Self-control expert offers six tips for creating successful New Year's resolutions

Psychologists say that making resolutions can be helpful, but caution people to think carefully before deciding exactly what their goals will be.

Unfortunately, USC Dornsife researchers have not unlocked the key to keeping you from sleeping through your 5 a.m. spin class or avoiding the 4 p.m. trip to the vending machine.
But John Monterosso, an expert on the psychology and neuroscience of self-control as well as addiction, can offer insight on how to create more calculated resolutions—and keep yourself from going too far with a resolution that's making you miserable.

30 dec 2015--"I don't think any research on the topic is going to work like an advance in engineering—like 'Aha! If people do this or take this pill, they will keep their resolutions,'" said Monterosso, associate professor of psychology. "Realistically, what psychologists and neuroscientists are trying to do is learn how resolutions work. We know only a little about the brain mechanisms, but quite a bit about the psychology—enough that I do think we can offer some useful insights."
Monterosso, who leads the USC Dornsife's Addiction and Self Control Lab, explained that a resolution can be thought of as a special kind of plan.
"But what is special about a resolution is that it is made in response to a very particular anticipated obstacle—one's future self," he said. "You think, 'I want to quit smoking now, but I know I might go back on that in the future.' The resolution is supposed to guard against this happening."

Note to future-self

Monterosso suggested that you think of the resolution as a message you are sticking in a bottle and throwing out to your future self.
"'I know at some time that donut is going to seem like a good idea,' you might say to your future self. 'But don't eat it,"' Monterosso explained. "The hope is that when donut-smells fill your senses, and your mouth begins to water, you will not only remember the resolution, but you will also care enough to feel bound by it."
Or maybe not. Monterosso suggested resolutions may sometimes go too far.
If it's a fresh-baked donut from a world-famous pastry shop, it may be worth the indulgence. "Not all resolutions are good—some are counterproductive and even unhealthy," Monterosso said.
When making your resolutions in the next two weeks, Monterosso suggests you keep these six essentials in mind:

Failed resolutions are not harmless.

It feels bad to fail and undermines our confidence in our resolve, which can make us less able to succeed in keeping a future resolution.
Studies show that in some cases failure leads to worse behavior. Think of the recovering alcoholic who slips up, feels all is lost—and therefore disengages from any restraint, going on an extended bender.

Resolutions work by linking single decisions to a bigger picture.

Imagine someone who has resolved to quit smoking but craves a cigarette. The harm of just one cigarette is small and uncertain. Why not give in to the craving when the harm of just one cigarette is so small?
Successful resolutions guard against this logic by making the temptation an important test case. One thinks, "I resolved to quit. If I give in and smoke the cigarette, then my resolution is out the window." If one takes a resolution seriously, the health implication of the single cigarette feels significant, and the decision no longer feels like just this one.

Consider being less ambitious in your resolutions.

People tend to be wildly overconfident about a behavioral change at the time when they make a resolution. Even in an area in which we have a long history of failed resolutions, we often feel almost bizarrely optimistic that this time will be different.
The problem with overconfidence is that it can lead to setting unrealistically ambitious resolutions. An hour of yoga per day may not be realistic if your life is already packed with obligations. If it is not realistic, then resolving to do it is worse than worthless, given the potential harm from failure. Setting a good resolution requires knowing yourself well.

Resolutions should not be vague.

If a resolution leaves a lot open for interpretation, it won't be helpful. Consider a resolution such as, "Be nice to my spouse." What seems nice enough at the time of the resolution may not be the same as what seems nice enough a week later, particularly in the heat of a disagreement.
Similar to a contract between distinct people, a personal resolution that is not specific can't be enforced. Instead, try making a more specific resolution such as, "I will not raise my voice with my spouse."

The New Year is a fresh start.

While we tend to be overconfident when making resolutions, that confidence can leave us later when we feel tempted. We remember other failed resolutions, and the goal often feels out of reach, leading to 'oh-the-heck-with-it' moments in which we succumb to temptation.
It helps if there is something to set the recent resolution apart from unsuccessful ones that came before it. A New Year's resolution can accomplish this because we perceive Jan. 1 as a fresh start, meaning past failures might not seem as damning. After all, they are the failures of last year's you.

Even successful resolutions can be mistakes.

People can get so uptight and over-resolved that they continue sticking to things that are costly to themselves and to others. Whether it is restricting eating to the point of starvation, exercising to the point of bodily harm or saving money to the point you never enjoy spending it. In any domain, resolutions can go too far. Again, it comes down to judgment—to wisdom—and knowing yourself.

So are resolutions even a good idea?

"I think at their best, resolutions play a role in great human achievements," Monterosso said. "But, they can cause suffering, as well. It pays to be thoughtful in how they are used. Good resolving is a bit of an art."


Provided by University of Southern California

Biobehavioral Approach Linked to Benefits in Dementia

Intervention aimed at patients, caregivers includes visits with therapists, advance practice nurses

01 sept 2010-- A biobehavioral environmental intervention -- Care of Persons with Dementia in their Environments (COPE) -- is associated with better functioning in patients with dementia after four months, as well as benefits for caregivers, according to research published in the Sept. 1 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Laura N. Gitlin, Ph.D., of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, and colleagues analyzed data from 209 pairs of patients and their family caregivers. Participants were randomized to receive up to 12 contacts in the home or over the phone with occupational therapists and an advanced practice nurse who provided training to caregivers on matters such as modifying the home environment and daily activities. Control caregivers received educational materials and up to three calls from research staff.

The researchers found that the COPE group had less functional dependence at four months and less dependence in instrumental activities of daily living compared with controls. COPE patients also had improved engagement, and their caregivers had improved well-being and improved confidence using activities. At nine months, changes in outcomes were similar for patients in the two groups, but COPE caregivers reported greater benefits.

"Because most patients live at home with functional decline, a non-pharmacologic, biopsychosocial-environmental intervention may positively contribute to disease management. Future research needs to examine effects of underlying medical conditions, ways to boost treatment effects, cost-effectiveness, COPE in combination with pharmacologic treatments, and translational potential," the authors conclude.

Behavior: Hostility May Raise Risk for Disease

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

Researchers studying 313 healthy Vietnam veterans have found that anger and hostility may increase the risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes and high blood pressure.
Over a period of 10 years, the men had regular physical examinations involving a wide variety of medical tests. They also underwent psychological examinations using well-established questionnaires to determine their levels of hostility, anger and depression.
The researchers measured blood levels of a protein called C3, a marker for the inflammation that is a risk factor for cardiovascular illnesses. After controlling for other variables, the scientists found that those in the highest one-quarter in hostility, anger and depression showed a steady and significant increase in C3 levels, while those in the lowest one-quarter had no increase.
“This may put those men at increased risk for hypertension, diabetes and coronary heart disease,” said Stephen H. Boyle, the lead author of the study and a researcher at Duke University Medical Center.
Why these increases in C3 levels happen is unknown, but the authors speculate that anger in hostile and depressed men initiates a series of chemical responses in the immune system that lead to inflammation.
Taking steps to control hostility may be helpful. “There are interventions that appear to be useful in lowering levels of anger,” Dr. Boyle said. “I don’t know if their long-term effects on physiology have been tested, but if you’re less angry and hostile, that in itself is a worthy goal.”
The study was published in the August issue of Brain, Behavior and Immunity.

You, Your Friends, Your Friends of Friends


By GINA KOLATA
IN a way it all seems so obvious. Your friend found a lump in her breast, so you have that long-delayed mammogram. One by one your friends stop smoking, so you stop, too. Of course people are affected by their friends’ habits and their health.
But what seems obvious in the abstract can lead to surprising findings. A recent study found that obesity can spread from friend to friend much like a virus. When one person gains weight, close friends tend to gain weight, too.
The study, published recently in The New England Journal of Medicine, involved a detailed analysis of a large social network of 12,067 people who had been closely followed for 32 years, from 1971 to 2003.
Now, scientists believe that social networks not only can spread diseases, like the common cold, but also may influence many types of behavior — negative and positive — which then affect an individual’s health, as well as a community’s.
“In the past few years we have been seeing a network revolution,” says Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, a physics professor at the University of Notre Dame. “People sensed that networks were out there, but they never had large enough data sets to start understanding them in a quantitative fashion.”
For example, he said, sociologists would go into a classroom and ask students to list their friends. That, he said, can be useful, but social networks are huge, and they evolve over time. They involve you, your family, your friends, your friends’ friends and your friends’ friends’ friends.
The researchers who found the obesity effect stumbled upon the data they needed in the Framingham Heart Study. It has gone on for decades and followed most of the population of Framingham, Mass. As part of the study, participants named friends who could help locate them if researchers lost contact. That link was just what was needed to construct a social network and watch it evolve over decades — a web of friends and friends of friends along with family members.
The striking feature of networks, notes Dr. Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School, is that they amplify whatever effect they are propagating. One person catches a cold and spreads it to 10 friends, each of whom spreads it to 10 more friends.
But obesity? Dr. Christakis and his colleague James H. Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, say they do not know how it happened, but the dynamic was clear — when one person became obese, that person’s friends were more likely to become obese and so were their friends and their friends’ friends.
Obesity was just the start, the researchers say. They have already begun asking about other health-related issues. Smoking, for example — have smokers become more isolated over time?
After all, networks evolve, and if smoking becomes unacceptable, smokers might be expected to cluster in their own little orbits, cut off from the mainstream. That, Dr. Fowler said, is exactly what happened. The Framingham data from the 1970s show smokers embedded in social networks just like everyone else. But by the 1990s, smokers began to be shunted to the side, their links to nonsmokers breaking.
Dr. Fowler and Dr. Christakis are now looking at depression, asking whether it spreads from friend to friend. There are hints from another study that it might.
The network in that case was derived from the federal National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a study of tens of thousands of teenagers that asks them to name their friends and follows them for years. It turned out, says Peter Bearman, a social scientist at Columbia University, that certain friendships increased the likelihood of suicide or suicidal thoughts in teenage girls.
The risky friendships are what Dr. Bearman calls a contradictory network — a teenage girl has two friends who dislike each other. “It tells you about the importance of social relationships for girls’ health and self-esteem,” Dr. Bearman says. “If you are in an unstable triad, it makes it much more difficult to fit in.”
Now Dr. Bearman and his colleagues are studying autism. The number of autistic children has increased rapidly in recent years, but it is not clear how much resulted from increased diagnosis and how much from an increase in the actual disease.
Dr. Bearman is studying how diagnoses of autism spread. When a child is diagnosed, friends of that child’s parents may wonder whether their child has autism as well, and have their child evaluated. Demand for autism evaluations would increase, and doctors and schools would become more sensitive to the disorder and more likely to suspect it. Schools would then provide services for the autistic children in the community, attracting families from other areas where autism was less common and where schools were not as prepared to help.
“There is an enormously important dynamic that draws people into a diagnostic maelstrom,” Dr. Bearman says. “Autism is real, but the epidemic very likely has a very important social network component.”
The challenge in medicine now is to map out complex dynamic networks, Dr. Barabasi said, and he does not just mean networks of people. The proteins and enzymes in a cell also form a closely connected network, Dr. Barabasi says. And when you tweak one protein, the whole web is affected. “That is why drugs have side effects,” Dr. Barabasi said.
And, he adds, “we will not have cures for obesity or cancer until we understand those networks.”
But he’s an optimist, believing that these cellular networks will be mapped sooner or later. “Right now, this is a work in progress,” Dr. Barabasi says, “but I believe we will get there in 10 years.”