| It's navel gazing time again, that
stretch of the year when many of us turn our attention inward and think about
how we can improve the way we live our lives. But as we embark on this annual
ritual of introspection, we would do well to ask ourselves a simple question:
Does it really do any good? The poet Theodore Roethke had some insight into the matter: "Self-contemplation is a curse that makes an old confusion worse." As a psychologist, I think Roethke had a point, one that's supported by a growing body of controlled psychological studies. In a study I conducted with Dolores Kraft, a clinical psychologist, and Dana Dunn, a social psychologist, people in one group were asked to list the reasons their relationship with a romantic partner was going the way it was, and then rate how satisfied they were with the relationship. People in another group were asked to rate their satisfaction without any analysis; they just gave their gut reactions. It might seem that the people who thought about the specifics would be best at figuring out how they really felt, and that their satisfaction ratings would thus do the best job of predicting the outcome of their relationships. In fact, we found the reverse. It was the people in the "gut feeling" group whose ratings predicted whether they were still dating their partner several months later. As for the navel gazers, their satisfaction ratings did not predict the outcome of their relationships at all. Rather, too much analysis can confuse people about how they really feel. Self-reflection is especially problematic when we are feeling down. Research by Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, a clinical psychologist at Yale University, shows that when people are depressed, ruminating on their problems makes things worse. For years it was believed that emergency workers like police officers and firefighters should undergo a debriefing process to focus on and relive their experiences; the idea was that this would make them feel better and prevent mental health problems down the road. But did it do any good? In an extensive review of the research, a team led by Richard McNally, a clinical psychologist at Harvard, concluded that debriefing procedures have little benefit and might even hurt by interrupting the normal healing process. People often distract themselves from thinking about painful events right after they occur, and this may be better than mentally reliving the events. |