Lincoln’s Prudence and Spielberg's Fear of Uncertainty (Film Review)

I recently watched an early screening of Steven Spielberg’s new film, Lincoln. If I’m emotionally invested in a movie, I try to see it as soon as possible to avoid spoilers and having my opinion shaped by others. In psychology-speak, I try to bring a beginner’s mind to the films I want to see.

I was particularly excited for this movie because of Daniel Day-Lewis. His 2007 portrayal of an oil baron in There Will Be Blood continues to haunt me and is why the film is my favorite of the last decade. Day-Lewis didn’t disappoint in Lincoln – his Abraham Lincoln felt like a real man (tender, flawed, and exhausted) as opposed to the previous glorified versions I’ve seen. Along with a superb cast and a surprisingly intimate score from John Williams, the film brings to life the core lessons of Team of Rivals – namely, Lincoln succeeded in ending a civil war due to political prudence, consensus building (by preventing groupthink in his Cabinet), and fortitude. I loved the relevance to our modern politics via a deeply divided Congress and a spotlight on ugly legislative “sausage making”.

The only real issue I had with the film was the ending. Without giving anything away, it felt contrived. There was too much dénouement, too much sentimentality, too little uncertainty. Spielberg made it very clear how I should feel about the legacy of Lincoln. I'd rather mull things over in my head and draw my own conclusions.

I’ve been frustrated with many Spielberg endings, both with historical dramas (e.g. Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan) and science fiction (e.g. Minority Report, A.I.). Spielberg is just too afraid to leave the audience with a sense of doubt about the destiny of his protagonists. After Lincoln, I wanted to see if there was anything to this pattern of endings. I watched a recent 60 Minutes interview with Spielberg and within 30 seconds, I had my answer.   

Leslie Stahl: “You’re a nervous wreck?”

Steven Spielberg: “Yeah, it’s true.”

Leslie Stahl: “Is it a fear?”

Steven Spielberg: “It’s not really fear…it’s just much more of a…anticipation of the unknown. The unknown could be food poisoning. It’s just kinda a level of anxiety about not being able to write my life as well as I can write my movies.”

Spielberg’s anxiety results from a childhood history of not fitting in and being bullied. While it's cathartic for him to make films, his fears pervade the narrative of his stories. Little is left to chance and I assume this is the way Spielberg would want it if he could direct the events of his own life.

Anxiety, whether mild, moderate, or severe, is a fear of uncertainty. There is always a chance things will not go our way, but anxiety makes us feel as if we cannot tolerate that risk. Anxiety about spoilers is what drew me to seeing Lincoln a week before its release (something anxiety specialists call a “safety behavior”) and it led Spielberg to create an overally sentimental ending for this film. I still don't like the ending, but understanding why it occurred the way it did gave me an appreciation for the role anxiety plays in both Spielberg's and my life. 

Rating: 8/10

Anger and Hope in the Presidential Elections of Roslin/Baltar & Obama/Romney

Note: This article contains spoilers for Lay Down Your Burdens, season 2 episodes 19 and 20 of Battlestar Galactica.

Living in New York, I’ve been sheltered from the 2012 presidential ads. Since the state is all but guaranteed to vote for Barack Obama, neither candidate has spent much money on advertising here. However, when I was in Virginia this past weekend, I was inundated with political ads. These ads reminded me of another pivotal election in which a once popular incumbent (who also inherited a horrible situation) declined in polls after a failed debate against a candidate no one expected to win – the presidential race between Battlestar Galactica’s President Laura Roslin and Vice President Gaius Baltar.

Obama's ads claim Romney's policies would result in more economic decline. 

Romney's ads claim the economy continues to decline. 

Vice President Baltar was an “empty suit” of a politician, light on experience, socially awkward, and perceived to be a man of privilege. His campaign was unable to gain traction against the incumbent, President Roslin. However, Roslin was not universally popular. Many questioned whether this “schoolteacher” should have been sworn in as president at all (as the Secretary of Education, she was 43rd in line of succession after the destruction of her homeworld during the Cylon genocide). Primarily due to Roslin’s alliance with the military, polls expected her to be re-elected to a 2nd term.  

All of that changed when the fleet stumbled upon a planet hidden in a nebula that was capable of supporting life – New Caprica. Roslin rejected the idea of permanent settlement due to the brutal landscape of the new planet. Baltar’s aid, Tom Zarek saw this planet as an opportunity:

“It may look dreary. It may be dreary, but it's solid ground under your feet, and a real sky over your head. You'd be surprised what a powerful idea that is to people cooped up in metal boxes for nine months."

Baltar agreed and centered his campaign on the prospect of settlement. Roslin defended her platform, criticized Baltar for promoting a plan that could put the fleet in danger, and reiterated the need to move forward despite any hardships they will encounter.

Baltar went on to win the election because of his projected optimism and Roslin’s cold realism. During the final presidential debate, he gave the fleet hope that they could finally stop the onslaught of Cylon attacks.

"The President uses fear to drive her campaign…fear of the gods, fear of the Cylons, fear of fear itself. Isn't it time to stop being afraid? I am asking all of us to stop running from our lives and start living them."

As was best summarized by Tory Foster, Roslin's chief of staff, “People vote their hopes, not their fears, they don't want to hear the truth.”

Baltar won the election due to his optimism about permanent settlement.

What I love about the election of Baltar is that it highlights much of what we know about the psychology of voting. People vote for many reasons, but political preferences are influenced by a complex interaction of genetics, environment, and psychology. In a recent paper, Peter Hatemi and Rose McDermott reviewed the role of each variable in determining political views. What Hatemi and McDermott found was up until individuals move out of their parents’ homes, both identical twins (who share almost the exact genetic structure) and fraternal twins (who share about half of their genetics) have the same political opinions. After leaving one's home, fraternal twins can develop different political views while identical twins retain the same views. In other words, genetics, family, and culture play a major role in influencing political opinion growing up, but change can occur if and when one leaves their home.

By itself, this is not surprising – family influences your politics due to your genes and the values you grow up with (the same is true of temperament and we’ve known that for a long time). What is surprising is the strong role basic emotions play in year-to-year elections, specifically anger and hope.

A group of University of Michigan political scientists, led by Nicholas Valentino, created an experiment in which participants wrote about an experience that made them angry, anxious, or enthusiastic. Later, participants were asked about their participation in politics. Those who were in the angry situation had statistically higher intentions to participate politically compared to the anxiety and enthusiasm groups. The authors found similar results when analyzing national electorate data from 1980 – 2004. Bottom line – to make voters more engaged and mobilized in your cause, get them pissed off at your opponent. Unfortunately, Valentino and his colleagues identified a side effect of anger – it leads individuals to become closed-minded (something 60 Minutes recently detailed in their analysis of the U.S. Senate).

Gridlock within the Senate may be due to anger and hostility. 

Along with anger, “people vote their hopes”. The triumph of optimism in U.S. presidential elections was first identified in a series of studies led by University of Pennsylvania psychologist Harold Zullow. Researchers analyzed the acceptance speeches of all major candidates at their political conventions throughout the 20th century for optimism, pessimism, and focus on negative events. Their analysis used a technique called CAVE (Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanations), which is based on the finding that depressed individuals discuss events differently than non-depressed individuals (e.g. “I’m alone because I don't deserve to be loved” versus “I’m alone because I haven’t met the right person yet”). Results indicated that between 1900 through 1984, the more optimistic candidate who focused less on negative events won 80% of the elections (the exceptions were FDR in his three reelection races and Nixon). Candidates who inspire hope have a significant advantage with the electorate (exemplified by Clinton’s “A bridge to the 21st century”). Why is optimism so important? Optimistic individuals continue to work hard, even in the face of defeat, and optimistic messages may resonate better than neutral or pessimistic messages.

In the Battlestar Galactica election, Roslin failed to understand the importance of emotions in elections. She relied upon her perceived experience, authority, and judgment to win re-election. Baltar capitalized on the underlying anger of the fleet, funneling it towards the incumbent, while also inspiring the electorate with hope for a better future. 

Today’s election between President Barack Obama and Govenor Mitt Romney puts us in a different situation. President Obama’s 2008 landslide victory was the result of a campaign that effectively integrated messages of “hope and change”. But many believe Obama has failed to deliver on his promises. As New York City Mayor recently stated in his endorsement of Obama: 

“In 2008, Obama ran as a pragmatic problem-solver and consensus-builder. But as president, he devoted little time and effort to developing and sustaining a coalition of centrists, which doomed hope for any real progress on illegal guns, immigration, tax reform, job creation and deficit reduction. And rather than uniting the country around a message of shared sacrifice, he engaged in partisan attacks and has embraced a divisive populist agenda focused more on redistributing income than creating it.”

While, Governor Romney has effectively used the depressed economy to instill anger at Obama, many find him to be uninspiring and untrustworthy due to his political pivots from moderate Governor to a conservative presidential nominee.

It is not surprising that this election is too close to call. There’s plenty of anger to go around and neither candidate has inspired the American people. Combined, the campaigns have spent $2 billion attacking each other rather than giving us a reason to believe in a better future (Obama’s closing argument – “Romney’s proposed policies failed our country in the past, we can’t trust him”, Romney’s – “Obama’s failed our country, we can’t trust him”). There is no New Caprica in this election, nothing to make the American people excited about the prospect of change. Rather, we’re faced with the cold reality that the next four years are going to be nearly as difficult as the last. Utlimately, this election boils down to the following question – which candidate do you dislike the least?

How Bane & Hurricane Sandy Increased Teamwork and Altruism in Gotham City

Hurricane Sandy came and went. While I escaped the storm safe and sound, some of my friends and family were not so lucky. Many are still without power, some experienced flooding, and two had extensive damage to their property.  

Walking around New York City post-Sandy was surreal. Above 40th street, New York felt like Metropolis under the watchful eye of Superman with folks brunching and kids trick-or-treating. Below 40th, it was Gotham City under the occupation of Bane with limited resources and a crumbling infrastructure.

REUTERS/Gary Hershorn/Eduardo Munoz, Lower Manhattan before and after Hurricane Sandy, via Washington Post.

Yet, despite these horrible conditions, New Yorkers across the city rallied around each other, shared what they had, and reached out to those who couldn't help themselves. 

We've seen this before, both in science fiction and reality. In this summer's The Dark Knight Rises, Gothamites came together to fight the brutal forces of Bane. A similar phenomenon was observed in the real Gotham City post 9/11/2001 - New Yorkers put their differences aside to ensure their neighbors were safe. 

A major theme in the Dark Knight trilogy is the rise of Gothamites from an apathetic population to one that takes responsibility for its city. 

Psychologists Christopher Peterson (who sadly passed away last month) and Martin Seligman, pioneers in the field of positive psychology, investigated this exact observation in a 2003 study. Peterson and Seligman used the Values in Action (VIA) Classification of Strengths (you can take it yourself here), a scientific assessment of positive traits that exist across cultures, to determine if New Yorkers were experiencing a change in character strengths before and after the events of 9/11. What they found was post 9/11, the character strengths of gratitude, hope, kindness, leadership, love, spirituality, and teamwork had significantly increased. Furthermore, these strengths remained elevated 10 months after the attacks. 

What is going on here? The authors provide the following explanation: 

In the immediate aftermath of September 11, people behaved differently by turning to others, which in turn changed their social worlds so that the relevant behaviors were rewarded and thus maintained.

In other words, following 9/11 people were more likely to help each other, which in turn reinforced altruistic character strengths in the short and long term. 

While there are some problems with Peterson and Seligman's 2003 study (it was cross sectional, not longitudinal, and could suffer from a sampling bias), it did empirically demonstrate a trend that is often observed in the aftermath of traumatic events - people help each other.

The murder of Kitty Genovese, and the ironic myth of bystandard apathy in her case, ignited research in the field of altruism. 

But why does this happen? We know from social psychology that individuals are more likely to engage in altruism if they: 

1. See a situation as an emergency.
2. Feel personal responsibility to the other person (i.e. don't see themselves as a bystander).
3. Have the ability to plan and implement a course of action. 

Given the above, it's likely that in these large scale disasters, most individuals feel an increased personal responsibility to their neighbors, friends, and relatives. Additionally, seeing news, blogs, photos, and tweets about the disaster increases a sense of urgency while reports of locals helping each other shows us how we can provide assistance. 

Living in a part of NYC that had power this week, I did feel a personal responsibility to provide refuge to friends who were not as fortunate. However, that responsibility only developed after reading about their suffering through Facebook updates. When displaced friends did come over, it felt good to help them (altruism is highly reinforcing). 

Peter Foley returned to Gotham's aid because of a sense of responsibility to his friend. 

Getting back to The Dark Knight Rises, when Bane created a sense of emergency it was through teamwork and collective responsibility that Gotham rose against him. Bruce Wayne returned as Batman only after John Blake and Commission Gordon reminded him of his responsibility to protect the city. Later, Commissioner Gordon used a sense of personal responsibility, based upon their past partnership, to convince Peter Foley to stop hiding and assist in the resistance against Bane. The ultimate hero of the Dark Knight trilogy is not Batman, but the citizens of Gotham who finally accepted responsibility for fighting injustice.  

While I would never wish a disaster upon anyone, psychology has demonstrated that good things can come out of traumatic events. We can all capitalize upon these findings (e.g. create a sense of urgency, personal responsibility, and describe a course of action) to promote altruism before impending disasters, in their aftermath, and during times of personal crisis.

To learn more about how you can help those affected by Hurricane Sandy, click here for more information.

Growing Up Trekkie - How Star Trek Made Me Fall in Love with Psychology

I have a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and spend most of my days working in a hospital treating anxiety and depression. As a child, I never thought I'd be in this position. Back then, I spent most of my time riding bikes and playing video games. While other kids dreamed about who they would become when they grew up, I was content just thinking about the next great Nintendo game. My dad feared I might not graduate high school, let alone college. I was okay with that.

March 13, 1988: That’s me on the left playing Atari with my brother.

All of that changed when my brother took me to see Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. I was only eight years old at the time and knew nothing about Star Trek. While the movie's social commentary on the end of the Cold War was way over my head (I was much more fascinated by the exploding spaceships), something about this universe spoke to me. While Han Solo and Luke Skywalker were cool, I couldn’t see myself living in their scary universe. But I wanted to be friends with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy and believed it just might be possible for me to serve on the U.S.S. Enterprise.

January 27, 2004: Sharing my story with the director of Star Trek VI, Nicholas Meyer.

A few days later, my brother and I were channel surfing when we came across an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I remember him saying, "You really liked that Star Trek movie, maybe you should check out this show." I was a little confused at first - I had no idea there was a Star Trek television show (nor did I realize there were 5 other movies and an original television series). The Next Generation immediately consumed me. I raced home every day from school to watch reruns of the series and anxiously awaited new episodes.

This experience changed my life in a seismic way. Star Trek taught me that by using science, technology, and exploration we could push the human race forward. As I grew up, Star Trek challenged my world views. Episodes such as "Tapestry", "The Inner Light", "Darmok", "The Outcast", and "The First Duty" forced me to reconsider my beliefs on life and death as well as right and wrong. The core Star Trek value of inclusion ("infinite diversity in infinite combinations") became the foundation of my own philosophy.

​September 25, 2010: Thanking Patrick Stewart, Star Trek’s Captain Jean-Luc Picard, for inspiring me to love science.

I didn't know how, but I wanted to pursue similar goals (science and exploration) in my life. Yet, in high school few subjects appealed to me. I enjoyed my science courses, but I didn't feel like biology, chemistry, or physics "spoke" to me like Star Trek did. Eventually, I enrolled in college as an undeclared major. While I told friends and family that I was considering pre-law and pre-med, inside I was lost.

I avoided choosing my first semester freshmen courses as long as possible. It reached a point where most classes were closed. When I did enroll, only introductory psychology was available as an elective. I knew nothing of the subject and enrolled more by default than by interest.

The first lecture by Professor Goesling hit me just as hard as the explosion of Praxis in Star Trek VI. Psychology spoke to me in much the same way as Star Trek did. The integration of hard scientific research and introspection, two elements of all great Star Trek stories, were the foundation of psychology. I saw psychology as a field that could finally answer questions proposed by Star Trek - how do we define life, what makes a person good versus evil, and how can we better humanity? The science of psychology (behaviorism, cognitive science, and neuroscience) had empirical methods for analyzing these questions and a rich literature of experimental answers. Once again, I geeked out and devoured the field by devoting the next decade of my life to earning my bachelors, masters, and doctorate in psychology.

As the internet celebrated the 25th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation and wrote about its legacy and the impact it has had on so many lives, I felt compelled to share my story and start this blog. It is my hope that this blog will inspire the next generation of science fiction geeks to love the brain and behavioral sciences.

Welcome to Brain Knows Better.

October 22, 2012: This model of the U.S.S. Enterprise, hanging in my hospital office, reminds me of the human potential to change and grow.