This is why you’re burning out: Science proves being on call is just as stressful as working

www.salon.com|Victoria Sayo Turner

We would all appreciate a healthy work-life balance, but even those of us who try to unwind outside the office are frustrated by the gentle chime of email at all hours. To our delight and horror, smartphones and tablets have given us the flexibility to respond to work from anywhere, practically becoming one of the family. Entrepreneurs and executives are known for a round-the-clock devotion to work, in contrast to the four-day-week gurus, but what toll does availability take for those whose jobs require it?

A recent study links extended work availability with decreased calmness, mood, and energy levels. By looking at industries from technical services to nursing, the study evaluated the effects of being on-call — that is, not at work, but being expected to remain available by phone for questions or customer requests. Participants answered questions in the evening after an on-call day about how often they thought about work or how constrained their activities felt. The next morning, they were quizzed again to better understand how the previous day’s mental requirements affected their mood.

Scientists designed music specifically for cats, and it is pretty beautiful

www.salon.com|Joanna Rothkopf

A group of researchers (two psychologists and a composer) with truly lovely research interests recently embarked on a mission to create music that was designed specifically for domestic cats’ enjoyment. In the study, published last month in the journal “Applied Animal Behaviour Science,” the researchers write of their hypothesis: “In order for music to be effective with other species,” they write, “it must be in the frequency range and with similar tempos to those used in natural communication by each species.”

If you live in fear, it multiplies fast: “Your entire world simply looks more scary”

www.salon.com|Scott Timberg

The recent outbreaks of mass violence – especially the attacks on Paris and San Bernardino – have amplified fear, distrust, and paranoia. A New York Times op-ed on Sunday – “National Cognitive Therapy” – described a national mood of anxiety. “We would be fools to insist on being unafraid in the presence of threat,” Richard A. Friedman of the Weill Cornell Medical College wrote. “But we cannot allow fear to rule – or ruin – our lives.”

In his Sunday night address, President Obama spoke about the importance of remaining confident in the face of threat. “Our success won’t depend on tough talk, or abandoning our values, or giving into fear. That’s what groups like ISIL are hoping for. Instead, we will prevail by being strong and smart, resilient and relentless, and by drawing upon every aspect of American power.”

But the fear continues to spread, and it’s begun to redraw the 2016 presidential race, especially on the Republican side, where the tone has become more bloodthirsty.

What effect does fear have on us, our society, politics, and values? 

We’re hard-wired to want vengeance: “Those are the brain systems that are old — they’re the ones we share with dogs and rats and deer”

www.salon.com|Scott Timberg

Last week’s Paris terrorist attacks, like most other large-scale crimes, has seen the original violence followed by a period in which the perpetrators are tracked down and killed, often one by one. Pick up a newspaper or glance at the Internet, and someone else has been found and killed. We see it in death penalty cases; we saw it on the hunting of Osama Bin Laden after the September 11 attacks. The latest example involves a raid that killed Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected leader of the attacks.

Jailing someone who commits a crime – so he or she won’t break the law again — makes rational sense. But vengeance is a different kind of process, deeply rooted in our emotional system. Where does blood lust come from and what does it lead us to do? How ancient is the urge?

Homeopathy is pure quackery: People prefer alternatives, even if those alternatives are useless

www.salon.com|Reynard Loki

Does homeopathy actually work? It’s a long-standing debate. Although the evidence is mounting that it doesn’t, a lot of Americans seem to believe in it. According to the latest estimates from the Centers for Disease Control, about 3.3 million Americans spent $2.9 billion on homeopathic remedies in 2007. The alternative healing practice has a long list of famous acolytes, from W.B. Yeats, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Twain, and Dizzy Gillespie to more recently, Cindy Crawford, Paul McCartney, Martina Navratilova and Oprah Winfrey. Even former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop called homeopathic physician Dr. Justice Gage Wright “a great model.”

The schizophrenia spectrum: What the mental disorder could have in common with autism

www.salon.com|Simon Makin

Most people have felt depressed or anxious, even if those feelings have never become debilitating. And how many times have you heard someone say, “I’m a little OCD”? Clearly, people intuitively think that most mental illnesses have a spectrum, ranging from mild to severe. Yet most people do not know what it feels like to hallucinate—to see or hear things that are not really there—or to have delusions, persistent notions that do not match reality. You’re psychotic, or you’re not, according to conventional wisdom.

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Parents who are overly involved in the lives of their college-age children are folks we love to scorn. A steady stream of articles and blog posts bristle with indignation over dads who phone the dean about a trivial problem or moms who know more than we think they should about junior’s love life. But now that a new school year is starting, it may be a good time to ask just how common such incidents really are — and whether “helicopter parenting,” when it does occur, is as damaging as we’ve been led to believe.

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Nobody needs a psychology degree to know the 2016 presidential campaign trail is filled with genuine narcissists—exceptionally vain men and women who see themselves as deserving attention and power. And then, in a class by himself, is Donald Trump.

Remarkably, the chord that Trump has struck with voters is growing, to the dismay of the Republican establishment and to the glee of Democrats and progressives—who feel they are watching a spectacle that’s better than The West Wing. Who could have imagined this script, where the GOP is being destroyed from within—and Trump, leading in all recent national polls for the nomination, is fighting with Fox News?

I’ve never really understood why the word “moist” makes me cringe. I enjoy using moisturizer on my face and body, and the word can connote good things — like cake. And yet, I tend to avoid using the word; it just sounds, well, icky, and I don’t like the feel of it coming from my lips. And because you’re already cringing, too, you know I’m not alone. Lots of people have a similar aversion to this mostly harmless word — it’s been called the most hated word in the country. Researchers at Oberlin College and Trinity University decided to explore the logic behind the aversion using three experiments that suggest semantic features of the word “moist” — like its associations with bodily functions — are the underlying cause of our collective disgust.

The Pixar movie “Inside Out” has not only entertained children and adults since its June opening, it’s brought psychological concepts – the importance of memory, the role of the unconscious, the complexity of emotion – to mainstream movie audiences in a way we’ve not seen at least since the heyday of Alfred Hitchcock. For a kid’s movie, its degree of psychological complexity is simply off the charts.

“Inside Out” tells the story of an 11-year-old girl named Riley, moving with her parents from Minnesota to San Francisco. Much of its tale is told literally from inside her head, where characters representing sorrow, fear and other emotions both quarrel and cooperate to shape the way her experiences resonate.

Plenty of us have known a dog on Prozac. We have also witnessed the eye rolls that come with the mention of canine psychiatry. Doting pet owners—myself included—ascribe all kinds of questionable psychological ills to our pawed companions. But in fact, the science suggests that numerous nonhuman species do suffer from psychiatric symptoms. Birds obsess; horses on occasion get pathologically compulsive; dolphins and whales, especially those in captivity, self-mutilate. And that thing when your dog woefully watches you pull out of the driveway from the window—that might be DSM-certified separation anxiety. “Every animal with a mind has the capacity to lose hold of it from time to time,” wrote science historian and author Laurel Braitman in her 2014 book Animal Madness.

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The corporate lexicon is full of bloodthirsty metaphors. Business is cutthroat; those who succeed are sharks; and they make a killing. What better place for a psychopath to really shine? Lots of CEOs are perfectly lovely, I’m sure, but study after study suggests that 4 percent of them—four times as many people as in the general population—qualify as psychopaths.

Almost every joke about lawyers relies on the stereotype that they are, essentially, psychopaths: liars and cheats, bereft of morals, obsessed with profiteering at any cost. This, even though your average public defender is hardly getting rich off billable hours, and I know an awful lot of great people with JDs (she wrote, veering dangerously close to, “Some of my best friends are lawyers” territory). Still, Dutton’s research found lawyers landed second only to CEOs in the number of psychopaths in their ranks, and it certainly makes sense that some lawyers (say, litigators) would benefit from the ability to turn on the charm and lie without conscience.

This one seems like kind of a no-brainer. Is it any surprise that the sort of person who might imagine herself so important that everyone should be exposed to her, is a person who might have some narcissistic tendencies? Obviously, not everyone in film, television or radio scores high on the Hare meter, but if you think of some of the most glaring psychopathic personalities in both media, it all sort of makes sense.

Remember the “Always Be Closing” scene from Glengarry Glenross when Alec Baldwin shows up and basically tells a roomful of salesmen their lives are meaningless because he makes more money than they do? (Choice quote: “Nice guy? I don’t give a shit. Good father? Fuck you, go home and play with your kids!”) Psychopaths in the sales industry probably consider that guy a role model. In his book, Working With Monsters: How to Identify and Protect Yourself from the Workplace Psychopath, John Clarke highlights how having a psycho on the sales team can be a real asset. “The psychopath is very likely to be a good salesperson, if they are intelligent as well as glib and superficial,” Clarke writes. “In fact, a study done in 2001 by Marc Hamer found that superior sales performance was associated with higher levels of narcissism (egocentric and grandiose), sociopathy and cognitive empathy.”

Interestingly, while doctor and nurse made the list of careers with the fewest psychopaths, surgeons were among the most psychopathic. As surgeon Wen Shen stated in a 2014 Pacific Standard piece, “the trouble with surgeons [is]…[m]any are abrasive, abusive, and wildly self-centered—so much so that observers have speculated that they suffer from psychiatric disorders.” Shen speculates this attitudinal tendency might be traced back to the horrible, pre-anesthesia days of surgery, when the field necessarily attracted a breed of person who could operate “to a soundtrack of screams” while keeping a cool hand. That may be changing—there’s a push for a kinder, gentler surgeon afoot—but doctors in other fields and other healthcare professional still seem to hold surgeons in unique regard.

A musician friend once said to me that you have to be a complete narcissist, totally delusional, or both to get up on a stage and essentially expect a room (to say nothing of a stadium or an arena) full of people to listen to you. To consider your own emoting so worthy of being heard that you essentially, and completely willingly, make a spectacle of yourself. It’s an abstract way of looking at things but there’s a grain of truth to it. (The fact that you might be charming and engaging enough for that audience to want to watch you is itself another psychopathic trait.) Which is why this one isn’t exactly a spoiler, especially after number three. (And no, the irony is not lost on me as write these words.)

In an era where police abuse and brutality is a topic of national discourse like never before, much has already been written about the psychological profiles of police officers. It’s an enormous conversation, and anything I write here would likely be repetitive. But I was fascinated  to learn about Diane Wetendorf’s Police Domestic Violence: Handbook for Victims, which finds that “women suffer domestic abuse in at least 40 percent of police officer families.” Compare that with the already troubling national average of 25 percent for American women in general. What’s more, “police families are two to four times more likely than the general population to experience domestic violence,” according to the Advocates for Human Rights. 

The Catholic Church’s child sexual abuse scandal has cost the church a staggering $3 billion in payouts to victims. The Church’s efforts to hide abuse, often moving sexual predators from parish to parish, is now well known, and is a stain on the church’s reputation that will likely never be erased. But psychopathy knows no denominational boundaries, and there are plenty of non-Catholic religious leaders who seem to be, at the least, narcissists, and at the worst, diabolical psychos.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Gordon Ramsay (not exactly the picture of sanity) said, “Chefs are nutters. They’re all self-obsessed, delicate, dainty, insecure little souls and absolute psychopaths. Every last one of them.” And boy, would he ever know. I’m not sure about every attribute he lists, but I’ve met a lot of chefs in my day and like most creative people, they’ve all had inventive, innovative minds, often accompanied by drinking problems. (Just the messenger here, folks.) Plus, they work in a profession that requires them to work crazy hours, often for long stretches, in conditions that would drive most of us mad. (Have you ever seen a busy restaurant kitchen at a peak hour? Absolute madness.)

It can often feel like being a sadist is a prerequisite for working at the DMV. Harold Schechter’s The Serial Killer Files: The Who, What, Where, How, and Why of the World’s Most Terrifying Murderers notes that “[i]t has become part of popular lore that certain kinds of government workers are particularly prone to mass murder; a perception reflected in the phrase ‘going postal.’”

In addition to being a necessary (if awkward) component of romantic life, the first date can also be one of the most anxiety-provoking. Facing off over that infinite chasm of a white tablecloth, each member of a couple will inevitably be afflicted by a million troubled thoughts, including, “Is my date even attractive?” “Am I even attractive?” and “Did I remember to turn off the stove before I left the house?”

On “Fox & Friends” Wednesday morning, Fox News’ “Medical A Team” psychologist Keith Ablow blamed “devices and how distracted we are now” and firearm-related overconfidence for a Kentucky man leaving a child unattended in a running vehicle. Unlike last year, in which a forgotten child seemed to die daily after being left to broil in a hot car or truck, this child was not in danger of overheating, as the truck in which he was left was running. However, as Mark Herrmann — who shot the viral video of the boy — noted, anyone could have walked up to the vehicle and driven away.

Why do people become unhappy, and what should anyone do about it? These are questions that concern philosophers, psychologists, politicians, neuroscientists, managers, economists, activists and doctors alike. How one sets about answering such questions will depend heavily on what sorts of theories and interpretations one employs. A sociologist will offer different types of answers from a neuroscientist, who will offer different types of answers again from a psychoanalyst. The question of how we explain and respond to human unhappiness is ultimately an ethical and political one, of where we choose to focus our critique and, to be blunt about it, where we intend to level the blame.

Why do people become unhappy, and what should anyone do about it? These are questions that concern philosophers, psychologists, politicians, neuroscientists, managers, economists, activists and doctors alike. How one sets about answering such questions will depend heavily on what sorts of theories and interpretations one employs. A sociologist will offer different types of answers from a neuroscientist, who will offer different types of answers again from a psychoanalyst. The question of how we explain and respond to human unhappiness is ultimately an ethical and political one, of where we choose to focus our critique and, to be blunt about it, where we intend to level the blame.