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DISCLOSURE: This post was originally published Feb. 17th. See the original + follow up comments on the Casanova Pendrill blog.

A recent article on HuffingtonPost.com about depression in Latinos really surprised me, since the data I’ve seen generally describes Latinos as positive or optimistic. Some other findings were:

• Mental illness, such as depression, often carries a stigma in the Hispanic community because of cultural and socioeconomic factors – “Even more so than American culture as a whole, Latino culture values self-reliance, which can discourage people from talking about their problems…”
• There’s a major shortage of Spanish-speaking health professionals
• Cultural barriers -  “Many physicians, psychiatrists, therapists are well-trained…but they aren’t trained in understanding culture and how they’re impacting someone’s world.”
• 16 million Latinos – about 1 in 3,  are presently uninsured in the U.S.

Maybe marketers need to take a second look. I don’t really have any answers, but I do have a lot of questions:

How many U.S. Latinos are currently battling depression?

How does depression vary based on level of acculturation?

Does country of origin play a role?

Parents, teens, recent arrivals adjusting to life in the U.S. — how are they coping?

Is this article an accurate depiction or just a catchy headline?

Has anyone else seen data that supports or contradicts this article? I’d love to know.

Just found an article that came out a year ago over on Science Daily that said “Buying Experiences, Not Possessions, Leads to Greater Happiness.” I’ve written before about “What Makes Us Happy?” in an extensive Harvard study led by Dr. Vaillant.

Apparently , this “…study demonstrates that experiential purchases, such as a meal out or theater tickets, result in increased well-being because they satisfy higher order needs, specifically the need for social connectedness and vitality — a feeling of being alive.”

Makes sense. Most people are social by nature, so it seems logical that if forced to choose one or another, we’d rather be doing things with people than by ourselves, despite our accumulation of material possessions.

In other words, no matter how bad-ass this new Porsche 918 Spyder is, it’d be a lot more fun with some company.

Porsche 918 Spyder

Image “Porsche 918 Spyder concept is the most beautiful hybrid we’ve ever seen“

From Jonah Lehrer’s post about young Norwegian chess prodigy Magnus Carlsen:

“When we practice properly – and this means engaging in deliberate practice – we aren’t just accumulating factual knowledge. Instead, we’re embedding our experience into our unconscious, so that even insanely complicated calculations – and Carlsen can regularly plan twenty chess moves in advance – become mostly automatic.”

As a newbie trying to teach myself Japanese, this reaffirms the adage “Perfect practice makes perfect” — not “Practice makes perfect,” which is incorrect.

Bonus quote:

“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” – Neils Bohr

LINK:

The Frontal Cortex – Chess Intuition

PsyBlog has  new post titled “Why Groups Fail to Share Information Effectively.” According to the article:

“They found that people trying to make decisions in groups spend most of their time telling each other things that everyone already knows. In comparison people are unlikely to bring up new information known only to themselves. The result: poor decisions.“

This can have huge ramifications, like in a court case where jurors are faced with delivering a verdict.

I think most people would protest and say, “No, not me. I’m not influenced by other people and I can make my own decisions.” — but this just isn’t the case.

Most people are followers and the study found 3 main reasons why people basically repeat the same info instead of adding something new to the discussion:

1) Memory- Shared information is more memorable + the more people that know this information the greater chance it will be remembered by someone.

2) Pre-judgements- To an extent, people have already made up their minds prior to entering a discussion and will use shared information to back-up their thoughts and biases.

3) Anxiety- Most people would rather be liked than be right. By offering a different opinion or information, people make themselves easy targets for the group to chastise. The anxiety this creates makes then want to conform.

How Can People Be Encouraged to Share Ideas?

Basically, give them more time to discuss, find out who the knowledgeable people are in the group and create a diverse group to begin with who will be more likely to share instead of withhold information.

This is important stuff for marketers, especially to get a good handle on how ideas spread.

Read the rest of the article here.

LINKS:

The Tipping Point Wiki

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”  — Viktor Frankl in “Man’s Search for Meaning“

Jonah Lehrer has a terrific science blog, “The Frontal Cortex” which covers lots of interesting stuff on how the human mind works. The other day he talked about a woman who is a top ultra-runner.

The captivating part of her story is that she’s missing her right temporal lobe in her brain. This actually helps her endurance because she can easily lose track of time.

You know that feeling you get when you’re on the treadmill and know you’ve only got about 2 minutes left? She doesn’t have it because when she’s engaged in an activity (in her case running), she doesn’t have the feeling you get of relief (or agony) as she approaches the finish line. In other words, she’s in constant flow.

Here’s the takeaway and it completely parallels what I learned in my martial arts training:

The runner’s story is a perfect example of mind over matter. Sure, it’s important to have a healthy body, but when you’re completely focused on something, how you interpret what your body is going through is actually more important than what’s happening to you.

This philosophy is a major concept in Stoicism and a theme I’m reading about now in Viktor Frankl’s book “Man’s Search for Meaning.”

LINKS:

Brain Surgery Frees Runner, but Raises Barriers via NYTimes.com

PsyBlog has a new post called “How Newcomers Can Influence Established Groups” but I think the title of my post may have been more appropriate, since PsyBlog basically says that newcomers are going to have a hard time getting their input recognized.

In one study, 187 health professionals were split into one group of participants that thought they were being critiqued by a newcomer who had only been there 3 weeks while the other group believed they were being critiqued by an 18 yr veteran:

“In each case the criticisms were presented to participants were identical, the only difference was their apparent source.

The results were clear. Compared with old-timers, the health professionals:

• thought newcomers provided less constructive criticism,
• agreed less with newcomers’ suggestions,
• were more negative about their criticisms.“

So what can a newcomer do to improve receptiveness?

Another study showed that they could improve their standing in a group by distancing themselves from their old group.

Thinking back on some of my previous jobs when I was vocal (or not), it makes sense that as someone who’s new in an organization it would be wise to hold back initially, but NOT because you’ve been a part of the group for such a short period of time.

Instead, I think what it really comes down to is trust. When you build trust, your peers will be more receptive to your thoughts. Yes, it does take time, but the way you act (offering intelligent opinions, helping others, listening intently, etc.) can really alter and reduce the amount of time that it will take for the rest of the group to believe in you.

This article from The Atlantic, “What Makes Us Happy?“, came out a couple months ago. It was an exhaustive 72 year study by Harvard Researchers (its most famous male participant was JFK) led by Dr. George Vaillant. It’s a long article, so I wanted to highlight a few excerpts that stood out.

“What allows people to work, and love, as they grow old? By the time the Grant Study men had entered retirement, Vaillant, who had then been following them for a quarter century, had identified seven major factors that predict healthy aging, both physically and psychologically.

Employing mature adaptations was one. The others were education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise, and healthy weight. Of the 106 Harvard men who had five or six of these factors in their favor at age 50, half ended up at 80 as what Vaillant called “happy-well” and only 7.5 percent as “sad-sick.” Meanwhile, of the men who had three or fewer of the health factors at age 50, none ended up “happy-well” at 80. Even if they had been in adequate physical shape at 50, the men who had three or fewer protective factors were three times as likely to be dead at 80 as those with four or more factors.“

It’s no surprise (to me, at least) that depression has major negative implications.

“The study has yielded some additional subtle surprises…And depression turned out to be a major drain on physical health: of the men who were diagnosed with depression by age 50, more than 70 percent had died or were chronically ill by 63. More broadly, pessimists seemed to suffer physically in comparison with optimists, perhaps because they’re less likely to connect with others or care for themselves.“

Furthermore,

“Vaillant’s other main interest is the power of relationships. “It is social aptitude,” he writes, “not intellectual brilliance or parental social class, that leads to successful aging.” Warm connections are necessary—and if not found in a mother or father, they can come from siblings, uncles, friends, mentors.

In an interview in the March 2008 newsletter to the Grant Study subjects, Vaillant was asked, “What have you learned from the Grant Study men?” Vaillant’s response: “That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”“

Salvador Dali - The Persistence of Memory

Read an interesting article on the NYTimes.com today, The Songs They Can’t Forget, which talks about how music can reach people with Alzheimer’s disease. From the article:

“Music has the power to bypass the mind and wash through us, triggering strong feelings and cuing the body to synchronize with its rhythm.

Researchers and clinicians are finding that when all other means of communication have shut down, people remember and respond to music. Familiar songs can help people with dementia relate to others, move more easily and experience joy.

Music memory is preserved better than verbal memory, according to Ms. Clair, because music, unlike language, is not seated in a specific area of the brain but processed across many parts.

Patients with a wide range of ailments — from children with disabilities to burn victims to people with Parkinson’s disease and stroke — have experienced the ability of MT to speed healing, improve mood and increase mobility.“

The healing/therapeutic aspect reminds me of the Patch Adams story, but with a musical twist.