Rejection Makes You Dumb 66
photozz writes: "Just when I was looking for more reasons to hate the girls that dumped me in high school, this article at NewScientist explains how studies have shown that rejection actualy makes you dumb. From the article: 'Rejection can dramatically reduce a person's IQ and their ability to reason analytically.'"
That's okay... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:That's okay... (Score:1)
Don't forget the alcohol [ananova.com].
+1 Funny (Score:1)
Re:No wonder you geeks are so stupid! (Score:1)
It's true (Score:2, Funny)
During the past few years, with all the rejected stories, I figure Slashdot owes me all the intelligence it takes to go from -1, Troll to +5, Insightful
Lucky Me (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Lucky Me (Score:1)
This just in... (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, I can attest to the 'rejected people tend to be more violent and aggressive', because I am grossly violent and aggressive (I actually factor in 'destroyed gadgets' into my monthly budget).
Am I dumber than I used to be ? Well yes, but not because of being turned down once too many. The brain is like a muscle, keep it in shape and it will work well. Let it sleep for a few years and it will become a lump of silly-putty. Being rejected often will make you depressive. Being depressed will put you and your brain to sleep for prolonged periods. So by the time you crawl out of your darkness, BAM! you're a retard. You need to get those neurons back into shape, to restore your former I.Q.
Re:This just in... (Score:1)
Dumb dumb dumb... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just before you take the test, I stomp on your foot. Wups! You don't do as well on the test as you would have. Your apparent IQ gone down.
Just before taking the test, your boyfriend/girlfriend breaks up with you. Wups! You don't do as well on the test as you would have. Your apparent IQ gone down.
Anyone know why there are so many psychology students in US colleges? Because a large portion of college students are too stupid to handle a real major. Unfortunately, those psych majors eventually graduate and publish studies such as these.
It's not dumb. Testing common sense is science! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, it is obvious common sense that rejection -- or psychological upset of any kind -- would make subjects perform poorly on a test. We'd all expect the study to come out this way, and probably wonder why it's necessary.
But common sense is often wrong. That's why we have science.
There is tremendous value in taking things that we all presume to be true, and seeing whether they actually hold up to scrutiny. Another interesting psychological tidbit: although it's "common knowledge" that children pick up new languages much faster and with much more facility than adults, no study has ever actually managed to show conclusively that children have an inherently better language-learning ability.
Suddenly, a piece of common sense is full of interesting questions: Is there a neurological change in the brain's language centers around puberty? Or is there a social change? Are adults simply less willing to jump in and make mistakes? Nobody knows for sure.
Remember -- common sense once held that the sun and the planets revolved in perfect circles around the earth. A few brave souls started questioning that, and everybody said, "dumb dumb dumb", with a dash of "die heretic" thrown in for good measure.
Granted, this study is not the most exciting one in the world. It's unsurprising, and other research suggests about the same thing. But it is never "dumb dumb dumb" to question common sense -- even when common sense turns out to be completely correct.
That's science. Don't knock it.
Re:It's not dumb. Testing common sense is science! (Score:2)
Odd, I never heard the "perfect circles" theory. Any moron who watches the skies can tell you that the planets don't.
Sure, the sun, moon, and stars do--but the planets? IIRC, they were named as such because they didn't travel as regularly as the other stars.
;) and it's as scientifically correct to use any point in the solar system as the "unmovable object" as any other. The sun just presents (by far) the simplest model.
Re:It's not dumb. Testing common sense is science! (Score:2)
That's why I was careful not to use any, but thanks for the clarification.
Nit-picking aside, I think my actual point holds: it's important to question common sense.
Re:It's not dumb. Testing common sense is science! (Score:2)
The explanation given for this was that the planets and suns orbit around... well, nothing, but they move in circles, and those circles themselves move around the earth. Pretty stupid theory, but it worked enough for people to say 'oh, ok, well that's alright then'.
--Dan
Re:It's not dumb. Testing common sense is science! (Score:2)
Re:It's not dumb. Testing common sense is science! (Score:1)
Re:It's not dumb. Testing common sense is science! (Score:2)
This is the category of item that supposed to go into an academic journal with little fanfare. Good for getting a graduate student (or undergrad) published but little earth-shattering insight that "otherwise intelligent people" would find interesting. On the contrary, it is fodder such as this that folks will cling to when they try to create an artificial environment without any rejection. After all, rejection is bad for you. "Think of the kids!"
Sustained exposure to trauma can atrophy brain (Score:2, Interesting)
Pardon the vague and slightly inaccurate subject line; let me explain. I had not heard of this study on "rejection", but (according to a documentary I saw on the BBC) it has been found that sustained terror can result in atrophy of the hippocampus, a part of your brain that is essential to memory formation.
A neurologist had remarked that some Vietnam veterans could remember the war as vividly as if it had just happened and yet they could not tell you what they had for breakfast, so it occurred to him to perform a scan of such a man's brain -- which revealed the aforementioned atrophy. The mechanism associating trauma and atrophy is complex, and I am not a medical doctor, but I'll do my best to give a fair account.
Upon detecting an environmental stimulus for which the autonomic nervous system "knows" a response, the pertinent series of chemical changes is unleashed immediately; after your brain deciphers the stimulus/stimuli and associates it/them with an event (or fails to do so) further changes in your body chemistry may be unleashed which (depending on the case) either enhance or inhibit the already deployed response of the autonomic nervous system.
If you were hiding in the thickets and you heard shots being fired nearby, your so-called limbic system would (correctly) identify an imminent threat and tell the autonomic nervous system to put you in a "fight or flight" physiological state, which might make you breath more heavily or even want to start running; because the behaviours that might follow naturally from this physiological state would further endanger your life, the prefrontal cortex (the cognitive/executive part of your brain) will cause the glands under its control to exert the physiological equivalent of an "equal and opposite force" as quickly as possible.
When the alternative is death, that kind of internal struggle can be good for you -- but the repeated incidence of this physiological tug of war on glands and, ultimately, your brain, can cause structural damage that could be permanent. This is especially true if the brain is still in a stage of rapid development, as in the case of a child, or if the (mature) individual is experiencing a physiological state that makes him especially vulnerable.
Given that an agile and robust memory is an important asset in problem solving, that memory formation is a physiological phenomenon, and that the faculty of memory is therefore vulnerable to prolonged psychological trauma, I am not surprised to learn (as this latest study seems to claim) that an unabatable feeling of being rejected by important elements in our social context may have the unfortunate neurophysiological impact of diminishing our mental faculties.
How do you explain geeks? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How do you explain geeks? (Score:2)
We never ask chicks out. So we never get rejected.
"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."
- WOPR, "War Games".
(Everything I needed to know in life I learned from the WOPR computer in War Games. Love, mutually-assured-destruction, hey, what's the difference ;-)
Re:How do you explain geeks? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the problem with the study (or at least with the New Scientist write-up) is that it doesn't indicate how long the effect lasts for. It says the lower IQ was shown immediately after the rejectioin event. But what about 1 hour later, 1 day later, week, month, year, decade, etc?
I think other studies I learned about in Psych 101 or Soc. 101 indicated that rejection causes a release of adrenalin and hormones associated with stress. This is called the 'fight or flight response' and is a natural defense machanism. If our ancestors discovered they had made a mistake in their life and death environment, it likely meant they had to prepare for a physical confrontation or to flee for their life.
These stress hormones deliberately hamper the operation of higher brain functions so that lower brain functions can take priority. If you are about to be attacked by sabre tooth tiger that now plans on eating you, when you had thought you could kill it and eat it, you don't want to be admiring its asthetic beauty, or trying to decide how closely it might be related to a house cat, you want to decide quickly what's the best escape route. So naturally while these hormones are coursing through you, you're not going to preform well on an IQ test that primarily measure higher brain function.
But what about two days later, when you are back to normal, has your IQ been altered merely becase of the events two days ago? I doubt it.
Rejection does NOT make you dumb! (Score:3, Insightful)
The biggest reason I do not trust the findings is because the exact setting of the study is unknown. Depending on the subjects (age, background, education, social status), the actual transcripts of the study, the atmosphere of the study and the subsequent IQ tests, hell, even what the subjects had for breakfast, the end result could vary dramatically. It is very well known that studies can be skewed. I seem to remember some test showing that NT was much faster than Linux, and immediately after that, other tests proving the contrary. If you set up the test properly, even if you deal with computers, cars or people, you can get almost any result that you want. Note that I said ALMOST.
Given this, the study should be viewed with skepticism. And there are other things to consider. It is pretty obvious that if you tell somebody that he/she is a reject, a loser, and outcast, that person will get enraged. Especially if those comments come from a trustworthy professor. If you expect that while being angered you do not become more aggressive, well, Newton's law applies quite well here. Also obvious should be the fact that while in a highly emotional state (anger in this case) the brain does not function at its full logical potential. Most of its concentration is focused on the emotions. This in turn skews the IQ results, which are very much based on logic.
I took a few IQ test myself, and while in all the scores were fairly close (I didn't have anybody telling me I'm an idiot when I was taking them), the final IQ result was never the same. So there is a wide margin of error here too.
So in the end, we are left with somebody who wants to prove at all costs that rejection makes one dumb, creates a test specifically designed to get that result, and lo and behold, he does. It's a great day for science.
I don't think so.
Re:Rejection does NOT make you dumb! (Score:1)
I have no doubts that this guy got some people together, had them take a test, told some of them they sucked, other that they were wonderful, and the rejected ones scored lower on a second test then they had previously. Who the hell would show any motivation to score well after being treated like that?
It's no secret that treating people poorly will make them uninterested in you and your "silly little test".
The really annoying thing is that this study suggests that the effect is permanent when no information was given as to the affects of the subjects outside of his IQ tests or over any period of time.
The study also make quite a jump in suggesting the aggression increases as IQ lowers and vice versa.
this may sound sad... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:this may sound sad... (Score:1)
Oh, the Irony! (Score:4, Funny)
2002-03-16 17:16:47 Rejection makes you a dumbass (articles,news) (rejected)
Re:Oh, the Irony! (Score:2)
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Yeah (Score:1)
(I read the article but could not resist. Actually I beleive the article is trivial considering people's condition right after rejection.)
Yep, i agree. (Score:2)
Laid off 3 times in 3 years. I feel pretty fucking raped, im angry, and while i don't think my IQ has suffered (I always type like this), i'm certainly a lot angrier, vengeful, and cynical than i was previously.
The first layoff was okay. It was a dot-com. The second layoff was seen coming from a mile away. Literally the 2nd day i was working there.
The third layoff was the straw. I was their best administrator, most certified individual and knew more about the systems than our "manager of unix systems", who was a technical manager - not a manager-manager. There were definately some political reasons behind it, and i know - for a fact - the manager was in on it, and was jealous that someone in their 20's knew more about the systems than someone in their 50's. Now that's rejection. I have more debt than most people in their 30's. And that one rejection will end up costing me more than i can calculate right now.
New Study (Score:1)
Seriously this has got to be some ploy no serious researcher is going to release results under a tag line like that unless they work for the National Enquirer. The amount of unknown variables here are very significant and the amount of research done here hardly scratches the surface. Even the most unreasonable can probably agree that people act differently after being rejected. Given that it would be far easier to assume that people may in fact act dumber after being rejected but to jump off the deep end and report rejection makes you dumber is a fairly large accusation and without anything to back it up hardly makes for a new story. Who runs NEW Scientist anyway and how did this make it past their editors or lack there of.
Oh and I'm guessing they use the defense to anyone who objects to their findings that they must have been rejected too much. HaHA got some cure all medicine bottles I'll sell you and the fountain of youth is in my backyard, make an offer and it's yours.
Re:New Study (Score:1)
Re:New Study (Score:1)
Now, the article is written by "Emma Young of Blackpool", newscientist.com is registered in the UK, and the conference is get this "British Psychological Society in Blackpool, Lancashire, UK". That being said I'm sure it's apparent for most with IQs above a rodent why my comment was phrased the way it was. It was meant as a joke being the people in the UK must believe whatever you tell them. Now if you want a biography of this "scientist" let me know I can post a follow up on that also as I had to figure out what in the hell this article was about, were the bias was, and what the motivation was. So I ended up doing a bit more than just read the article.
Doesn't matter (Score:2, Funny)
That is, if you believe this tripe to begin with.
Seriously, tell them they suck, then tell them to take a test. I dunno about you, but I'm distracted by rejection. I can't pay attention. I'm too busy thinking about it to pay any attention whatsoever.
Evolution (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, humans go unconscious seemingly just when we need our minds the most. If the body or brain receives trauma, we loose the capacity to fight the cause of trauma. This does not seem to be to our advantage. But the brain shuts down for only one reason: lack of cooling capacity.
The most processor intensive task the brain has is consciousness. The difference between consciousness and unconsciousness is 15 watts of heat. Shock id caused by a partial loss in cooling capacity caused by blood loss or dehydration. So, when we loose blood or receive a head injury, causing the body to reduce blood flow to the head to reduce aggravation of a bruising condition, we loose consciousness.
While unconscious, we remain combative. We have reptilian response that does not shut down. We still swallow and can place one foot in front of the other as these functions are controlled by the lizard brain and brain stem.
Cut circulation to the arm and it falls asleep due to lack of oxygen in about two minutes. Cut the blood flow to the head and we loose consciousness in as little as 3 seconds not because there is no oxygen but because the body shuts the brain down to prevent overheating.
So the seemingly illogical response of loss of consciousness just when we need it most is in fact a life saving measure. So, that begs the question: What do we gain by becoming stupid and aggressive when rejected? A "sober" man rejected by a woman does not procreate. A "drunk" man rejected by a woman might create the opportunity to procreate by force. A "sober" woman rejected will not procreate. A "drunk" woman rejected might become promiscuous.
Basically anyone rejected will lower his or her standards for the next opportunity to procreate. We hardly needed a study to tell us this is true.
the most processor intensive task is life (Score:1)
there, I've said it, now I can derive all sorts of interesting conclusions about being brain-dead as an evolutionary advantage in the academy.
what kind of metric is the power of the concious Vs unconcious brain ?
Re:the most processor intensive task is life (Score:2)
Now that you have first hand experience being rejected, tell us about it. It might be the first time you ever contributed anything to a disscusion on slashdot that was not a troll.
Re:the most processor intensive task is life (Score:1)
please read more carefully, it was not ment as a scientific remark, but humouristic quote with regard to a part of your parent quote (conciousness appears composed of several tasks, and is NOT a single task).
don't be so touchy
Dumb but rich?? (Score:1)
If I was a rejected nerd and geek in highschool, with I become as dumb and rich as Bill Gates?
Okay, good.
What if this were used as an argument in court? (Score:1)
There are other, more mundane scenarious that are imaginable. Time off work because you were dumped, talking a teacher into letting you re-take a test....
While I read the article, I didn't see a link to the actual study. The article itself didn't realy have any substance.
Stay tuned.. (Score:2, Funny)
Because new findings show that both food and sleep makes you dumb!
A study made at the University of Utter Bullshit in the department of the Blatantly Friggin Obvious, shows that both food and sleep make test subjects IQ drop
One test group took the test after being awake for 12 hours and scored well, when they redid the experiment at 4am just after sleeping for 6 hours their scores were significantly lower. This clearly shows that sleep does not aid students in scoring well.
A second study done also proved that food has the same effect, first the test group had nothing to eat for 6 hours, then they were given a large family-sized pizza with double meat and triple cheese and took the test again. This time the scores were also a lot lower, some subjects even turned so dumb they fell asleep!
The school is now enforcing a strict no food-no sleep policy to help students with their studies, each student is given free coffee and Jolt cola and on the first day all departments* showed significantly better results.
*Except the CS department who have been using the no sleep-no food and a strict caffeine diet for years
Depression (Score:1)
So. If being depressed *may* make you dumber
On the other hand, DSM-IV also says that if the patient has had traumatic experience such as being dumped recently, they're probably not suffering from depression the disease but from depression the mood. You get better from the latter with time on your own unless you kill yourself.
Oh NO! (Score:1)
And what abou having win XP not boot because of activation? Must be worse....
OMG I must be an idiot by now.
Secondsun
Re:Oh NO! (Score:1)
And what abou having win XP not boot because of activation? Must be worse....
You know what a "kernel" is. Your case cannot be helped, sorry...
Is this part of an agenda? (Score:1, Flamebait)
I'm sorry, but I'm just not buying it. Those pieces of shit ought to be ashamed of themselves for even trying to con us with something so ridiculous.
All I can say is that there aren't enough libertarians around.
Lee
excellent (Score:4, Funny)
wait...
dammit.
-c
Acceptance Makes You Dumb (Score:5, Funny)
A control group of 10 males between the ages of 16-24 were administered a series of IQ tests in separate booths. Another group of 30 similar males, split into three cohorts of 10 each, took the same series of tests, but were presented with varying levels of "acceptance" in between.
One cohort received "mild acceptance," which usually involved the promise of a date with a well-known pretty girl that night. Results from the control group suggested a 3% drop due to fatigue, but Cohort A experienced an average drop of 6%, double that of the control group.
Cohort B received "moderate acceptance," which was either an "enthusiastic" (bright smile, touching of arm, perhaps hug and kiss) yes-response from a well-known girl, or a merely "interested" yes-response from a previously unknown yet astoundingly gorgious woman. Cohort B experienced an average drop of 12%.
Cohort C received "extreme acceptance," which was either immediate "fellatio" by the known girl, or immediate "fellatio" by a previously unknown yet astoundingly gorgious woman. In order to maintain the integrity of the tests, subjects were allowed to repeatedly "venture" their self-image on the possibility of "acceptance". Cohort C found itself unable to complete the final round of testing.
This study sheds new light on the previously published (albeit in the New Scientist) report from Case Western that claimed to show that rejection makes you dumb. Seeing as the opposite also seems to hold true, the hypothesis offered at the end of Ohio State's article is that any extreme emotional variation adversely affects intelligence. So, they sugget, avoiding romantic attachments of any kind may be the key to better intellectual performance.
The Case Western team suggested that that was exactly what those eggheads over at Ohio State were doing.
Re:Acceptance Makes You Dumb (Score:2)
I hereby volunteer for Cohort C.
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Lessons (Score:1, Insightful)
Whatever IQ measures can fluctuate wildy due to environmental factors.
Remember that next time you are tempted to argue that IQ tests measure some inate quality. If an IQ score for the same person can vary by 25% depending on environmental factors, it should be pretty damn obvious that IQ scores for different people can vary at least as much due to purely environmental factors.
misleading (Score:1)
Psycological studies find correlations, not causes (Score:1)
Jane Elliot described similar results (Score:1)
PSychological Drive. (Score:1)
I knew it! (Score:1)
This also explains why all the "popular" guys still work at the local grocery store and I'm a Systems Admin... wait, maybe I should've asked a few girls out.