Psychology Archives - The Sciku Project

August 17, 2022August 16, 2022

Homo narrans

Once upon a time,
I heard science as stories.
I recall them well.

Storytelling and narrative are fundamental in almost every aspect of our lives. We are storytelling animals, narrative helps us to make sense of the world.

The ethnologist Kurt Ranke and communication scholar Walter Fisher both independently coined the idea that humans are “homo narrans” – storytelling animals who are persuaded to make decisions based on the coherence and fidelity of stories. Psychologist Jerome Bruner describes this ‘narrative mode of thought’ as being concerned with human wants, needs, and goals. Stories “help people make sense of the facts by framing them with particular narratives about how the world works” (Davidson, 2017).

The consequence of humans organising our thoughts through stories is that they tend to stick in the brain.

Numerous studies have shown that narrative and storytelling increase interest in and recall of information, and can be effectively employed in science communication. Hong & Lin-Siegler (2012) found that adding narrative to bare facts “increased student interest in science, increased their delayed recall of key science concepts”. Narrative “improves information processing, increasing recall of and interest in, the story” (Martinez-Conde et al. (2019).

Framing scientific information as stories increases the impact and power of the communication, but narrative can do more than just stimulate interest and improve recall. A study by Morris et al. (2019) found that “narratives framed as stories consistently outperformed factual narratives for encouraging action-taking in all audiences.”

Stories can change our behaviour.

In their 2002 book The Science of the Discworld II: The Globe, novelist Terry Pratchett and science writers Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen conclude with this sentence:

“Plenty of creatures are intelligent but only one tells stories”

It’s a lovely statement that perfectly encapsulates the importance of narrative and storytelling to our place as a species. It’s also 17 syllables long.

Optimism

Elixir of life
lies within our own outlook.
Old age will be great!

Meher Baba was on to something with when he came up with his adage “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”. The Indian spiritual master’s famous saying received global recognition in Bobby McFerrin’s chart-topping a cappella hit in 1988 (and later at the turn of the century thanks to ‘Big Mouth Billy Bass’).

Yet new research suggests that Meher Baba was on to something when he coined is famous phrase. Koga et al. (2022) tracked the longevity of more than 150,000 women over the course of 26 years and examined factors influencing morbidity and mortality including ethnicity, lifestyle and psychological outlook.

The researchers found that higher optimism was associated with longer lifespans, overall and across racial and ethnic groups. Whilst optimism is partly heritable, research shows that “optimism is modifiable with accessible methods that target optimism such as writing exercises and cognitive-behavioural strategies”.

All too often we focus on factors that negatively impact longevity. We should take a leaf out of Meher Baba’s book, be happy and remember the importance of thinking that the glass is half-full.

Intriguingly, whilst this research in the USA suggests the link between optimism and longevity, a study released earlier in 2022 by Okuzono et al. suggests that contrary to the latest research from Western populations, optimism is unrelated to longevity among Japanese older adults.

Original research:

Koga et al. (2022) https://doi.org/10.1111/jgs.17897

Okuzono et al. (2022) https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-022-00511-8

December 17, 2021December 10, 2021

Apparent Horizons by Dr Lee Tsang

In mid-2021 The Sciku Project teamed up with the Literature and Science Hub at the University of Liverpool to run the ‘Research in Verse Poetry Competition’, open to staff and postgraduate research students across the university to submit poems about their research subject. The competition saw poems addressing all sorts of topics, ranging from gravity to slavery to life in the lab.

Third prize was won by Dr Lee Tsang for his poem ‘Apparent Horizons’:

Apparent Horizons

I am what I am and what I’m not.
I’m the acts and non-acts of
‘might’ and ‘forgot’.
More than that.
I am the suns I never had.

I’m the light that
moves
both outwards
and in.
I am the Green Ray,
a moment
of fusion where
Apparent Horizons play with time.

As you are to me
I’m the passing cusp of
hopes and fears
for suns untamed.

I am the Light
both extinguished
and aflame.

Background

Dr Lee Tsang is a musician of dual heritage who takes on multiple roles in crossover works. His poem was written while reflecting on complex systems in his own practice, as demonstrated in Twisting Ways (2020, 2020/2021), the latest output from a longstanding partnership with Canadian jazz-classical pianist and composer David Braid. The poem contemplates philosophical and psychological issues relating to agency, identity, and fluid performance/compositional processes in light of Korsyn’s espousal of Harold Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence for musical contexts. You can connect with Lee on Twitter here: @l_tsang

Further Reading:

Bloom, H. (1973). Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press.

Korsyn, K. (1991). ‘Towards a New Poetics of Musical Influence’, Music Analysis, 10(1/2), pp. 3-72.

Tsang, L. (2015). David Braid’s ‘Resolute Bay’ with Sinfonia UK Collective. Toronto: K52 Music. Available at: http://www.sinfonia-uk-collective.org/

Tsang, L. (2016). ‘David Braid: Flow’. In Flow: David Braid + Epoque Quartet [CD liner notes]. New York, NY: Steinway & Sons. Available at: http://www.sinfonia-uk-collective.org/flow_albumNotes.pdf

Tsang, L. (2018). David Braid: Corona Divinae Misericordiae [CD, B07KZTWBJL]. Epoque Chamber Orchestra, Patricia O’Callaghan, Elmer Iseler Singers, Sinfonia UK Collective. Toronto: K52 Music.

Tsang, L. (2020). Tsang’s musical poetry (2018-2020) for ‘Twisting Ways’ (Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra 2020). Available at: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3110815/

Tsang, L. (2020/2021). ‘The Hand’, ‘Hope Shadow’ and ‘Lydian Sky’, Twisting Ways: The Music of David Braid and Philippe Côté [CD, WJOCD0005]. Winnipeg, MB: Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra.

September 5, 2019January 28, 2022

The Psychopharmacological Revolution

’50s to ’60s
use of new psychotropics
soars in both genders
by Dr Michael J. Leach.

Psychotropic drugs act on the central nervous system to elicit a range of therapeutic effects, such as improved sleep and anxiety relief.

Barbiturate psychotropics are older medicines with narrow therapeutic indices, meaning that there is little difference between beneficial and harmful doses. Actress Judy Garland is one of many people who has tragically died from a barbiturate overdose.

Non-barbiturate psychotropics such as benzodiazepines, meanwhile, are newer and safer alternatives to barbiturates for the treatment of psychological disorders. An example of a psychotropic that is widely used in modern society is the benzodiazepine diazepam, which was first marketed under the brand name Valium.

Historically, the Psychopharmacological Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s saw the introduction of a wide range of non-barbiturate psychotropics onto a growing global pharmaceutical market. There has been little research into the gender-specific, community-level use of psychotropic drugs over the Psychopharmacological Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s.

In order to shed light on the origins of Australia’s relatively high modern-day consumption of psychotropics, my colleague and I conducted a study to explore gender-specific volumes of psychotropic dispensing at a Melbourne pharmacy during the 1950s and 1960s. This original research has been published in the peer-reviewed journal Pharmaceutical Historian.

In this study, I sourced data on the name of medicine dispensed, dispensing date during 1954 or 1961, and patient gender from a set of old prescription books that were kept at a community pharmacy in the inner Melbourne suburb of Toorak. I cross-referenced the dataset with historical pharmacy reference books to classify each medicine into one of the following mutually exclusive categories: barbiturate psychotropics, non-barbiturate psychotropics, and non-psychotropic medicines. After collecting data and classifying each medicine, I calculated the number of prescriptions dispensed in each year and adjusted for the size of the population residing in the surrounding local government area.

The study results indicated that twice and 1.7 times as many medicines were dispensed to females than to males during 1954 and 1961, respectively. Such gender differences were evident across all three categories of dispensed medicines: barbiturate psychotropics, non-barbiturate psychotropics, and non-psychotropic medicines. There was also a pronounced shift in psychotropic dispensing from the older, more dangerous barbiturates (77% in 1954; 38% in 1961) to newer, safer non-barbiturate psychotropics (23% in 1954; 62% in 1961). The extent of this shift over time to newer, safer psychotropics was similar in both genders.

Original research: Gender differences in psychotropic medicine dispensing at a pharmacy in Melbourne, Australia, 1954 and 1961 by Michael J. Leach and Rebecca Kippen.

Michael Leach (@m_jleach) is an Australian health researcher, biostatistician, and poet with a PhD in Pharmacoepidemiology and a passion for health humanities. Examples of his science poems are online here: https://imagesofhealth.wordpress.com/.

If you enjoyed this sciku, check out Michael’s other sciku ‘Quality of Life at Seven Years Post-Stroke‘ and ‘Drug-Induced Hip Fractures‘, ‘The Core Correlate of Covid-19 Vaccine Acceptance’, ‘The Early Impacts of COVID-19 on Australian General Practice‘, ‘The Burden of Bushfire Smoke‘, and ‘Australian Science Poetry‘ with science communicator Rachel Rayner.