EssayGTheMan

Introduction

I’ve been thinking about the importance of cooperation and community a lot lately. One of the realms that I am convinced that it is a benefit is the UA South Psychology program that I now direct. The following is a review of our attempts to make UA South more communitarian.

When I was first hired it was because of my expertise in the relatively neglected online instruction at the University of Arizona. Online instruction is important for a program with students in a geographically diverse service area because everyone can’t just meet in a single room during the day as with traditional college courses. I’ve taken great pride in creating online courses that engage students as much as possible. However, a recent full service UA Online degree being run out of the UA Main campus and personal experiences where I had the opportunity to teach courses in the same room of all of the enrolled students has motivated us to shift UA South’s psychology program to a more hybrid instructional model. Is there demand and valid reasons to continue a program that focuses on connection to students and includes intermittent opportunities to be physically present with instructors and advisors?

I think the 10% of us that is part Bee benefits from physical social interactions (Haidt, 2012). When we don’t get that social connection I think that we don’t get the same hive switch and we don’t learn as much. If true this might explain why there is a disconnect between our social remembering self and our experiencing self (Kahneman, 2011).

I’ve been thinking about the neurobiology of the hive switch and I am convinced that it’s dependent on the dopamine salience signal. When our brain decides something is important enough to remember it releases dopamine that increases the likelihood of memory formation (Haidt, 2012). Drugs or other addictive substances can induce these salience signals that we can get from social experiences suggesting that these addictions are just hijacking our need for sociality. Not getting social signals can result in depression (Hari, 2018). Receiving inappropriate signals might finally make sense of schizophrenia, which involves the connection of ideas others do not have and is treated with dopamine blockers (Whitaker, 2001). Disruptions in these salience signals might even be at the core of anxiety disorders like PTSD (Janezic et al. , 2016).

Anyway this might be a partial explanation for why our remembering self differs from our experiencing self (Kahneman, 2011). Our remembering self only looks at the experiences that have been marked for memory and if I’m right about the hive switch and the dopamine salience system. It might also predict that we will remember events where the hive switch has been flipped better than times that we are all chimp. So I think that the UA South and the psychology program should find ways to flip our collective hive switch by providing and encouraging opportunities to have physical interactions with students and teachers might help. I hope to continue to figure out if this approach is helpful.

Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics

and religion. Vintage. Hari, J. (2018). Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression–

and the Unexpected Solutions. Bloomsbury Publishing. Janezic, E. M., Uppalapati, S., Nagl, S., Contreras, M., French, E. D., & Fellous,

J. M. (2016). Beneficial effects of chronic oxytocin administration and

social co-housing in a rodent model of post-traumatic stress

disorder. Behavioural pharmacology, 27(8), 704-717. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the

psychology of choice. Science, 211(4481), 453-458.

Whitaker, R. (2001). Mad in America: Bad science, bad medicine, and the

enduring mistreatment of the mentally ill. Basic Books.