Love Hurts

"That will be us someday!" It's the sweet wish of a young couples when they spy older couples on the street, in restaurants, on the dance floor who still seem to be in love. 

But the other side of that wish is this: love may have no expiration date, but all people do. Death of a partner is most likely to happen in old age, more likely to happen to older women, and is often considered to be one of the most traumatic events a person can experience.

This sort of loss, or bereavement, is often related to Major Depressive Disorder (clinical depression). The most recent version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V) removed the "bereavement exclusion": thus a grieving person who exhibits the symptoms of depression may receive that diagnosis even though these symptoms are a normative response to loss of a loved one.

Fried, Bockting, Arjadi, Borsboom, Amshoff, Cramer, Epskamp, Tuerlinckx, Carr, and Streoebe (2015) note that we often assume bereavement causes a person to have depression, and depression produces symptoms. This is called the "Common Cause Hypothesis" because all symptoms are thought to come from one situation: depression. However, the authors caution us that this hypothesis may not be appropriate because there are thousands of symptoms that depressed people may have, these may contradict each other (e.g.; some depressed people eat too much while other depressed people don't feel like eating at all), and risk factors, such as suicide, may vary depending on the constellation of symptoms that an individual exhibits.

Instead, Fried et al. (2015) encourage us to consider a Network model. From this view, bereavement would cause symptoms, and these symptoms would create situations, such as depression. These symptoms could also interact with (influence) each other to produce such situations.

To test these two viewpoints, the authors used data on depression symptoms from the Changing Lives of Older Couples (CLOC) study. First, they compared the scores on a depression test from 241 widowed seniors (from Follow-Up 1) to 274, age- and gender-matched, married seniors (from Follow-Ups 1-3). The majority of the participants were female and senior citizens. When these individuals joined the CLOC study there was no difference in their reported depression symptoms, but in the follow-up interviews, six months after the death of a spouse the bereaved seniors demonstrated slightly more of these symptoms compared to the seniors who were still married. In fact, 84 of the widowed seniors exceeded the criteria for Major Depressive Disorder by endorsing at least six symptoms. The most commons symptoms were: feeling lonely; feeling sad; feeling depressed; having trouble motivating themselves; problems sleeping; problems eating.

Then Fried et al. (2015) applied complicated statistical models to see if the Common Cause or the Network frameworks would best explain the relationship between bereavement, depression, and depression symptoms. For the Common Cause model to be supported these six symptoms should be better predicted by Depression; instead four of these symptoms were better predicted by loss itself (bereavement) lending support to the Network model. Further investigation revealed that bereavement was especially linked to one symptom, feeling lonely.

These results caution us to think more broadly about depression and spousal loss in older age, especially for older women. Instead of assuming that bereavement causes depression, it may be that bereavement causes a set of symptoms including loneliness. In turn, it could be that this loneliness is what eventually leads a person to experience Major Depressive Disorder. 

As this week's meme suggests, true love may last forever: into old age and even when the person we love is gone. With love still in our hearts but now suddenly on our own, it is easy to see how loneliness could set in. And that is a depressing thought.

FURTHER READING:

The Fried et al. (2015) Journal of Abnormal Psychology article can be accessed through your local college library.

Advice from the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) on ways to survive bereavement.

WebMD's suggestions to "Help Yourself Out of Depression." If loneliness or depression are causing you to have suicidal thoughts, it is very important that you get help. In the U.S. you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255.

BONUS!

A TEDx talk by Dr. John Cacioppo on "The Lethality of Loneliness."

What we fear is a mirror

Along with trick-or-treating and attending parties, some people celebrate Halloween by paying to get scared: they walk through the spooky scenes of a haunted house while actors jump from the shadows, scream, and taunt them.

Why do we like to get a little scared? The James-Lange theory of emotion would suggest that we experience our bodies' fear response, racing hearts and sweaty palms, but then mislabel that arousal as "fun" or "excitement." As well, haunted houses keep us in the present moment so we cannot worry about anything else at the same time. People who were stressed before going into a haunted house often report the highest amount of relaxation from the experience.

But do we all get scared by the same things? Muroff, Spencer, Ross, Williams, Neighbors, and Jackson (2014) wondered if White and African American men and women have different ideas of what causes fear. They used a cognitive interview technique by asking a convenience sample of almost 200 participants (ages 18-85) a single question, "What makes and object or a situation fearful?" (p. 156).

From their answers the researchers distilled five categories of what makes something scary:

External Locus of Control: feeling out of control; not knowing what is about to happen.

Harm/Danger: risk that something would hurt or threaten your health/life.

Phobias: an irrational, intense fear of something that provokes immediate anxiety and/or panic.

Past Experience: having had or knowing about someone else's past experience with something that was fear-inducing.

Self-Perception: your belief that you will find something scary or not be able to handle something.

Muroff et al. then reexamined the participants' responses to see how often all of the participants and participants from specific groups included these categories in their original explanations about what makes things scary. From these qualitative data, they found that (p. 157):

*The most common category for all participants was External Locus of Control: it was mentioned in 35% of all explanations. This was followed by Harm/Danger (29%) and Phobias (18%).

*White women were 1.5 times more likely than African-American women to include External Locus of Control as part of their answers.

*External Locus of Control appeared most in the explanations given by White women and the least in explanations given by White men. 

*Older participants' responses were more likely to include External Locus of Control.

*White men were 3.5 times more likely than African-American men to include Past Experience in their responses.

*Men were more likely than women to include references of Self-Perception.

*Phobia was most common in the answers given by participants who had not completed high school.

This would suggest that these same individuals would react differently to various aspects of a haunted house. The majority, but especially White female and older participants, would be scared by unpredictable situations: dark passageways; rooms filled with disorienting lighting and mirrors; going around blind corners; not being able to find the way out of a room.

White male participants would be scared of things that remind them of bad situations that they, or people they know, have experienced. For example, an actor throwing a fake punch toward them, or a torture scene that includes an actor being kicked in the genitals or having a thumb hit by a hammer.

Males, in general, would also be afraid if they were led to believe that they could not handle a situation. This could be induced by playing recorded messages like, "You are helpless," "Others have come here but nobody leaves alive," or, "You can fight but you are too weak to escape," as they walk through the haunted house.

Finally, participants who had not completed high school might be particularly afraid if the horrific scenes included common phobia triggers. For example, spiders, needles, blood, tight spaces, or high heights.

Muroff et al. were not interested in how to build the scariest haunted house. Instead they were curious if people from different groups may have different interpretations of an assessment question that is commonly used to diagnosis phobias. Their results suggest that age, education level, sex, and race can influence how people conceptualize fear, and this may affect the accuracy of that phobia assessment.

The authors emphasized that the results likely reflect truly scary aspects of American culture. For example, women tend to have less financial power related to men; money allows you to better control your experiences. I would also add that women are more often cautioned to control their environments to prevent dangerous situations (e.g.; never walk alone; don't leave your drink unattended; walk with purpose and stay in well-lit areas). This may be particularly true for White women as the media more often portrays them as victims of violence - even though it is African American women who actually experience more violence. Perhaps this is why White women were more likely to endorse External Locus of Control as something that induces fear.

More clearly, Muroff et al. wrote, "Research on coping mechanisms for discriminated and stigmatized groups suggests that African American men and women may depend on various mechanisms for coping such as external locus of control and social learning" (p. 158). In this case external locus of control means that discrimination is explained as being random or a product of the situation, and thereby not caused by the person experiencing this unfair treatment. The authors explained that this beneficial coping mechanism would be less likely to be part of African Americans' explanations of fear.

Additionally they wrote, "Our findings also suggest that White respondents in this sample mention past experiences in their conceptualizations of fear more frequently than their African American counterparts. African Americans' experiences may be influenced more by unpredictable events including acts of racism and discrimination." Because of this, "African Americans may focus on the present and future in order to cope with adverse life experiences" (p. 158). When your past is full of fear it might not help you distinguish if a new situation is scary or not.

We can all exit a haunted house, but we can rarely step outside of our own experience of biological sex, race, and culture. The first step is to realize that we are all different: the same environment may be fun for some and scary for others.

Further Reading:

The Muroff et al. (2014) article can be accessed through your local college library.

Listen to National Public Radio's "Hidden Brain" podcast on the Science of Fear.

Read about Neuroscientist Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett who creates a yearly haunted house in her basement based on the neuroscience of fear. The proceeds of the event are donated to charity.

BONUS:

Watch when talk show host Ellen Degeneris sends her executive producer and "Modern Family" star, Eric Stonestreet, through a haunted house. These men are both White: does their behavior match the results of Muroff et al.?

Andy Goes to a Haunted House with Eric Stonestreet, Part 2 | EllenTV.com

On the borderline of rejection

Nobody likes to feel left out; it hurts and you might wonder if you did something wrong or if you will always be rejected. On the other hand, imagine being included and feeling a sense of impending abandonment. In this week's meme Overly Attached Girlfriend is exhibiting that problem as she spends time with her partner:

Gutz, Renneberg, Roepke, and Niedeggen (2015) investigated how three populations respond to being included and then rejected. Along with healthy controls, or average people for comparison, their experiment included people in treatment for Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) and a separate group in treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

Individuals with Social Anxiety Disorder are terrified that they are going to come across as awkward losers when they interact with others. This fear comes from a distorted perception that other people are more negative and judgmental than they really are, which leads to avoiding social situations and having very few social connections. When these situations cannot be avoided, people with SAD are hardest on themselves after the fact: they go over what happened in their minds and imagine how their behaviors left bad impressions.

People with Borderline Personality Disorder have an intense fear of being rejected and also view others as more negative and judgmental than they really are. This is complicated for people with BPD because they lack a solid sense of self and tend to derive some identity through the attention given to them in relationships. At the start of relationships they treat people as if they can do no wrong, but as they grow closer this bond becomes a risk - they might lose their source of self! Based on a distorted perception of reality and motivated by fear they turn against the people closest to them: accusing and blaming; projecting their own faults; exploding with over-the-top emotional reactions; or making threats of self-harm. These behaviors are scary and hurtful to receive from somebody who used to treat you so well, so eventually many of these relationships end. This further reinforces a fear of rejection.

Gutz et al. were interested in how the three groups would react to being included and being excluded. To provoke these situations they used a rigged video game called Cyberball: in this game you can "toss" a ball to two other players and they can choose to "toss" the ball to you. The participants are tested individually and they believe that they are playing online against two other people. However, they are actually just playing with a computer program and what occurs in the game is not by accident. In the first trial the program sends the ball to the participant and the two pretend players equally (33%) of the time; this should give participants a feeling of being included. In the second trial the program sends the ball to the participant less (16%) of the time compared to the pretend players; this should give participants a feeling of being excluded or rejected.

In addition to participants' ratings of their fear, expectation, and experience of rejection, the authors collected biological data in the form of brain activity during both trials. This was measured by electrical changes on the scalp known as an "event related brain potential" or ERP. The ERP of interest was P3b: this change occurs when a person has to reevaluate a situation - when something unexpected happens (and should not be confused with the dehydrated peanut butter PB2). In prior studies using Cyberball, average people exhibited this electrical change when they received the ball in the exclusion trial because this is an unexpected event.

The results of the present experiment confirmed differences between the healthy controls and the two clinical populations: overall the healthy controls rated themselves as lower in anxiety about being rejected and on expectations of rejection. In the exclusion trial, all three groups felt left out but the two clinical groups felt more threatened by this than did the healthy controls. This is evidence that rejection is felt more strongly by people diagnosed with SAD and BPD.

Differences between the clinical groups also occurred: Borderline participants rated themselves as higher in rejection expectancy than did the participants with Social Anxiety Disorder. Likewise, while there was little difference between healthy controls and participants with SAD, the participants in treatment for BPD always reported a higher experience of being left out, even in the inclusion trial. In fact, whereas the other two groups were accurate, at all times participants with BPD underestimated how many times the ball was tossed to them: they overestimated how much they were left out.

P3b activity confirmed these self-reports: only the participants with Borderline Personality Disorder demonstrated a P3b event, in fact a large P3b change, during the inclusion trial. Because this is associated with unexpected events, this means that these participants were expecting to be left out even when they were being included. Further evidence can be found in a statistical analysis: self-reports of rejection expectancy explain the largest difference in the P3b changes between the three groups.

Gutz et al. explain the significance of these findings:
...this negative perception bias might cause situation-inappropriate overreactions in daily life, and consequently prompt expectation-confirming rejection behavior by others. A recent study indicated that it is the negative perception of others that triggers elevated negative affect and quarrelsome behavior in patients with BPD (p. 428).

If Overly Attached Girlfriend struggles with BPD she may assume that any relationship puts her at risk for abandonment. An evening hanging out with her partner would not be interpreted as being accepted, but instead as a situation of likely rejection. The meme is funny because we can see the distortion in her thinking. In real life it would not be any fun: instead it might start a fight or even lead to a break-up.

Further Reading:

The Gutz et al. (2015) article can be accessed through your local college library.

If you or somebody you care about are dealing with anxiety or personality disorders, you can find helpful resources on the National Alliance on Mental Illness website.

Dr. Marsha Linehan, who created a therapy for Borderline Personality Disorder, made news by announcing that she, too, struggles with this psychological problem. Read the New York Times article about her "coming out."

Dr. Kipling Williams, one of the originators of the Cyberball game, has an updated version available on his website. This site also includes a gif that shows an image that is similar to what is seen when participating in Cyberball experiments.

BONUS: None of us would need to fear rejection if Ryan Gosling were our partner (or lab partner). Enjoy the statistics humor!

A+ for Responsive Parenting

It is no secret that parents and teachers impact children's lives. Some believe that their influences are distinct: parents are thought to take care of socializing children and teachers are assumed to be in charge of teaching kids academic skills. This somewhat crude meme illustrates this idea - but is it correct?

Could responding to your child's physical and emotional needs also influence his or her cognitive skills? A recent study by Bernier, Beauchamp, Carlson, and Lalonde (2015) supports this idea. The authors were interested if the type of attachment that children share with their mothers may relate to certain abilities that predict success in school.

You may recall that Mary Ainsworth and colleagues developed one way to study Attachment quality: briefly leaving toddlers in a Strange Situation and then reuniting them with their caregivers to observe how the children react. The majority of children got upset, but not hysterical, when left alone and were very glad when their caregiver returned: they ran to them; wanted to be held; and stopped crying almost immediately.

These children, like most American children, demonstrate a Secure Attachment relationship with their caregivers. This Secure style is associated with parents who notice when their children need something - physically or emotionally - and they respond to those needs in a prompt way. Children who share a Secure relationship learn to trust that their parents will come through for them.

In contrast, children may have an Insecure Avoidant relationship with parents who cannot be trusted to notice or take care of their needs. In this case the children don't want to be with the parents and do not rely on the parents for help.

Children can also share an Insecure Ambivalent relationship with parents who are unpredictable and unreliable at taking care of their needs. These children are always on edge because they don't know if today will be a good day or a bad day: they may be unusually clingy but also demonstrate a lot of anger toward their parents.

Finally, children raised in an abnormal environment of abuse and neglect, or by parents who are severely mentally ill, may just seem confused. This type of attachment relationship would be described as Insecure Disorganized.

We know that having a Secure Attachment relationship is associated with children demonstrating better social skills, emotional control, and improved behavior as they grow older. Bernier et al. hypothesized that this sort of attachment as a toddler would also be associated with better Executive Functioning skills during kindergarten. These Executive Functioning skills are largely regulated by the brain's prefrontal cortex and are very important for success in school. For example, relying on working memory, demonstrating the ability to plan and reach goals, and having control over your behavior are all requirements of kindergarten through college.

The authors considered 105 children who were tested at 15 months, two years, and when they were in kindergarten (age 5-6). At 15 months and age two, research assistants used a Q-Sort method to assess the attachment quality between the children and their mothers. The assistants came to each child's home and observed mother-child interactions. Based on those observations the assistants sorted 90 phrases into nine categories that ranged from "very unlike the child's behavior" to "very similar to the child's behavior." The resulting piles were compared with the piles we would expect from a Secure attachment relationship: if there was a strong match, the observed child would also have a Secure relationship with his or her mother. For example, children with Secure attachments would be rated as very similar to, "If held in mother's arms, child stops crying and quickly recovers after being frightened or upset," and rated as very unlike, "Child rarely asks mother for help" (p.1180).

At age 5 or 6, the same children were tested for general cognitive ability and specific Executive Functioning skills. General cognitive ability included an assessment with a delicious name, the Lollipop Test, which measures knowledge of colors and shapes, understanding of spatial relationships like "above" and "below," number knowledge, and letter knowledge.

Five assessments measured the children's Executive Functioning. Four of these directly tested the children's working memory, ability to follow rules, planning skills, and selective attention. Higher scores on these tests were associated with higher Executive Functioning skills. The children's kindergarten teachers completed the final assessment: they rated the children on 63 items related to problems with self-control, flexibility of thought, and metacognition (working memory combined with planning/organizational thinking). Thus, a low score on this rating was associated with higher Executive Functioning skills.

The results supported Bernier et al.'s hypothesis. Children who had earlier demonstrated Secure attachment relationships with their mothers scored higher on all of the Executive Functioning tests and received lower scores from teachers on problems with Executive Functioning. In other words, children whose parents had been responsive to their physical and emotional needs early in life were more likely to become kindergarten students with strong Executive Functioning skills. These skills in turn predict higher school success for these children.

Moreover, having a history of a Secure attachment was better at predicting good Executive Functioning skills than other factors known to have such influence. For example, attachment style predicted Executive Functioning skills better than predictions based on children's general cognitive ability scores. Likewise, attachment style's predictive powers trumped the children's ages, their families' income and education levels, and the amount of weeks that they had spent in kindergarten.

Although we cannot take these correlational results to mean that being a responsive parent or sharing a Secure Attachment relationship causes children to be primed for school success, they do imply that these things are likely to hang together. Returning to our meme, this research suggests that it is not solely the teacher's actions that will help children in school. If children are successful with the demands of kindergarten we can infer that they likely have a history of parents who wiped their noses, soothed their fears, and helped them regulate their emotions.

Further Reading:

The Bernier et al. (2015) journal article in Developmental Psychology can be accessed through your local college library.

If you are concerned that a child in your life has problems with Executive Functioning skills. Here is a resource from Understood.org: Understanding Executive Functioning Issues.

The Extension office at Purdue University offers concrete examples of parenting that are associated with Secure and Insecure Attachment relationships. The good news is that Insecure relationships can become Secure ones if parents change their behaviors.

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.

Cats and Depression

Some suggest that the first popular Internet memes starred cute cats with sayings like "I can has cheezburger?." So it was natural that I chose a cat as this blog's icon and not surprising that this week's meme features a cat:

The humor comes from relating typical cat behaviors to the very serious symptoms of human depression. Specifically the DSM-V includes "changes in sleep, appetite, and decreased interest in activities" as indicators of Major Depressive Disorder and Depressive Episodes in human beings.

On the other hand, there is an old adage that pets and their owners resemble each other. Maybe this trend applies not only to physical traits but also to psychological traits? We can ask the question: is their a relationship between cat ownership and depression?

On one hand we have research findings that lead us to believe that having a cat, or any pet, could be protective against depression. For example, McConnell, Brown, Shoda, Stayton, and Marton (2011) conducted an experiment to determine if pets can serve as social support and reduce the sting of rejection. In their somewhat disturbingly named paper, "Friends with benefits: on the positive consequences of pet ownership," they included a study of 97 undergraduate students, who were also pet owners (76 dogs, 20 cats, one horse). The participants either wrote a detailed report about a time that they were rejected (experimental condition) or what they had done earlier that day (control). Thus the experimental condition triggered feelings of rejection whereas the control condition did not; this was verified by participants' scores on a 17 question Social Needs Scale.

Next, the participants were either instructed to write about why they like their pets, why they like their best friends (human, that is), or to draw maps of their college campus. Past research demonstrated that thinking of your best friend serves as a reminder of social support, so the researchers were curious if thinking of a pet would have the same effect. Drawing a map was a neutral experience that would not be related to social support.

Indeed, when they completed a second check of their emotional states the participants who had felt rejected and then thought about their pets or best friends had rebounded and now felt that their social needs were satisfied. Although the difference did not reach statistical significance, the students who thought about their pets actually had a slightly higher emotional boost than the students who thought about their best friends!

Things were worse for the participants who had felt rejection and then drew maps of their campus: their social needs scores continued to plummet. Drawing the map was associated with feeling even more rejected as the study progressed! So if you are feeling low, thinking about your cat might make you feel better, but just thinking about random things to distract yourself might make you feel worse.

Before you start to believe that cats are the key to avoiding depression, these findings are tempered by an earlier study also found in the McConnell et al. (2011) article. When they compared 167 pet owners and 50 non-pet owners in the university community, the pet owners were slightly less lonely and had better self-esteem, but they did not differ significantly from the non-owners on actual measures of depression.

Another possibility is that the positive social support that cats provide may be undercut by a negative biological factor: Toxoplasma gondii. This protozoan can only complete its reproductive cycle inside a cat's digestive tract and can infect humans who have contact with cat poop that contaminates their food. A recent review by Hsu, Groer, and Beckie (2014) reports that 23% of the U.S. population shows no physical symptoms yet tests positive for this type of infection!

New T. gondii infections that are acquired during pregnancy can cause miscarriage, but an ongoing, undetected infection is associated with, "...mental and behavioral disorders such as schizophrenia, depression and suicide attempts" (p. 632). This is likely because the infection causes inflammation or cysts in the brain, and both could disrupt neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine, and tryptophan. However, cat ownership is not considered to be a high risk factor for infection for most people: raw meat consumption or contamination from unwashed kitchen utensils are more common modes of infection.

So go ahead and hug your cat to thank your pet for the social support - but, to be safe, wash your hands well after cleaning out the litter box. For all of us, if you are not a cat and find yourself sleeping too much, eating too much or too little, and you have lost all motivation it is important that you seek treatment for depression.

Further reading:

You can access the McConnell et al. (2011) article at your local college library. A copy of the Hsu et al. (2014) article is available online.

Depression is a serious illness. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255) can help if you are feeling hopeless. Their website also has good information for people who would like to volunteer or donate to help others.

A really fun read for anyone who likes cats: a link to Shreve, K.R., & Udell, M.A.R. (2015). What's inside your cat's head? A review of cat (Felis Silvestris catus) cognition research past, present and future. Animal Cognition, in press.

BONUS: Imagine if your friends acted like cats and dogs...or watch it here and it will make you smile:

The Walking Dead: New Parents

I went back to work when my daughter was 7 months old.  Even though I had taught psychology for a long time, the lack of sleep made it hard for me to remember even basic things.  Once I was lecturing on Piaget's stages and for a good 10 seconds I had to stall because instead of the names of the stages all I had in my head was this.  Eventually I remembered the stages; but I have never forgotten that moment.

So this week's blog is dedicated to all of the new parents out there...

First, is this plotting baby correct?  Yes - for the near future.  Newborn babies wake to eat every two or three hours - so in a given night the parents might be awakened four or more times!  A study by McDaniel and Teti (2012) found that one-month old babies wake two to three times each night and three month old babies still wake one to two times each night.  Babies this young require attention at night - to feed them, to soothe their gas pains, to change their diapers, to rock them - so if the baby is awake, that means that the parents aren't sleeping either.

So what is the problem?  Many studies including McDaniel and Teti's demonstrate that getting less sleep tends to go hand in hand with more clinical depression in new parents.  Most, but not all, find that this is especially true for new mothers who are more likely than new fathers to lose sleep caring for Baby's nighttime needs.  We can't be sure that it is only the loss of sleep that is causing the depression; but a positive correlation like this means that it's common to see these two things happening at the same time.

McDaniel and Teti also looked at how lack of sleep might relate to parents' perceptions of each other as parents.  This is important because, "...supportive coparenting, such as when partners endorse and support each others' parenting behaviors and cooperate with each other in raising their children, has been linked to increased relationship quality, less depression, and less parenting stress (p. 886)."  So if parents do not feel like they are a team, that also seems to go hand in hand with depression.

To unravel this riddle, the researchers used data from Project SIESTA (Study of Infants' Emergent Sleep TrAjectories) that included how 132 new parent (heterosexual) couples responded to a questionnaire about coparenting.  The parents rated themselves on how much they agree about parenting, how close they feel to each other and if they fight in front of their baby, their feelings of competition as parents, and how fairly they share the tasks of parenting.  This questionnaire, a measure of parents' depressive symptoms, and reports on their babies' nighttime wakings were collected when the infants were one month old and three months old.

Using a statistical method, McDaniel and Teti were able to determine how these things are related.  Put simply: between one month and three months, babies sleeping less predicted parents sleeping less; parents sleeping less predicted more depression symptoms; more depression symptoms predicted feeling worse about how coparenting is going.  This flow remained the same regardless of the family's social class and the baby's level of fussiness - so even well-off, well-educated families with easy-going babies were likely to show this pattern.

If this sounds miserable (and even more miserable for single parents doing it solo), you may be relieved to learn that most babies are able to sleep through the night by about six months.  Until then, there are some things that you can do to help your baby sleep and ways to make this sleep deprivation even a bit funny (see below) when you feel like a zombie parent.

Further Reading:

Get Your Baby to Sleep: Infant sleep suggestions from pediatrician, Dr. William Sears.  I like that he is clear:  each baby is an individual and each family has its own needs - so choose what feels right for you.

Adam Mansbach wrote a darkly humorous book for ADULTS who are suffering from child-induced sleep deprivation.  Its title and text does contain the F-word so don't click this or buy this book if it would be offensive to you.  Although it is meant to be funny, its angry and defeated tone is probably a good demonstration of depressive symptoms!

You can read the entire McDaniel and Teti (2012) paper here and find out more about Project SIESTA on Douglas Teti's homepage.