By Kristine Keller

Downtown dating is like the root canal process—painful while you’re going through it but the end result leaves your sensory nerves feelin’ good. And sadly, there’s no quickie fix for that painful pearly white procedure. There is, on the other hand, a fast way to land suitors in the date-o-sphere, which is why a bevy of singletons have discovered the allure of speed dating. Like most first conversations, speed daters might ask “so, what do you value most in a relationship?” to which a secure person might respond “honesty and loyalty.” There are those who take a different approach in their answer: “I value a partner who calls and texts 20 times a day, Instagrams a picture of me and my dog in the morning, faxes me at night, and pins my face all over his Pinterest in the afternoon.” Reeling from that, the person sitting across might then snap fast and yell “NEXT!”

During a recent speed dating exercise, psychologists noted that a process known as attachment could explain interactions of this sort. Attachment theory maintains that a relationship with one’s caregiver early on in life largely determines one’s social and developmental upbringing. Those raised in reliably nurturing environments with caregivers who responded to their every need grow up “securely attached.” When these infants were hungry, they were fed; when they cried, they were shown consistent care and attention. As a byproduct, these infants grew into secure and trusting adults. The kind of adult you want sitting across from you during a lighting fire round of “How many times do you expect your boyfriend or girlfriend to call you in a day?”

Those raised under the roof of unpredictable caregivers who exhibited inconsistent care might become “anxious-ambivalent attached” adults. These children came from caregivers who were at times interested and warm, but then unavailable and distant. We have these unpredictable caregivers to blame for the stage-five clinger. Anxious-ambivalent adults are excessively needy, clingy, and constantly need validation and approval from others. They also demand constant communication with their honey for fear of abandonment—and aren’t afraid to be upfront about it during first rounds of speed dating.

Lastly, there’s the “avoidant attached” person, whose caregiver rarely responded to their distressed calls and ignored their needs entirely as infants. It’s the avoidant adult who eschews intimacy entirely due to failing to form an emotional bond with one’s caregiver early in life. It’s also the avoidant-attached person who is at risk for developing severe interpersonal problems, like lack of empathy, callous, unemotional responses and other psychopathic symptoms. A caregiver’s sensitive and responsive nature towards children serves as a model for empathy in a healthy reciprocal relationship. Without this model, children who didn’t form a secure attachment with their caregiver fail to develop the skills for a healthy functioning relationship. This person might be cold and aloof at a speed-dating jaunt having only shown up at the coercive prodding of pushy friends.

When it comes to these speed-dating soirees, NYC daters are quite savvy and intuitive when making judgment calls. Those deemed “securely” attached adults by psychologists were more favorably rated by potential suitors. Unsurprisingly, those categorized as insecurely attached were given poorer marks. The good news is that these styles of attachment can change depending on our interpersonal experiences in life. Just as a bad breakup might make a securely attached dater turn anxious-ambivalent, a positive experience could turn an avoidant-adult into a diehard romantic. And lucky for us—it’s easier to change an insecure style into one that’s secure than vice-versa. So daters of every attached-type, take heart—we’re never done evolving and changing. And eventually one of these quickie-dating episodes will blossom into a longer-term affair and if anything, that’s something everyone can feel security from.

Kristine received her master’s in psychology from NYU. She currently works at Vanity Fair. E-mail her at StreetShrinkNYC@gmail.com for questions.

By Kristine Keller

There are times when you’re playing back a situation in your mind and a split screen appears. On one side of the screen there’s reality—the version of events that actually happened. But it’s the second screen we zero in on in high-definition, with surround sound and unequivocal certainty— the twisted version of reality. When the aloof waitress pours your coffee only halfway and then throws your check on the table with steely eyes, you’re convinced she’s a moody person all the time. Or when your loved one comes home and offers a curt “hi” before shutting himself away, you think he’s mad at you.

It’s easy to delve into the muddled inner corridors of our minds and jump to irrational conclusions. Our brains have innumerable associations to make every day at extraordinary energetic costs. We find ways to maximize our cerebral energy, and sometimes the result is making hasty judgments and associations. Sometimes these quick associations are helpful—there’s no need to re-evaluate your stance on Chris Brown (blech) or Beyoncé (goddess)—but when doing so, we must aim for being a truthful and insightful observer of others’ behaviors, rather than misrepresenting actions that falsify reality.

The most prominent exaggerated thoughts can make us irrational, illogical creatures, one snapchat away from sending our best friend a selfie sad face. This past weekend, these fallacious thoughts took the cerebral stage when I offered to dispense advice to a friend trapped in text banter purgatory. “She doesn’t like me anymore,” he moaned. “Her replies went from sexy paragraphs to the equivalent of a verbal lobotomy.” I rolled up my sleeves and consoled him: “Maybe she lost her job this week. Maybe she’s got a thorny family problem. You don’t know what kind of cross she’s bearing right now.”

I’ve been on that sinking armchair before, and this propitiating advice is unsatisfying or ignored 90 percent of the time. My friend committed a common cognitive distortion known as the Fundamental Attribution Error. This is the tendency for us to attribute internal, intrinsic motivations to the behaviors of others, while minimizing the impact of external situations. These situations may be unpredictable and leave us, at best, a little snippy, and at worst, on the floor in shambles, foaming at the mouth with tequila and chipotle. In tandem, we’re prone to personalizing these situations and led to thinking their acts are a direct reflection of how other people feel about us.

After erroneously underestimating the impact of external situations, your mind might amble to a related cognitive distortion, all-or-nothing thinking, which goes something like this: He didn’t text me back, and it’s been two hours, so he’s never going to text me again and this will always happen in my life. Before you weep into your hands and curse the sky, relax. Turns out, his dad was just kidnapped on the L train by a belligerent goon on the lam. Your sometimes-boy has got bigger fish to fry, so you have to cut him some slack for his lack of emoji-cyber reciprocation. The “never” and “always” extreme labels that we generalize from one situation leave us unable to see anything in shades of gray.

When trying to decipher the veracity behind others’ actions, we only have the information presented before us, especially when evaluating the actions of strangers. But in focusing solely on internal characteristics to make sense of brusque behavior or confusing commentary, we often deceive ourselves. We can remedy this by engaging in mindful empathy, and imagining the manifold reasons that could have contributed to someone’s ill-perceived behavior. Taking a second to think about the kind of day your waitress or loved one had before personalizing actions can keep these distortions in check and our negative conclusions to a minimum. Maybe then we can merge our split screens into one and have a better viewing experience all around.

Kristine Keller

I am rational. I am a woman of reason. I operate in life under a series of principles ardently rooted in reality. When a rainbow’s colors paint the sky, there’s no luck or gold for me, only tiny water droplets in the air reflecting light as the sun shines behind me at the right angle. A shooting star is merely a meteor splattered across the sky, not the force that will cause me to Freaky Friday-life-swap with Jessica Biel. And yet, I’m a slave to superstition. If I’m wearing what I’ve dubbed my good luck bangle, I’ll make myself believe I’ll be discovered while eating Belgian fries at Pommes Frites and subsequently cast in a Quentin Tarantino movie … or, at the very least, as an extra who can snack at the craft services table. That’s how destiny unfurled for Gisele, they say. Just luck of the jewels.

And when I inevitably lose that bangle, my good luck earring (just the right one) will have to act as my new fortune supplier. Wearing these items certainly can’t be the cause of good fortune hitherto experienced, but the idea of facing the world without a talisman makes me feel like I’m in that nightmare where I’m on the 6 train. Naked. Next to Jay-Z. On a day he decides to freestyle-rap about his fellow subway passengers.

So, what is it about superstition that takes firm hold of this scientific being? During my journey on the supernatural stair-master, I visited a place where dreams are discovered and materialized. Where superstition is housed and nurtured. And I don’t mean Broadway’s revival of Ghost. I’m talking about a place down with the tarot cards and up with the spirits: downtown’s finest psychic. With the new year hitting soon, my craving for life’s answers has left me salivating more than Pavlov’s dog. I don’t care about the “why” but mull over answers to three meta W’s—what will I accomplish, who will be the important players in my life, and when, when, when does it all happen? A psychic offers us that quick fix, like a shot of hope in our insatiably inquisitive veins.

When I entered behind the prophet’s swanky beaded curtain, I was greeted with one sentence: “I can feel your energy from the streets!” But, I’d have to soft-pedal that energy and eagerness, given that I could only ask one magic question. Amid the glow of the iridescent chandelier and tabletop crystal ball, I asked: What will be my greatest accomplishment in 2013?

After a swift shuffle and deal, my psychic’s tarot cards revealed that this would be the year I follow a lifelong dream. I was told the dream exists outside the realm of friendship and family and that if I wanted it to happen, I’d have to open myself up more. Upon leaving I couldn’t help smile at the thrill of uncovering something new and different in 2013. Though always guessing what’s in store for your future is as futile as trying to predict where the subway door will open, there is something to be said about thinking about goals. And whether it’s someone or some good-luck charm that can facilitate realizing your goals and believing they can happen, perhaps there’s room for a science-and-sorcery civil union. In fact, psychological studies have consistently shown that those who engage in good-luck rituals actually perform better in goal-related tasks than those who don’t. Activating superstitions boosts belief in yourself, raising levels of self-efficacy and, as a result, confidence. It might not be that your running shoes are lucky, but if you wholly believe they are, this could be the reason you’re sprinting like Usain Bolt. So, if an everlasting dream really is in my New Year cards, I’ll have to do as my teller of fortune divines and say yes to every opportunity. And with that advice reverberating in my mind, I have no choice but to call the acting class number taped to a Prince Street bulletin. It’s lucky 2013, and anything is possible.

Kristine received her master’s in
psychology from New York University.
She currently works at Vanity Fair.

Kristine Keller

She found me in a muddled mess on my floor, panic rolling over me like a suitcase with a broken wheel on cobblestone. Pretty soon I was gasping for breath like someone who’s just climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, unprepared for the rarefied air and devoid of an oxygen mask. “What is it, what’s happened?” my roommate shouted. “Those Sarah McLachlan animal cruelty commercials get me every time!” I wailed.

Though it’s tempting to mock me for my mawkish tears, there is a (somewhat) logical explanation for the hysteria: empathy. The ability to put oneself in another’s shoes is considered one of the most fundamental components of moral emotion. In fact, empathetic responses have been observed in those as young as two days of age. Infants have responded to other infants’ distress signals by crying, responding the only way their minuscule selves can to another’s discomfort. With this and other experiments, evolutionary and neuroscience perspectives have supported the notion that a biological predisposition exists for empathetic responses. These reactions begin in infancy and continue into childhood, whereby at 2 or 3 years of age, children routinely respond with genuine concern at the sign of another’s agitation.

These empathetic signals develop into full-blown responses as our cognitive capacity burgeons with age. Eventually, adults form two types of empathy: affective and cognitive. Affective empathy is the ability to directly feel what another is feeling; when you cry, I cry. On the other side of the coin is cognitive empathy, the ability to describe the emotions of another in words. While a normal functioning adult develops a cohesive combination of both, interestingly, those who commit highly aggressive acts and are subject to psychopathic tendencies have a strong deficit in affective empathy, while their cognitive empathy remains intact. These perpetrators have been described as someone who knows the “words” of emotions but fails to learn the “music.” This ability for cognitive empathy also supports why those who rank high on psychopathic clinical checklists are able to speak with confident glibness when detailing the reasons that you’re upset, but are unable to endure this emotion themselves.

Other evidence for empathetic responses has been supported by findings from mirror neuron systems. First observed in rhesus macaque monkeys, mirror neuron findings have been extended and studied in humans. While conclusive explanations are in nascent stages, investigators like Dr. Cecilia Heyes maintain that a special network of neurons exists that fire not only when you yourself grasp an object, like when you pick up a glass of orange juice, but also when you observe another person pick up a glass. In short, our neurons match the observed and executed behaviors of others. This finding has spilled into studies of empathy where our mirror neurons fire when we observe another person scared or crying. Mirror neurons help elucidate why you viscerally share the stress and agony of a player taking a foul shot during a tied basketball game in the fourth quarter. Different theories have been put forth, but proponents of natural selection assert that we inherit mirror neurons because they enable us to understand the intentions of others, an integral ingredient for a steaming hot pot of survival and happiness.

Sometimes a collective chorus of critics share their ideas of what New York is like. They say New Yorkers are cold, unforgiving or quarrelsome. Or that we just don’t have the time and avert eye contact in fear that it might slow us down on the way to our daily hunt of shooting dreams and catching opportunities when they fall prey. But, I’ve observed a lion’s share of empathetic interactions, and I believe the empathetic muscle is one that can be honed and toned. I’ve witnessed many give up their seats on crowded subways to impending mothers with bulbous bellies and elderly New Yorkers whose feet are tired from having pounded the pavement from Washington Square Park to Times Square for so long. I’ve exchanged smiles and tears and knowing glances with those next to me in coffee shops and street corners. And, in a place teeming with strangers who lack a genetic motive to help others through altruistic acts, an explanation is that empathy exists in some form. Empathy is circling us, and if we can exercise and flex it, we’ll all be in better shape.