Posts by TracyDennis:
Through a Glass, Darkly; But Then Face to Face: Sensitive Souls and Social Media
June 15th, 2013
By Tracy Dennis.
There is an idea out there that’s prevalent but which has little or no scientific support: that people who use more social media are less sensitive, less empathic, and less emotionally attuned. My students Lee Dunn, Amy Medina and I wanted to put that assumption to the test (and reported these findings at the Society for Psychophysiological Research Annual Conference). We found the opposite: that people who prefer to use technology like social media to communicate with others are actually more emotionally sensitive and more empathic. These folks aren’t emotionally stunted or disconnected. If anything, they are more attuned to their emotions and to the emotions of others, and also might be more challenged by these emotions. They are “sensitive souls.”
This makes sense when you start to think about how hard face-to-face interactions can be.When we use social media, we may feel in control and safe compared to face to face. Technology affords a comfortable distance. It’s simply easier to tell someone you’re angry via email or IM, without having to deal with their reactions in person. So, if you’re an emotionally sensitive person, you might be drawn to social media. This is a judgment-free statement. Our findings don’t weigh in on whether this helps or hinders a person’s social and emotional skills. That is the critical next step in our research. Here is what we know so far:
How we put it to the test. While previous studies ask people to report on very basic aspects of their social media use – like how many hours a week they use social media sites – we did something new. We asked people how they prefer to communicate with others (and what they actually did over the past 6 months) when they need to express emotions like anger or excitement, ask for or give social support during emotionally tough times, and exchange information. For each question, answers could vary from 100% using technology (not including the phone) to 100% using face-to-face interactions. Many people showed a strong face-to-face preference, but just as many showed a strong tech preference.
Then, we asked people to tell us about their emotional lives – emotional highs and lows, empathy for others, personality, and satisfaction with the social support they receive from others. Finally, we recorded EEG (aka “brainwaves”) while they viewed emotional pictures. While EEG doesn’t give us the power to directly access people’s consciousness (Oh, Dennis Quaid, you really had us believing that you could EEG your way into our brains in the 1984 movie Dreamscape), EEG can measure the degree to which our brains are sensitive to different types of emotional information – pleasant, disgusting, erotic, dangerous, and cute, cuddly things. We showed participants everything from sex to kittens, and graves to gore.
The power of EEG, portrayed by the movie Dreamscape (1984). Dennis Quaid is probably NOT looking at pictures of kittens.
Findings. Data analyses are incomplete and are not yet published, so I’ll only discuss the broad strokes of our findings. As I stated at the top,those who prefer to communicate via social media and technology versus face-to-face interactions are sensitive souls: they report feeling more negative emotions (like anxiousness and sadness), are less extroverted, and are less satisfied with the social support they receive from others. On the other hand, they also report feeling more empathic towards others (for example, “I get a strong urge to help when I see someone who is upset” or “it upsets me to see someone being treated disrespectfully”).
Complementing this, EEG findings show that those with a social media/tech preference have stronger brain responses to pictures portraying mortality – graves, sick people, dying loved ones. That is, the brains of folks who prefer social media are more sensitive to pictures that are reminders of death and loss.
This is not about social media causing anything! The popular press often describes research about social media in inaccurate ways – saying that social media caused people to be a certain way (e.g., the idea of Facebook depression). This sounds sexy but is just wrong most of the time. Unless you’ve done experiments that show social media directly change something about people, or you’ve tracked how social media predicts changes in people over time, you cannot even begin to discuss causality.
So what can we discuss? What does this all mean? What it means is that our findings are not about causality, they are descriptive. These results help us to describe the social-emotional profile of people who prefer and use tech-mediated versus face-to-face social interactions – their personalities, goals, strengths, and vulnerabilities. Ultimately, this can help us understand the growing role of social media in our everyday routines, and why, for some, these tools can feel like life boats in the stormy seas of our lives. What remains unclear is whether these life boats are going to bring us to shore or whether we will be lost at sea (ok, this metaphor is getting a little much).
Where are we going with this? Importantly, we have no idea what the long-term costs or benefits of social media are for our sensitive souls. That is where I am really going with this research. I believe we need to track how a tech preference influences us from the cradle to the rocking chair: in our digital natives who are using these tools before they are out of diapers; in adults, who almost can’t remember a time when these tools didn’t exist; and in older adults, who may be discovering the immense world that opens up before them when they use technology to communicate with others.
Appily Ever After?
May 19th, 2013By Tracy Dennis.
I was very interested to read this funny take on psychology smartphone apps in the New York Times (by Judith Newman) – or more accurately, how NOT to build a psychology app. I just blogged about this general topic in my last post, and what struck me most about this article was the notion of time.
Art by Emily Flake (published in the New York Times 4/5/2013)
This article seems to suggest that mental health apps should quickly and effortlessly facilitate our relationships, efficiency, and well-being. As Newman writes in the article: ”All of these apps require thought. Lots and lots of thought. Thinking is what I do all day long. I needed something that would turn my mind off, not on.”
Great point. Maybe we don’t want the app to be our shrink – because when we go to a therapist, we tend to have a set of expectations that involve spending a good deal of time and energy (unless we’re just looking for a medication fix). Apps, by their nature, are fast, easy, and mobile. So, most of us expect that a psychology app will be a shortcut to mental health. We shouldn’t have to spend time learning how to use the app or being on it too much – at least not so much that it’s taking away from “having a life.”
This view tells me that there is a potentially deep disconnect here: between what many of us in the mental health field think of as the promise of mobile health technologies and what everyone else thinks. Many psychologists see a future in which apps and computerized therapeutic tools break down barriers to treatment, which can be too expensive and intensive for many. For example, for the most common class of psychiatric disorder, the anxiety disorders, only about 20% of anxious people receive treatment! So, the psychologists are thinking, jeez, mobile technologies offer so many amazing possibilities for integrating mental health treatment into the daily life of people who are suffering. Let’s create an app for that!
But we need to think through our approach carefully. If we just put the same old (frankly boring) computerized interventions on smartphones, will that actually help us reach more people? How many will choose to use these tools? Maybe some, but perhaps not many. Perhaps what most of us want from an app is the digital and interactive version of the self-help book – you can take it or leave it, pick it up and put it down after a few minutes and still get something from it, and which doesn’t feel like just another source of techno-burden.
So, what is the take-home message for the mental health professionals? Make it fun, make it fast, and make it effective or get back to work on making traditional treatments better.
Original Link: http://psychescircuitry.wordpress.com/2013/04/06/appily-ever-after/
In Love with the Written Word: Reading in the Digital Age
May 11th, 2013By Tracy Dennis.
I was interested to see this commentary by five college students about reading in the digital age, posted on Zócalo Public Square. One of the things that struck me the most was my own anticipation that I would be out of touch with how college students are engaging with the written word today; and I’m a college professor who should be in touch! But actually, I found that the diversity of their approaches mirrors the same diversity I see among my peers.
Several seemed to express a need for speed and fast consumption of many (relatively superficial) sources of information in the attempt to swim rather than sink in the ocean of information that needs sorting through every day. Others seemed to feel burdened by this glut of information and feel nostalgic for the simple and physically-satisfying pleasure of holding and reading a book – a virtual luxury in our fast-paced lives because it’s hard to multitask with a book. Among all the writers, however, I sensed information fatigue combined with enthusiasm for the written word.
My take-home message is that, whatever the future holds, the digital age has put writing, reading, and text at the center of our lives. I think we are becoming more rather than less in love with reading. The question is, what will we be reading and will it be grammatically correct 
?
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Are Social Media Anti-Social?
January 25th, 2013By Tracy Dennis.
This past Wednesday, I had the pleasure of being a panel member for a debate at the UN on social media. It launched the debate series “Point/Counter-point” organized by theUnited Nations Academic Impact team. You can see the debate here.
We debated on the theme “social media are anti-social.” I was assigned to the team arguing in support of this point. I was unhappy with being asked to take this side – because I don’t agree with it! – but I was willing to do so with the understanding that I would argue that the very question of whether social media are anti-social is a faulty one. That is, like most technology, social media are neither good nor bad in and of themselves because the impact of social media depends on how they are used. Moreover, from a scientific standpoint, we know almost nothing about whether social media are actually making us more “anti-social” – less socially connected and less socially skilled.
After clearly stating this, however, my strategy was to highlight ways in which social media COULD be antisocial – emphasizing that the research to test these possibilities remains to be done. Perhaps that was one reason why we (my team mate BJ Mendelson and I) lost so spectacularly. At the same time, it was clear that the audience (whose votes determined the winning side) had already made up their minds before the debate even began. This was unsurprising because social media, as this era’s technological bugaboo, are absurdly polarizing. It’s either the scapegoat for all that is wrong, or the best hope for a utopian future. And of course, the truth is always somewhere in between.
Coincidentally, this very debate had just been played out in relation to an inflammatory Newsweek article last week called “Is the Web Driving Us Mad?” A flurry of responses emerged, including an online Time Healthland article calling into serious question the Newsweek article’s review of evidence that the internet “makes” people crazy. Essentially, the Newsweek article is accused of being sensationalistic rather than doing what responsible journalism is supposed to do: (a) impartially seeking out and weighing the evidence that exists with a careful eye to the quality and direct implications of the science being cited, and (b) avoiding quoting scientific findings out of context.
I believe, however, that there is so much polarized debate because the research we need to weigh in on these issues has not yet been conducted. And that was my main point in the debate. We know almost nothing about the cause and effect relationship between social media or the internet and mental health: Are these technologies making us crazy, depressed, anxious, etc,…, or are people who are already troubled in offline life troubled no matter what the context? How do we measure anti-social, or crazy, or any other outcome that reflects the well-being of an individual? The plethora of unanswered questions makes for polarizing journalism.
One interesting possibility that the Newsweek article brought up and which I considered in the debate was the idea that social media may influence us in ways that are more powerful than other types of technology because they tap into something that is fundamentally rewarding to humans (and most mammals!): the need to be socially connected with others.
I made the point in the debate that, “Science is finding that social media are so rewarding, so motivating, that they essentially “highjack” our brain’s reward centers – the same brain areas that underlie drug addiction- so that you see what all of us can attest to: people have difficulty disengaging from social media. They feel the need to constantly check their device for the next text, tweet, status update, or email. They feel obsessed. The documented existence of Facebook addiction attests to this. How many of us walk down the street, or eat dinner in a restaurant with our devices clutched in our hand or lying on the table right next to us like a security blanket. I know I do more often than I’d like.”
Indeed, we don’t walk down the street reading a book or watching TV. These technologies can be consuming, but the nature of social media – portable, brief, deeply social – creates a completely different set of temptations and rewards. Textbook theories of behavioral learning and reinforcement tell us that the way rewards are integrated into social media is a recipe for keeping us roped in. For example, if your goal is to, say, make a rat in a cage press a bar as frequently as possible you should do the following: every once in a while, in a completely unpredictable way, give a reward when the bar is pushed. In contrast, if you give rewards every time they push the bar, they’ll become sated and push less. If you reward in a predictable way, they’ll press the bar just enough to get the reward and no more – because they know how many times they need to press the bar before the reward comes.
Now think about how we use our devices. We check our devices frequently (analogous to pressing the bar) because we’re never sure when an important message, really good piece of news or fascinating factoid will pop up (analogous to the unpredictable reward). So, we find ourselves with device in hand “pressing the bar” over and over again, all day long. The whole economy of social media (i.e., the way the creators of these platforms make their money) is hugely dependent on this very fact.
Now I have to stop and give a MAJOR caveat: This idea may be compelling, sounds like it could be right, but, from my reading of the literature, there is very little direct evidencethat this is the case. All we know is that neurologically, aspects of social media and internet use are rewarding, calming, and pleasurable. It’s a far cry from “highjacking our brain,” a phrase I used in the debate for the sake of argument and hyperbole. At the same time, a growing number of people think this is a viable hypothesis, and one that we must put to the test.
By the end of the debate, I think we were all in agreement that when forced to pick a side, we could argue it. But really, we all felt the same thing: Whether social media are anti-social simply depends. It depends on who is using it, how they are using it, and why they are using it. And we just don’t have the scientific knowledge yet to understand these who’s, how’s, and whys.
I concluded my opening statement in the debate by saying, “Until we as a society spend the time, energy and resources to scientifically test how we are changed [by social media], we should proceed with caution and with the possibility in mind that social media could make us more anti-social.”
But BJ Mendelson may have summed it up best when he made a good old-fashioned fan boy reference: with great power comes great responsibility. We need to take the responsibility to look at, question, and try to understand the role of social media in our lives and in society.
http://psychescircuitry.wordpress.com/2012/07/17/with-great-power-comes-great-responsibility-are-social-media-anti-social