ASM138 Frustration, Animal Guilt, and Getting Set in Our Ways

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frustration animal guilt and getting set in our ways all that and more on this week's episode of ask science [Music] [Applause] understand mike talk anyway we got problems he won't stop there but he'll talk and talk and talk until he flew in the face science faith welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life i'm your host science mike not on the internet is mike mccarrig and we're coming back from a little bit of a break on the program as i'm back from tour and done with the patron episodes and just in time for the end of the year turning the show back to normal and speaking of a show let's get it started [Music] hi science mike my name is pete wilson and i have a question so where i currently am in my faith journey i believe religion has been bound up kind of with the experience of guilt as humans how we handle that in ourselves and others around us one of the historical purpose of religion is to help us you know process and contextualize these powerful experiences of guilt and shame and our sense of justice sometimes religion is known as well and sometimes not so well so my current handle on guilt is that it's the felt experience of being out of harmony with the universe and so i'm wrestling with the question is this feeling of guilt just an emergent property of a localized bioelectrical chemical process it's me or is guilt a transcendent experience but my feeling actually comes from the deep connection i was given by harmony love creativity etc that creates and sustains the universe but that's that's not my question for you so to get to my question um i was talking with a friend about all of this and i asked him the question do you think that chimpanzees or other higher primates feel guilt and he replied that he thought they might and the weird thing about that was that it shook all my faith and all that stuff i just said and i realized that my whole theology of guilt and that is based on this assumption that i don't really have evidence supporting or contradicting but there might be evidence that i don't know about so my question is what does science know about what's going on in our brains when we experience guilt do other animals with complex brain structures feel guilt there's guilt strictly human experience so i'm hoping you have some answers for that and hopefully that qualifies as one question thanks for all you're doing thanks for supporting this amazing conversation at the intersection of science and faith well pete i almost wish i didn't have your preamble and didn't know why you were asking the question because then i would be less disappointed in the answer let's talk a little bit about how we understand brains uh in neuroscience we are in a relatively primitive era we understand the brain is far more complex than we're able to image today and in fact more complex even than we understand from non-living brains that we can dissect your brain is truly intricate and has structures at small scales that we don't understand at all in science today and when we look at living brains using brain imaging technology those various technologies allow us to image the activity of neurons by the millions at once so our granularity is very very low in our imaging of the brain and sometimes we're not even imaging the activity of neurons at all we're imaging elements in the brain like oxygen which we're assuming correspond with localized brain activity but we don't know for sure and we don't know how quickly so as exciting as brain science is and you hear me talk about neuroscience on ask science mike all the time the fact is brains are complex and when we talk about the activity of other brains complex mammals for example our data is even more limited because we understand quite well how to get a human being to enter an environment where you do brain imaging and then engage in a behavior we ask a person to do something and they do it but animals that don't tend to engage in natural behaviors or predictably when they're put into a brain scanner so we've done some brain scanning with dogs a little less with cats and they've been trained and we get some data from that but we don't know for sure you know what a cat or a dog is thinking they can't tell us right so um when it comes to your question about animals and guilt well i mean dogs certainly look guilty and we've seen in different apes very guilt-like body language you know the hanging of a head the averting of eyes in response to stimuli or situations socially that we would think would provoke guilt but we don't actually know if they're having the same experience the same emotion that we have we've confirmed with pretty good certainty that many animals experience basic emotions like happiness anger or sadness or also sometimes called simple emotions but more complex emotions like guilt like melancholy we have no idea we know that chimpanzees for example exist in sophisticated social hierarchies and they do keep track of social transgressions and that makes me think it's plausible that guilt would be useful in those contexts we also know that dogs and therefore their ancestors wolves are social mammals and they can absolutely signal remorse or submission in response to another animal's behavior another wolf's behavior but guilt specifically means keeping track of a moral wrong that occurred in the past and then feeling something in response to that in the present and we don't have enough evidence from studies observational studies or behavioral studies with animals to say that that happens with animals other than humans we have tried to run experiments especially with dogs but the results are consistently inconclusive so when we set up control criteria where we imagine guilty behavior could emerge in dogs the data is not clearly that we think dogs do or do not experience guilt they are truly inconclusive and we've attempted these experiments multiple times so we don't know if your dog is actually guilty or simply responding to you with a forlorn expression that just happens to manipulate you we know that it works we know that humans are responsive to remorse displays in other animals but we do not know if underneath that is actual guilt which unfortunately does not help illuminate your question about guilt being a localized neurological phenomenon or some intrinsic aspect of a greater ultimate reality the materialist in me of course would weigh in and say that of course it's a localized brain phenomenon but then i also am a mystic and i understand what it's like to see more to life than the material so i guess your search continues but thanks for the question pete our next question came in via email and it reads science mike what happens in your brain when you get frustrated i'm typically a patient non-confrontational person but i seem to have these volcanic reactions after enough frustration pressure builds up it's a shameful part of my personality and i hope through understanding i can start changing it thanks for all you do it's a great question i bet a lot of people listening relate to that question and fortunately i can tell you quite a bit about frustration and the brain because we have done a few not a lot but a few brain imaging studies that show frustration in the brain through brain imaging under controlled circumstances and what we've found is that frustration is like a miniaturized version of rage it activates this basic same network in your brain as rage but it activates it at a lower level than all outrage and this frustration these circuits specifically include the left amygdala the left midbrain pag it includes the left anterior insula and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex so that's the raid circuit in humans those parts of the brain and i'm sure you're all super illuminated by those specific terms anyway that's the network it activates in frustration and activates more in a fit of rage so frustration is miniaturized rage or appears similar to miniaturized rage in brain imaging studies we have also found that your temperament whether you have a high or low tolerance for neurological arousal that's what we mean by temperament in this case impacts how much stress you feel from frustration so if you have a high tolerance for neurological arousal then you don't feel that much stress from being frustrated but if you have a low tolerance then you feel very stressed out when you feel frustrated i've hit my head so i've experienced both of those conditions i historically in my life have not felt very stressed from frustration but now i feel very stressed when i'm frustrated which means i'm not the best person to talk about coping with frustration or dealing with angry outbursts because unlike i've been for most of my life i've changed according to one informal assessment that i found online from a credible psychological institution i've gone from being what we would call highly successful with dealing with frustration to having an extremely high level of frustration that's chronic in my life and here's those diagnostic criteria i am often frustrated and irritable especially when interrupted i never used to care now it drives me crazy because i can't keep track of my thoughts very well you hear me smoothly on a podcast but no one ever interrupts me i get to talk and finish my thoughts so that's one i'm often frustrated and irritable two i snap at people now that's a new thing in my life i've never really done that now i do three i do self-medicate mostly with junk food other people may self-medicate from frustration through drugs alcohol indulgent behaviors for me it's mostly pizza you all know me my reactions sometimes hurt people's feelings that's another criteria that i had to say yes to i sometimes feel misunderstood that's one criteria and in my case i feel very misunderstood when i'm trying to time when to say something in a conversation that involves more than two people so even when i record podcasts when we have guests it's not always clear to me when i should speak and when i should be quiet so i end up either being too quiet for too long and people ask if i'm okay or i interrupt people and that has never been a problem with me before i fell off a motorcycle i lose my cool on hard work days that's a criteria and uh when i'm disappointed i often feel unworthy and like i should give up if you heard the shame podcast we just released on the liturgist podcast then you know that story in more detail so because of a brain injury i've gone from being a low frustration person to a highly frustrated person and uh our life circumstances change that's part of life so i can't give you a single solution to deal with frustration because your life circumstances may change so what i can tell you is what i'm doing to start over from scratch about dealing with frustration sometimes i feel like i'm four years old again and i'm just learning how to be a person and here's what i'm working on i am working to be more aware of when i am tired because if i'm more aware when i'm tired i can rest before i become irritable or i can be more aware that i'm irritable and i need to be more cautious about what i say i'm working to apologize to people when i snap at them which means i have to become aware of it do you know that at this point in my life sometimes when i snap at people i don't even know that i've done it which is fascinating for an enneagram 9 peacemaker to be unaware when they snap at someone and three and this is actually the hardest one for me i am working to be patient with myself to acknowledge the limitations of my mind as it is today and as is it is different than it once was so one of the things that will consistently send me into an absolute frustration rage a frustration that goes beyond frustration becomes rage is trying to type on my iphone to text people to write tweets anything sometimes i get so angry that i i almost throw my phone like out the window of a car or on the ground i get very very very angry and i'm learning to be more patient to understand that hey guess what mike typing on an iphone is hard for you autocorrect confuses you congratulations that is the new you stop wishing for the old you and just acknowledge who you are and laugh who cares if you type a weird thing in text who cares if uh if you're my friend and you text me i'm sure half my friends think i ghost them they just maybe don't know that texting is overwhelming for me and i tend to just avoid it and i have to be patient with myself because if i'm not patient with myself i'm going to snap at people and i'm going to be irritable much more right so i have to learn to forgive myself when i'm frustrated and that means i'm learning to see frustration as a warning light on my emotional dashboard it's just a thing that tells me something about myself and in doing so lets me become more aware of it and allows me to once again become a more patient and gentle person over time through hard work now if you are wanting to learn more i've got three links on this question that will be on ask sciencemic.com just look up episode 138 and you can find links to a couple of studies as well as four tips to deal with frustrating people and be aware that you may be one of those frustrating people hi science mike thanks for all that you do i just finished finding god in the waves and i loved it thank you for writing it and sharing it with us my question i've been trying to figure out how to phrase it and i'll give you a little bit of backstory mostly uh conversations with my parents regarding our differing beliefs my parents kind of treat me like i'm young even though i'm 30 and that my mind will change eventually to what theirs is what they believe which is what is correct um i this thought terrifies me um i disagree with the premise but i was curious if there is any science or evidence to show that there is a point in time where we don't change our minds where we come to a idea thought belief conclusion about something and it doesn't change or is less likely to change um because i want to avoid that and so i'm curious for the people that can keep a flexible mind as they age what does that take um above to know if there is an answer to that um maybe it's rare um the way my parents view the world um that that you come to a certain age of wisdom where you don't have to learn anymore maybe that's less common than i feel like it is in my world but either way i hope this question made sense um and i would love to hear your thoughts thanks well your question made perfect sense um and i think will be useful to a lot of people this week especially as people contemplate going home for the holidays uh there's two things going on here so i'll start with the easy one yes we become more set in our ways as we get older and that actually happens starting around age 25 for most people and it's because our brains start to lose plasticity in our mid-20s our brains become less likely to create new neurons and less likely to wire new pathways in the brain and start trusting existing pathways more and our brains become less plastic that's why when you're a kid learning new things is so effortless and as you get older becomes more and more difficult with a big tipping point in your mid-20s neuroscientists tell us when that happens it's harder to learn new things and easier to trust existing knowledge and this makes so much sense for a species shaped by evolution it makes so much sense for hunter-gatherers and and tribes of humans to trust the knowledge of wisdom in a world that doesn't change very much compared to modern society uh the the plants that were poisonous yesterday are poisonous today right but in in the context we live in where uh the environment changes a lot and social conditions change even more uh this evolutionary tendency maybe backfires a little bit but not enough to prevent us from breeding so evolution doesn't care but regardless of how much sense this loss of plasticity makes evolutionarily um it's it's not necessarily a pleasant way to live your life and luckily this loss of plasticity isn't a death sentence for learning it does not mean that your mindset has to be permanent or that there is one correct way of viewing the world you can increase your brain's plasticity at any age by challenging yourself with new experiences and learning new things and the more difficult these things are for you to learn the more they increase your brain's plasticity and even can cause your brain to grow new neurons and allow those wa neurons to wire into pathways in a way that makes them significantly impact your behavior your brain often will grow new neurons when you're older but the lack of plasticity means they don't wire in enough to be effective and learning new things makes new neurons find useful homes in your brain okay what kind of things learning a new language if you want to maintain plasticity always be learning a new language learning a new musical instrument especially if it's dissimilar from an instrument you know or if you've never learned a musical instrument congratulations that's a great way to increase your brain's plasticity because it incorporates all sorts incorporates motor skills abstract reasoning temporal activity sound all these things together i'm going to take dance classes next year and i can't really dance i got my first shot at dancing at the seattle liturgist gathering a very kind person at the after party took a couple of hours and gave me an intensive dancing course which i deeply appreciate and that's made me realize you know what i should dance and so i'm going to take dance classes with my wife next year the key is to be challenged to be deeply challenged you need to get tired both mentally and physically to know that you're doing something that can increase your brain's plasticity okay you're getting tired mentally and physically that's the best place to be for increasing plasticity but that's not all of what's happening with your parents part of what's happening with your parents is not just neurological in origin but sociological they are living in an environment where a single perspective or world view is privileged above others and that can happen anywhere if you live in a coastal city that's very liberal you can still get set in your open-minded ways if that makes sense and lose plasticity it's just that your fixed mindset incorporates like tolerating other mindsets but it doesn't mean you seriously consider them so i don't know what way your parents are stuck in a particular mindset but increasing plasticity won't necessarily help them if there's no sociological impetus to consider new ideas if what you're saying is how do i avoid getting into that state you need to not only work on your neurological plasticity but your sociological environment you need to stay involved in communities we're considering new ideas with an open mind is important and the two of those things together will keep your mind flexible all the way until your older sunset years our next question came in via email and it reads yes i am a current student at liberty university however after the election i don't consider myself evangelical anymore you and many others like you are probably the only reason why i still have a passionate faith in god thank you for everything that you and michael do my question is actually what happens in the brain regarding any particular call to ministry at 18 years old while at a conference i had an experience where i felt the spirit of god inaudibly telling me that i needed to surrender to be a youth pastor this experience led to my attending liberty university as well as majoring in youth ministry i have since then changed majors and no longer feel the burden for ministry that i felt then it's not just that i voted for hillary clinton my first time i was able to vote when i grew up in a republican-dominated culture it seems deeper than that there are times i even forget that this experience even happened because that call seemed so foreign to me yet at the time it was one of the most profound moments in my life thanks again i wish you all the best keep doing what you're doing you're having a real impact on former evangelicals well thanks for saying that that's very kind i too am a former evangelical and uh i still love them current evangelicals i still love them evangelicals taught me so much about the world and i have great hopes that uh the dismay we see in the age of donald trump does not represent the summation of evangelicalism but you're a former evangelical you're an exiley like me so let's talk about this call that you felt and where it went one of my favorite researchers is tanya lerman she's an anthropologist and she's done extensive research into evangelicals and charismatics and pentecostals specifically as well as people of faith in general and how they experience god and based on her work and in consultation with neuroscientists she believes that evangelicals and other uh charismatic and those those types of faiths train their brains to experience some of their thoughts as coming from beyond their consciousness that this is what the combination of sunday school and evangelical prayer rituals do is they train people to experience experience god i literally did a course when i was in i think high school maybe middle school called experiencing god about how to hear god's voice and those types of curriculums in tonya lerman's theory train you to listen to your own thoughts and to experience them as coming from beyond your consciousness it's amazing it allows a thought to feel like it is coming from somewhere else like you said god inaudibly called you that kind of language or inaudibly told you it's very common for people who've been through this kind of uh religious training and i've experienced this so many times in my life i mean so many times that i thought god was speaking to me inaudibly and directing me to do something and i don't anymore i used to but i don't anymore because i've not continued to train my brain in that way my prayer practice looks different and i've changed my reference frame if i were to experience something like that i would probably chuckle and think oh brain stop being silly that's not god and it's just a matter of how you're paying attention to yourself so you had this significant experience and then the way you saw the world changed and it made you view the experience in a different light and even caused it to fade and that's fine let that experience be to you what it was to you i treasure my experiences with god from my evangelical days even though today i understand they probably came from my own brain but they made me who i am today and i like who i am today and i'm grateful for what those experiences taught me but i also acknowledge that my continued growth as a person and as a spiritual person is not a betrayal of those experiences so even though once you know my experiences with god might have told me that it was unacceptable to believe that two men could be married i just think that was wrong but i don't i don't throw out everything that those experiences meant to me i don't throw out the fact that feeling like god was personally involved in my life kept me alive when i was a little kid without any friends you see my evangelical faith and my personal experiences with god and those inaudible callings taught me about justice baptists and a personal god taught me that all people are equal before god it taught me that men should honor women and that there was no room for racism in god's church and therefore no room for racism in the world i am a justice advocate today because i once heard an inaudible calling from god in a conservative evangelical context so you're at liberty university and you've changed majors but perhaps you could learn to honor and appreciate how that inaudible calling led you to where you are today and in some way continues to guide you in where you go tomorrow it doesn't mean you have to believe that you are called to be a youth minister and that you're somehow betraying that ideal but it does let you know that there was a time that you believed god was very near to you and active in your life and you're still by your own description a person with a passionate faith in god so be thankful to your past that it set you up to where you are today [Music] you know at the end of uh the last episode i did i asked for people's thoughts on ask science mike and many people have sent me their feedback um i'd like to hear more there's a few formats to ask science mike you may have heard there's a live format there is what i call a patron format when i just answer a lot of questions off the top of my head and then there's this episode a traditional studio episode where i research the answers to four questions and uh and then and then record them i'd like to hear which are your favorites and why um as i as i think about what to do with ath science mike in 2018 so grateful for all of you supporting this show uh this show is so supported especially by folks who support me on patreon and if you'd like to help the show keep going uh just go to asksciencemike.com and click on that patreon button you can learn more about supporting the program a dollar a month five dollars a month it makes a big deal in my life when you do that if that's too much no problem if you want to rate this show on itunes lots and lots of five-star ratings that makes it really easy for people to find the program so thank you to all my patrons i want to thank andrew golucky who does pre-production work on ask science mike of course i want to thank craig nordin who produces the program and my boy jed waterford for writing me science [Applause] [Music]