Worst Case Scenario Moms

For most of us, when we make plans we take into consideration a small number of logical problems that might occur. In this case, a little bit of anxiety helps us make logical choices to keep ourselves safe. For example, if you are planning a road trip it is a good idea to use Google maps or your GPS to navigate without getting lost. 

For some individuals who struggle with anxiety that list of possible problems would not only be lengthy, it might also include some very unlikely and illogical problems. For example, if the weather report predicts sunny skies and you are very worried about a million things - including that you will have to drive through massive thunderstorms - this is probably a sign of an anxiety disorder. Even worse, when your friend tells you that you don't need to worry, you are still convinced that your concern is based in reality.

Our meme uses a good key word to help you understand one aspect of anxiety disorders:  catastrophically. Catastrophic thinking is a cognitive bias that is associated with anxiety disorders. It causes people to generate and fear many possible, even if unlikely, worst case scenarios. This might lead a person who fails one exam to believe, "I am going to fail out of school and be homeless;" a person who has a sore throat would think, "I am going to die from throat cancer;" and a person going through a break-up could fear, "I am going to die alone because nobody will ever want me."

In addition to worrying about themselves, people who are very anxious may also worry about catastrophes that could occur in others' lives. Based on this, Lester, Field, & Cartwright-Hatton (2012) wanted to clarify the relationship between anxiety and catastrophic thinking as they relate to mothers. This is very sensible as parents are charged with protecting their children from harm and teaching children how to be careful: all parents are expected to envision what could go wrong for their kids. 
 

 

As well, we know that anxiety disorders are caused by an interplay of genetic and environmental influences. If parents model catastrophic thinking it may be that their children will start to have the same cognitive bias.

In the study, 300 English mothers of elementary school children were tested for their baseline level of anxiety, or trait anxiety. Overall, they were not particularly anxious - only 5% or so were anxious enough to meet the criteria for Generalized Anxiety Disorder - but there were some moms who scored higher than others.

Next, the mothers were interviewed to measure their tendencies toward catastrophic thinking, or catastrophic processing. Almost 200 of the moms were asked to imagine that a person doing something dangerous was their own child; about 100 of the moms were instead asked to imagine themselves as the person doing the dangerous thing. For example (p. 759), the participants were asked to imagine their child or themselves as the man standing atop this high column.

They were then asked to state what worried them about that situation. The interviewer continued with follow-up questions based on these answers to generate a list of possible worst case scenarios. The mothers who came up with more of these had a larger bias toward catastrophic thinking.

All of the mothers participated in another test to see if they were simply biased to see danger in general. They read 20 descriptions of ambiguous situations - situations that could be interpreted as being dangerous or safe. Examples are not given in the Lester at al. article, but I can imagine a situation like, "Walking alone to a friend's house." Half of the situations were described as applying to them (my version: "You are walking alone to a friend's house....") and the other half were described as applying to the participants' children (my version: "Your child is walking alone to a friend's house....").

Bias toward seeing danger was assessed through a test of recognition memory. Recognition memory is what you use to complete multiple choice exams: you simply pick out the choice that matches what you remember. In this case the mothers' memories for the 20 situations were tested: for each one they had to choose between a version that was dangerous and a version that was safe. So if we use my made-up example of "walking alone to a friend's house" the choices might include:

a) ...walking alone to a friend's house and a man jumps out of a car with a knife...

b) ...walking alone to a friend's house and a rabbit jumps out from behind a bush...

Having a bias toward seeing danger would lead participants to choose the memory that depicted a threat as the correct answer.

The results confirmed that mothers who are higher in trait anxiety generated more possible worst case scenarios: anxious mothers were more likely to demonstrate catastrophic thinking. This was equally true regardless if they were asked to envision outcomes for their children or for themselves. This suggests that anxious mothers may generalize their own anxiety to their children's experiences.

Likewise, Lester et al. found that mothers who are higher in trait anxiety were more likely to remember ambiguous situations as including threats: they were biased to see danger. This was especially true when they were asked to imagine themselves in those ambiguous situations; it was true to a lesser extent when they were asked to imagine their children in the situations. Some further analyses led to the suggestion that higher trait anxiety leads to a bias of seeing danger as it might affect you personally; this self-directed bias in turn increases your likelihood to imagine danger for your child.

Lester at al. were careful to point out that their methods do not allow them to state that these biases cause children of anxious parents to become anxious themselves. However they raise the possibility that kids could be at risk of anxiety if they grow up with parents who engage in catastrophic thinking and who are led to envision danger in their children's lives. The authors also offer another possibility based on their results: parents of anxious children may develop these cognitive biases, such as catastrophic thinking, as a result of raising their fearful offspring. Talk about an ambiguous situation!

Further Reading:

The Lester et al. (2012) article can be accessed through your local college library.

For a humorous look at worst case scenarios and parenting, try this book by Piven, Borgenicht, & Jordan (2003). You can find an excerpt from the chapter on "long car journeys" here.

If you are concerned about your anxiety or the anxiety of your mother a loved one, the Anxiety and Depression Association of America offers good information on treatment. This includes a podcast about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, a common treatment to combat irrational thoughts, including a bias toward catastrophic thinking.

The "Me" in Meme

If you Google "meme" you will find that the term originated in the 1976 book, "The Selfish Gene," by Richard Dawkins (not to be confused with 1976 gameshow host, Richard Dawson) as a way to explain how cultural information can be transmitted through generations in our DNA.  In fact the word meme comes from a Greek word meaning "to imitate."  Internet Memes, like the ones featured on this blog, are distant cousins of this original, biological definition but also tell us about our culture.

When I teach at my university, I purposely search for photographs that represent people from different races, ethnicities, sexes, sexual orientations, and ages to illustrate my lectures.  I want my lessons to reflect the diverse human experience so that all of my students will see a glimpse of themselves in at least some of those images.  Another person who thinks that visual images matter is CEO of Facebook and founder of Leanin.org, Sheryl Sandberg.  Sandberg commissioned a set of more modern and diverse images of women to combat old-fashioned, sexist images or ridiculous favorites like the Tumblr-worthy "women laughing alone with salad."  The collection is introduced this way:

A picture is worth a thousand words. But in an age where visuals are everywhere, what message are those pictures sending? Much of the imagery we see daily portrays a familiar trope: men leading, women sidelined or sexualized, and mom and dad in stereotypical roles. But that paradigm is shifting. LeanIn.Org and Getty Images have teamed up to create the Lean In Collection—a library of thousands of creative images devoted to the powerful depiction of women and girls, families of all kinds, and men as caretakers as well as earners. These images are updated monthly. The goal is to shift perceptions, overturn cliches, and incorporate authentic images of women and men into media and advertising. Join us to help close the image gender gap—one photo at a time.

So as I curate this blog, I would like to show diverse people in memes.  This is proving to be difficult:  the groups that tend to be underrepresented in other forms of popular media also are harder to find in the meme world.  Even worse, when I do find images of women, people of color, senior citizens, people with disabilities, they are often portrayed in negative, stereotypical ways.

For this post I decided to document this phenomenon by using Google Image to search for "top memes."  Here are first 50 results:

I tabulated the characteristics of the main person featured in the meme.  If there were two people in the meme, I noted the features of the person who is portrayed to be speaking or highlighted by the text.  Based on my first impressions, here is what I found in these top 50 memes:

Seventy percent of the memes featured males; 24% featured females; and the remaining percent were unclear or featured an object (although this object was a male action figure toy).

Eighty percent of the memes featured a White person; 10% featured a Black person and 10% featured an Asian person; 2% featured a Middle Eastern person and 2% featured a Native American; while the remaining percent was an object (although this object was a White action figure toy).

Forty-two percent of the memes featured a young adult (ages 18-39); 26% featured a baby or a child; 18% featured a middle-aged person (ages 40-59); 6% featured a teenager (ages 13-17) and 6% featured an older person (ages 60+); with the remaining percent from an object (although this object was an action figure toy portraying a young adult or midlife man).

If we compare these results to data from the Pew Research Center about Social Media - where these memes would be shared - we see some mismatches.  For our example let's look at Facebook, the most popular social media platform with 71% of all Internet users logging on (like us on Facebook here!).  Here are the 2014 Facebook Demographics about Internet users:

66% of these males and 71% of these females are on Facebook.
71% of White users are on Facebook; 67% Black users; 73% Hispanic log on to Facebook.
87% of ages 18-29; 74% ages 30-49; 63% ages 50-64; and 56% ages 65+ are Facebook users.

If the basis of a meme is to tell us something about our culture - even something as simple as what is funny - the messages may over-represent males and Whites compared to their audience.  The premise of this blog is that these pop culture memes often contain ideas that are backed up by psychology - so what does it mean if these memes mostly portray certain types of people?

With the majority of midlife and older adults logging on to social media, this also means that they will be less likely to see their images illustrating these messages.  Young adults won out in meme representation and in social media use, but they are not featured in memes to the extent that they are a presence on Facebook.  If they are also the ones making these memes, it is interesting that babies and children are relatively popular choices of theirs to serve as their messengers.

My count of these memes is not science at its best, but it illustrates a phenomenon that we see elsewhere in media:  the image is male, White, and young adult.  For example, the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism found that, in the top 100 films of 2012, speaking roles were played by:  men (77%); Whites (76%); young adults (49%).  Expanding on the words of The Status of Women in U.S. Media in 2014, we may conclude that:

Unequivocally, it matters when [we] get our just due across the vast media landscape. Only when [we all] are equal partners in the multi-layered work of deciding what constitutes a story and how that story might be told can we paint a more textured, accurate picture of the worlds that we all...inhabit. (p.5).

Further Reading:

View the entire Lean In stock photo collection here.

Want to make some more diverse memes?  Try these online tools:  Meme Generator; imgflip; or imgur.

The Women's Media Center has excellent resources about how sex, gender, race, and age are portrayed in American media.