Christian Jarrett

Now, a new <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2167702619829748" id="dd519797-e6d7-38d0-a47f-8dbf84c7a2c2"> paper </a> in the journal Clinical Psychological Science authored by Kaylin Ratner at Cornell University explores the possibility that derailment both precipitates, and is a consequence of, depression. After all, people with depression often struggle with motivation, losing the will to pursue goals they previously held dear. They also frequently withdraw from their relationships and social roles. All of these changes could trigger sensations of derailment. Or perhaps derailment comes first, with the inner disorientation leaving one vulnerable to depression.

Surprisingly, these questions have been little studied before now. We nominate derailment as a new feature of the depressive landscape and underscore the need for greater empirical and practical attention at the crossroads of mental health and human development, Ratner and her team write.

The researchers recruited nearly a thousand undergraduate students and asked them to complete measures of depression and derailment four times over the course of an academic year. The recently developed 10-item derailment measure was based on the students agreement or not with statements like, My life has been headed in the same direction for a long time, and I did not anticipate becoming the person that I currently am.

The team found that the students scores on depression and derailment were relatively stable across the course of the year. Also, students derailment and depression symptoms tended to correlate at each of the measurement time pointsimplying there may well be an association between the two. In terms of cause and effect, and as the researchers predicted in advance, higher depression scores at an earlier time point tended to presage increases in derailment scores later on. However, in what they described as a curious finding," higher derailment scores earlier in the year actually tended to herald a decline in depression symptoms later in the year.

Ratner and her team propose a number of explanations for this last finding-including that while derailment may be uncomfortable at first, it may catalyze people to withdraw from relationships or goals that are unfulfilling, thus leading to gains in wellbeing over time. The researchers also pondered whether there might be moderating factors that alter whether derailment leads to increases or reductions in depression-such as whether people find meaning in their feelings of derailment, or how much they end up ruminating over the feelings. Such questions remain for future research, as do many other outstanding issues, such as how derailment and depression might be related in other non-student groups and over longer time periods.

This post originally appeared on <a href="https://digest.bps.org.uk/" id="5b1da76c-489a-3b49-ab1d-32ddf386a206"> BPS Research Digest </a> . Read the <a href="https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/06/03/researchers-have-investigated-derailment-feeling-disconnected-from-your-past-self-as-a-cause-and-consequence-of-depression/" id="85ee6a05-b029-3293-ac7f-43a16930f209"> original story </a> here. Dr Christian Jarrett, PhD, is the author of PERSONOLOGY, Using the Science of Personality Change to Your Advantage.

What 'Derailment' Can Teach Us About Depression

People move houses, change jobs, and begin new relationships all the time-and yet most of us still experience a thread of inner continuity, a constant feeling of me-ness that transcends the various chapters of our lives. Indeed, theres evidence that having a stable, constant sense of self and identity is important for psychological wellbeing. However, this thread can rupture, leading to an uncomfortable disconnect between who we feel we are today, and the person that we believe we used to bea...

'Derailment' Is the Latest Theory Psychologists Have to Explain Depression

The controversial implication is that depressed people deliberately act in ways that are likely to maintain their low mood. Now a <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-10869-001" id="8e48de19-ad88-3f6d-a175-03dc99752233"> study </a> in the journal Emotion has replicated this finding, but the researchers also present evidence suggesting depressed people are not seeking to maintain their negative feelings, but rather that they find sad music calming and even uplifting.

The current study is the most definitive to date in probing depression-related preferences for sad music using different tasks, and the reasons for these preferences, write the team at the University of South Florida, led by Sunkyung Yoon.

The research involved 38 female undergrads diagnosed with depression and 38 non-depressed female undergrad controls. The first part of the study was a replication attempt using the same materials as the 2015 paper that found depressed people preferred sad music. The participants listened to 30-second excerpts of sad (Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber and Rakavot by Avi Balili), happy, and neutral music, and stated which they would prefer to listen to again in the future. Successfully replicating the earlier research, Yoon and his team found that their depressed participants were more likely to choose the sad music clips.

However, unlike in that earlier research, Yoons team also asked their participants why they made the choices they did. The majority of the participants with depression who favored sad music said that they did so because it was relaxing, calming, or soothing.

The second part of the study used new music samples: 84 pairs of 10-second clips of instrumental film music, contrasting happy, sad, fear-inducing, neutral, and also high and low energy tracks. In each case the same participants as before indicated which music theyd prefer to listen to again later. They also heard all the samples again at the end and stated what effect they had on their emotions.

The researchers found again that people with depression had a far greater preference than controls for sad, low-energy music (but not fear-inducing music). Critically, though, when they heard these clips again, they reported that they made them feel more happiness and less sadness, contradicting the provocative idea that depressed people are seeking to perpetuate their low mood.

This study is unable to speak to why depressed people find low-energy, sad music uplifting, although common sense suggests that if you are feeling down, then a fast-paced, happy clappy tune might be irritating and inappropriate, whereas a more soothing, serious tune could be comforting. Further clues come from <a href="https://digest.bps.org.uk/2013/07/15/why-do-people-like-listening-to-sad-music-when-theyre-feeling-down/" id="7b663c83-b69c-3a89-a449-13891d5febd4"> another recent study </a> that investigated why (non-depressed) people generally like listening to sad music when theyre feeling down for instance, some participants said the sad music acted like a supportive friend.

The new research involved only a small sample of female undergrads, and it only looked at emotional effects over a short time frame. Yoon and his colleagues acknowledge more research is needed to find out why exactly depressed people favor sad music. For now though, the new findings suggest that this preference may reflect a desire for calming emotional experience rather than a desire to augment sad feelings.

Christian Jarrett, PhD, is a psychologist and the editor of BPS Research Digest, where this article originally appeared. Read the original <a href="https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/04/24/why-do-people-with-depression-like-listening-to-sad-music/" id="dcf4fed6-c605-3eb0-ae2a-e268d6d5870b"> article here </a> .

Why Depressed People Like Listening to Sad Music

We all know the powerful effect that music can have on mood. You might be feeling rather chirpy, but then a tear-jerker comes on the car radio and you arrive home feeling morose. For most of us, these effects are not a big deal. But what if you are living with depression? Now the implications become more serious. And according to a provocative <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797615583295" id="0c95c358-e4fd-3d3b-a99f-096b03983d94"> study </a> published a few years ag...

Why People Like Listening to Sad Music When They're Depressed

Reporting <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810018303350?dgcid=raven_sd_via_email" id="7ec30a22-914a-34cc-a7da-26e7a2c847aa"> their findings in the journal Consciousness and Cognition </a> , the researchers write that people may be more aroused simply after walking by a coffee shop. Not only would they be more aroused, but at a more downstream level, their decision making might shift as well.

The intriguing results come from four studies involving hundreds of online and lab-based participants. Given the <a href="https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/01/02/now-john-barghs-famous-hot-coffee-study-has-failed-to-replicate/" id="afb43629-01da-319f-a30e-53eb0cf044fc"> replication problems </a> in the general area of social priming (concerned with how abstract ideas and sensory experiences can influence thoughts and behavior, and vice versa), some readers may find that merely hearing about this new research is enough to elevate their pulse and alter their mindset to a more skeptical mode.

The four studies followed a similar pattern and no drinks were actually ingested. They started with participants being cued to think about either coffee or tea. In one study, they had to come up with advertising slogans for coffee or tea (depending on which group they were allocated to); in the other studies, they read either a mocked-up health news story about the benefits of drinking coffee, or a version pertaining to tea.

These reminders were then followed by a measure of the participants physiological arousal levels, either self-reported (how alert, energetic, and excited they were feeling) or based on their heart rate. And finally, the participants completed a measure of their construal levelessentially how much they were thinking in a focused or literal way, or more abstractly. This final measure mostly took the form of categorizing activities, such as deciding whether making a list is an example of getting organized (more abstract) or writing things down (more literal).

Overall, the results showed that thinking about and being reminded of coffee increased participants physiological arousal levels compared with thinking about and being reminded of tea. This greater arousal, in turn, prompted a more literal, focused thinking style.

One of the studies showed that this arousing, cognition-altering effect of coffee reminders only played out for Western participants, not for participants from Eastern countries where coffee is less popular and does not have the same connotations related to energy, focus, and ambition.

Another study showed that the cognition-altering effect of coffee reminders was enhanced by watching an exciting clip from the Fast and Furious movie and nullified by a clip from the less exciting House of Rock, which the researchers said bolstered the idea that the effect of the coffee reminders on thinking style was acting via the changes it induced in arousal.

The researchers noted that they were agnostic on whether these apparent effects of coffee reminders are advantageous or not. Presumably, it would depend on the circumstances. They called for more research to explore the implications of their findings, concluding that our research adds to the literature documenting that the foods we eat and the beverages we drink do more than simply providing nutrition or pleasure. Mere exposure to or reminders of them can affect how we think.

Readers might understandably question the practical significance of the effects documented here. For some perspective, the average heart rate for the coffee group was 76 beats per minute, compared with 70 beats per minute for the tea group. They will probably also want to see the findings replicated before reading too much into them.

Another issue was that there was no baseline condition. Rather, the coffee reminders were always compared to tea reminders. Therefore, one could arguably interpret the results as showing that reminders of tea reduce arousal and induce a more abstract thinking style, rather than that coffee increases arousal and induces a concrete thinking style.

The researchers acknowledged the need for follow-up studies, writing that they "await further work to replicate our basic effects, providing practitioners and researchers further credence in the validity and reliability of the findings.

Why Just Thinking About Coffee Wakes You Up

So entrenched is the association between coffee and ideas of ambition and focus that merely thinking about the drink is enough to increase the bodys arousal levels and focus your thoughts, according to researchers at Monash University and the University of Toronto.

Just Thinking About Coffee Is Enough to Wake You Up, New Study Finds

If this is your experience, you may welcome <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0301006619827486?journalCode=peca" id="7de104e6-a3d1-3086-aaaf-385b2c730896"> a study </a> published recently in the journal Perception that documents a phenomenon known as the eye contact illusion." Put simply, we are not that good at telling whether an interlocutor is looking us in the eye or not. In fact, we tend to think they are, even when theyre not (a bias that is <a href="https://digest.bps.org.uk/2016/08/16/after-rejection-your-brain-performs-this-subtle-trick-to-help-you-make-friends/" id="961fdc8e-05ae-3a55-a3b3-e85020a96ddf"> magnified </a> after weve been rejected). Thanks to this illusion, you can give the impression of making eye contact simply by ensuring you are looking in the general direction of your conversants face.

To demonstrate the eye contact illusion, one member of the Edith Cowan University research team, Oliver Guidetti, held 4-minute getting to know you chats with 46 male and female university students. Both Guidetti and the students he spoke with wore eye tracking glasses. For half the students, Guidetti made plenty of eye contact (around 77 percent of the time, resulting in mutual eye contact during 52 percent of the chat) just as he usually would. For the other students, he chatted in the same casual way, but deliberately reduced his eye contact to around 25 per cent, focusing more on the mouth region of their faces instead (resulting in mutual eye contact for just 3 percent of the chat).

The critical test was how much the students in the two groups believed Guidetti had tried to make eye contact and how much they enjoyed the chat. In fact, both groups of students perceived the same amount of eye contact and enjoyed the chat the same amount. A follow-up experiment confirmed this wasnt because the eye-tracking glasses made it hard to judge gaze direction.

The researchers, including lead author Shane Rogers, said their findings were consistent with past evidence suggesting that, during normal conversation, the perception of eye contact is driven by the other person looking in the general direction of your face, not into your eyes specifically. The new findings may be reassuring to anyone who wants to be a good communicator but who finds eye contact uncomfortably intense. Dont get hung up on seeking out the eyes of the audience, just look more generally at their face, and let the eye contact illusion experienced by your partner do the work for you, the researchers advised.

<a href="http://www.psychologywriter.org.uk/Index/Welcome.html" id="52751dfd-da16-3136-a272-fb29e58d582f"> Christian Jarrett </a> is the author of the forthcoming book Personology: Using the Science of Personality Change to Your Advantage.

This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on <a href="https://digest.bps.org.uk/" id="37e5577b-ace4-3b77-af11-8ea88c921400"> Research Digest </a> , published by the <a href="http://bps.org.uk/" id="efcf7cd3-982e-3657-a547-6012f2fb716f"> British Psychological Society </a> . Read the <a href="https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/03/18/first-study-to-explore-what-its-like-to-live-with-avoidant-personality-disorder-safe-when-alone-yet-lost-in-their-aloneness/" id="9c19137f-8a12-3b05-ae77-15e931cb1ac5"> original article </a> .

How to Maintain Eye Contact if You're Anxious

Were taught from an early age that it's polite and assertive to look people in the eyes when were talking to them. Psychology research backs this up: People who make plenty of <a href="https://digest.bps.org.uk/2016/11/28/the-psychology-of-eye-contact-digested/" id="a9283e2f-5296-36d1-a750-7a7e402457f9"> eye contact </a> -as long as its not excessive-are usually perceived as more competent, trustworthy, and intelligent. If you want to make a good impression, then, its probably a good idea to...

Here's a Simple Trick for Anyone Who Struggles to Maintain Eye Contact

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Christian Jarrett

Articles written by the author

'Derailment' Is the Latest Theory Psychologists Have to Explain Depression

Why People Like Listening to Sad Music When They're Depressed

Just Thinking About Coffee Is Enough to Wake You Up, New Study Finds

Here's a Simple Trick for Anyone Who Struggles to Maintain Eye Contact