73 - Why do we laugh?

This week we’re returning to an everyday psychology topic and pondering why we laugh. In classic Two Shrinks style, we talk through four pieces of research: preschoolers laughing with their friends, personality and laughter, ridicule in family and funeral workers’ use of laughter.

As always we finish up with things we came across: Amy freaks out about robot-human interaction and Hunter delights in a letter to the editor.

Research:

Social Facilitation of Laughter and Smiles in Preschool Children

Do extraverts ‘like to laugh’︁?: An analysis of the Situational Humor Response Questionnaire (SHRQ)

An Initial Study on How Families Deal with Ridicule and Being Laughed at: Parenting Styles and Parent–Child Relations with Respect to Gelotophobia, Gelotophilia, and Katagelasticism

I Nearly Died Laughing: Humor in Funeral Industry Operators

TWCA:

Robot Humor: How Self-irony and Schadenfreude Influence People's Rating of Robot Likability

Narratives with Robots: The Impact of Interaction Context and Individual Differences on Story Recall and Emotional Understanding

Development and Testing of Psychological Conflict Resolution Strategies for Assertive Robots to Resolve Human–Robot Goal Conflict

Designing Social Interactions with a Humorous Robot Photographer

Hunter’s book recommendation: In Moonland by Miles Allinson

Letter to the editor

73 - Why do we laugh?

Dr Hunter Mulcare & Amy Donaldson

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72 - Why do we cry?

We’re back after an unexpected break with a classic Two Shrinks question, why do we cry?

Why is it that something painful, emotional or even joyful makes us tear up? How does it help us communicate, share with others, process how we feel? We’ll talk through why music makes us cry, what babies expect to happen when they cry, who cries in therapy and when it helps. To wrap up, we finish with the all important play behaviours of octopuses/octopi/octopodes and some research into whether little Albert actually became scared of white rabbits.

Join us next time for an episode on laughter.

If you need to take the time for a good cryve (cry while driving), let us set the mood we have a Cryving playlist up on Spotify.

Songs to Cryve to (Spotify playlist) :https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2qBqylXVS9QddK5gDR1wwF?si=75bdb78ec9c74dcc

Crying Research:

• Feeling Like Crying When Listening to Music: Exploring Musical and Contextual Features

• Young Infants Expect an Unfamiliar Adult to Comfort a Crying Baby: Evidence from a Standard Violation-of-Expectation Task and a Novel Infant-Triggered-Video Task

• Patient Crying in Psychotherapy: Who Cries and Why?

• Patients’ Crying Experiences in Psychotherapy and Relationship with Working Alliance, Therapeutic Change and Attachment Styles

• When and for Whom does Crying Improve Mood? A Daily Diary Study of 1004 Crying Episodes

TWCA:

• When Do Octopuses Play? Effects of Repeated Testing, Object Type, Age, and Food Deprivation on Object Play in Octopus Vulgaris

• Did Little Albert Actually Acquire a Conditioned Fear of Furry Animals? What the Film Evidence Tells us

Music featured in the episode:

Ave Maria - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_5bYNqpEFU
Beethoven’s 9th symphony - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdWyYn0E4Ys
Skinny love - Bon Iver
On my own - Samantha Banks
O children - Nick Cave
It’s quiet uptown from Hamilton
Someone great - LCD Soundsystem
Somewhere over the rainbow - Israel Kamakawiwo’ole

Thanks to listeners for contributing their songs - the playlist above includes all of our favourites.

72 - Why do we cry?

Dr Hunter Mulcare & Amy Donaldson

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71 - Psychs on Film 3 (Shrinks with a Vengeance)

In honour of our third instalment of psychs on film, we’re following the trilogy format and introducing a new character, well actually a guest - Sharon Shaw, podcaster and therapist from the School of Movies podcast. Join us for a discussion of 6 film and tv therapists - what we love, how it’s different from real life therapy and issues we can’t stop ranting about.

The shows we talk about are:

Top left - Right: West wing, donnie darko, fleabag
Bottom left - right: thomas crown affair, bones, Ozarks

• The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)

• The Ozarks (2020). Season 3, episode 5. Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSWwltmJUEk 

• The West Wing (2000). Season 2, episode 10

• Donnie Darko (2001). Clip: https://youtu.be/GPOjr_z3Wn4

• Fleabag (2019). Season 2, episode 2. Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy6kbVptkRY

• Bones (2007) Season 2, episode 13

Listen to Sharon Shaw on the School of Movies podcast: https://schoolofmovies.podbean.com/

71 - Psychs on Film 3 (Shrinks with a Vengeance)

Dr Hunter Mulcare & Amy Donaldson

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70 - Therapy with the Breakfast Club

The Breakfast club - five teenagers in detention, each struggling and assuming everyone else has their life together. But what would happen if they were referred for therapy instead?

Join us for a Two Shrinks look at Claire, Bender, Principal Vernon, Allison, Andy & Brian as we talk through how we’d make sense of these characters and what they’d need in the therapy room.

The Molly Ringwald article we reference can be found at: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/what-about-the-breakfast-club-molly-ringwald-metoo-john-hughes-pretty-in-pink

70 - Therapy with The Breakfast Club

Dr Hunter Mulcare & Amy Donaldson

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69 - Sexual Assault: How to Respond to a Disclosure

This episode we’re talking about an unashamedly heavy topic. Given the recent events in Australian Parliament, we wanted to talk about how psychologists, friends and family members of people who have been sexually assaulted can respond. How you can best support someone who’s beginning to share their story, even when you don’t know what to say.

If you’d like to skip to a particular topic:
9:45 Common reactions to media coverage of sexual assault & some basic coping strategies
15:30 Responding to disclosures as a psychologist
47:30 Responding as a friend or family member
53:45 Message to survivors who are considering disclosing for the first time

Supports in Australia

Lifeline: 13 11 14
1800 Respect: 1800 7377 328
ReachOut list of supports: https://au.reachout.com/articles/sexual-assault-support
CASA: https://casa.org.au/

Australian Statistics

https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/0375553f-0395-46cc-9574-d54c74fa601a/aihw-fdv-5.pdf.aspx?inline=true

https://e2epublishing.info/statistics

Music

River by Leon Bridges

69 - Sexual Assault: How to respond to a disclosure

Dr Hunter Mulcare & Amy Donaldson

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68 - The Seven Deadly Sins

To kick off 2021, two shrinks is getting sinful. Thanks to a suggestion from psychiatrist Dr Jackie Rakov (@psychwrite on twitter), we’re taking a look at the psychology behind the seven deadly sins. Do we find people more attractive when we’re primed with lust? Does envy make us more likely to harm others? Is pride different from straight-up narcissism? Listen in to for a light-hearted but in depth look at whether the sins really are that bad.

Timepoint/Articles:
05:30 Envy https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167219897660
14:30 Pride - https://europepmc.org/article/med/33180528
26:25 Gluttony - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24411760/
40:58 Sloth - https://www.prdb.pk/article/prevalence-of-academic-procrastination-and-reasons-for-acade-8348

47:30 Lust - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224545.2014.933158
58:51 Wrath - https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/bjso.12357
01:14:27 Greed - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886918305130

Media clips drawn from: Se7en (sins), Winnie the Pooh (gluttony), The Simpsons (Sloth), U2 (pride) Pride & Prejudice (pride), How I Met Your Mother (lust), Wallstreet (greed) and Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan (wrath)

Hunter’s bonus I can’t believe it’s not sloth articles:
(from 35:00-40:58 mins)
Sloth bears: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-05979-001
Bridges: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1369847820304125

68 - The Seven Deadly Sins

Dr Hunter Mulcare & Amy Donaldson

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