Sсiеntifiс Аmеricаn Mind 2019 11-12.pdf

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NOVEMBER /DECEMBER 2019 | MIND.SCIENTIFICAMERICAN.COM
PLUS
DEBATE OVER
THE POWER
OF “GROWTH
MINDSETS”
NEW TOOLS
TO MEASURE
CONSCIOUSNESS
HOW TO GET
PAST SHAME
Fear
Our
It’s a hardwired response,
but it doesn’t have to rule
our emotions
WITH COVERAGE FROM
Embracing
FROM
THE
EDITOR
Your Opinion Matters!
Help shape the future
of this digital magazine.
Let us know what you
think of the stories within
these pages by emailing us:
editors@sciam.com.
The Fearful Mind
Nearly one fifth of the U.S. adult population suffers from an anxiety disorder, according to 2018 data.
At their core, the worry and panic that make up general anxiety stem from an overactive fear response
in the brain. And indeed, that primordial reaction is one of the most examined topics in neuroscience—
investigated in rodents, humans, other apes and even invertebrates. But how much do those automatic
feelings relate to the emotions that humans associate with fear and, subsequently, their experience in
the world? To sort out the issue, as six neuroscientists discuss in a fascinating Q&A in these pages,
step one is for the field to come to agreement over an exact definition of fear and how best to study it
(see “Embracing Our Fear”).
If you worry about whether your life is “happy enough,” focus instead on the meaningful experiences
in your life, both good and bad, writes Scott Barry Kaufman (see “Forget Happiness, Find Meaning”).
And in one of my favorite features of the year, check out the winners in the annual Art of Neuroscience
photography competition (see “The Brain in Images: Top Entries in the Art of Neuroscience”). They are
a beautiful new way to think of your mind.
Andrea Gawrylewski
Senior Editor, Collections
editors@sciam.com
LIZ TORMES
GETTY IMAGES
On the Cover
Fear is a hardwired
response, but it
doesn’t have to
rule our emotions
2
WHAT’S
INSIDE
MARKOS K APELIOTIS AND REBECA ALEJANDRA GAVRILA LAIC
November-
December 2019
Volume 30
•Number
6
OPINION
56.
GETTY IMAGES
The Death of Social
Reciprocity in the Era
of Digital Distraction
Honor your right to
disconnect and focus
on strengthening
real relationships
58.
NEWS
Debate Arises over
Teaching “Growth
Mindsets” to
Motivate Students
Research shows con-
flicting data on the
impact of the interven-
tion, but a major new
study confirms it
can work
8.
4.
CANDACE MICKLER
GETT Y IMAGES
Workers Are Afraid
to Take a Mental
Health Day
Bosses like me
can fix that
FEATURES
60.
The Technology
of Kindness
How social media can
rebuild our empathy—
and why it must
New Clues Found in
Understanding Near-
Death Experiences
Research finds
parallels to certain
psychoactive drugs
10.
No Bones about It:
People Recognize
Objects by Visualizing
Their “Skeletons”
This basic ability
gives humans a leg
up on computers
15.
18.
New Insights into
Does Birth Order
Self-Insight: More
Affect Personality?
May Not Be Better
Researchers examine
An innovative study
the old adage that
technique yields surpris- birth order plays
ing results that counter a significant role
the popular idea that
in shaping who
knowing yourself is
we are
good for you
A Successful
Artificial Memory
Has Been Created
The growing science of
memory manipulation
raises social and
ethical questions
12.
17.
21.
Forget Happiness, Find Meaning
Peak emotional experiences are the most 
meaningful ones in our lives
24.
On the Nature of Fear
Experts from the fields of human and animal
affective neuroscience discuss their own
definitions of fear and how we should study it
41.
The Scientific Underpinnings and
Impacts of Shame
People who feel shame readily are at risk
for depression and anxiety disorders
45.
The Brain in Images: Top Entries
in the Art of Neuroscience
Scientific American presents
the winner and
runners-up of the ninth annual Art of Neurosci-
ence contest, along with other notable entries
Where’s My
Consciousness-ometer?
Whether an entity is
conscious may soon
be a testable question
64.
Which Weighs More:
A Pound of Stone or a
Pound of Styrofoam?
It’s not a trick question:
your brain answers
differently depending on
whether they’re part of
the same object or not
ILLUSIONS
66.
Chasing Rainbows
Black-and-white photos
turn into Technicolor
3
NEWS
Debate Arises
over Teaching
“Growth Mindsets”
to Motivate
Students
Research shows conflicting data
on the impact of the intervention,
but a major new study confirms
it can work
IN HER 2006
book
Mindset,
psychol-
ogist Carol Dweck of Stanford
University identified the power of
beliefs. “They strongly affect what we
want and whether we succeed in
getting it,” she wrote. “Changing
people’s beliefs—even the simplest
beliefs—can have profound effects.”
She then argued that people who
possess “fixed mindsets” believe their
intelligence or personality cannot
change. They are more likely to focus
on performing well on familiar tasks,
to shy away from challenge and to be
GETTY IMAGES
4
NEWS
less resilient in the face of failure.
By contrast, those with a “growth
mindset” believe their intelligence or
personality is malleable. They see
challenge as an avenue to improve-
ment and are better prepared to
learn. Dweck cited exemplars of
growth mindsets, including Michael
Jordan, Charles Darwin, photographer
Cindy Sherman and Lou Gerstner,
who rescued IBM.
The idea quickly caught the public
imagination, and the book became
a best seller. Dweck’s TED talk has
nearly 10 million views. The mindset
approach has been applied in stress
and mental health research, in
conflict resolution and in corporate
boardrooms. But it has been espe-
cially influential in education as a
way to help students, low achievers
in particular, reach their full potential.
After the success of Dweck’s book,
schools around the world began to
teach mindsets as a learning
technique, and companies sprang up
selling mindset materials to teachers
and parents.
Then came the pushback. Like
several other major ideas from
psychology, mindset research, which
began in the 1980s, has been
reexamined in the current rigorous
era of social science. A soon-to-be
published study that attempted to
replicate two of Dweck’s most-cited
papers reported “little or no support
for the idea that growth mindsets are
beneficial for children’s responses to
failure or school attainment.” And
while some mindset-based education
interventions had good results, others
found no effect on student outcomes.
A few methodological questions
about Dweck’s work have emerged
(as have questions about the replica-
tions and failed interventions), but the
loudest criticism makes the claim that
mindset research overpromised and
underdelivered. “Millions of dollars
have gone into funding mindset
research. If it turns out this doesn’t
work, that’s a massive lost opportuni-
ty,” says psychologist Timothy Bates
of the University of Edinburgh, senior
author of the replication study.
Even mindset’s proponents recog-
nize that the concept was dissemi-
nated too far too fast. “Any popular
idea in education gets spread way
ahead of how ready the science is,”
says psychologist David Yeager of
the University of Texas at Austin. He
is a leader among the new genera-
tion of mindset researchers that has
begun to refine the science underly-
“Millions of
dollars have gone
into funding
mindset research.
If it turns out
this doesn’t work,
that’s a
massive lost
opportunity.”
—Timothy Bates
ing interventions. Dweck says she
used to think that growth mindset
was a simple concept. “But then we
started becoming aware of all the
ways that it might be misunderstood
or not implemented in a compelling
way. One thing we’ve learned in the
past five to 10 years is how the
nuances matter.”
Yeager and Dweck’s latest work
takes these subtleties into account.
A paper they and their colleagues
published on August 7 in
Nature
confirms that mindset interventions
can work at scale, especially for
low-achieving students, but that
context is critical. Exposure to two
short, low-cost online programs led to
higher grades for lower-achieving
ninth graders (the average improve-
ment was 0.1 grade point). Schools
that fostered climates celebrating
academic success and curiosity saw
the largest gains: some students got
another half a grade point or slightly
more, and the likelihood of failure (a
D or F average) fell by 8 percent. In
addition, high- and low-achieving
ninth graders chose more challenging
math courses in 10th grade.
The study is notable not only for its
findings but for its methods, which
met today’s exacting scientific
requirements and then some: It is a
randomized controlled trial of more
than 12,000 students from a nation-
ally representative sample of public
schools. The authors preregistered
their hypotheses and analysis plan (a
step that prevents fishing for positive
results), and the intervention was
administered by an independent
research firm. The statistical analysis
was reviewed independently, too. The
work has also been replicated by a
separate set of researchers in a study
of more than 6,500 students in
Norway. (That replication will be
published separately.)
Some question whether this level of
5

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