ScienceDaily (July 2, 2012) ? A new study indicates that mass extinctions affect the pace of evolution, not just in the immediate aftermath of catastrophe, but for millions of years to follow. The study's authors, University of Chicago's Andrew Z. Krug and David Jablonski, will publish their findings in the August issue of the journal Geology.
Scientists expected to see an evolutionary explosion immediately following a mass extinction, but Krug and Jablonski's findings go far beyond that.
"There's some general sense that the event happens, there's some aftermath and then things return to normal," said Krug, a research scientist in geophysical sciences at UChicago. But in reality, Krug said, "Things don't return to what they were before. They operate at a different pace, sometimes more rapidly, other times more slowly. Evolutionary rates shift, and that shift is permanent until the next mass extinction."
Krug and Jablonski's suggestion that the potential for rapid speciation and expansion of survivors and new groups of organisms in the "emptier" world following a mass extinction "is a reasonable possibility as one source of rate change," said paleontologist Richard Bambach of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, who was not directly involved in the UChicago study.
The long-term evolutionary patterns of species diversification following mass extinctions are poorly understood. Paleontologists have extensively debated whether diversity has increased over the last 251 million years, which followed the most devastating mass extinction in Earth history, Bambach said
Inconsistent classifications
Scientists have been putting Latin names on fossils since 1758, often inconsistently. Methods and tools have changed with the times, but old names often remain. The UChicago paleontologists have combed through seemingly endless volumes of research papers and countless museum drawers in an ongoing attempt to standardize these classifications.
For their Geology study, Krug and Jablonski analyzed contemporary groups of organisms from the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, which ended approximately 10,000 years ago, to the Jurassic Period, which began approximately 200 million years ago. The availability of globally abundant data on bivalves, a group that includes clams, oysters and scallops, set the study's time boundaries.
"With some groups, like sea urchins or corals, you just couldn't do it because the numbers aren't big enough," said Jablonski, the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Service Professor in Geophysical Sciences. When he and Krug statistically plotted the origination rate of new bivalve species at 50 million-year intervals, they found that all the species evolved at a fairly steady rate for millions of years. Then the bivalve groups show a sudden increase or decrease in the rates at which new species evolved. These sudden shifts marked the occurrence of a mass extinction. "They settle back down to a different rate from what was before, and they do it multiple times, corresponding to each mass extinction," Jablonski said.
Theoretically, the origination rates of the organisms might have "been all over the map," with evolutionary rates varying in a random or chaotic style, but they didn't. "It's surprising how organized the pattern is," he said.
Krug and Jablonski's perspective of the data is somewhat different from Bambach's. These perspectives are "not contradictory, but complementary, ways of looking at the data," Bambach said. "One of the valuable things about their work is that they record the pattern and pattern change during intervals that I lump together."
Bambach bases his work on older data compilations that include the animal kingdom as a whole, while Krug and Jablonski use their new, carefully vetted data from bivalve mollusks.
Setting a new pace
"There's been a lot of talk about the evolutionary role of mass extinctions, but it's like the weather. Everyone talks about it, but no one does much about it," Jablonski joked.
"No one has really thought about it in terms of these downstream dynamics, once the smoke has cleared and ecosystems have found a new equilibrium, for want of a better word. But the wonderful thing is that when they find a new equilibrium, it's a different evolutionary pace from the one that prevailed for the preceding 50 million years. The survivors of the mass extinction, or the world they inherited, is so different from what went before that the rate of evolution is permanently changed."
Krug and Jablonski's research builds upon the work of UChicago's David Raup, the Sewell L. Avery Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Geophysical Sciences, and Michael Foote, professor in Geophysical Sciences.
In 1978, Raup published a method for determining the extinction rate of organisms. His method involved monitoring the survivorship of a group of organisms that had all originated during a specific time period and quantifying when they disappeared. It would be like collecting census data for all individuals born on Jan. 1, 1899, tracking their longevity, then finding that the 1918 influenza epidemic had produced a spike in this group's mortality.
Foote followed up in 2001, showing that Raup's method worked equally well for determining origination rates as it did for extinction rates. One simply needed to use the method in reverse, tracking the time since origination of a group of co-occurring lineages as opposed to the time until extinction. Now comes Krug and Jablonski's latest study, finding that the evolutionary "birth rate" was also reset at major catastrophes. "It's very Chicago-esque," Jablonski said.
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Journal Reference:
Andrew Z. Krug and David Jablonski. Long-term origination rates are re-set only at mass extinctions. Geology, June 29, 2012
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Penn engineers convert a natural plant protein into drug-delivery vehiclesPublic release date: 3-Jul-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Evan Lerner elerner@upenn.edu 215-573-6604 University of Pennsylvania
PHILADELPHIA Finding biocompatible carriers that can get drugs to their targets in the body involves significant challenges. Beyond practical concerns of manufacturing and loading these vehicles, the carriers must work effectively with the drug and be safe to consume. Vesicles, hollow capsules shaped like double-walled bubbles, are ideal candidates, as the body naturally produces similar structures to move chemicals from one place to another. Finding the right molecules to assemble into capsules, however, remains difficult.
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have now shown a new approach for making vesicles and fine-tuning their shapes. By starting with a protein that is found in sunflower seeds, they used genetic engineering to make a variety of protein molecules that assemble into vesicles and other useful structures.
Daniel A. Hammer, Alfred G. and Meta A. Ennis Professor of Bioengineering, graduate student Kevin Vargo and research scientist Ranganath Parthasarathy of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science conducted the research.
Their work was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"To our knowledge, this is the first time a vesicle has been made from a recombinant protein," Hammer said.
Recombinant proteins are the products of a well-established technique that involves introducing a designed gene sequence into a host organism in most cases, the bacterium E. coli in order to get that organism to make a protein it would not normally produce.
Hammer's group worked for nearly a decade to find a protein that was biocompatible, could be produced through recombinant methods and, most important, could be induced to form vesicles.
"The molecule we identified is called oleosin," Hammer said. "It's a surfactant protein found in sunflower and sesame seeds."
Surfactants are soap-like chemicals that have two distinct sides; one side is attracted to water and the other is repelled by it. They can make many structures in solution but making vesicles is rare. Most often, surfactants make micelles, in which a single layer of molecules aggregates with the water-loving part on the outside and the water-hating part on the inside. Micelles have a limited ability to carry drugs. Vesicles, in contrast, have two walls aligned so the two water-hating sides face each other. The water-loving interior cavity allows the transport of a large payload of water-soluble molecules that are suspended in water. Since many drugs are water soluble, vesicles offer significant advantages for drug delivery.
The team systematically modified oleosin to find variants of the molecule that could form vesicles. Getting oleosin to take this complex shape meant selectively removing and changing parts of oleosin's gene sequence so that the corresponding protein would fold the way the researchers wanted after it was produced by the E.coli.
"We started by truncating the sequence that codes for the hydrophobic part, shortening the protein itself," Hammer said. "We did more complex truncations at the ends for separation and to control the shape of the assembly."
"There are simple ways to correlate the gene sequence to the geometry you get in the protein," Vargo said. "For example, getting the right amount of curvature to make a spherical vesicle means the chains should be sufficiently large that they do not pack tightly."
In the process of finding the right protein for this task, the researchers came up with several other useful protein variants that form different shapes, including sheets and fibers, when grown in the appropriate salt solutions.
Materials made by recombinant methods offer an additional advantage in that the precise sequence of amino acids can be controlled for targeting to specific receptors and other biological targets. For proteins of this size, this level of control is not attainable by any other method.
"Other groups have synthesized polypeptide vesicles, but they have a hard time controlling the sequences in individual sections of their molecules," Vargo said. "We can go in a change a single amino acid in the protein by modifying the corresponding part of the gene."
"Recombinant methods mean we can make polymers that are all of a defined length and dictate the chemical composition at each location along that length," Hammer said. "You get the exact length and sequence every time."
According to Hammer's team, the hardest part of the research was confirming that these sequences did indeed fold into vesicles. This was only possible with specialized equipment available to the researchers through their association with Penn's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center and made possible by a grant written by professor Karen Winey from Materials Science and Engineering.
"The vast majority of our time in this project was doing the imaging; making the protein was relatively easy," Hammer said.
The imaging technique used is known as cyro-transmission electron microscopy, or cryoTEM
"With cryoTEM," Vargo said, "we create a thin layer of solution, then plunge it into ethane, freezing it fast enough that the water doesn't crystallize. Ice crystals would also destroy the vesicles, so this technique leaves you with your particles and structures intact."
As their protein is already routinely eaten, the researchers are confident that their oleosin vesicles will be of great interest in drug-delivery applications, particularly oral-drug delivery. Future work will entail adding genes for functional groups to allow the vesicles to target certain tissues, as well as determining whether the proteins can be induced to change shape once they reach their targets.
"This research opens up the possibility of using switchable motifs to allow us to release high concentrations of drugs on different cues, such as a change in acidity," Hammer said. "Tumor microenvironments and the interior of tumors are known to be acidic, so a vesicle that falls apart in acidic environments would be extremely valuable."
###
The work was supported by the National Science Foundation through the Penn MRSEC and the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Penn engineers convert a natural plant protein into drug-delivery vehiclesPublic release date: 3-Jul-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Evan Lerner elerner@upenn.edu 215-573-6604 University of Pennsylvania
PHILADELPHIA Finding biocompatible carriers that can get drugs to their targets in the body involves significant challenges. Beyond practical concerns of manufacturing and loading these vehicles, the carriers must work effectively with the drug and be safe to consume. Vesicles, hollow capsules shaped like double-walled bubbles, are ideal candidates, as the body naturally produces similar structures to move chemicals from one place to another. Finding the right molecules to assemble into capsules, however, remains difficult.
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have now shown a new approach for making vesicles and fine-tuning their shapes. By starting with a protein that is found in sunflower seeds, they used genetic engineering to make a variety of protein molecules that assemble into vesicles and other useful structures.
Daniel A. Hammer, Alfred G. and Meta A. Ennis Professor of Bioengineering, graduate student Kevin Vargo and research scientist Ranganath Parthasarathy of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science conducted the research.
Their work was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"To our knowledge, this is the first time a vesicle has been made from a recombinant protein," Hammer said.
Recombinant proteins are the products of a well-established technique that involves introducing a designed gene sequence into a host organism in most cases, the bacterium E. coli in order to get that organism to make a protein it would not normally produce.
Hammer's group worked for nearly a decade to find a protein that was biocompatible, could be produced through recombinant methods and, most important, could be induced to form vesicles.
"The molecule we identified is called oleosin," Hammer said. "It's a surfactant protein found in sunflower and sesame seeds."
Surfactants are soap-like chemicals that have two distinct sides; one side is attracted to water and the other is repelled by it. They can make many structures in solution but making vesicles is rare. Most often, surfactants make micelles, in which a single layer of molecules aggregates with the water-loving part on the outside and the water-hating part on the inside. Micelles have a limited ability to carry drugs. Vesicles, in contrast, have two walls aligned so the two water-hating sides face each other. The water-loving interior cavity allows the transport of a large payload of water-soluble molecules that are suspended in water. Since many drugs are water soluble, vesicles offer significant advantages for drug delivery.
The team systematically modified oleosin to find variants of the molecule that could form vesicles. Getting oleosin to take this complex shape meant selectively removing and changing parts of oleosin's gene sequence so that the corresponding protein would fold the way the researchers wanted after it was produced by the E.coli.
"We started by truncating the sequence that codes for the hydrophobic part, shortening the protein itself," Hammer said. "We did more complex truncations at the ends for separation and to control the shape of the assembly."
"There are simple ways to correlate the gene sequence to the geometry you get in the protein," Vargo said. "For example, getting the right amount of curvature to make a spherical vesicle means the chains should be sufficiently large that they do not pack tightly."
In the process of finding the right protein for this task, the researchers came up with several other useful protein variants that form different shapes, including sheets and fibers, when grown in the appropriate salt solutions.
Materials made by recombinant methods offer an additional advantage in that the precise sequence of amino acids can be controlled for targeting to specific receptors and other biological targets. For proteins of this size, this level of control is not attainable by any other method.
"Other groups have synthesized polypeptide vesicles, but they have a hard time controlling the sequences in individual sections of their molecules," Vargo said. "We can go in a change a single amino acid in the protein by modifying the corresponding part of the gene."
"Recombinant methods mean we can make polymers that are all of a defined length and dictate the chemical composition at each location along that length," Hammer said. "You get the exact length and sequence every time."
According to Hammer's team, the hardest part of the research was confirming that these sequences did indeed fold into vesicles. This was only possible with specialized equipment available to the researchers through their association with Penn's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center and made possible by a grant written by professor Karen Winey from Materials Science and Engineering.
"The vast majority of our time in this project was doing the imaging; making the protein was relatively easy," Hammer said.
The imaging technique used is known as cyro-transmission electron microscopy, or cryoTEM
"With cryoTEM," Vargo said, "we create a thin layer of solution, then plunge it into ethane, freezing it fast enough that the water doesn't crystallize. Ice crystals would also destroy the vesicles, so this technique leaves you with your particles and structures intact."
As their protein is already routinely eaten, the researchers are confident that their oleosin vesicles will be of great interest in drug-delivery applications, particularly oral-drug delivery. Future work will entail adding genes for functional groups to allow the vesicles to target certain tissues, as well as determining whether the proteins can be induced to change shape once they reach their targets.
"This research opens up the possibility of using switchable motifs to allow us to release high concentrations of drugs on different cues, such as a change in acidity," Hammer said. "Tumor microenvironments and the interior of tumors are known to be acidic, so a vesicle that falls apart in acidic environments would be extremely valuable."
###
The work was supported by the National Science Foundation through the Penn MRSEC and the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Last week for The Writer Magazine, I wrote a review of You Should Really Write a Book: How to Write, Sell and Market Your Memoir (St. Martins, August 2012) by author and agent Regina Brooks, and journalist and social worker Brenda Lane Richardson.? In sophisticated, thought-provoking prose, the authors challenge the idea that agents, editors, and readers have finally tired of memoir.
Doubt the continued appeal of an author?s personal narrative?? Consider the well-deserved success of Portland author Cheryl Strayed?s new memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. (You can read my review of the book from High Country News here).
?
I maintain, along with the authors of You Should Really Write a Book, that if you have an intriguing story to tell and you know how to tell it well (and market it successfully), editors will be interested.
On Tuesday, July 3rd, I?ll be speaking about memoir for the Portland, Oregon chapter of Willamette Writers.? Details below; I hope to see you there!
Your Life in Words
by Mary Andonian of Willamette Writers
July 3rd Meeting Speaker Melissa Hart
Have you ever wanted to write your life story? Have you ever gone through something in your life that changed you and now you believe others could benefit from your experience? Maybe you got sober in AA, or raised a barracuda of a kid (and survived!), or got brainwashed in a cult. Or maybe you discovered the 10 secrets to a productive (fill in the blank). Whatever the case may be, you have a true story to tell and our July speaker will teach you how to tell it.
On Tuesday, July 3rd, Melissa Hart will be at the Old Church to talk about how to write short memoirs for magazines and journals, and longer memoirs for books.
In a lively and entertaining talk, Melissa will explain the most compelling elements of memoir and how participants can identify appealing topics for both short and long forms of the genre. Using examples from published memoirists, she?ll discuss the memoir writer?s obligation to readers, as well as how to best to approach and impress editors and agents with a finished piece. A post-talk question and answer period will provide participants with candid, practical information to use in their own writing projects.
Melissa grew up in Southern California and began writing for regional newspapers at age 16. She earned a B.A. in Literature from the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College, in Plainfield, Vermont.
For the past eight years, she?s taught Feature Writing and Travel Writing at the School of Journalism and Communication, University of Oregon. As well, she teaches a summer memoir class for U.C. Berkeley?s online extension program and private writing workshops in Eugene. She?s a contributing editor at The Writer Magazine, and the author of the memoir, Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood (Seal, 2009), which The Oregonian called, ?a well-balanced tale that forgoes blame in favor of poignancy.? Melissa?s essays and articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Hemispheres, Writers? Digest, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Advocate, Adbusters, and Horizon Air Magazine which?in June?ran and his habit of stealing the neighbors? laundry.
Melissa lives in Eugene with her husband, photographer Jonathan B. Smith, and their daughter, plus too many cats. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, running, biking, backpacking, and traveling to quirky destinations such as giant bird parks and abandoned Costa Rican luxury hotels.
Even if you don?t think you want to write memoir, this talk will still help you cull interesting bits of your life that you can drop into your novel or short story.
We hope you?ll join us at the Old Church on July 3rd to hear Melissa Hart. Talk starts at 7:00 p.m.; doors open at 6:30. To learn more about Melissa, please visit her websites: www.melissahart.com or www.butt2chair.wordpress.com.
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July 2, 2012 - Posted by lissahart | memoir | Brenda Lane Richardson, Cheryl Strayed, creative writing, Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood, High Country News, Melissa Hart, memoir, Portland, Regina Brooks, The Writer Magazine, Wild, Willamette Writers, You Should Really Write a Book
'Self-distancing' can help people calm aggressive reactions, study findsPublic release date: 2-Jul-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Dominik Mischkowski Mischkowski.1@osu.edu Ohio State University
COLUMBUS, Ohio - A new study reveals a simple strategy that people can use to minimize how angry and aggressive they get when they are provoked by others.
When someone makes you angry, try to pretend you're viewing the scene at a distance - in other words, you are an observer rather than a participant in this stressful situation. Then, from that distanced perspective, try to understand your feelings.
Researchers call this strategy "self-distancing."
In one study, college students who believed a lab partner was berating them for not following directions responded less aggressively and showed less anger when they were told to take analyze their feelings from a self-distanced perspective.
"The secret is to not get immersed in your own anger and, instead, have a more detached view," said Dominik Mischkowski, lead author of the research and a graduate student in psychology at Ohio State University.
"You have to see yourself in this stressful situation as a fly on the wall would see it."
While other studies have examined the value of self-distancing for calming angry feelings, this is the first to show that it can work in the heat of the moment, when people are most likely to act aggressively, Mischkowski said.
The worst thing to do in an anger-inducing situation is what people normally do: try to focus on their hurt and angry feelings to understand them, said Brad Bushman, a co-author of the study and professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State.
"If you focus too much on how you're feeling, it usually backfires," Bushman said.
"It keeps the aggressive thoughts and feelings active in your mind, which makes it more likely that you'll act aggressively."
Mischkowski and Bushman conducted the study with Ethan Kross of the University of Michigan. Their findings appear online in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and will be published in a future print edition.
There were two related studies. The first involved 94 college students who were told they were participating in a study about the effects of music on problem solving, creativity and emotions.
The students listened to an intense piece of classical music while attempting to solve 14 difficult anagrams (rearranging a group of letters to form a word such as "pandemonium"). They had only seven seconds to solve each anagram, record their answer and communicate it to the experimenter over an intercom.
But the plan of the study was to provoke the students into anger, which the experimenters did using a technique which has been used many times in similar studies.
The experimenter interrupted the study participants several times to ask them to speak louder into the intercom, finally saying "Look, this is the third time I have to say this! Can't you follow directions? Speak louder!"
After this part of the experiment, the participants were told they would be participating in a task examining the effects of music on creativity and feelings.
The students were told to go back to the anagram task and "see the scene in your mind's eye." They were put into three groups, each of which were asked to view the scene in different ways.
Some students were told to adopt a self-immersed perspective ("see the situation unfold through your eyes as if it were happening to you all over again") and then analyze their feelings surrounding the event. Others were told to use the self-distancing perspective ("move away from the situation to a point where you can now watch the event unfold from a distancewatch the situation unfold as if it were happening to the distant you all over again") and then analyze their feelings. The third control group was not told how to view the scene or analyze their feelings.
Each group was told the replay the scene in their minds for 45 seconds.
The researchers then tested the participants for aggressive thoughts and angry feelings.
Results showed that students who used the self-distancing perspective had fewer aggressive thoughts and felt less angry than both those who used the self-immersed approach and those in the control group.
"The self-distancing approach helped people regulate their angry feelings and also reduced their aggressive thoughts," Mischkowski said.
In a second study, the researchers went further and showed that self-distancing can actually make people less aggressive when they've been provoked.
In this study, 95 college students were told they were going to do an anagram task, similar to the one in the previous experiment. But in this case, they were told they were going to be working with an unseen student partner, rather than one of researchers (in reality, it actually was one of the researchers). In this case, the supposed partner was the one who delivered the scathing comments about following directions.
As in the first study, the participants were then randomly assigned to analyze their feelings surrounding the task from a self-immersed or a self-distanced perspective. Participants assigned to a third control group did not receive any instructions regarding how to view the scene or focus on their feelings.
Next, the participants were told they would be competing against the same partner who had provoked them earlier in a reaction-time task. The winner of the task would get the opportunity to blast the loser with noise through headphones - and the winner chose the intensity and length of the noise blast.
The findings showed that participants who used the self-distancing perspective to think about their partners' provocations showed lower levels of aggression than those in the other two groups. In other words, their noise blasts against their partner tended to be shorter and less intense.
"These participants were tested very shortly after they had been provoked by their partner," Mischkowski said.
"The fact that those who used self-distancing showed lower levels of aggression shows that this technique can work in the heat of the moment, when the anger is still fresh."
Mischkowski said it is also significant that those who used the self-distancing approach showed less aggression than those in the control group, who were not told how to view the anger-inducing incident with their partner.
This suggests people may naturally use a self-immersing perspective when confronted with a provocation - a perspective that is not likely to reduce anger.
"Many people seem to believe that immersing themselves in their anger has a cathartic effect, but it doesn't. It backfires and makes people more aggressive," Bushman said.
Another technique people are sometimes told to use when angered is to distract themselves - think of something calming to take their mind off their anger.
Mischkowski said this may be effective in the short-term, but the anger will return when the distraction is not there.
"But self-distancing really works, even right after a provocation - it is a powerful intervention tool that anyone can use when they're angry."
###
Contact: Dominik Mischkowski, Mischkowski.1@osu.edu (Email is the best way to reach him.)
Brad Bushman, (614) 688-8779; Bushman.20@osu.edu
Written by Jeff Grabmeier, (614) 292-8457; Grabmeier.1@osu.edu
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?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
'Self-distancing' can help people calm aggressive reactions, study findsPublic release date: 2-Jul-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Dominik Mischkowski Mischkowski.1@osu.edu Ohio State University
COLUMBUS, Ohio - A new study reveals a simple strategy that people can use to minimize how angry and aggressive they get when they are provoked by others.
When someone makes you angry, try to pretend you're viewing the scene at a distance - in other words, you are an observer rather than a participant in this stressful situation. Then, from that distanced perspective, try to understand your feelings.
Researchers call this strategy "self-distancing."
In one study, college students who believed a lab partner was berating them for not following directions responded less aggressively and showed less anger when they were told to take analyze their feelings from a self-distanced perspective.
"The secret is to not get immersed in your own anger and, instead, have a more detached view," said Dominik Mischkowski, lead author of the research and a graduate student in psychology at Ohio State University.
"You have to see yourself in this stressful situation as a fly on the wall would see it."
While other studies have examined the value of self-distancing for calming angry feelings, this is the first to show that it can work in the heat of the moment, when people are most likely to act aggressively, Mischkowski said.
The worst thing to do in an anger-inducing situation is what people normally do: try to focus on their hurt and angry feelings to understand them, said Brad Bushman, a co-author of the study and professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State.
"If you focus too much on how you're feeling, it usually backfires," Bushman said.
"It keeps the aggressive thoughts and feelings active in your mind, which makes it more likely that you'll act aggressively."
Mischkowski and Bushman conducted the study with Ethan Kross of the University of Michigan. Their findings appear online in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and will be published in a future print edition.
There were two related studies. The first involved 94 college students who were told they were participating in a study about the effects of music on problem solving, creativity and emotions.
The students listened to an intense piece of classical music while attempting to solve 14 difficult anagrams (rearranging a group of letters to form a word such as "pandemonium"). They had only seven seconds to solve each anagram, record their answer and communicate it to the experimenter over an intercom.
But the plan of the study was to provoke the students into anger, which the experimenters did using a technique which has been used many times in similar studies.
The experimenter interrupted the study participants several times to ask them to speak louder into the intercom, finally saying "Look, this is the third time I have to say this! Can't you follow directions? Speak louder!"
After this part of the experiment, the participants were told they would be participating in a task examining the effects of music on creativity and feelings.
The students were told to go back to the anagram task and "see the scene in your mind's eye." They were put into three groups, each of which were asked to view the scene in different ways.
Some students were told to adopt a self-immersed perspective ("see the situation unfold through your eyes as if it were happening to you all over again") and then analyze their feelings surrounding the event. Others were told to use the self-distancing perspective ("move away from the situation to a point where you can now watch the event unfold from a distancewatch the situation unfold as if it were happening to the distant you all over again") and then analyze their feelings. The third control group was not told how to view the scene or analyze their feelings.
Each group was told the replay the scene in their minds for 45 seconds.
The researchers then tested the participants for aggressive thoughts and angry feelings.
Results showed that students who used the self-distancing perspective had fewer aggressive thoughts and felt less angry than both those who used the self-immersed approach and those in the control group.
"The self-distancing approach helped people regulate their angry feelings and also reduced their aggressive thoughts," Mischkowski said.
In a second study, the researchers went further and showed that self-distancing can actually make people less aggressive when they've been provoked.
In this study, 95 college students were told they were going to do an anagram task, similar to the one in the previous experiment. But in this case, they were told they were going to be working with an unseen student partner, rather than one of researchers (in reality, it actually was one of the researchers). In this case, the supposed partner was the one who delivered the scathing comments about following directions.
As in the first study, the participants were then randomly assigned to analyze their feelings surrounding the task from a self-immersed or a self-distanced perspective. Participants assigned to a third control group did not receive any instructions regarding how to view the scene or focus on their feelings.
Next, the participants were told they would be competing against the same partner who had provoked them earlier in a reaction-time task. The winner of the task would get the opportunity to blast the loser with noise through headphones - and the winner chose the intensity and length of the noise blast.
The findings showed that participants who used the self-distancing perspective to think about their partners' provocations showed lower levels of aggression than those in the other two groups. In other words, their noise blasts against their partner tended to be shorter and less intense.
"These participants were tested very shortly after they had been provoked by their partner," Mischkowski said.
"The fact that those who used self-distancing showed lower levels of aggression shows that this technique can work in the heat of the moment, when the anger is still fresh."
Mischkowski said it is also significant that those who used the self-distancing approach showed less aggression than those in the control group, who were not told how to view the anger-inducing incident with their partner.
This suggests people may naturally use a self-immersing perspective when confronted with a provocation - a perspective that is not likely to reduce anger.
"Many people seem to believe that immersing themselves in their anger has a cathartic effect, but it doesn't. It backfires and makes people more aggressive," Bushman said.
Another technique people are sometimes told to use when angered is to distract themselves - think of something calming to take their mind off their anger.
Mischkowski said this may be effective in the short-term, but the anger will return when the distraction is not there.
"But self-distancing really works, even right after a provocation - it is a powerful intervention tool that anyone can use when they're angry."
###
Contact: Dominik Mischkowski, Mischkowski.1@osu.edu (Email is the best way to reach him.)
Brad Bushman, (614) 688-8779; Bushman.20@osu.edu
Written by Jeff Grabmeier, (614) 292-8457; Grabmeier.1@osu.edu
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GENEVA (Reuters) - Foreign ministers of world powers gather in Geneva on Saturday to try and forge a common strategy to end the bloodshed in Syria, but differences between Russia and the West may thwart them.
Kofi Annan, the former U.N. chief who is special international envoy on Syria, has been hoping for consensus on a plan for a unity government that, by excluding from the leadership figures deemed too divisive, would effectively mean President Bashar al-Assad stepping down.
However, Moscow, a long-time ally of the Syrian strongman and an opponent in principle of what it sees as foreign meddling in domestic sovereignty, has voiced objections to any solution "imposed" on Syria from outside, while the United States and its European and Arab allies see no way ahead with Assad in power.
After Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met over dinner in St. Petersburg on Friday, Lavrov echoed Annan's own earlier upbeat assessment of the chances of agreement, but a senior U.S. official sounded less confident and said differences remained.
"We have a very good chance to find common ground at the conference in Geneva tomorrow," Lavrov told reporters, while also warning against what he called a counterproductive effort to dictate the outcome of a political transformation in advance.
His deputy, Gennady Gatilov, later tweeted Moscow's view of forcing Assad aside: "Our Western partners want to determine themselves the results of the political process in Syria," he said. "However, this is a matter for the Syrians themselves."
Nonetheless, Lavrov said he detected some flexibility on Clinton's part on the eve of talks due to start at U.N. offices in Geneva around 10 a.m. (0800 GMT): "I felt a change in Hillary Clinton's position. There were not ultimatums," he said.
"Not a word was said that the document we will discuss in Geneva cannot be touched," he said, a few hours after senior officials in Geneva failed to arrive at a compromise that could be presented to the foreign ministers for approval on Saturday.
A senior U.S. State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity after the meeting in St. Petersburg, said respect for Annan meant the ministers would still attend.
"There are still areas of difficulty and difference," the official said. But as for the chances of an accord in Geneva, the official added: "We may get there; we may not."
POWERS CONFERENCE
The foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - Russia, the United States, China, France and Britain - will attend Saturday's talks along with counterparts from regional powers Turkey, Kuwait, Qatar and Iraq as well as U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Nabil Elaraby, the secretary-general of the Arab League.
Annan is seeking backing for a proposal that does not explicitly state that Assad must step down, but does call for a unity government which would exclude figures who jeopardize stability.
Diplomats have said that Russia proposed changes on Thursday to Annan's plan for a national unity government, despite initially supporting it, but the United States, Britain and France rejected the amendments.
Annan, who brokered a much abused ceasefire in April, said early on Friday he was "optimistic" that the Geneva talks would produce an acceptable outcome. Later, senior officials holding preparatory talks there failed to overcome differences. Western diplomats said Russia was pressing for changes to Annan's text.
Russian diplomats said the work continued but they would not "impose" a solution on Syria.
Moscow has vetoed Security Council resolutions condemning the Syrian government over its crackdown on protests which began 15 months ago and have turned into something close to civil war with a sectarian tinge. The U.N. estimates at least 10,000 people have been killed.
Russia, and China, both conscious of the risk of internal revolt at home, have objected to what they see as Western interference in the domestic affairs of rulers like Libya's Muammar Gaddafi.
Western governments, however, have shown little will to repeat last year's Libyan experience of military support for Arab rebels in Syria, where Assad's forces are formidable and the complexities of religion and ethnicity much greater.
The world has been accused by Syrian opposition activists of inertia over the bloodshed.
Assad on Thursday dismissed the notion of any outside solution to the crisis which has imperiled his family's four decades in power: "We will not accept any non-Syrian, non-national model, whether it comes from big countries or friendly countries.
"No one knows how to solve Syria's problems as well as we do."
TANKS, HELICOPTERS
On the ground in Syria, fighting continued on Friday, with particular tension around the northern border with Turkey, a week after Syria shot down a Turkish warplane.
Syrian helicopter gunships bombarded a strategic town in the north and tanks moved close to the commercial hub of Aleppo, rebels said. But Syrian troops kept well clear of new Turkish air defenses installed to curb Syrian action near its borders.
Regional analysts said that while neither Turkey nor its NATO allies appeared to have any appetite to enforce a formal no-fly zone over Syrian territory, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan had made clear Assad would be risking what he called the "wrath" of Turkey if its aircraft strayed close to its borders.
Erdogan told a rally in the eastern city of Erzurum on Friday, broadcast by Turkish television: "We will not hesitate to teach a lesson to those who aim heavy weapons at their own people and at neighboring countries."
Turkey, sheltering some 34,000 Syrian refugees and providing bases for the rebel Free Syria Army, is in the forefront of the efforts to bring down Assad.
(Additional reporting by Andrew Quinn and Liza Dobkina in St. Petersburg, Tim Heritage and Gleb Bryanski in Moscow and Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Antakya, Turkey; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Ralph Gowling)
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Public release date: 3-Jul-2012
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