Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps—and What We Can Do About It

beth — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Given the heavy media coverage about studies that “prove” significant, inborn differences between males and females, it is no surprise that we excuse or accept certain behaviors depending on whether they come from a boy or a girl. We are often led to believe that it is natural for a boy to be athletic and for a girl to demonstrate more empathy because it is part of their biology and something that cannot be helped one way or another. If this were true, we would have to resign ourselves to our appropriate gender roles and stick to the activities and behaviors assigned to us by nature.

Not so, says Eliot. Right off the bat, Pink Brain, Blue Brain shows us that we must examine these studies critically in order to appreciate their message. Eliot goes through various popular studies with a fine-toothed comb and comes away with a vastly different interpretation of the data. Rather than proving innate differences between boys and girls, instead we see that these differences are really not as large as they appear and that the outcomes have been subtly manipulated and phrased in ways that present the results as far more provocative, and therefore popular with the media.

After a close scrutiny of the studies, Eliot goes on to investigate the various claims of the differences between boys and girls starting at conception and ending around puberty. Though she is a neuroscientist, Eliot provides well thought out sociological critiques along with useful explanations of biology. She fuses both the nature and nurture aspects of development to show that gender gaps are not just innate or taught, but oftentimes both. What nature instills, society tends to exaggerate. The consequences are that these gender stereotypes become self-fulfilling prophecies, and this hurts both boys and girls.

Particularly useful to those who strive to raise well-balanced children are the ideas and tips that Eliot includes at the end of nearly every chapter. For instance, she recommends pet care as a way to teach and encourage a sense of nurturing in young boys. Likewise, she suggests getting girls involved in chess in order to help foster a healthy dose of competition and to improve spatial analysis skills. We may have been dealt a specific set of cards at birth, but this by no means should limit us in what we achieve and how we excel.

Written by: Shana Mattson, January 4th 2011

Emotional Bullshit: The Hidden Plague That Is Threatening to Destroy Your Relationships—And How to Stop It

admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 10:42:00 +0000

By Carl Alasko, Ph.D.

Tarcher

Emotional bullshit, however far flung, rarely consists of strategies for conflict aversion. Carl Alasko’s Emotional Bullshit: The Hidden Plague that Is Threatening to Destroy Your Relationships—And How to Stop It consists of strategies for identifying and replacing those habits. Denial, delusion, and blame sneak into our repertoire, to make us look or feel better about our job, our part in a relationship, or role in our family, how far we’ve digressed from our goals and integrity, or keeping promises, to ourselves and others. In some it is tastelessly obvious, in others it is virtually undetected, at least for a while.

Alasko describes three common habits: denial, delusion and blame as a self-camouflaging sequence, in addition to that pesky, prickly good feeling we get from serotonin when we’re in love can help us get hooked on delusions about a relationship, even when we at first see bad signs. Like any good self-help book, it makes a lot of sense, and yet it is original and interesting.

My eager endorsement of the book may be self-incriminating; allow me to follow a genre approach to elucidate: Do you often spend time, energy or other resources avoiding conflict? Do you rationalize your own or others behavior? Following a confrontation do you have thoughts about how right or how much better you are? Are you often lonely or are you usually in relationships that are parasitic or filled with strife? In short, anyone who has strife in a relationship of any kind could theoretically benefit.

There are a couple strategies on how to deal immediately with conflict, even if you are in a position where you cannot respond, or are incapacitated to respond well. And there are more complex strategies for engaging in ongoing discussion with someone you have an intimate relationship with and are committed to. These are "fool proof if you follow all the steps/rules." Realistically, I can imagine very many alternate "out of bounds" responses and outcomes for every case study that went well.

To the author's credit, attempts one, two and three to getting it right are often described. Some of the couples' true stories are very moving. I can't help but think that they benefited particularly by having the author as their therapist, and that undertaking the strategy, however simple, as "amateurs" and without a neutral, and professional, mediator, could take a lot more tries. Still, better self-awareness, at least, can be achieved by reading Emotional Bullshit: The Hidden Plague that Is Threatening to Destroy Your Relationships—And How to Stop It.

Written by: Heather Irvine, March 29th 2009