Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

How stupid are these people?

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

The words do not have to be perfect.

So many bastards, so little time.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

The snowflake in chief appeared visibly frustrated when questioned by a reporter about egg prices.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

This blog will pay for itself.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

You are here: Home / Science & Technology / Eeyore Is Smarter Than Pooh

Eeyore Is Smarter Than Pooh

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Via Scientific American, a behavioral ecologist and a psychiatrist suggest that a major depressive incident may make people better able to solve complex problems and social dilemmas :

Depressed people often think intensely about their problems. These thoughts are called ruminations; they are persistent and depressed people have difficulty thinking about anything else. Numerous studies have also shown that this thinking style is often highly analytical. They dwell on a complex problem, breaking it down into smaller components, which are considered one at a time.

This analytical style of thought, of course, can be very productive. Each component is not as difficult, so the problem becomes more tractable. Indeed, when you are faced with a difficult problem, such as a math problem, feeling depressed is often a useful response that may help you analyze and solve it. For instance, in some of our research, we have found evidence that people who get more depressed while they are working on complex problems in an intelligence test tend to score higher on the test.

During my scholastic career, I frequently got depressed when attempting to work math problems (took basic high school algebra three times and still don’t understand it). I’d stare at the paper until the numbers started dancing, ruminating on the problem until I reached the correct solution: “That’s it; I am sooo fvcked.”

Then I’d throw up.

Which totally makes sense now, because of course serotonin function affects the gastrointestional tract as well as that lump at the top of the spinal column.

Reader Interactions

74Comments

  2. 2.

    arguingwithsignposts

    This is not to say that depression is not a problem. Depressed people often have trouble performing everyday activities, they can’t concentrate on their work, they tend to socially isolate themselves, they are lethargic, and they often lose the ability to take pleasure from such activities such as eating and sex. Some can plunge into severe, lengthy, and even life-threatening bouts of depression.

    This, also. I’m so glad that depression isn’t a disorder, but an adaptation. Still sucks.

  4. 4.

    geg6

    Well, based on my own experiences, this is absolutely true. For good and ill. I know being very analytical makes me effective at problem solving. But it also makes me so self-critical that the black dog decides to settle in for a good long visit. All things being equal, I’d rather be me than a less self-aware and solution minded person like, say, your average teabagger.

  5. 5.

    Betsy

    I find this difficult to grasp. When my partner is in the grip of major depression, all problems, however minor, seem completely insoluble to him. I mean, he’s brilliant at finding reasons why a given solution won’t work, which is a kind of analytical skill, but ultimately that is the opposite of helpful. It’s also not usually reflective of reality. Although he can always come up with a reason X or Y won’t work, usually, if he would give X or Y a chance, they would work fine. So it seems like a false skill to me – it seems incisive and analytical, but it doesn’t bring him to the right answers.

  6. 6.

    General Winfield Stuck

    Maybe this validates those polls that claim republicans are happier than dems. And also teh stupiderer. Though they seem quite mental recently, we should experience a wave of smarter wingnuts on the horizon, and Peak Wingnut will have been averted, at least til Sarah Serendipity gets elected Queen of the Viking Hordes, and the shit starts all over again.

  7. 7.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Betsy: I think it’s more of a long-term thing. I mean, in the grips of severe depression, no, one is not going to make good decisions (or any at all). If said person makes it through the severe depression, then one can apply one’s hard-earned thinking skills in a more productive fashion.

  10. 10.

    Tom65

    This would make Peter Daou a fucking genius, which is too depressing to contemplate.

    Hey, wait a minute…

  12. 12.

    debit

    Interesting. As a math phobic, that’s how I deal with math issues when I’m without a calculator; break it down into non-panic inducing chunks and just hope my I don’t mess up the running tally until I get to the end.

  13. 13.

    geg6

    Betsy: I think, though I haven’t read the article, that the idea is that, when not in the midst of a depression, the analytical ability serves us well. I generally am only a mild depressive and never took meds for it. But I had one very, very bad period. Otherwise, I just have the normal ups and downs. I do, however, still analyze everything I do from every angle. I analyze everything. I over analyze and sometimes fall into the depressive trap of seeing only why things won’t work. But I do know that this type of thinking has also been a major factor in my successes in life.

  14. 14.

    HL Guy

    This is weak thinking, based on an adaptationist perspective- “If something persists in the face of natural selection, it must be adaptive.” Umm, no.
    Many diseases persist despite having no adaptive value. See: heart attacks, cancer. Unless you have actual *evidence* that depressives are better at solving complex analytical problems, and do so better over the long term (which could be significantly shortened by, say, suicide), don’t tell me any just-so stories about depression being adaptive.

  15. 15.

    Betsy

    @geg6:
    I looked at it, and they seemed to be suggesting that it was actually the depression itself that triggered the analytical thinking – i.e., while depressed, you think deeply/brood about everything. In other words, it’s DURING the depression, not after it, that the thinking is sharper. (C.f. their example about people who get depressed while solving a math problem doing better than those who don’t.) That seems to me to be absolutely counter to every experience I’ve had with people in the midst of serious depressive episodes.

  16. 16.

    Betsy

    p.s. I know that the plural of anecdote /= data, but their research seems pretty thin to me, esp. after reading Dave C’s links.

  17. 17.

    Comrade Mary

    The whole point of cognitive behaviour therapy is to get depressed people to look for cognitive distortions, then correct them so that they can be happier.

    Raw analytical skills don’t always lead you to the correct conclusions. Being smart doesn’t necessarily make you wise, or kind, or generous to others or to yourself. Some people can read Ayn Rand in their teens, then grow out of it, others end up writing for Reason.

    I suspect that all other things being equal, more analytical people may be more prone to getting depressed. Biochemical imbalances and stressful live events obviously are big factors, too, but the tendency to pick apart and ruminate, coupled with a pessimistic outlook and some biochemical or external trigger, can push susceptible people right into full-blown depression. It’s ironic that they same thing that gets them in there may be able to get them out again.

  18. 18.

    smiley

    At the risk of repeating my self here, when listening to the media about science, you should just ignore it or take it “with a grain of salt”. That includes Scientific American. For example, I was watching an episode of “Good Morning America” some years ago, and Charlie Gibson announced that two articles about heart health had just been published in The New England Journal of Medicine and The Journal of the American Medical Association. Both prestigious journals. The problem was that they contradicted each other. Charlie looked into the camera and said, ” What are we supposed to believe?” Journalists believe that their standard for truth is true in all fields. Please don’t take any of this kind of shit seriously until it has been replicated numerous times. Especially stuff dealing with human behavior. /soapbox

  19. 19.

    Doug

    Assuming this makes a depressed person smarter than a non-depressed person is a leap in the wrong direction. It’s akin to assuming that people who need eyeglasses have better vision than those who don’t. Non-depressed people are able to solve problems without falling into depression.

    I’m not trying to be mean about it. I love many smart people with chronic depression and have suffered brief bouts of it myself. But the depression is an adaptation, not a feature.

  20. 20.

    Chad N Freude

    I’ve read half the article (and will finish, I promise) but my attention was caught by this quote from the first paragraph:

    the brain plays crucial roles in promoting survival and reproduction, so the pressures of evolution should have left our brains resistant to such high rates of malfunction.

    The authors appear to conclude that therefore depression is not a malfunction. The idea that “pressures of evolution” should have produced a particular result as the starting point for their argument leaves a bit to be desired in the rigorous logic department. It seems to me. In my humble opinion.

  21. 21.

    shelley matheis

    Well yeah, Eeyore is smarter than Pooh. Heavens, in the book Pooh is constantly referred to as ‘a Bear of little brain.”

    Of course Eeyore also thinks a busted balloon is a great birthday present.

  24. 24.

    Laura W

    Best post ever, Anne Laurie, and the title is delicious.

    My favorite part of the article (bolded emphasis mine):

    But depression is nature’s way of telling you that you’ve got complex social problems that the mind is intent on solving. Therapies should try to encourage depressive rumination rather than try to stop it, and they should focus on trying to help people solve the problems that trigger their bouts of depression. (There are several effective therapies that focus on just this.) It is also essential, in instances where there is resistance to discussing ruminations, that the therapist try to identify and dismantle those barriers.

    When one considers all the evidence, depression seems less like a disorder where the brain is operating in a haphazard way, or malfunctioning. Instead, depression seems more like the vertebrate eye—an intricate, highly organized piece of machinery that performs a specific function.

    Brings to mind two things:
    I wrote a friend just two nights ago: “I was up all last night ruminating on all this.”
    And advice from a very wise and trusted spiritual mentor long ago: “Don’t pathologize The Mystery.”

  26. 26.

    General Winfield Stuck

    @Linkmeister:

    : Nah. Republicans are happier than Dems because Dems have empathy and the Repubs have none.

    Though I always question new theories related to mental illness, as there is a cottage industry of speculation and dubious studies about this infinitely complex subject, I have always believed firmly in the oft used axiom of “no pain no gain” unscientific, simplistic, yes, but also true IMHO.

    Since I have in the past, had my share of bouts with the black reeper of blues, I choose to believe it makes you smarterer as a whip.

  28. 28.

    geg6

    Comrade Mary: You explained exactly how I feel about this better than I did. Yes, I think analytical personalities are prone to depression. And I, for one tend toward pessimism and. Turning things over and over in my head. Mostly, it has served me well. Sometimes, something goes out of whack and it takes me down a dark hole. I’ve only gotten treatment once (as I said, I’m a mild depressive) and I’m a big believer in talk therapy for people like me. It allows you to use those analytical skills to pull yourself out. Worked for me and my therapist taught me some things to try to pull myself out before I hit bottom again.

  29. 29.

    Chad N Freude

    Re Scientific American: At one time it was pretty scientific. Over the years, it has become a moderately entertaining and visually attractive (read that as really marketable to a much wider audience than when it was publishing boring science stuff), but not a particularly good source of scientific reportage or thought. For my science fix, I go to New Scientist.

  31. 31.

    Anne Laurie

    Of course Eeyore also thinks a busted balloon is a great birthday present.

    No, no — the ‘fun’ part was a busted balloon and a pot to put it in. That’s what I’ve always loved about the Tao of Eeyore: When you’re given an accidentally pre-broken present, plus the leftovers from what should have been the other gift, you can still put the bits together and create a new way to amuse yourself. As long as you’re not the kind of optimist who expects anything better from the Universe than scraps, remainders, and apologetic explanations!

  32. 32.

    plaindave

    Did I miss the comments regarding the link between the digestive parts and the mood parts? Throwing up after seems right to me. But what about causation in the other direction? Poor digestion to depression?

  33. 33.

    Chad N Freude

    @wasabi gasp: Math, yes. Some teachers of math not so much.

    I always loved math because of the certainty. My son also: in his early teens, he told me that he liked math because of “the way everything fits together”.

  34. 34.

    Laura W

    @Anne Laurie:

    When you’re given an accidentally pre-broken present, plus the leftovers from what should have been the other gift, you can still put the bits together and create a new way to amuse yourself.

    May I introduce you to Pique Assiette Mosaics?
    ;-)

  35. 35.

    shelley matheis

    o, no—the ‘fun’ part was a busted balloon and a pot to put it in.

    You’re absolutely right, I forgot about that! His absolute delight at ‘balloon goes in, balloon goes out.”

    And he also loved that little lean-to of sticks that Pooh and Piglet built for him as a house.

  36. 36.

    Anne Laurie

    @smiley: Oh, geometry I could handle. I scored in the low 70s for the NY state Reagents alegebra exam, and in the mid-90s for the equivalent geometry exam. But in those days, “everybody knew” that only boys were dyslexic, so the fact that I kept reversing numbers indicated I was lazy & willful. Geometry is about logic and symmetry, things I’m much more comfortable with.

  37. 37.

    kommrade reproductive vigor

    Numerous studies have also shown that this thinking style is often highly analytical. They dwell on a complex problem, breaking it down into smaller components, which are considered one at a time.

    This called obsessing and it ain’t a lot of fun. Nor is it productive.

    There is another possibility: that, in most instances, depression should not be thought of as a disorder at all.

    Oh gee, that makes me feel so much better.

    Look, to speak very simply there are two times you’d do this while depressed. One is if you’re focused on an actual event that’s causing the depression. The other is if your brain just decides it would be fun to make you fucking miserable. I don’t know about the first one, but with the second one, analysing shit that your brain is making up doesn’t help anything. It’s like saying a schizophrenic should pay close attention to the voices.

    Many other symptoms of depression make sense in light of the idea that analysis must be uninterrupted.

    Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Over? Thank God these people aren’t oncologists.

  38. 38.

    smiley

    @Chad N Freude: That’s really cool. I don’t have any kids (and never will) but that must make you proud. Is he going to in to something… never mind…

  41. 41.

    debit

    @Chad N Freude: I actually liked math very much until 5th grade. That’s when I got an elderly teacher with issues. Perhaps it was early onset dementia, perhaps he had just ceased to give a crap. All I know is he lectured us on politics and his own, odd personal beliefs and biases, but he didn’t teach us math.

    That was the year I was supposed to get the building blocks to lead me into Algebra, which started in 6th grade. I didn’t get them, and 6th grade math and every year after was a nightmare of just honestly not getting it and being accused of being either lazy or willfully ignorant. It left me convinced that I was just abysmally stupid and could never do it, since every one else found it so easy.

    I deal with it now. I have to. I work in a tax and accounting office. Heh.

  43. 43.

    smiley

    @Anne Laurie: For me, I really surprised some teachers with how I did in geometry class. I was pretty average in high school – smoking pot all the time. I pretty well redeemed my self in college and graduate school, however – smoking pot all the time. (but not any more)

  44. 44.

    toujoursdan

    Fascinating article.

    This is a horrible simile but depression may work a bit like Sickle Cell anaemia does, where a mild form of the condition can be advantageous in that it sharpens the mind, but a lot can be a huge drawback.

    This is a first article. It will be interesting to see if more research moves in this direction.

  45. 45.

    wasabi gasp

    @Chad N Freude: In college, as a math major, I had a professor that was so bad that he factored into my decision to drop out and take a job offer in a completely different field. It turned out to be the right decision, but I never followed up on the promise to myself to continue the self-teaching that I began in his class. The guy was no better worse than an audio book of the text.

  48. 48.

    Davis X. Machina

    Geometry is about logic and symmetry, things I’m much more comfortable with.

    I did very poorly in Algebra , but I aced geometry — you could draw diagrams, solve problems, graphically, it was easy. In Algebra 2 w/trig, the emphasis shifted to the Cartesian coordinate grid and all of a sudden, you could draw pictures of equations, even of whole systems of equations — and Trig was all triangles and circles. I aced Algebra 2. The teacher couldn’t believe it was the same kid.

  49. 49.

    Brachiator

    Via Scientific American, a behavioral ecologist and a psychiatrist suggest that a major depressive incident may make people better able to solve complex problems and social dilemmas.

    Interesting and provocative, but flawed research. Evolutionary psychologists typically make the error of trying to find an unambiguously positive reason why a trait persists. They seem uncomfortable with the idea that some evolutionary outcomes may produce negative trade-offs.

    For example, sickle cell trait appears to confer some immunity against malaria, but can come with health problems. Full on sickle cell kills you, so sickle cell trait is clearly preferable to death, so much so that the African sickle cell gene can be found in some people in Portugal who are otherwise “white.” Their ancestors, who lived in areas of Portugal with malaria, had children with African slaves. The beneficial sickle cell gene gave them a reproductive advantage.

    Some people I know who have battled depression appear to break down problems into components. The only problem is that they don’t break them down in order to solve them, rather each component becomes a new stumbling block, and soon they are overwhelmed not with one big problem but with hundreds of smaller ones.

    Still, this research is very promising, and with some cautions, may lead to fruitful treatment for depression.

  51. 51.

    Betsy

    It’s like saying a schizophrenic should pay close attention to the voices.

    Ha!! I love this. I confess to having a knee-jerk reaction to a lot of this, since my partner’s major depression has made both our lives infinitely harder (his more than mine, of course). I actually do agree that therapists should help the patient address any external problems that they’re dealing with too; that can only help. But that’s different from saying depression is what happens when you need to do some deep thinking. Again, maybe it’s the dif between major and minor – NO ONE could ever confuse what my partner has with just being “blue” or angsty about the universe or anything like that. When it gets really bad, he can barely function.

  52. 52.

    Betsy

    Also, this:
    Some people I know who have battled depression appear to break down problems into components. The only problem is that they don’t break them down in order to solve them, rather each component becomes a new stumbling block, and soon they are overwhelmed not with one big problem but with hundreds of smaller ones.

    This is *exactly* what happens with my partner. You describe it perfectly.

  54. 54.

    Chad N Freude

    Another quote from the article:

    When scientists have compared the composition of the functional part rat 5HT1A receptor to that of humans, it is 99 percent similar, which suggests that it is so important that natural selection has preserved it.

    You know, like the appendix. For an apparently legitimate scholarly take on this idea, look at this. Short version: Stuff hangs around after it is no longer evolutionarily useful, like the vestigial appendix (which exists in other mammals besides humans), “the wings of the ostrich and the eyes of blind cavefish”. Money quote:

    Vestiges can be functional, and speculative arguments against vestiges based upon their possible functions completely miss the point.

    Vestiges can be functional, and speculative arguments against vestiges based upon their possible functions completely miss the point.

    I think the authors need to go back to the drawing board, or the lab table, or the dorm room, or wherever they do their reasoning.

  57. 57.

    ellaesther

    I’ve been deeply depressed about Israel/Palestine since September 2000, and yet for all my endless, ceaseless, pitiless ruminations, I have not yet broken the problem down in a way that will allow me to solve it.

    Well, no, that’s not quite right: I have. End the occupation, remove most of the settlements, establish a strong, durable Palestine, and share Jerusalem as the capital city of both peoples. FIXT!

    But I’m still depressed because my ruminations have not led me to cracking the code on how to convince my (Israeli) people of my superior wisdom.

    (Sorry. I know depression is no joke, not even a black joke about bloody political conflict. I’m just doing some I/P writing right now and my mind is stuck. Sorry. Carry on…).

  58. 58.

    wasabi gasp

    @smiley: I smoked tons of pot while running the math in college, not so much because I was a big head, which I was, but because the math would flatten the high lickety-split. My wallet wasn’t very good with that math.

  59. 59.

    Chad N Freude

    @Brachiator:

    Still, this research is very promising, and with some cautions, may lead to fruitful treatment for depression.

    Maybe. I should read the actual paper they’re talking about in the Sci Am article before reaching a conclusion, but the reasoning here is seems faulty.

    Re cautions: Over the past half-century, caution has not been a hallmark of psychotherapy. Primal scream therapy, transactional analysis, gestalt therapy, …

  60. 60.

    Xenos

    If analyzing how evolutionary processes may have resulted in depression being a common trait, the point should not be whether it is ‘adaptive’ to ancient or modern life, but if it effects reproductive fitness.

    Depression may very well have no direct effect on reproductive fitness, or may be a side effect of something very adaptive – such as the increasing cognitive abilities that have presented themselves in modern humans.

    I have noticed are that some optimistic friends of mine could have benefited from some depression rather than jumping from one hare-brained scheme to another.

  62. 62.

    General Winfield Stuck

    such as the increasing cognitive abilities that have presented themselves in modern humans.

    I got better after I stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb.

  64. 64.

    Brachiator

    @Chad N Freude:

    Maybe. I should read the actual paper they’re talking about in the Sci Am article before reaching a conclusion, but the reasoning here is seems faulty.

    I was being too kind to the article. It doesn’t clearly distinguish between clinical depression and “depressed mood states,” and then tries to hang an evolutionary explanation on too much. For example, some people can do “analytical rumination” without becoming depressed, so the authors confuse the behaviors that they believe are related to depression.

    I looked at some other abstracts, but haven’t had time to read the full article. But as a rule psychologists have generally been wrong when they jump to connecting genes to specific behaviors with the claim that “Evolution makes us do it.”

    The full article can be found here:

    http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&uid=2009-10379-009

  66. 66.

    Chad N Freude

    @Chad N Freude:
    Okay, that was unfair. I know at least one psychologist who is actually really good at psychology. But the profession as a whole has a history of charlatanry, ill-conceived and untestable theories, and good intentions gone wrong.

  67. 67.

    Porlock Hussein Junior

    Me, me! Fine book, and so is most of what Paulos has written. Highly recommended. Also, his book titled (approx) A Mathematician Plays the Market : outstanding, if by chance you’ve ever had the inclination to do that sort of thing.

    Funny thing is, I read the second book, with its good treatment of “indexing”, which is the effect of being convinced that the right value of something is what everybody says it is, regardless of evidence — I read it, quite by chance, in my hotel room when I was out of town to attend an auction, at which the point is to figure out what things are really worth, independent of the valuations that are forced on your attention. Got new insight, anyway, if not any new brilliant bargain purchases.

  68. 68.

    mclaren

    If this is true, I should have an IQ of about 900 by now. Every time I see another one of Obama’s betrayals of his campaign promises I get so depressed I want to lie down and die.

  69. 69.

    vacuumslayer

    @General Winfield Stuck: That was the first thing that popped into my head, too. I do think there’s something to it. I can imagine that people who view the world in black and white and never think too hard about anything would naturally be a bit happier.

  70. 70.

    Jen R

    @kommrade reproductive vigor:

    analysing shit that your brain is making up doesn’t help anything. It’s like saying a schizophrenic should pay close attention to the voices.

    Thank you.

    This is *just* what people with serious depression need — idiots coming along with their guessing-game “research” and giving more ammunition to the “just cheer up” brigade.

  71. 71.

    scarshapedstar

    Yeah, I spent my fourth and fifth semesters as an engineering student in horrible depression, and then I finally hit the solution: switch to biology!

  72. 72.

    Sirkowski

    I’m worse at math since I suffered from depression.

    I think this study is trying too hard to cherry-pick answers that fit their hypothesis.

  73. 73.

    Brian Griffin

    @kommrade reproductive vigor:

    well said. good commentary on this article here:
    http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2009/08/28/could-depression-be-natures-way-of-saying-think/

    Grohol politely calls bullshit. After watching my wife struggle with depression I find it difficult to be so polite. These guys apparently know nothing about depression, and the implication that it helps one to think is ludicrous.

    The problem with flimsy science like this is that it reinforces the anti-psychiatry viewpoint that depression should not be treated with drugs, when drugs may often be essential. Anti-psychiatry activists, (mostly, but not all of them scientologists) that have already picked up on this article and are using it to oppose the Mother’s Act currently before the Senate.

    As one of the commenters there notes:

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