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Why Career Planning Is Time Wasted

Office
[Photo by Thomas Hawk]
Our culture worships planning. Everything must be planned in advance. Our days, week, years, our entire lives. We have diaries, schedules, checklists, targets, goals, aims, strategies, visions even. Career planning is the most insidious of these cults precisely because it encourages a feeling of control over your reactions to future events. As that interview question goes: where do you see yourself in five years time? This invites the beginning of what starts as a little game and finishes as a belief built on sand. You guess what employers want to hear, and then you give it to them. Sometimes this batting back and forth of imagined futures becomes a necessary little game you play in order to 'get ahead'.

"We want to make a decision all of our own, based on our own values and preferences."
In reality, people frequently don't know what they want and psychology has proved it. That's why career planning, or at the very least just deciding what you're going to do next, is so unpleasant. It's no fun at 18 years old when people ask what you want to do. There seem to be so many different options, each with myriad branching possibilities, many of which lead in opposite directions, but all equally tempting. Surrounded by these endless spiralling futures, it is no wonder that many a school-leaver sticks with what they know and follows in parental footsteps. But we don't all want to trust the tried and tested, whether for good reasons or bad. We want to make a decision all of our own, based on our own values and preferences.


Midlife crisis
If it's hard at 18, it's even harder in midlife when people are theoretically better equipped to make their choice. In reality by your 30s wide-eyed optimism has normally been replaced by a more cynical outlook on jobs and the workplace. Now it's more clear what the downsides of certain jobs are. There's not only our own experiences of work but we also have friends at work, all of whom colour our perception of their careers.

Everyone has their own internal trade-offs. How much routine do you like: boring but safe? How much do you like travel: exciting but you'll be away from loved ones? How much do you care about earning more money: and taking a more boring/stressful/less fulfilling job? Whatever the outcome of all these swings and roundabouts along with many more, the reason that deciding what to do with your life is so difficult is that it involves predicting the future.

There's many reasons why it seems we should be good at prediction what we want. If I know that I'm enjoying what I'm doing now, then I should enjoy it in the future shouldn't I? On top of this I've got years of experience building up a set of things I like - cinema, books, sitcoms - and things I don't like - trips to the dentist, severe embarrassment and flu, especially not all at the same time. If I've got this huge bank of likes and dislikes it should be easy to predict my wants in the future. And yet, it seems we are often surprised by what the future throws at us.


Miswanting
"We are poor at predicting what will make us happy in the future."
The idea of making mistakes about what we might want in the future has been termed 'miswanting' by Gilbert and Wilson (2000). They point to a range of studies finding we are poor at predicting what will make us happy in the future. My favourite is a simple experiment in which two groups of participants get free sandwiches if they participate in the experiment - a doozie for any undergraduate.

One group has to choose which sandwiches they want for an entire week in advance. The other group gets to choose which they want each day. A fascinating thing happens. People who choose their favourite sandwich each day at lunchtime also often choose the same sandwich. This group turns out to be reasonably happy with its choice.

Amazingly, though, people choosing in advance assume that what they'll want for lunch next week is a variety. And so they choose a turkey sandwich Monday, tuna on Tuesday, egg on Wednesday and so on. It turn out that when next week rolls around they generally don't like the variety they thought they would. In fact they are significantly less happy with their choices than the group who chose their sandwiches on the day.


Prediction failure
This variety versus sameness is only one particular bias that people display in making predictions about their future emotional states. There is another counter-intuitive bias emerging from the work being done in positive psychology. This looks at how people predict they will feel after both catastrophically bad, and, conversely, fantastically positive occurrences in their life. For example, how good would you feel if you won the lottery? Most people predict their lives will be completely changed and they'll be much happier. What does the research find? Yes, people are measurably happier after they've just won, but six months down the line they're back to their individual 'baseline' level of happiness.

So, in the journey from the sublime - predicting how we'll feel about winning the lottery - to the ridiculous - predicting which sandwiches we'll want for lunch - we are incredibly bad at knowing our future selves. And if we can't even decide what type of sandwich we might like next week, how can we possibly decide what type of job we'd like to be doing in twenty years?

With age occasionally comes wisdom. Over time we learn, whether implicitly or explicitly, that we are not that good at predicting the future. At the very least we begin to recognise it is a much less precise science than we once thought.


A stranger future
This means your future self is probably a stranger to you. And, on some level, you know it. That's why it might be hard for an 18 year old to choose their career, but it's a damn sight harder for someone in midlife when limitations have been learnt.

"People begin to understand that the future holds vanishingly few certainties..."
This might seem like just another way of saying that people get more cautious as they get older, but it is more than that. It's actually saying that it's not caution that's increasing with age, but implicit self-knowledge. People begin to understand that the future holds vanishingly few certainties, even for those things that would seem to be under our most direct control, like our sandwich preferences.


Best guess beats careful planning
The argument about miswanting applies to any area of our lives which involves making a prediction about what we might like in the future. Career planning becomes painful precisely because it's such an important decision and we come to understand that we have only very limited useful information.

The best strategy for career planning is this: make your best guess, try it out and don't be surprised if you don't like it. But for heaven's sake don't mention this in your interviews.

[Also see the aptly named 'chaos theory' of career planning that I've noted before.]

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References

Gilbert, D. T., & Wilson, T. D. (2000) Miswanting: some problems in the forecasting of future affective states. In: J. Forgas (Ed.). Feeling and Thinking: the role of affect in social cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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More Accessible Posts to Come

Thanks to everyone who voted in my poll of you-my-beloved-readership. Contrary to my expectations, while most of you are involved in psychology academically in some way, it's not by any means all of you. At the time of writing, no fewer than 7 of you are interested laypeople, 7 are applied psychologists, along with 4 'other'. Mmm, the mysterious 'other' category. No doubt before long you will have your own category of psychological disorder: numerophobia (from the Latin numerus: category, class, number), defined as a refusal to self-categorise. Or perhaps you're positively identifying yourself as 'other' in the philosophical sense. Or the more prosaic reason that you didn't fit into the available categories. Answers on a comment please.

Anyway, as you'll have noticed, the content on PsyBlog has gone quite academic of late. Partly as a result of my quick and dirty survey I will be changing that over coming months. All lovers of the emotion series of posts, don't despair, these will continue. I will also be continuing with longer but less frequent posts. Hopefully, though, I'll be talking about fascinating developments in psychology in a more accessible way.

Please stay tuned through the dry patches here on PsyBlog, it just means I'm overrun with work and haven't had a chance to write anything, unfortunately something that's been happening more often of late. If you're not already using RSS feeds then get to it (top left under 'subscribe'). It will save you having to guess when I might have deigned to post. The Stream (column on the right) will continue to provide links to the best posts I've read.

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Resolute

ConfuciusCycling
[Photo by Steve Webel]
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." - Confucius

I'm happy to report that the first step has been taken. Well done!

I hope the rest of you are managing to do the same.

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A New Year, An Old Promise

Ahead
[Photo by B Tal]
Today, over lunch with a good friend, the subject of New Year's resolutions came up. My friend mentioned having made a few of the sorts of resolutions many people would recognise. Exercise, relationships, learning new skills - solid, worthwhile goals. But while we started off talking rather hopefully about what he and I wanted to accomplish in the New Year, the conversation began to turn melancholy. How many times have we made similar resolutions before? Why is it so difficult to get started? Do we really have time for these things?

Later in the day it occurred to me that this defeatist attitude is fundamentally built into New Year's resolutions. We make these promises to ourselves because we feel good about it on January the 1st. It feels good to be resolute on a day when the burden of living has been eased by the colourful holiday season. But later, back in real-life, back at work, back in the supermarket doing the weekly shop, the world has returned to its grey routine. It's not long before promises that once appeared unbreakable have turned to dust.

So how can this barrier be broken? The answer is simple: we need support from others. We need to tell other people what our New Year's resolutions are, and then have them keep us honest. It's not enough just to talk about your New Year's resolutions as though they are meant to be broken. It's not enough to discuss them in an abstract fashion, knowing in the back of your mind nothing will change. Similarly, it's not enough to idly listen to other people's resolutions and then turn a blind eye when they flout them.

In this spirit of resolution, then, I'm holding my friend to account. He has the weekend to at least make a start on the things he discussed. On Monday I will be reporting back here on whether or not he managed it.

I hope you'll all do the same for your friends, and they will do the same for you.

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Robert Solomon

Robert Solomon
[Photo by statesman]
At the outset of my journey into the emotions I touched on some of the ideas of Professor Robert Solomon. I was sad to hear last week that Professor Solomon has passed away (via Mixing Memory). Professor Solomon's philosophical work on the emotions has had a great influence on me. My interest was fired by a series of lectures Professor Solomon recorded for The Teaching Company. Although I never met him, it is clear from these that, amongst his other talents, he was an inspirational teacher. He will be sorely missed.

Emotion Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Autism
[Photo by crowolf]
Like alexithymia, those with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are also known to have problems processing emotional information. This may at least partially account for some core features of autistic behaviour: especially problems in social interactions. After all, ordinary social interactions contain considerable emotional components. This post looks at studies which have examined how those with ASDs may have deficits in the automatic processing of emotions.

Hill and Frith (2003) describe three main cognitive theories of autism. Of these the one that has the clearest parallels with emotional processing theories is Baron-Cohen's 'mindblindness' hypothesis. In this theory, those with ASDs are thought to have problems intuitively understanding the minds of others. But, this does not mean that individuals with autism cannot understand the mental states of others - it's just that they have to explicitly work it out rather than the knowledge being processed implicitly.

Hill, Berthoz and Frith (2004) found problems in the cognitive processing of emotions in individuals with ASDs. They were also seen to have higher levels of depression than both a control group and a group of relations of the individuals with ASDs.

So this give us some general evidence of emotion processing problems in ASDs, but what about the dual process model of appraisal? Some exciting new evidence comes from McIntosh, Reichmann-Decker, Winkielman and Wilbargeret (2006) who examined the way adults and adolescents with ASDs mimic facial expressions.


Copying facial expressions

The mimicking of other people's facial expression is something that we all do naturally. It oils the wheels of social interaction. We perceive the facial expression of others, then quickly and effortlessly flex corresponding muscles in our own faces to reflect the feeling back. McIntosh et al. (2006) contrast this type of automatic mimicry with the slow effortful mimicry we carry out when consciously trying to copy another's expression.

McIntosh et al. (2006) compared the automatic responses of a control group with individuals with ASDs by using facial EMG to measure movement of the major cheek and brow muscles. There were two phases to the experiment, in the first participants simply watched a screen on which were displayed different pictures of happy and sad faces. In the second, participants were asked to copy the expression they saw in the picture.

The results showed that individuals with ASDs did not automatically mimic facial expressions they saw in the pictures, as did the control group. On the other hand, they had no problem imitating facial expression explicitly, indeed they were better at imitation than the control group. McIntosh et al. (2006) argue that this fact rules out alternative explanations of their results which include the individuals with ASDs having problems in perceiving the faces, praxis, or understanding the task they were carrying out.


Mimicry in the brain scanner

From a study carried out by Dapretto, Davies, Pfeifer, et al. (2006) we even have information about the neurological basis for these behavioural findings. In this study participants carried out a task similar to that used by McIntosh et al. (2006) but this time inside an fMRI scanner.

The major difference found in brain activation between the groups was that the individuals with ASDs showed no activation in the so-called 'mirror neuron system'. The mirror neuron system is hypothesised to be involved in understanding the thoughts and actions of others, along with many other functions! If you're new to mirror neurons then start with Mixing Memory's posts here, and here.

Again, individuals with ASDs showed no difference to the control group in imitating faces, and no differences were seen by eye tracking equipment. In other words, both groups were looking at the photos in a similar way. Those with ASDs did, however, show differences in brain activation when they attempted to imitate the face in the photo.

Dapretto et al. (2006) speculate that those with ASDs have deficits in automatic processing through the mirror neuron system, for which other parts of their brains compensate when imitating facial expressions.


ASDs and alexithymia

Both of these imitation studies provide some evidence that individuals with ASDs suffer deficits in their automatic processing of emotions, but are quite capable of imitating emotions consciously. This provides a clear parallel with the studies carried out on people with alexithymia, who also have problems with the automatic unconscious processing of emotions but can clearly describe emotions that are in focal awareness.


References

Dapretto, M., Davies, M., Pfeifer, J., et al. (2006). Understanding emotions in others: mirror neuron dysfunction in children with autism spectrum disorders. Nature Neuroscience, 9(1), 28-30.

Gillberg, C., & Rastam, M. (1992). Do some cases of anorexia nervosa reflect underlying autistic conditions? Behavioural Neurology, 5, 27-32.

Hill, E., Berthoz, S., & Frith, U. (2004). Brief Report: Cognitive Processing of Own Emotions in Individuals with Autistic Spectrum Disorder and in Their Relatives. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 34(2), 229-235.

Hill, E., & Frith, U. (2003). Understanding autism: insights from mind and brain. Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, 358(1430), 281-289.

McIntosh, D., Reichmann-Decker, A., Winkielman, P., Wilbargeret, J. L. (2006). When the social mirror breaks: deficits in automatic, but not voluntary, mimicry of emotional facial expressions in autism. Developmental Science, 9(3), 295-302.

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Emotion Processing Deficits in Alexithymia

Thinks
[Photo by DerrickT]
Alexithymia is a subclinical condition characterised by an inability to express or identify felt emotions (Berthoz et al.. 2002). It is thought to affect 10% of the population (Linden, Wen & Paulhaus, 1994). Between Berthoz et al. (2002) and Vermeulen, Luminet and Corneille (2006), the term also includes the following mix of characteristics.
  • problems distinguishing emotions from physiological arousal,
  • difficulty describing emotions to other people
  • tendency to focus on external events,
  • conflict avoidance,
  • lower ability to engage in fantasy.

An fMRI measure of alexithymia

In order to investigate the brain activity that might be associated with alexithymia, Berthoz et al. (2002) carried out an fMRI study, focussing on activity in the anterior cingular and medial pre-frontal cortices. Both of these are thought to be involved in emotion processing - specifically the conscious experience of internal emotional states. Further, these areas are thought to regulate the expression of emotion as well as inhibit excessive emotion.

Berthoz et al.'s (2002) study compared a group of males who were found to be high on an alexithymia scale with those who were low on the scale. Participants viewed images designed to illicit positive and negative affective states while their brains were scanned.

The results showed differences in the anterior cingular and mediofrontal cortices but not in areas involved in lower levels of processing. Berthoz et al. (2002) suggest that alexithymia does result from an emotion processing problem. I would add it provides, in people exhibiting alexithymia at least, some support for the late model of appraisal (discussed here).

Participants were also asked to judge the affective component of the photographs they had seen. Here there was no difference between the groups. This is consistent with findings that those exhibiting alexithymia are able to describe affective stimuli, but do not, in some sense, feel the emotion caused by the stimuli.


A behavioural measure of alexithymia

Brain imaging studies seem to show a difference in the way emotions are processed in alexithymia, but how does this relate to the process model of appraisal? Vermeulen et al. (2006) carried out three studies using behavioural measures.

In this study, participants who were high and low on ratings of alexithymia were compared using an affective priming paradigm. This involves presenting an affective prime subliminally, in this case an angry face, followed by a word displayed liminally (consciously). Participants have to decide on the emotional valence of the word presented to conscious awareness. They should be quicker to respond to words which have been primed with a congruent emotion.

This is exactly what was found for low scorers on the alexithymia scale. But, as scores on the scale increased, so the influence of the affective prime decreased. For Vermeulen et al. (2006), this suggests that participants scoring at high levels on the alexithymia scale have a deficit in the automatic processing of emotional stimuli.

Returning to the process model of appraisal, both of these studies might suggest that those scoring high on alexithymia scales have a deficit in the automatic/associative processing of emotional cues, but not in the type of emotional processing that occurs in focal awareness.

Perhaps a similar deficit can also be seen in other disorders of emotion regulation such as autistic spectrum disorders? The next post will examine this possibility.

Berthoz, S., Artiges, E., Van de Moortele, P., et al. (2002). Effect of Impaired Recognition and Expression of Emotions on Frontocingulate Cortices: An fMRI Study of Men With Alexithymia. American Journal of Psychiatry, 159(6), 961-967.

Linden, W., Wen, F., Paulhaus, D. L. (1994) Measuring alexithymia: reliability, validity, and prevalence. In: J. Butcher, C. Spielberger, (Eds.). Advances in Personality Assessment. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Vermeulen, N., Luminet, O., & Corneille, O. (2006). Alexithymia and the automatic processing of affective information: Evidence from the affective priming paradigm. Cognition & Emotion, 20(1), 64-91.

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What is empathy?

Cycling
[Photo by messtiza]
Some of the most striking discoveries in psychology have come from patients with deficits of various kinds. Phineas Gage, one of the most famous patients in psychology, was thought to have suffered emotional blunting - along with personality changes - after a tamping rod was propelled through his frontal lobes. Less dramatically, but no less vitally, it seems highly probable that common psychological disorders have, at their heart, a problem processing emotions. Two examples are alexithymia and autism spectrum disorders, both of which seem to involve problems with empathising. But what is empathy?

Like many terms in psychology, it can seem intuitively obvious what 'empathy' means, but on closer inspection the definition is not so clear. de Vignemont and Singer (2006) identify two strands in the literature; the first of which provides a broad definition of empathy as occurring when an affective response is more appropriate to another person. The second, which de Vignemont and Singer (2006) prefer, is much narrower and requires that:
  • you feel a particular affective state
  • this state feels similar to you and the 'target' of your empathy, but has different causes,
  • it stems from you watching or imagining the target's affective state,
  • you realise your affective state is a result of empathy.
de Vignemont and Singer (2006) argue that this definition allows a distinction to be made between empathy and 'cognitive perspective taking'.

Automatic empathising?

These definitions of empathy beg the question of how much control we have over our empathising. Individual differences aside for a moment, generally do we automatically empathise with those around us, or is there some extra effort involved? The process model of appraisal, discussed previously on PsyBlog, certainly suggests there is some level of automatism to our emotional processing. In this theory, perceptual components can lead directly, and unconsciously, into appraisal processes and from there to an emotional response.

Neuroscience work reported by de Vignemont and Singer (2006) supports this hypothesis. Studies have found that when people see complete strangers enduring pain, their brain activation responds in a typically empathetic fashion (Morrison, Lloyd, di Pellegrino & Roberts, 2004).

Contextual empathising

But as de Vignemont and Singer (2006) point out, this indiscriminate empathising must be modulated by situational factors otherwise our emotional lives would be a constant riot of confusion. Similarly, the process model of appraisal does not exclusively rely on perception as the sole input for emotional responses, it also takes into account 'associatively activated representations' and 'the contents of focal awareness'. Secondly, and importantly for the process model of appraisal, de Vignemont and Singer (2006) argue that empathy can be 'fast and implicit'.

de Vignemont and Singer (2006) also suggest a number of categories which may help to explain why some of us empathise with others in some contexts but not in others:
  • Intrinsic emotional factors - e.g. some emotions may be intrinsically easier to empathise with.
  • Relational factors - like appraisal theory de Vignemont and Singer (2006) point out that the relationship between empathiser and target will have an important effect.
  • Individual differences
  • Situational factors

Early or late appraisal?

The process model of appraisal suggests an early model of appraisal. This means that both the emotional cue and the context are evaluated by appraisal processes before an emotional response is created. The alternative is a late model model which includes a direct link from an emotional cue to an emotional reponse, thereby bypassing appraisal processes. de Vignemont and Singer (2006) point out that there is little current evidence to distinguish between these two paths.

Whatever the process by which empathy operates, it is clearly a vital part of effective social functioning. Just how vital is the subject of constant debate. Many have suggested that empathy increases prosocial behaviour, de Vignemont and Singer (2006) argue that empathy increases social coherence and social communication. Conversely, a lack of empathy is associated with antisocial and aggressive behaviour.

In the next post, I'll move on to look at the research into those disorders which seem to incur an empathy deficit, e.g. alexithymia and autism spectrum disorders.

de Vignemont, F., & Singer, T. (2006). The empathic brain: how, when and why? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(10), 435-41.

Morrison, I., Lloyd, D., di Pellegrino, G., & Roberts, N. (2004). Vicarious responses to pain in anterior cingulate cortex: is empathy a multisensory issue. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci, 4(2), 270-8.

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