Christophe André, native of Toulouse but doctor at the Sainte-Anne psychiatric hospital in Paris, has come out with a new book called “Les Etats d’Ame: Un apprentissage de la sérénité” as part of a great science popularization series edited by Odile Jacobs. I have not read the book yet, but it was reviewed favorably by Emilie Lanez in our newsweekly, Le Point. André’s topic is the spirit (âme) as in “good spirits” or “flagging spirits” – your emotional color – and that it is possible to consciously decide that you can accept certain life circumstances and dominate your own spirits to remain serene.

It sounds like a book I could use.

The author has also been interviewed in English-language reviews, among which the online magazine Ode last spring. This is well worth reading in full, but here are a couple of extracts:

C. André: “In my own experience, happiness does take effort; you need to do your best to see happiness, experience it, absorb it.”

Peter van Dijk, interviewer: “Among leftist intellectuals in France, happiness gets a bad rap. In Vivre Heureux, André notes that the deadly sin of happiness according to these critics is petit bourgeois. Marcel Proust was gentler: Happiness was good for the body but bad for creativity. [Fond memories of Clare’s lecture at SciBlog.] And any French intellectual worth his salt thinks happiness is selfish, for how can you be happy in an unhappy world?”

André seems convinced by the data that we humans are natural pessimists, and that there was (is?) likely a protective function in perceiving the world and its potential dangers that way. The glass is half empty – you might be thirsty! – unless you remind yourself to see it as half full.

“Spontaneously, I’m a pessimist. If you ask me what the future holds for Africa, I’ll start talking about famine, violence and misery. But if I concentrate, I think, What were things like in Europe 100 years ago? War, unemployment, illness, poverty. Things have changed here now, so why not there? Optimism gives you the power to try for happiness, and then when you get a little, you understand that trying to be optimistic was worth the trouble. In the end, it’s about making an investment in yourself.”

Through the book review, I came on work that André cites in which (at least according to the abstract), humans are more likely to selectively detect hostile and therefore threatening facial expressions in a crowd, even if there are more friendly ones. There is similar (and abundant!) work about word “valence” and memory, and how we are naturally inclined to remember and respond to negatively rather than positively associated words.

But one can consciously change unconscious cognitive bias once one becomes aware of it. A pretty technical article by Kunde et al. sums up some literature as well as their own experiments by stating that “by intentionally setting up action triggers we gain control over the impact of stimuli we cannot perceive consciously.” I interpret this to mean that if we practice seeing the smiles and thinking optimistically, we can train ourselves to not reflexively let the threats of life get us down (at least, not as much).

Bluma Zeigarnik’s Ph.D. work to the effect that uncompleted things remain in the forefront of our memory until completion, when we allow them to slip out and make room for other uncompleted things, is also cited in Etats d’Ame (for references, see here rather than here, where the observation is attributed to her advisor; I can’t read the original Russian but the English online biography by her grandson implies that both Ziegarnik and her advisor were responsible for describing the “Zeigarnik effect”). Without knowing that it had been studied long ago, I was subjected to the Zeigarnik effect from around 5 to 6:30 AM today, when I gave up and got up to complete a few of the domestic tasks at least and thereby free up space for the rest of what is on my mind. André writes that accumulation of interruptions and hanging threads produce a great series of frustrations that make poor spirits pretty much the default situation.

Another thing that has been on my mind and that is not yet resolved is a personal cost-benefit analysis of blogging here, there or anywhere, or just participating in forum discussions, in the context of the rest of those same uncompleted tasks. According to Lanez’ review, André reminds his readers that it is easier to have a positive and happy outlook when you have had a good night’s sleep (no kidding!), are well fed and sheltered, and above all, have cultivated positive social interactions. This reminded me of Stephen’s post on the advantages of scientific networking. When making online friends works well, and one can and must focus on the majority of times when it does, it becomes a valid element of happiness.

Thanks, folks.
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Kunde, W. (2003). Conscious control over the content of unconscious cognition Cognition, 88 (2), 223-242 DOI: 10.1016/S0010-0277(03)00023-4