3. Witvliet, Hofelich Mohr, et al., “Transforming or Restraining Rumination.”
4. We’re defining “optimism” and “pessimism” this way, as a blend of several ways of defining and assessing them. Typical examples include Seligman’s “explanatory style,” that is, a way of understanding why things happen in terms of the permanence, pervasiveness, and personalness of the factors that cause them. Seligman, Learned Optimism. By contrast, Scheier and Carver’s Life Orientation Test (LOT) assesses a person’s general expectancy of good things or bad things happening. Scheier and Carver, “Optimism, Coping, and Health.”
5. Diemand-Yauman, Oppenheimer, and Vaughan, “Fortune Favors the Bold.”
6. Mehta, Zhu, and Cheema, “Is Noise Always Bad?”
7. Phillips, “How Diversity Works”; Apfelbaum, Phillips, and Richeson, “Rethinking the Baseline.”
8. It’s called the “Dunning Kruger Effect.” Sapolsky, Behave, chap. 2.
9. Byron, Khazanchi, and Nazarian, “Relationship Between Stressors and Creativity.”
10. Phillips, Liljenquist, and Neale, “Is the Pain Worth the Gain?”
11. McCrea, Liberman, et al., “Construal Level and Procrastination.”
12. Cerasoli, Nicklin, and Ford, “Intrinsic Motivation and Extrinsic Incentives.”
13. Torre and Lieberman, “Putting Feelings into Words”; and Fan, Varamesh, et al., “Does Putting Your Emotions into Words.”
14. Adams, Watson, et al., “Neuroethology of Decision-Making.”
15. Sharp, John, “Senate Democrats Read.”
16. Withers, Rachel, “8 Women Who Were Warned”; Hatch, “13 Iconic Women Who”; Higgins, “The 35 Best ‘Nevertheless.’?”
17. Resources for those looking to dive more deeply into the research on what we call “the Monitor” but is technically known as the discrepancy-reducing (or -increasing) feedback loop and criterion velocity: Carver and Scheier, “Feedback Processes in the Simultaneous Regulation of Action and Effect.” If you’d like to know more about evidence-based strategies for supporting behavior change, check out Miller and Rollnick, Motivational Interviewing. And if you’d like to read the biological and computational science of the “exploit/explore problem,” we really valued Ejova, Navarro, and Perfors, “When to Walk Away,” and, more peripherally, MacLean, Hare, et al., “Evolution of Self-Control.”
CHAPTER 3: MEANING
1. A review of all survey instruments and questionnaires that scientists and clinicians use to assess “meaning in life” concluded that meaning is “a highly individual perception, understanding[,] or belief about one’s own life and activities and the value and importance ascribed to them.” Brandst?tter, Baumann, et al., “Systematic Review of Meaning.”
2. Seligman, Learned Optimism.
3. Russo-Netzer, Schulenberg, and Batthyany, “Clinical Perspectives on Meaning.” Two-thirds of the studies done in a systematic review of research on personal recovery from mental illness found that “meaning in life” was a significant factor in recovery. Other crucial factors: connectedness, hope, identity, and empowerment, giving the acronym CHIME. Leamy, Bird, et al., “Conceptual Framework for Personal Recovery.”
4. Metz, Thaddeus, “The Meaning of Life.”
5. Ryan and Deci, “On Happiness and Human Potential.”
6. Metz, Thaddeus, “The Meaning of Life.”
7. King, Hicks, et al., “Positive Affect and the Experience.”
8. Steger, “Experiencing Meaning in Life.”
9. Roepke, Jayawickreme, and Riffle, “Meaning and Health”; Czekierda, Gancarczyk, and Luszczynska, “Associations Between Meaning in Life”; Kim, Strecher, and Ryff, “Purpose in Life and Use.”
10. Roepke, Jayawickreme, and Riffle, “Meaning and Health.”
11. Vos, “Working with Meaning in Life.”
12. Guerrero-Torrelles, Monforte-Royo, et al., “Understanding Meaning in Life Interventions.”
13. Park, “Meaning Making Model.”
14. “Meaning is knowing what your highest strengths are—and deploying those in the service of something you believe is larger than you are.” “Meaning of Life,” Positive Psychology Foundation.
15. These are condensed from the Personal Meaning Profile’s seven factors of meaning—relationship, intimacy, religion, achievement, self-transcendence, self-acceptance, and fair treatment—and on the Meaning Making Model’s self-esteem, affiliation, certainty, and symbolic immortality. Heine, Proulx, and Vohs, “Meaning Maintenance Model.”
16. Of course, there are better and worse Something Largers in terms of their impact on the world—to pick the low-hanging fruit of examples, Nazis had plenty of meaning in their lives, murdering millions of people—but the nature of good and evil is outside the scope of this book. If you’re asking yourself whether your Something Larger is a good one, consider what our own grandmother told us, which is also what pretty much any major religious figurehead would say: “Ask yourself, ‘Are you hurting anyone? Are you helping anyone?’?”
17. Hart, The Ear of the Heart, 241.
18. Paul and Wong, “Meaning Centered Positive Group Intervention.”
19. Cancer Journals.
20. Clinton, Hillary, Twitter post, September 6, 2016, 4:18 P.M. https://twitter.com/?hillaryclinton/?status/?774024262352941057.
21. Murdock, “The Heroine’s Journey.”
22. Friedan, “Up from the Kitchen Floor.”
23. Martin, “Star Trek’s Uhura Reflects.”
24. Park and Baumeister, “Meaning in Life and Adjustment.”
25. Tang, Kelley, et al., “Emotions and Meaning in Life.”
26. Tsai, El-Gabalawy, et al., “Post-Traumatic Growth Among Veterans.”
27. Calhoun, et al., “Relationships between Posttraumatic Growth and Resilience.”
28. White, Maps of Narrative Practice, and e.g., Vromans and Schweitzer, “Narrative Therapy for Adults.” For depression: Weber, Davis, and McPhie, “Narrative Therapy, Eating Disorders.” For disordered eating: Adler, “Living into the Story.”
29. Gwozdziewycz and Mehl-Madrona, “Meta-Analysis of Narrative Exposure Therapy.”
30. Fisher, Everlasting Name. But see also Howe, “I Believe in the Sun,” for history and other translations.
CHAPTER 4: THE GAME IS RIGGED
1. Saha, Eikenburg, et al.,”Repeated Forced Swim Stress.”
2. Seligman, Learned Optimism.
3. Douthat, “Redistribution of Sex.”
4. From July 2016 through August 2018. The Santa Fe, Texas, high school shooting, the Ed’s Car Wash shooting, the Marathon Savings Bank shooting, and possibly the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting were all apparently motivated, at least in part, by jealousy of or rejection by a woman. The Capital Gazette shooting involved the perpetrator’s resentment of the newspaper’s coverage of his guilty plea to harassment of a woman. Berkowitz, Lu, and Alcantara, “Terrible Numbers That Grow.”
5. “Guns and Domestic Violence,” Everytown for Gun Safety. Mass shootings are a tiny but highly visible fraction of deaths by gun violence, but they parallel other gun violence, which is disproportionately perpetrated by men and occurs in the context of domestic and intimate partner violence.
6. Krebs, Lindquist, et al., Campus Sexual Assault (CSA) Study.
7. Fulu, Warner, et al., “Why Do Some Men Use Violence Against Women.”
8. Sadker and Sadker, Failing at Fairness, 269.
9. Karpowitz, Mendelberg, and Shaker, “Gender Inequality in Deliberative Participation.”
10. Dalla, Antoniou, et al., “Chronic Mild Stress Impact.”
11. Friedan, Feminine Mystique.
12. See “Balancing Paid Work, Unpaid Work, and Leisure,” OECD.
13. Altintas and Sullivan, “Fifty Years of Change Updated.”
14. “Women Shoulder Responsibility,” Office for National Statistics.
15. R v R [1992] 1 A.C. 599, House of Lords.
16. Davidai and Gilovich, “Headwinds/Tailwinds Asymmetry.”
17. Files, Mayer, et al., “Speaker Introductions at Internal Medicine.”
18. “A new study confirms it: You likely experienced that moment of awkwardness or disrespect because you are a woman.” Accessed December 7, 2018. https://www.facebook.com/?NPR/?posts/?10155647100291756.