\u201cThose with fewer friends, with lower self-esteem and with less opportunity to disclose their emotions tend to visually amplify threats<\/strong>,” Harber said. “Their perceptions are exaggerated, and disturbing things appear higher, closer, of greater duration or more intense than they actually are.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Harber\u2019s thesis \u2013 a theory known as the Resources and Perception Model (RPM) \u2013 psychosocial resources can prevent this amplification, leading to more accurate perception. In a study published in the The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,<\/em> Harber and colleagues from the University of Virginia enlisted passersby who were alone or with a friend and asked them to estimate the angle of a steep hill on the U.Va campus. \u201cThose with friends saw the hill as less steep, and the longer they knew their friend or the closer they felt toward their friend the less steep the hill appeared to them<\/strong>,\u201d Harber said.<\/p>\n His latest study, published in the journal Emotion<\/em>, tested whether the resource of self-worth affected distance perception to a live tarantula. Subjects were first asked to recall one of the following: a personal success, a neutral chore or a personal failure. Next, they used a reel to pull a clear plastic cart toward their face and estimate how far away it was from them. For some people, the cart contained a harmless cat toy; but for others it contained a live tarantula.<\/p>\n \u201cAs expected, feeling good, neutral or bad about oneself had no effect on distance to the cat toy but did affect distance to the tarantula<\/strong>,\u201d Harber said. \u201cThose who felt bad about themselves saw the tarantula as looming closer than it was; those who felt good about themselves were strikingly accurate.\u201d<\/p>\n Another study tested how high a ledge appeared depending on one\u2019s frame of mind. Researchers brought subjects to the fifth floor of a building and estimate how high up they were. One group could put their hands the railing, while the other was prevented in doing so by paper handcuffs. For those who could hold onto the rail, self-esteem had no effect on height perception<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were all pretty accurate in their height estimates,\u201d Harber said. But self-esteem did matter for the subjects who couldn\u2019t hold the railing; the hand-cuffed subjects with high esteem did as well as did subjects who could hold the handrail.<\/p>\n \u201cThose with high levels of self-worth could \u2018get a grip\u2019 internally,\u201d Harber said.\u00a0 But handcuffed subjects who lacked self-esteem \u201chad neither an external nor an internal resource. They saw the distance to floor as much greater than did all other subjects,\u201d\u00a0 Harber said.<\/p>\n Why would our mind\u2019s eye play these tricks on us?\u00a0 According to Harber,\u00a0 the distortions can be useful.\u00a0 \u201cWhen we lack resources, the potential costs of engaging with hazards are greater and we need to adjust our behavior accordingly.\u00a0 Our psyches might be nudging us toward caution by exaggerating the visual aspect of challenging things, when our resources are low.\u201d<\/p>\n But for people who chronically lack resources, there may be a serious downside.\u00a0 \u201cThose who are isolated, who often lack self-worth, or who are in other ways bereft of resources might live in a more threatening world where mole hills look like mountains.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n The remedy, suggests Harber, is not to be super-popular or in a perpetually happy mood (in fact, mood has little influence on his studies).\u00a0 Rather, it\u2019s about having a sufficient number of good friends and a core level of self-acceptance.\u00a0 \u201cIt’s not about seeing the world through rose-colored glasses,\u201d Harber says. \u201cIt’s about having the resources to see things clearly, as they are.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Rutgers press release: People who have fewer social resources, such as friends and family, literally see challenging objects and events in a more exaggerated way than do people… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,6],"tags":[363,12,167],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6560"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6560"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6741,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6560\/revisions\/6741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/HelpingHand.jpg\" "\\"getting")
People who have fewer social resources, such as friends and family, literally see challenging objects and events in a more exaggerated way than do people who feel emotionally supported<\/strong>, according to research by Kent Harber, associate professor of psychology at Rutgers-Newark.<\/p>\n