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Personality
Written and researched by Bob Murray, PhD
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Mental Illness 'At the Root of Jazz'
July 10, 2001
Without his schizophrenia, Charles "Buddy" Bolden -- the man credited by some with starting off the jazz movement -- might never have started improvisation, psychiatrists have heard. And without this style change, music might never have evolved from ragtime into the jazz movement we know today.
Professor Dr Sean Spence, of the department of psychiatry at the University of Sheffield, was speaking to representatives at the Royal College of Psychiatrists' annual conference. He said jazz music arose from the attempts of a cognitively impaired performer to execute novel performances.
He said that Bolden's mental health problems meant his motor functions were impaired. Bolden could not read music and the only way he was able to play his cornet was by improvising. Dr Spence said: "It may be that he had to improvise because he could not play tunes in a useful way.
"He could not read music and he had to make up things as he went on. If we had not had this improvised music then it would just have continued as ragtime." Dr Spence said that Bolden was diagnosed as suffering from "dementia praecox," which later became known as schizophrenia.
Although no recordings of his music survive, Bolden is widely considered to have started the jazz movement, which was officially recognised in 1917. Bolden was famous for his big bold cornet sound and although his music had a solid blues form it was closer to ragtime than to jazz. He lived and played at the beginning of the twentieth century, leading a band that was most successful between 1900 and 1906. Bolden's playing style was extremely popular. At one point he played with eight bands at one time.
But by 1906 Bolden's mental health had started to deteriorate and the next year, after attacking his mother and mother-in-law in the street, he was committed to a mental hospital outside New Orleans. Bolden remained in the mental hospital until his death 24 years later.
Read more on BBC News
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Against Abortion? It's All in Your Genes
July 2, 2001
Research reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology shows that although attitudes are learned, differences between people in their attitudes to a range of subjects are also partly attributable to genetic factors. These include attitudes as diverse as whether one likes rollercoaster rides or controversial social issues such as attitudes toward abortion and the death penalty for murder.
Study authors James M. Olson, PhD, Philip A. Vernon, PhD, and Julie Aitken Harris, PhD, of the University of Western Ontario and Kerry L. Jang, PhD, of the University of British Columbia, surveyed 336 pairs of adult Canadian twins (both fraternal and identical) to explore the role of genetic factors in creating differences between individuals in attitudes.
By comparing the responses to attitude questions between the identical and fraternal twins, (for example, "My overall attitude toward doing crossword puzzles is..." with answers ranging from "extremely unfavorable" to "extremely favorable") the researchers were able to determine which attitudes were more influenced by genetic factors.
Of the 30 individual attitude items on the survey, 26 showed some genetic influence. The five which produced the largest genetic connection were attitudes toward reading books, abortion without restrictions, playing organized sports, rollercoaster rides, and the death penalty for murder. The four items found to have no genetic effect were attitudes toward separate roles for men and women, playing bingo, easy access to birth control and being assertive.
Putting the individual attitude items into broader categories, the three factors having the largest genetic influence were attitudes toward the preservation of life (including attitudes toward abortion without restrictions, voluntary euthanasia and organized religion), attitudes toward equality (including attitudes toward making racial discrimination illegal, open-door immigration policies and getting along well with others), and attitudes toward athleticism (including attitudes toward doing athletic activities, playing organized sports and exercising).
Factors having the smallest genetic influence included attitudes toward intellectual pursuits (including attitudes toward reading books, doing crossword puzzles and playing chess). Given that direct gene-to-attitude connections are extremely unlikely, what are the mechanisms that might account for the genetic component of attitudes?
The authors found that several personality traits and related characteristics -- themselves highly heritable -- may play a role. Sociability, in particular, showed a strong genetic connection with several attitudes. Athletic ability and physical attractiveness also produced significant genetic connections with certain attitudes.
"Presumably, these characteristics predisposed individuals to form particular kinds of attitudes, thereby contributing to the genetic determination of individual differences in those attitudes," said the researchers. "For example, a person with inherited physical abilities such as good coordination and strength might be more successful at sports than less athletically inclined individuals, resulting in the more athletic person developing favorable attitudes toward sports."
The authors say it's important to keep in mind that nonshared environmental factors (unique experiences of each member of a twin pair) had the most powerful contribution to attitudes. However, they add that more research is needed on the role of biological influences, including genetic factors, in the formation and change of attitudes.
Read more in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
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Winter is SAD, Summer is Violent
May 1, 2001
A new study by Gunnar Morken, MD, of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim has shown that seasonal variations play a much larger role in human behavior and mood than was previously realized.
Most of the attention up to now has been focussed on Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). This malady affects a great number of people, primarily younger women, causing them to become more depressed during winter months than in summer.
However, in an article in the May issue of Psychiatric Times, Morken shows that SAD is only the tip of the iceberg and that season plays an important role in many other psychological problems as well. For example Spring seems to be the trigger for episodes of bipolar disorder (manic depression).
Most researchers have pointed to the changes in temperature and light as the triggers for SAD but Dr Morken believes that disturbances in the sleep-wake rhythm may cause these seasonal peaks, not only for SAD but for other disorders as well. The rapidly changing length of day around the equinoxes might disturb the circadian and sleep-wake rhythms and change mood and activity in vulnerable individuals.
Violence and suicides, too, seem to have seasonal patterns. Studies in Finland have shown that the murder rate goes up in Summer. Other studies have shown that the number of assaults and rapes also go up during the warmer months.
Geographic location may also influence anti-social behavior. In southern parts of the northern hemisphere, higher temperatures are associated with greater risk of violent behavior. In northern climates, the time after the equinoxes, especially in spring, are high-risk periods. In all studies, winter is a low-risk period.
Read more on Psychiatric Times online
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Mentally Ill Do Not Kill Strangers
March 17, 2001
A report in the current edition of the British Medical Journal confirms what mental health workers have suspected for a long time:
1. That the mentally ill are more prone to suicide than the rest of the population. And
2. That when they are involved in murders, they rarely kill strangers.
The idea that the mentally ill, as a class, are a danger to the community at large has been put to rest. The other interesting finding is that more than one fifth of all suicides among the mentally ill are preventable. The report entitled The National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness showed that many people at risk of suicide are simply slipping through the net.
About a quarter of the United Kingdom's 6500 suicides each year occur among people with mental illness, some 12% of them while in hospital, usually by hanging from a curtain rail.
A quarter of those who attempted suicide died within three months of being discharged from hospital, nearly half of them never making it to their first follow up appointment.
According to the report, mental health teams thought few of the homicides committed by mentally ill people could have been prevented. A record of violence was more common among those without mental illness than those with it; and people with mental illness are more likely to kill someone they know than those without mental illness.
Read more in the British Medical Journal
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Obsessive People and Depressives Risk Heart Attacks
March 18, 2001
People with obsessive habits are more at risk to heart attacks, according to two studies, one British and one Dutch.
The British study, which was carried out by experts from several London medical schools, looked at men who had obsessive habits, such as sticking to a routine, being excessively meticulous and disliking sudden change. It also looked at signs of anxiety, such as sweating, sleep disturbance and indigestion. The study showed that who had a high score -- who were overly compulsive -- were 28% more likely to die of heart failure.
The Dutch study showed that depression is a leading indicator of future heart failure. This study looked at 2,900 people between 55 and 85 years old over four and a half years. It found that among those patients who did not have heart disease, but who did have major depression, deaths related to the heart disease almost quadrupled. Death rates tripled in those who already had heart disease when the study began, and who developed depression. The British Heart Foundation (BHF) has said a patient who is seriously depressed after a heart attack is over three times more likely to have a second attack than a patient who is not depressed. It added that working in a stressful job with little control over work increases the risk of coronary heart disease by more than 50% compared to having a job with more control of variety and pace of work.
All the more reason to take the Uplift Program. The program's 94% success rate in reducing the symptoms of depression over time would seem to be a good cardiac problem preventer. BM
Read more on BBC News
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Crisis in Children's Mental Health
January 3, 2001
A report issued recently by the American Surgeon General painted a bleak picture of children's mental health. According to the report the situation has reached crisis point, with one in ten children suffering from some form of severe mental illness (sufficient to cause impairment).
What's more, fewer than one in five of these children receive any kind of treatment. The long-term consequences are very disturbing. According to the report "the burden of suffering by children with mental health needs and their families has created a health crisis in this country. Growing numbers of children are suffering needlessly because their emotional, behavioral, and developmental needs are not being met by the very institutions and systems that were created to take care of them."
In terms of actual recommendations the Surgeon General's proposals fall back on the old and failed -- more school counselors and the like -- and the usual bromides about 'helping families cope'. The real underlying causes of the mental health crisis -- overpopulation, materialism, lack of spiritual foundations, isolation, poor diets, too much stress on 'achievement' and so on are not mentioned. What a waste!
The Surgeon General's report was published by the US Department for Health and Human Services
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Say Cheese and Thrive
February 10, 2001
The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, an otherwise dry and unrewarding place to visit had a fascinating piece in a recent issue.
Some researchers from the University of California set out to study the relationship between smiles on the faces of people in college yearbook photographs and their success or otherwise later in life.
They found, to quote their abstract that "positive emotional expression (ie cheesy grin) predicted favorable outcomes in marriage and personal wellbeing up to 30 years later." Controlling for physical attractiveness and social desirability had little impact on these findings.
I can imagine the grant application that they wrote for this study. BM
Read the University of California Study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Read more on BBC News
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Official: It's Nurture and Nature
February 12, 2001
Perhaps the most important news item for years, for psychologists at any rate, is the finding, reported on February 11th, that we have far fewer genes than expected. This suggests that environmental influences play a greater role in our development than was previously thought.
In fact we only have twice the number of genes (about 30,000) as the humble fruit-fly (about 15,000), not nearly enough to control all the aspects of behavior that genetic determinists claimed they did. Dr Craig Venter, the leader of a private effort to decode the human genome, said this proves that genetic determinism, the idea that a person is controlled by their genes, was a fallacy.
"There are two fallacies to be avoided," Dr Venter's team wrote in the journal Science. "Determinism, the idea that all characteristics of a person are 'hard-wired' by the genome; and reductionism, that now the human sequence is completely known, it is just a matter of time before our understanding of gene functions and interactions will provide a complete causal description of human variability.
"One implication of the work," said Dr Venter, "is to calm fears about cloning. Trying to clone a person to gain immortality would be a pointless venture," he said. "This whole debate about cloning, is much ado about nothing because while you may be able to have someone who looks similar to you, the chances of them having the same personality and the same outcome in life is close to zero. That's why you can't have xerox copies of people."
Its nice to be proved right. We have been saying that behavior is a mixture of genetics and environment, but that nurture was the principal determinant, from the beginning of our teaching the Fortinberry Murray Method. BM
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Accident Prone? It's Not Your Fault !
January 5, 2001
One of the perennial arguments that academics and psychology professionals have is over the level of 'responsibility' that people ought to take for their actions.
This surfaced in an interesting form recently, when a team from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology identified three key personality traits and declared that one of them made people more accident-prone.
The traits are:
- Dependability -- the tendency to be conscientious and socially responsible
- Agreeableness -- the tendency not be aggressive or self-centred
- Openness -- the tendency to learn from experience and to be open to suggestion from others
If your personality was low in the first two or high in the last you were more likely to be involved in accidents. Therefore people should be screened for personality types before they were given jobs such as train driver or airline pilot.
Nonsense, said the UK Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents: "If you start to label certain personality types as accident prone then there is a danger that some people will start to blame their personalities, rather than accepting responsibility for their actions."
Both are, we feel, mistaken. Many studies have shown that a propensity to accidents is a result of childhood trauma. If a person is going to be accident prone in any give occupation they will have a history of accidents (or illnesses since both can be the result of subconscious attempts by a child to get certain needs met). It is this record that should be looked at, not the 'personality type'.
Read more about the University of Manchester Institute study as reported on BBC News on January 4, 2000.
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RPM Exercises May Help People With Schizophrenia
According to research carried out by Dr Joseph Loizzo of Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in NY exercise of the kind that is found in
Repatterning Movements (RPMs) offer people with schizophrenia an opportunity to be with other people without having to depend on verbal communication, which can be frightening for some patients. This kind of exercise "helps people with schizophrenia realize that they have control over what their bodies are doing. It allows them to experience a more motor, less verbal mode."
The main thing about RPMs is that, in Dr Loizzo's view, there is no 'toxic feedback' -- they are non-competitive and there are no critical comments or 'right' way of doing things.
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About the Author
Dr Bob Murray is a widely published psychologist and expert on emotional health and optimal relationships. Together with his wife and long-term collaborator Alicia Fortinberry, he is founder of the highly successful Uplift Program, and author of Raising an Optimistic Child (McGraw-Hill, 2006) and Creating Optimism (McGraw-Hill, 2004).
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