Your Football Team

"A guy can change anything. His face, his home, his family, his girlfriend, his religion, his God. But there’s one thing he can’t change. He can’t change his passion."

 

~ Pablo Sandoval - El secreto de sus ojos (The Secret In Their Eyes).

 

Definitely one of the best crime films I've ever seen. A 2009 movie, it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 82nd Academy Awards.

The above quote tied in with the criminals love for his local football team, and the words ring so true. But football fans in general seem to have this idea that they couldn't have supported any other team. And I would include myself in that too. The thoughts of supporting anyone other than Manchester United just seems ridiculous. Frightening in fact.

Now unless you come from a household with a father, mother or older siblings who supported a certain team, yes you're probably going to be influenced by them and moulded by that environment. But it's a myth to think that you couldn't have supported any other team. It was just what you were exposed to in that time of your life. At that particular moment that set the tone for the future. The ups and downs. Downs mainly if you're currently supporting Louis Van Gaal and his "philosophy".

However once the choice is pinned down, especially at a young age, it's set for life. There is no going back. And the slagging of other fans and calling them fickle or 'typical', you could have been one of those fans yourself if the path was different. I mean if you supported that rival team, would you suddenly be ascribed with these features for choosing to support them?

 

No obviously. But we all assume so.
I do it regularly. And it's just a very strange thing.

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Depressive Disorders

The causes of depression are mixed. There is no one cause for depression - even for a single person. And so we think of it as a risk factor model: where depression develops in the context of risks, and when those risks get high enough, the person goes over some threshold to develop this self-sustaining depression. Those risks might be divided into three categories; psychological, environmental and biological.

On the biological side we have genetics and other physiological factors which can give the person a predisposition towards being depressed. The psychological aspect can include thinking patterns or cognitive style personalities that may leave a person at a greater risk for depression. While environmental factors can include the stressors the person faces and a lack of social support. When the sum total of all these risk factors get high enough, then that can push us over some threshold and we go into a period of clinical depression. For some people, one of those three factors may be stronger than the other but it's unlikely that there is one cause - there's usually some balance of all of the factors. Nevertheless, all of the risk factors should be attended to.

As depression begins to take hold, people stop performing behaviours that previously provided reinforcement, such as hobbies and socialising. Moreover, depressed people tend to make others feel anxious, depressed and hostile (Joiner and Coyne, 1999). Eventually, these other people begin to lose patience, failing to understand why the person just can't snap out of it. This diminishes social support even further and may eventually cause depressed people to be abandoned by those who are most important to them (Nezlek et al., 2000). Additionally, longitudinal studies show that reductions in social support are a good predictor of subsequent depression (Burton, 2004).

 

In short, behavioural theorists believe that to begin feeling better, depressed people must break this vicious cycle by initially forcing themselves to engage in behaviours that are likely to produce some degree of pleasure. Eventually, positive reinforcement produced by this process of behavioural activation will begin to counteract the depressive affect, undermine the sense of hopelessness that characterizes depression, and increase feelings of personal control over the environment.
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''If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather. Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness, and loneliness they’re going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side. It’s hard to be a friend to someone who’s depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do.''
              ~ Stephen Fry

The Chameleon Effect

According to authors Chartrand and Bargh ,"The chameleon effect refers to nonconscious mimicry of the postures, mannerisms, facial expressions, and other behaviors of one's interaction partners, such that one's behavior passively and unintentionally changes to match that of others in one's current social environment." (Journal Of Personality and Social Psychology, 1999).

 
How many times have you yawned after viewing another person do it? Or noticed your tone of voice depended on the company you were in. What about meeting up with people from where you used to grow up and now realising that your homeland accent has suddenly started coming out of your mouth...

 

The chameleon effect can happen naturally and frequently because we feel a rapport with people who mimic our moves. Most of us do it automatically to varying degrees, we mimic the people around us all the time without even realizing it.

 

In one study of the chameleon effect, Chartrand and Bargh found that students who rated high on empathy were more likely to imitate others. "Those who pay more attention mimic more," says Chartrand.

 

We also mimic the facial expressions of other people. This is so hardwired that one-month old infants have been shown to smile, stick out their tongues, and open their mouths when they see someone else doing the same (Meltzoff & Moore, 1977).

Unintentional mimicry and imitation functions as a social cohesive. The chameleon effect actually becomes a warm response that facilitates social interactions. Mirroring a persons language shows that you understand your conversation partner, and that you are an empathetic listener.

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''When you are in the company of lunatics, behave like a lunatic. When you are in the company of intelligentsias, speak with brilliance...that is how a chameleon behaves, the territory changes it, and it adapts to the changes.''
                                                                                                                    ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Is intelligence best understood in terms of 'g' (or as a multidimensional construct)?

Even after more than a century of research and theory development, there is still sharp disagreements about what intelligence is. Psychologists have not reached a consensus about how to define intelligence. Some common themes often include; adaption to the environment, the potential for individuals to understand the world around them, basic mental processes, higher-order thinking (e.g. reasoning), problem solving, and decision making.

 

Much of the debate around intelligence is whether it is a general ability or several distinct abilities.

The following is the APA task force definition: ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought, - a fairly comprehensive definition to say the least!

 

The argument for intelligence as a general ability was first advanced by a British psychologist named Charles Spearman (1863 - 1945), the first major theory of intelligence. General intelligence, also known as g factor, refers to the existence of a general intelligence that influences performance on mental ability measures - a single, unitary quality within the human mind. He interpreted it as the core of human intelligence.

 

According to Spearman, this g factor was responsible for overall performance on mental ability tests. Thus Spearman would argue that your performance in a maths test would depend mainly on your general intelligence but also on your specific ability to learn mathematics. Those who hold this view believe that intelligence can be measured and expressed by a single number, such as an IQ score. The idea is that this underlying general intelligence influences performance on all cognitive tasks.

 

Further, it captures the kinds of general mental flexibility needed to cope with novelty, read the environment, draw conclusions and choose how and when to act (Lubinski, 2004).

 

However, an important question to be asked about intelligence is how much of our intelligence is shaped by genetic factors and how much by the environment we live in? It has long been recognised that genes and the environment are not additive, in the sense that x percent of intelligence is caused by genes and y percent by the environment. Rather, they interact with each other in causing the development of all human characteristics, including intelligence.

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''Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven''

                             ~ Edward De Bono

Did Jesus have the IQ of a Cornflake?

The Flynn Effect, this 'rising-curve' phenomenon is James Flynn's explanation of the rise in mean IQ scores during the 20th century (Rowe & Rodgers, 2002). He and his colleagues were the first to notice this rise and it is now fairly accepted that there is one. The phenomenon was first observed in New Zealand in the 1980’s, that different generations of people seemed to be scoring increasingly higher results in standard intelligence tests. It has been shown and is universally accepted that word knowledge has risen significantly in the last 20 years by about 5 verbal IQ points (Nettelbeck & Wilson, 2004).

''Ah, I see! So the line going up means more smarteredness''

''If the present generation is put at 100, their grandparents had a mean IQ of 82.36.  Either today's children are so bright that they should run circles around us, or their grandparents were so dull that it is surprising that they could keep a modern society ticking over'' (Flynn).

 

One could argue that the Flynn Effect is not down to biological factors but more so environmental factors (Nijenhuis, 2011), such as the advances in technology and education, e.g. that technology aids the transmission of information to all corners of the globe. Better nutrition and more education possibilities may have resulted in IQ improvements for each generation (APA).

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We're living in an era of smart phones and stupid people