Author: ken

Unconscious Attraction – and Fear

New research suggests that the incest taboo may be more complex and interesting than current anthropological theories suggest.  Freud may have been closer to the truth, after all.

Wired recently noted that “researchers found that people are turned on by photographs of people who resemble their close genetic counterparts.”

In the experiment, subjects ranked the attractiveness of photos they were shown.  In some cases, they were primed by subliminal images of their own parents;  in others, the photos subtly morphed into images that incorporated parts of themselves.

“People appear to be drawn to others who resemble their kin or themselves,” said psychologist R. Chris Fraley of the University of Illinois.  “It is possible, therefore, as Freud suggested, that incest taboos exist to counter this primitive tendency.”

Wired summed it up: the “experiments support the Freudian idea that we have subconscious mechanisms that make us attracted to features that remind us of our own, and that cultural taboos against incest exist to override that primitive drive.”  (See, “You Are Sexually Attracted to Your Parents, Yourself.”)

There is other evidence for this tendency — as well as parallel perspectives.  Neuroscientists now understand that the brain organizes input according to pre-existing categories.  So the earlier experiences we all had with caregivers – those who were present and active in caring for us as children – become the templates for later relationships.  That may be why, as Professor Fraley put it, we are drawn to others who resemble our kin.

Psychoanalysts have called this tendency “transference,” since it seems that attachments to earlier figures in our lives are transferred to current figures with whom we are deeply engaged.  That’s why the people with whom we fall in love tend to resemble parental figures.  That also helps to explain why we reproduce parental expectations in our relationships with the therapists we come to trust and on whom we depend.

But those attachments can also become frightening if they are too intense or if they tempt us into actions that conflict with adult responsibilities.  It is touching for a daughter to say she wants to marry her daddy when she grows up, but it would be shocking for her daddy to encourage those feelings and criminal to exploit them.  Our culture is in agreement on that – for very good reasons.

It’s about the pathways of attraction and the fact that out behavior tends to follow pre-existing patterns.  That makes the world more familiar and less alien.  But we have to manage those tendencies as they can also get us into trouble.

What we don’t know we know is the inexorable force of past experience.

… What is Normal?

This is not the first economic recovery in recent years in which employment lagged behind other economic indicators.  But does that mean nothing can or should be done about it?

According to Paul Krugman in The New York Times, the jobless rate is being taken as a sign that our current unemployment rates need to be accepted:  “the odds are that unemployment will rise, not fall, in the months ahead. That’s bad. But what’s worse is the growing evidence that our governing elite just doesn’t care — that a once-unthinkable level of economic distress is in the process of becoming the new normal.” (See, “Defining Prosperity Down.”)

For years, increasing structural unemployment has been forecast – with varying degrees of alarm.  Continual threats to American jobs have been coming from improved productivity, leaner management, automation, information technology, and outsourcing.  It is also true – and well-known – that official unemployment figures leave out large numbers of workers who have given up trying to find jobs, settling for reduced, marginal lives.  Whoever gives up on the job search after 6 months is no longer “unemployed.”

So, perhaps, it is true that our economy has a “structural problem” with employment.  The invisible hand that so deftly adjusts supply and demand may neglect jobs.  According to our economic ideology that’s not supposed to happen – but, then, neither was the need for the government to bail out financial institutions “too big to fail.”  Krugman’s worry about redefining acceptable levels of unemployment gains credence from the fact that Congress has allowed unemployment benefits to run out.

A few days before Krugman’s commentary, Bob Herbert, also in The Times, cited Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies:  corporations “threw out far more workers and hours than they lost output.”  As a result, this period of economic recovery “has seen the most lopsided gains in corporate profits relative to real wages and salaries in our history.”

Professor Sum went on. “Here’s what happened: At the end of the fourth quarter in 2008, you see corporate profits begin to really take off, and they grow by the time you get to the first quarter of 2010 by $572 billion. And over that same time period, wage and salary payments go down by $122 billion.”  He exclaimed:  “I’ve never seen anything like this.”  (See, “A Sin and a Shame.”)

Professor Sum along with Krugman and Herbert express a kind of shock and outrage at what their awareness of economic terms and trends allow them to see.  Most of us don’t have their perspective.  Wondering when will things get better, we know something is very wrong.

We don’t see it because consciousness is very selective.  Words like “unemployment” define for us what is real, excluding what doesn’t fit.  Moreover, disconnected facts prevent us from seeing the whole picture.

But we know it because we do have unconscious intuition.  We just don’t know what we know.

A Permanent Reality Show

There is a growing trend to make news of the entertainment business into a form of entertainment itself, as if it were its own endless and fascinating reality show.  What does this tell us?

If one blockbuster movie noses out another in ticket sales over a weekend, for example, that’s now more likely to be reported in the entertainment section of the daily paper than on the business pages, even though it is far more likely to affect the profits of the film’s producers and distributors more than the life of any viewer.  If a new album by a pop star has disappointing sales, that, too, becomes entertainment news though it will affect the record company and its investors more than the consumer.  It’s all about the success of the product, not the quality or interest of the entertainment.

We follow the careers of actors and sports figures, the amount if money they make, their affairs, their new contracts, and so on.  This is part of our celebrity culture, the way we live vicariously through others.  But this focus on business itself is different.  It’s not about any one person or figure.  It’s pure cash and statistics.

In last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, James Kirns noted: “We have become a society that is fixated on process and absorbed by the slippery, complex machinations of the middlemen, brokers and executives who conspire offstage to determine what takes place onstage.”  He wondered, “What purpose is served by this spreading fascination — this compulsive preoccupation, really — with transactions instead of actions and with negotiating maneuvers instead of outcomes?”

He proposes the term “procedural voyeurism” to describe the phenomenon.  That’s awkward, but the “voyeurism” is dead on.  The public is looking in on events in which they have no say, no standing, no impact.  The gratification is entirely at a distance.  But what purpose does it serve, as Kirns asks?  Why have these dramas come to occupy center stage?  (See, “The Art of the Deal as Entertainment.”)

For one thing, the more conventional forms of entertainment are losing their power.  Swamped by digital media, the public is no longer absorbed by the increasingly standardized products of the entertainment industry.  The ritualized summer blockbusters and assembly-line hits, tailor-made to fit the market, no longer really surprise.

By focusing backstage, behind the scenery, where real power is being exerted, on the other hand, the media satisfies our thirst for authentic dramas of success – and failure.  The public is mesmerized is the spectacle of the money and influence they don’t have.

That’s the second part:  as real income declines for most, and our social safety nets are being dismantled, the public gets to experience opportunity and risk in these negotiations and deals.  If they can no longer hope much for themselves they can, at least, be captivated and enthralled by how it plays out for others.

Interesting to think that he dealmakers, agents, producers and moguls who compete for better contracts and greater profits unconsciously keep alive the promise of America.

… And How It Helps Me To Think

I usually don’t take anything to read when going for a ride on the subway.  And I don’t listen to books on tape while driving or running in the park. Typically I defend myself to friends who think I’m wasting time by claiming, “I need the time to worry.”

New research, however, gives me a better excuse.  When the mind is wandering, the brain’s “default network” takes over, according to Eric Klinger at the University of Minnesota, and “this system keeps the individual’s larger agenda fresher in mind.”  That’s an evolutionary advantage, he suggests, “increasing the likelihood that the other goal pursuits will remain intact and not get lost in the shuffle of pursuing many goals.”  (See, “Discovering the Virtues of a Wandering Mind.”)

But the report on mind wandering in The New York Times, suggests there is also reason to believe that it encourages the creative process.  According to Dr. Jonathan Schooler, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, “it may help if you go jogging, take a walk, do some knitting or just sit around doodling, because relatively undemanding tasks seem to free your mind to wander productively.”

“For creativity you need your mind to wander,” Dr. Schooler says, “but you also need to be able to notice that you’re mind wandering and catch the idea when you have it.”  Waking up from day dreams and reflecting on where your mind went when it wandered is essential for making use of this process.

It’s good to have to have scientific evidence for the value of mind wandering, but it is something many of us who work with our minds have intuitively understood.  When I say I need time to “worry,” I don’t mean I want to ruminate obsessively.  I want to find out what’s on my mind, not so different from asking a psychotherapy patient to tell me “What comes to mind?” or “Where did your mind go just then?”

The mind is always working.  We can often benefit from just letting it go about its business, and then looking in on it when we need a little extra help.

Economic Power Too

Economists have recently confirmed something most of us have known since the third grade, the power of beauty to influence our judgment.  Not a real surprise.  But it is interesting how easily we seem to forget how our third-grade minds persist into adulthood, and how much they still control our reactions.

Newsweek notes: “Handsome men earn, on average, 5 percent more than their less-attractive counterparts (good-looking women earn 4 percent more); pretty people get more attention from teachers, bosses, and mentors; even babies stare longer at good-looking faces (and we stare longer at good-looking babies).”

It’s good to have the exact numbers, but, I recall all too well how much attractiveness had to do with who was popular in school, who got elected class president, who got more dates, etc.  It was painful, then, for those of us banking on the less compelling virtues of intelligence and hard work to get ahead.  And, clearly, many of us are still uncomfortable with that reality.  We would like to think that our assessment of a person’s intelligence and skill will trump appearance.  But, according to economist Daniel Hamermesh:  “over his career, a good-looking man will make some $250,000 more than his least-attractive counterpart.”  (See, “The Beauty Advantage.”)

Newsweek surveyed 202 corporate hiring managers, as well as 964 members of the public: “from hiring to office politics to promotions, looking good is no longer something we can dismiss as frivolous or vain.”

“Fifty-seven percent of hiring managers [said] unattractive candidates are likely to have a harder time landing a job, while more than half advised spending as much time and money on ‘making sure they look attractive’ as on perfecting a résumé. When it comes to women, apparently, flaunting our assets works: 61 percent of managers (the majority of them men) said it would be an advantage for a woman to wear clothing showing off her figure at work.”

So why is this bias so true throughout our lives?  The answer has to do with the fact that consciousness tends to dispose of information threatening to our self-esteem.  We couldn’t escape certain painful truths growing up, but we could forget them.  And we can still forget them or dismiss those truths as adults, even as we continue to be biased in favor of beauty.

In other words, it’s not that we don’t know that we are attracted to beautiful people or, even, that we are predisposed to favor them when it comes to hiring or other choices we make.  What most of us dispose of is the awareness that we allow our bias to trump our better judgment.

Worse, we don’t usually include ourselves in that favored group.  That’s the really painful part.