Procrastination: A Tangled Path to Depression

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The Wikipedia entry on Procrastination (1) contains the following under psychological causes:

The psychological causes of procrastination vary greatly, but generally surround issues of anxiety, low sense of self-worth, and a self-defeating mentality[4].

As a chronic procrastinator, I can vouch for the truthiness of the wikipedian's description. However, if anxiety, low self worth and defeatism were the sole privilege of procrastinators, depressed people would have a good deal less to be miserable about.

Notice how Wikipedia's procrastination entry has a threshold for significant dysfunction similar to the one listed in the DSM-IV criteria for a depressive episode (2):

Wikipedia: While it is normal for people to procrastinate to some degree, it becomes a problem when it impedes normal functioning. (1)
DSM-IV: The symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.(2)

Completing my own hastily drawn depression / procrastination link, wikipedia provides us with one last gem for pondering what sort of demon procrastination is - and how it can be ridden to the dark depths of self-inflicted hell:

Chronic procrastination may be a sign of an underlying psychological or physiological disorder.(1)

Whatever the cause - procrastination's clear overlap with depressive symptoms provides an intriguing route to follow in the pursuit of sadness. Testing how well any of these techniques 'work' long term on yourself is likely to result in a lifetime of tragically aborted or mis-formed endeavors. Thus, as always, proceed carefully.

It is important to tailor your procrastination tendencies around topics and people that are important to you in your life, in order to get the full effect. Here are two scenarios:

1. Start a scientific blog on sadness with your flat-mate/coworker, wait 2 months to make your first post, base it on Wikipedia. Search for scientific articles when you don't have access, write a note to remind yourself to send the link to your work email so you can download them. Save Blog as draft 50 times before halfway through.

2. Deliberately procrastinate on making contact with a loved-one. This combines anxieties about losing relationships, increased seclusion and even the sense that your sadness may be contagious (no citation). It also helps you avoid making new acquaintances, as you realize the failure of so many relationships past paints a clear image of your future.

Facebook is a great way to get started on this - pick someone you've had a significant relationship with but haven't spoken to in some time. Now imagine how your message might brighten their day, or a birthday note might send a tiny breath of sweetness to their hearts.

Now dash those thoughts, close your browser and meditate on the cold reality that you will likely never reconnect with this person, at least not on a meaningful level. Once you can't stand it and are rushing to look up their number in your non-existent rolodex, suppress the thought and repeat 'I'll call them tomorrow' until the throbbing subsides.

For advanced procrastinators, pick a time to call them when you know you're going to be busy, although we all know what 'busy' really means. Once you master the scientific-looking model below for maximum depression-relevant procrastionation, you'll be well on your way to achieving sadness.

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Here's how you can picture your brain going through these actions:
Original MRI Image Source

If you ever do manage to make a blog post on your hypothetical blog, or reach out and touch that special someone, make sure that the blog post / phone call goes badly enough that you feel like you've failed, but not so horrible that you shouldn't do it again.

Better yet - give yourself big expectations for the next blog post / phone call - tell yourself that you'll make up for it with a new, well-prepared, on-schedule set of correspondence.

Repeat again, make procrastination the only expected outcome for any action - see if it don't make you unhappy.

Code Red: Happiness Is Contagious

Head for the bunkers everyone! New research shows that happiness spreads through networks like badly controlled bird flu. If several of your friends are happy, chances are high you'll get infected too!

Logically you stand the biggest chance of being infected when a close friend is happy and the effect lessens the larger amount of people inbetween (if a friend nearby is happy you are 42% more likely to become happy too, a friends friend friend gives a 6% increase chance). However, it is still surprising that the happiness of a friend of a friend of a friend can statistically predict your own happiness. 

This study is great due to its large number of partipants (about 5000) and in that it followed these people to see how emotions changed over time. Aditionally is important because it makes predictions on effects of our extending networks these days due to internet like facebook, myspace & twitter.

 

The good news is that sadness spreads too but at a slightly lower rate, but I'm not surprised, because, how down can you get?

Again we are confronted with the fact that while we feel we are in control of our own life & happiness much of this is already set by the social context we live within, so remember to bail out of your knitting network if someone gets a child or promoted. And before you know it you'll tell your psychiatrist you need no more sessions because Brian's girlfriend's uncle won $500 in a lottery.

 

Lnk: Original BMJ article

Lnk: CNN article

Lnk: Social Capital Blog with a quite thorough analysis of the research

The Nihi-List

L Psychology Today on this trend of putting your bad luck, depression and how life sucks on twitter and blogs. Seems especially the French love complaining. Stay with us & stay sad.

L What is the biggest gender difference you ask? Is it aggression? Map reading skillz? Frequency of masturbation? No! It's that girls are bad with balls. Neuroanthropology has the story.

L Even chickens prefer beautiful humans. What more can I say. You're fucked.

L In case you were still doubting; panic in the media as it becomes clear the pharmaceutical industry owns medical science. 149 Harvard med. school faculty members get paid by drug giants Pfizer. This is just the tip of the ice-berg though, read the cold hard facts on pharma involvement in psychological and medical research in the blog Furious Seasons.

I'm personally shocked as I run experiments for Pfizer as we speak, sorry guys. I'll try to keep it real.

L Depressed hamsters shed light on seasonal disorder. Shed... get it?

L TAKE THE BLUE PILL, NEO! Amsterdam researchers show fear and anxiety can be "deleted" with a pill in a nature article. Fortunately some scientists warn it could delete good memories too.

L Finally, the wait is over. We can now genetically alter mice to stop sniffing cocaine.

L The Dutch start an official suicide hotline. Government funds it with a staggering 1.4 million euro. Interestingly the number to call will be 113, not to be confused with 112 which will get you the police. Call now for only 99cent per minute.

L Junk-food makes you want to kill yourself (and other people). Go stack up on those McFatties! (side note; the solution seems to be ingesting more Omega-3, easy as that?!)

The Moral of Oral: "Macbeth Effect" Explained

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual

~Nietzsche

Fresh of the bat: A not yet published article in Science (magazine extrordinaire) by Ronzin and his buddies says disgust experienced by tasting bad foods is the same as experiencing moral disgust.

This is how the story goes; In another article in the same Science issue four experiments are presented that show the same facial disgust activation (through muscle contraction that raises the upper lip and wrinkles the nose, see image on right which muscle) when tasting horrible stuff (Experiment 1), seeing disgusted faces (Experiment 2), and being morally mistreated (Experiment 3).

SO: The article first mentioned suggests this is evidence that our current reactions to moral injustice are linked to our basic disgust taste reactions: Our old disgust warning system developed to include items that are bad for us without us having to taste it (e.g. la cucaracha) and from there on to include societally bad bad actions (like incest) and people who are not very nice to us (like Hitler).

Interestingly, they also connect this to a great 2006 Science study about washing your hands (as you should, especially before dinner). This study found that after thinking unethically, people were more likely to think of cleaning (Exp. 1) and they wiped their hands more with alcohol tissues (Exp. 3). Even weirder, after cleaning their hands they were more likely to support people morally (Exp. 4). These findings were called the "Macbeth Effect", the idea that after being morally impure, we need to clean ourselves (if you do not know who Macbeth is, please feel free to rethink your life).

The Rozin article argues that this is a nice example of how moral thoughts link to classic disgust avoidance related behavior.

In Sum: Oral Disgust = Moral Disgust. Morals are not a nice new philosophical concept that reason makes us evaluate like: "That, dear Sir, is morally dubious" but more as "Ewww....!"

Topic Tip:

Just eat horribly tasting food, in addition to tasting bad it will make you feel the world is morally despicable. You will retreat to that dark corner of your room and after crying yourself to sleep night after night, the realization that everything is rotten and horribly askew makes you read Nietzsche and Schoppenhauer. As a consequence you understand that moral thinking is everything that is wrong with society and you either become a Nihilist or make an appointment with your psychatrist every wednesday evening.

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Lnk: Article in Science, From Oral to Moral

Lnk: Article in Science, In Bad Taste

Lnk: Article in Science, Wash Away Your Sins

Empathy & Botox: Or How To Effectively Stop Caring

It is hard to be apathetic to human suffering... But it's possible.
~Nils-Fredrik Nielsen, Samlede Tristesser.

Facial feedback hypothesis assumes that reading emotions from peoples' facial expression is helped by displaying the corresponding expression yourself. For example, when I pout my lips and look like the end of the world is nigh (my usual composure) it will help me recognize that emotion in someone else. Also, holding my face in a certain emotional pose will influence how I interprete what I see, hear or feel.

A nice & famous example is that people find cartoons funnier if they read them while keeping a pen horizaontally between their teeth (it's like smiling, don't try it), and less funny if they hold the pen in their mouths with their lips (like pouting).

Now, many scientists believe that this is a very important part of understanding others emotions in general (some Italians attribute this to "Mirror Neurons"). If we were unable to replicate another's facial expressions directly, it will hinder understanding their emotional state.

This brings us to our topic. A study in Cerebral Cortex shows that people with botox injections show less spontaneous imitation of facial emotions in pictures. But there is more; in a brain scan (and we know only real scientists use brainscanners) botoxers showed less amygdala (often assumed to play a role in processing negative information) activation in response to sad faces. The authors suggest this could make them less skilled in understanding what they see.

It's strange, however, that they did not have participants rate the facial expression they saw on emotion type and intensity. This could have demonstrated if botoxers really had problems understanding the expressions. Nonetheless it is an interesting finding, suggesting a positive effect of botox in removing yourself emotionally from other people.

And forget about creating an army of soldiers without an amygdala, incapable of feeling fear. Just botox the 'em. Not only will they be ruthless, have no empathy or fear. They will be pretty also.

Useful materials:
-Botox (or some houshold silicone)
-Dermatologist, plastic surgeon or helpful friend
-Needles
-Bandages
-Medical maltreatment insurance

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Side note: In my search for botox related information I stumbled upon a journal with the uplifting name "Headache". Something tells me you will be hearing more from this one on Science of Sadness.
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Lnk:Facial Feedback Hypothesis, Wiki
Lnk: Pens, Smiles & Cartoons, JPSP, 1988
Lnk: "Mirror Neurons"
Lnk: Article in Cerebral Cortex
Lnk: "Headache"

Loneliness Makes You Cold

"When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside world which is like the cold space between the planets (slightly above 0 degress Kelvin? -ed). It is an air in which men perish utterly." - Hilaire Belloc

A (relatively) new article in Psychological Science reports that when thinking about a situation where you were socially excluded, it makes you estimate the room temperature as colder.
A second study excluded or included participants in a computer ball-tossing game. When excluded, participants preferred hot drinks and food over cold, suggesting a need to "warm up".

Reversely the authors speculate that cooler temperatures could make you feel sadder, lonelier and socially excluded (a valid assumption but pure speculation nonetheless as this bidirectionality was not explored).

An interesting side note was the surprisingly large variaton in estimated room temperature (from 12C to 40C). Another indication that context and other subjective factors steer perception of reality more than factual conditions (bringing us to the question of the existence of factual conditions itself).

Additionally, this reasearch could potentionally shed light on seasonal disorder as partly caused by variations in temperature. Makes me wonder if dressing warmly could help shield you from depression.





Useful Materials:
-Ice cream
-Snow
-Cold pizza
-Siberia
-Documentaries on North Pole
-Winter rain
-Ice baths
-Dog sled expeditions

Topic Tip:
Turning down the heat in your home will result in stronger feelings of sadness, loneliness and social exclusion. We'd suggest you open all windows, take a shower but don't dry off. Subsequently pull out some Ben and Jerry's (preferably their depressingly fitting "Socialice") and start reading "The Terror"*.

* An all time favorite historic fiction on two ships stuck in the ice somewhere in north-east Canada while supplies run out. While the crew fights for survival The Cold starts creeping into every aspect of their lives. I constantly kept upping the thermostat while reading.

Lnk: Article by Zhong & Leonardelli in Psych. Science
Lnk: Book "The Terror"
Lnk: Movie: "The Frozen Dead"
Lnk: Depressed Hamsters Shed Light on Seasonal Disorder

-Matthijs

A depressive diagnosis for anyone

This blog will be about getting you down, because it is better for you this way. This first post, however, will be a short introduction to the many ways you can be sad, so when you read and follow our posts, you will instantly know what level of despair you have reached.

Think you are not depressed or never have been?

Please see the list below and think again. There is a depression type or subtype for every man, woman and child out there, you will never need to feel left out again (although this might help you reach the ultimate goal of severe despair).

If you can't find one you like, let us know now, and for only $9.99 we come up with one, and what the heck, if apply you within the next 30 years, we'll throw in one for free.

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The golden standard of modern psychiatry, the DMS-IV starts us off with 6 depression-relevant diagnostic categories you might find yourself meeting criteria for:

Major Depressive Disorder: Do we need to spell it out for you? You're depressed or down for weeks on end, for years on end.
Major Depressive Episode: As above, but shorter - at least 2 weeks duration.
Manic Episode: A temporary reversal of fortune - you run around feeling energized, grandiose even. Others do not concern you, you don't need sleep and might become irritable. Symptoms must hold for at least 1 week.
Mixed Episodes: Little of this, little of that. Combines Major & Manic episodes.
Hypomanic Episode: Like Manic but shorter. A case of red bull should do it. 4 days minimum.
Dysthymic Disorder: Only sometimes depressed, but over a period of 2 years. Me: "Doctor, I have never always felt great" Dr. Phil: "That's a clear case of Dysthymia, son."

But wait, there is more! Of the following depressive categories, not all are as accepted today, but who are they to tell you how you feel?

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD!): Hamsters have it too! If only it was as prevalent in summer...
Endogenous depression: Occurs from within. No one knew why. Biological. Avoid antidepressants.
Reactive depression: Results of circumstantial stressors. Antidepressants no effect.
Psychotic Depression: Similar to endogenous. Includes hallucinations.
Bereavement: Loss of loved one (spouse, friend, hamster etc.).
Neurotic: See Dysthymia.
Primary Depression: Depressed because of depression (!).
Secondary Depression: Depressed by other reasons (medical, biological, financial).
Postnatal depression: You'll have to become pregnant first, sorry guys
Postpartum Disorder: a.k.a. Baby Blues. Have baby? Depressed? PD! See postnatal depression.
Atypical Depression: Depression that is not typical. Most prevalent type. Patient feels good when something good happens. Sound familiar?
Double Depression: See Dysthymic. Depression x 2.
Situational Depression: same as Reactive but different.
Agitated Depression: Irritability and restlessness.
Melancholic Depression: Anhedonia (loss of pleasure). Inability to find pleasure in positive events (in contrast with which disorder?) Often in combination with agitation, insomnia, and no appetite for Domino's.
Catatonic Depression: Depression for cats with movement impairments.

If all else fails and normality & content is closing in, remember, we are here for you.

Welcome to Science of Sadness.

Stay with us & stay sad,
written by Matthijs - edited by Dan F

Lnk: DSM-IV 1, 2 (subscriptions only)
Lnk: Depressed Hamsters Shed Light On Seasonal Disorder