I have been writing a lot about the fact that behavioral scientists have made a great deal of progress on how to prevent virtually all of the most common and costly problems of human behavior, including depression, crime, and academic failure. In essence, we have figured out how to help families, schools, and to some extent communities, become less coercive and more nurturing. More loving societies are realistically within our grasp.
But the progress is threatened by global warming. (more…)
Our society faces the challenge of reducing the incidence and prevalence of all of the most common and costly psychological, behavioral, and health problems. This task is both necessary and achievable given what we have learned about the inter-relationships among these problems, the proximal and distal influences on them, and the treatment and prevention interventions that have been shown to affect them. It is the task that healthcare reform in Oregon and elsewhere has set for itself, and it is the logical next step for prevention science given the state of accumulated evidence (Biglan, 2011). At least three reasons support the belief that such an agenda is needed and achievable. (more…)
The other day I had a chance to talk with Jerry Patterson about coercion. He talked about the work that he and his colleagues did that led them to conclude that coercive family interactions are at the root of the development of anti-social behavior.
He gave a simple example. A mother asks her young son Timmy to get up from the TV and get ready for bed. Timmy whines and says he is wants to watch the show he is watching. His mother does not insist that he get up. Timmy stops whining.
In this simple interaction, Timmy learns that if he whines he will not have to go to bed. His mom learns that if she backs off from her requests, Timmy will stop whining. Both of these events are examples of negative reinforcement: when an aversive event is removed it tends to reinforce the behavior that preceded its removal. Jerry and his colleagues observed hundreds of hours of these types of interactions and found that such sequences of negative reinforcement were much more likely in the homes of aggressive children. (more…)
People will become more nurturing as we build a culture that celebrates and models nurturance. I am often struck my how many songs encourage us to be nurturing–and how many do not. Here is a list of songs I like that I think promote us to nurture each other.
Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word by Elton John
Your Song by Elton John
Can You Feel the Love Tonight
Of course musical tastes vary. Your reaction to these examples may be, “Yuck”
That’s fine. What are some songs that you think encourage nurturance?
I am happy to report that I have a new book coming out in the fall. It will be published by New Harbinger. We are still debating the title. I had tentatively titled it New Under the Sun: A Memoir of the Behavioral Science Revolution. But New Harbinger’s editors have suggested several other possibilities. My current favorite is, Thinking Big: How the Behavioral Sciences Can Bring Us to a Happier, Healthier, and More Caring World.
The book tells the story of my own journey as a behavioral scientist. I have been fortunate to come of age during what I believe is the most important scientific revolution in human history. I get to tell the story of the enormous progress science has made in understanding—and doing something about–human behavior. I believe this is the most significant development in science ever. If that claim seems outrageous, hear me out. (more…)
In the past month, I witnessed a terrific example of a community coming together to save something that we love.
Abernethy Elementary School has a wonderful School Kitchen Garden, with a garden tended by the kids and a cafeteria staffed by a real chef. The garden and the cafeteria are really just part of an overall health and wellness curriculum that encompasses science, math and physical education. Garden Tom, an Americorps volunteer, teaches the garden classes, then sends the produce to Chef Nicole. She tries to buy everything locally and cooks it all from scratch. The kids love it and they actually eat the kale.
Over the summer, the USDA changed its school lunch regulations to ensure better meals for the kids of our country. Portland Public Schools had to reevaluate the nutritional content of the meals it serves. And guess what? It didn’t have time to evaluate Abernethy’s superior program and decided to have the school serve the same old heat and serve chicken nuggets as everyone else. (Which, by the way, have their nutritional content packaged by the big food packagers.)
The community of Abernethy rallied together. Congressman Earl Blumenauer called the district. And we got 200 people together on two days notice to talk with state and district officials. And the good news is: Abernethy will raise the money to have a dietician look at the nutritional content of the meals, which satisfies state and district officials.
But it isn’t enough to have one school with a School Kitchen Garden. All schools need them. And the Abernethy community has committed to helping other schools design their own health and wellness programs, and will share recipes and tips on how to keep this movement going.
Gary Gutting, Professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame published an opinion piece this week on the New York Times Opinionater pages. In it, he asserts that “we need to develop a much better sense of the severely limited reliability of social scientific results” and that “Given the limited predictive success and the lack of consensus in social sciences, their conclusions can seldom be primary guides to setting policy. At best, they can supplement the general knowledge, practical experience, good sense and critical intelligence that we can only hope our political leaders will have.”
Dr. Gutting is woefully uninformed about the effectiveness of the behavioral sciences. His view are at least thirty years out of date. He is clearly unaware of the Institute of Medicine report on prevention, which describes the results of numerous randomized trials showing the benefits of many family and school interventions for preventing virtually the entire range of psychological and behavioral problems of human beings.
First, with respect to the assertion that randomized controlled trials “are seldom possible when human beings are involved,” the IOM report on prevention indicates that there were more than 290 randomized trials evaluating preventive interventions between 1999 and 2007. Clearly he is mistaken about the possibility of doing randomized trials.
He is also mistaken about the ability of the behavioral sciences to specify policies and practices that can enhance human wellbeing. The IOM report describes many experimental evaluations of family interventions that routinely show that parents’ skills can be enhanced, children’s positive social development improved, and that problems as diverse as antisocial behavior, drug abuse, depression, and risky sexual behavior cen be prevented. There are family interventions for every stage of development, from the prenatal period through adolescence. At every age, we have solid experimental evidence that the social behaviors that lead children to fail in school and develop multiple problems can be prevented.
Then there are school-based interventions. Here too we have solid experimental evidence that preschools and public schools can be transformed to nurture children’s’ academic and social development. To take just one example, the Psychiatrist, Sheppard Kellam did a randomized trial of the Good Behavior Game, which rewards children for working cooperatively in small groups. He found that when children played the game in first grade, they developed the self-regulatory skills that enhanced their development. Children whose classrooms were randomly assigned to play the game in first grade, were less likely to have problems with suicidality, antisocial behavior, or drug abuse as young adults! I am confident that any physicist who was aware of this research would prefer to have their children in a classroom that played the Good Behavior Game.
Dr. Gutting should also be aware the clinical psychology has made enormous progress in the past thirty years thanks, in part, to its relentless use of randomized trials. I have just reviewed more than fifty randomized trials of an approach to treatment called, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). ACT helps people become more willing to have unpleasant thoughts and feelings in the service of their pursuing valued directions. There are randomized trials showing the benefit of ACT for: anxiety, depression, job burnout, drug abuse, cigarette smoking, schizophrenia, epilepsy, , diabetes, physical activity, prejudice, willingness to innovate, and willingness of drug abuse counselors to try new practices.
Canards about the inferior nature of the behavioral sciences have been a staple of public discussion in some intellectual circles for many years. But times have changed. Like other areas of science there has been a steady accumulation of knowledge. It is time for academics who have an influence on public discussion to become better informed about the very valuable tools that are already available to society to prevent virtually all of the psychological and behavioral problems that plague society. Hopefully people like Dr. Gutting will learn about the tremendous progress that has been made in behavioral science research. Perhaps then he will be writing opinion pieces demanding that society inform its policy-making with all of the evidence that can guide us to achieve communities where many fewer young people develop problems and many more succeed.
“PERHAPS the most widespread peril children face isn’t guns, swimming pools or speeding cars. Rather, scientists are suggesting that it may be “toxic stress” early in life, or even before birth.” says New York Times columnist, Nicholas D. Kristof’s, in his article about the American Academy of Pediatrics recently issued “policy statement”. The statement, based on two decades of research, identifies “toxic stress” as a major cause of disabilities that can haunt children for a lifetime.
Kristof presents numerous citations of the harm that is caused by things such as malnutrition in pregnant women and neglect during early infancy, both of which lead to lifelong increased risk of heart disease, diabetes and other physical ailments as well as impaired school performance. He also cites the improvement that can be obtained through relatively inexpensive interventions like the Nurse Family Partnership.
Read this piece at the Times website
The evidence keeps piling up on the level of poverty and economic inequality in the U.S.
See yesterday’s column by Charles Blow
The Occupy movement has change our public conversation. There is much more coverage of inequality and the need for regulation of banks, more, not less, government.
Support your local Occupy!
“Why is the problem of violence against children so much more acute in the US than anywhere else in the industrialized world?”, asks Michael Petit, President of Every Child Matters.”
Thus begins the BBC News website’s article, entitled “America’s Child Death Shame” Here are a few of the salient facts:
Over the past 10 years, more than 20,000 American children are believed to have been killed in their own homes by family members…. nearly four times the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The child maltreatment death rate in the US is triple Canada’s and 11 times that of Italy. Millions of children are reported as abused and neglected every year.
One reason is that teen pregnancy, high-school dropout, violent crime, imprisonment, and poverty – factors associated with abuse and neglect – are generally much higher in the US.
Further, other rich nations have social policies that provide child care, universal health insurance, pre-school, parental leave and visiting nurses to virtually all in need.
In the US, when children are born into young families not prepared to receive them, local social safety nets may be frayed, or non-existent. As a result, they are unable to compensate for the household stress the child must endure.
In the most severe situations, there is a predictable downward spiral and a child dies. Some 75% of these children are under four, while nearly half are under one.”
The entire article here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15193530
