PoBronson.com - Blog

Learning To Lie

2008-02-11T12:32:00.000-08:00

From Po & Ash:

This is an exciting week for us. Exactly a year ago that our praise piece hit the news stands, we're on our way to Boston to accept our AAAS award – and we have a new cover story for New York Magazine that hits the stands today.

The new piece, entitled "Learning to Lie," explores why kids lie. First considering the prevalence of teens' lying to their parents, on a wide variety of topics, we examine when lying begins for little kids: discussing the work of scholars such as McGill University's Dr. Victoria Talwar, we take a look at the developmental (cognitive) and environmental factors that come into play (such as parents and siblings). We then return to teens' lying – to examine how this lying is more about a teen's development of autonomy. And that surprisingly, it turns out that, for a teen, arguing is actually a good sign; it means the teen respects an adult enough to tell the truth about what's going on in her life.

We sincerely hope that you'll enjoy it.

"The One?" a short film by J.D. Beltran and Po Bronson

2007-11-26T20:54:00.000-08:00

From Po:

Just posted on YouTube is the short documentary film on the science of love, "The One?" which was written, directed, and filmed by J.D. Beltran and Po Bronson, narrated by J.D., and produced and edited by J.D.

The film explores where humans get this longing for, or this notion of, a "One" - a special romantic partner. It's both a film about love and a film about science and a film about parenting. The film also explores how our early imprint of love from parents creates a natural bias that affects our perception of all those we fall in love with later in life.

Part 1:

Part 2:

AAAS Announces Winners of the 2007 Science Journalism Awards

2007-11-15T08:30:00.000-08:00

From Po and Ash:

We're very honored. Yea!

From: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Contact:
Earl Lane, 202-326-6431. elane@aaas.org
Molly McElroy, 202-326-6434, mmcelroy@aaas.org

AAAS Announces Winners of the 2007 AAAS Science Journalism Awards

An inquiry into mysterious elk deaths in Wyoming, a profile of a largely unknown black chemist who was a pioneer in the synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants, and a look at the merits of telling children they are smart are among the winners of the 2007 AAAS Science Journalism Awards from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Independent panels of science journalists chose the winners of the awards, which honor excellence in science reporting for print, radio, television and online categories. The awards, established in 1945, also include a prize for coverage of science news for children that is open to journalists worldwide. The judges awarded a special Certificate of Merit in the children's category this year as well.

"There is no higher recognition than the AAAS awards," said Po Bronson, co-author of the prize-winning effort in the magazine category. Bronson and Ashley Merryman won for their piece in New York magazine on the science of praising children. "The scientists we interview often titter amusedly, 'Well, your work's not peer-reviewed,' " Bronson said, "Now we can tell them, 'It kinda has been.'"

Jennifer Frazer, a winner for her stories on elk deaths in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, said the subject gripped her from the outset. "It had the allure of a detective story and an unlikely culprit: a small green lichen that most people wouldn't notice even if they walked right over it," Frazer said.

Katie Alvord, a freelance reporter who won in the online category for her stories on the changing environment of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, said the award "makes the intense work I did to write this online article series even more worthwhile." She added, "Especially for a small-town freelancer like me, it's a real boost to get this kind of recognition."

The winners included Kenneth Weiss and Usha Lee McFarling of the Los Angeles Times for an ambitious series that examined the profound disturbances that have been occurring in the ecology of the world's oceans.

"The Altered Oceans series was an unusual undertaking for a newspaper," Weiss said. "There was no single dramatic event like a hurricane or tsunami. No mass human deaths. Instead, we looked at the slow creep of environmental decay the kind of changes that most people never notice."

The AAAS Science Journalism Awards are sponsored by Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development, L.L.C. The winners will receive $3,000 and a plaque at the 2008 AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston in February.

"Informed reporting is essential if the public is to remain engaged with the crucial science issues of the day," said Alan I. Leshner, the AAAS Chief Executive Officer and Executive Publisher of the journal Science. "The awards this year honor truly excellent work, both in national media and in some enterprising local outlets."

The list of winners:

PRINT

Large Newspaper - Circulation of 100,000 or more
Kenneth Weiss and Usha Lee McFarling
Los Angeles Times
"Altered Oceans"
July 30, 2006 - Aug. 3, 2006

The series described how industrial society has been overdosing the oceans with nutrients that have promoted the growth of harmful algae and bacteria. Plastic wastes have created a plague of floating detritus with widespread impact on sea life. The series also discussed how carbon dioxide is entering the oceans at a rate of nearly 1 million tons an hour, raising the acidity of seawater and threatening entire species. Natalie Angier, a Pulitzer Prize- winning science writer for The New York Times, said that the series gives "specificity and geography, a sense of place, to a part of the world we terrestrial species too often consider amorphous and unknowable." She said the series shows "the sort of passionate rigor we rarely see in newspapers these days." Frank Roylance of the Baltimore Sun, called it "a most compelling series, ambitious, important and surprising in many aspects. The writing was first-rate, the enterprise impressive."

Small Newspaper - Circulation less than 100,000
Jennifer Frazer
Wyoming Tribune-Eagle
"Getting to the Bottom of Mysterious Elk Deaths"
Nov. 26, 2006 and Dec. 3, 2006

A rash of mysterious elk deaths in Wyoming in 2004 left scientists and game wardens wondering what had happened. Frazer described the steps by which researchers determined that a poisonous lichen was the likely cause. In a two-part series, Frazer also described efforts to save the remaining elk and help the species recover. Calling her series an example of "superb local science writing," Robert Lee Hotz of The Wall Street Journal said Frazer "opens a window into the mysteries of field epidemiology, turning a story of doomed elk into a page-turner of a lethal botany and the consequences of ecology." Guy Gugliotta, a freelance science writer formerly with The Washington Post, said the series was a "compelling narrative detective story that shows how science can be put at the service of a community and why it matters."

Magazine
Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
New York
"How Not to Talk to Your Kids"
Feb. 19, 2007

According to a Columbia University survey, 85 percent of American parents think it is important to tell their children that they are smart, helping to ensure that they do not sell their talents short. But in a cover story in New York magazine, Bronson and Merryman described a growing body of research which suggests that giving kids the label "smart" does not prevent them from underperforming. Rather, it may actually be a cause of their underperformance. The story noted that the impulse to offer praise "has become a sort of panacea for the anxieties of modern parenting." Roylance called the story a "terrifically written exploration of a topic of interest to any parent." He said it was a "surprising, counter-intuitive treatment, well-sourced and well-grounded in the scientific literature." Robert Boyd, a science writer in the Washington Bureau of McClatchy newspapers, called it a "beautifully written story of substantial importance to legions of parents *valuable that it appeared in a magazine not known for science articles." He added that the story "reports actual scientific findings, not just pop-psychology generalities."

TELEVISION

Llewellyn Smith, Stephen Lyons
WGBH/NOVA
"Forgotten Genius"
Feb. 6, 2007

The grandson of Alabama slaves, African-American scientist Percy Julian overcame racial discrimination to become one of the leading chemists of the 20th century. The winning WGBH/NOVA program told his remarkable and largely unknown story. The program describes not only Julian's early struggles to open doors traditionally closed to blacks but also his keen sense for how to do science. His work with steroids and alkaloids helped bring about a host of affordable and effective treatments for diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and glaucoma. The judges praised the program for its insights into Julian's personality and its clear explanations of the science that Julian pursued during his career as an academic and industrial chemist. Peter Spotts, science writer for The Christian Science Monitor, called the program "a superb profile of a little-known scientist that covers the science well but also raises profound issues. Not just informative, but moving." Christine Dell'Amore, an editor at National Geographic News, said "the producers' determination to portray Julian as an authentic person, with his own faults, gave credence to the story and allowed the viewer to relate to Julian as he moved through his career."

RADIO

Keith Seinfeld
KPLU-FM, Seattle/Tacoma
"The Electric Brain"
Jan. 9-11, 2007

In a thematic series, Seinfeld of KPLU-FM in Seattle/Tacoma described the electrical properties of the human brain and how scientists are finding new ways to use those properties to treat diseases and injuries. The judges were impressed by his clear, concise language and great use of sound in telling about important research in neuroscience. "While a drill whines in the background, cutting a hole in the top of a patient's skull, Keith Seinfeld carries his listeners into the story," said Jeff Nesmith, a Washington-based science writer for Cox Newspapers. "This kind of radio journalism seizes a listener's attention while it delivers an understandable account of complicated science." David Baron, global development editor for Public Radio International's "The World" program, praised the "vividness of the writing, the clarity of the scientific explanations, the superb use of sound, the dramatic storytelling." He said Seinfeld's work "hangs together beautifully as a series, with each story building upon those that came before. Well conceived and brilliantly executed, 'The Electric Brain' is radio science journalism of the highest order."

ONLINE

Katie Alvord
KeweenawNow.com
"Lake Superior Basin Climate Change" series
May 3, 2007; June 3, 2007; June 30, 2007

In a solid example of localized science reporting for a community-based Web site, freelance writer Alvord described the potential local impacts of global warming on a local Michigan community. Kathy Sawyer, a freelance science writer formerly with The Washington Post, said Alvord's "well-crafted and enterprising online package 'zooms in' to capture the effects of global climate change" on Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula. "The writing, supplemented by telling photos, provides specific, graphic detail for an audience that might not get from any other medium such extensive information about what's happening in their environs," Sawyer said. Bryn Nelson, a freelance science writer, said Alvord delivered a "compelling, accessible and well-reported analysis of how a global phenomenon could be intensely local for a community in Michigan' Upper Peninsula, including its possible impacts on winter recreation, tourism, Lake Superior's water levels and even the moose population on Isle Royale National Park. Alvord also included the necessary nuances to balance the potential dangers against the remaining uncertainties."

CHILDREN'S SCIENCE NEWS

Mona Chiang
Scholastic Science World
"A Whale of a Mystery"
Jan. 15, 2007

Chiang told her young readers about an investigation by scientists into the puzzling death of a North Atlantic right whale that was spotted drifting off the coast of Nova Scotia. She described various clues that the researchers followed in trying to determine the cause of death. They eventually concluded that a large, blunt object had hit the whale on one side. Catherine Hughes, a senior editor for National Geographic Kids magazine, said the story met all the criteria. "The mystery is an immediate draw for kids, as is the compelling species, the ever-popular whale," Hughes said. "The scientific process used to solve the mystery both teaches and holds readers' interest." Susan Milius, a reporter for Science News, said Chiang "showed scientific process in action with vivid details. What's not to love about decayed whale flesh oozing like toothpaste?"

Certificate of Merit
The judging panel recommended a special Certificate of Merit for the runner-up in the children's news category. Sina Loeschke, a writer for GEOlino - a German science magazine for children - wrote an engaging piece about sea slugs. "With lively, imaginative writing and colorful pictures, the story deftly introduces readers to these unusual ocean denizens and cogently explains their biological quirks," said John Carey of Business Week. Loeschke's piece was published on Feb. 7, 2007.

# # #

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's largest general scientific society, and publisher of the journal, Science (www.sciencemag.org). AAAS was founded in 1848, and has 262 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of 1 million. The non-profit AAAS (www.aaas.org) is open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society" through initiatives in science policy, international programs, science education and more. For the latest research news, log onto EurekAlert!, www.eurekalert.org, the premier science-news Web site, a service of AAAS.

Po on "On Point"

2007-10-15T17:14:00.000-07:00

From Ash:

This morning, Po was on the NPR show On Point discussing our sleep pieces. Also guests were Dr. Judith Owens, of Brown University, and the new superintendent of schools for Edina, Ric Dressen.

I think it's a really great discussion of the issues we've been writing about.

You can download the audiofile from the On Point program information website.

Naps and Other Make-up Sleep

2007-10-10T11:31:00.000-07:00

From Ash & Po:

A couple people have asked us about naps (for school-aged and older kids) and sleeping in – great questions we'd wondered, too.

If your kid is tired, then, by all means, let the kid sleep in or take a nap.

Let's kill the myth that sleeping in or napping is part of "lazy afternoon." Physiologically, you can't sleep unless you actually need to sleep. That's the homeostatic pressure part of sleep at work. So there's nothing lazy about getting needed sleep. (Conversely, being awake and sleep-deprived will probably lead to more lethargy than if he'd actually just slept more.)

Moreover, sleep loss is cumulative, so the only way to make up for it is to get more sleep on another night or during a nap.

But – and this is the big caveat – don't treat sleeping in or naps as a cure-all. Instead, they are the sleep-equivalent of band-aids. They shouldn't be something that you rely on, instead of having a kid get a regular nightly sleep schedule.

Here's why.

Sleeping in and naps do help resolve the sleep debt, but they probably won't resolve the debt entirely. As an example, let's say that a particular teen does need the 9.25 hours a night recommended by many sleep experts. But he only gets seven hours on school nights. On Monday, he's down 2.25 hours. That's not great, but we've all been there, right? By the end of the week, he's short 11.25 hours of sleep – he's missed more than an entire night's worth of slumber. Even sleeping in until noon on Saturday will probably only have helped erase two or three of those lost hours.

Much more daytime sleep than that, however, will likely throw off a kid's circadian rhythm and homeostatic pressure – so he'll may have more trouble going to sleep in the evenings, and wake up already sleep-deprived the next Monday morning. (That's even more of a concern for a teen, whose circadian system already has a preference for nighttime wakefulness.)

The amount and quality of sleep a person needs in a given night is directly related to the mental and physical activity that a person did during that very day. To the point that if you learn more vocabulary, you likely will spend more time in REM stage sleep. Make-up sleep can't handle those sleep stage adjustments as well.

Naps also bring unique problems of their own. That horrible groggy feeling after some naps is called "sleep inertia" – the body can't wake up fully. That's a real issue, but scientists don't know why it occurs or what it means.

What they do know is that the brain can't do the same sort of work during a nap that it does during nightly sleep. Consider that a nice nap is about 25 to 45 minutes. That's only 1/4 to 1/2 as long as it takes to cycle through all of sleep-stages of non-REM and REM sleep, and the brain needs to process information throughout all the stages of sleep.

Interestingly, a nap works best if it's prophylactic: if you know the kid's going to have a late night, then an afternoon nap can help him stay alert later in the evening. But even that is of limited use: he'll be just as tired the following day as if he hadn't had the nap.

Ultimately, let them get that make-up sleep.

But the more make-up sleep they need, the more you should think about changing their overall sleep schedule.

One Real Cost We All Pay For Sleep-Deprivation

2007-10-10T10:10:00.000-07:00

From Ash:

There's one aspect of sleep deprivation for adults that I think is so important, that I really think that if this blog post could be forwarded around enough, it could help save lives.

A study for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that, between 1999 and 2003, drivers falling asleep at the wheel were responsible for an estimated 1.35 million car accidents.

Sleepy drivers are just as impaired in reaction times and judgment as drunk drivers – to the point that the experts can actually give you equivalent blood alcohol measurements depending on how much sleep deprivation you've had.

But that's just a "drowsy driver."

A driver who actually falls asleep is even more dangerous than the drunk driver. Because if she's asleep, she's never going to hit the brakes, turn the wheel, or take any evasive action. The car just keeps going forward until it runs into something. So a fall-asleep crash is almost always serious and rarely just a fender-bender. Statistically, "fall-asleep accidents" are actually much more deadly than other types of crashes.

As we wrote in an earlier post, young adults, who are the most sleep-deprived, are disproportionately responsible for sleep-related car accidents: young adults are involved in 55% of the 100,000 fall-asleep crashes annually, even though they aren't even close to being half of the driving population.

Now, if you just did the math and realized that the national studies' numbers aren't consistent, that's because the 100,000 accident rate is based on police reports. But the police determine that sleep was the culprit only when they've ruled out every other reason for the crash to have occurred. So, for example, they rule out weather, alcohol, mechanical failure, etc. until there's no other possible explanation than the driver fell asleep. Thus it's a low estimate.

The 200,000+ accident annual figure comes from a nationally representative survey that asked people about their driving habits and sleep-related crashes. Not surprisingly, drivers were more willing to confess to fall-asleep crashes to the researchers than they were willing to admit to the police.

That's the kind of question that usually has an artificially low response though – because people don't like to admit that they are to blame for an accident. So that too, is a low estimate.

So how big a problem is this, really?

A couple of the sleep experts privately told me that if the real figures were known, we'd discover that more young people die in fall-asleep crashes than drunk-driving accidents.

Sleep Is For Wusses – An Idea Kids Are Learning All Too Well

2007-10-10T07:54:00.000-07:00

From Ash:

Between Po and myself, I think we have interviewed at least 20 of the world's sleep experts.

Every one of them complained that exhaustion is a huge national health-issue. And every one of them also railed against the way our society sees that exhaustion as a virtue.

Indeed, our 24-7 society doesn’t tolerate sleepiness. We don't think of sleep as a biological imperative. Instead, we think of it as a character flaw – a sign of weakness. University of Minnesota's Dr. Mark Mahowald says that he's even heard parents say that exhaustion is actually good for children – because it teaches them a good work-ethic. Continuing with this logic, the parents actually argue that getting enough sleep would actually be bad for children, because valuing sleep would teach kids to be lazy. If nothing else, they argue, sleep deprivation will prepare kids for the exhaustion they'll face as adults.

Perhaps most tellingly – these parents also say that if they're tired, then their kids should be, too.

That’s what it really comes down to. For adults, sleep has become a luxury good; it’s considered an indulgence, not a necessity. And I'll be the first to admit that I myself have had that point of view – I'm one of those "Sleep When You're Dead" girls. Even as I've slathered the concealer on, trying in vain to cover up the circles under my eyes, I've considered those dark shadows as badges of honor.

We sell a story to ourselves that Sleep is for Wusses. And apparently, our kids buy into it, too.

For the past several years, a childhood friend of mine, Bridget Persons, now a San Diego, California high school English teacher, has given her students a district-mandated final exam. The students are supposed to read a couple articles on teens’ need for sleep, and then they're to write a persuasive letter to the Board of Ed as whether or not school start times should be changed.

Bridget’s school starts at 7:15 am. To get there, many of her students are already on school buses at 6am.

Her students never miss the irony. They’re taking a 7:15 am final exam about how teens’ brains are still asleep at 7:15. Between the readings and their own experience, the students are convinced that there’s a problem. They feel passionately enough about it that they always get into a big discussion after the test.

But out of hundreds of student essays she’s read, Bridget says only one student ever asked for more than a scant 15 or 30 more minutes of sleep.

They have this gut instinct that (correctly) even just 15 minutes or so more would help a little.

The kids all want even more sleep than that – they feel it would make a real difference – but asking for more than that just isn't something they feel they can do. Practically, they just can’t figure out how to fit sleep into their busy lives. Their school is a performing arts magnet; rehearsals frequently last until 8 pm. Home at nine with homework to do, an extra hour of sleep is an extravagance well out of their reach.

I don't know what grades they are getting on those essays, but it's clear that they’ve already mastered society's lesson: The show must go on.

On the Question, "How Much Sleep Does My Child Actually Need?"

2007-10-09T11:01:00.000-07:00

From Po:

You might notice that in both of our sleep articles, we never come out and say, "here's how much sleep your kids needs - X hours." I don't think there's an easy answer to this, and I don't like pretending there's an easy answer when in fact it's complicated. Perhaps I'm most worry of the simple advice line, "your 5th grader needs 10 hours of sleep," because I don't think merely telling people this nugget will have any affect at all. I might as well be telling people "you need 5 million dollars to be financially secure." That isn't going to help them get from point A to point B - from where we are today, to where we need to be. So I emphasized, in the article, how every 15 minutes counts, and how a single hour can have dramatic consequences. I'm hoping the integrity of that science will push parents and children to find 15 minutes more, or a half hour more.

For the record, here's a simple chart we made which shows the gap between "what kids need" and "what they get." It uses data from Dr. Fred Danner at the University of Kentucky.

According to the sleep scientists, one of most-common incorrect assumptions is that you could draw a straight line from how much sleep your 6 year old needs to how much sleep an adult needs, and plot kids along that slope by age. I.e., as kids get older, they don't need as much sleep. While there's some slope from age 6 to age 12, the sleep scientists say that all teenagers, ages 12-18, really need 9.2 hours sleep. Their brains are still developing up until about the age of 21 (during later teen years, their brains appear to be pruning away unnecessary synaptic connections in the prefontal cortex, and this seems to improve their judgment of risk). At the end of puberty, the "phase shift" of delayed melatonin ceases.

How do the sleep scientists know that kids need 9.2 hours? Well, here they make a crucial assumption. They assume the body and brain will wake up when they've had all the sleep it needs. So they say teens "need" 9.2 hours by having experiments where the kids sleep a ton for weeks before coming into the sleep clinic - so they're entirely rested - and then letting them sleep all their bodies want in the clinic. The teens slept over 9 hours. In fact, at that point the researchers did wake up many of the kids.

So that might be how much the body wants, but is it fair to say that's what the body/brain really, truly needs? The scientists believe so. On the other hand, it's also fair to ask "at what point do we see a steep dropoff in performance, due to less sleep?" Is there a tipping point? The answer appears to be that we see minor consequences for only getting 8 hours sleep, but we see major consequences for only getting 7 hours sleep. One study of over 3,000 students in two school districts in Ontario, Canada demonstrated this dynamic. We didn't include this study in our New York article because the data is literally too hard to explain in just a few words, and you'll see why. Basically, they asked kids if they felt sleepy in the morning. 73% of the kids felt sleepy from 8 am to 10 am. They were performing worse than the "not sleepy" kids, but only slightly worse, nothing alarming. However, there was an additional subgroup who still felt very sleepy from 10am to noon. This group had real problems, from decreased grades to missing school and sports, etc. The rate of "sleep consequences" skyrocketed up 46% to 220%, depending on the variable. They were also getting less sleep - under 7.5 hours.

None of this can be taken as a rule and applied to individual kids. Some people need more, some need less. In sleep clinics there are children getting 11 or 12 hours sleep, yet it's still not enough. And we all have heard stories about a few uniquely driven adults who seem to thrive on 5 hours sleep.

One of the most interesting sub-analyses is being done by Dr. Oskar Jenni in Zurich. He has some preliminary data which, in a strange way, confounds the odds that students who get A's average 15 more minutes than the B's, who in turn average 15 more minutes than the C's. Despite those overall odds still holding true, Jenni has noticed that many very-gifted children actually need less sleep. He theorizes that smarter people actually can sleep less, because they have more efficient sleep systems. The more they sleep, the better it is for them - but they can do more with less, compared to others. (Note: this is very preliminary and untested. Please do not use it to justify letting your gifted child stay up late.)

Are the Hallmark Traits of Adolescence Just Symptoms of Sleep Deprivation?

2007-10-08T13:30:00.000-07:00

From Po and Ash:
(Note: This post continues the conversation from our New York magazine stories)

Stephen Farrell is Assistant Headmaster and Dean of Faculty of the elite prep school, Choate-Rosemary Hall. Traditionally, boarding schools hold classes six days a week, but recently, Farrell led the movement to make a controversial change that separated Choate from its peer schools – Phillips Exeter, Groton, and the like. Choate eliminated Saturday classes. Farrell did so for one reason. His students were exhausted. Farrell had seen enough of the sleep research (and heard enough complaints from the school pediatrician) to be convinced that his students’ academic and physical well-being would improve if they slept in an extra day a week.

Even after the switch, Choate’s staff pediatrician regularly warns Farrell that some students are so sleep deprived that they are jeopardizing their physical and psychological welfare. Farrell has tried to tinker with lights-out policies in the dorms and forbidding use of phones and computers use after midnight, but the complaints are too loud from parents, faculty, and students. “These are kids who don’t want to be reined in,” Farrell explained. But they’re not inhuman. On confidential surveys, his students report crashing on holidays, sleeping 15 hours a night during the entire vacation.

While all kids are impacted by sleep loss, for teenagers, sleep is a special challenge.

University of Kentucky’s Dr. Fred Danner has studied how, on a national level, sleep decreases each year during high school. In their first year, 60% of kids got at least 8 hours on average. By the second year, that was down to 30%. Right alongside this decline went their moods; dropping below eight hours doubled the rate of clinical-level depression. Over one-eighth of the students reached this classification, which makes one only wonder how many more suffer from melancholy of a lesser degree.

Brown University’s Dr. Mary Carskadon has demonstrated that during puberty, the circadian system – the biological clock – does a “phase shift” that keeps adolescents up later. In prepubescents and grownups, when it gets dark outside, our brains produce melatonin, which makes us sleepy. But adolescent brains don’t release melatonin for another 90 minutes. So even if they’re in bed at 10 p.m (which they aren’t), they lay awake, staring at the ceiling. It's possible that this played some evolutionary role, back when teens needed to leave the tribe and explore or hunt.

Awakened at dawn by alarm clocks, teen brains are still releasing melatonin. This pressures them to fall back asleep – either in first period at school or, more dangerously, during the drive to school. Which is one of the reasons young adults are responsible for more than half of the 100,000 “fall asleep” crashes annually.

“We thought the evidence was staggering,” Carole Young-Kleinfeld recalled.

Kleinfeld is a mother in Wilton, Connecticut, thirty miles up I-95 from New York City. Wilton, too, had saved money by running busses in two shifts, starting the high school at 7:35. Then a few years ago, she was at a meeting for the local League of Women Voters. Then-state senator Kevin Sullivan spoke about Carskadon and others’ research, and how starting high school at a more reasonable hour was the answer.

Kleinfeld had a sullen teenager of her own, and when she went to local high schools to register kids to vote, she regularly saw students sleeping in the halls during class. So the idea hit home. She and others formed a committee to learn about the issue. Eventually, they convinced the district to move the high school’s start time to 8:20.

For Kleinfeld, the change “was a Godsend.”

Her son Zach had once been a perfectly happy kid, but when he hit high school he became the prototypical disengaged, unenthralled-by-everything teen. He was so negative, so withdrawn that “I really thought we’d lost him,” Kleinfeld sighed. “We’d lost that sense of connection.”

After the high school start time shifted, Kleinfeld couldn’t believe it. “We got our kid back.” Zack would bound downstairs in the morning with a smile, wanting to share a funny story he’d read in The Onion. His SAT scores went up, too.

Several scholars have noted that many hallmark traits of modern adolescence – moodiness, impulsiveness, disengagement – are also symptoms of chronic sleep deprivation. Might our culture-wide perception of what it means to be a teenager be unwittingly skewed by the fact they don’t get enough sleep?

University of Pittsburgh’s Ronald Dahl agrees, observing: “Is it adding one percent or sixty percent, we don’t know. But clearly a lack of sleep makes it much worse.”

Sleep - Without Snooze, You Lose

2007-10-08T09:58:00.000-07:00

From Po & Ash:

Today, we have two new features for New York Magazine in which we explore the fascinating – and surprisingly scary – ways that sleep deprivation can affect a child's cognitive, emotional and physiological development. And very early this morning, Po was interviewed about the pieces by Harry Smith on CBS's The Early Show. (Yes, Po's currently slightly sleep-deprived from getting up at 4 am to be interviewed about sleep deprivation.)

We're very excited about these pieces, and we really hope that you'll read both. The main article, Can A Lack of Sleep Set Back Your Child's Cognitive Abilities? (available both in the print and on-line edition of the magazine) is an overview of the effects of sleep deprivation on children. The second, a web-exclusive, How To Get Kids To Sleep More, isn't just your standard advice piece: in that one, we provide the scientific basis for the experts' suggestions on how to get a good night sleep – and explore what we often do that inadvertently prevents getting sleep.

Because we all know that sleep matters. What's amazing is just how much it matters. Sleep isn't just a time of rest – it's when learning is consolidated in the brain, it's when the body's metabolism works its magic, and when emotions are regulated.

Over the next few days, we're going to be blogging more information about both kids' and adults' sleep, so please come back for much more.

Today Show segment video clip

2007-07-11T19:37:00.000-07:00

From Po:

I was on NBC's The Today Show yesterday with Tiki Barber, Matt Lauer, and Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, once again talking about the power and peril of praising kids.

Here's the video clip:

FYI, right before the end, Tiki Barber concludes, "So we have a consensus - it's okay to praise kids when they're really young, but we need to cut back as they get older." We were running out of time, and I was swayed by his attempt to make nice, so I didn't interject, I only lamely smiled. In fact, this body of research was repeated on subgroups of every age, from preschoolers all the way up to Ivy League medical students, and every subgroup showed the same negative consequence of being labeled by praise as "smart." So it's not okay to praise preschoolers constantly, and it's probably better to get in the habit of doing it right.

Results from Survey of Parenting Styles & Assumptions

2007-07-06T12:02:00.001-07:00

This blog post will describe how people are answering our survey. When appropriate, the correct answer is in bold type.

Question 1. At the time of birth of a firstborn child, how confident are mothers and fathers in feeling adequately prepared for their new role of being a parent?

80% of mothers and 40% of fathers are confident	10.84%
60% of mothers and 60% of fathers are confident	21.67%
40% of mothers and 20% of fathers are confident	38.92%
20% of mothers and 20% of fathers are confident	29.06%

Question 2. Researchers surveyed teachers to find out which students have behavior problems at school. Then they polled parents, to learn about their parenting styles. You'd probably not be surprised to hear that it was children of "Disengaged Fathers" who teachers reported being the most angry and aggressive. But what other parenting style was also strongly associated with children having behavior problems at school - nearly as high as the children of Disengaged Fathers?
answer options	Response Percent
The Progressive Father	62.41%
The Traditional Father	37.59%

Question 3. On average, how well do you think siblings treat each other, compared to treating their friends? (This is for children of elementary school age and younger).
answer options	Response Percent
Siblings are 10% nicer to each other than to their friends.	11.58%
Siblings insult each other and attempt to control each other twice as often as they do with friends.	45.26%
Siblings insult each other and attempt to control each other seven times as often as they do with friends.	43.16%

Question 4. (In three parts) Children learn to lie around their fourth birthday (or even earlier). They may, or may not, make a habit of it. Which statement do you think applies to this developmental stage?
answer options	Response Percent
Preschool-aged children who lie a lot just don’t realize yet they’re lying, and are blurring the distinction between the fanciful and the deceptive.	24.73%
Preschool-aged children who lie a lot are worse at distinguishing lies from the truth.	17.58%
Preschool-aged children who lie a lot are better at distinguishing lies from the truth.	57.69%

Which story, told to children, has a bigger impact on reducing their lying?
answer options	Response Percent
The Boy Who Cried Wolf	75.54%
George Washington and the Cherry Tree	24.46%

Outside the United States, which story has a bigger impact on reducing their lying?
answer options	Response Percent
The Boy Who Cried Wolf	80.43%
George Washington and The Cherry Tree	19.57%

Question 5. Scientists have been studying children’s racial attitudes – their tendency to stereotype people of other races and ethnicities, and have negative or positive bias towards them. Without overthinking this question, which statement would you generally assume to be true?
answer options	Response Percent
Children who attend very diverse high schools have dramatically better racial attitudes than children who attend non-diverse high schools.	13.11%
Children who attend very diverse high schools have slightly better racial attitudes than children who attend non-diverse high schools.	29.51%
Children who attend very diverse high schools have slightly worse racial attitudes than children who attend non-diverse high schools.	26.78%
There is no correlation between diversity of high school and racial attitudes.	30.60%

Question 6. Before your children entered kindergarten, what best describes your philosophy to handling the sensitive topic of skin color and race?
answer options	Response Percent
It has very rarely come up, and I think talking about race will only teach my child to notice differences. In fact, by treating people I encounter just as people – without regard to skin color – my children can learn that all people are equal.	47.73%
It has occasionally come up, and yet I don’t want to call special attention to skin color, so I've sometimes told my child general principles, such as “Everybody is equal,” or “God loves us all,” or “It’s what’s inside that matters.”	26.14%
Even before my kids noticed skin color differences, I've handled it very proactively, asserting specific, unmistakable principles, such as “That someone has the same skin color as you is not a reason to like or prefer him.” I've made it super-clear that judging someone for their skin color is morally wrong.	26.14%

Question 7. (In two parts) True or False: Kids who sleep a lot are more likely to be overweight.
answer options	Response Percent
True	17.32%
False	82.68%

True or False: Kids who sleep a lot are less likely to have a report card full of A’s and B’s.
answer options	Response Percent
True	16.29%
False	83.71%

Question 8. Another way to describe the majority of the bullies at your local middle school could be to say they are ______ and ______.
answer options	Response Percent
a. bad-tempered and physically intimidating	34.64%
b. popular and cool	40.78%
c. loners and withdrawn	24.58%

Question 9. Which of the following fits you? When I see a young boy pretending to be in a scenario that involves karate moves and/or shooting an imaginary gun ...
answer options	Response Percent
I’m a little nervous that in non-pretend situations, he might be a little more physically aggressive.	35.43%
I’m very worried that in non-pretend situations, he might be a little more physically aggressive.	6.29%
I’m not worried at all that it leaks over to non-pretend situations, and I wouldn’t expect him to be more physically aggressive.	58.29%

Question 10. Many parents tell their children that they are smart. They believe that this helps build the children’s self concept, which works like an angel on the shoulder. Is this something you do?
answer options	Response Percent
Yes	60.23%
No	39.77%

However, of the 51% who have not heard about or read our New York magazine article, 77% are saying "Yes" and 23% are saying "No."

Question 11. (In two parts) What percentage of adolescents think it’s okay to lie to their parents about personal and moral issues?
answer options	Response Percent
95% think it’s okay to lie	19.21%
90% think it’s okay to lie	36.72%
55% think it’s okay to lie	31.64%
35% think it’s okay to lie	12.43%

What percent of white adolescents accept and follow the restrictions their parents set for them?
answer options	Response Percent
Only 5 percent	17.51%
Only 20 percent	47.46%
Only 35 percent	35.03%

Question 12. When children see their parents fighting, it affects their mood. This is actually measurable – scores of their moods drop by an average of 26%. But boys and girls are affected differently. For one gender, their moods drop dramatically and recover quickly, within hours. For the other gender, their moods drop moderately and don’t fully recover for many days. For which gender do you think their mood scores drop moderately and don’t recover for days?
answer options	Response Percent
Boys	55.68%
Girls	44.32%

Question 13. If a heated argument starts with your spouse in front of your kids – and you realize this – what do you do?
answer options	Response Percent
Stop immediately, because our arguing can hurt the kids.	8.09%
Ask to take it upstairs or out of the room, so the kids don’t witness any more conflict than they already have.	20.81%
I try my best not to completely lose my cool, but I don’t shield my kids from the reality of anger and arguing, because I think it’s a reasonably normal part of family life.	35.84%
I try to make sure my kids witness how the fights end – how they’re resolved – so they have role models for resolving arguments.	35.26%

Question 14. If your toddler throws his food (let’s say an apple) off his tray table, how would you respond?
answer options	Response Percent
By not responding at all, to avoid rewarding him with attention. I’d clean it up later.	11.63%
By removing the tray table and his food, because he’s probably not really hungry any more if he’s throwing food.	19.77%
By nicely saying, “We don’t throw food, we eat food.”	33.72%
By firmly saying, “No throwing or I will take the food away.”	27.33%
By saying, “Oh, poor Mr. Apple! See how he is bruised?”	7.56%

Question 15. 90% of kids have been spanked. However, a parent’s demeanor and language can shape the meaning of the spanking for the child. Which type of meaning assigned to corporal punishment has been associated with behavior problems in school?
answer options	Response Percent
A) Spanking is used very sparingly, reserved only for rare occasions like this one where you did something especially wrong.	51.74%
B) Spanking is the normal punishment for when you do things wrong.	48.26%

Question 16. Researchers have found that fathers who are religious tend to be more conservative when it comes to issues relating to "family values." These men believe that marriage is very important, that having kids is an important part of a happy life, that single parent families are damaging to kids, and that it's better for the kids if their moms stay-at-home rather than work. Holding these traditional values, religious men:
answer options	Response Percent
are less involved with their kids on a day-to-day basis.	37.28%
hold more egalitarian views about housework and childcare duties - wanting to be equally involved in both.	4.73%
are no more or less likely to be involved in childcare than those who espouse less traditional views.	57.99%

Question 17. Which of the following everyday school elements has such a dramatic effect on a child that it could reduce a gifted child's performance in class by 18%?
answer options	Response Percent
The buzzing of large fluorescent lights	59.28%
The gender of the child's teacher	40.72%

Council on Contemporary Families Honors Five Journalists for Outstanding Coverage of Family Issues

2007-04-18T13:27:00.000-07:00

From Po & Ash: "Yeah!"

CHICAGO, April 18 (AScribe Newswire) -- The Council on Contemporary Families (CCF) is pleased to present its Fifth Annual Media Awards on Friday May 4th at its Tenth Anniversary Conference and Gala Celebration in Chicago, Illinois. The ceremony will take place at 6:30 PM at the University of Chicago's International House (1414 East 59th Street), following a day of panels on contemporary family issues. Afterwards, CCF will celebrate its 10th anniversary with an appetizer buffet, jazz entertainment, and special guest Al Franken.

The 2007 Award for Outstanding Coverage of Change in America's Families goes to Po Bronson and his collaborator Ashley Merryman for their articles for Time magazine and The Guardian on issues ranging from the Mommy Wars to rebuilding broken families. The articles stem from their in-depth research about family trends, a reference available online as The Factbook on Family (www.pobronson.com/factbook). Jurors commended Bronson's writing, sourcing, and the way his work cuts through myth and hyperbole to actual discourses around the family.

About the CCF Media Awards: The CCF media awards were established in 2002 as part of the Council's commitment to enhancing the public understanding of trends in American family life. "All too often, changes in U.S. family patterns are painted in stark, better-or-worse terms that ignore the nuanced and complex realities of family life today. The Awards Committee looked for articles that put individual family issues in larger social context. This kind of coverage offers the public a balanced picture of the trade-offs, strengths and weaknesses in many different family arrangements and structures," explained Stephanie Coontz, CCF's Director of Research and Publicity. The CCF media awards committee will call for nominations for the 2008 awards in the fall. Please visit www.contemporaryfamilies.org for information.

About CCF: Founded in 1996, with a membership consisting of national noted family researchers, mental health and social work practitioners, and clinicians, the Council on Contemporary Families is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization dedicated to enhancing the national conversation about how and why contemporary families are changing, what needs and challenges they face, and how these needs can best be met.

Damage & Baggage - Does it Mean Your Relationships Are Doomed?

2007-03-08T11:28:00.000-08:00

From Po:

One of prevailing assumptions we have about the stability of marriage & relationships is this: if you had some bad shit in your past, especially your childhood, you're not going to do as well in relationships as a grown up. Psychologists call this the Theory of Enduring Vulnerabilities. All marriages are likely to endure stressful events, and the way we react to those events is partly regulated by the way those stressful events echo childhood difficulties.

To state this more plainly, the more baggage you bring in to a marriage increases the risk your marriage won't last. People with fewer enduring vulnerabilities should have a better capacity to adapt - and deal - and communicate; people with more enduring vulnerabilities will not handle problems as well.

So that's the theory.

The counter-theory might be something like this: the more baggage you've had to deal with, the better you got at dealing/communicating/adapting. This learned response from said baggage cancels out its detrimental legacy. Our psychological scars might open up vulnerabilities, sure, but they also bring us awareness and attentiveness. We're seasoned. We'll handle problems fine.

So you might not think this theory/counter-theory could ever be tested, but in fact it has.

This theory was indeed recently put to a quite interesting test, in a well-managed study by researchers at Ohio State University. Ten years ago, they put 90 newlywed couples into a study, interviewing them extensively. Ten years later, they followed up, to learn who was divorced, and who was still married, and how satisfied they were in their marriage. So it measured both marital stability (divorce?) and marital satisfaction (happy?). For what it's worth - and this is an important caveat - these 90 newlywed couples began their marriage very satisfied and happy. They were blissful newlyweds, with very positive outlooks. None was dealing with any form of mental illness (the couples had been screened for that). This would partly explain why, ten years out, only 17 of the 90 couples had divorced. (The national average, for first marriages, predicts that 33% would divorce in ten years).

So these researchers were looking for models that could predict who would divorce, and who might be unhappy in marriage. They were checking for everything, from how these couples argued to their heartrates to their hormone levels. In their extensive interviewing, they applied the model of Enduring Vulnerabilities. They counted how many stressors (baggage) each person brought to the marriage, and how severe they were. What they found was surprising. Enduring Vulnerabilities was not a predictor. People with more baggage did not fare worse in marriage, either for the likelihood of divorce, or for the likelihood of being unhappily married.

So if that's not a predictor, what is?

Hormones.

The best predictor of future divorce and unhappiness was the presence, shortly after marriage, of elevated stress hormones when arguing - epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol.

To make this clear, imagine two newlywed couples. Both tell you how happy they are to be married. Both believe, equally, they're in this til death do them part. To all appearances, they are equally enthusiastic.

The researchers then basically provoked a fight. The couple chose a topic of some contention between them, and they discussed it for half an hour. During this argument (if it got that heated), the researchers were occasionally checking their hormone levels through a blood draw. The couples who stressed out a lot, during that argument, were the ones who were divorced or unhappy ten years later.

For what it's worth, the reseachers also watched how the couples argue, and employed a scoring system that kinda measures whether couples arguments turn negative and get nasty. This turned out not to be a predictor, any more than enduring vulnerabilities. So a couple can get testy and mean-spirited on the outside (in what they say to each other), but the real predictor is how much stress they're going through on the inside (measured by their hormones).

"You're Ruining My Self-Esteem!" – Part 3

2007-03-03T08:53:00.000-08:00

From Ash:

So picking up right where we left off yesterday – on Dr. Jennifer Crocker's work on the price unwittingly paid by people who pursue a positive self-esteem / self-image – Crocker is building upon the scholarship of Carol Dweck, Edward Deci and Richard Ryan (scholars leading work relating to intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation that we discussed in an earlier post) and others.

And she has found another twist in those who are invested in self-esteem. For those who become invested in maintaining their self-image (similar to Dweck's findings with younger students) – the confirmation they need to affirm that image increasingly comes from external sources. For example, the school-defined student doesn't define himself by the knowledge he's accumulated, but rather by the grades and accolades he has been given by faculty and peers. A student who thinks that her looks are a lot of who she is becomes dependent on keeping up with fashions set by others, and people telling her that she's pretty.

In other words, people who are attached to a label often become dependent on outside sources to tell them if they are living up to that label or not. Self-image becomes self-worth – but that self-worth is defined by someone else's terms, not one's own.

That's bad enough, but what makes this even worse is that external validations are inherently temporary – different grades come out with every assignment, fashions change with each magazine cover – and suspect. And of course, the more dependent these people become on those external validations, the more competitive, more frantic, they become. (Which is sort of where Crocker becomes an intersection between Dweck's research and that of Deci and Ryan.)

So now, in light of all that, consider Roy Baumeister's team's meta-analysis of self-esteem studies. Before their review, scholars (and many others) had operated on the assumption that building self-esteem lead to increased achievement at school, in careers, in romantic relationships. But that turned out to be completely unsupported by the research.

Now, it turns out that there is sometimes – but not always – a relationship between self-esteem and achievement.

Boosts in achievement can increase self-esteem. But a boost in self-esteem doesn't cause anyone increase his achievement. On the contrary, it's a one-way street.

In fact, if you try to drive backwards on this route – start at self-esteem to end up at achievement – you get just as far as you would on a real one-way road. Seriously.

Efforts to boost self-esteem caused college students' grades to go down, not up. Convicted wife-batterers actually beat their wives more after they'd gone to classes to boost their self-esteem. Women with high-self-esteem are more prone to have casual sex, and less likely to use birth control.

I don't want this to be an advice post – I'm not in any way a psychologist and don't pretend to be one – but I think the clearest way to show how this would actually play out in an adult's life would be a hypothetical. I'll take me. Say I want to feel better about myself, want to look better, and attract more guys, so I decide to go to the gym. The research says each of my three reasons for going to the gym have set me up for failure.

Because my success will be determined by other people, not me– and there's always going to be someone hotter than me in the mirror in the stationery bike room, and there's no guarantee about the dates either. So I'm probably not going to feel better about myself, no matter how much I work out – could end up feeling even worse than I did before. And I'm going to have to go off the work-out deep-end to compete with the Xena-types, or more likely, I'll just give up entirely, thinking I'm just no good at this and genetically-doomed to flab.

The better course would be for me to decide to exercise for its health benefits. Increasing my stamina, strength, etc., are goals I can set and meet on my own – no third party judgment needed. Now, by doing that for a while, I may actually improve my appearance, maybe a guy over at the weights will flirt with me. But if those don't happen, I still know the worth of going, I haven't lost my motivation. And maybe, I will eventually feel better – physically and emotionally.

So, is it possible to have a healthy self-esteem? Sure, why not. But the problem is it can't be the direct goal that a person is actually going for. Rather than working on building self-esteem, work on building persistence through setting goals that you hit . . . and miss. . . . Self-esteem apparently will hitch a ride somewhere along the way.

Gosh, almost makes me want to find a gym . . . .

Nah.

"You're Ruining My Self-Esteem!" – Part 2

2007-03-02T10:56:00.000-08:00

From Ash:

News stories on the problem of inflated self-esteem are hitting the wire faster than I can keep up with them, and you probably have seen at least one of these by now, so I won't specifically comment on the SDSU report (at least I get a copy of the report itself), other than to say that I love Jean Twenge's mentioning little kids being taught to sing, to the tune of Freres Jacques: "I am special, I am special, Look at me." Sent shivers up and down my spine.

But it ties in nicely with what I wanted to write about today and tomorrow. According to the University of Michigan's Dr. Jennifer Crocker, who runs the Institute for Social Research's Contingencies of Self-Esteem Lab, the problem isn't whether or not someone has high self-esteem or low self-esteem.

The real problem is the energy people devote into maintaining or boosting the level of self- esteem they have.

Crocker has described this as "the costly pursuit of self-esteem."

In her research, Crocker has come to a conclusion that tracks Dweck's very closely. That is, essentially, that when people spend their lives trying to achieve positive self-esteem, they pursue only that which builds their esteem levels. And, accordingly, they jettison anything that won't promote their self-esteem.

And that means developing a self-image of what they're good and bad at – they chase the labels they identify with, and they can't deal with any threat to those labels. (You can see how this equates almost exactly with Dweck's fifth graders. It's all about image-maintenance.)

In one of my favorite of the Crocker studies, she found that college-students who define themselves by their academic status spend more time studying than those who define themselves less by their grades – but there's no evidence that they get better grades. They just study more. There is actually evidence that those who define themselves by academic standing may even do worse: by the end of the school term, they report being more stressed, and having a greater number of conflicts with their professors and peers.

Her other research on college students has found that these students drop-out of classes they might not do well in. They also find it more difficult to pick a major or field – they're afraid to commit to something because they're afraid of not succeeding.

In other words, when their entire self-worth is defined by their academic transcript, they aggressively try to defend it – to the point that they start shooting themselves in the foot.

Tomorrow, more on how the costly pursuit of self-esteem plays out, and then Po and I are going to start on some new topics we've been working on.

"You're Ruining My Self-Esteem!" – Part 1

2007-02-27T09:00:00.000-08:00

From Ash:

Since we began our research on praise and self-esteem, Po and I both heard many stories from parents and teachers about self-esteem issues. My favorite was from an English teacher. She'd recently given one of her students a "C," and the mother came down to complain, saying "You're ruining my child's self-esteem." The teacher shot back, "I'm not here to make him feel better; I'm here to make him do better."

At the time, I thought that was an exceptional story – but we've spoken since, and she's had almost the same conversation with another set of parents. Apparently, it's a regular thing.

Another mother I spoke with said that her daughters were so accustomed to the idea of self-esteem building, that if an adult said something they considered to be too negative, they'd tell him, "You're ruining my self-esteem." Which she said they meant as a joke, but always gave the grown-ups pause, since perhaps it was true.

Since then, I've been constantly struck by just how pervasive the idea of building self-esteem is throughout our society. (If you think about it, even the Oscars succombed: since the Eighties, even though you may still think of the phrase, "And the winner is" – they really hand out the trophy with "And the Oscar goes to." A change they explained specifically because the Academy had wanted to event to seem less like a competition.)

The astonishing thing is just how little we know about the supposed-benefits of self-esteem building. Its efficacy has been a truism presumed to exist, like gravity. I think we made the case – that self-esteem building isn't in fact effective and doesn't actually get you much in terms of benefits – pretty powerfully in the article. But both Po and I have been particularly struck by the number of responses about that section, as small as it is, so I just thought I'd fill out the argument with a couple posts. If you're interested in a complete explanation, you might check out Roy Baumeister's Scientific American article, but (besides the fact you'll have to pay to access it) there's so much information in there, on so many topics, I think it's easy to miss some of the more major ideas.

First, consider any dialogue of self-esteem is almost inherently flawed, because everyone – from researchers to laymen – approach the issue in terms of having "high self-esteem" and "low self-esteem." "Middle self-esteem" just isn't in anyone's vocabulary. We don't know how to talk about such a thing, and the scholars don't even study it. (The "Mids" usually are dropped out of a study, because it's easier to study the extremes.) But addressing just the extremes is always problematic. The results skew much more dramatically that they should, and they leave out any consideration of those somewhere in between the two – which is often where the vast majority are.

Then, there's the seemingly-natural assumption that "high self-esteem" is good and "low" is bad, while middle (or perhaps, realistic) seems to be nonexistent.

Which brings me to the next problem is that the measures used to gauge self-esteem levels have nothing whatsoever to do with whether a person's self-esteem is warranted or not. The tests for self-esteem don't distinguish between an accurate self-perception and just complete narcissism. A Nobel Laureate and a serial killer could both have "high self-esteem" – or "low self-esteem," for that matter.

You may have heard about the studies that found people with high self-esteem are smarter, more beautiful, and more successful in their personal relationships than us poor schlumps with low self-esteem. But those studies asked people to rate their self-esteem and then asked them to rate their own intelligence, beauty, relationship skills, etc. And if you think about it, it shouldn't come as too terrible as surprise to learn that the people who thought highly of themselves said they were golden in each of those areas.

But when subsequent researchers asked third parties to rate high and low self-esteem people in terms of beauty, high self-esteem people were no more likely to be considered beautiful. IQ tests revealed they weren't any smarter. And college students said that high-self-esteem students weren't better roommates. Actually, it was the low-self-esteem students who were. Low self-esteem people assume you don't like them, so they work harder to be friendlier – they take suggestions for change more seriously, etc. For person with a high self-esteem, those comments are like water off a duck's back, because he's already sure you like him or that if you don't, that's your problem, not his.

Ironically enough, while tests for self-esteem are often frequently separated from a person's reality, the more a person's self-esteem is actually separated from reality, the more problematic it becomes. (Which brings us to the facts and phenomenon Po was exploring yesterday.)