BBC News website, May 2, 2006, accessible at news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/happiness_formula/4771908.stm.
10 For a summary of Michael McCullough and Robert Emmons’s gratitude research, with references to individual journal articles, see psychology.ucdavis.edu/labs/emmons/or Robert Emmons, Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007). See also note 1.
11 Martin Seligman et al, ‘Positive psychology progress: empirical validation of interventions’, American Psychologist 60 (2005): 410–421.
12 See, for example, Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough, ‘Counting blessings versus burdens: an experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84 (2003): 377–389.
13 Andrea diMartini et al, ‘Post-traumatic stress disorder caused by hallucinations and delusions experienced in delirium’, Psychosomatics 48 (2007): 436–439.
14 Jorge Moll et al, ‘Human fronto-mesolimbic networks guide decisions about charitable donation’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103 (2006): 15623–15628.
15 Footage of Dawkins taking questions from creationist students, including a discussion of altruism, is at video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8033327978006186584#.
16 Sandy Wolfson and Pamela Briggs, ‘Locked into gambling: anticipatory regret as a motivator for playing the National Lottery’, Journal of Gambling Studies 18 (2002): 1–17.
17 Roese’s research is discussed in Neal Roese, If Only (New York: Broadway, 2005). For further evidence that inaction is regretted more than action, see Marcel Zeelenberg et al, ‘The inaction effect in the psychology of regret’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 82 (2002): 314–327. Several earlier studies reached an opposite conclusion, but Zeelenberg et al suggest this may be because they studied isolated, one-off decisions in artificial experimental settings.
18 Neal Roese and Amy Summerville, ‘What we regret most … and why’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 31 (2005): 1273–1285.
19 Robert Provine’s research on laugh-trigger phrases, the link between laughter and humour, and the role of laughter in personal advertisements is detailed in his book Laughter: A Scientific Investigation (New York: Viking, 2000).
20 James Pennebaker and Sandra Beall, ‘Confronting a traumatic event: towards an understanding of inhibition and disease’, Journal of Abnormal Psychology 95 (1986): 274–281.
21 John Weinman et al, ‘Enhanced wound healing after an emotional disclosure intervention’, British Journal of Health Psychology 13 (2008): 95–102.
22 If you’re part of a married couple, anyway. The paper in question is Jean Twenge et al, ‘Parenthood and marital satisfaction: a meta-analytic review’, Journal of Marriage and Family 65 (2003): 574–583.
23 Nattavudh Powdthavee, ‘Think having children will make you happy?’, The Psychologist 22 (2009): 308–310.
24 Philip Brickman et al, ‘Lottery winners and accident victims: is happiness relative?’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37 (1978): 917–927.
25 Daniel Simons and Daniel Levin, ‘Failure to detect changes to people during a real-world interaction’, Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 5 (1998): 644–649.
26 Scott Taylor, ‘An exploration of wilderness effects: a phenomeno-logical inquiry’, online at www.c-zone.net/taylors.
27 These findings are from Robert Wuthnow, ‘Peak experiences: some empirical tests’, Journal of Humanistic Psychology 18 (1978): 59–75 and Andrew Greeley, Ecstasy: A Way of Knowing (New York: Prentice Hall, 1974): 141.
28 See Martin Seligman, Helplessness (San Francisco: Freeman, 1975).
29 For example, Brad Bushman, ‘Does venting anger feed or extinguish the flame? Catharsis, rumination, distraction, anger, and aggressive responding’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28 (2002): 724–731.
30 R.H. Hornberger, ‘The differential reduction of aggressive responses as a function of interpolated activities’, American Psychologist, 14 (1959): 354.
31 Lisa Starr and Joanne Davila, ‘Clarifying co-rumination: associations with internalizing symptoms and romantic involvement among adolescent girls’, Journal of Adolescence 32 (2009): 19–37.
32 Richard Wiseman summarised his findings, based on surveys conducted at a science festival, in ‘The truth about lying and laughing’, The Guardian, 21 April 2007, at www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/apr/21/weekendmagazine.
33 F. Strack et al, ‘Inhibiting and facilitating conditions of the human smile: a nonobtrusive test of the facial feedback hypothesis’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54 (1988): 768–777.
34 The story of Hans Selye, stress and strain is summarised at the website of the American Institute of Stress, www.stress.org/hans.htm.
35 Bert Brown, ‘Face-saving following experimentally induced embarrassment’, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 6 (1970): 255–271.
36 Christine Harris, ‘Embarrassment: a form of social pain’, American Scientist 94 (2006) 524–533.
37 Ibid.
38 Much of the research on embarrassment involved Rowland Miller, and is discussed in his book Embarrassment: Poise and Peril in Everyday Life (New York: Guilford Press, 1996).
39 Barbara Fredrickson and Marcial Losada, ‘Positive affect and the complex dynamics of human flourishing’, American Psychologist, 60 (2005): 678–686; and Barbara Fredrickson, Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive (New York: Crown, 2009).
40 J.P. Forgas and S. Moylan, ‘After the movies: the effects of transient mood states on social judgments’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 13 (1987): 478–489.
41 These findings are discussed throughout John Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008).
42 C.-B. Zhong and G.L. Leonardelli,‘Cold and lonely: does social exclusion literally feel cold?’, Psychological Science 19 (2008): 838–842.
43 Cacioppo, op. cit. (See note 41).
44 E.E. Jones and V.A. Harris, ‘The attribution of attitudes’, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 3 (1967): 1–24.
45 J.G. Miller, ‘Culture and the development of everyday social explanation’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 46 (1984): 961–978.
46 Philip Zimbardo, ‘A situationist perspective on the psychology of evil: understanding how good people are transformed into perpetrators’, in Arthur Miller, ed, The Social Psychology of Good and Evil: Understanding Our Capacity for Kindness and Cruelty (New York: Guilford, 2005).
47 Scott Feld, ‘Why your friends have more friends than you do’, American Journal of Sociology 96 (1991): 1464–77.
48 Satoshi Kanazawa, ‘Why your friends have more friends than you do’, Psychology Today, November 1, 2009, online at www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamen talist/200911/why-your-friends-have-more-friends-you-do.
49 Andrea Donderi’s posting, under the username ‘tangerine’, is online at ask.metafilter.com/55153/whats-the-middle-ground-between-fu-and-welcome#830421.
50 See, for example, research by Stephen Emlen and Peter Buston, summarised in Catherine Zandonella, ‘Opposites do not attract in mating game’, New Scientist 30 (June 2003), at www.newscientist.com/article/dn3887-opposites-do-not-attract-in-mating-game.html.
51 Robert Epstein, ‘How science can help you fall in love’, Scientific American Mind Jan–Feb 2010: 26–33.
52 Ibid.
53 One real-life example is Thomas Walker and Eleanor Main, ‘Choice shifts in political decisionmaking: federal judges and civil liberties cases’, Journal of Applied Social Psychology 3 (2006): 39–48.
54 For example, Miron Zuckerman et al, ‘The egocentric bias: seeing oneself as cause and target of others’ behaviour’, Journal of Personality 51 (2006): 621–630.
55 Thomas Gilovich et al, ‘The spotlight effect in social judgment: an egocentric bias in estimates of the salience of one’s own actions and appearance’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78 (2000): 211–222.
56 Jon Jecker and David Landy, ‘Liking a person as a function of doing him a favour’, Human Relations 22 (1969): 371–378.
57 One such recent study is S. Goel et al, ‘Real and perceived attitude homophily in social networks’, a report for Yahoo! Research (2010), available online at www.cam.cornell.edu/~sharad/papers/friendsense.pdf.
58 William Swann and Michael Gill, ‘Confidence and accuracy in person perception: do we know what we think we know about our relationship partners?’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73 (1997): 747–757.
59 Solomon Asch, ‘Opinions and social pressure’, Scientific American 193 (1955): 31–35.
60 See for example Mark Granovetter, ‘The strength of weak ties: a network theory revisited’, Sociological Theory 1 (1983): 201–233.
61 Robert Nelson and Peter Economy, Better Business Meetings (Burr Ridge, Illinois: Irwin Professional Publishing): 5.
62 Zoltán Dornyeï, The Psychology of the Language Learner (Mahwah, New Jersey: Laurence Erlbaum Associates, 2005): 158.
63 Steven Rogelberg et al, ‘“Not another meeting!”: are meeting time demands related to employee wellbeing?’ Journal of Applied Psychology 1 (2006): 86–96.
64 Discussed in Mary Czerwinski et al, ‘A diary study of task switching and interruptions’, Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (2004): 175– 182.
65 Cameron Anderson and Gavin Kilduff, ‘Why do dominant personalities attain influence in face-to-face groups? The competence-signaling effects of trait dominance’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96 (2009): 491–503.
66 K. Weaver et al, ‘Inferring the popularity of an opinion from its familiarity: a repetitive voice can sound like a chorus’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92 (2007): 821–833.
