Can Animals Fall In Love?

We all love our pets, but can our cats and dogs fall in love with us, too? Skeptics believe that we anthropomorphize our pets, and their supposed expressions of love are really just simple instincts that help them get a treat or something else they want. Animal lovers know better of course, but now we have some cold, hard scientific research to back us up. In fact, this new research shows that pets might love us even more than we love them!

Claremont Graduate University economist Paul Zak has been conducting a series of studies related to the “hug drug” oxytocin and reporting his findings in The Atlantic. Many know that oxytocin is released by mothers interacting with their babies, and couples making love, but any positive interaction, even between strangers, increases the neurochemical by a modest amount. The production of oxytocin helps us care about the people around us, at least temporarily.

Zak’s researched focused on humans before, but he was moved to start studying human-animal relationships after an emotional experience saying goodbye to his 15-year-old dog at the vet’s office. Surprised at how much the dog’s passing affected him, he wondered if animals can cause people to release oxytocin.

100 participants came to Zak’s lab and provided baseline blood samples before playing privately with a cat or dog. Zak compared the participant’s oxytocin levels after playing with an animal to their baseline level, and the levels after interacting with another human being.

Surprisingly, only 30 percent of participants produced more oxytocin after their pet play session (levels increased from 10 to 50 percent after interacting with humans). Past and present dog owners were more likely to have an increase after playing with a dog, but cat owners had the opposite reaction (probably because dogs are more responsive to their owners than their independent feline counterparts).

Next, Zak went to an animal refuge in Arkansas to test whether animals could feel love and friendship for other animals. He focused on two young males who would often play and simulate fighting with each other. They were two different species: a terrier mix and a goat.

Zak let the pair interact uninterrupted in an enclosed area, and, as with the humans earlier, took their baseline blood samples and drew again after the playdate.

The dog’s oxytocin levels increased by 48 percent, showing the strong friendship he feels lt for his goat buddy. But it seems the goat is actuallyin love with the terrier — he had an increase of 210 percent! Zac wrote inThe Atlantic, “The only time I have seen such a surge in oxytocin in humans is when someone sees their loved one, is romantically attracted to someone, or is shown an enormous kindness.”

This is a small sample size for now, and hopefully Zak will move forward with more of this research. But now we know that our pets’ love is as real as our own.

https://www.sootoday.com/content/green/details.asp?c=72441

VIDEO Bazaar Bizarre: The Strange Case Of Bob Berdella

6 Must Know Facts About Your Babies Brain

1.Baby's brain grows rapidly
After birth, the human brain grows rapidly, more than doubling to reach 60 per cent of its adult size by the time the kid is sampling his first birthday cake. By kindergarten,the brain has reached its full size but it may not finish developing until the kid is in his mid-20s.

2.Lantern vs flashlight
Baby brains have many more neuronal connections than the brains of adults. They also have less inhibitory neurotransmitters. As a result, the baby's perception of reality is less focused than adults. They are vaguely aware of everything — a sensible strategy considering they don't yet know what's important. Few likens baby perception to a lantern, scattering light across the room, where adult perception is more like a flashlight, consciously focused on specific things but ignoring background details.

3.Babbling signals learning
Within their lantern's light, babies focus momentarily. When they do, they usually make babbling sounds to convey interest. The nonsense syllables babies spout - is the acoustic version of a furrowed brow. Few signal to adults that they are ready to learn. What makes babies smarter is talking to them, dialogue is best, where a parent responds within the pauses of an infants' vocalisations.

4.Brains can be overwhelmed
But their need for human interaction doesn't mean they should be tickled silly day and night. Babies have short attention spans and can easily be over-stimulated. Sometimes, the interaction they need is simply help calming down. This can be provided by rocking, dimming lights or swaddling flailing limbs that babies have yet to figure out how to control.

5.Educational DVDs aren't worth
Recent research suggests that social responses are fundamental to a child's ability to fully learn language. Babies divide up the world between things that respond to them and things that don't. Things that don't are not worth it. A recording does not follow a baby's cues, which is why infant DVDs, have been found to be ineffective.

6.They need more than parents
Researchers theorise that spending time with non-parental caregivers — a doting granny, a daycare teacher, a family friend - helps infants learn to read different facial expressions and expand their ability to take the perspectives of others. They use adult mental processes for figuring others' emotions by the time they are seven months old.

http://www.psychtronics.com/2014/03/6-interesting-facts-on-babys-brain.html

The Devil You Know: The Inside World Of A Psychopathic Scientist

James Fallon is a happily married father of three, an award-winning neuroscientist at the University of California, Irvine, the founder of several successful biotech companies, and a scientific advisor to the US Department of Defense. He is also a psychopath.

In 2005, after decades of studying the brain scans of psychopathic killers, Fallon made a startling discovery when examining his own PET scan as part of a separate research project. His brain, Fallon discovered, looked precisely like those of the cold-blooded murderers he’d spent the last 20 years scrutinizing. And after analyzing his DNA, Fallon later uncovered that his genetic profile contained several genes strongly linked to violent, psychopathic behaviors.

After Fallon revealed the findings in a 2009 TED Talk, mainstream media latched on: he was profiled on NPR, graced the front page of the Wall Street Journal, and even inspired an episode of the TV series Criminal Minds. Now, however, Fallon is telling his own version of the story. In a new book, The Psychopath Inside (Penguin Group), Fallon takes a hard scientific look at our evolving understanding of psychopathy — through the lens of his own biology and behaviors. And the latter, as he admits, haven’t exactly been laudable: Fallon isn’t a murderer, but he writes candidly of hard partying, perpetual lying, and reckless, dangerous impulsivity — not to mention the admission that he’s never truly made an empathetic connection (even with his wife). So how does an expert in psychopathy come to terms with the disturbing symptoms of his own illness? We talked to Fallon to find out.

I think you’d agree that the term “psychopath” is thrown around liberally, and the general public tends to think of psychopathy as a condition that afflicts the most cold-blooded of killers. But you point out in the book that, as far as the medical community is concerned, psychopathy isn’t even a defined and diagnosable illness. Why do you think that is?

You’re right that there are a lot of definitions of psychopathy, and there isn’t one governing set of symptoms that point to it. If you look to the DSM-5 [ED: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders] psychopathy doesn’t exist, and if I asked my psychiatrist friends they’d agree with that assessment. In large part, that’s because many of the traits that characterize a psychopath — things like narcissism, sadism, anti-social behavior — appear in other disorders. So there isn’t a clean set of defining traits we can look to and come up with a diagnostic criteria. Really, that’s how much of psychiatry has turned out to be: we don’t have categorical answers, because there’s much more dimensionality to these conditions.

As far as public perception goes, I’d say that the best, most badass, sadistic, ultimate example of a psychopath would be the original Hannibal Lecter. That’s who we think a psychopath is. But I’d argue that Will Graham, the FBI agent who tracks Hannibal, is the version of a psychopath we see more often in reality: he’s the pro-social psychopath, the guy in the office who seems a little off but who doesn’t engage in really ugly, egregious criminal behavior. And that’s where I would put myself. I might have a lot of weird, disturbed thoughts, but I don’t act on those thoughts. The Hannibal guys are a small subset, but they’re certainly overrepresented in the media.

So if you personally aren’t the Hannibal, then what kind of psychopath are you?

What I’ve realized is that for me, it’s all about the power. I get a buzz from manipulating people, and from making them want to do things for me — even if I don’t take it that far, by making unreasonable or immoral demands on them. I just like to know that I can; it’s like a game I play whenever I walk into a room. I can really turn on the charm, I can really work it to get whatever it is that I might want. I mean, I don’t look good: I’m fat and I’m old. But I can make people think that I’m really special. And that gives me a hit that I crave.

Look, let’s say all of a sudden I was broke, I didn’t have a career, I didn’t have a family. Then I could see myself breaking the codes of ethics and morality, and getting into some ugly behavior to get what I wanted or felt I needed. But I’ve been very fortunate to have a wonderful, privileged life — so I don’t feel a need to break those codes. I’m just saying that I can easily see myself going there.

As a scientist, you were a long-time adherent to the idea of genetic determinism: that our biology rather than our environment decides how we wind up. But you write that finding out you had the genetic profile of a psychopath actually changed that perception. How so?

At the period of time when I was growing up and going to school, everything was about society and your environment, and how those things molded you. I guess for me, I looked around and knew a lot of great poor people and a lot of really rich jerks, so I said “hey, if the environment is key to all of this, it really isn’t doing the job we think it is.” Instead, I became convinced that we were born and not raised — and I spent my career studying exactly how the brain influences who we become.

But I didn’t fit my own theory. I had similar brain scans to full-blown, psychopathic killers. I had the genetic profile of a psychopath too. So why didn’t I fall into that kind of behavior? Well, I’d say it’s because I had a very fortunate, very warm upbringing with a wonderful family. And a lot of those who have my same genetic makeup and go onto violence endured awful abuse or trauma. So you need to give environment more credit than I used to, but that doesn’t mean I’ve thrown out biology: around the time this was all happening to me, the field of epigenetics started to explode. Maybe it isn’t that biology doesn’t determine who you are, but that your environment can play a role in which genes are turned on or off.

You’ve known about your brain scans for four years, but writing this book forced you to discuss those results with others, to confront unpleasantries about your personality, and to acknowledge how your behavior has impacted your family, friends, and colleagues. What was that process like?

Coming to terms with the hurt you’ve caused loved ones or close friends, that’s not an easy thing to do. I had never given much thought to my behavior, I thought it was entirely fine — but I guess you never know what people are saying about you behind your back. And when I started asking people to really be honest with me, they were, and they told me “You know Jim, a lot of the time you’re kind of an asshole, or you’re really inconsiderate.” My brother-in-law, who’s a Vietnam vet, told me that of all the stuff he did in the war, none of it compares to the risks he took when he was hanging out with me.

The most important part of all this has been reexamining my life with my family, and my behavior towards them. And I’m very fortunate, because at the end of the day despite everything, they still think that deep down I’m a pretty good guy. My professional pride is very important to me too, and for the most part colleagues treat me the same as they used to and still trust my judgment. But I’ll admit that a couple people don’t want to be around me anymore, one in particular has simply fled from me — they reinterpreted their interactions with me after the psychopathy stuff came out, and they weren’t okay with me.

Now that you’ve recognized the effects of your behavior, have you been able to change it?

Well, my wife just walked in, so let’s ask her. [“It’s Katie Drummond from The Verge, she wants to know if this has all made me any better.”] She says, “Yes, you’re more considerate.” So there you go.

I did make an effort to change my behavior during this process, and I’ve kept up with that. I decided to start doing all the things people think are “the right things to do.” I go to the weddings, the funerals, I think about people’s feelings — all the stuff I don’t get a kick out of, I try to do now. It’s just the day-to-day decision to not be an asshole, to not lie to get out of something so that I can go down to the bar. And I don’t do it because I’m nice, I do it because of my pride: I want to know if I can pull it off. Trust me, there’s no magic to it. As I’m becoming a nicer guy, I’m also getting fatter. I can only control so many impulses at once.

Let’s say someone reading your book — and I’m asking for a friend here — is worried that they exhibit a lot of the same traits you do. Maybe they seek out power, they’re manipulative, they don’t readily make emotional connections. Do you have any advice for readers concerned they, too, might be “pro-social” psychopaths?

Well, I can only tell you what worked for me. Since I’m a lapsed Catholic, I started thinking of psychopathic behavior in terms of the seven deadly sins. Those sins, to me, are just psychopathic traits and tendencies with different names — I kept sinning, and I kept doing it over and over and over. And using the term “sin” is one example of how we’ve all mollified psychopathic behaviors: if it’s a sin, well then that’s okay, because everyone sins and then you go to church on Sunday and you make it better. But it’s not actually okay.

I’d say that around 10 or 15 percent of us are pretty borderline as far as psychopathy goes, but we all let those behaviors slip and we protect each other — we say “oh, it’s okay, he does that all the time,” or “oh, that’s just how she is.” It’s a Stockholm Syndrome epidemic. What I’d tell you to do is strip away the bullshit terms and excuses surrounding your behavior, and ask yourself what you’re actually doing and how it affects other people. For me, simple linguistics were what it took to change my behavior. Instead of saying, “Oh, that’s a sin and I gotta go to church,” it’s a matter of saying “Oh wow, I just did something really psychopathic, and I gotta figure out how to stop it.”

http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/31/5025744/james-fallon-the-psychopath-inside-interview

The Big 5 Happiness Myths Debunked

1. IT'S CRUCIAL TO MAINTAIN A POSITIVE MINDSET

Good luck with that. Though it's the founding principle of the positive thinking movement, trying hard to focus on upbeat thoughts and emotions frequently backfires, generating stress. One culprit is the mind's susceptibility to "ironic effects": attempting not to think about certain negative things only renders them more salient. Research underlines the point: bereaved people who try not to feel grief take longer to recover; experimental subjects who were told to try not to feel sad about some distressing news felt worse. Much more fruitful is the Buddhist-inspired notion of "non-attachment:" learning to let negative emotions arise and pass, resisting the urge to stamp them out. In any case, it's often more productive to focus on behavior, not internal states. Next time you're feeling unmotivated about starting some daunting project, allow yourself to feel unmotivated--and at the same time, open up the file and begin. Doing meaningful work is challenging enough without the burdensome demand that you feel like doing it, too.

2. AMBITIOUS GOALS, RELENTLESSLY PURSUED, ARE THE KEY TO SUCCESS

Another self-help dogma that's being further undermined every year. A too-vigorous focus on goals, research suggests, can trigger a variety of unintended consequences: it can degrade performance, and encourage ethical corner-cutting. Moreover, it can badly distort an organization, or a life, by singling out one variable for maximization, regardless of how it's connected to all the others. (Consider the hypothetical entrepreneur who vows to become a millionaire by 35 and succeeds--but only at the cost of alienating his family and friends, and ruining his health.) Even the 1996 Mount Everest disaster has been blamed on the "overpursuit of goals."

Deep down, what may explain our obsession with goals is the fear of uncertainty--the craving to know for sure how the future will turn out--whereas in fact it's only amid uncertainty that true creativity can occur. "The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning," wrote the psychologist Erich Fromm. "Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers." Besides, isn't there something dubious about a philosophy of happiness that locates it entirely in the future, which never seems to arrive?

3. THE BEST MANAGERS ARE THOSE WHO MAKE WORK FUN

This won't surprise anyone who's encountered managers in the mold of David Brent--but the hazards of enforced positivity get worse when it's a matter of trying to make other people, not just yourself, feel cheery. Feeling obliged to maintain a sunny facade actually imposes a cognitive burden on employees--it's a form of affective labor--sapping resources that could be more productively deployed.

Inauthentically "fun" workplaces can be deeply alienating environments: if the famous ping-pong tables and meditation pods of Silicon Valley do keep workers happy, that's probably because they reflect a commitment to letting people relax when they need to--not because anyone feels forced to use them. The quality that's really appreciated in managers, one recent study suggests, isn't fun; it's fairness, which proved much more important as a source of stress than an overwhelming workload.

4. HIGHER SELF-ESTEEM EQUALS GREATER HAPPINESS

It's better to have high self-esteem than low self-esteem. (Within limits, anyway: history's most horrifying dictators thought pretty highly of themselves, too.) But a dissenting minority of psychologists have long suspected there's a problem with the notion of "self-esteem" itself. It rests on the idea of giving your whole self one universal grade--and once you've done that, it's a constant struggle to stop that grade slipping from high down to low. Suddenly, your everyday failures--the things that go wrong for everyone, every so often--become far more consequential: instead of merely being regrettable in themselves, they threaten your overall grade.

The late psychotherapist Albert Ellis called self-esteem the greatest emotional disturbance of them all. Rate your individual acts as good or bad if you like, he advised, and by all means try to perform more good ones. But leave your self out of it.

5. AVOID PESSIMISTS AT ALL COSTS

"Toxic people," "energy vampires": whatever labels the positivity police like to give them, it's a solid plank of conventional wisdom that people who dwell on worst-case scenarios are best avoided. Yet a particular kind of pessimism is well worth cultivating. It's what the psychologist Julie Norem calls "defensive pessimism," though its origins stretch back to the Stoics of ancient Greece. Thinking carefully about how badly things could go, the Stoics Seneca and Epictetus both recognized, saps the future of its anxiety-producing power; once you've figured out how you'd cope if things went wrong, the resulting peace of mind leaves you better primed for success.

Full Article: http://www.fastcompany.com/3021264/work-smart/5-big-happiness-myths-debunked-do-worry-be-happier/