News category: News

January 11th 2011.

If there’s one thing the U.S. economy is booming in, it’s the production of mass quantities of onlookers. We have become a nation of spectators, zoning into the glow of digital and high-def screens, cocooned in entertainment centers, oblivious to the sun in the sky, the breeze in the trees, and the mandate in our bones to be more than observers to our own lives. Like the Chauncey Gardiner character in Being There, we like to watch.

Some, hypnotized by their smart phones, step off curbs into oncoming traffic and wind up in the ER, the latest “text-walking” case. The other day I saw a woman, head down in her phone, sauntering through a red light on a major street while dozens of cars waited. She was clueless that she was a walking bowling pin. Others are so enamored by “Mafia Wars” or “Grand Theft Auto” that significant others are reduced to arcade props. And plenty of others are convinced that the only entertainment is what comes from the giant screen in the living room.

Read the full story at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-robinson/spectator-nation-screen-junkie_b_806570.html?ref=tw

By Joe Robinson

December 1st 2009.

I love spending time outside. From wild places like the backcountry of the Sierra Nevada mountains, to the mundane nature in my back yard, I find comfort in my natural experiences. These places are restful. Peaceful. They restore my batteries, and help me to focus. And I am not alone in these experiences. People around the world seek out natural experiences. Even when confined to built spaces, we add pets, plants, pictures, and momentos from nature. It is part of who we are, and these experiences in nature help us reflect on what is important in life.

But a recent article by researchers at the University of Rochester shows that experiences with nature can affect more than our mood. In a series of studies, Netta Weinstein, Andrew Przybylski, and Richard Ryan, University of Rochester, show that exposure to nature can affect our priorities and alter what we think is important in life. In short, we become less self-focused and more other-focused. Our value priorities shift from personal gain, to a broader focus on community and connection with others.

Read the full story at:

Originally posted at:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/moral-call-of-the-wild/

By P. Wesley Schultz

November 15th 2010.

If humans were cars, we would have been recalled a long time ago for a key fix in the ignition equipment. A serious defect keeps our desire machinery defaulting to a belief that other people, goodies, or status can make us happy or worthy — the exact opposite of what can do the job. This leads to a lot of stall-outs as we chase external payoffs that can’t possibly satisfy us.

So what do we really need? That’s the 64-zillion-dollar question. If we knew the answer, we’d know exactly how to get what would satisfy us. How big would that be? For most of human history, the answer to that question has been a gray area that sales folks have happily filled in for us, creating needs where there weren’t any for designer togas or shoes with blinking lights in them. Luckily, we live in a time when some very sharp minds have deciphered the correct motivational wiring.

Edward Deci and Richard Ryan of the University of Rochester have led the way, with an aspirational framework known as self-determination theory. I find it amazing that this remarkable tool hasn’t made its way into the public consciousness. Self-determination theory is a veritable GPS to fulfillment, decoding our innermost longings and linking the world of science and spirit. It’s been vetted by hundreds of scientists in more than a dozen cultures.

I

Read the full story at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-robinson/3-core-needs-happiness_b_781833.html

By Joe Robinson

November 8th 2010.

Left alone in a room, a group of people were given a complicated seven-piece puzzle, known as a Soma cube, and told to assemble the pieces into specific designs. One group was offered a monetary reward for each correctly assembled puzzle; another group was offered nothing. They worked at the puzzles until being told they could stop. And then the experiment really began.

Edward Deci, the research psychologist behind the study, told the subjects to read a collection of magazines while he recorded his findings. Instead of tabulating the puzzle data, he observed the subsequent behavior of both groups. The group promised payment tended to quit assembling the puzzles, picking up the magazines instead. The group offered nothing was more likely to keep trying.

“When money was used as an external reward, intrinsic motivation tended to decrease,” Deci wrote of the experiment. (Click this link to read the full paper, “The Effects of Externally Mediated Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation,” as a PDF.)

Read the full story at:

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/11/can-social-sharing-survive-the-rise-of-rewards-based-campaigns312

By Mya Frazier

October 13th 2010.

Knox College’s Tim Kasser and Richard Ryan, from the University of Rochester, have documented that external goals like appearance and possessions are associated with lower self-esteem, higher anxiety and lower well-being. Jennifer Crocker of the University of Michigan reports that, when self-esteem is based on external measures like appearance and approval, there is more stress, anger, and substance abuse. Whatever strokes we think we get from the coolest duds or hotspots, they’re gone by the next morning, and we have to get more. External verifications don’t convince, because the approval isn’t coming from you. It would appear, then, that being cool is uncool for your happiness.

Read the full story at:

Originally posted at

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-robinson/are-cool-people-more-inse_b_757462.html

By Joe Robinson

September 20th 2010.

With unemployment idling near 10%, the negative effect of job loss on mental health has assumed a sharp relevance. Losing work has been linked to depressive symptoms, heavy alcohol use and even long-term psychological damage.

But research suggests that loss of income explains only part of this pain. The rest has something to do with the deep connection people forge between themselves and their work.

In several recent studies, social scientists have zeroed in on why paychecks alone can’t explain the link between work and well-being. The evidence shows that people can find meaning in seemingly insignificant jobs and that even trivial tasks make us far happier than no tasks at all.

“We become very dedicated to things it would be hard to be dedicated to if we were perfectly rational,” says behavioral scientist Dan Ariely, author of “The Upside of Irrationality,” published in June. “It turns out you can give people lots of meaning in lots of ways, even small ones.”

Read the full story at:

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/20/health/la-he-work-motivation-20100920

By Eric Jaffe

August 2010.

 You’ve been working on Self-Determination Theory for a long time. How did it all begin?

I’m a clinical psychologist. The very first motivation project I was involved in, back in the late 1970s, was in schools, and we saw what a big impact classroom teachers were having, not only on learning but on the well-being and self-esteem of the students as a function of their motivation-related practices. This impact occurred within the first three to five weeks of the school year, in fourth, fifth and sixth graders in public school.

As a clinical psychologist, I appreciated how big an effect that was and thought it was important to follow-up and do more research on it. At the time, I was already collaborating with Ed Deci, who is my co-author on this highly cited 2000 paper. So we started to talk about an approach to studying this and a theory to explain it. This, of course, led to the early formulations of Self-Determination Theory, which have since been elaborated by formal theory and experimentation.

Read the full story at:

http://archive.sciencewatch.com/inter/aut/2010/10-aug/10augRyan/

By Science Watch

August 2010.

Ten years ago, the popular business reporter and author Daniel Pink began researching why an increasing number of people were leaving jobs in large organizations to work for themselves. He encountered—“in a pretty cursory way,” as he explains it—work on human motivation by Rochester experimental psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan.

Two years later, Pink began researching how people might be motivated to do creative work. He returned to the work of Deci and Ryan. What he found, he says, was “an absolute treasure trove of research on human motivation”—much of it generated from initial research led by the two professors in Rochester’s Department of Clinical and Social Psychology. In his 2009 book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Pink placed Deci and Ryan front and center.

“Deci and Ryan, in my view, are the sun around which all this other research orbits,” Pink says. “They’re true pioneers. Forty years from now, we’ll look back on them as two of the most important social scientists of our time.”

What motivates us? How do we get motivated? And why do we describe some people as motivated and others not?

http://www.rochester.edu/pr/Review/V72N6/0401_feature1.html

By Karen McCally