Did you manage to attend the Psych Weekend 2019? If you missed it, here's a brief of what was shared during Psych Weekend 2019.
Psych Weekend 2019 is part of an ongoing annual learning convention organized by the Singapore Psychological Society (SPS). It provides an audience from all walks of life with a glimpse into the remarkable versatility in the application of psychology. Bringing together speakers from multiple professions and areas of expertise, Psych Weekend covered various topics that are intimately connected to our daily lives. This ranged from tips on cultivating happiness to social media engagement.
Day 1
The first day of Psych Weekend was kicked off by Dr Cherie Chan, the president of Singapore Psychological Society who welcomed everyone to the convention.
The first speaker, Ms Beverly Lim, a counselling psychologist, shared about the importance of gratitude and its association with happiness. She began her talk by providing two iconic examples of individuals who overcame incredible challenges in their lives. Viktor Frankl was a Jewish prisoner in the Nazi concentration camps for 3 years. He recognized that survivors were more spiritual and appreciative of simple things. Another example was Nick Vujicic, a motivation speaker with tetra-amelia syndrome. Despite facing great odds in from early life, he went on to serve as an inspiration to many others.
How do individuals who face such overwhelming odds in their lives achieve happiness? Ms Beverly Lim highlighted that happiness depends on 50% of genes, 40% intentional activities and 10% circumstances. There is indeed merit in focusing on intentional activities that can alter our behaviours and thinking patterns.
Gratitude is one practice that can alter thinking patterns and encourage happiness. An intervention study was conducted on Singaporean participants with the Moment Diary app. In the intervention group, participants input 5 things that they are grateful for in the week. In contrast with a control group, there was a marked decrease in stress levels and negative emotions across time. Notably, positive emotions did not increase as it did when the study was conducted on our Western counterparts. Ms Beverly Lim accounted for this difference in terms of cultural variables. Perhaps negative emotions may play a role in the context of our collectivistic society, encouraging us to place others before ourselves. She highlighted that besides strengthening connections between people, gratitude also improves physical health and reduces stress levels.
Ms Vaishnavi Honnavalli, a research analyst at Home Team Behavioral Sciences Centre, shared about the concept of criminal profiling. Criminal profiling involves using different techniques to gather information at a crime scene and identify the offender. It aims to generate the typical and average qualities of the offender group. Criminal profiling was initially conceptualized by the behavioral science unit in the FBI in 1974. The unit was responsible for the categorization of “organized crime” and “disorganized crime”. This involves an analysis of all evidence to generate a description of the offender. The purpose of profiling and research is to establish an understanding of the behavioral correlates of a crime. This allows the detection of a number of potential suspects.
Ms Vanishnavi Honnavalli highlighted four components – biological, social, cognitive and situational factors that lead to criminal behavior. Firstly, biological factors refer to the links between aggression and brain damage resulting from toxin. Secondly, social factors are about the learned behaviors. For instance, scripts such as antisocial behavior can be learnt from one’s social environment. Thirdly, cognitive factors involve ideas and patterns that emerge from interactions. This is evident from findings such as that violent people are less efficient in thinking of nonviolent ways to deal with conflicts. Fourthly, situational factors are factors characteristic of the environment. This includes an access to weapons.
Interestingly, Ms Vanishnavi Honnavalli also spoke about mental illness in criminals. She clarified that mental illness is not a cause for violence. However, mental illness can possibly act as a trigger, through irrational thought and actions, to cause violence.
Finally, Mr Ivan Lee, a registered clinical psychologist, concluded the first day of talks with his sharing about myths and stigma on mental health. He highlighted an important point: although mental health is about managing life functionally, being mentally health is more than simply being free of depression or anxiety. In fact, having a mental health condition is defined as experiencing distress and/or problems functioning in the social, work and family context.
Day 2
On the second day of Psych Weekend, Mr Ivan Lee, the Public Education Chair of the Singapore Psychological Society welcomed everyone back. He mentioned that Psych Weekend serves as a good introduction to the different sectors of psychology. Although psychology is commonly associated with mental health, Psych Weekend is a good reminder that there are many other facets to psychology.
Ms Karyen Chai, a public speaker and educator, was the first speaker of the day. She shared about the application of neuroscience in daily meditation. The more frequently one meditates, the more one is able to engage in conscious thinking and bring consciousness to the present. There are plenty of benefits to meditation, such as achieving better sleep and a better state of health.
There are different types of brain waves. Delta waves are found in people in a state of deep sleep. Theta waves are found in states of dreaming and deep meditation. Alpha waves indicate that the brain is in the resting state. They are found in mind wandering states and some meditative states. Beta waves are indicative of the brain being alert. They are found when engaging in difficult cognitive tasks. Gamma waves are found when engaging in states of “higher virtues” and “universal love”.
Ms Karyen Chai introduced a portable EEG machine that can be utilized alongside an app on the Apple store. The EEG machine is connected via Bluetooth to the app. The app can facilitate guided meditation while the EEG machine tracks the level of relaxation and attentiveness the participant exhibits throughout the session. Ms Karyen Chai emphasized that this provides a data-based approach to meditation with an equipment that is commercially available and accessible to public consumers. According to the data generated, one can alter one’s meditative practice accordingly.
The second speaker was Mr Jerry Olivero, a counselling psychologist, who shared about emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is defined as being smart in relationships. It is important to recognize and understand emotions. Also, it is vital to be sufficiently aware to manage oneself and one’s relationships with others. Mr Jerry Olivero introduced the 4 skills of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management.
Self-awareness is the most important dimension of emotional intelligence. It is one’s ability to accurately perceive one’s own emotions and remaining aware of one’s emotions as they occur. This can involve being aware of the physiological reactions of the body. There are many practices that people can adopt to improve self-awareness. For instance, this can involve looking back on situations in hindsight and learning one’s usual tendencies.
Self-management is the ability to use one’s awareness of one’s emotions to positively direct one’s behavior. It involves managing one’s emotional reactions to all situations and people. For instance, an individual can cultivate an awareness of one’s own emotional triggers. Since the combination of an event and a response results in outcome. In order to change the outcome, we are responsible in altering our responses to events in our lives.
Social awareness is the ability to accurately pick up other people’s emotions and understand other people’s thoughts and emotions. This requires empathy, which involves seeing the world from another’s perspective, identifying and understanding another’s situation, feelings and motives. In order to improve social awareness, one can spend more time listening to others and suspending one’s judgement in the process.
Relationship management involves the ability to utilize an awareness of one’s emotions and the emotions of others to manage interactions successfully, ensure clear communication and effective handle of conflict. Mr Jerry Olivero dropped a tip that this can involve switching one’s negative perceptions of someone’s behaviour to a sense of curiosity instead. It can be important to ask questions to clarify any doubts, or when sensing emotional reactions in another person’s body language.
Mr Carlin Lee, an educator, concluded the second day of talks with his sharing on social media engagement and the importance of paying attention to our attention. As social media has become commonplace in our daily lives, it assails us with an overflowing influx of information daily.
However, social media usage brings with it a whole host of problems. This can involve mindless scrolling, which can be a genuine waste of time and result in real-life consequences such as a lack of sleep. Due to mobile phones becoming distractions in everyday life, people lack mindfulness. Also, children who use mobile phones can get absorbed into the lure of social media usage at a young age.
“If it is not on social media, it didn’t happen!” Social media usage has become a reflection of our lives. This results in phenomena like fear of missing out (FOMO), the need to be where the fun is. Also, fear of better options (FOBO), where people are constantly looking for an ideal option for themselves, sometimes to the extent of perfectionism.
Mr Carlin Lee emphasized that it is necessary for us to cultivate an awareness of our intent behind using social media. This allows us to differentiate between target audiences and establish boundaries. For instance, one’s LinkedIn account can be curated solely for professional use or include some element of our personal lives as well. This self-awareness allows us to limit the use of social media, understanding that social media may be a part of our lives but not our entirety.
Psych Weekend 2019 is part of an ongoing annual learning convention organized by the Singapore Psychological Society (SPS). It provides an audience from all walks of life with a glimpse into the remarkable versatility in the application of psychology. Bringing together speakers from multiple professions and areas of expertise, Psych Weekend covered various topics that are intimately connected to our daily lives. This ranged from tips on cultivating happiness to social media engagement.
Day 1
The first day of Psych Weekend was kicked off by Dr Cherie Chan, the president of Singapore Psychological Society who welcomed everyone to the convention.
How do individuals who face such overwhelming odds in their lives achieve happiness? Ms Beverly Lim highlighted that happiness depends on 50% of genes, 40% intentional activities and 10% circumstances. There is indeed merit in focusing on intentional activities that can alter our behaviours and thinking patterns.
Gratitude is one practice that can alter thinking patterns and encourage happiness. An intervention study was conducted on Singaporean participants with the Moment Diary app. In the intervention group, participants input 5 things that they are grateful for in the week. In contrast with a control group, there was a marked decrease in stress levels and negative emotions across time. Notably, positive emotions did not increase as it did when the study was conducted on our Western counterparts. Ms Beverly Lim accounted for this difference in terms of cultural variables. Perhaps negative emotions may play a role in the context of our collectivistic society, encouraging us to place others before ourselves. She highlighted that besides strengthening connections between people, gratitude also improves physical health and reduces stress levels.
Ms Vanishnavi Honnavalli highlighted four components – biological, social, cognitive and situational factors that lead to criminal behavior. Firstly, biological factors refer to the links between aggression and brain damage resulting from toxin. Secondly, social factors are about the learned behaviors. For instance, scripts such as antisocial behavior can be learnt from one’s social environment. Thirdly, cognitive factors involve ideas and patterns that emerge from interactions. This is evident from findings such as that violent people are less efficient in thinking of nonviolent ways to deal with conflicts. Fourthly, situational factors are factors characteristic of the environment. This includes an access to weapons.
Interestingly, Ms Vanishnavi Honnavalli also spoke about mental illness in criminals. She clarified that mental illness is not a cause for violence. However, mental illness can possibly act as a trigger, through irrational thought and actions, to cause violence.
Day 2
On the second day of Psych Weekend, Mr Ivan Lee, the Public Education Chair of the Singapore Psychological Society welcomed everyone back. He mentioned that Psych Weekend serves as a good introduction to the different sectors of psychology. Although psychology is commonly associated with mental health, Psych Weekend is a good reminder that there are many other facets to psychology.
There are different types of brain waves. Delta waves are found in people in a state of deep sleep. Theta waves are found in states of dreaming and deep meditation. Alpha waves indicate that the brain is in the resting state. They are found in mind wandering states and some meditative states. Beta waves are indicative of the brain being alert. They are found when engaging in difficult cognitive tasks. Gamma waves are found when engaging in states of “higher virtues” and “universal love”.
Ms Karyen Chai introduced a portable EEG machine that can be utilized alongside an app on the Apple store. The EEG machine is connected via Bluetooth to the app. The app can facilitate guided meditation while the EEG machine tracks the level of relaxation and attentiveness the participant exhibits throughout the session. Ms Karyen Chai emphasized that this provides a data-based approach to meditation with an equipment that is commercially available and accessible to public consumers. According to the data generated, one can alter one’s meditative practice accordingly.
Self-awareness is the most important dimension of emotional intelligence. It is one’s ability to accurately perceive one’s own emotions and remaining aware of one’s emotions as they occur. This can involve being aware of the physiological reactions of the body. There are many practices that people can adopt to improve self-awareness. For instance, this can involve looking back on situations in hindsight and learning one’s usual tendencies.
Self-management is the ability to use one’s awareness of one’s emotions to positively direct one’s behavior. It involves managing one’s emotional reactions to all situations and people. For instance, an individual can cultivate an awareness of one’s own emotional triggers. Since the combination of an event and a response results in outcome. In order to change the outcome, we are responsible in altering our responses to events in our lives.
Social awareness is the ability to accurately pick up other people’s emotions and understand other people’s thoughts and emotions. This requires empathy, which involves seeing the world from another’s perspective, identifying and understanding another’s situation, feelings and motives. In order to improve social awareness, one can spend more time listening to others and suspending one’s judgement in the process.
Relationship management involves the ability to utilize an awareness of one’s emotions and the emotions of others to manage interactions successfully, ensure clear communication and effective handle of conflict. Mr Jerry Olivero dropped a tip that this can involve switching one’s negative perceptions of someone’s behaviour to a sense of curiosity instead. It can be important to ask questions to clarify any doubts, or when sensing emotional reactions in another person’s body language.
However, social media usage brings with it a whole host of problems. This can involve mindless scrolling, which can be a genuine waste of time and result in real-life consequences such as a lack of sleep. Due to mobile phones becoming distractions in everyday life, people lack mindfulness. Also, children who use mobile phones can get absorbed into the lure of social media usage at a young age.
“If it is not on social media, it didn’t happen!” Social media usage has become a reflection of our lives. This results in phenomena like fear of missing out (FOMO), the need to be where the fun is. Also, fear of better options (FOBO), where people are constantly looking for an ideal option for themselves, sometimes to the extent of perfectionism.
Mr Carlin Lee emphasized that it is necessary for us to cultivate an awareness of our intent behind using social media. This allows us to differentiate between target audiences and establish boundaries. For instance, one’s LinkedIn account can be curated solely for professional use or include some element of our personal lives as well. This self-awareness allows us to limit the use of social media, understanding that social media may be a part of our lives but not our entirety.
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