- Greetings, and welcome to this edition
of Berkeley Conversations: COVID-19.
I'm Dan Mogulof from UC Berkeley's
Office of Communications
and Public Affairs.
Today, we'll be talking
with three leading Berkeley psychologists
about effective approaches and strategies
for dealing with the anxiety,
stress, and uncertainty
that have become inherent
parts of the COVID-19 crisis.
Professor Frank Worrell, sorry,
Frank, is a faculty member
at Berkeley's Graduate
School of Education.
He's an expert on the
challenges of learning at home,
the benefits of structure, and
the sort of online resources
that can best support
learning and wellbeing.
Sonia Bishop, who's joining us
from Birmingham today in England
is an associate professor
within the Department of Psychology
and the Helen Wills
Neuroscience Institute.
Among her areas of expertise
are anxiety and decision
making under uncertainty.
And Dacher Keltner is a
professor of psychology
and the co-director of the
Greater Good Science Center.
He's gonna be talking
about ideas and practices
that can help us cultivate
resilience and connection
as we face the challenges
of the coming months.
I wanna go around and just
start by asking each of you,
and it's something I think
we're probably all asking each other,
how are you doing, and how are you coping?
What's working for you right
now in sort of the face
of really an unprecedented situation?
Frank, lemme start with you.
- I think things are going well.
I live alone, so being
alone is not unusual.
Not being able to leave the house,
of course, is a bit of a problem.
I can't go to the gym,
and I'm finding that
I'm doing less writing
because I'm spending so much
time in front of my computer
teaching and doing meetings
that I don't want to sit down
in front of the computer to write.
On the other hand, I'm
playing the piano a lot more.
I hadn't touched it much this year,
and I'm on it practically
every day in the last month,
and actually, reaching out to friends,
not just in the United
States, but around the world.
- And what's working for you?
What have you found
that's sort of helping you
get through this moment in time?
- Actually, music.
I conduct choirs and stuff,
so music has been a great solace to me.
I actually rewrote the
words to "Ain't Misbehavin'"
to speak to COVID, and one of my friends
is gonna be performing it next week.
(Frank laughs)
- Super.
Sonia, lemme come to you next.
What's it been like for you,
and as somebody who
sort of has a specialty
and a particular interest in anxiety,
how are you applying what
you know to what you need?
- It's not been too bad so far.
I'm sure, like many people, in some ways,
once the shutdown kicked in,
to some extent, that reduced
a lot of the anxieties,
for example, trying to persuade
my mother to stop going
to the gym, which had been a
conversation up to that point.
For me myself, one of my main
hobbies is improv comedy,
and that community has been amazing
and very rapidly moving to
free online classes and jams.
So that's a lovely way
to still find some time
to relax and laugh during this.
And then also family.
We normally play board games at Christmas,
and so we started doing the weekly
online playing board games together.
- Dacher, same question.
- Yeah, it's been the best of
times and the worst of times.
I really miss teaching
students face-to-face,
and lab, and grad students,
and everything that's
part of university life.
I miss it poignantly.
I've been Zoom bombed, and
that's quite an experience.
(Dacher laughs)
But then in terms of
how we're adapting here,
my two college-aged students
are back in the home,
and it's been really wonderful
to have dinners together
and try new recipes.
Some go well, some do not.
And then making sure I get outside
and do social distance
hiking all the time.
- So Frank, let's get
down to the nitty-gritty,
and I think a lot of people
who are joining us today
are really looking for tips and guidance
in an era that nobody
was really prepared for.
In term of our kids, what's
important to keep in mind?
What are some of the key things we can do
to support their mental
health and wellbeing?
- I think there are several things.
I think one is actually to keep
our sense of anxiety away from them,
so that when we are concerned,
we don't want to show that
to them, that we are very distressed.
But two, providing structure
in a way that they've not had before.
Typically, the school days
structures kids' lives.
So they get up, they
dress, they go to school,
they have after-school programs,
they come home, they do homework.
Now they're home all the time,
and if we do not put
that structure in place,
they are gonna be sort
of without an anchor.
And so that structure's
gonna be really important
for them to have a
sense of predictability,
competence, and going forward.
- So, Sonia, I'm gonna turn to you,
'cause part of what Frank's suggesting
is maybe a little bit of
protection from our own anxiety,
and as somebody without
specializes in that area,
how do we address our own anxiety?
I mean, we don't wanna be in denial.
It's clear what's
happening around the world,
and it seems rational
to be anxious about it.
So how do you deal with that?
- Absolutely.
I mean, all of us have different
levels of anxiety normally.
So some people will be very
used to experiencing anxiety,
and it may be worse.
For others, it may be the first time.
We know from surveys that at
the beginning of the outbreak,
before there were stay-at-home
orders, quite a lot of people
were not necessarily feeling that anxious,
maybe not taking it that seriously.
I think for a lot of us, when we have
rapidly changing situations
like this we're not used to,
it can be very easy to have
what we call optimism biases
kick in and to feel invulnerable,
particularly if it's not
a simple thing to imagine.
But now we have more
images coming on the media.
Many more people are seeing
people who are like them getting ill.
So I think a lot of people
are experiencing anxiety.
Some surveys say six out of 10 adults,
and so really, in that situation,
we need to try and find
things that help us relax
and be gentle to
ourselves, maybe not expect
so much of ourselves if
we're still working remotely,
and try and be healthy, maybe
not watch the news too much,
if that's a negative for us.
Maybe once a day, not
before we go to sleep,
and definitely keep
exercising and eating healthy.
- So, part of your answer,
it seemed to suggest
that there's going to be
a great variance in
terms of how individuals
deal with anxiety and
deal with the moment,
and that may even be happening
within family groups.
What's behind that?
Talk to us a little bit
more about that phenomenon?
- Yeah, so one of the issues
is that we're not very good
about making judgments under uncertainty,
and this situation is
just a perfect combination
of things to make it
very difficult for us.
So at the beginning, there's
a lot of information missing.
We didn't know how long
perhaps it had been spreading
in the community, how
many people were infected,
and then rates were changing very rapidly.
So that means it's very hard
to have precise estimates.
And in that situation, some
people will assume the best,
and other people will assume the worst.
And we also know that
it's actually normally
quite healthy to have an optimism bias
and to assume really bad
things won't happen to us,
we won't be someone on
the plane which crashes.
When those things happen infrequently,
that's a good strategy,
but in this situation,
initially what the
government really needed
was everyone to take it more seriously.
But the counter-side of that is
as people do start getting ill,
or we maybe know people who are sick,
then people will become more anxious,
and it will really hit home.
That's where we need to
protect people from anxiety
and potentially depression as well.
- So Dacher, I know
that both you and Sonia
study the neurophysiology of stress,
and I know you also do
research on positive emotion.
Share a bit of what you
know about those areas
and how it relates to this discussion
we're having in this moment in time.
- Well, you know, Sonia's comments
about the six out of 10 people
feeling anxious right now,
that's really worrisome.
We know from past quarantines
that people show a rise of PTSD
and depressive symptoms and
anxiety, often threefold rises.
What we know about the neurophysiology
is that activates parts of
the brain that Sonia studies,
like the amygdala, gets
into your HPA axis,
the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal
axis, cortisol rises.
And a lot of trouble can ensue
if we have chronic anxiety,
and this is just a recipe
for chronic anxiety.
So, what I would encourage
our listeners to do,
also mindful of Sonia's point
that we're all gonna adapt
to this in different ways.
We all have our strengths
and our weaknesses.
At the Greater Good Science Center,
greatergood.berkeley.edu,
we've put together
a lot of resources that can help us adapt,
things like maybe start practicing
a little bit of gratitude.
What in the day do we feel grateful for,
whatever our circumstances?
Getting outside, turning
to music like Frank said.
There are nice data showing
a little bit of listening
to music calms the body down,
very profoundly and directly.
So, I think we have to really up our game
in terms of building a set of practices,
(Dacher laughs)
and in a way,
it's an ideal time to
handle this chronic anxiety.
- So Dacher, I know you also talk about,
think about, write about,
research about social connection
and the important role that
social connections play,
and it feels like something
we need more than ever
is harder to achieve than ever.
How do you balance that?
How can you find some of the goodness
that comes out of social connections
and use it to your benefit
in times like this?
- Well, I think that
first, there's a sense
that we're gonna be in
these pods for a while,
so amp up the connection in those pods.
Return to unstructured conversations.
I think as Sonia said,
there's a lot of
invention going on online.
So interesting to hear
about standup comedy or improv doing it.
I have a friend who leads a
worldwide dance organization,
doing a lot of online
dancing, which is remarkable.
Then I think we're gonna need
really accurate information.
When can you connect with people?
And that one part will be
the responsibility of CDC,
to guide us in this,
because we know, you know,
one of the biggest findings
in the happiness literature
is strong connections give you
10 years of life expectancy.
And that is in jeopardy right now, right?
So we need intelligence on this.
- Interesting.
So, Frank, one of the things
that Dacher just talked about
is adaptability, and I
think in other times,
we tend to think that kids are
sort of inherently adaptable.
But maybe that's not the case right now.
Are there differences, do you think,
that can be generalized about
how different age groups
in terms of children
are dealing with this,
and what we should expect
about their adaptability?
- Yeah, I think we're gonna
see things at different levels,
again, with individual differences.
So for young children,
for toddlers and so forth,
this is going to be an
unusual time for them,
but it's something that
they are going to adapt to
relatively easily, unless
the adults around them
are very anxious and
communicating anxiety.
So, for school-age kids,
so the kindergarten up to
the early teenage years,
I think this might pose some
more challenges for them.
Parents need to be more
structured with them
and give them space to do
stuff, but structure their day,
because they are going to be understanding
something is going on, but not
yet be consumers of the news
in the way adolescents,
late teenagers are.
For teenagers and so forth, you may need,
especially if they're very anxious,
to monitor their consumption of the news
in a way that you have not,
but allowing them to set
the tone for themselves
as they work through these things.
So really, the middle
years are perhaps the ones
that need to pay more attention to,
and Sonia talked about not
watching the news before bed.
Having a check-in with children
at the beginning do the day
and at the end of the
day, just a check-in,
so you know, "How are things going?"
Things like reading stories,
playing games together,
setting up a bedtime routine
that allows them to go to bed
in a calm and happy frame of mind
I think would make a big difference.
- Frank, I wanna ask you,
I'm gonna follow-up, and I'm
gonna ask Dacher and Sonia
to weigh in on this one as well
from your own perspectives
and areas of expertise.
How concerned should we be
as parents about long-lasting
traumatic effects of
what's happening right now,
and being cut off from
traditional modes of learning?
Or is this something that it
would be legitimate to think
will be transient and in some point,
it'll all wash out in the future?
'Cause I think it's something we're all,
for those of us who are parents,
very concerned about that fact,
about that lasting impact.
What do you have to say about that?
- Yeah, so, one of the things that we know
is that there's a range
of individual differences.
So we know that there are
kids who in fact, I mean,
who may get classified in
school as gifted and talented.
There are students who
actually may get classified
as having a learning
disability and so forth.
I think there are going to
be differential impacts.
For students who are
classified gifted and talented,
typically what that means
is that they can learn faster than others,
so that in fact, when
school gets back to normal,
and sometimes even now,
because they're often
ahead of their peers anyway,
they're gonna do fine.
We need to be a bit more
concerned for students
who have learning
disabilities and so forth,
where they're not getting, for instance,
special education in school,
so they're not getting the traditional
learning supports that they would get.
There are a number of places online,
Khan Academy, PBS Kids and so forth,
that are providing information
that can help parents
in doing that, but parents
may not have the time,
and even if they have the time,
they may not have the
know-how to do this as well
as somebody who's trained
in special education.
That being said, I think
that over the longer term,
if this does not go on into the next year
or something like that, I
think the impact on learning,
there'll be a dip, much like
there's a summer learning loss,
but this will pick back up
when schools get back into session.
One potential benefit of this is that
I think we are learning much
more about online learning now.
So those lessons that we are learning now,
we can take with us into the future
when we are back in schools.
- Nice.
Dacher, long-term impacts?
I'm wondering what you're thinking about
from your area of
expertise, for ourselves,
but really, even more
importantly, for our kids.
- Yeah, you know, I think first of all,
there's a lot of work in
the trauma literature,
for example, by George
Bonanno, that you know,
a lot of people are resilient,
as Frank said earlier.
They will rise.
But I am profoundly
worried about what we call
the health disparities, or just
the disparities literature,
that these kind of very
disruptive cultural events
affect the poorest, the lower class,
people of color, the disenfranchised more,
and that is almost a law-like
proposition about how things
affect human societies, and
by implication, our kids.
So, we're starting to see
data of this is hitting
people of color harder, it's
hitting the poor harder.
It's probably gonna be worse
in context of economic inequality,
and then Frank just conveyed
a finding to me recently.
Our poor kids, 40% of them
don't have laptops, right?
We're trying to work with
Brownsville and New York City,
and 40% do not have laptops.
I do not know how you
will do online education
on a smartphone in a
very crowded situation.
So I'm really worried that
this will bring a sharp focus
on the weakness of US culture,
which is racism and classism.
- Wow.
Sonia, how are you thinking
about long-term consequences
and possible impacts of this,
particularly for our kids?
- Yeah, I worry about
some of the younger kids,
in particular, with regards
to post-traumatic stress
and anxiety, and we
know some factors there.
So we know if any children
are unlucky enough to have
a close family member get
very sick or potentially die,
that could be very traumatizing for them.
Seeing their parents seem anxious,
any indication that things
aren't under their control,
aren't safe, suddenly
being exposed to that
for the first time can be
very anxiety-provoking,
and we know that a lot of
anxiety disorders do set on
in kind of late childhood or early teens.
So as far as possible,
protecting children from
parental anxiety is amazing.
But as Dacher said, that may vary,
depending on if parents are anxious
about having to go out
to work at this time.
That will vary with socioeconomic status.
It will vary the kinds
of jobs people are in.
If children have parents who
are frontline health workers,
that will be extremely
stressful for their parents.
So there will be a lot of children
who will be having tough times right now.
- So Sonia, I'm gonna stick
with you here for a second.
Speaking of healthcare workers,
there have been initial scientific reports
that are suggesting that
some of the frontline
hospital workers in China,
in Wuhan in particular,
have experienced high levels
of mental health problems,
anxiety, depression, insomnia.
Can you tell us a little
bit more about that
and how this is all likely
to impact those people
that are out there on
the frontlines every day,
who we depend on, now more than ever?
- Absolutely.
So it's looking very concerning.
We already know that situations like this
can lead to high levels of anxiety,
depression, post-traumatic stress.
We've learned from situations like 9/11,
which was different,
but was very traumatic
for frontline responders,
and basically, what we're seeing
is, for example, in Wuhan,
those who are involved with
diagnosis and treatment
of patients with COVID who
are witnessing patients dying,
who are maybe feeling out of control,
not being able to have
enough resources for patients
and not having enough
protective gear for themselves,
these are kind of the
classic, unfortunately,
perfect storm that can give
rise to post-traumatic stress.
And in Wuhan, as many as one
in three frontline workers
were reporting very high anxiety levels,
and one in six were reporting
the level of post-traumatic
stress you might see
after exposure to combat-related trauma.
- Wow.
Again, we're coming back
to some common themes here.
Not surprisingly, I think we're feeling it
in our personal lives,
reading about it in the paper,
the idea of anxiety,
stress, and all the rest.
Dacher, I'm curious about something.
I know in a lot of your work,
you talk about the need
to facilitate empowerment.
Is that something that we
can use to help address,
mitigate, ameliorate the
impact of stress and anxiety,
and how exactly does that work?
- Yeah, I mean, I think that's a theme
running through our comments,
that I think our audience and
ourselves and our children
should be thinking about,
what is an agentic approach
to how I understand this
mystery of COVID-19?
It's still not understood
in fundamental ways,
and as Frank said, we
should be thinking about
empowering ways to handle
the onslaught of information.
I think what I always tell people
coming out of the science of happiness,
thousands of studies, peer review,
is pick three or four things
that you really can count on,
like Sonia was talking about
improv, through this pandemic.
So that's empowering.
And then I think that we
need to really think broadly
about how we turn to our imagination
to empower new approaches to this.
I just have to say, you know,
I've done research on awe,
and awe reduces stress, reduces
cardiovascular physiology,
reduces the inflammation
response in your body,
and up at North Bay Community
Health, Michael Amster,
an MD, is putting in an
awe program hospital-wide,
which is a way, as Sonia said,
these frontline healthcare
providers are really at risk.
They are stressed out,
their families are stressed,
and he is putting in a way
to get nurses and doctors
to share inspiring moments
of awe during this work,
just to countervail stress.
So I think empowerment's gonna be,
we can't let this run our lives.
We have to find our agency.
- So can you make that
a little more concrete?
I'm sitting at home listening to you,
and yeah, I'd like to feel some awe.
(Dacher laughs)
I'd like to feel some agency.
I'd like to let my
imagination run a little wild.
Is there, and I'm sure
people will be coming
to the Greater Good Science
Center to sort of follow-up,
but just right in the here and now,
give us a little bit of
guidance in that regard.
How do we create awe?
- Yeah, so, well, first of all, you know,
as Frank said, part of
the key here is structure.
We are pattern animals.
We love pattern.
So I would pick three or
four times during the day
where you go after a little
bit of awe through music
or just looking at the outdoors,
picking a sunset, looking at a cloud.
Tapping into somebody who
really inspires you, right?
Martin Luther King or Gandhi.
But I would go to ggia.berkeley.edu.
It's all free.
We've spent five years,
a really talented team
at Greater Good, to give people
those very brief micro-doses of awe,
just to build it into
their lives at this moment.
- So Frank, this is great,
to have what is really a
utilitarian conversation,
'cause we're all looking
for tools right now,
'cause the regular
toolbox seems to be empty.
I know one of your areas of
expertise is online resources.
Tell us a little bit about,
maybe if you can extract
some things, either particular websites,
or some guidance about
how we can do triage,
separate the good from the bad
in terms of the online
environment, to find the resources
that can help ourselves and our children.
- Yeah, I think actually,
so if we go, for instance,
in the psychologist
space, we have of course
the Greater Good Science
Center that Dacher mentioned,
but we have the American
Psychological Association
has been triaging a lot of
information on its website.
There are 54 divisions
of APA, all of which
have been asked to put together
things that in fact help.
There's the Association
for Psychological Science
and the National Association
of School Psychologists.
So what happens is that
these national associations
where they can put evidence-based
practices on their websites
are places you can go
for psychological stuff.
We have actually added,
on the announcement
on the news page of the Graduate
School of Education today,
we've added a three-page
list of triage things
about parenting care and so forth,
and then there are some well known,
I mentioned Khan Academy and
PBS Kids, but Sesame Street,
the Children's Television
Workshop, ABCmouse.
There are a number of these places,
some of which used to
be charging for them,
but they're now providing free resources,
academic resources, for parents.
And if I could add a little bit more
just related to what Dacher was saying,
I know one of the things he
said, we talked about awe.
One thing he talked about is gratitude.
I've done research on what we
call attitudes towards time.
So one of the things that
parents and kids can do
is think back to happy
moments, what we know
is a positive past, positive
present, and positive future.
But having that sort of a
profile actually reduces anxiety,
it decreases stress, and all
of those kinds of things.
And so what are things that
you can do after this is over?
You can't predict when it's going to end,
but you can predict what
you will do after it ends.
That's another way of
getting a sense of agency,
as Dacher was talking about.
- So we only have a few
minutes left, unfortunately,
but I wanna quickly ask each of you,
because you've given us news we can use,
information we can put
to good use in our lives.
What are you learning?
What are you studying right now, Sonia,
in this incredible moment in time?
- Yeah, so right now, actually,
we just launched yesterday
a new study to try and address this.
This can be found on our website,
which is bishoplab.berkeley.edu.
And what we're doing
is we're asking people,
or as many people as are
willing, to take part,
and we're going to track
anxiety and depression,
worry, and behaviors across
the next three months.
And what we're really trying to understand
is how those are varying,
because even where we
think we understand it,
really, this is an
unprecedented situation.
So it may be that some people
are feeling really anxious
right now, and some people
aren't, and maybe that changes,
depending on what happens in our lives,
economically, financially, in
terms of our family's health.
It may depend on the kind
of behaviors we engage in,
and if we can try and
learn from that and see,
"Ah, actually, maybe there's
some protective things
"that people who are
relaxing in certain ways
"or engaging in certain ways
are handling it better."
We can use that information.
Equally well, if we discover
that a very large number
of people are moving,
say, from anxiety to depression,
that's really important
information we need to have.
And then also for individuals,
we provide links where they can.
- I have a special interest
in music and in creativity
and in writing and new
forms social connection,
and then once you embed that
within a hospital environment,
you can start to look at,
how do these things help our health?
We're in a very vulnerable
moment health-wise,
when we think about
rising levels of stress.
So we're trying to make the most of this.
- Frank?
- Right.
So in the School of Psychology,
we have a couple things going on.
One of my colleagues who
specializes in bullying
is looking at the impacts of bullying
on Asian kids and so forth, and in fact,
after doing some collaborative
work in China as well
to look at the impacts of bullying,
and then the long-term impact
of stress on adolescents
in this situation in
Wuhan, being the epicenter,
and with all of the statements
that were being made about that.
One of my areas of work is
gifted and talented education,
and we have a summer
program at UC Berkeley
called the Academic Talent
Development Program.
This summer, we are gonna be
online, which is gonna allow us
to in fact do our usual
end of program survey,
but look at how effective are the teachers
in terms of clarity and enthusiasm impact,
what are the things that
the students are finding
most useful and less useful,
so that we get a better sense.
And these are kids who
do well in school anyway.
So this is a nice way to see,
to compare with the past
and then future summers.
- Great.
All right, last question for all of you.
I mean, one of the
things that I've noticed,
at least among my friends and family,
is there's this yearning for
a silver lining, you know,
this hope that so many people have
that we'll come out of
this better as a society,
better as individuals.
We may not take things
for granted as much.
We may be more aware of inequities.
So I wanna ask each of you,
is that a form of denial,
or do you think there's
some legitimate hope
on either a personal and/or societal level
that there's gonna be some
long-term benefit from this?
Sonia, lemme start with you.
- I think it's definitely leading people
to ask a lot more questions,
to sort of stop and reflect
on what's important, which
relationships are important.
Societally, I really hope so,
but I think that one's more challenging.
One thing we can do,
which I didn't get time
to mention earlier,
was if people are able financially,
even a small amount, one of the times
we stop feeling anxious is
when we think about others.
So something we can do
with our kids is to look
at ways of giving, perhaps
in third-world countries
where they have less
resources to handle COVID.
So this can be a great time
to actually teach altruism
or teach reaching out and maybe influence
the next generation in
thinking more about that.
- Frank, Frank, do you see a benefit?
Do you see a potential for
benefit in a better day?
- Yeah, I do.
I mean, we know that in fact,
in moments of challenge,
hurricanes and so forth,
that people come together.
We also have the people who do gouging.
But one of the things that this is doing,
because it's so widespread,
but still also having
those disparate impacts,
I think it provides us,
as Sonia was saying,
an opportunity for us
to talk about things,
a living wage for everybody,
healthcare for everybody,
and many of those things
which we would all want
for ourselves and for our whole society.
I think the importance of those
things at a societal level
have been made manifest
very much in this moment.
- Dacher, I'm gonna
give you the last word.
- Thank you.
Yeah, you know, I mean,
after the Black Plague,
14th century, their cities got cleaner.
They stopped using lead,
and there was less serfdom.
So we moved out of this
system of indentureship.
And I think as Frank said,
this pandemic is revealing
the things we need to
work on as a culture,
and I'm very encouraged,
but I think we've to a
lot of hardship coming.
But I'm encouraged about the conversation
around poverty and inequity
and race, and how we fix that.
So it's the central thing we're facing.
- And for my part, I have to say,
I'm encouraged to know that
there's folks like you,
not just in psychology,
but across the campus
that are engaging all of
these issues at the moment.
I really wanna thank all
of you for what's been
an incredibly informative
and interesting session.
And for those who are
watching, for more information
about this, if you go
to news.berkeley.edu,
there's be a write-up of this event.
There'll be links
to some of the resources
we've talked about.
Dacher's got a video series
that he's recently launched,
and I know Sonia, your lab
has things that are on hand
for people who are looking
for additional tools,
and Frank, for you as well.
And I ask that everybody continue to check
the Berkeley Conversations
webpage for new events
that we're continually
adding, and in the meantime,
be well, stay safe, and by
all means, keep your distance.
Thank you.
- [Dacher] Thank you.
- [Sonia] Thank you.
- [Frank] Thank you so much.
Bye-bye.
