Institute of Behavioral Science

Eight decades later, Marine (and distinguished professor) to revisit Iwo Jima

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 06:00:00 +0000

Eight decades later, Marine (and distinguished professor) to revisit Iwo Jima Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 11/01/2023 - 00:00

Clint Talbott

Richard Jessor, ��ƷSM��ӰƬ distinguished professor of behavioral science and co-founder of IBS, records an oral history with the National World War II Museum and will return to the island in March, on the 79^th anniversary of the battle

Because Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, Richard Jessor joined the U.S. Marines and went to war. But when he came face to face with the enemy—a dead Japanese soldier on the island of Iwo Jima—he again recharted his life, turning away from war and toward education.

Jessor will return to Iwo Jima in March to observe the 79^th anniversary of the battle, one of the fiercest and most famous of World War II. He will join the Reunion of Honor ceremony, held annually for veterans from the United States and Japan, “honoring their service and sacrifice and fostering peace” as former adversaries meet near the landing beaches.

“I don’t know how it will feel to be standing once again on the black sand of the landing beach almost 80 years later, but I know there will be tears,” Jessor said recently.

After four days of fighting, he and his company were pulled from the front line and allowed to write one letter. Jessor wrote to his parents. He thanked them for everything. And he said goodbye, writing: “I don’t think I’ll get off the island alive.”

As Veterans Day approached, Jessor spoke with this magazine about the indelible marks of war, his oral history interview with the National World War II Museum, his coming reunion with soldiers on both sides of the Iwo Jima battle and his disgust at leaders who blithely discuss war as an instrument of policy rather than a gruesome choice of last resort.

Jessor, who will turn 99 this month, is a distinguished professor emeritus of behavioral science at the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ. He served on the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ faculty for 70 years before retiring in 2021. He co-founded and later directed the university’s Institute of Behavioral Science, and he wrote an influential 1970 report on the lack of ethnic diversity on campus.

But in February 1945, he was a 20-year-old Marine. Before then, Jessor had little conception of who the Japanese people were. “It was only really after we got overseas on our training base and on Maui in the Hawaiian Islands” that he realized how many servicemen viewed the Japanese as the “Yellow Peril,” a prejudice Jessor recalls with “a great deal of dismay.”

That prejudice, he suggests, was a way to dehumanize America’s foes.

For weeks before invading, U.S. forces shelled and bombed Iwo Jima, hoping to weaken the Japanese fighters, many of whom were holed up in miles of tunnels underneath the island’s only promontory, Mount Suribachi.

At the top of the page: Richard Jessor in his Boulder home in 2021. ��ƷSM��ӰƬ photo by Glenn Asakawa. Above: Marines landing on the beach of Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945.

On the evening of Feb. 18, 1945, Jessor was with the Fourth Marine Division on a tank-landing ship when the crew was summoned to the deck. There, a Marine commander said, “Tomorrow night at this time, a lot of you are going to be dead.”

The shocking message might have been tempered by a belief that the fight would be easier or quicker than it actually would be. Iwo Jima comprised only 8 square miles, and the plan was for U.S. forces to conquer the island in three to five days, then sail off to invade Japan.

Things did not go according to plan. Fighting lasted 36 days.

Chaos and death

Jessor was in the fourth wave of Marines to land on Iwo Jima.

“Our tractor hit the beach and got stuck in the loose sand. We were sitting there, artillery shells exploding all around, and we were immobilized. And so, we began to just jump out of the rear of the tractor into the water, run around the vehicle and hit the beach.”

His first sight was a fellow Marine lying on his back, blood bubbling from his mouth, dying.

“That was my introduction to war,” he said.

Jessor was hit in the back by shrapnel during the first day ashore, but he was able to continue fighting. After four days of fighting, he and his company were pulled from the front line and allowed to write one letter. Jessor wrote to his parents. He thanked them for everything. And he said goodbye, writing:

“I don’t think I’ll get off the island alive.”

Back in battle, Marines were taking souvenirs from dead Japanese soldiers, and the Marines were particularly interested in Japanese “good luck flags,” which bore well wishes from friends and family and which were often tied around the soldiers’ waists.

Jessor remembers emerging from a foxhole one morning and seeing the body of a Japanese soldier. Jessor bent over to see if the man had a flag under his shirt.

“And as I’m bending over, I see that he has letters in a pocket on his shirt,” presumably from the man’s family. “I suddenly have this epiphany: I have letters in my pocket in my shirt.”

Richard Jessor (holding the Japanese "good luck flag") and 4th Marine Division buddies during the battle of Iwo Jima. Photo courtesy of Richard Jessor.

Like the soldier in Thomas Hardy’s “The Man He Killed,” Jessor felt their shared humanity.

“I was like, what are we doing here? What is this about? What difference could it make?”

At that time, Jessor notes, he had already said goodbye to his parents. He vowed never to go to war again, whatever the reason. “I made a personal resolve that I wanted to do something that made a difference. And that has really animated me from that time on.”

For the moment, though, Jessor was still in battle. He recalls that enemy fighters were always hidden. “You fired your weapon when you saw that something was being fired at you, but you didn’t see the enemy. You didn’t see Japanese soldiers. You went to an opening of a cave, and the guy with the (flamethrower) would point his weapon into the cave opening and just fire away, hoping to incinerate any occupants of the cave,” Jessor said.

“But the enemy was not personified in actual persons.”

A live Japanese soldier, a hopeful flag-raising

That changed for Jessor about 10 days after landing, when a Japanese prisoner was caught alive by Marines in the front line. No one on the front line spoke Japanese, and Jessor was ordered to take the prisoner, at gunpoint, back to the beach, more than a mile away, to headquarters and a translator.

As Jessor and his prisoner walked through the rear lines of Marines, who had never seen a live Japanese soldier, a Marine leapt up and exclaimed, “I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.”

"I had to point my rifle at that Marine and say, ‘I have orders to shoot anybody who touches my prisoner.’” The Marine relented. Another Marine made the same threat, and Jessor responded the same way.

“I think back on it now, and I don't really know whether I would have been able to do what I was ordered to do. And I'm afraid that I might have been able to do it, because that's what you were trained to do.”

Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press captured this iconic image of the flag-raising on Suribachi. Richard Jessor saw the flag from below and yelled to his colleagues, who were buoyed by the apparent milestone. The battle raged on for weeks longer, however.

Earlier, five days after the Marines landed, Jessor’s division was striving to reach higher ground on Iwo Jima. As he faced enemy forces with his rifle, “I happened to turn around and looked over my shoulder, and I saw the American flag on top of Suribachi.”

This is the flag-raising captured in an iconic image of World War II, by Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press. That picture won the Pulitzer Prize for photography in 1945 and inspired the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington County, Virginia.

In that moment, Jessor was stunned and started screaming, “The flag’s up! The flag’s up!”

The flag-raising was significant, because it meant that Jessor and his fellow Marines had their flank covered. “And it animated me to begin to feel that maybe we could make it,” he said. Jessor did survive, but the battle wasn’t done. Weeks of fighting lay ahead.

When the Marines finally did secure the island, “we knew that the battle was essentially over,” he recalled. The Marines were ordered to return to the landing beach.

“I remember coming to the beach and seeing this long array of crosses where the temporary burials of Marines were, and I still have that vision of seeing and knowing. It just filled your vision, the rows of crosses on from Blue Beach, all the way down the beach, and in that one vision, you encapsulated the cost of the war.”

Back to Maui

With Iwo Jima secured, the Marines sailed back to Maui to train for their next mission—the planned invasion of Japan. After training during the day, Jessor recalled, he and five other men in a tent would drink beer in the evening and “relive every inch of the battle of Iwo Jima.”

“Somebody would say, ‘You remember we were in this bomb crater, and it hit so-and-so, and his intestines hit so-and-so?’ And we went through every aspect of our experience on Iwo, reliving it night after night. And as a psychologist, I think of that as sort of being cathartic and getting things out of your subconscious.”

But one man in the tent, a young recruit who had not yet seen battle, had heard enough. “Finally, he exploded at us and said, ‘I’m sick of listening to the same s—t night after night. I’ve just had it!’”

I find myself so offended when I hear representatives in Congress or in government speak so casually about war … about using war as an instrument of policy.”

Jessor rose and gave the recruit a lecture. “I said, ‘You know, we're fighting for free speech, and nobody's going to tell me that they've had enough of our talking.’”

Jessor added, “I've been a professor for 70 years, but I guess I was a pedant even before I became a professor.” As it happens, Jessor soon forgot this episode but was reminded of it decades later, when a fellow Marine, Red Kelly, contacted Jessor.

Kelly, now deceased, had become an American history teacher in a Boston high school. “He said to me, ‘Every one of the students I’ve had over these years knows about Dick Jessor.’” Kelly had used Jessor’s lecture to illustrate “good wars and reasonable wars.”

Jessor also recalls being on Maui when the United States dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “We were thrilled. We thought it was a great thing,” he said. “This meant we wouldn’t have to go back into battle.”

The costs of war

However, “It wasn’t long after I got discharged before I realized that it was a horrendous event, the dropping of the bomb. I have come to the conclusion that it was unnecessary—even though most arguments are that it saved us further killing of Americans, in Japan this time. There were other ways of dealing with the emergence of a nuclear bomb.”

Interments of the 4th Marine Division on Iwo Jima. Suribachi is in the background. "It just filled your vision, the rows of crosses on from Blue Beach, all the way down the beach, and in that one vision, you encapsulated the cost of the war.”

He added: “I haven’t been able to resolve this. I can’t think of any war that I would support any more. And yet I supported the invasion of Europe and the attack on and the defeat of Nazi Germany—as a Jew, particularly, given the horrors of the Holocaust.”

There are times, Jessor said, when a nation must resort to making war on an enemy. “But the way I’ve resolved this in my own mind is there must always be some alternatives that would forestall what emerged.”

Jessor wishes more people, particularly those in power, shared his deep hesitation about war. “I find myself so offended when I hear representatives in Congress or in government speak so casually about war … about using war as an instrument of policy.”

“There is no real sense among so many who are in power about the absolute inhumanity of resorting to war and what it means, not just in the time of the events but in how it just continues its consequences,” shaping the lives of those who endured it, Jessor said.

His dismay about this is one reason he chose to do an oral history with the National World War II Museum, to further document the true face of war.

Meanwhile, he looks forward to traveling to Iwo Jima in March to commemorate the 79^th anniversary of the battle. He will travel with Jane Menken, a distinguished professor of sociology who succeeded Jessor as the director of the Institute of Behavioral Science. The two also happen to be married.

About meeting Japanese veterans of Iwo Jima, Jessor said, “I see myself embracing them. We are, as I think of it now, comrades.”

A vial of black sand from the beaches of Iwo Jima sits next to a disarmed Japanese hand grenade on Richard Jessor's desk. ��ƷSM��ӰƬ photo by Glenn Asakawa.

Learn more about Jessor’s time at and effect on ��ƷSM��ӰƬ in this short biography and at this link. Read his 1970 report on the lack of ethnic diversity at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ at this link. See the National World War II Museum’s news release about next year’s visit to Iwo Jima here.

Richard Jessor, ��ƷSM��ӰƬ distinguished professor of behavioral science and co-founder of IBS, records an oral history with the National World War II Museum and will return to the island in March, on the 79th anniversary of the battle.

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Workshop seeks to heal trauma by connecting individuals to their communities

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 19:26:43 +0000

Workshop seeks to heal trauma by connecting individuals to their communities Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 11/18/2021 - 12:26

Jaxon Parker

Upcoming workshop to address how individuals can heal their trauma, and the role of the community in preventing violence

On March 22, 2021, Boulder suffered one of the worst mass shootings to occur in the nation’s recent memory. The impact of the shooting at the Table Mesa King Soopers brought a profound wave of shock, anxiety and grief that reverberated across the city and the nation.

Colorado, like many cities across the United States, has seen a dramatic increase in violent crime in recent years. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting, violent crime across the country has risen by 5% in 2020, and in Colorado, the rate is slightly higher.

Trauma from witnessing violence can be isolating, leaving survivors feeling alone in dealing with recurring thoughts, memories and anxieties. But a workshop jointly hosted by the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ and Naropa University intends to facilitate healing from trauma caused by violence through repairing a sense of community connection and belonging.

“Healing Colorado’s Collective Trauma: Honoring Shared Loss and Promoting Resilience"

Date: Wed., Dec. 1 and Thurs., Dec. 2

Time: 9 to 11 a.m. Mountain Time

This event is free of charge.

The workshop, titled “Healing Colorado’s Collective Trauma: Honoring Shared Loss and Promoting Resilience,” is hosted by Beverly Kingston, director of ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence (CSPV) at the Institute of Behavioral Sciences and a senior research associate. It will take place virtually on Wednesday, Dec. 1 and Thursday, Dec. 2, from 9 to 11 a.m. Mountain Time. Those who wish to attend can RSVP here to reserve a spot. There is no cost to attend.

Kingston says the workshop, which is focused on healing from and preventing violence to help citizens expand their understanding of trauma and cultivate trauma-informed awareness, offers “an incredible opportunity (to) voice the pain we’ve all experienced from the violence in Colorado.”

“This is a chance for anyone who’s been impacted by violence, and who wants to make a difference in preventing future violence, to come together and learn some of these really great practices around how to heal, and how to… get into touch with parts of ourselves that may have been shut down” by trauma, Kingston says.

One result of trauma is a sense of disengagement and isolation from the community, Kingston says, which reflects broader social and cultural patterns that fail to actively prevent violence collectively.

At the CSPV, Kingston adds, researchers ask a critical question: “How do we prevent violence? We know lots of ways to prevent violence, (but) it’s really frustrating that what science says works is not really getting put into place. So, we ask ourselves, ‘why is that?’”

Kingston believes that one reason is the trauma of violence, in which feelings of numbness spread and propagate a “sense of apathy, like there’s nothing that can be done.”

Trauma can manifest in a myriad of ways, but common indicators of trauma include the feelings of being “shut down,” or even dissociation, where you feel like “you’re not in your body anymore.”

At the top of the page: A stone memorial for the ten victims of the King Soopers shooting earlier this year (Glenn Asakawa). Above: Thomas Hübl, a renowned teacher, author and international facilitator, will lead the workshop.

To address this sense of widespread apathy to violence, Kingston wanted to change how she and other experts approached violence prevention by engaging in practices that may help traumatized individuals and communities heal and build resilience.

These community-based practices for healing individual, generational and collective trauma are inspired by the work of Thomas Hübl, a renowned teacher, author and international facilitator who will lead the workshop. His teachings combine meditative practices of wisdom traditions with evidence-based research and modern sciences.

The workshop is also being hosted by Hübl’s non-profit organization, the Pocket Project, which focuses on examining the roots—and symptoms—of collective trauma throughout the world to promote greater healing.

Kingston believes Hübl’s work has helped how people around the world embrace community-centered practices for healing trauma. Kingston noted that Hübl’s work was widely received in Germany, where some communities still struggle with the residual traumas of the Holocaust.

“In communities that have experienced cycles of violence, it is critical that we attend to healing on both the individual and collective levels. In my work over the past 20 years in working with people who have lived through—or are descendants of—some of humanity’s worst atrocities, I’ve observed that critical steps in healing can take place as we learn to attune our nervous systems, practice self- and co-regulation, and experience the power of group resonance and coherence,” said Hübl.

Regina Smith, vice president of Mission, Culture, & Inclusive Community at Naropa and a workshop co-host, explains that “Naropa's mission is to unravel the conditions which create suffering. To do that, we must recognize that regardless of the manifestation of suffering—whether it be a personal loss, a traumatic event, or systemic oppression—we are all being impacted because we are intimately connected.”

“The Boulder shooting was yet another reminder of how intimately connected we actually are—we hope this collaboration, and Thomas Hubl’s work, will help us to recognize this connection and build our collective resiliency,” Smith says.

Kingston adds that, “we are living in a time that urgently needs new and innovative competencies and resources to support the well-being of our communities. Hübl’s work has been embraced by professors, physicians, psychologists and therapists with great acclaim throughout the world over the past 20 years, opening up new avenues for research.”

Beverly Kingston, director of ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence (CSPV) and a senior research associate, will host the upcoming workshop.

Hübl’s work include practices that are a form of mindfulness and meditation techniques where individuals sense their own bodies, emotions and thoughts, and then open themselves to others in the group.

“Hübl’s work is about us first coming into ourselves to be able to sense (ourselves)… they’re embodied practices focused on sensing, where you're feeling your physical self, feeling your emotional self, and becoming aware of your thoughts and asking, ‘Are these parts of myself in sync?’” Kingston says.

In groups of three at the workshop, individuals will have the opportunity to learn self-regulation, and then extend this practice to co-regulation, learning to “attune to one another” as well as the larger group. “He'll start to work with us on being able to sense the entire group, an exploration of what it means to experience coherence and synchrony as one ‘shared nervous system.’”

“We'll focus on what's arising from everyone in the group, and together, become present to ‘what is,’ not what we think the experience ‘should be.’ Whatever is emerging is the truth of that moment that needs to be seen and acknowledged,” Kingston notes. Workshop participants can engage as much or as little as is comfortable in the process.

A critical aspect to supporting the healing of trauma in the community setting, Kingston believes, is becoming more conscious of how communities are traumatized and fragmented through racism, poverty and other persistent social inequalities and injustices.

“To quote Peter Senge, who's a great (social) systems thinker, ‘In order to change the systems, we have to be able to see the systems.’ And so this is how healing trauma also helps us address the fragmentation at the more collective, societal level,” explains Kingston.

Repairing the relationship between traumatized individuals and the community, Kingston believes, will help communities become more conscious about systemic violence, which will then foster more collective action to counter the causes and effects of trauma.

Mark Wilding, director of PassageWorks Institute, a non-profit focused on supporting equitable classrooms and emotional learning between educators and students, is also partnering with ��ƷSM��ӰƬ and Naropa to promote this workshop.

“I believe that Healing Colorado’s Collective Trauma virtual workshop is happening at a critical time for our communities, our schools, and our organizations. Understanding how to recognize and respond to collective trauma is the most important challenge that we face personally, with family and friends and in our workplaces. Learning how to heal from traumatic experiences and events is essential to addressing racism and violence in Colorado,” Wilding says.

Kingston thinks it may take a long time before such a trauma-informed awareness becomes widely embraced. But Kingston believes that “it is possible to plant those seeds, to truly prevent violence, to truly start doing them now, even if it's going to take 500 years for these seeds to grow to fruition and to have the society we really want. Let's do it anyway.”

More information, including on how to register, is available on Naropa’s website

Upcoming workshop to address how individuals can heal their trauma, and the role of the community in preventing violence

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Sleep deficits linked to chronic cannabis use

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Aug 2021 19:12:10 +0000

Sleep deficits linked to chronic cannabis use Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 08/18/2021 - 13:12

Nicolette Edwards

Recent research from ��ƷSM��ӰƬ finds that, rather than help, frequent cannabis use could induce further sleep problems

For some, the drowsiness and relaxation that comes from marijuana use can be helpful for sleep. However, research from the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ suggests that this potential sleep aid could instead be an impediment.

This is one of the implications of the research of Evan Winiger (PhDPsych’21), whose doctoral dissertation shows evidence connecting frequent cannabis use with a range of early and late sleep problems—which is the first direct evidence of cannabis use and sleep’s shared genetic relationship.

At the top of the page: Cannabis plant growing under LED grow lights. Photo by Esteban Lopez on Unsplash. Above: Evan Winiger is a postdoctoral research fellow at University of Colorado Anschutz examining the relationships of cannabis and sleep.

“There’s a kind of big misconception in the role that cannabis can have as a sleep aid. We see some evidence that when you use it frequently and you use it early, it might be associated with long-lasting or some potential drastic effects on your sleep quality,” Winiger, now a postdoctoral research fellow at University of Colorado Anschutz, said.

When consuming marijuana, the plant’s tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)—or the substance that gets people high—and cannabidiol (CBD)—a chemical compound essential to many medical applications—are activated in the endocannabinoid system, an important bodily system for brain and nervous system function.

THC binds to CB1 and CB2 receptors, which are found in the nervous and immune systems, respectively. CB1 receptors, in particular, are thought to regulate sleep processes such as the sleep-wake cycle and seem to not be as successful with chronic cannabis use.

Furthermore, research has shown high-doses of CBD help sleep, but high-doses of THC seem to obstruct sleep.

“Our brain does a lot when we sleep: It repairs, organizes and consolidates memories. In terms of how cannabis influences sleep, very acute limited use has shown to help sleep, but when we see heavy chronic use, daily use, it’s associated with a host of sleep deficits, including insomnia, lower sleep duration, sleep-quality issues and longer sleep onset latency. It is thought that chronic or heavy use is associated with the desensitization of the CB1 receptors and CB1 activity and efficacy, which facilitates waking,” Winiger said.

Twin modeling was used in this collection of work, which allows researchers to look at biological twins to examine the degree to which genetic and environmental factors influence a trait or disorder, and is an initial step in pinpointing the genetic relationships.

Winiger and his team also utilized genomic methods to test many sleep traits and substance use traits to find significant genetic correlations.

Using a method called polygenic risk prediction, or a method to estimate an individual's lifetime genetic risk of disease, Winiger found that the genetics that potentially contribute to insomnia can also predict cannabis use traits such as age of first use and use behaviors.

Further application of genomic methods led Winiger to determine significant genetic correlations between lifetime cannabis use and evening chronotype (individual differences in sleep timing), as well as genetics links between cannabis use disorder and both short sleep duration and insomnia.

“If genetic variation accounts for the association (of cannabis and sleep), that then leads us to look at how genetic variants, such as in the endocannabinoid system, might affect sleep patterns; (how) genetic variants for sleep or circadian rhythms might influence propensity to use cannabis; or, indeed, whether some other system related to genetic determinants of impulsive behavior, for example, might influence both cannabis and sleep,” said John Hewitt, director of the Institute of Behavioral Genetics and professor of psychology and neuroscience.

Our brain does a lot when we sleep: It repairs, organizes and consolidates memories. In terms of how cannabis influences sleep, very acute limited use has shown to help sleep, but when we see heavy chronic use, daily use, it’s associated with a host of sleep deficits.”

“Motivated by the twin study results, Evan went on to also utilize genomic data to confirm these genetic associations.”

Along with the twin and genomic studies, Winiger also examined how cannabis use during pregnancy might affect sleep in children. The results suggest that general exposure to cannabis during pregnancy may be associated with childhood sleep deficits, which can lead to sleep disorders.

“The endocannabinoid system is very instrumental and operational in early pregnancy, and it holds a crucial role in both prenatal brain and embryonic development,” Winiger said. “The fetal brain is thought to be densely populated with CB1 receptors, and these escalate during gestation and are believed to actually impact brain development. So THC binds to these receptors and there's evidence that suggests it possibly alters neuro (brain) development.”

Winiger is continuing his research on cannabis and sleep with his current postdoc, looking at the further questions stemming from his dissertation.

“This body of work really is the first collected evidence of cannabis use having a genetic relationship with sleep deficit,” Winiger said.

Recent research from ��ƷSM��ӰƬ finds that, rather than help, frequent cannabis use could induce further sleep problems.

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Researchers pinpoint behaviors underlying gambling addiction

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 17:24:51 +0000

Researchers pinpoint behaviors underlying gambling addiction Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/05/2021 - 11:24

Nicolette Edwards

Before putting $20 down on the table, audit your mental health, researchers from the Institute of Behavioral Science suggest.

Gambling activities are more readily available than ever, but the availability could play into potential problem gambling and addiction based off one’s genetics, according to new research from the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ.

In a study published in Addictive Behaviors, the researchers found that individual’s genetics, psychiatric diagnoses and behaviors influence the frequency in which a they gamble, the specific activities they participate in, and the probability that they will develop problems with gambling.

Spencer Huggett is a postdoctoral fellow at Emory University and an author on the paper. He is also a postdocral trainee at the Insitute of Behavioral Genetics.

Gambling addiction affects roughly two million people per year and yet much about what causes the addiction to arise is relatively unknown given the complexity of the data. This new research, though, provides some insight on the relationship of genetics and addiction.

"The types of gambling that you do and your current mental health matters, and how much you gamble all depends on whether you develop problematic outcomes from it," Spencer Huggett, (PhDPsych’19), a postdoctoral fellow at Emory University and an author on the paper, said.

“Certain people are more prone to develop problems gambling and/or to engage in certain types of gambling than others,” he said.

Huggett and Evan Winiger (PhDPsych’21), the study’s co-author and a postdoctoral fellow at Anschutz Medical Campus, were roommates as they both pursued their doctorates in behavioral, psychiatric and statistical genetics. Winiger studied cannabis and Huggett, studied cocaine. Through living under the same roof, scientific, technical and philosophical conversations on addiction and genetics ensued. One of these conversations led them to asking questions about gambling and its addictive properties.

“We hypothesized that there’s going to be some common feature to all types of gambling from playing poker and betting on slot machines to buying lottery tickets and day trading in the stock market. Although we did not think this would fully recapitulate the complexities and nuances across all forms of gambling,”. Huggett said. “We thus set out to study clusters of gambling behavior — particularly those involving an element of ‘skill’ — to investigate and characterize the developmental pathways of gambling behavior.”

Evan Winiger is the study’s co-author and a postdoctoral fellow at Anschutz Medical Campus researching cannabis and sleep.

To assess these potential phenomena, they utilized the Institute of Behavioral Genetics’ library of complex datasets and pulled the large twin and sibling sets. The sibling sample was selected based on externalizing behaviors, and the twin sample provided a general population overview. They used multi-dimensional statistical techniques on a sample of 2,116 twins and 619 siblings to understand the structure, typology and etiology of gambling frequency.

“This study is a genetically informed evaluation of different gambling profiles,” Winiger said. “There’s some research out there trying to categorize different kinds of gamblers, and our study is kind of another approach showing this might be a different way to look at these different subgroups as well as how certain classes or subgroups might correlate with various mental health or substance use.”

Their study identifies four gambling subtypes distinguished by their gambling behavioral profiles (or how often they gambled). According to the study, the gambling subtypes with the highest rates of psychiatric disorders had approximately two to six times higher rates of problem gambling than those with lower rates of mental illness. Genetics play an important role in the development of gambling behavior, the researchers said, noting that the gambling subtypes with highest rates of problem gambling were strongly predicted by genetic factors. The individual’s mental health, genetic risk plus their gambling behavioral profiles determined whether or not problematic gambling behaviors would arise, the researchers found.

The study also found that individuals participating in common gambling activities such as betting on slots, playing dice and buying lottery tickets were more likely to lead to problem gambling than gambling with a perceived element of skill gambling such as day trading and playing pool for money.

Huggett and Winiger applied the Pathways Model, an established model within gambling research that determines problem and pathological gamblers, which defines three possible pathways that individuals begin to experience problems with gambling. The three pathways are behaviorally conditioned problem gamblers, emotionally vulnerable problem gamblers, and antisocial impulsivity problem gamblers.

“What we really wanted to understand was, ‘is there a profile of certain gambling activities that clusters into broader mental health subtypes?’” Huggett said “We did find evidence that this was the case. Certain types of gamblers based off of the activities that they prefer tended to mimic some of these more popular pathways to gambling addiction.”

In the discussion of the study, the researchers mention that their examination of personality disorders and gambling should be approached with caution due to the wide spectrum of gambling activities and behaviors. This study does, though, supports the connection between genetics to personality disorders and gambling addiction.

“This is an extremely big pie of mental illness and gambling and the thing that we did was the smallest little sliver,” Huggett said. “We wanted to shed light in that pie so we can have a better understanding and hopefully use this information to tailor more proactive approaches and potentially tailored treatment profiles to the individual.”

Before putting $20 down on the table, audit your mental health, researchers from the Institute of Behavioral Science suggest.

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Shocked by battle of Iwo Jima, young scholar vowed to make a difference

Anonymous — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 14:25:28 +0000

Shocked by battle of Iwo Jima, young scholar vowed to make a difference Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 07/30/2021 - 08:25

Clint Talbott

Richard Jessor, distinguished professor of behavioral science and co-founder of IBS, retires after 70 years of service to ��ƷSM��ӰƬ

Three sentinels watch over Richard Jessor’s desk: a disarmed Japanese hand grenade, a vial of Iwo Jima’s sand and a Purple Heart medallion.

They signify Jessor’s 28 days as a U.S. Marine on the island of Iwo Jima in World War II. And they foreshadow his decades as a pioneering professor at the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ.

Now 96, Jessor retired in June. He is the longest-serving faculty member in ��ƷSM��ӰƬ history, having taken his first position here, as assistant professor of psychology, in 1951.

During the ensuing 70 years, he co-founded and later directed the Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS), became a distinguished professor and conducted pioneering research that laid the foundation for Problem Behavior Theory.

Along the way, he played key roles in pivotal times: He wrote an influential report on the lack of ethnic diversity on campus, and he found himself in the eye of a storm of campus unrest in the 1960s.

But all of that came after Iwo Jima.

A vial of black sand from the beaches of Iwo Jima sits next to a disarmed Japanese hand grenade on Richard Jessor's desk. ��ƷSM��ӰƬ photo by Glenn Asakawa.

With the financial help of his family, which was “really quite poor,” Jessor was studying at the College of the City of New York in 1943. There, he enlisted in the U.S. Marines, which sent him to Yale University. From Yale, he went to war.

Jessor was in the fourth wave of Marines to land on Iwo Jima, which the Japanese had heavily fortified. Jessor leapt from the landing craft, which was stuck in volcanic sand and under merciless artillery fire. His first sight was a fellow Marine, lying on his back, blood bubbling from his mouth.

“That was my introduction to war,” Jessor said.

After four days of fighting, he and his company were pulled from the front line and allowed to write one letter. Jessor wrote his parents. He thanked them for everything. And he said goodbye. “I don’t think I’ll get off the island alive,” he wrote.

Back in battle, other Marines were taking souvenirs from dead Japanese soldiers, and the Marines were particularly interested in Japanese flags, which were often tied around the soldiers’ waists.

Jessor remembers emerging from his foxhole one morning and seeing the body of a Japanese soldier nearby. Jessor bent over to see if the man had a flag under his shirt.

“And as I’m bending over, I see that he has letters in a pocket on his shirt,” presumably from the man’s family. “I suddenly have this epiphany: I have letters in my pocket in my shirt.”

Richard Jessor (holding the Japanese flag) and 4th Marine Division buddies on Iwo Jima. Photo courtesy of Richard Jessor.

“I was like, what are we doing here? What is this about? What difference could it make?”

Jessor kept that resolve.

Returning to America, and academics

After the war, Jessor earned his bachelor’s degree from Yale in 1946, his master’s at Columbia University in 1947, and his PhD from Ohio State University in 1951. Jessor focused on clinical psychology.

Victor Raimy, a psychologist who moved from Ohio State to Boulder, invited Jessor to join the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ faculty as part of its clinical-psychology unit. Jessor was hired by Karl Muenzinger, who was then chair of the psychology department and whose namesake building on campus houses the department today.

As Jessor describes it, he worked in that area for several years, until he decided that, “I couldn’t change the world one person at a time.”

He sought opportunities to undertake “large-scale community research on important social problems.” One way to accomplish this, he reasoned, was to capitalize on the synergy of scholars from different disciplines working together to understand complex problems.

To catalyze such research, Jessor and a colleague co-founded the Institute of Behavioral Science in 1957. The institute champions interdisciplinary, collaborative work to understand complex social behaviors, employing researchers from social and behavioral sciences.

Jessor and a colleague pitched the idea of IBS to the CU president, Ward Darley, in 1956. At the time of their meeting, Darley was sick and in bed at the president’s home, which is now the Koenig Alumni Center on campus.

Once they found the president’s bedroom, Darley asked them, “What do you boys want?” Standing by his bedside, “We laid out our proposal in some detail, after which he said he approved and that we should proceed with our plans,” Jessor recalled.

Later, Jessor led a research project in the small Colorado town of Ignacio, then home to about 3,000 people. Working with interdisciplinary researchers, Jessor and colleagues set out to understand why different ethnic groups had different rates of excessive alcohol use and “other forms of deviant behavior.”

I made a personal resolve that I wanted to do something that made a difference. And that has really animated me from that time on."

The result was Jessor’s first book, published in 1968, Society, Personality, and Deviant Behavior: A Study of a Tri-Ethnic Community. In the journal Social Sciences Review, a colleague of Jessor’s hailed the work as a “truly pioneering effort in the field of interdisciplinary behavioral research.”

That work laid the foundation for what later became Problem Behavior Theory, which has been described as a way of predicting the likelihood that adolescents will engage in unconventional or deviant behavior, both in their youth and later in life.

It also buttressed Jessor’s academic career, during which he wrote or edited more than 140 publications, including 13 books. He has been named a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Web of Science, which is a designation reserved for researchers who are ranked in the top 1% of citations (which are a measure of academic influence).

He served as the director of IBS’s Research Program on Problem Behavior from 1966-1997 and as the IBS director from 1980-2001. Additionally, he’s won a host of fellowships and awards and was named a distinguished professor of behavioral science in 2005.

Through it all, Jessor remained committed to interdisciplinary research, which can be seen as a buzzword now and, Jessor said, was a buzzword in the 1950s. He noted that what some view as interdisciplinary work could be as simple as publishing a book in which one chapter is written by an economist, another by a psychologist, a third by a sociologist and so on.

Richard Jessor, at his desk. Behind him are photos from his mountaineering expeditions, which he continued until the age of 85, along with eight caps and medals for completing the New York Marathon, eight years in a row, beginning when he was 65. ��ƷSM��ӰƬ photo by Glenn Asakawa.

In such cases, Jessor said, the scholars are doing what they would normally do: work within the confines of their own disciplines. He distinguishes that approach from “true interdisciplinarity,” which he describes as “a conceptual framework that borrows concepts from multiple disciplines and organizes them in a coherent way.”

He noted that his landmark research in Ignacio, Colorado, exemplified this approach. “It showed me that you could do hard-headed social science in the actual communities in which those problems reside.”

Life on campus and beyond

Jessor was also an important actor in key chapters in the university history.

For instance, in 1970, Jessor chaired a CU Faculty Council committee charged with studying the marked absence of non-white students on the Boulder campus.

Jessor wrote the committee’s report, “Equality of Educational Opportunity and the University of Colorado.” Later known as the Jessor Report, the document noted the “bleak fact” that “access to colleges and universities has been open only in a token sense to youth who belong to America’s main minority groups.”

The Jessor Report marked the beginning of the university’s attempts to improve access to higher education. It was cited in ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s 2019 Inclusion, Diversity, and Excellence in Academics Plan.

Jessor noted that the university still grapples with issues he raised in 1970. “I wrote about the fact that faculty don’t feel comfortable moving to Boulder because it’s all white, and what we have to do is make provisions for housing our faculty here” so non-white faculty can have a community in Boulder instead of commuting to Denver.

Earlier, Jessor played a key role in helping the university understand campus unrest. In the late 1960s, former CU President Joseph Smiley appointed Jessor to his Commission on the Academic Community, which was charged with examining the causes of student unrest.

After a year-long investigation, Jessor wrote the commission’s “Report to the President,” which found a widespread animosity among students, faculty and staff to the CU Board of Regents. The report noted that some viewed the regents as the enemy of the university.

The late Joseph Coors, then a regent, took exception to the report and confronted Jessor as the professor sat at a table in the University Memorial Center. Jessor recalled that Coors, who was quite tall, was “towering above me and shaking his finger at me, and saying, ‘Professor Jessor, you have just damaged the university.’”

Outside of academic life, Jessor has been physically active for decades. He credits mountain climbing with helping to keep him at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ even when other universities made enticing offers to leave.

Jessor has joined mountaineering expeditions and summited peaks in South America and the Himalayas. He describes climbing as “multi-dimensional,” challenging and a good way to approach aging.

He summited Peru’s Ishinca Peak, which is 18,200 feet, at the age of 80, and he continued climbing until he was 85.

I wanted to be in the world in full possession of who I was not just cognitively, but physically. And so part of it was, ‘How do I age and, and remain in charge of this last part of my life trajectory.’"

“I wanted to be in the world in full possession of who I was not just cognitively, but physically. And so part of it was, ‘How do I age and, and remain in charge of this last part of my life trajectory.’”

He continued: “I wanted it to be interesting, challenging: that is, a continuation of how I lived earlier parts of my life, rather than a transformation into sedentariness.”

Jessor ran his first New York Marathon at age 65, then ran it each year for the next seven years.

He has also bicycled extensively with Jane Menken, a distinguished professor of sociology who succeeded Jessor as IBS director. The two distinguished professors are also married.

Last year, at 95, Jessor gave up cycling because he was less sure of his balance. The idea of winding up in the hospital with a fracture was not appealing, he said. Still, his outlook remains positive.

He recalls Iwo Jima and says the experience probably strengthened him in ways that he’s not totally aware of.

“I sometimes actually verbalize it: If I could get through Iwo, well, I can get through anything.”

Richard Jessor, distinguished professor of behavioral science and co-founder of IBS, retires after 70 years of service to ��ƷSM��ӰƬ.

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Prof seeks avalanche of ideas to help prevent disaster

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Dec 2020 21:21:39 +0000

Prof seeks avalanche of ideas to help prevent disaster Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 12/14/2020 - 14:21

Clay Bonnyman Evans

��ƷSM��ӰƬ Natural Hazards Center calls for 1,000 letters to inform Biden transition team on how to respond to hazards, disasters

The transition team for the incoming presidential administration of Joseph R. Biden recently sent an email to institutions around the nation, seeking input and names of experts in four key priority areas—the COVID-19 pandemic, economic recovery, racial equity and climate change.

“So many names came to my mind in all four areas,” said Lori Peek, professor of sociology and director of the Natural Hazards Center in the Institute of Behavioral Science at the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ. The priorities “really cross-cut the work that people in the hazards and disaster field do.”

At the top of the page: Fires in Pine Gulch and Eldorado Canyon have filled the air in Boulder, lending sunsets and sunrises with an eerie color. Taken August 27, 2020. Photo by Jeff Mitton.
Above: Lori Peek

The Natural Hazards Center is a National Science Foundation-designated information clearinghouse for the societal dimensions of hazards and disasters. Founded in 1976 by the late Professor of Geography Gilbert F. White, the center is dedicated to reducing disaster harm through sharing information, connecting researchers, producing novel research and training, and mentoring the next generation of professionals.

Recognizing how many ideas are out there, Peek conceived the One Thousand Letters Project, inviting the people in the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ community and far beyond to compose 500-word letters to the transition team, to “share your vision for how we can work together to ultimately reduce the enormous harm and suffering caused by disasters, while identifying practical steps that will help move the vision forward.”

“I just want to share the expertise that I know exists here at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ, but also across the nation,” Peek said. “During this time of transition, it just seemed like our scientific and civic duty.”

Anyone interested in submitting a letter, including students, should send it to 1000Letters@colorado.edu by no later than Tuesday, Dec. 15. The team at the center will read and compile letters and submit to the Biden transition team. Anonymous letters will be accepted, and authors will not be identified without permission, Peek said in her call for contributions.

She’s heard through the grapevine of larger institutions that the transition team is serious about soliciting information from a wide range of sources, even if they won’t necessarily read each and every letter.

“They are just processing so much information, getting ready to take over the administration of a massive federal infrastructure. I know the likelihood of them sitting down over the next 60 days and reading them all isn’t high,” Peek said with a laugh.

“But I am synthesizing all that we are receiving into a high-level memo for the transition team, and the letters are important symbolically. A thousand voices don’t even begin to capture the size of the natural hazards and disaster research and management community.”

The Natural Hazards Center has been extremely busy over the past year, not just with its response to COVID-19, but also several destructive hurricanes and a ferocious wildfire season.

It is going to take all of our science and best practices to turn the tide of rising hazards losses."

The center’s CONVERGE facility put out a special call for grant proposals for COVID-19-related research in the spring, providing $1,000 grants to 90 working groups encompassing some 1,200 people in social and behavioral sciences around the world. Peek says the center expects to announce the names of grantees from a second round of associated COVID-19 funding before the end of the year.

Peek experienced disaster up close and personally herself when she and her husband had to evacuate their home when the Cal-Wood Fire raged out of control Oct. 17, eventually destroying some 26 homes and more than 10,000 acres in the foothills and mountains northwest of Boulder. She wrote about her experience in a recent article, imploring others to prepare for the worst.

“I’m looking out my window right now at the burn scar from the fire,” Peek says during a phone interview.

The recent brush with disaster has only deepened her sense of urgency to act in the face of widespread disaster losses.

“It is going to take all of our science and best practices to turn the tide of rising hazards losses,” she wrote in her call for letters. “May we listen to and learn from one another and act together as we imagine new possibilities for a just and sustainable future.”

��ƷSM��ӰƬ Natural Hazards Center calls for 1,000 letters to inform Biden transition team on how to respond to hazards, disasters.

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��ƷSM��ӰƬ research to focus on often-overlooked rural America

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Oct 2019 17:01:54 +0000

��ƷSM��ӰƬ research to focus on often-overlooked rural America Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/04/2019 - 11:01

Kenna Bruner

Researchers' goal is to develop the first systematic understanding of the sociodemographic and economic characteristics and patterns of change in small rural places over time

With more Americans living in big cities, we’ve learned a great deal about the country’s urban places, thanks to a wealth of publicly available data. Much less is known about the country’s small places.

Contemporary rural America has been called a landscape of despair with what some call stunning divides between rural and urban places.

Two multi-university grants have been awarded from the National Institutes of Health to the CU Population Center (CUPC) in the Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS). A $450,000, two-year project will focus on learning about and understanding the small towns, villages and cities in the U.S. with populations of fewer than 2,500 residents. A $1.7 million five-year project will fund an interdisciplinary network of researchers focusing on rural health and aging.

Lori Hunter

These two exploratory projects break new ground with national focus on rural communities and their residents.

Understanding the dynamics of small rural places

The team of researchers on this project includes lead investigator Lori Hunter, professor and chair of the sociology department and CUPC director; Myron Gutmann, professor and IBS director; Dylan Connor, assistant professor in the School of Geographical Sciences & Urban Planning at Arizona State University; Catherine Talbot, graduate student in sociology; Stefan Leyk, associate professor in geography; and Johannes Uhl, postdoctoral researcher in CUPC.

“We call this team effort the Tiny Town Project,” Hunter said. “What is exciting about this project is the focus on the tiny towns themselves. A lot of rural demography or studies of rural communities examine counties at the national scale, so you lose this focus on the small place itself. These tiny communities are the least well represented in research.”

Over the next two years, the team will compare small rural places with other, slightly larger rural communities with populations from 2,500 to 19,999 residents during the 1980-2010 period to better understand the place-based distinctions that must inform policy.

The last nationwide examination that focused on small rural places was published more than 30 years ago. More precise information and analysis on small-town America is crucial for policymakers. Filling knowledge gaps is a central part of this work’s significance.

The team will pull together existing data, such as the different kinds of census data and information from sources like the National Parks Service, health services, etc.

Hunter uses a Boulder County analogy to explain that a study at the county level doesn’t give a clear enough picture of individual towns. Within Boulder County are cities that range in size from Boulder, with 107,000 residents, to Ward, home to 155 people.

“There’s not a lot of information on these little places. If you don’t know what’s been happening in Ward and small towns like Ward, for example, how are you going to develop policies that are appropriate for them?”

“There’s not a lot of information on these little places,” she said. “If you don’t know what’s been happening in Ward and small towns like Ward, for example, how are you going to develop policies that are appropriate for them?”

Among the burdens on rural America are significantly poorer public health, higher incidents of teen pregnancy, lower education levels and higher prescription rates for narcotics. The team’s goal is to develop the first systematic understanding of the sociodemographic and economic characteristics and patterns of change in small rural places from 1980 to 2010.

“There are tiny places in the country that have lost population, but they’ve stayed around,” Hunter said. “There are some places that have actually grown. And then there are others that have simply disappeared. What is it about these places that puts them on particular trajectories? What is it that predicts relative levels of success? These are the questions that motivated this work—what is going on in these little places? We really don’t know.”

Understanding trends in small places is essential for developing place-appropriate policies because continuing urbanization has yielded urban-centric policy that downplays processes that are critically important to small towns.

The team will focus on three goals, including development of a place-based dataset, identification of pathways of change for small towns from 1980-2010, and then linking this understanding to health outcomes.

This project will lay the foundation for a larger scale project that would include conducting qualitative research by talking to people in small towns.

“These little places have tended historically to be bundled in with places that are not like them,” Hunter said. ‘We’re trying to make them more visible.”

Investigating rural health and aging trends

Led by Penn State, the project will build on a USDA-supported multistate research project involving a group of demographers studying rural people and places to create and support a network devoted to better understanding the problems of health and aging in rural America. In addition to Penn State, key institutional partners are ��ƷSM��ӰƬ, Syracuse University and the University of Mississippi.

Hunter is co-principal investigator on this project.

The newly established Interdisciplinary Network on Rural Population Health and Aging will identify gaps, stimulate new research and develop and disseminate training materials, and data and analytic resources to better understand rural health, aging trends and the factors affecting these trends.

Rural America the focus of two new projects funded by the National Institutes of Health and U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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Evidence of climate-driven conflicts is piling up

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 23:26:19 +0000

Evidence of climate-driven conflicts is piling up Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/18/2019 - 17:26

Lisa Marshall

Climate has played a small but important role in fueling civil wars and other conflicts, researchers find

On a sweltering July afternoon in the remote village of Daaba in Northern Kenya, ��ƷSM��ӰƬ Geography Professor John O’Loughlin was stood up by a tribal chief.

John O'Loughlin

O’Loughlin and his colleagues had driven for hours along dusty roads in the drought-ravaged region to interview the local leader about if, and how, climate change is impacting violence levels there. The moment they pulled up, they got some answers.

“We were told he’d been gone three days,” O’Loughlin recalls, describing how 30 raiders had swept through the village earlier that week, stealing 100 head of cattle and prompting the chief and an armed party to go after them. “My guess is, if they caught up with them, it ended in violence.”

The recent, mid-summer raid in Daaba is among countless small-scale clashes igniting across the African continent and elsewhere around the world as shifting rainfall patterns, rising temperatures, natural disasters and other climatic shifts help push simmering ethnic, religious and political tensions to a violent boiling point.

Climate change is not, in and of itself a risk, but it works through other risks creating a multiplier effect."

In recent decades, climate-related factors have played a small but important role in fueling civil wars and other armed conflicts, influencing between 3% and 20% globally, according to a June study co-authored by O’Loughlin and published in the journal Nature. But with global temperatures projected to rise 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit by centuries end (in the absence of substantial greenhouse gas emission reductions) one in four armed conflicts will soon be a result of a changing climate, the paper suggests.

“These will be the wars of the future,” says O’Loughlin, a researcher with the Institute for Behavioral Science and a leading scholar in the study of so-called “climate wars.”

“I have done dozens of interviews with local elders in Africa and there is a general sense that, while they have managed to share resources and cooperate so far, it is getting harder and harder to keep a lid on the violence due to climate change.”

The final spark

The link between climate change and armed conflict has been hotly disputed. Some scholars have pointed to conflicts in Syria and Darfur (Sudan) as quintessential climate wars fueled by drought-sparked migration. Others, including O’Loughlin, have been more skeptical in the past, pointing to corrupt regimes, poverty and ethnic and religious differences as the primary culprits.

But the new Nature paper—a Stanford-led collaboration between 11 experts from political science, economics, environmental science, peace studies and other disciplines—marks a newfound consensus on the matter. It’s bottom line: Yes, climate change helps fuel violent conflict, and it’s poised to get worse.

“Climate change is not, in and of itself a risk, but it works through other risks creating a multiplier effect,” O’Loughlin says.

He still believes that things like unstable government, vast economic inequalities within societies and a history of violence are all bigger and more certain drivers of conflict.

But as he has seen firsthand through his field research, piling drought or flooding or loss of crops—and the suffering that results—on top of those vulnerabilities can push things over the edge, leading more young men in particular to take up arms.

A young girl stands amid the freshly made graves of 70 children, many of whom died of malnutrition, in Dadaab, a refugee camp in Kenya. Children have walked for weeks across the desert to get to Dadaab, and many perish on the way. Others have died shortly after arrival. Photo: Andy Hall/Oxfam

In one study, O’Loughlin found that when temperatures rose two standard deviations higher than the long-term average in a region—roughly 2 degrees F for a place like Kenya—violent conflict soared by 30%.

Migration also plays a role. As water sources dry up, and people relocate to find sustenance for animals and fertile ground for crops, they are often met with resistance from those already strapped for resources. In one 2018 study, O’Loughlin and colleagues found that Kenyans who relocated temporarily due to drought were three times more likely to be subjected to violence.

“There are expected to be huge migration outflows from areas that are strongly affected by climate change. Some places will frankly be unlivable,” he says.

Already, such factors are fueling bloody clashes between roaming cattle herders and farmers. In Nigeria alone, according to Amnesty International, more than 2,000 people were killed in such conflicts in 2018.

There are expected to be huge migration outflows from areas that are strongly affected by climate change. Some places will frankly be unlivable.”

“That’s more people than were killed by the terrorist group Boko Haram, but you rarely hear about this in the news,” notes O’Loughlin.

He recently spent several weeks in Northern Kenya with Anthropology Professor Terry McCabe and graduate student Sarah Posner, interviewing tribal leaders and kicking off a new study in which he will use cell phones to survey 500 locals every two months for a year about how shifting weather patterns are impacting their livelihood and exposure to violence.

When he first arrived in the study area of Isiolo, he spotted newspaper headline that read “2 million people at immediate risk of starvation.”

“Pasture-lands are drying up, people are hungry, and raiders are stealing from their neighbors,” he said. “Everyone is worried about climate change.”

In addition to a vast humanitarian toll, the looming threat of climate wars could present a global security risk, he adds, as beleaguered young men in drought or flood-stricken areas grow more tempted to join militant groups.

But he believes many of these scenarios can be prevented through investments in things like crop insurance, post-harvest storage facilities and more resilient water systems in regions hit hard by shifting weather patterns.

Now that there is some long-awaited consensus around the issue, he hopes policy makers will take notice.

“The question now is: To what degree will the developed world ignore this issue and to what degree will it get involved?”

Climate has played a small but important role in fueling civil wars and other conflicts, ��ƷSM��ӰƬ and other researchers find.

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The tragedy of the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 20:28:13 +0000

The tragedy of the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/19/2019 - 13:28

Lisa Marshall

On the 50^thanniversary of Garrett Hardin’s influential essay about the 'freedom to breed,' the director of the CU Population Center contends he missed the mark

“Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all.”

The ominous statement reads more like a line from a dystopian novel than a peer-reviewed journal article. But it is, in fact, the punch-line of one of the most influential scientific essays to date.

Published in Science in December 1968 by the late University of California ecologist Garrett Hardin, the 6,000-word Tragedy of the Commons has been cited more than 38,000 times and informed policies on everything from climate change to intellectual property to digital content.

Lori Mae Hunter

Its bold assertion that, left unchecked, population growth will inevitably outpace the earth’s resources helped ignite a zero-population fervor in the 1970s, was often used to justify China’s now-defunct one-child policy, and is still conjured today in op-eds about immigration, Front Range overpopulation and fertility planning in the developing world.

But on the 50^thanniversary of its publication, a new ��ƷSM��ӰƬ-led paper published this month in the journal Nature Sustainability argues that Hardin’s theories about overpopulation were “simplistic” and “underdeveloped” and run the risk of leading to ill-informed policy.

“Pointing fingers at people who live in Tanzania and have large families or people who migrate here from elsewhere is not going to solve our environmental problems,” contends lead author Lori Mae Hunter, director of the CU Population Center at the Institute of Behavioral Science.

“It distracts us from looking at the way we live our own lives, our own consumption patterns and the way we build our own transportation and energy systems.”

Selfish herdsmen, a growing flock, and climate change

Hardin’s parable centers around a flock of hypothetical herdsman who, if given access to a communal pasture, will increase their herd size until they collectively degrade the pasture. “Ultimately, the commons collapses, hence the tragedy,” summarizes Hunter, who also chairs the sociology department.

The metaphor is most often conjured in the context of environmental protection: The global atmosphere is the “commons.” Owned by no one, used by everyone, and left unregulated it, like the pasture, is doomed to be overexploited and ruined.

Hardin’s parable centers around a flock of hypothetical herdsman who, if given access to a communal pasture, will increase their herd size until they collectively degrade the pasture. “Ultimately, the commons collapses, hence the tragedy,” summarizes Hunter.

That prediction has been debated for years, with one challenger, the late Elinor Ostrom, winning a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her elucidation of a more optimistic real-life scenario—one in which small communities around the globe have managed to devise ways to successfully manage common resources like grazing land, forests and irrigation waters.

But Hardin’s second argument—the overpopulation argument—has not received the same critical attention.

That’s the task that Hunter and co-author Aseem Prakash, a political scientist at University of Washington, set out to do.

“It’s time to move past Hardinesque population alarmism … in order to develop better-informed policy,” they write.

Relinquishing the freedom to breed

In his essay, Hardin bluntly applies the “tragedy of the commons” idea to parenting, suggesting that the availability of food and other resources as part of the “welfare state” drives people to procreate and overpopulate:

“If each human family were dependent only on its own resources; if the children of improvident parents starved to death; if, thus, overbreeding brought its own punishment to the germ line—then there would be no public interest in controlling the breeding of families. But our society is deeply committed to the welfare state,” he wrote. His solution: Mandated population control:

“The only way we can preserve and nurture other and more precious freedoms is by relinquishing the freedom to breed.”

That argument had ripple effects, notes Prakash, indirectly fueling heated arguments within the Sierra Club over whether population control, including stronger checks against U.S. immigration, should be a central pillar of their environmental agenda. (It is not).

We would not argue that population doesn’t matter at all when it comes to the environment. Of course it matters. But simply pointing a finger at others and saying you shouldn’t be here obscures all the other things we should be thinking about.”

“Even today, with all the discussions of the border wall, in the back of the mind is Hardin’s overpopulation thesis again. That if you have too many resources, people will in-migrate and procreate,” said Prakash. “What we are pointing out is that is much more complex than that.”

They note that while the birth rate in the United States is at its lowest in 30 years, 51 percent of people here still believe the population is growing too fast.

Meanwhile, they add, in the places where the population is truly growing rapidly, carbon emissions per capita are minuscule compared to those in the West. For instance, U.S. residents emit 16.49 tons per capita in carbon emissions, while in Tanzania, per capita emissions run around 0.22 tons.

The complex reasons women get pregnant, or don’t

While Hardin drew a simple conclusion—that availability of resources drives procreation—Prakash and Hunter also point to a complex web of factors, including social values, cultural norms and local reproductive health policies, that contribute to family planning.

For instance, in Nepal, where resources are scarce, women tend to want to have more children to help them to gather those resources—such as firewood and food for their animals.

In Rwanda, which had notoriously high fertility levels prior to 2005, fertility rates have declined a stunning 25 percent—from 6.1 to 4.6 children per woman—not due to a shrinking of the “welfare state” but due to a national prioritization of family planning and a greater exposure to mass media, which shifted male attitudes about birth control. Together, that led to a huge boost in contraceptive use.

“People don’t just procreate because they know they can feed their family,” says Prakash. “We shouldn’t take these simplistic notions—a la Hardin—and use them to support misinformed policies.”

Instead, he and Hunter suggest, policymakers and others concerned about overpopulation should consider the key role sociocultural factors can play in fertility decisions and take steps to empower women to control their own family planning.

And when it comes to the environment, they argue, they should stop pointing fingers at large families, and take a close look at their own house.

“We would not argue that population doesn’t matter at all when it comes to the environment. Of course it matters,” said Hunter. “But simply pointing a finger at others and saying you shouldn’t be here obscures all the other things we should be thinking about.”

On the 50th anniversary of Garrett Hardin’s influential essay, the director of the CU Population Center contends he missed the mark.

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To confront wildfire risk, experts get social

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Apr 2018 21:19:13 +0000

To confront wildfire risk, experts get social Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/09/2018 - 15:19

Cay Leytham-Powell

The WiRē team—a group of wildfire practitioners and researchers, including some from the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ—is working across Colorado to better understand the human role in local wildfire mitigation

For the community of Mountain Village in southwestern Colorado, it was all about the trees.

Anything that involved cutting down trees was a non-starter for this picturesque community near Telluride, according to the town council’s understanding at the time. Residents just weren't willing to get rid of them, they argued, even to reduce wildfire risk. A group of researchers and wildfire practitioners—or the Wildfire Research (WiRē) team—however, saw this challenge as an opportunity to do things a little bit different.

The team—which includes sociologists, economists and wildfire mitigation specialists (or wildfire practitioners) with ties both to the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ and federal agencies throughout Colorado—surveyed local residents and quickly disproved the conventional wisdom. In fact, 77 percent of Mountain Village respondents reported being willing to remove their trees to reduce wildfire risk and help protect their homes.

With data in hand, a member of the WiRē team and the director of a regional wildfire organization, Lilia Falk (Geog'10) of the West Region Wildfire Council, went to the town council and showed them that not only were a majority of respondents willing to remove trees to reduce wildfire risk, but that they felt there were both perceived barriers and distinct motivations for completing this work.

Mountain Village, much like other mountain communities throughout Colorado, was struggling to reconcile two apparently competing goals: making itself safer from wildfire while also preserving the beauty that draws many of its residents. And it is this tension, that while wildfire is a natural phenomenon, learning to live with wildfire is social—and social solutions are also needed to save lives and property—that the WiRē team hopes to address.

"As a nation, we're spending a lot of time, money and resources suppressing fires—especially fires that threaten homes and communities. But the human condition is such that humans choose to build in those areas. Humans choose. So, just the concept that, yes, it is a hazardous fuels issue, yes, it is a structure issue, but its first and foremost a social issue that needs to be addressed," said Falk.

Learning how to not only prepare for wildfires, but also live alongside them, is a difficult task, and one that the WiRē team hopes to help residents living in the wildland-urban interface—the transitional area between vegetation and homes—overcome through a combination of social science research and on-the-ground work, all to create more wildfire adapted communities.

Yes, it is a hazardous fuels issue. Yes, it is a structure issue. But its first and foremost a social issue that needs to be addressed"

They accomplish this through the systematic collection of household data via surveys. The team then pairs those data with parcel-by-parcel wildfire risk assessments, which are completed by professional wildfire mitigation specialists. From there, the team’s researchers analyze the findings and generate reports about the community and their relationship to wildfire, including residents’ risk perception, wildfire experience and their opinions of wildfire and mitigation work.

These reports, and the data within them, are then used by the team to craft useful products for the practitioners, including presentations, infographics and story synopses to help facilitate community conversations, and help expand the social science literature around wildfire adaptation and mitigation.

The collaboration, though, doesn’t end there. The researchers and practitioners use this as a jumping off point, continuing to work together to figure out how they can fine tune their research questions and create new programs aimed at improving wildfire preparedness.

Thus far, the team has collected data from roughly 80 communities across Colorado and has garnered about 6,000 risk assessment observations, predominantly in southwest and southcentral Colorado, with no plans of stopping.

One way they're expanding their work is by creating the WiRē Center—a non-profit outgrowth of the team. The center looks to help garner resources to further the goals of the group and to support more research-practitioner partnerships across Colorado and beyond.

This multi-faceted approach is especially important as wildfires grow in size and intensity, and more people move into the wildland-urban interface.

Wildfires are usually approached in the United States with a focus on mitigation (attempting to reduce the damage or risk of wildfires), and suppression (putting a fire out when it does occur). Homeowners and landowners are often encouraged to take care of their own property to reduce wildfire risk, but often they lack the specific information concerning how to do it, or to what extent they need to take action.

And often, according to Hannah Brenkert-Smith (PhD, Soc'08) of the WiRē team, wildfire management policies try to be a one-size-fits-all approach, which doesn’t necessarily work.

"A common limitation we see is not that homeowners don’t know their homes are at risk of wildfire—they're often quite aware of that in a general sense—but where some of the information disconnect comes in is that people don't necessarily know the specifics," said James Meldrum (PhD, EnvSt'12), a research economist with the U.S. Geological Survey who is a member of the WiRē team, and, formerly, a research associate with the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ's Institute of Behavioral Science. "They might be taking action such as creating defensible space around their home, but they might not be doing it to the level that the practitioner would want them to be doing, or that would be as effective as it could be."

"We're seeing that providing that information really makes a difference."

Hannah Brenkert-Smith is an environmental sociologist and research faculty with the Environment and Society program at the Institute of Behavioral Science. Photo courtesy of Hannah Brenkert-Smith/��ƷSM��ӰƬ.

Beyond just a lack of information, another barrier to mitigation efforts is the sheer initial cost of the endeavor. Research shows, however, that for every dollar invested in mitigation before a big wildfire disaster, society saves $4 in suppression costs when the wildfire burns.

"We believe that if more investment happens in the upfront side of things, supporting community risk reduction, that we can reduce impacts in local communities from major wildfires," said Brenkert-Smith, an environmental sociologist and research faculty with the Environment and Society program at the Institute of Behavioral Science. "But at this point in time, the machine to respond to fires is so big and so hungry that there are few dollars left to put on this front-end piece."

"And so, what we're trying to do is create a way—a systematic way—of investing dollars so that when wildfire programs and practices are underway, that they’re efficient, they’re tracking what works, and they're responding to the local context."

One way that the WiRē team is attempting to create this systematic approach differently is by incorporating wildfire practitioners into their work and research from the very beginning of the process.

The practitioners work directly with homeowners to make sure that they’re informed, their homes are safe, and that any potential destruction on their homes or property is mitigated. These mitigation efforts include creating defensible space (or the buffer between a home and the forest around it), hardening a home (adding building materials that are more fire resistant), and introducing fire-resistant landscaping. But, they can also include outreach and working with the community directly.

Historically, practitioners have worked in their own silos, separate from the research conducted on mitigation and suppression. What the WiRē team provides is a different, data-driven, people-driven approach that improves efficiency.

And the partnership between the researchers and practitioners is something that both groups appreciate.

For the West Region Wildfire Council, a nonprofit group that works with the WiRē team in Gunnison, Hinsdale, Delta, Montrose, Ouray and San Miguel counties, that has definitely been the case.

"Having that information provided by the WiRē approach has absolutely been critical to the evolution and efficacy of our programs," said Falk, who is also a member of the WiRē team. "We've been able to infuse that information into our programs, think critically, modify and change over time."

That appreciation holds true for the researchers as well: "It's really been pretty inspiring working with the practitioners so closely," said Meldrum. "It's been a pretty incredible opportunity to be able to work with such forward thinking and innovative people who very much care about the problem. Everyone really does give 110 percent."

This innovative approach, and how well it has worked, has spurred the group to get the message out for other potential researcher-practitioner partnerships, and one way they are doing that is through newly released outreach videos on their website. The videos each emphasize a different aspect of the WiRē team and WiRē Center’s collaborative approach to the social side of wildfire.

The first video, "An Innovative Approach to Understanding Communities," introduces the WiRē team, and provides an overview of how they're helping communities adapt.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2fYBOsk4Qg]

The second, "Applying the WiRē Approach," delves into the WiRē team's process of pairing social data from residents living in the wildland urban interface with local wildfire risk data.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa6VCmDHHfw]

Finally, the third video, "Becoming More Fire Adapted Through Better Understanding of the Community," describes WiRē's method of working with at risk communities to tailor their efforts for specific needs, resulting in increased wildfire education and adaptation.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awNcG8D2V3o]

"Something that we really tried to emphasize in these videos is the process of understanding a community in detail and working to see how to use that understanding to improve the engagement of the community in becoming more fire adapted," said Meldrum.

"We hope these videos can convey that message and encourage other places to take this approach."

Brenkert-Smith agrees, "Our intent really was to tell people our story about how research and practice don’t have to live in separate worlds, and how we’ve managed to join together in a collaborative effort that really challenges the way things usually get done."

"And part of this is try to say, 'We have something. It's real. It's working.'"

The WiRē Center and team are looking to expand beyond just their current areas to Grand County, Colo., and central Washington.

"We directly have data on 80 communities right now, and that’s growing," commented Brenkert-Smith.

"It's really exciting because the practitioners that we’ve been working with, and even those we’ve just had conversations with, lament that sometimes they steer their programs to respond to the vocal community members who have really strong opinions about how things should be done or shouldn’t be done. But, what we've learned is that sometimes those voices don’t actually represent the majority of the people in their communities."

"So, there's a feeling that things can change because of this process."

If you are interested in working with the WiRē Center, supporting their efforts or learning more about their services, you can contact them on their website.

The header photo is by Stuart Palley/Flickr.

A team of wildfire practitioners and researchers—including some from the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ—is working across Colorado to better understand the human role in local wildfire mitigation.

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