On Sleep Disturbance, Color Perception, and the Loneliness of Perception

I just watched a wonderful video that discussed something I've wondered about before: is my perception of color the same as yours?  As I suspected, the video stated that this is something we will never truly know.  Specifically, it is part of the "explanatory gap" - the failure of language and human understanding to adequately communicate to another human what their own perceptions feel like or, in the case of color, look like.

We learn color through exposure.  No one is able to explain to us in words what "yellow" is; instead, they have to show us.  This school bus is yellow.  This pencil is yellow.  Over time, we learn how to identify yellow on our own, based on what we have been shown, as well as our ability to generalize learned information to other things.  We also learn to discriminate - to learn definitions in such a way that we can say, "This thing is yellow.  This thing, on the other hand, is orange."  We can never describe in words how we know this thing is a different color than another, except to say that it looks different.  These abilities are one of the reasons that, even a human of low intelligence is smarter than a computer when it comes to detecting context and experiencing things through perception, rather than hard numbers.

Which leads me to another story.  When I was 8 years old, I began my lifetime struggle with insomnia.  At best, I can get 7 or 8 hours a night - if I go to bed really early, and intend on staying in bed for far more than those 7 or 8 hours to make up for the latency in falling asleep and all those times I wake up in the middle of the night.  At worst, I get 2 to 4 hours a night.  These are the nights I dread.  It doesn't matter how tired I am.  It doesn't matter if I can barely keep my eyes open during the day.  I may still find myself exhausted and in bed, but unable to sleep.

It's a difficult thing for people without sleep disturbance to understand.  How can one be sleepy, but unable to sleep?  In fact, it isn't just their inability to feel my feels - I didn't even know that what I was experiencing was abnormal for a very long time.

Our only experience that we can truly know is our own.  As the video I linked above says, we are alone in our perception of the world.  We can use language and examples to describe our perception to others, but we can never truly know if they feel what we feel.  So for the longest time, I thought my sleep was perfectly normal, because I only had my own experience to draw upon.  I thought everyone took 30-60 minutes to fall asleep.  And I thought everyone woke up multiple times in the middle of the night.

I remember one time in high school, when I was sick, that I actually slept the whole night through without waking up.  I mentioned this to a friend the next day, expecting that they would say, "Yeah, you must have been really sick to be able to sleep that much."  Instead, I got, "What do you mean you wake up multiple times at night?"  Of course I do.  Doesn't everyone?  I was surprised to learn that, no, my sleep was different from others.

Still, I didn't think much of it, until I got to graduate school.  As a psychology student, I was taught again and again that the primary determinant of whether any disorder is problematic (and in need of treatment) was if it interfered with one's life.  When the stress of grad school caught up with me to the point that I was getting only a couple hours a night, I knew I had a problem.  And when I began forgetting things - important things, like class assignments and assistantship duties - I knew I needed to get help.

I was 23 or 24, and for the first time in my life, was finally diagnosed with insomnia.  Something I'd already spent 15 or 16 years of my life battling.

There is a clear stigma around mental illness - perhaps less so with regard to sleep disturbance, but the end result is the same.  People don't talk about it.  And given that our only experience of the world is our own, we may not know how it feels to be other people because we can't experience it.  Unlike color perception, however, we can use language to describe the experience of feelings: sadness, fatigue, anxiety, euphoria.

But we don't know what others are feeling - truly feeling - unless they tell us.  We may not realize that others feel sad for no other reason than they are and that things feel hopeless.  We may not realize that others feel anxious about different events.  We may not realize that others sometimes want to stop living in this world for any number of reasons - or no reason at all.

With the recent news of Robin Williams's suicide, the world is talking.  They're talking about depression.  Suicide.  They're expressing disbelief, or understanding, or fear that it may happen to someone they love.  Remember, no one knows what it feels like to be you, unless you tell them.  Here's to keeping the conversation going.  You never know what sharing that side of yourself to others may do.  It just might save someone's life.

Deeply yours,
~Sara

Totally Superfluous Movie Review: Alien Resurrection - and Why It's Actually an Early Version of Firefly

After working on a few things around the house last night, I decided to settle in with a movie as I waited for my husband to come home. I looked through my (probably) hundreds of DVDs and Blurays, and just couldn't find anything I was really dying to watch. Then I remembered that I received the Alien movies in a Bluray box set for Christmas last year. I'd watched Alien and Aliens not too long ago, so I didn't feel like watching them again. I occasionally break out Alien 3 just for continuity's sake (not a great movie, but watchable), but never ventured as far as Alien Resurrection.

That dark place is where movies go to die - you must never go there, Simba.

I actually have only seen Alien Resurrection once - when I saw it at the theater on one of my first (and only dates) with my first high school boyfriend. I don't remember enjoying it very much, and I generally enjoy these types of movies. To paraphrase Ash from the first movie, "I admire their purity." They are what they are without any pretense. So I decided it was time for another viewing.

First off - holy crap, this movie was written by Joss Whedon?! How did I never know this before?! And the whacky crew of the Betty? That would be Firefly version 1.0. Seriously. I'll get back to that later. But here's more realizations in a sort of play-by-play as I watched the movie. (Spoilers ahead.)

The scientist performing the surgery at the start of the movie? That would be Gríma Wormtongue from Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (and the extended cut of Return of the King). The actor, Brad Dourif, was also Billy Bibbit in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Chucky in the Child's Play movies. Dude, my Kevin Bacon game just got a lot more formidable.

Ripley and Sarah Connor from the Terminator movies are definitely cut from the same cloth. Ripley was arguably a bit tougher at the start of the adventure, but still - these two characters have a similar progression from, "Oh, I guess I have to fight" to "Mess with me, and I'll bust your kneecaps with my big toe." The scene where Ripley attacks the scientist while handcuffed reminded me of Sarah's interactions with her psychiatrist in Terminator 2.

And now the crew of the Serenity - er, Betty:

First up, Captain Frank Elgyn, who like Mal is a gun-for-hire. However, whereas Mal is moody but honorable, Elgyn is just sleazy. I don't think anyone is that upset when he's killed off.

Co-pilot Sabra Hillard is kind of a mash-up of Zoe (in the devotion to her captain sense) and Inara (in the love interest sense), but take away any opinions or motivation other than pleasing her man. While the movie itself would pass, I don't think Hillard's character would pass the Bechdel test by any stretch of the concept.

Mechanic Vriess is kind of similar to Wash, in that he lends some goofiness to the story, but has a few attributes of Kaylee as well.

Johner is like a meaner, slightly more violent version of Jayne. The similarity is pretty striking, though. I bet on some distant world, he's celebrated as a folk hero, with his own statue and theme song. He just needs this hat and he's there:

Finally, Annalee Call (played by Winona Rider) is very similar to Kaylee. She's also the final step of the complementary synth progression process that inverts Ripley's badass progression. You see, as Ripley gets more and more badass across the movies, the synths get more and more agreeable and weak.

Movie 1: Ripley has to sing herself a lullaby to kill the alien, Ash tries to murder her with a rolled up porno mag while bleeding whatever that white "blood" is.

Movie 2: Ripley battles the alien queen with a loader, Bishop saves the girl after he was ripped in two and also makes some cheeky comments about humans.

Movie 3: Ripley is the honey badger of the movie, Bishop is unable to even get sympathy for being little more than a bust and begrudgingly complies to Ripley's demand that he recover data from the flight recorder.

Movie 4: Ripley continually kicks ass, Call is like a futuristic PETA protester.

BTW, the only reason Alien Resurrection passes the Bechdel test is because of Call and Ripley. Oh yeah, and the subject of their conversations, these guys:

The Reavers of the Alien Whedonverse

And then there's Purvis, one of the Alien hosts, played by Leland Orser, who has a penchant for playing guys found as a quivering mess of collateral damage from the actions of the bad guy. If you seriously want to talk about type-casting, check out this guy: he's doomed to play his character from Se7en over and over again (he was the collateral damage of the "lust" murder).

Overall, there are definitely some issues with Alien Resurrection, not the least of which is the previously mentioned Bechdel results. It's kind of surprising to me that Joss wrote this, given some of these issues, like the annoying "Careful" warnings of Wren that are more likely to cause Dr. Gediman to slip and kill both Ripley and the Queen than anything else. Or the triteness of the dialogue from General Perez. Or the stereotypical throw down that results from Johner trying to make the moves on Ripley, that are more a thinly veiled attempt to show her badassedness than a display of true human behavior.

To be fair, the concept of writing credit in Hollywood is different from what I tend to deal with in academia - in my field, with some exceptions, the person who does most of the writing gets the most credit (being listed first), and people who do less writing get less credit (being listed after the first author). In Hollywood, the person who gets writing credit may have only done the first draft, which could be substantially rewritten by the time it gets to the final cut. One reason for this exception has to do with writing contracts. Depending on what is in the contract, a rewriter's only reimbursement for his/her time may be monetary, and he/she may not ever be listed as a writer in the opening credits. While rewrites are presumably to improve a script, they may also reduce the quality (see the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie as an example). So it's possible that the script Joss gave them is very different from what I watched last night.

That being said, the Firefly similarities definitely scream Joss Whedon. The Betty/Serenity crew similarities, the Alien/Reaver similarities, even the message of the film are signature Joss. As I've discussed before, one big message I saw in Buffy is that the monster is often ourselves. While the Aliens are terrifying bad guys with a mission to destroy other life, the true bad guys of the movie are even worse:

What happens when you have endless resources and scientific knowledge, but no sense of morality...

As Ripley and the survivors try to escape the ship, they happen upon a room containing previous Ripley clone failures. And when we saw the final Alien queen, capable of giving live birth (as Dr. Gediman calls, "perfect"), we realize that the multiple clone experiments were not to recreate the perfect Ripley, but rather, the perfect Alien. The final ("successful") Ripley clone is merely a side effect of those attempts. Even more, though they did surgically remove the queen from Ripley, allowing her a chance at survival (and after the revelations I just described, I wonder why they even bothered), they certainly did not offer that possibility to the human cargo sold to them by faux Mal.

While you could argue there is also a pretty literal demonstration of "we are the monsters" in the final Alien hybrid:

throughout the movie, the real monsters are the people. In fact, even in more pure instances of Whedonverse, the super powered bad guys aren't the real monsters. The human beings who make the decision to turn to darkness are much more maligned. Ripley's response when we learn that Call is a synth is probably the most telling: "No human being is that humane." Ripley, who has witnessed - and been a unwitting victim of - more of the dark side of humanity than anyone else, has no more love for this sorry species.

Final verdict - I think if I ever get the urge to watch this movie again, I'll just watch Firefly instead.

Beautiful Asymmetry

Tom Cruise is newsworthy. Not my most surprising revelation, but hear me out. Apparently, everything he does is newsworthy. That “Tom Cruise picks his nose in public” Twitter account is still waiting for its moment to shine. Perhaps that is why, recently, the world was shocked to discover that Tom Cruise has an asymmetrical face.

And people just can't let it go (check out #9). No doubt, countless scholars in the area of psychology and other fields studying physical attractiveness and its impact, had the same reaction as me. “Yes, he does. So do I. So does the person who wrote this article. So do the people reading it.”

Asymmetry is completely natural - arguably more natural and common than the voyeurism so pervasive in our society that it clamors for more articles metaphorically dissecting our favorite celebs. Perhaps, then, what is more surprising than the realization that Tom Cruise’s face is asymmetrical, is the fact that it took this long for anyone to notice.

Researchers in the area of physical attractiveness have found, however, that symmetry is considered attractive to most human beings. So perhaps that is reason that we are shocked to discover that people we consider attractive have “flaws." Beautiful people tend to have a pretty easy lot in life: they get paid more, they are less likely to be found guilty by criminal juries (and if they are found guilty, tend to receive lighter punishments), and mothers are even more affectionate to attractive babies (read more here).

Symmetry is also a sign of good genes, because it means one is less likely to have genetic mutations. You see, symmetry is in essence averageness. In studies where researchers have composited multiple faces together, participants actually rate the composites as more attractive, because these composites average out distinctive features (a crooked nose, eyes that are slightly different sizes, etc.).

The truth is, if you scrutinize any face in isolation of other faces, you will find asymmetry. Want some evidence? Here are pictures of people perceived as being faces of beauty, and rather than just taking in the whole face, start looking at individual features and you'll see it. (Disclaimer: I am in no way saying these people are actually unattractive because of this asymmetry, just showing you it is there.)

First up, Cindy Crawford. Ignore the mole on one side (a pretty obvious instance of asymmetry) and look at the rest. Notice how her left eye (the right side looking at this picture) is slightly higher and larger than her right? This is very typical - the left side of just about anyone's face is usually larger. Also notice her face shape is not quite symmetrical; her left jaw is a bit more square.

Ryan Gosling. Notice that his left eye is lower (actually quite a bit lower) than his right. His nose is crooked, slanted a bit more to the left. And his face shape is also slightly different on his left side than his right.

One more - Marilyn Monroe. I'll admit, this one took me a little longer to see, since in most photos I found she is 1) heavily made up, 2) shot with very strategic shading over one side of her face, and 3) often shot from slightly off-center. Again, her left eye is slightly lower than her right, and the right side of her face is actually a bit narrower than her left.

I feel I've made my point that we're all asymmetrical. But just to belabor it a bit more (and in fairness to our perfectly gorgeous individuals pictured above), I give you one non-celebrity:

This was a Halloween pic, so don't worry - I don't usually have antennae. First, note that my left eye is lower than my right (not just because my head is turned), and my chin is a bit fuller on the left side. The right side of my face is also a bit narrower, just like Ms. Monroe above. Also, note that my left eyebrow has a more pronounced arch than my right. If you could see my ears, you'd probably also notice that one is lower than the other.

The truth is, even people without backgrounds in psychology or research experience have gotten the message that our faces are asymmetrical. Why do you think people talk about being photographed "from my good side"? It may be that one side is truly better than the other, but it's probably more likely having one side in the foreground is better than being photographed head-on. This technique camouflages the asymmetry. Makeup and good shading can also have a strong effect.

But I still haven't totally answered the question about why we may have missed these very human characteristics in celebrities. I'll introduce you to another offspring of this asymmetry work - more fun with averages!

Remember what I said above about composites being perceived as more attractive? Faces in a group photo are also perceived as more attractive than solo faces, for the very same reason. Our brains average across what we see in a picture. So if there are multiple faces, your brain will average across them, making them all seem more symmetrical in your mind's eye.

Where do we tend to see celebrities? When they're all glammed up attending an award show or movie premiere, they tend to be in groups. There are people in the background much of the time. On the other hand, where do we tend to see celebrities walking solo? Tabloids, where they're usually being attacked for their weight, their looks, their lack of makeup, etc. They are out of their usual context, and perhaps as a result, perceived as less attractive.

So what can we learn from this?

That I've perhaps made myself look more attractive by including my photo in the context of attractive celebrities? Maybe, though scrolling down to see my face probably means Ms. Monroe is out of the frame. Instead, you're probably averaging me with the parrot.

Or that if you want to look more attractive on dating websites, you should include a group photo instead of a picture of yourself alone? Again, maybe. I'd love to hear if that actually works (just idle curiosity; no plans on dating profiles anytime soon).

But perhaps the big thing we can learn from this is that, when we are comparing ourselves to celebrities and scrutinizing our own flawed face, that we can be assured that all faces have flaws. Flaws make us human.

Asymmetrically yours,

~Sara

Trivial Only Post: Random Thoughts about Vampires

I stumbled across an old (but still funny) cartoon about Blade crossing over into the Twilight universe and slaying Edward.  Okay, not actually Edward - they call him Edgar, probably to avoid copyright infringement.  But whatever.  And I thought, "Damn, if only..."

But then I thought, "What makes us think a stake would kill him?  I mean, sunlight doesn't kill him.  Poor writing doesn't kill him.  Bad acting doesn't kill him.  He's seriously immortal, which sounds cool and all, but I don't want it if it means I sparkle."

I've also already discussed (at length here and here) that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is my favorite show.  Of course, I'll be the first to admit the inconsistencies in its approach to vampire lore.  First of all, important vampire characters live longer in sunlight than throwaway characters, almost as if the love (or hatred, or sometimes a little of both) imbues them with additional powers.  One of the Master's goons (or really any character bereft of a name) can be thrown into sunlight and instantly explode, but Spike can sizzle for a full minute before an appendage bursts into flame.  Second, there is marked variation in vampiric gestation.  Some vampires awaken in the morgue (e.g., the vampire at the end of "The Body").  Others awaken on the table or in their casket at the funeral home (e.g., the vampire at the beginning of "Help").  Still others are buried, perhaps for days, before they wake up (e.g., Ford in "Lie to Me").  AND BUFFY ALWAYS KNOWS.  I think I need to watch more Buffy to figure this out...

Trivially yours,
~Sara

If Psychological Research in Movies Were More Realistic: The Haunting

I've been pondering this post for a while.  And after reading some IRB-themed jokes recently (yes, that's what I do for fun), I thought this would be a funny post to write.  So here it is, what research in movies would look like if it were more similar to research in real life.  When I started this, it was going to be just one post, but there's so much material out there, I thought this might be part of a series of portrayals of research in movies.

First off, the movie, The Haunting… Not a great movie by any means (it holds a rating of 17% on Rotten Tomatoes), and even the awesome cast couldn't save it.

The cast, searching desperately for a sensical plot...

Sadly, this movie depicts what many people think psychological researchers are like: manipulative, deceitful, lacking any empathy.  It also fails to follow the basic rules of ethical psychological research.  Forget about the fact that the house is actually haunted, and look only at the plan of the study.  Here's what would happen if someone tried to recreate this study in real life:

Research Protocol Review

Dr. David Marrow discusses his project with his department chair, who insists that he can't conduct the study ethically.  But he ultimately lets Dr. Marrow do what he wants and shrugs as if to say, "But hey, give it a try and see how it turns out."  How would that conversation have ended in real life?  The department chair would have concluded his comment on ethics with, "but we'll have to let the IRB sort it out.  File the paperwork and you should have a decision in a couple of months."

Let's see, I'm bribing emotionally unstable insomniacs with a sizable salary and free room-and-board to come to a weird old house that I'm going to trick them into thinking is haunted.  That should qualify for expedited review, right?

Barring the IRB determining, like the department chair said, that there is no way to conduct the study ethically, Dr. Marrow gets his approval and can go forward with his study.  Of course, that's a big if - the IRB would probably, at the very least, require lots of additional language in the consent form to warn people about how this study might make them feel (um, scared, probably) that would prevent Dr. Marrow from deceiving his participants as much as he would like.  And by the way, consent forms?  There don't seem to be any in this movie.  But okay, he gets that figured out and he can begin recruiting.

Recruitment

Did he get the IRB's approval of the text of his ad before putting it in the paper?  And is the newspaper staff member handling the call inquires on the IRB paperwork (since he or she will be speaking with potential participants)?  If not, better file an amendment first.

After filing his amendment and getting the staff member at the newspaper to complete the necessary ethics trainings, Dr. Marrow can again proceed with recruiting participants.  

The Study Itself

Once he has them, he invites them to the house where they will begin the study.  All good for now.  But what's next in the study procedure?  Signing consent forms!  What fun.  Oh, and since he's collecting information about people's sleeping patterns, medical diagnoses of insomnia, etc., he better also have them sign a HIPAA authorization too.

And on page 20 of the consent form, you'll see that you can stop participating at any time without penalty.  Directly below that, see the note about the gatekeeper chaining us in every night.

So now he has three consenting, HIPAA-authorizing participants.  He can go on with the study, which also involves the house staff giving the participants additional information about the house being haunted.

Wait, I didn't see anything about confederates in your study paperwork.  Better file another amendment and complete protocol deviation forms for the three participants.

But then things go horribly wrong.  It turns out the house really is haunted and the people are actually in danger.  What does the IRB say?  The IRB requires researchers to report any adverse events (harm) or serious adverse events (injury or even death) caused by the study.  Both require forms to be filed with the IRB, and the IRB must then decide if the study can continue safely.

This would be a serious adverse event.

Basically, all of these protections are in place for a reason.  Informed consent means the participants know what they are in for - they may not know the true purpose of the study (because deception is allowed) but they have to know what they will be asked to do in the study and potential harms that may result.  Participants also have to be allowed to leave the study at any time if they wish.  The IRB continues to oversee studies and steps in if things turn out to be more harmful than originally thought.

Somebody find the chain cutters...

Thoughtfully yours,

~Sara

Trivial Only Post: An Open Letter to Winter

Dear Winter,

We realize that you have been wronged.  You've gone easy on us these last couple years, and how did we repay you?  We called you 'mild', we jokingly referred to you as 'Spring'; yes, we know you are not Spring, and so calling you this wrong name must have really hurt your feelings.

So what did you do this year?  You reminded us what Winter really is.  It's cold.  It's long.  It's loaded with snow.  It makes you question why you live where do, because, despite being tolerable to gorgeous 9ish months out of the year, it's "snow, snow, too cold to snow, still too cold to snow, warmed up and guess what? Snowed" the other 3 months.

We see now that your actions are just a response to our behavior.  We remember what you are - you are cold, you are rough, you make small children and even grown adults cry.  You make us buy funny hats with earflaps and lined with so much fleece we spend the day with sweaty hat-hair, and coats so puffy, we have to loosen our seatbelt.  Never again will we call you 'mild.'  Never again will we question, "What's with all the snow?"  We know; it's Winter.

Never forget

We get it now.  And we apologize.  We remember who you are.  You can be over any time now.

Be sure to send in Spring on your way out.

Hugs and lollipops,
~Sara

The Truth about OCD: A Real-Life Example

I am thankful for all of the organizations and people who have worked to make the public aware of mental illness and convince them that is nothing to joke around about.  At the same time, I constantly encounter people, including friends, who joke about their "OCD" acting up - when they see something out of place, when a line painted on the road is crooked, when a pencil is upside down, whatever.

What a coincidence - my annoyed psychologist senses are tingling

As a response to these jokes and comments, allow me to present something that just happened to me.  I went out to my car to run a quick errand, and saw one of my neighbors outside cleaning off her car that was parked next to mine.  She said hello and kept brushing.  I've seen her before and strongly suspect she has OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder), but will admit I don't know that for sure.  She always seems very sedate when I talk to her, so she is probably on some pretty heavy anti-anxiety meds to help control the condition (or she has something else I'm not aware of and can't detect because she's so heavily medicated).

She walked around her car once, continuing to brush as I started my car and got my brush out.  And when I say she was brushing the snow off her car, I mean she was brushing each and every flake off of her car, off of the windows, the sides, the tires, the headlights.  Her car was clean - far cleaner than mine was even after I finished brushing.  The wind picked up and blew some of the snow from my car onto hers.  I apologized, and she smiled and kept brushing, each new flake that flew onto her car being immediately brushed off.  And as new snow started to fall, she continued walking around her car, brushing.  

I don't know how long she had been out there before I came outside, or how long she was there after I left.  But my heart went out to this poor lady, who could not stop brushing her car until every single flake was gone.  I look out the window and see that it is snowing now, and I think of what a futile task it is to want - no, need - every single flake of snow off of the car.

Desiring order in all things, being really bristled when something is not perfect - that's not the same thing as what this woman experiences, where desiring order, obsessing over each little detail, keeps her from being able to move forward; where her compulsion for things to be perfect keeps her from being able to complete a simple task like cleaning off her car.

I'll resist the urge to go on.  And for my friends out there who make comments about their OCD, I will only say - if you really truly think that your need for order and perfection constitutes a mental illness, please get help.  But if you are just using this diagnosis as a joke, or a "prettier" way of referring to your anal retentive nature, think about this woman, and how every single flake on her car needs to be gone before she can get in and drive away.

Thoughtfully yours,

~Sara