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Repetitive negative thinking associated with cognitive decline in older adults

bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com

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Re: Repetitive negative thinking associated with cognitive decline in older adults

#141

Post by growingkittens »

mschuster91 wrote: post #82
growingkittens wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or a byproduct of sustained trauma being more prevalent in modern society. There was a large shift in the way children are raised in the past 100 years, from community to individuality. Entire generations of people whose childhoods prepared them for a world that did not exist by the time they were adults. There is no template for raising children in the new world, and no community to fall back on. Many react with ang…

> Abuse is way more prevalent than most people realize. Frankly, abuse and childhood trauma has always been a staple of human history. Even in the Bible, so at least a few thousand years ago, physical punishment against children is described. Sexual abuse was rampant as well, the Quran documents marriages at age 9. Wars and all the horrors that came with them were all too common - Europe only got actually peaceful af…

Many people fall into a trap of thinking "we catch the bad guys now, not like in the old days." I'm sure people were saying it in the 90s, 80s, 70s...every era of advancement involves experiencing technology before it is widely understood, which can feel very futuristic or magical. The underlying systems we depend on, like the court system, are still stuck in "the old days".

Re: Repetitive negative thinking associated with cognitive decline in older adults

#142

Post by Nevermark »

I already knew my best friend from childhood was a terminal cynical bastard.

But now this! He has less time than I thought. I will have to forward it to him, and cross my fingers that he doesn't spiral. Thoughts and prayers, man. Before you suggest it, I can't tell him to just "think positive". He would physically explode. Implode? Something. Matter, antimatter.

Re: Repetitive negative thinking associated with cognitive decline in older adults

#143

Post by lutusp »

Aurornis wrote: post #128
lutusp wrote: post #98

> "Repetitive negative thinking (RNT) is a core symptom of a number of common psychological disorders and may be a modifiable process shared by many psychological risk factors that contribute to the development of cognitive impairment." (emphasis added) This strongly implies that changing negative thinking behavior might reduce cognitive impairment. But the study has no way to establish a cause-effect relationship --…

> A similar finding is that kids who smoke marijuana are likely to experience serious mental health issues later on -- that's indisputable. The problem is the same as in this case -- people assume a cause-effect relationship that isn't supported by the evidence. This is one of those topics where people will set an impossibly high standard for evidence and then use that to reject everything. We do actually know that h…

> Yet if you want to set your threshold for evidence so high that nothing short of a large scale RCT will answer the question you can ignore all of this, because such an RCT will never be produced for obvious ethical reasons.

Yes, but this means existing studies can't be relied on to justify a conclusion that would have required the impossible study. Saying that a study isn't practical can't be used to justify making a policy decision based on circumstantial evidence.

My use of marijuana studies is meant only to show how bad science steers public policy, not to advocate for its use. There are other, better reasons to avoid that drug.

> This pattern is common in topics where people simple don’t want to believe a casual relationship might exist.

This is why science exists. But if the science cannot be carried out, then we have no right to draw conclusions that would require actual science to be legitimate.

This is moving away from the original topic, which is the kind of sloppy science common in modern psychology, where people wave their hands instead of their scientific results.

> I knew a guy who ...

A red herring, but I think you knew that.

Re: Repetitive negative thinking associated with cognitive decline in older adults

#144

Post by growingkittens »

Yoric wrote: post #95
growingkittens wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've talked about how intergenerational trauma has affected my family before, although I didn't mention it started in 1918 when my great great grandfather killed my great great grandmother in a murder suicide, leaving my great grandmother an orphan who would one day abuse my grandma. [1] I think there are patterns to abuse regardless of the cause. Abuse is essentially addiction to control or anger (the seven deadly s…

> Abuse is essentially addiction to control or anger That's an interesting formulation. I have someone in my family who could be described by these words. Is this your own description or does this come from somewhere?

Additional note. Since it is my own description and it sounds familiar to you, if you want to discuss it further my email is in my profile.

Re: Repetitive negative thinking associated with cognitive decline in older adults

#145

Post by yowlingcat »

jncfhnb wrote: post #87
ninetyninenine wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all if negative thinking is associated with cognitive decline and if what you say is also generally true then humans will also be pretty much, in general, be in cognitive decline. Humans all being generally in a state of cognitive decline doesn’t make sense from an evolutionary perspective because natural selection will weed out degraded cognitive performance. So most people won’t be in this state. Anecdotal…

There’s not much evidence of rigorous differences in intelligence across racial groups that could not be explained by environmental and cultural differences. Statistical analysis generally suggests that if there is one, the effect size is small. The current observed gap is much smaller than gains than have been observed within racial communities over time as a result of environmental changes. So… no. You don’t have a…

I know this is such a controversial livewire of a topic and borderline taboo, but the evidence is pretty substantial. That being said, the intra-group variation is also extremely substantial (IE the variation between genius/median in any particular group is simultaneously a) far more than median in one group and median in another group and b) far less than genius in one group vs genius in another group). All that being said, I think this contributes to rather than detracts from GP's comment. These "studies" (as with much of modern psychological "research") are so poorly designed so as to be meaningless, hence the replication crisis. I think they're actually worse than meaningless because they're misleading and create infohazards.

Re: Repetitive negative thinking associated with cognitive decline in older adults

#146

Post by osn9363739 »

awesome_dude wrote: post #121
kcoddington wrote: post #6

I'm not seeing where they are coming up with RNT as a cause, other than a lot of theory. Wouldn't it be a symptom of cognitive decline instead? Dementia patients, particularly those with Alzheimers, tend to become depressed because of confusion and memory loss. Wouldn't it be more likely that these depression symptoms are being caused by deteriotating brain function rather than the other way around?

This is the problem of correlation being reported in media, people read it as "causation found" When really it's "We've found an interesting association, and we are going to explore it more to see if there's an causation that we can influence"

I think they need to use a different word than associated. That's what's causing the confusion?

Re: Repetitive negative thinking associated with cognitive decline in older adults

#147

Post by somenameforme »

nicce wrote: post #105
moab9 wrote: post #94

Repetitive negative thinking associated WITH EVERYTHING.

Does someone have a medicine for negative thinking?

Have children. Hard not to endlessly smile when you see their smiles for you doing nothing more than being there for them. Then, uhh I guess the plan is to have more children once they enter their teen years?

Weight lifting also helps with mentality in a million different ways.

Re: Repetitive negative thinking associated with cognitive decline in older adults

#148

Post by tayo42 »

somenameforme wrote: post #147
nicce wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does someone have a medicine for negative thinking?

Have children. Hard not to endlessly smile when you see their smiles for you doing nothing more than being there for them. Then, uhh I guess the plan is to have more children once they enter their teen years? Weight lifting also helps with mentality in a million different ways.

having a kid had triggered an constant existential crisis for me. the moments are nice, but overall life is more confusing then ever, and not in a good way.

Re: Repetitive negative thinking associated with cognitive decline in older adults

#149

Post by cyberax »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #59
hliyan wrote: post #28

I have a personal theory (I'm sure it's not a novel one and it probably has a name) that human brains are naturally predisposed to negative thought than positive thought because our brains are essentially evolved prediction engines. And because it is often easier and faster to lose something than gain it (e.g. it is usually less urgent to act on the signs of deer you might want to hunt and eat, than the sign of a tig…

First of all if negative thinking is associated with cognitive decline and if what you say is also generally true then humans will also be pretty much, in general, be in cognitive decline. Humans all being generally in a state of cognitive decline doesn’t make sense from an evolutionary perspective because natural selection will weed out degraded cognitive performance. So most people won’t be in this state. Anecdotal…

There are studies on separated Black twins that ended up in different socioeconomic situations. They limit the genetic difference in variation of IQ between races to just a few points.

And to be clear, IQ itself is very much inheritable. But the _variation_ in IQ in a population is not explained by genetics.

Re: Repetitive negative thinking associated with cognitive decline in older adults

#150

Post by cyberax »

CalRobert wrote: post #73
orwin wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or for individuals. I;ve never realized how US-like my country was becoming until DJT and his second administration. I'm probably one of the most US-pilled person my age in my country (I follow US football more than soccer, i hang out on US forums and discords, i used to follow US news every day, i've spent a month between Ohio and WV, and another between California, Nevada and Colorado, it's the foreign country i've…

I'm an American living _in_ Europe for over a decade and I've been going crazy watching the EU willfully remain a weak and insignificant vassal to the US when it _could_ be much, much stronger. It's insane watching them go back to their abuser over and over and over and acting surprised when the abuser behaves exactly like they said they would.

What do you mean by "weak" and "vassal"?

Do a mental experiment. Suppose that the US disappeared. What would Europe do differently?

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