Your Host: Kim I Mills
Kim I. Mills is senior director of strategic external communications and public affairs for the American Psychological Association, where she has worked since 2007. Mills led APAs foray into social media and envisioned and launched APAs award-winning podcast series Speaking of Psychology in 2013. A former reporter and editor for The Associated Press, Mills has also written for publications including The Washington Post, Fast Company, American Journalism Review, Dallas Morning News, MSNBC.com and Harvard Business Review.
In her 30+-year career in communications, Mills has extensive media experience, including being interviewed by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and other top-tier print media. She has appeared on CNN, Good Morning America, Hannity and Colmes, CSPAN, and the BBC, to name a few of her broadcast engagements. Mills holds a bachelors degree in biology from Barnard College and a masters in journalism from New York University.
Raising Children To Be Resilient
If youre a parent or a dedicated teacher or another important adult in a childs life, you might be wondering what you can do now to help your child grow up with resilience.
The American Psychological Association has some excellent tips and techniques on encouraging resilience in the children in your life. Give these ideas a try:
Treatment And Control Conditions
Between-subjects experiments are often used to determine whether a treatment works. In psychological research, a treatment is any intervention meant to change peoples behaviour for the better. This intervention includes psychotherapies and medical treatments for psychological disorders but also interventions designed to improve learning, promote conservation, reduce prejudice, and so on. To determine whether a treatment works, participants are randomly assigned to either a treatment condition, in which they receive the treatment, or a control condition, in which they do not receive the treatment. If participants in the treatment condition end up better off than participants in the control conditionfor example, they are less depressed, learn faster, conserve more, express less prejudicethen the researcher can conclude that the treatment works. In research on the effectiveness of psychotherapies and medical treatments, this type of experiment is often called a randomized clinical trial
The Powerful Placebo
Many people are not surprised that placebos can have a positive effect on disorders that seem fundamentally psychological, including depression, anxiety, and insomnia. However, placebos can also have a positive effect on disorders that most people think of as fundamentally physiological. These include asthma, ulcers, and warts . There is even evidence that placebo surgeryalso called sham surgerycan be as effective as actual surgery.
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Do You Always Need A Control Group
Yes. In an experiment, you need to include a control group that is identical to the treatment group in every way except that it does not receive the experimental treatment. Without a control group, you cant know whether it was the treatment or some other variable that caused the outcome of the experiment.
A National Poll Suggests Relationships May Be More Resilient Than You Think
When this is all over, divorce lawyers are going to be busy. Many of us have heard some version of this sentiment. When others predict COVID-19s impact on relationships, many predict that relationships problems will skyrocket. A bit cynical? Perhaps.
Then again, previous research suggests it may have some merit. COVIDs rise has created turmoil in nearly everyones life and disrupted couples established routines. That can have consequences. When Ohio State University researchers studied long-distance relationships, despite spending a lot of time apart, those relationships were happy. However, when their relationship changed and they started spending a lot more time together, their relationships tended to suffer. Sound familiar?
Like it or not, a global pandemic and the coinciding social distancing has shifted many relationships dynamics. On one hand that sounds ideal , but many people also value their me time. As Amy Muise, York Universitys director of the SHaRe lab, suggests: Add to that the fact that couples cant do many of the activities they used to do to connect, and we can begin to see why relationships may struggle.
Has the Virus Changed Your Relationship?
Has the Virus Changed How Much You Argue?
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What Is The Meaning Of Fortitude
Finally, theres fortitudeyet another word that is often used in tandem with or in lieu of resilience.
Merriam-Websters dictionary defines fortitude as strength of mind that enables a person to encounter danger or bear pain or adversity with courage.
This shares some obvious similarities with the other constructs mentioned above, namely mental toughness and mental endurance. All three are rooted in this idea of inner strength, a reserve of mental power that we can draw upon to get us through the most difficult times.
The Psychology Of Mental Strength
Although you might read about resilience and think that it applies to only the most inspiring, impressive, and awesome among us, resilience is surprisingly common. As the APA Help Centers piece on resilience states, Research has shown that resilience is ordinary, not extraordinary. People commonly demonstrate resilience.
Resilience isnt about floating through life on a breeze, or skating by all of lifes many challenges unscathed rather, its about experiencing all of the negative, difficult, and distressing events that life throws at you and staying on task, optimistic, and high-functioning. In fact, developing resilience basically requiresemotional distress. If we never ran into disappointment in the first place, we would never learn how to deal with it.
When you think about it in those terms, its easy to see that we all display some pretty impressive resilience. Some of us are more resilient than others, but we have all been knocked down, defeated, and despondent at some point in our lives however, we kept goingand here we are today, stronger and more experienced.
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Random Assignment And Sample Size
Importantly, random assignment does not guarantee that confounding variables with contribute equally in each manipulated condition of a design for any given experiment. By chance alone, the random assignment process could accidentally lump some confounding variables into one condition more than another. The best way to guard against this problem is to increase sample-size. Increasing sample-size increases the number of random assignments that are made, and smooths out the lumpiness of chance.
As we discussed in Chapter 4, random-assignment is often used in between-subjects designs. Between-subjects design are always confounded by the non-equivalent groups problem. The subjects in each condition are different people, so they are inherently not equivalent. Or, in other words, all other things besides the manipulation between conditions are not the samethe subjects in each condition are different! The random assignment process is used to create increase the equivalence between the groups.
Considerations For The Design Of An Experiment
There are a number of issues to consider in deciding whether an experimental factor should be assigned within-subjects or between-subjects.
Sometimes there is no choice. Here is an example where a between-subjects design must be used. If hand preference is a factor in an experiment, it must be assigned between-subjects, because a participant cannot be both left handed and right handed! Hand preference must be a between-subjects factor, withseparate groups of left handers and right handers recruited for the experiment.
Conversely, here is an example where a within-subjects design must be used. If an experiment seeks to investigate the acquisition of skill over multiple sessions of practice, then the only option for the factor session is within-subjects. No two ways about it! The factor is session, it is within-subjects, and the levels are session #1, session #2, session #3, and so on.
However, in many other situations, there is a choice. If so, a within-subjects design is generally preferred. There are at least two reasons. First, fewer participants are needed in a within-subjects design since each participant is tested on all levels of a factor. Although more testing is required for each participant, there is an advantage in having fewer participants overall, since recruiting, scheduling, briefing, demonstrating, practicing, and so on, are easier if there are fewer participants.
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This Article Is A Part Of The Guide:
In a normal experiment, the order in which treatments are given can actually affect the behavior of the subjects or elicit a false response, due to fatigue or outside factors changing the behavior of many of the subjects. To counteract this, researchers often use a counterbalanced design, which reduces the chances of the order of treatment or other factors adversely influencing the results.
The Effects Of Psychological Strength On Overall Health
Although every point in that list is a good reason to pay attention to resilience, the last one may be most important of all. Resilience has a powerful impact on our health .
A recent review of the research on resilience suggested that resilience leads or contributes to many different positive health outcomes, including:
- The experience of more positive emotions and better regulation of negative emotions
- Less depressive symptoms
- Better coping with stress, through enhanced problem-solving, a positive orientation, and re-evaluation of stressors
- Successful aging and improved sense of well-being despite age-related challenges
- Better recovery after a spinal cord injury
- Better management of PTSD symptoms .
Further, resilience experts Harry Mills and Mark Dombeck point to research that resilience boosts immune system functioning. Resilient people are able to better manage negative emotions and experience more positive emotions, which leads to objectively good health outcomes like more immune system cells and better immune functioning in cancer patients, and more favorable mortality rates in marrow transplant patients .
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Resilience And Mental Toughness: Whats The Difference
Aside from the term bouncing back, there are many more similar concepts that resilience is often associated with. For instance, resilience is frequently used interchangeably with mental toughness.
So what is mental toughness? Mental toughness is a personality trait which determines in large part how individuals deal with stress, pressure and challenge irrespective of circumstances . Its part hardiness , part confidence, and it is what allows people to take whatever comes in stride, with a focus on what they can learn and gain from the experience.
While the association with resilience is understandable, its also easy to see where they differ: resilience is what helps people recover from a setback, but mental toughness can help people avoid experiencing a setback in the first place.
As Doug Strycharczyk puts it, All mentally tough individuals are resilient, but not all resilient individuals are mentally tough .
Those who are mentally tough are not only able to bounce back, they are more likely to see hardship as a welcome challenge and greet it with a smile.
Demonstrating Resilience As An Individual
So what does it look like to demonstrate resilience?
The APA outlines a number of factors that contribute to and act as markers of resilience, including:
- The capacity to make realistic plans and take steps to carry them out.
- A positive view of yourself and confidence in your strengths and abilities.
- Skills in communication and problem-solving.
- The capacity to manage strong feelings and impulses .
In addition, these characteristics are also mentioned by Glenn Schiraldi:
To summarize, if a person has awareness , they manage their feelings effectively, keep a handle on their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, and understand that life has its inevitable ups and downs.
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What Is A Control Group In Psychology
The control group is composed of participants who do not receive the experimental treatment. When conducting an experiment, these people are randomly assigned to be in this group. They also closely resemble the participants who are in the experimental group or the individuals who receive the treatment.
Removes Effects Of Individual Differences Between Conditions
In a between-subjects design, different participants take part in each condition, so participant characteristics often vary between groups. This means its hard to say whether the outcomes are truly the result of the independent variable or individual differences between groups.
In contrast, there are no variations in individual differences between conditions in a within-subjects design because the same individuals participate in all conditions. Participant characteristics are controlled for.
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How Do You Control Order Effects In Psychology
Carryover and interference effects can be reduced by increasing the amount of time between conditions. Researchers also reduce order effects by systematically varying the order of conditions so that each condition is presented equally often in each ordinal position. This procedure is known as counterbalancing.
What Is Resilience A Definition
Psychology Today describes it this way:
Resilience is that ineffable quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back stronger than ever. Rather than letting failure overcome them and drain their resolve, they find a way to rise from the ashes.
In a nutshell, resilience can be defined as the ability and tendency to bounceback.
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Episode 124 Why People Believe In Conspiracy Theories With Karen Douglas Phd
This past year, COVID-19 and the U.S. elections have provided fertile ground for conspiracy theorieswith sometimes disastrous consequences. Karen Douglas, PhD, of the University of Kent in the United Kingdom, discusses psychological research on how conspiracy theories start, why they persist, who is most likely to believe them and whether there is any way to combat them effectively.
Why Is It So Hard To Not Check My Phone
The average person checks their smartphone 150 times every day. Its not just a notification buzz that sends us tapping or swiping. Its merely the sight of our phone in our periphery that creates the psychological urge to check for messages or alerts. But why?
This urge is based on behaviorism principles, which posit that human behavior can be predicted by antecedent stimuli or subsequent stimuli . Positive intermittent reinforcement occurs when a subsequent reward is random and unpredictable. Just like a mouse keeps pulling a lever in hopes the next pull will result in food, a gambler keeps playing the slot machines in hopes the next round will result in coins.
Our smartphones are no different. They are designed to exploit a vulnerability in our basic psychology. Every time you subconsciously check your phone, your brain is hoping for a potential reward . This reward results in an immediate dopamine hit to the brain. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter responsible for boosting mood, motivation, and feelings of pleasure.
To quote Edward Tufte, There are only 2 industries that call their customers users: illegal drugs and software.
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The Role Of The Media In The Treatment And Prevention Of Eating Disorders
Much of the literature on the role of the media in the treatment and prevention of eating disorders has focused on media literacy, activism, and advocacy . Media literacy training involves teaching people to think critically about different forms of the media, increasing awareness of media use, and analyzing the content and intentions of the media producers. Through media literacy, adolescent girls learn how to decode and discuss the visual images and the messages in the media they learn that all media images are constructed, that what they see is not necessarily reality, and that all media creations represent a point of view . Media literacy usually emphasizes that all forms of media are created through very deliberate, well-researched processes that are primarily profit-driven .
Researchers have also focused on ways to combat the risk factors that make certain individuals more vulnerable to the medias negative effects. It has been suggested that treatment programs for eating disorders will be most effective when they incorporate media literacy with strategies to help address the patients deficits in self-esteem and social skills .
Why Is Within Subjects More Powerful
Within–subjects designs are the most powerful type of research design because each participant serves as their own control. Multiple observations of the outcome can be taken as well to understand longitudinal effects. There is always a drastic decrease in the needed sample size when using within–subjects designs.
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Mental Endurance: Yet Another Synonym
Another construct that is similar to resilience is mental endurance. Mental endurance refers to the mental or inner strength that we use to deal with our challenges.
It requires willpower, self-discipline, and perseverance to develop and maintain mental endurance . Although it is not specific to bouncing back from trauma or adversity, it is related in the sense that both traits help us deal with difficulty in our lives.