Umbrella Dynamics (Emotive Reactance)

Last week I spent an afternoon with my good friend Rose. Our stream of conversation touched on many a topic of depth, though one in particular struck a chord with me.

We were discussing how influences in the world around us (for example the puppies at Pet’s Paradise in Melbourne Central) affect how we feel – which led me to a novel idea for this analysis: the umbrella.

What is the umbrella?

We all know the proverbial umbrella as a shield of sorts – a barrier if you will, that both separates and protects us from the elements. Psychologically speaking, we also have an umbrella – and its role is similar: to regulate how much our mood or emotive state is affected by external stimulus. Under the umbrella is you, your mood. Outside the umbrella is the external environment: the innumerable things happening around us which may or may not influence our emotional or affective state. They fall into two categories:

• Positive (sunshine) – e.g. receiving an act of kindness, getting complimented, seeing a rainbow
• Negative (rain) – e.g. missing the train, getting insulted, seeing a car accident

To the end of clarifying the concept, your umbrella has two critical characteristics (1) opacity and (2) integrity, which are presented on the diagram below.

(1) Opacity dictates the degree to which positive influences penetrate through to emotive state, or how much sun you’re getting. At one extreme, if your umbrella is transparent or only slightly opaque, it follows that you’re going to get lots of sun shining through. On the flipside, if your umbrella is solid or highly opaque, then the sunlight won’t permeate it.

(2) Integrity dictates the degree to which negative influences penetrate through to emotive state or how wet you get when it rains. At one extreme, if your umbrella is full of holes and tears, rain will leach through and you’ll get wet. To the contrary, if the fabric is unadulterated, the rain will roll off leaving you dry.

Unavoidably, these two characteristics create four different classes of umbrella, defining four general categories of people.
Due to the fact that consecutive testing of both integrity and opacity is ineffectual because they are not independent, we will test one. The following interactive exercise is designed to unsystematically test the integrity axis:

I want you to rate your present mood or state of mind on a 1 to 10 scale; with 1 being in the throes of depression as an employee a peon of Macquarie Bank, and 10 being Tom-Cruise-On-Oprah’s-Couch happy. Then, clear your mind of thoughts, either download via this link and watch full screen to get the full effect or alternatively just press play on the clip below and focus your full visual and auditory attention on it, thinking only of the imagery it conveys.

After having watched the clip, pause for a few minutes to absorb and reflect on the content.
Now assess your mood again and reassign a value to it.

For the average person, there should be a decrement of 1 to 3 reflecting our psychological reactance to negative imagery. A decrement of 4 or over is indicative of hypersensitivity to emotional stimulus. Should the clip produce no decrement then it is symptomatic of being emotionally flat-lined. Finally, were your mood to actually improve after viewing the clip, then it could mean one of two things; you either processed the imagery appreciatively by relating it to how good your life is by comparison, or more likely, you are morally bankrupt.

Umbrella Types

Note that in defining the four types,  the extremes of the two factors have been used for simplicity. In reality, a moderate Io or iO type umbrella reflects the vast majority of people, reflecting a relative positive or negative dominance.

Obviously, referring to the diagram, the ideal umbrella to be carrying around is one with high integrity and low opaqueness (type Io) – a clear and strong one that allows the sun to shine through and protects you from the rain. A person carrying an ‘Io’ type umbrella is oft misperceived as an ‘optimist’ (tending toward seeing the good side). Whilst it is indeed true that an optimist has what is best termed a ‘positive bias,’ the fact holds little currency with that individual’s emotive reactance profile. The nature of the ‘Io’ profile is a favourable response to positive stimuli and low susceptibility to negative stimuli. An intentionally narrow and contrived example of this would fit the mould of a compulsive gambler in that a win puts them in a euphoric state whereas successive losses often do not register emotionally.

Next, we have the opposite, type iO , denoted by low integrity and high opacity – a black umbrella with tears that blocks the sun but lets the rain through. Again, the equivalent generally accepted consensus of pessimist (tending toward the bad side) is fallacious. ‘Melancholist’ is perhaps a term more befitting. The ‘iO’ is typified by no or low responsiveness to positive stimuli coupled with a high susceptibility to negative stimuli. Patients with schizoid/schizotypal disorders often exhibit this pattern of behaviour: heightened sensitivity to the adverse and indifference toward the positive.

The remaining two types ‘io’ and ‘IO’ are combinations far less prominent and considerably more interesting. Respectively, they are the states of hypersensitive and flat-lined.

Hypersensitivity (severe type io) is apparent where the mind is effectively at the mercy of exogenous stimuli, resulting in emotional volatility. An instance of example would be where one’s affective state and mood for the whole day can be decreed by whether it is bright or overcast outside. It is almost akin to not having an umbrella at all, because the division between one’s internal or endogenous algorithms for controlling emotion are extensively jumbled with external stimuli, sometimes to the point where control over how one feels is lost completely.

Lastly, there is the dubious state of being flat-lined (severe type IO) where the umbrella encapsulates like a fortress, allowing neither sun nor rain to influence. Andy Dufresne in the Shawshank Redemption comes to mind – a character who is perceived as unfeeling and cold for his seeming lack of emotional conveyance. An even better example is Meursault in Albert Camus’ fictional work, L’Etranger, a Frenchman who is utterly emotionally blunted to the flow of his universe, showing equal apathy to both love and his own execution. Admittedly, this is taking it a bit far, because IO can be portrayed in different lights. On the one hand, it flies in the face of social convention when an individual shrugs upon winning the lottery or getting fired – it is not a normal reaction. Whilst on the other hand, being ‘flat-lined’ confers a benefit by way of anomalous emotional stability.

Should one stop to consider, the vulnerability of our mind-state to external influences is enormous. Oblivious to it most of the time, our decisions are directed by external influence on our affective state. Men go out and buy LYNX/AXE deodorant because it elicits a positive effect on mood by implanting its mantra of ‘turning nice girls naughty’ or something lewd to that effect. Similarly, the negative effect of the video composition constructed for this analysis could obviously elicit donations to a humanitarian organisation.

Adding one final layer, it is important to note that positive and negative stimulus are not equitable in terms of effect. As surely as fear is an emotion more powerful than greed, so to do negative stimuli eclipse their positive counterparts. I could have also constructed a clip with photographs from my recent trip to the Caribbean accompanies by uplifting ‘happy’ music – but it would not have had an opposite effect of level magnitude. Herein lies a fundamental law which underpins our ‘human’ behaviour: we are more receptive to, and psychologically affected by ‘bad’ than ‘good’.

It is the toxicity of negativity: the omnipotent premise which upon almost anything can be explained:

It is why the pain of a single loss in the stock market can eclipse the pleasure of a history of gains.
It is why we will remember that one mistake a partner made, even in the face of everything they’ve done right.
It is why there is an enshrined legal system to punish the wicked, but no system to reward the good.
It is why we see an inkblot over the sheet of paper.

It is why we fear death more than we love life.

P. X. Waterstone

Errata: to those disenfranchised by the melancholic composition, please direct your attention to this juncture. Though we cannot guarantee its effectiveness at reversing the negative effects, there have been encouraging results in trials with chimpanzees.

It would be interesting to see how this framework rates in terms of verisimilitude, and also opinions on the effectiveness of the composition clip. All comments and thoughts strongly invited.

Link to high-resolution clip download:

Psi-N Test Composition

~ by X on April 9, 2007.