The New IQ: Use Your Working Memory to Think Stronger, Smarter, Faster. Tracy Alloway

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СКАЧАТЬ for rumination among the young adults, we made some very surprising findings: not all of the ruminators had low working memory scores, and not all ruminators were depressed. The ruminators who had good working memory were less likely to suffer depression compared to the ruminators who had poor working memory. Our interpretation is that though their working memory Conductor plays the same song, it is also strong enough to inhibit the negative emotions associated with depression.

      Working Memory and the Glass Half Full

      The results of our study on working memory, rumination, and depression were an exciting start because they revealed that people do use working memory to manage emotions, resolve problems, and avoid slipping into depression. Encouraged by these findings, we looked at the opposite end of the happiness scale to determine if a strong working memory makes people more likely to choose optimism.

      To explore this question, we joined forces with the British Science Festival, a hugely popular annual event celebrating science, engineering, and technology. With help in promoting our study and inviting festivalgoers to participate in it, we were able to conduct another large-scale study involving thousands of adults. The scale of the study helped us understand how working memory influences happiness and if a strong working memory will make you more likely to see the glass half full.

      For this study, participants completed a working memory test and filled out the Life Orientation Test, a clinical questionnaire that gauges levels of optimism and pessimism. We also asked participants to answer yes or no to the following questions:

      1 In uncertain times, I usually expect the best.

      2 I’m always optimistic about my future.

      3 If something can go wrong for me, it will. I rarely count on good things happening to me.

      When we looked at their responses, we found a correlation between the strength of working memory and level of optimism. Those with stronger working memory were more likely to have a high level of optimism, while those with weaker working memory tended to be more pessimistic. These results suggest that people with high working memory tend to be more hopeful and confident about the future, while those with weak working memory tend to be more pessimistic.

      The research we have examined so far in this chapter suggests that a good working memory is associated with happiness and optimism. It’s not a direct causal relationship because happiness is complex, and many factors—both personal and cultural—play into personal happiness. So although a strong working memory can’t guarantee optimism, it can set your feet more firmly on the path to fulfillment.

      One of the huge benefits of optimism is a longer and more satisfying life. Becca Levy’s research at the University of Yale’s School of Public Health demonstrated that older adults who are optimistic about aging live an average of 7.5 years longer than their less optimistic counterparts. An optimistic outlook is also associated with a healthier life. For example, Hillary Tindale and colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh found that optimism reduces the risk of coronary heart disease, which can lead to death. In their study of almost one hundred thousand women aged fifty to seventy-nine, they compared the 25 percent most optimistic with the 25 percent most pessimistic and found that the optimistic women had less risk of cardiovascular problems, as well as reduced risk for diabetes and hypertension. A study with men followed over a ten-year period found similar results: those who were optimistic were less likely to develop coronary heart disease as they aged compared to those who were pessimistic.

      Less Is More

      At the end of this chapter, we share some simple exercises to help you strengthen your working memory, but in the meantime let’s take a quick look at a few coping strategies to improve both working memory and happiness.

      In Chapter 2, we introduced you to our friend Sam who struggled to wade through all the possibilities after losing his job. Too many choices result in psychological stress and unhappiness. A 2010 study by Hazel Markus and Barry Schwartz published in the Journal of American Consumer Research backed this up, finding that although American culture venerates choice and freedom, people often become paralyzed by unlimited choice and are less happy with their decisions as a result.

      As you saw in Chapter 2, an excess of choice can overload your working memory and lead to lots of negative consequences, including an increase in stress and anxiety, an inability to make a decision, and even ruminating over whether you’ve made the right choice. So one way to improve your happiness is to minimize the number of choices you have to make. At the office, for example, you might want to dedicate specific chunks of time to specific tasks and open only one program on your computer screen rather than toggling between multiple windows and switching back and forth between options.

      At home, many of us feel that rushing our children off to five activities a day will improve their lives and make them happier. The reality is that offering your children too many choices of extracurricular activities may overwhelm them and reduce how well they perform in the activities they do pursue. By choosing a few activities and focusing on some relaxing downtime in which the family reconnects, there will be less working memory overload, and everyone will feel less stressed and happier.

      Limiting your consumer choices will help too. At the supermarket, interesting packaging or new products compete for our attention. Sometimes it’s hard to decide which of the ten different brands of the same product to buy. In order to limit the number of choices and not get overwhelmed, make a list of exactly what you need before you go to the market, and stick to it.

      Our friend Sam who fell into depression because he couldn’t decide what next job to pursue, found that narrowing his choices helped immensely. After a few weeks of his malaise, Sam’s wife encouraged him to seek the advice of a career coach, who helped him focus on one or two more immediate tasks and goals. His working memory was then able to better digest the information he had to consider, his stress lifted, and he became happier. He was able to make a list of potential jobs and started sending out his newly updated CV. Two weeks later, he landed an interview.

      Confronting Fears and Challenges

      One afternoon Ann, a corporate lawyer who had recently made partner, discovered a large bump in her lower back. She immediately started worrying that it was a cancerous tumor, but since she was so overwhelmed with her new job responsibilities, she avoided going to the doctor and tried to put the situation out of her mind. But the more she tried to suppress the thought, the more she kept going over catastrophic possibilities in her mind. Within a few weeks, she was very depressed. She had trouble focusing on work, got distracted in meetings, made faulty judgments on cases, and started to forget to return phone calls to her clients. In short, her working memory was impaired.

      Some fascinating research suggests that failing to address our problems undermines our working memory. One such study conducted by scientists at Harvard, Cornell, and the University of Texas researched the fight-or-flight mechanism in mice and found that mice who ran away from a variety of challenging situations (such as interacting with bigger, more aggressive mice) suffered weight loss, lower sex drive, and insomnia, and they had a change in levels of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Previous research has shown that low levels of BDNF are associated with both a compromised working memory and depression, but the exact nature of this complex relationship has yet to be determined.

      The mice who interacted with the larger mice had regular sleep, a healthy sex life, normal eating, and no change in their BDNF levels. The authors suggest that the discovery has an important implication: СКАЧАТЬ