Category: Psychology

Quarantine Conditions Conspire Against “Flow”

(p. A24) Because I’m a mother, and because I once wrote a book about modern parenthood, I’ve spent a lot of time these days trying to diagnose why it is, exactly, that the nerves of so many parents have been torn to ribbons in the age of quarantine.

. . .

. . . : “Flow” is that heavenly state of total absorption in a project. Your sense of time vanishes; it’s just you and the task at hand, whether it’s painting or sinking shots through a basketball hoop.

It turns out that flow is critical to our well-being during this strange time of self-exile. A few weeks ago I spoke to Kate Sweeny, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, who recently collaborated on a survey of 5,115 people under quarantine in China. To her surprise, the people who best tolerated their confinement were not the most mindful or optimistic; they were the ones who’d found the most flow. She suspected it was why Americans have spent the last two months baking bread and doing puzzles. “They’re intuitively seeking out flow activities,” she said.

Flow, unfortunately, is rare in family life. The father of flow research, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, told me so point-blank when I wrote my book. When kids are small, their developing brains actually conspire against flow, because they’re wired to sweep in as much stimuli as possible, rather than to focus; even when they’re older, they’re still churning windmills of need.

And that’s during the best of times. Now, not only are we looking after our children, an inherently non-flow activity, and not only are we supervising their schoolwork and recreational pursuits — two things we used to outsource — but we’re working.

You need a stretch of continuous, unmolested time to do good work. Instead, your day is a torrent of interruptions, endlessly divided and subdivided, a Zeno’s paradox of infinite tasks. There’s no flow at all.

For the full commentary, see:

Jennifer Senior. “We’re Not Really Parenting. We’re Managing Parenthood in a Pandemic.” The New York Times (Monday, May 25, 2020): A24.

(Note: ellipses added; italics in original.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date May 24, 2020, and the title “Camp Is Canceled. Three More Months of Family Time. Help.”)

The book Senior mentions above, is:

Senior, Jennifer. All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2014.

“How Swimming Frees Their Minds”

(p. 11) Tsui endears herself to the reader . . . . Her universal query is also one of self, and her articulations of what she learns are moving. Long-distance swimmers speak to her about how swimming frees their minds, of their sense of “sea-dreaming.” And Tsui’s argument about the unique state of flow one enters while swimming makes you desperately long to be in the pool or the ocean. Water becomes the mind’s sanctuary while the body moves in its best imitations of a fish.

For the full review, see:

Mary Pols. “Deep Dive.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, June 14, 2020): 11.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date April [sic] 14, 2020, and has the title “Eat. Sleep. Swim. Repeat.”)

The book under review is:

Tsui, Bonnie. Why We Swim. New York: Algonquin Books, 2020.

Germans Were “Seduced” by Nazi “Optimism”

(p. C7) In some perceptive passages in the earlier stages of this book, Mr. Fritzsche examines how, during the party’s years in opposition, the Nazis were able to broaden their support away from the original ideological core to voters who, for example, just thought that “something” had to be done to sort out a deeply unsettled country.  . . .

What the author stresses is that, contrary to what is so often assumed, many Germans were seduced not by despair but by optimism. Mr. Fritzsche sets out the ways that the Nazis produced the impression that the party was creating a Volksgemeinschaft—a people’s community—through such methods as transforming the Left’s traditional celebration of (p. C8) the first of May into “The Day of National Labor,” a festival of national unity rather than class struggle.

. . .

Mr. Gellately differs from many in the weight he places on the appeal of the “socialist” element in an ideology that, almost from its earliest days, had combined nationalism and anti-Semitism with a distrust of capitalism.

. . .

It was probably the memory of that Volksgemeinschaft, however much it rested on illusion, that explains one of the most remarkable facts in Mr. Gellately’s book: When Germans in the country’s west and in West Berlin—a people still living amid the ruins of the Reich—were asked in 1948 whether National Socialism was a good idea, but poorly implemented, 57% of those polled replied “yes.”

For the full review, see:

Andrew Stuttaford. “High-Speed History.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, June 13, 2020): C7-C8.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review was updated on June 12, 2020, and has the title “Three on the Third Reich: High-Speed History.”)

The two books mentioned in the passages quoted above, are:

Fritzsche, Peter. Hitler’s First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich. New York: Basic Books, 2020.

Gellately, Robert. Hitler’s True Believers: How Ordinary People Became Nazis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Oliver Williamson’s Subtle Attempt to Get Pablo Spiller to Turn Down the Music

Several years ago, I presented a paper in an economic methodology session at the AEA in which Williamson also presented a paper. He was a fellow pluralist in method. I think his work deserves more attention than I have given it. The profession will be worse for his absence.

(p. A9) Building on the work of Ronald Coase, Dr. Williamson developed transaction-cost economics, examining costs that go beyond the price of a good or service.

. . .

Some of Dr. Williamson’s thinking took shape when he worked for the Justice Department’s antitrust division in 1966 and 1967.

The department had accused Schwinn & Co. of restraining trade by limiting the retailing of its bicycles to authorized merchants. The conventional wisdom among antitrust enforcers was that such arrangements could be explained only as an effort to reduce competition.

Dr. Williamson found the question more complicated and argued that Schwinn’s motive might be to reduce costs. For instance, a restricted number of retailers would make it less costly to control quality and agree on how to share advertising expenses. The resulting increase in efficiency could benefit consumers.

. . .

Pablo Spiller, a friend and Berkeley colleague who lived across the street from Dr. Williamson, recalled that he spoke precisely but not always directly. One night Dr. Spiller was playing music a bit too loudly. Dr. Williamson called. Rather than mentioning the volume, he said: “You know, I actually like the current song more than all the previous ones.”

For the full obituary, see:

James R. Hagerty. “Economist Explored Inner Life of Firms.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, June 6, 2020): A9.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date June 4, 2020, and the title “Oliver Williamson, Nobel Economics Winner, Studied Inner Life of Firms.”)

Masks Do Not Cover Genuine Smiles

(p. D3) Women do tend to smile more than men, across age groups and ethnicities. But it’s not necessarily because they are happier; in fact, women suffer higher rates of depression. Rather, said Marianne LaFrance, a psychologist at Yale University who studies gender and nonverbal communication, women feel pressure to smile, and they can be penalized if they don’t.

“Women get completely socialized that smiling should be the default expression on their face,” said Dr. LaFrance, the author of “Why Smile? The Science Behind Facial Expressions.” “So everyone expects it, including women themselves.”

. . .

As Dr. LaFrance described it, it is the social, obligatory smile — “which is the one that women do the most,” she said — that tends to be focused on the mouth muscles, easily covered up by a medical mask. But a genuine smile, or what is know in the field as the Duchenne smile (named for Guillaume Duchenne), a French anatomist who discovered it, involves both the mouth and the eyes.

“What’s interesting,” Dr. LaForce said, is that the facial muscle engaged by a genuine smile — what’s called the orbicularis oculi — can’t be used on command.

“So will the mask stifle a smile? No. Not unless it’s a fake one,” she said.

For the full commentary, see:

Jessica Bennett. “How Emotions Play Out Behind the Masks.” The New York Times (Thursday, June 11, 2020): D3.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date June 10, 2020 and has the title “Silver Lining to the Mask? Not Having to Smile”.)

The book by LaFrance, mentioned in a passage quoted above, is:

LaFrance, Marianne. Why Smile?: The Science Behind Facial Expressions. pb ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013.

Coffee Gives Us “More Ideas, More Talk, More Energy, More Time, More Life”

(p. C4) After five centuries, we still have questions about coffee, but we agree on what we need it to do. Most of us drink coffee not because we have a finely calibrated understanding of its role in blocking the adenosine that makes us feel tired and increasing the dopamine that makes us feel good. Instead, we drink coffee because . . . of our bottomless desire for more ideas, more talk, more energy, more time, more life.

For the full commentary, see:

Augustine Sedgewick. “How Coffee Became a Modern Necessity.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, April 4, 2020): C4.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the same date and title as the print version.)

Sedgewick’s commentary is related to her book:

Sedgewick, Augustine. Coffeeland: One Man’s Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favorite Drug. New York: Penguin Press, 2020.

Data Retrieval Does Not Equal Creativity

(p. F2) Steve Jobs once described personal computing as a “bicycle for the mind.”

His idea that computers can be used as “intelligence amplifiers” that offer an important boost for human creativity is now being given an immediate test in the face of the coronavirus.

In March [2020], a group of artificial intelligence research groups and the National Library of Medicine announced that they had organized the world’s scientific research papers about the virus so the documents, more than 44,000 articles, could be explored in new ways using a machine-learning program designed to help scientists see patterns and find relationships to aid research.

. . .

Jerry Kaplan, an artificial-intelligence researcher who was involved with two of Silicon Valley’s first A.I. companies, Symantec and Teknowledge during the 1980s, pointed out that the new language modeling software was actually just a new type of database retrieval technology, rather than an advance toward any kind of “thinking machine.”

“Creativity is still entirely on the human side,” he said. “All this particular tool is doing is making it possible to get insights that would otherwise take years of study.”

For the full commentary, see:

John Markoff. “You Need A.I. to Spell Creative.” The New York Times (Thursday, April 9, 2020): F2.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 8, 2020, and has the title “You Can’t Spell Creative Without A.I.”)

“Masks Are Pilloried Until They Are Mandatory”

(p. 6) The surreal reality of American cities and towns also mirrors the half-remembered, half-empty approximations explored in sleep, ordered by the same pliable, foggy logic: Masks are pilloried until they are mandatory; liquor stores open early for sexagenarians only; an invisible plague makes people fall gravely ill seemingly at random; touching anything — everything — is banned.

For the full story, see:

Caity Weaver. “The Interpretation of Viral Dreams.” The New York Times, SundayStyles Section (Sunday, April 12, 2020): 6.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 11, 2020, and has the title “Why Am I Having Weird Dreams Lately?”)

Baiju May Violate the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility

I remember Gary Becker suggesting that there may be rare exceptions to the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility. Maybe baiju, discussed below, is one of those rare exceptions?

(p. A13) Newcomers to China are usually horrified by their first encounter with baijiu, the fiery spirit consumed at banquets and family dinners, typically comparing it to jet fuel, paint stripper or drain cleaner. Even long-term expatriates often shudder at the stuff. So can foreigners learn to love baijiu? Derek Sandhaus proves it is possible. But it takes some work, as he describes in “Drunk in China.”

A Mandarin-speaker and the trailing spouse of an American diplomat to China, Mr. Sandhaus sniffs his first glass of baijiu and compares it to “the last whiff one senses before waking up in a serial killer’s rumpus room.” So when a friend tells him it takes 300 shots to learn to love the liquor, he accepts the challenge and starts a blog about his odyssey. The promised epiphany comes after 70 shots when Mr. Sandhaus cracks open a bottle of National Cellar 1573, made by Sichuan’s Luzhou Laojiao distillery. “This was not simply a magnificent baijiu,” he writes. “It was a magnificent drink. Period.”

. . .

China’s distillers need to find new markets for baijiu, and Mr. Sandhaus has embraced this mission with the zeal of a convert. He co-founded Ming River Sichuan Baijiu to sell a baijiu produced by Luzhou Laojiao, the same distillery that produces the 1573 hooch he first fell in love with. He believes that cosmopolitans will embrace authentic Chinese baijiu if it is presented in a familiar form. To that end, he promotes the creation of baijiu cocktails. It’s a gutsy bet, especially by one who initially thought baijiu “smelled as if someone had wrung a garbage bag of soiled gym shorts into a bucket of fish sauce, stirred in an equal measure of Drano, rotten fruit, and blue cheese, and left it to marinate a few days.”

For the full review, see:

Hugo Restall. “BOOKSHELF; The Proletariat’s White Wine.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, January 17, 2020): A13.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date Jan. 16, 2020, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; ‘Drunk in China’ Review: The Proletariat’s White Wine.”)

The book under review, is:

Sandhaus, Derek. Drunk in China: Baijiu and the World’s Oldest Drinking Culture. Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2020.

In Covid-19 Lockdown, Cars Allow a Private Escape from Crowded Noisy Homes

(p. D6) Public spaces are hard to safely navigate, or totally off-limits and, as a result, I haven’t felt this strongly about my car since I was 16 — not just grateful, but deeply attached. Not just attached, but somehow amalgamated.

Every car is a getaway, even when it’s parked.

In my neighborhood, where so many people live in multigenerational homes, parked cars now double as quiet meeting spaces, meditation rooms, listening stations, nap pods, whatever extra spaces we need.

We sip coffee, fight loudly and make out in our cars. We eat snacks and take important phone calls and watch TikTok videos and put the seats way back and just breathe.

I haven’t seen my brother, who lives 15 minutes away from me, in weeks. He uses his tiny car as an office. Never mind that the floor is covered in Cheerios, and the windows are dotted with peeling stickers.

Week Three of lockdown, and it’s a privilege if you can work safely, in isolation, if you can escape momentarily into your car. Even if — especially if — you have nowhere else to go but home.

For the full commentary, see:

Tejal Rao. “Car Culture Has a New Meaning.” The New York Times (Wednesday, April 1, 2020): D6.

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 31, 2020, and has the title “Dining and Driving on the Empty Freeways of Los Angeles.”)

Lincoln Was “Always Full of This Loneliness and Sadness”

(p. C6) What’s the most surprising thing you learned while writing it?

I’ve read all these books about how Lincoln was hated, but I was still surprised by how disdained and disliked he was by so many of his contemporaries. Liberal Republicans thought he was too calculating, too quick to weigh public opinion. Democrats thought he was a tyrant, a rube, and was destroying the Constitution. I think a lot of this was airbrushed out of history after he was assassinated, when he became a martyr. But when you go back to that day and look at what people were saying, you get a stunning sense of what Lincoln was up against. There’s a lot of hostility from all sides. I’m not sure how he withstood it. I guess he was defeated so many times in his life, had been down so many times, that he was able to take almost anything.

And Lincoln is always surprising to me for his extremely peculiar qualities. He’s got this immense intelligence, and he’s always full of this loneliness and sadness. He goes up to the inauguration alone. He’s a strange guy. He has an ability to step outside himself and to view issues dispassionately. All of those qualities are seen in the book.

For the full interview, see:

John Williams, interviewer. “5 THINGS ABOUT YOUR BOOK; Edward Achorn; For Lincoln, a Beginning Near the End.” The New York Times (Monday, February 24, 2020): C6.

(Note: bold in original.)

(Note: the online version of the interview has the date February 24, 2020, and has the title “5 THINGS ABOUT YOUR BOOK; 24 Tense Hours in Abraham Lincoln’s Life.” Williams’s question is in bold; Achorn’s answer is not in bold.)

Achorn’s book, that he discussed in the passages of the interview quoted above, is:

Achorn, Edward. Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2020.