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This is easily the most intriguing 3Things that I've put together. I learned something super practical in the Delphi Method and Cognitive Reappraisal and I'm taking another stab at Self-Determination Theory because I learned it in a different way from a month ago. Cognitive Reappraisal and Emotional Suppression A game changer. I learned this skill at 27 but didn’t know what it was called and it literally changed my life. The ability think through your emotional reaction basically releases the pressure built up by the emotion. Examples I read about include simply seeing your reflection when wanting to gorge out on a bowl of candy or writing the word ANGER in big letters on a piece of paper when you’re angry. Attaching a cognitively derived thought and action to an emotional reaction will release the power that emotion is bringing to your brain and self. This is probably one of the most important thing I’ve learned in the last 8 years for myself and now I have a label to attach to it and research it more. Here’s a definition of what it is: “Cognitive reappraisal is an emotion regulation strategy that involves changing the trajectory of an emotional response by reinterpreting the meaning of the emotional stimulus. Emotion regulation is defined as follows: "the use of deliberate and effortful processes to change a spontaneous emotional state.” For example, a person may fail a series of tests and think negatively about his or her performance upon first receiving the results. The person revisits his or her emotional response to the situation and later views the results as a way to challenge and better him or herself. This process involves two parts: a) recognition of one’s negative response, and b) reinterpretation of the situation to either reduce the severity of the negative response, or exchange the negative attitude for a more positive attitude. This strategy is one of the three broad categories of coping which include appraisal-focused behavior, problem-focused behavior, and emotion-focused behavior. It differs from the other two methods of coping because it primarily addresses an individual’s perception of a situation, rather than directly altering environmental stressors or emotional responses to those stressors.” The crazy part about this is that we reappraise re-narrate any action or event that occurs anyway – we can’t help it. To make an action or event make sense to the construct of your brain you have to translate it into something that makes sense. You just do this. So, instead of allowing a magical and unknown process occur that does this for you, why not develop a cognitive and thoughtful process to translate that event to benefit your goals of self? Self-Determination Theory Have you ever had a boss tell you to do something you didn’t want to do and then you have to talk yourself into doing it? Has that same boss ever told you you’ll get overtime for it? Or maybe in your performance review – even though it was mostly good- they offered “tangible rewards, threats, deadlines, directives, pressured evaluations, and imposed goals” and all you wanted to do was give them the finger and walk out? Maybe, like me, you have both been that asshole boss and been the employee who walked out and been confused about what is going on? It comes down to the paradoxes of Self-Determination Theory. Self-determination theory (SDT) is a macro theory of human motivation and personality that concerns people's inherent growth tendencies and innate psychological needs. It is concerned with the motivation behind choices people make without external influence and interference. SDT focuses on the degree to which an individual's behavior is self-motivated and self-determined. Here are my bullet points from reading one of the founding articles on it:
 I guess the trick is make the goals of the business become the intrinsic goals of the individual. I don’t know how to do this but if you learn how, let me know. Delphi Method Anyone who has ever been a part of a decision-making process needs to know of the Delphi Process. This is incredible. I swear it would have saved tens of thousands of dollars in planning projects I’ve been involved in if I knew this. Here’s the idea (pay attention to the 3rd step where you anonymize experts’ reflections):  Wikipedia has a long and tedious but good explanation below but basically the Delphi Method gets expert opinion on an idea, anonymizes the comments (thus removing self-censure and unconscious bias in response to others’ ideas), and proceeds with group analysis from there. Here is what Wikipedia has to say:
the Delphi Method is “a structured communication technique or method, originally developed as a systematic, interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of experts. The experts answer questionnaires in two or more rounds. After each round, a facilitator or change agent provides an anonymous summary of the experts’ forecasts from the previous round as well as the reasons they provided for their judgments. Thus, experts are encouraged to revise their earlier answers in light of the replies of other members of their panel. It is believed that during this process the range of the answers will decrease and the group will converge towards the "correct" answer. Finally, the process is stopped after a predefined stop criterion (e.g. number of rounds, achievement of consensus, stability of results) and the mean or median scores of the final rounds determine the results. Delphi is based on the principle that forecasts (or decisions) from a structured group of individuals are more accurate than those from unstructured groups.”
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Critical and Sensitive Periods! Poetic Transcription! And Ippon seoi nage! Here are the three things I learned in Grad School this week:  Ippon Seoi Nage
I was going to look into Sovereign Power in Gentrification but I have to write a paper and I know too little about this to delve deep. Instead, I got my ass handed to me last week with the most basic Judo throw, called an Ippon Seoi Nage – or, more simply, a seoi nage (pronounced roughly as: say na gee). After a week of drills with the seoi nage, I pulled two muscles in my quads, rolled an ankle, and landed poorly on my neck. Judo is a lot of fun and I have at least 18 more basic throws to learn but I am inhaling ibuprofen in the process. Critical Periods and Sensitive Periods In class I said: “the most interesting part to me was that if you do not get appropriately socialized at the right ages you lose the ability to socialize appropriately for the rest of your life – if you don’t use it, you literally lose it.” This was in response to a reading called The Nurture Assumption by Harris where she says that peer groups in childhood are more important for a person’s development than a parent’s influence. This idea of being locked in to a lifetime of maladjustment was baffling to me – I had never heard that; it goes against the belief I have that we can reinvent ourselves endlessly. Apparently not. In Developmental Psychology there are these points in our life called Critical Periods and Sensitive Periods and they relate to skill building. Critical periods are necessary and sensitive periods are more extended with less necessity to acquire a skill for use. Some folks say there are no differences between the two and others make more distinctions. According to Wikipedia: “critical period is a maturational stage in the lifespan of an organism during which the nervous system is especially sensitive to certain environmental stimuli. If, for some reason, the organism does not receive the appropriate stimulus during this "critical period" to learn a given skill or trait, it may be difficult, ultimately less successful, or even impossible, to develop some functions later in life. Functions that are indispensable to an organism's survival, such as vision, are particularly likely to develop during critical periods. "Critical period" also relate to ability to acquire first language.” These ideas make more sense to me with ensuring vision kicks in or acquisition of language but it is somewhat scary to me that it applies to socialization, behavior, and psychological development. I suppose that this is what a lot of therapy is based on: reworking maladjusted, learned behaviors as best as possible within the boundaries of your limited self for the best opportunities for success. It means you can’t fix it but you can give yourself healthy coping mechanisms and skills to fight the results of the limitations you have. Damn. Poetic transcription I love poetry. In some ways, I got my undergraduate degree in studying it. But this week we learned Poetic Transcription and it makes me feel icky. The idea is that you create a poem from the data you collect in an interview to pull out the most important aspects in a concise and coherent way. Sidenote: I love poetry but I think the reason it makes me feel like slugs are crawling up my neck is because I hate bad poetry. Like, aesthetically but also somatically repulsed by bad poetry. I don’t know why this is the case but I cringe when hearing someone share a bad poem. And, making a good poem out of someone’s drivel seems difficult. I digress. I see a use for Poetic Transcription for helping to make sense of the chaos of a 90 minute interview. I did this for the first season of Pelecanus and it helped in not only editing our episodes but also in understanding the subject matter better. The idea is create new insight through emotional intertwining of various and sometimes disparate concepts of someone’s interview.
I learned a little about Gentrification, Group Socialization Theory, and Social Rejection Theory this week. And here is a sea turtle that is as surprised about all this as I am.  Artists and Enviros as First Wave of Gentrification
This is not my field and not what I am knowledgeable about but sitting in the Grad Lab I had a quick conversation with a colleague studying Gentrification. Actually, these quick side conversations about fields not my own are becoming my favorite part of grad school; I’ve had conversations about the physics of the Northern Lights, material engineering, and industrial concrete randomly that have opened me up to worlds I would not have considered. I digress: he knocked my socks off explaining that artists and enviro folks are often times the first wave of gentrification for various reasons. For urban planning and developing multiple beneficial uses I can only imagine how challenging this must be. On one hand you are trying to create a better and more liveable place for more people and on the other, an integration of socioeconomic dimensions (accommodating and co-creating opportunities for poor people) and oftentimes a cultural history. Again, I know nothing about this but I found some interesting articles about it:
Group Socialization Theory From the book The Nurture Assumption by Harris, this theory disrupts the nature vs nurture dichotomy as false to start with. The dichotomy is necessary but insufficient. Harris shows that children become socialized and their personality gets modified during development mostly by their peers. Children get their ideas of how to behave by identifying with a group and taking on its attitudes, behaviors, speech, and styles of dress and adornment; most of them do this automatically and willingly. The relationship with the parents and the genes they inherent are important and help establish baselines and what’s possible but the integration and growth within peer group has a significantly larger influence upon the child’s development. She also distinguishes two important skills: skills at friendship and the ability to navigate a group. Almost everyone will develop friendships but that rarely has lasting developmental impacts. However, the capacity to integrate within a group has demonstrably larger impact upon a person’s growth through childhood and adolescence into adulthood. I need to play with this idea a lot more before I share more because I think it is relevant to me personally and the work I do…I think… Social Rejection Theory To justify the time spent on long runs and lifting weights I listen to audiobooks. I love it. A lot of the time this is how I get my fiction fix. Lately I’ve been on The Great Courses kick and learning about classical music and ancient philosophy. For some weird reason, Audible took those subjects and recommended I listen to: Social – Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect by Matthew Lieberman. I don’t get it but whatever. Coincidentally, we just read an article in my Human Behavior class about how Social Cognition Theory, which this book is based on, has lacked empirical evidence in the real world. I don’t know whether that’s true or not but the ideas are pretty fascinating. The most interesting to me is the Social Rejection Theory part of it. Basically, it says that when researchers have done studies with people fMRI and put them in situations where they are socially rejected, the same parts of the brain light up as when you feel pain. Leiberman’s wife, Eisenberger, is the lead researcher on this (I love science power couples) and posits that feeling social pain is the same as physical pain neurochemically. I’d quote the book but it’s hard to stop running every five minutes to take notes while listening to it. Anyway, you can’t point to the pain as if you were hit in the arm but your brain feels the pain when a group dismisses you. Super crazy. The implications of this are nuts. One of the ways I’m thinking is what motivates and what prevents people from conservation or what they call Pro-Environmental Behavior. If you, say, decide to do xeric landscaping in a community with green lawns, you become the outsider. Depending on your baseline for handling rejection and how receptive your neighborhood is you may feel pain for being different. Or, say you are vegetarian in the US South where BBQ is one of the food groups…These are small scale examples but I’m curious to see how these impact larger issue things like policy support, conspicuous consumerism, or influencing expenditures on sustainability.
I learned about Validity, Serious Leisure, and Umwelt. And, here's a Red Panda.  Validity
Apparently, as a scientist, I need strive for Validity. Boring. But, it makes sense, so here are the several types of Validity I learned about:
Kaplan’s Leisure and Serious Leisure My department is considered to be under Leisure. I’m not sure I agree with that but the conversations of how this is – and the justifications of why it is so – are interesting. Actually, I knew nothing of what Leisure was before this (and anyone that knows me would find it highly ironic that I am studying Leisure, being one of the least ‘leisurely’ people that I know at least). Along these lines though I’ve come across a workable definition of leisure and what comprises Serious Leisure. Kaplan’s definition of Leisure: 1) an antithesis to work as an economic function, 2) a pleasant expectation and recollection, 3) a minimum of involuntary social-role obligations, 4) a psychological perception of freedom, 5) a close relation to values of the culture, 6) an inclusion of an entire range from inconsequences and insignificance to weightiness and importance, and 7) often, but not necessarily, an activity characterized by the element of play. Serious Leisure doesn’t have a operational definition I’ve found yet but it does have components that make sense. Serious Leisure is made up of Amateurs, Hobbyists, and Volunteers. And I have to say that this definitely describes how I interact with Leisure 100%. In the things I take up (fighting, photography, running, naturalist studies, volunteering at museums, etc), they follow all of the following criteria: 1. distinguishing it from unserious forms is the occasional need to persevere at it 2. the tendency of amateurs, hobbyists, and volunteer to have careers in their endeavors 3. significant personal effort based on special knowledge, training, or skill 4. there are 8 durable benefits found by amateurs: self-actualization, self-enrichment, recreation or renewal of self, feelings of accomplishment, enhancement of self-image, self-expression, social interaction and belongingess, and lasting physical products of the activity – self-gratification or pure fun is a ninth benefit that is characteristic of unserious leisure 5. differentiating serious and unserious leisure is the unique ethos that grows up around each instance of the former: serious leisure participants carry on their interests within their own social worlds 6. participants in serious leisure tend to identify strongly with their chosen pursuits Based on these definitions, everything I do (work, grad school, whatever) is all considered leisure – just Serious Leisure Umwelt Looking up ecological terms I came across this term. It is the German for environment but it means something slightly different than the English “environment.” I found this when reading a translation from the German of an ecological concept and was curious. According to neuroscientist David Eagleman, Umwelt means: “different animals in the same ecosystem pick up on different environmental signals.” He uses the examples of a bat and a tick. The tick is blind and deaf and it is going to use heat and odor to direct its existence. Potentially off the same tree, the bat is going to use echolocation. Where it gets wonky is that the tick will believe the world exists completely in body heat and the bat in the reverberation of sound; they cannot exist outside of their lived sensory experiences. For me this has a couple repercussions. The first is related to the 4 types of epistemology that I learned about last week: 1) experience, 2) religion or spiritual, 3) philosophy, and 4) empiricism or science. Umwelt is home in the first way of knowing something – experience. But how does it interact with the other three? For better or worse, Religion, Philosophy, and Science allow us to think beyond our experience but are all intimately related to our Umwelt. For example, if a thought runs against Face Value validity (or, how we think it might make sense in our real world) we might be more prone to dismiss it. Similarly, if it makes sense then we are more prone to accept it. However, what happens when we talk about Angels or the Standard Model of Particle Physics? We have to overcome our Umwelt to develop our thought to make the information make sense. The other thought is related to how the concept Umwelt transcends the natural sciences and plays with literary theories and philosophy. There are only a few theories and concepts that I’m aware of that do this. The consilience of the worlds has a special place for me. Right now, I’m playing with the idea of Keystone Species (as applied to Carnivore Ecology) for the social sciences as a sort of Social Contagion or Key People concept. I digress: Umwelt understood by semioticians is similar to Plato’s Cave analogy. Our mind creates subjective and unique meaning of the things it interacts with in the world. Those items are both made and in the process of being made in our Umwelt as we experience them each time.
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