The Greater Good Blog

And they all lived happily ever after…

July 2nd, 2009 by Katie Goldsmith | Tags: Education, children, development, emotional literacy, empathy, family, parenting | Leave a Comment »

Growing up, I was always a fan of bedtime stories with my mom. Looking back, I realize she had quite a talent for picking some good ones (like my favorite, Where the Wild Things Are).

According to a recent study by researchers Dorit Aram and Sigalit Aviram, published in Reading Psychology, these stories weren’t just a nice treat before bed; they may have actually had a lasting impact on me.

In the study, Aram and Aviram looked at the mother-child reading habits of 40 middle-class Israeli families with kindergarten-aged children. Within these families, they examined the relationship between the amount mothers read to their children, as well as their choice of what to read, and the children’s empathy, social-emotional development, and language skills.

The researchers asked mothers to identify authors’ names and key sentences from books to determine how frequently they read to their children. They also rated the mothers’ expertise in selecting books by asking the mothers to explain why they selected their books, then comparing their criteria with that of experts in children’s literature.

The children’s empathy was measured by their kindergarten teacher, who also looked at their ability to manage their emotions. Aram and Aviram also asked teachers about the kids’ abilities to stay on task, their levels of persistence and confidence, and the basic social skills they displayed during their daily classroom activities.

The results show that when mothers read to their children more frequently, those kids showed stronger emotional and language development skills than their peers. What’s more, there was a strong link between mothers’ skill in choosing books and their children’s language and development skills. Children who had mothers with a knack for selecting good books were also better at understanding others’ feelings, expressing their emotions, resolving conflicts.

The authors suggest that mothers with higher expertise in selecting books have kids with stronger emotional skills because those mothers tend to choose books that present more emotional situations, with more emphasis on social relationships.

Experts agree that books with these attributes stimulate children emotionally and allow them to identify with characters. They advise that when choosing a book, parents should look for stories with interesting events and logical connections between events in the book, and they should read the entire book before reading it to their kids, to make sure that it’s suitable.

The Daddy Shift in the news

June 25th, 2009 by Jason Marsh | Tags: children, family, gender roles, marriage, parenting | Leave a Comment »

Greater Good Senior Editor Jeremy Adam Smith’s new book, The Daddy Shift, has been generating a huge buzz nationwide. In the unlikely event that you missed any of the recent media coverage, check out these highlights:

• a story featuring Jeremy and one of the dads featured in the book, Gopal Dayaneni, on the Bay Area’s ABC News affiliate;
• a profile of Jeremy on the front page of the Style section in this past Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle;
• an interview with Jeremy on the public radio daily news magazine show, “Here and Now”;
• and a Q&A on Salon.com, which provides a good intro to the ideas in the book.

Enjoy!

Why Grandparents are Great

June 22nd, 2009 by Katie Goldsmith | Tags: aging, children, family, parenting | Leave a Comment »

I’ve always been close with my Grandma Marilyn. At 77, she’s still a vital part of our family, providing lots of humor, advice, and the occasional present. But according to a new study, grandparents like Grandma Marilyn are even more valuable than I realized. It turns out that when grandparents are involved in their adolescent grandkids’ lives, those kids have fewer behavior problems—and this is especially true for at-risk kids.

In the study, published in the Journal of Family Psychology, researchers looked at a wide cross-section of secondary school students in England and Wales, ages 11-16. These adolescents were categorized into one of three family groups: families where kids lived with both their biological parents, families where kids lived with one of their parents and either a step-parent or a parent’s partner, or single-parent families.

The researchers then gave the kids a questionnaire to assess both their relationship with their grandparents and their social, emotional, and behavioral well-being, paying special attention to the amount of kind, helpful behavior they displayed toward others.

The results showed that kids were equally close with their grandparents across all three family types, though adolescents from single-parent families and step-families had more behavioral and emotional problems than kids living with both of their biological parents. However, the researchers uncovered evidence suggesting that grandparents might help address these problems: Adolescents whose closest grandparent had a high level of involvement in their lives reported fewer emotional problems and more positive behaviors than those who had less grandparent involvement. This link between grandparent involvement and social-emotional well-being was actually weak among adolescents from two-parent biological families, but it was quite strong among adolescents from single-parent and step-families.

These findings are especially significant given that rising life expectancy is increasing the number of three- or even four-generational families. Based on their results, the authors argue that “public institutions, such as schools and welfare services, need to recognize grandparents as a potentially important source for support in adolescents’ lives in general, but in particular, for those increasing number of adolescents going through family transition.”

Better Together: A review of The Lonely American

June 18th, 2009 by Jill Suttie | Tags: Uncategorized, aging, happiness, health, nature, prosocial behavior, social connections, social exclusion, social integration | Leave a Comment »

“Americans in the twenty-first century devote more technology to staying connected than any society in history, yet somehow the devices fail us: Studies show that we feel increasingly alone.”

So begins the new book The Lonely American, by psychiatrists Jacqueline Olds and Richard Schwartz (Beacon Press, 2009), which describes America’s obsession with living separately from others and the corresponding (often hidden) costs to our psychological health.

The number of single-person households has increased from roughly seven to 25 percent of all households in last 60 years. But as psychologists have discovered, humans are meant to live in groups, and they thrive through their social interactions. People feel sad and vulnerable if they are not connected to others, if they perceive themselves as being “left out.” So why is it a sign of wealth and prestige in our culture to have “a room of one’s own”? Or to buy a large house in an isolated community where you have little contact with one’s neighbors?

“People in our society drift away from social connections because of both a push and a pull. The push is the frenetic, overscheduled, hypernetworked intensity of modern life. The pull is the American pantheon of the self-reliant heroes who stand apart from the crowd,” write Olds and Schwartz.

In other words, we want to escape from the stress of constant interaction, and we romanticize the idea of standing on one’s own feet and not needing help from others. Unfortunately, though these ideas are deeply ingrained in the American psyche, they are at odds with our natural instincts.

The authors illustrate this point by telling stories of their patients. When one patient moves to the country with her husband to find peace and solace in the midst of a life threatening illness, she finds instead that the lack of human contact leads her down a deep spiral of depression. Only when she reconnects with friends and family is she able to recover. In another instance, a patient descends into alcohol abuse when her marriage dissolves, calling her daily bottle of wine “my best friend.” Like many people who fall prey to drugs, she uses alcohol to dampen the very real pain of social isolation and rejection.

Olds and Schwartz denounce the American “cult of busyness” in which people gain more respect and deference the busier their lives become. Over-scheduling and over-working has led to individual exhaustion and alienated families, they argue, and to communities where neighbors are afraid to drop in on other neighbors for fear of disturbing them.

They also look at the role technology plays in interpersonal relationships, arguing that new technologies work best when used to extend rather than replace social interaction. Humans still need face-to-face contact with others, they argue, to correctly read emotional cues and to feel close to other people. Technology is no substitute.

The Lonely American makes a strong case against social isolation. It increases our chances of experiencing loneliness and a corresponding reduction in happiness, health, and longevity. So what’s to be done? Overcoming these trends won’t be easy, Olds and Schwartz write, but we should try––the personal costs of loneliness and the drain on environmental resources to support one-person households are too high not to. Perhaps if we re-examine our notion of the solitary hero and honor the heroes “whose courage and creativity flow from their engagement and connection with others,” they write, we can build a more communitarian society.

So turn off your computers, go knock on your neighbor’s door, and don’t take “no” for an answer. You may not be greeted as a hero, but you might make at least one person feel a little less alone. And that’s got to be a step in the right direction.

Good News for NPR

June 11th, 2009 by Madeleine Goodkind | Tags: Generosity, Giving, altruism, goodness, money | Leave a Comment »

Ever wonder about those people who donate to NPR pledge drives year after year, even though everyone else still enjoys the same listening benefits they do? And if you are one of those people, ever wonder if you’re alone?

A new study by J. Mark Weber and J. Keith Murnighan, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, examines these people who give to others even when it’s not required of them. Weber and Murninghan found that not only do these kinds of people, who the researchers call “consistent contributors,” regularly emerge in social situations, their generosity also encourages others to follow suit.

In a series of experiments, participants were given small amounts of money and, in several rounds, they could donate some or all of it to a group fund. The group as a whole benefited when more participants contributed, but individual participants of course fared better by not contributing. Between each round, the participants learned the amounts donated by other members of their group in the prior round, though the others’ identities were sometimes kept confidential.

Across the studies, 10 to 15 percent of the participants proved to be consistent contributors, donating some or all of their money in every round. What’s more, other members of their group donated two to three times more than members of groups that lacked a consistent contributor. Consistent contributors had this effect on others’ behavior even when the contributor’s identity was kept secret. And if participants were led to believe that the consistent contributor was of high status (described as a Ph.D. student), they donated even more and rated their choice to do so as smarter than they did otherwise.

This research has reassuring implications for NPR member stations and other organizations that rely heavily on regular donors: Those donors are likely to surface, and to influence the behavior of more cautious contributors. Maybe for its next fund drive, your NPR station should remind you of the people who always donate, especially if those people are pursing Ph.D.s.

Center Fellow Leaves for India to Mobilize Health

June 8th, 2009 by Pooja Upadhyaya | Tags: Awards, health, helping behavior, social capital | Leave a Comment »

That’s me—Pooja Upadhyaya—with the video camera I’m taking with me to India for a project called Mobilizing Health, partially funded by a summer fellowship from the Greater Good Science Center. I leave today!

I’ll be joined by two other Mobilizing Health team members, Karla De Leon and Christian Fernandez. Our other two members, Marko Spasic and Suneel Jain, will be consulting with us via Skype and emails from Brazil and California, respectively.

We’re all UC Berkeley students (or recent grads) who hope to increase access to emergency health care for the world’s poor. For our Mobilizing Health project, we’re capitalizing on the fact that today, even the most remote areas in the world have some cell phone network. By the beginning of 2010, we hope to use cell phones to connect as many as 20,000 Indian villagers in need of emergency medical care to a doctor.

The plan is to provide one health worker from each of 50 villages a cell phone and teach them how to send text messages in their own language. The messages will be sent to a central laptop located in the city of Udaipur at the Narayan Sewa Sansthan hospital, which has graciously offered their staff and facilities to serve as the base of the project.

This summer we’re going to pilot the project. In the first few weeks, we’ll be meeting with the hospital doctors, cell phone companies, and those who work with the villagers to make sure that such a project is feasible. Then for three weeks, we’ll visit the 50 villages and collect preliminary data—location, population, their receptiveness to the idea, etc. During the last week, we’ll test out the service. In December, we’ll return to fully implement the plan.

Throughout our trip, I plan to post pictures and video to the Greater Good blog, as well as to mobilizinghealth.wordpress.com. Stay tuned!

Ten Ways to Say “Thanks” While Driving

June 7th, 2009 by Alex Dixon | Tags: gratitude, social intelligence | Leave a Comment »

Have you ever found yourself behind the wheel, trying to express gratitude to another driver, but you didn’t know how? Say you’re in your car, windows up, driving down the road, speed untold, and someone lets you change lanes, or gives you the go-ahead at a stop sign. You want to scream “Thank you!” at the top of your lungs, but you realize that probably won’t do the trick. Thankfully, William Safire of The New York Times has compiled some alternatives. Here are ten signs full of gratitude.

Release Party for The Daddy Shift

June 5th, 2009 by Jason Marsh | Tags: events, family, gender roles, parenting | Leave a Comment »

Anyone in or near San Francisco should join us tomorrow night to celebrate the release of The Daddy Shift, the new book by Greater Good Senior Editor Jeremy Adam Smith.

The Daddy Shift offers an insightful take on the changing nature of the American family. It’s not only rich with compelling stories of stay-at-home dads and breadwinning moms, but it sheds light on why these new family forms have emerged, and how we as a society should best respond to them.

The book’s been out for not quite a week, but it has already enjoyed some great coverage, including this interview with Lisa Belkin of The New York Times.

The release party will be tomorrow night (June 6) at Cover to Cover bookstore in Noe Valley (1307 Castro St.). And if you can’t make it then, Jeremy will be reading from the book next Sunday, June 14, at 5 p.m. at Pegasus Books in Berkeley (2349 Shattuck Ave)–part of an event for the award-winning ‘zine Rad Dad.

Hope to see you there!

Greater Good Featured in “Doing Good” Guide

June 4th, 2009 by Jason Marsh | Tags: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

The Greater Good Science Center made San Francisco magazine’s list of “19 righteous ideas for rotten times“! Click on the article below to read more.

The Price of Perfection: A review of The Triple Bind

June 2nd, 2009 by Jill Suttie | Tags: children, development, family, gender roles, happiness, parenting, psychology | Leave a Comment »

In The Triple Bind (Ballantine Books, 2009), psychologist Stephen Hinshaw explores society’s expectations of girls and young women. According to Hinshaw, girls are pressured to excel at both traditional “female” roles (of being caring, tolerant, cute, sexy) and traditional “male” roles (of being competitive, assertive, strong, successful), while being 100% perfect all of the time. If they can’t manage to stay on top of these often conflicting demands, they see themselves as unworthy. This leaves girls facing impossible dilemmas, such as having to choose between comforting a sad friend or studying for an important math exam, or between following a career path or staying home to care for an ailing parent. Whatever they chose, they lose.

Though at first glance these problems may seem ordinary and innocuous, Hinshaw (who serves on the executive committee of the Greater Good Science Center) convinces us otherwise. Citing alarming statistics about the increased rates of suicide, violence, eating disorders, and depression—and recounting stories of individual patients in his psychotherapy practice—Hinshaw paints a vivid portrait of girls on the brink of self-destruction. “The Triple Bind and its impossible expectations conspire to make [girls] feel not full but empty, not waving but drowning in a sea of contradictory demands,” writes Hinshaw.

Yet there are ways to help young women thrive despite these cultural pressures. Hinshaw suggests that high-quality connections with adults, being part of a community with a shared purpose, and involvement in service to others can all help give girls a greater sense of self. He also promotes a renewal of the feminist movement, so teens can connect with a larger community of women who can help them see their issues from a broader social perspective. As Hinshaw concludes, “It’s up to us, the adults, to undo the bind and work with our youth to create a new culture.”