Rejection Reduces IQ
Ian Goddard
igoddard at erols.mom
Sat Mar 16 20:38:08 EST 2002
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992051
Rejection massively reduces IQ
13:45 15 March 02
Emma Young, Blackpool
Rejection can dramatically reduce a person's IQ and their ability
to reason analytically, while increasing their aggression, according
to new research.
"It's been known for a long time that rejected kids tend to be more
violent and aggressive," says Roy Baumeister of the Case Western
Reserve University in Ohio, who led the work. "But we've found that
randomly assigning students to rejection experiences can lower their
IQ scores and make them aggressive."
Baumeister's team used two separate procedures to investigate the
effects of rejection. In the first, a group of strangers met, got to
know each other, and then separated. Each individual was asked to
list which two other people they would like to work with on a task.
They were then told they had been chosen by none or all of the others.
In the second, people taking a personality test were given false
feedback, telling them they would end up alone in life or surrounded
by friends and family.
Aggression scores increased in the rejected groups. But the IQ scores
also immediately dropped by about 25 per cent, and their analytical
reasoning scores dropped by 30 per cent.
"These are very big effects - the biggest I've got in 25 years of
research," says Baumeister. "This tells us a lot about human nature.
People really seem designed to get along with others, and when you're
excluded, this has significant effects."
Baumeister thinks rejection interferes with a person's self-control.
"To live in society, people have to have an inner mechanism that
regulates their behaviour. Rejection defeats the purpose of this,
and people become impulsive and self-destructive. You have to use
self-control to analyse a problem in an IQ test, for example - and
instead, you behave impulsively."
Baumeister presented his results at the annual conference of the
British Psychological Society in Blackpool, Lancashire, UK.
Psychological Society in Blackpool, Lancashire, UK.
13:45 15 March 02
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http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992051
####
Bio-Psychiatric Fallacy - by Ian Williams Goddard
The following quote expresses the view of contemporary psychiatry.
It comes from Dr Harold Koplewicz, a professor of child psychiatry
at the New York University School of Medicine, [1] stated during
the White House Conference on Mental Health [2]:
"It's hard to believe that until 20 years ago we still
believed that inadequate parenting and bad childhood
traumas were the cause of psychiatric illnesses in
children. And in fact, even though we know better today,
that antiquated way of thinking is still out there, so
that people who wouldn't dream of blaming parents for
other types of disease, like their child's diabetes or
asthma, still embrace the notion that somehow absent
fathers, working mothers, over-permissive parents are
the cause of psychiatric illness in children."
In short, "childhood traumas" should not be expected to have
negative psychological repercussions on children. If a child
is depressed, it is due not to any environmental trauma, but
to a lack of psychiatric "medicine." Dr Koplewicz continues:
"And the only way we can change that [antiquated view]
is through more public awareness. I mean, essentially,
these are no-fault brain disorders. These diseases are
physiological, they respond to medicine."
The last sentence contains the crux of the fallacy of contemporary
psychiatry... that because mental states "respond to medicine"
they are thereby proven to be caused by internal brain disorders
that came into existence independent of environmental influences.
That view is a naked fallacy. The brain is not isolated, it is an
environmentally interactive and intersocial organ. Many studies
demonstrating that intersocial dynamics change brain states
demonstrate that there is no reason to assume that brain states
come into existence free from external influences, nor to assume
that the ability to change those states by chemical means proves
that their causal basis is divorced from external influences.
The entire edifice of contemporary psychiatry rests on a fallacy.
Seeing brain states, both positive and negative, as a result of an
internal/external interaction, rather than exclusively internally
caused, presents a more holistic view of psycho-social dynamics.
A view that held sway during the "antiquated" period of psychiatry.
__________________________________________________________________
[1] http://www.med.nyu.edu/people/H.Koplewicz.html
[2] White House Conference on Mental Health, June 7, 1999.
Was posted: http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/New/html/19990607.html
http://IanGoddard.net
"To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals." Ben Franklin
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