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Social Interactions Define Your Sense of Purpose

Social Interactions Define Your Sense of Purpose

by | 2022 Jul 11 | Public, Quick Hits

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

friendship brain

Having a sense of purpose is a pretty good thing to have because it seems to correlate with multiple health and life satisfaction measures. If you have a healthy sense of purpose you will likely live longer, be happier, have less disease, lower risk of cardiovascular disease, be wiser, be less lonely, and have lower risk of various neuro-degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

All in not bad!

But what drives purpose?  There are multiple factors and I have reported on some of these before. But this study just out by Gabrielle Pfund et al. of Washington University in St Louis found something surprisingly simple, cheap, and effective.

What did they find?

For this study they tracked 100 participants, aged on average 71, over 15 days. They were asked three times a day about the quality of their social interactions and then in the evening asked how much purpose they currently felt in their life.

The results showed that the quality of interactions strongly influenced their sense of purpose. Simply, if you have positive social interactions, you feel an increased sense of purpose in life.

This is surprising and unsurprising simultaneously.

It is surprising for numerous reasons. Firstly, the strong assumption is that purpose is linked to multiple big-ticket items such as religion, spirituality, and contributing to the greater good in society, not simple short interactions during the day. Secondly most research seems to see sense of purpose as a stronger more stable personality trait rather than something that fluctuates on a daily basis.

However, it is unsurprising because social interactions have been shown to influence just about everything. There are multiple reasons for this and I have written about some of the positive chemicals that are released in the brain and body and contribute to general wellbeing in other places (such as here).

So, rather than think about big things in creating a sense of purpose, it seems that simply ensuring that we have more, and better, social interactions will have multiple positive knock-on effects.

That is a really important insight. The small things do count and contribute to the big things. And the benefits to individuals and society are dramatic.

More importantly you can affect this by having positive social interactions with others. It will benefit you, and it will benefit others also, and it will in turn benefit your community and society.

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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Reference

Gabrielle N. Pfund, Matthias Hofer, Mathias Allemand, Patrick L. Hill. 
Being Social May Be Purposeful in Older Adulthood: A Measurement Burst Design. 
The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 2022; 30 (7): 777
DOI: 10.1016/j.jagp.2021.11.009

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Dark Matter in the Brain

Dark Matter in the Brain

by | 2022 Jul 9 | The Human Brain

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Being “Hangry” Really Is A Thing

Being “Hangry” Really Is A Thing

by | 2022 Jul 8 | Public, Quick Hits

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

hungry mood brain

So, scientists have now proven that being “hangry” is real thing. What took them so long?

Well, first of all things which seem intuitively right such as the weather making pain worse have actually been shown to have no correlation. So, things which seem obvious sometimes aren’t true. Secondly there has been plenty pf research into mood and various factors but little done with being hungry and angry in the real world “in the wild” so to speak.

This is measuring this when people go about their normal lives – obviously many other factors contribute to anger and irritability other than hunger.

In these sorts of situations groups of volunteers are monitored with an app and they are prompted randomly to provide answers to questions on their current mood and level of hunger. In this experiment, led by Viren Swami of Anglia Ruskin University, 64 adults were tracked over 21 days with five check-ins per day.

What did they find?

Yes, there was a strong correlation between hunger and anger and irritability. Specifically, 37% of the variance in irritability, 34% of the variance in anger, and 38% of the variance in pleasure was put down to hunger. Interestingly the negative emotions were impacted strongly by day-to-day hunger but also seemingly by residual levels of hunger over the research period.

So, there you have it, for the first time we now know that being “hangry” is a real thing in the real world. Proven●

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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Reference

Viren Swami, Samantha Hochstöger, Erik Kargl, Stefan Stieger.
Hangry in the field: An experience sampling study on the impact of hunger on anger, irritability, and affect.
PLOS ONE, 2022; 17 (7): e0269629
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0269629

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Reward Drives Aggressive Behaviour Against “Others”

Reward Drives Aggressive Behaviour Against “Others”

by | 2022 Jul 7 | Public, Quick Hits

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

brain group bias

Us vs. them is known as in-groups vs. out-groups in psychology. This is the well-known effect of people being loyal to their own groups and being competitive and often aggressive to the out-group. This happens in multiple groups. Obvious ones are nationalities, religious groups, sports teams, but also geographical regions.

Previous research has shown that we human beings are very good at creating groups and this can be formed very quickly. We also know that these groups, at extreme levels, can be the cause of much of what we consider evil in society, aggression, abuse, murder, torture, and genocide. What may also be surprising, to some, is that all evidence points to this being hardwired i.e. babies as young as 3-months-old exhibit favouritism to in-groups and out-groups and this includes punishing the out-group and rewarding the in-group!

Now researchers at the Virginia Commonwealth University have investigated this effect further and come to some surprising, to some, conclusions!

What did they find?

They put 35 male college students through online competitive aggressive tasks. For this they told they would be competing with participants from a rival university. In fact, they competed against a computer – for ethical reasons. They had their brains scanned while doing these tasks.

What they found that was surprising is that those who were more aggressive against out-group members had greater activation of reward circuits in the brain suggesting that this is driven be reward rather than anger or other mechanisms. Specifically, the nucleus accumbens and ventromedial prefrontal cortex.

This reward circuitry was also associated with the mount they excluded the out-group from other activities. Though this has been measured in other contexts and the research points to this rewarding experience the researchers were most surprised by the strength of the effect in what is a “weak” out-group. A rival university is, in the big scale of things, not a very strong out-group such as the ones that are constructed in a divisive political atmosphere or on the global stage.

So sad to say that reward for punishing others seems to drive, to a large extent, in- and out-grouping and harming others. Fortunately, we now know this and fortunately not everybody exhibits this to excessive degrees●

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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Reference

Emily Lasko, Abigale C Dagher, Samuel James West, David Chester. 
Neural Mechanisms of Intergroup Exclusion and Retaliatory Aggression. 
Social Neuroscience, 2022

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Low Oxygen Impairs Decision-Making

Low Oxygen Impairs Decision-Making

by | 2022 Jul 6 | Public, Quick Hits

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

crowd brain

Last year I reported on how pollution and bad air in offices correlates with lower performance and productivity. Something business should take note of.

A study out of the University of Tsukuba has looked into decision-making under physical fatigue. Now this may seem to be off on a tangent and not related to the business world but they were specifically trying to look at what specifically clouds judgement under fatigue.

We know that when under fatigue, during or after strenuous activity, that so-called executive function decreases. Executive function is the ability to control impulses and control cognitive processes. One test of this is the Stroop test. The Stroop test flashes coloured words such as “red” but the text is either in the same colour or a different colour (e.g. red or red). If the text matches the text colour you click yes. If it doesn’t you click no.

This is tricky at the best of times and is often used as an executive function test in its own right.

When doing strenuous exercise, performance on this drops, often dramatically. The question now is, is it, because of attentional issues, a change in brain function to be able to exert yourself, or reduced oxygen?

The researchers devised an experiment whereby they were able to  manipulate oxygen supply to the brain and thereby see whether it was just the oxygen levels that influenced this. And yes, when oxygen supply remained stable during exercise, performance on the Stroop test was influenced much less.

So, this shows that it is the oxygen supply that clouds judgment – or ability to deliver oxygen to critical executive regions of the brain.

That is important because that shows that oxygen supply to the brain is important for all decision-making in all conditions.

Take note businesses particularly those with those muggy meeting rooms where executives make critical decisions●

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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Reference

Genta Ochi, Ryuta Kuwamizu, Kazuya Suwabe, Takemune Fukuie, Kazuki Hyodo, Hideaki Soya. 
Cognitive fatigue due to exercise under normobaric hypoxia is related to hypoxemia during exercise. 
Scientific Reports, 2022; 12 (1)
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-14146-5

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