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Rejection Makes You Dumb
photozz writes: "Just when I was looking for more reasons to hate the girls that dumped me in high school, this article at NewScientist explains how studies have shown that rejection actualy makes you dumb. From the article: 'Rejection can dramatically reduce a person's IQ and their ability to reason analytically.'"
In other news, wearing plaid may cause sterile pregnancy among young virgin schoolgirls.
Seriously, I can attest to the 'rejected people tend to be more violent and aggressive', because I am grossly violent and aggressive (I actually factor in 'destroyed gadgets' into my monthly budget).
Am I dumber than I used to be ? Well yes, but not because of being turned down once too many. The brain is like a muscle, keep it in shape and it will work well. Let it sleep for a few years and it will become a lump of silly-putty. Being rejected often will make you depressive. Being depressed will put you and your brain to sleep for prolonged periods. So by the time you crawl out of your darkness, BAM! you're a retard. You need to get those neurons back into shape, to restore your former I.Q.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
...but i can actually vouch for this, a girl put me down right before a maths test, i pretty much stuff that one over. finally someone has proven what i've known for years, i think its more psychological though, because you start to believe you just suck at it all and you don't have as much confidence, etc.
Assuming this is true, it is interesting to think of what might be the evolutionary advantage for this.
For example, humans go unconscious seemingly just when we need our minds the most. If the body or brain receives trauma, we loose the capacity to fight the cause of trauma. This does not seem to be to our advantage. But the brain shuts down for only one reason: lack of cooling capacity.
The most processor intensive task the brain has is consciousness. The difference between consciousness and unconsciousness is 15 watts of heat. Shock id caused by a partial loss in cooling capacity caused by blood loss or dehydration. So, when we loose blood or receive a head injury, causing the body to reduce blood flow to the head to reduce aggravation of a bruising condition, we loose consciousness.
While unconscious, we remain combative. We have reptilian response that does not shut down. We still swallow and can place one foot in front of the other as these functions are controlled by the lizard brain and brain stem.
Cut circulation to the arm and it falls asleep due to lack of oxygen in about two minutes. Cut the blood flow to the head and we loose consciousness in as little as 3 seconds not because there is no oxygen but because the body shuts the brain down to prevent overheating.
So the seemingly illogical response of loss of consciousness just when we need it most is in fact a life saving measure. So, that begs the question: What do we gain by becoming stupid and aggressive when rejected? A "sober" man rejected by a woman does not procreate. A "drunk" man rejected by a woman might create the opportunity to procreate by force. A "sober" woman rejected will not procreate. A "drunk" woman rejected might become promiscuous.
Basically anyone rejected will lower his or her standards for the next opportunity to procreate. We hardly needed a study to tell us this is true.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Pardon the vague and slightly inaccurate subject line; let me explain. I had not heard of this study on "rejection", but (according to a documentary I saw on the BBC) it has been found that sustained terror can result in atrophy of the hippocampus, a part of your brain that is essential to memory formation.
A neurologist had remarked that some Vietnam veterans could remember the war as vividly as if it had just happened and yet they could not tell you what they had for breakfast, so it occurred to him to perform a scan of such a man's brain -- which revealed the aforementioned atrophy. The mechanism associating trauma and atrophy is complex, and I am not a medical doctor, but I'll do my best to give a fair account.
Upon detecting an environmental stimulus for which the autonomic nervous system "knows" a response, the pertinent series of chemical changes is unleashed immediately; after your brain deciphers the stimulus/stimuli and associates it/them with an event (or fails to do so) further changes in your body chemistry may be unleashed which (depending on the case) either enhance or inhibit the already deployed response of the autonomic nervous system.
If you were hiding in the thickets and you heard shots being fired nearby, your so-called limbic system would (correctly) identify an imminent threat and tell the autonomic nervous system to put you in a "fight or flight" physiological state, which might make you breath more heavily or even want to start running; because the behaviours that might follow naturally from this physiological state would further endanger your life, the prefrontal cortex (the cognitive/executive part of your brain) will cause the glands under its control to exert the physiological equivalent of an "equal and opposite force" as quickly as possible.
When the alternative is death, that kind of internal struggle can be good for you -- but the repeated incidence of this physiological tug of war on glands and, ultimately, your brain, can cause structural damage that could be permanent. This is especially true if the brain is still in a stage of rapid development, as in the case of a child, or if the (mature) individual is experiencing a physiological state that makes him especially vulnerable.
Given that an agile and robust memory is an important asset in problem solving, that memory formation is a physiological phenomenon, and that the faculty of memory is therefore vulnerable to prolonged psychological trauma, I am not surprised to learn (as this latest study seems to claim) that an unabatable feeling of being rejected by important elements in our social context may have the unfortunate neurophysiological impact of diminishing our mental faculties.