Welcome to “From Insults to Respect.” Today we spend a little time on the topic of being gullible. We begin with a parable that illustrates someone who is acting gullible. Then we sift through a research article that deepens our understanding of this topic. Our goal throughout is to guide the gullible people we care about toward more discerning ways.
A Short Parable
The scene, the offices of a large import, export business. Alice and Jill have just left their desks to go to lunch.
“Did you hear the big news!” Alice whispers excitedly. “Trish from sales and her boss, Ralph, are having an affair!”
“Is that so, Alice?” says Jill doubtfully. She knows Trish and her husband for a few years now and judging from their apparent warm, loving relationship, Jill is somewhat skeptical of Alice’s pronouncement.
“Oh, yeah,” replies Alice. “I heard it from Margaret. Her desk is right next to Trish’s.”
“From Margaret, hmmm. What exactly did Margaret see that makes her so sure about this?”
“Well, I don’t know, but I’m sure she wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true.”
“Wasn’t it Margaret who was telling everyone last month that Pete was going to be fired and he ended up getting promoted?”
“Well, gee, Jill, anyone can make a mistake. But don’t forget, she was right when she told everyone that they were going to hire another secretary in Accounting.”
“So, Alice, that seems to mean that sometimes Margaret is right and sometimes she’s wrong.”
Now the two ladies reach the lunch cafeteria, with its rich aroma of coffee, and the clattering of dishes.
“There’s Margaret over there,” says Jill, and she hurries over to her, with Alice following close behind.
Margaret, with her curly blond hair and bright blue eyes, is just opening up a brown paper bag with her baloney sandwich inside when Jill arrives by her side.
“Hi Margaret,” says Jill. “I’d like to have a word with you in private for a few seconds if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, sure,” says Margaret, and the three ladies go off into a hallway where no one else is around.
“Alice just told me you told her Trish and Ralph are having an affair,” says Jill. “What exactly did you see that made you conclude this?”
“Yipes, I think I screwed up on that one,” replies Margaret. “You see, I saw them in an embrace and then the way they smiled at each other afterwards, it was pretty clear they were in a secret relationship. But it now turns out that the both of them were working on a huge China deal worth over seven million dollars, and they had heard that it was going to go through, though the papers weren’t signed yet, so they had to keep it secret. So, the embrace was probably them just being thrilled when they heard that news. This morning, just a few minutes ago in fact, the papers were signed, so everyone began embracing one another now that it’s out in the open and Sales is throwing a big celebration after work over at O’Henry’s Bar. We ought to go.”
“Great!” says Jill. “There will be bonuses for the whole team! But putting that aside, Margaret, I’m hoping you make sure you tell everyone you told about this so-called love affair that it’s not true. You can really hurt someone by spreading rumors like that, and if the boss found out about it, you can even get yourself fired.”
“Oh, you are so right, Jill!” Margaret exclaims.
Parable Discussion
Here we see that Alice assumes that what Margaret tells her is true without first finding out any details of how her informant, Margaret, has come by her information. Moreover, Alice assumes Margaret’s gossip is true even though Margaret’s gossip has been wrong in the past. Jill, on the other hand, is not so easily convinced when a rumor comes her way. From this little parable, we see an example of someone who is gullible (Alice) and someone who is not (Jill).
Here’s another, more famous, example of a gullible person:
Recently, an article by Hugo Mercier appeared in the journal Review of General Psychology (2017, vol. 21, pp. 103-122) with the title, “How Gullible Are We? A Review of the Evidence From Psychology and Social Science.” I thought the topic would be particularly of interest to readers of this blog because when people come off as gullible, it can have an influence on how much respect they command. So, let’s take a look at what the author has to say.
The Research Article
Mr. Mercier, a French cognitive researcher, begins his article with the following words:
Are we too easily influenced by what people tell us? Do we accept messages that turn out to be harmful to us, even when we should have known better? Do we defer too easily to authority figures? In other words, are we gullible. Many scholars, from ancient philosophers to contemporary psychologists, have claimed that the answer is yes. (p. 103)
Mr. Mercier goes on from here to say that actually people in general are typically a lot less strongly gullible than is commonly believed. They are endowed, he goes on to say, with a set of skills that allow them to do a pretty good job when evaluating communicated information. However, there are some people who apparently are less skilled at this than most, and they are the ones who are most likely to be viewed as gullible. So, it seems to me that if we familiarize ourselves with the main set of skills that prevent us from being strongly gullible, perhaps we can help those that we care about who are a bit too gullible to sharpen their skills.
The Skills
The first set of skills falls under the heading of “Plausibility Checking.” If I told you that there was a green elephant in your yard, there is a good chance that you would think that I was probably pulling your leg. After all, you have a set of background information and you have never heard of a green elephant unless someone decided to go through the enormous bother of painting one, and what would any elephant be doing in your yard? Comparing what you know to be true, or at least very likely to be true, with what someone is telling you is the first skill that prevents us from being strongly gullible. In our parable, Jill knew that Trish and her husband have had a wonderful relationship for years and it struck her as somehow implausible that Trish would risk all of that by falling into a romance with Ralph. She knows that sometimes such relationships do happen, but she pauses, based on her background information regarding Trish’s relationship with her husband, and then begins to seek some more information. Mr. Mercier describes this process in the following manner:
There is substantial evidence that people detect inconsistencies between their background beliefs and communicated information, that such inconsistencies tend to lead to reject communicated information, and that information that is more inconsistent with one’s prior belief is more likely to be rejected. (p. 105)
He then points out that sometimes this mechanism does not completely reject a communication that strikes one as inconsistent with his or her prior beliefs, but instead, leads one to do more thorough checking. This is exactly what Jill does when she asks Alice some more specific information about what Margaret had told her, and when she went directly to Margaret to get some additional information.
The next set of skills that Mr. Mercier discusses is “Trust Calibration.”
Trust calibration is one of two main mechanisms that can supersede plausibility checking (the other being argumentation…) Thanks to trust calibration, receivers can accept messages whose content is inconsistent with prior beliefs. (p. 106)
People who are skilled at not being gullible use a variety of cues to infer someone’s trustworthiness. We saw in the parable that Jill did not completely trust what Margaret had told Alice because Margaret had been wrong in the past when she had claimed that someone was going to be fired. Alice, on the other hand, inferred that Margaret accurately knew about the relationship between Trish and Ralph because Trish’s desk was right next to Margaret’s. For Jill, this was not enough to convince her that Margaret’s conclusion was accurate.
When people are not gullible, they rely on more then just one type of cue to gage a person’s trustworthiness. Has the person been accurate in the past? How competent is this person? Is the person telling the information the one who directly witnessed what happened, or is this purely hearsay? And, on the whole, when someone’s report is very specific, rather then vague generalities, it is more likely to be viewed as trustworthy. For example, “I saw Trish and Ralph passionately kissing on their lips” is more specific than, “I heard that Trish and Ralph were having an affair.”
Now some forms of Trust Calibration may be misleading. For example, many believe that gaze avoidance or fidgeting is a sign that someone is lying. However, in the research reviewed by Mr. Mercier, these cues are not very dependable. “By contrast, statements that are implausible or illogical tend to be deceptive, as well as ambiguous statements that contain few details.” (p. 108)
The next set of skills that people use to avoid being viewed as gullible is assessing “Argumentation,” or said in another way, assessing the reasonableness of an argument. 
As examples of these skills, Mr. Mercier points out that studies demonstrate that participants find less compelling an argument from authority when the authority is not an authority in the relevant area, or if he or she has a vested interest. In an earlier post titled, “Making Judgments that Shine,” I delve far more into the skills that when utilized tend to lead to people respecting a person’s judgments.
Well, there are far more issues related to this topic, and Mr. Mercier delves into many of them in considerable detail in his fine article. But, for now, I hope this brief summary helps to deepen your understanding of what can be done to guide gullible people to think a little more before they jump to unwarranted conclusions.
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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.
Well, in thinking about this, I hasten to mention that Thomas Kuhn’s (1972) classic book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, rightly points out, for real change to occur in a branch of science, it is not enough to point out the weaknesses of a paradigm. There needs, as well, a new approach that is a distinct improvement over the old paradigm.
Regular readers know that I have, from time to time, been dealing with a conflict regarding psychiatric diagnosis. Said briefly, there are many people who immediately lose respect for anyone who questions the validity of the mental illness/mental disorder theoretical construct. On the other hand, many people have lost respect for the psychiatric profession because of its pathologizing approach of addressing concerns related to thinking, mood, behavior, or challenging life situations. Amidst this conflict, I have been trying to put forth on this blog, and in a number of other publishing outlets, an alternative approach with which the disputing parties can live in relative peace. 
Last year, I presented a paper on this topic at the American Psychological Association convention in Denver (see 
Albert Einstein created a revolution in the branch of science known as physics. Prior to the 20thcentury, physicists explained the propagation of light with the use of a theoretical construct known as the ether. There were experts in the ether who described ways to define it, along with its various characteristics. It was thought, for example, that the ether didn’t move in any direction, but it could vibrate. There was much discussion about an ether wind. And then Einstein came along and described the nature of light without resorting at all to the ether.
Criticism of the mental disorder construct began at the very beginning of American psychology when William James declared that it was nothing more than superficial medical talk. Criticism continued throughout the 20th century, and when the latest version of the DSM came out, there was a ton of media and professional articles that once again pointed out its numerous scientific shortcomings. Many throughout general psychology expressed deep concerns that psychologists utilizing the DSM approach had sold out to psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry. Moreover, they bitterly complained that a paradigm that utilizes the mental disorder construct brings down respect for psychology as a legitimate branch of science. What can be done about this?
Well, in thinking about this I hasten to mention that Thomas Kuhn’s (1972) classic book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, rightly points out, for real change to occur in a branch of science, it is not enough to point out the weaknesses of a paradigm, there needs, as well, a new approach that is a distinct improvement over the old paradigm. So, is it possible to really come up with a distinct improvement over the current DSMapproach? I think our APA can do this easily if it set its mind to it, and it can do so within a year.
Let’s say Mary Doe comes to a licensed practicing psychologist and says she has been feeling a great deal of sadness much of her days. The psychologist, for verification purposes can say, “I hear you saying that you are concerned about how sad you have been feeling much of your days, and you would like us to work together to address this concern, is that correct?” If the service seeker says yes, this would verify that a mental health concern has been expressed, and what the concern is.
Well, there you have it. I only have seven minutes to present the paper, so many of the essential points that I would love to make have to be left out. There will be some time for questions and discussion, so some additional information could be shared then. And, for those who are interested, as I point out in my paper, they can now readily retrieve a far more complete presentation of my proposal by assessing the journal article I wrote that was just published last month.
Regular readers know that I have, from time to time, been dealing with a conflict regarding psychiatric diagnosis. Said briefly, there are many people who immediately lose respect for anyone who questions the validity of the mental illness/mental disorder theoretical construct. On the other hand, many people have lost respect for the psychiatric profession because of its pathologizing approach of addressing concerns related to thinking, mood, behavior, or challenging life situations. Amidst this conflict, I have been trying to put forth on this blog, and in a number of other publishing outlets, an alternative approach with which the disputing parties can live in relative peace. 
Last year, I presented a paper on this topic at the American Psychological Association convention in Denver (see 
Albert Einstein created a revolution in the branch of science known as physics. Prior to the 20th century, physicists explained the propagation of light with the use of a theoretical construct known as the ether. There were experts in the ether who described ways to define it, along with its various characteristics. It was thought, for example, that the ether didn’t move in any direction, but it could vibrate. There was much discussion about an ether wind. And then Einstein came along and described the nature of light without resorting at all to the ether.
Criticism of the mental disorder construct began at the very beginning of American psychology when William James declared that it was nothing more than superficial medical talk. Criticism continued throughout the 20th century, and when the latest version of the DSM came out, there was a ton of media and professional articles that once again pointed out its numerous scientific shortcomings. Many throughout general psychology expressed deep concerns that psychologists utilizing the DSM approach had sold out to psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry. Moreover, they bitterly complained that a paradigm that utilizes the mental disorder construct brings down respect for psychology as a legitimate branch of science. What can be done about this?
Well, in thinking about this I hasten to mention that Thomas Kuhn’s (1972) classic book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, rightly points out, for real change to occur in a branch of science, it is not enough to point out the weaknesses of a paradigm, there needs, as well, a new approach that is a distinct improvement over the old paradigm. So, is it possible to really come up with a distinct improvement over the current DSM approach? I think our APA can do this easily if it set its mind to it, and it can do so within a year.
Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Today’s topic, friends.
Next, Bob tells us a little about Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the lead singer of the song he is about to play, “Don’t Take Everybody to Be Your Friend.”
Moving right along, Bob tells us about Moon Mullican, a Texan. Bob surmises the guy must be a friendly fellow from the song he sings, “Make Friends.”
Next, Bob tells us about one of the wisest guys he ever got to know, Muhammad Ali, who once said, “Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything at all.”
If you need a friend, here’s some things that makes a good friend: Good friends listen to each other. Good friends help each others solve problems. Friends are dependable. This one is very important, good friends never borrow money. 
Good friends never change the channel on your radio. Good friends will always tell you when you have food in your teeth. Good friends sometimes pay for dinner. And good friends sometimes let you have the last beer. And if you are doing all of those things, maybe you’ll have a friend, like Carol King sings about. Here’s Carol King. She’s going to brighten up even your darkest night. 
When you’re down and troubled,
You just call out my name
If the sky above you grows dark and full of clouds
Now, ain’t it good to know that you’ve got a friend
Tapestry, the Carol King album this song appears on, was the most popular of the early 1970s era, remaining on the charts for over 6 years. So, on that series of notes, I think we’ll begin to fade out for this week. I hope you enjoyed our little meditation on friends, and I hope you’ll join us again right here at From Insults to Respect.
According to the FDA, there has been a long-standing concern that antidepressants may have a role in inducing worsening of depression and the emergence of suicidality in certain patients during the early phases of treatment. Pooled analyses of short-term placebo-controlled trials of antidepressant drugs showed that these drugs increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children, adolescents, and young adults (ages 18-24) classified as having major depressive disorder and other psychiatric disorders. Short-term studies did not show an increase in the risk of suicidality with antidepressants compared to placebo in adults beyond age 24; there was a very slight reduction with antidepressants compared to placebo in adults aged 65 and older.
This may sound somewhat encouraging for those who are thinking of taking antidepressants and are over 24-years old if they are willing to put aside concerns about the many other negative side effects associated with taking this class of drugs. However, interpreting these findings is highly problematic for a number of reasons. For example, these results were based on short-term studies, typically lasting just a few weeks, while many people used the drugs for years. Many drugs that were viewed as relatively safe when the short-term evidence became available later turned out to have serious negative effects when the long-term effects started to come in.
Other concerns have to do with the fact that the current available studies are almost always carried out by the drug companies that have a massive interest in proving that the drugs are safe. With the largest lobbyist group in Washington, DC (see 
“In a meta-analysis of the placebo-controlled trials from 2006, the FDA reported only five suicides in 52,960 patients on SSRIs (one per 10,000 patients)(3), but there were many more suicides in these trials(2). Five years earlier, in 2001, Thomas Laughren, who was responsible for the FDA’s meta-analysis, published a paper using FDA data where he reported 22 suicides in 22,062 patients randomised to antidepressants(4), which is 10 per 10,000, or 10 times as many as he reported in 2006. In Laughren’s 2001 paper, there were four times as many suicides on antidepressants as on placebo, which was statistically significant (P = 0.03, my calculation). However, Laughren did not tell his readers about this but wrote: “There is obviously no suggestion of an excess suicide risk in placebo-treated patients.” No, but there surely was in the drug-treated patients!”
In interpreting the safety of these types of drugs, there are many other types of concerns hidden in the data. For example, there is strong reason to think that the subjects in these published studies are not at all the typical people who take antidepressants. Usually when someone is depressed and is open to taking antidepressants to feel better, they go to a nearby physician and get a prescription for the actual drug. That’s not at all how the subjects in these studies go about it. They have to fill out more forms than usual, and they have to agree to be part of an experiment that has them being randomly assigned to taking either the real drug or a placebo.
Now think about that. If you are depressed and open to taking these types of drugs, why would you agree to not knowing if you are taking the real pill or the fake one? Here’s a possible clue. As it turns out, many, if not all, of the subjects who agree to this are already taking one or more psychiatric drugs, including antidepressants. They have to agree to stop taking the antidepressants that they were taking, which typically leads to very uncomfortable withdrawal reactions.
So, again, why would people who are already depressed agree to undergo such an ordeal. It seems to me that it is very possible that many of these subjects had come to feel that the drugs that they had been taking had not been helping them. Thus, they became willing to try being part of the experiment in the hope that they will be put on another experimental drug they have not tried yet and it might end up providing the relief they were seeking.
Now, add this to the picture. Those who agreed to being subjects were excluded if they had had any suicidal thoughts or attempts. So, keeping this in mind, it turns out that many in this group of subjects are those who were placed in the past on antidepressants and did not have suicidal issues when taking them. This leads one to conjecture that this is a group of people who are particularly less likely to have suicidal issues than most people when they use antidepressants. After all, many people who choose to go on antidepressants in the usual manner (going to a local doctor) do so because they have begun to have suicidal thoughts and feelings, and some may have made an attempt to end their life. These folks would be excluded from participating in the study. Thus, those who participate in these studies are a special group who tend to not have suicidal reactions before taking antidepressants and when taking antidepressants.
Given all of these problems, how can we get some additional relevant information about whether these drugs increase suicidal issues for adults? Well, here’s a recent published study that I think is worthwhile to consider.
We found that antidepressants double the risk of suicidality and violence, and it is particularly interesting that the volunteers in the studies we reviewed were healthy adults with no signs of a mental disorder….
In one of the two crossover trials we excluded because we did not have data on the first period separately, a healthy volunteer committed suicide, which was mentioned in both published articles.A14,A15 She had received duloxetine in increasing doses for 16 days, tapered off the maximum dose of 400 mg daily very quickly (in just four days according to the design of the study) and killed herself four days later while on placebo. 
The authors, several of whom were employees of Eli Lilly or owned stock in the company, judged her suicide ‘to be unrelated to study drug treatment’,A15 although it is well known that the suicide risk is high when an antidepressant is stopped abruptly.
Although only two of the 29 clinical study reports were eligible for our meta-analysis, e.g. as the studies needed to be double-blind, two researchers (AØB and PBD) read them all (2224 pages) and extracted data independently, as we wanted to explore possible selective reporting of harms in the published articles. Nineteen clinical study reports reported on the harms we investigated and nine of these were published, but less than half of the harms were reported in the articles (21 of 50 events on antidepressants and two of four events on placebo)….
There can be little doubt that we underestimated the harms of antidepressants. For 11 of our 13 trials, we only had access to the published article, and it well documented that the drug companies underreport seriously the harms of antidepressants related to suicide and violence, either by simply omitting them from the reports, by calling them something else or by committing scientific misconduct.
Psychiatrists believe that the suicide risk with antidepressants is only increased till age 24, but this misconception builds on seriously flawed trial data that the FDA has published.
They also found out that many suicide attempts must have been missing; some of the investigators responded that there were suicide attempts they had not reported in their trials, while others replied that they did not even look for them. Further, events occurring shortly after active treatment was stopped were not counted. Another 2005 meta-analysis conducted by independent researchers used UK drug regulator data and included 40,826 patients; they found a non-significant doubling in suicides or self-harm events when events occurring later than 24 hours after the randomised phase was over were included (relative risk 2.14, 95% confidence interval 0.96 to 4.75, our calculation).
Even the FDA’s 2006 meta-analysis of 100,000 patients in 372 placebo-controlled trials
Well, this is just one study that discusses the issue of suicide risks for adults choosing to take antidepressants. I chose to present it because it is the most recent study on this topic, and it seemed to me to present some additional information not usually available in the US literature.
There is something similar to this when it comes to how Americans feel about psychiatrists. There are many people who hold the belief that psychiatrists are enormously helpful to our society by relieving suffering while others believe that psychiatrists have sold out to the pharmaceutical industry, consequently leading to enormous harm.
We get to see and hear favorable positions for the psychiatric point of view from the numerous ads on TV, radio, and print media sponsored by the fabulously wealthy pharmaceutical industry, which has the biggest lobbyist group in Washington, DC (see 
Psychiatrists have become addicted to the enormous financial benefits of transforming human suffering into a language of mental illness and then convincing people that they need to spend the rest of their life on psychiatric drugs. The consequences to society of this mental illness/drug approach is an enormous increase in people becoming disabled due to the negative drug effects. There is also some recent research suggesting that when women on these drugs become pregnant, there is an increased risk of miscarriages, and if the infant is brought into this world alive, she or he is at an increased risk of serious health consequences.
In my opinion, one of the best places to obtain the arguments about the harmful approach of psychiatric drugs is at the “Mad In America” site that readers can access 
The latest version of what is viewed by psychiatrists as the most authoritative American text on mental illness is the DSM-5. It tells us that mental disorders “are usually associated with significant distress in social, occupational, or other important activities (APA, 2013, p. 20).” There is some additional vague wording here about also having a “dysfunction.” Although my focus here is on the suffering component of the definition, I will say a few words about the functioning part of the definition shortly.
n case this vague definition does not provide enough wiggle room for clinicians to label all people seeking their services as having a mental disorder and to prescribe a drug for it, the ICD tells the clinician, “When the requirements are only partially fulfilled, it is nevertheless useful to record a diagnosis for most purposes” (p. 8). This type of double talk is one of the reasons why many people view the mental illness construct as too vague for scientific purposes.
Now, lets get back to the “suffering” component of the mental disorder definition. According to Buddhist philosophy, the first Noble Truth is that to live is to suffer. According to Christian philosophers that I have read, suffering is something to make us think. It is a tool to get our attention and to accomplish the Lord’s purposes in our lives in a way that would never occur without the trial or irritation. In Judaism, the Talmud teaches us that the righteous suffer in this world in order to increase their reward in the Eternal World. Rabbi Eliezer, in the Talmud, welcomed his suffering, calling his pains ”my friends.”
If we look outside the religious teachings, we find that giving birth is accompanied by suffering, and yet it makes more sense to classify this experience as a natural part of creating new life rather than a pathological condition. When writers receive rejections from publishers, or a loved one dies, suffering often accompanies these experiences.
Add to all of this the problems one encounters when one tries to decide objectively how much suffering, beyond the “normal” amount that one experiences during life’s parade of disappointments, is required to ascribe a diagnosis. In the end, can we really determine if one’s “suffering” is really a symptom of a disorder, or just life being life.
In saying this, I am not seeking to encourage people to be disrespectful to people who choose to take psychiatric drugs. It is their life, and it is their right to make the best decision they know how to make, and I wish them well. At the same time, I believe suffering may best be served by exploring what it could potentially provide. In my own life, I have seen numerous examples of people growing from their suffering. And one of the hardest lessons I had to learn, when seeking to be of help, is that there are times when it is best to address another’s suffering not by trying to fix it, but to stand respectfully beside the person’s misery and sharing what they are going through.
It begins with Sanders turning to Kasich and asking him, “Is Trump a liar?”
Kasich, 
Then, Kasich says, “But I’m not going to go so far as to call someone a liar! That when you get, when you start using terms like that, Bernie, we saw it in Congress. You know, back in the days when we were in the majority and they were after Jim Wright and all those things and there was a lot of calling people dogs and liars. Just let the facts speak for themselves, and then we can draw a conclusion. And I’m only saying this, not because I’m trying to defend anybody. I’m worried about my country. I’m worried about getting through this.”
At this point, Sanders replies, “But when we talk about the facts, I mean Jake asked a pretty simple question. All that I’m saying is, it’s not a question of, you’re a Conservative and I don’t think you’re a liar. We disagree on everything, but that doesn’t make you a liar, and I don’t think that makes me a liar. But if you were to tell me that three to five million people voted illegally in this election, of which no Republican or Democratic official believes, what can I say? I think that it’s a lie.”
Here Kasich looks troubled, and replies, “I, I, look, I guess I’m gonna do it, I didn’t think I would, does that mean that someone who writes a campaign ad that distorts somebody’s record is a liar? I mean, we have to be careful about our terms. That’s all I’m saying, okay?” 
Regular readers of this blog well know that name calling leads to me and others to lose some respect for the name caller. Calling someone a “liar” is name calling, and we can see the loss of respect that Governor Kasich feels for those who use that term when we watch the video clip.
As Bob Dylan once said on his radio show, “According to a survey, 4 out of 5 people admit to telling white lies at least once a day, and I’m telling you that that other guy, he’s lying.”
And they love pictures of him illustrating his lying ways. This might have been the reason for the chuckling of Senator Sanders and those in the audience when Governor Kasich began to reply to the question, “Is Trump a liar?” But consider how you would feel if someone called the candidate you support a liar. 
Recall that there were people calling President Obama a liar during his administration and illustrations of what some believed were his lying tendencies. 
I think the Golden Rule applies here. Moreover, calling the president a liar stirs up his supporters to be angry, and this can produce less than ideal conditions for people to come together in mutually beneficial ways.
Now, Senator Sanders has been trying to make the case that there is something different in the type of lying that President Trump engages in compared to what most people engage in. He is seeking to see how he can best make that distinction by bringing up the liar issue. In the clip, he brings up the example of the president declaring repeatedly that between three million and five million people voted illegally, and that if just the legal votes were counted, he not only won the electoral votes, he also won the popular vote. At other times, Sanders noted that the president has repeatedly claimed that his electoral vote victory was by the largest amount in history. When the president is confronted with the facts that the previous president, Mr. Obama, had won more electoral votes then he did, that many other presidents also won by more electoral votes then he did, and that this can easily be verified by anyone really interested in the truth of the matter, he just continued to claim he won the election by the greatest margin in history. At another time, the president claimed he was against the Iraq War despite a videotape clearly showing his support of that war, and no evidence that he spoke out against the war when it was getting under way.
These, along with others that he has made, are indeed whopper-sized lies. By providing the type of specifics that I provided in the previous paragraph it makes the point clearer than calling him a liar.
The good professor first covers the fact that to most the question of whether or not life is worth living hardly ever comes up, so intent are they to live every moment that they have. Others, spend most of their lives questioning whether it would be better to enter into the peace of being consigned to the earth. And then there are those who drift back and forth. After a poetic discourse of these different types, James delves into what we might say if we meet someone who indeed is questioning whether it would be better just to end it all.
“To breathe the air, how delicious!
“To come immediately to the heart of my theme, then, what I propose is to imagine ourselves reasoning with a fellow-mortal who is on such terms with life that the only comfort left him is to brood on the assurance, ‘You may end it when you will.’ What reasons can we plead that may render such a brother (or sister) willing to take up the burden again?”
At this point, Professor James hastens to confess that nothing he has to say will be able to prevent all suicides. If we make an effort to help and despite this, the person ends his or her life, “cases like these belong to the ultimate mystery of evil, concerning which I can only offer considerations tending toward religious patience at the end of this hour.”
He tells us that certain people who have grown up with a religious background, find that as they get older what they were taught and came to sincerely believe is not meshing well with their personal experiences. They observe that their own actions don’t accord with every teaching of the scriptures, and guilt begins to mount. And they begin to learn in science based teachings that the world was not created a few thousand years ago in six days, the animal kingdom evolved in a manner very differently than their religious stories, and when some of this science stuff seems to make sense to them, they feel they are engaging in blasphemy. They feel confused and fearful. Thus, Professor James tells us,
Once the springs of vitality are let loose in this way, without the burden of infinite responsibility, many experience an immense relief. Meanwhile, whatever is causing the suffering “can be tolerated for another twenty-four hours longer, if only to see what tomorrow’s newspaper will contain, or what the next postman will bring.”
Professor James believed that for some suicidal folks, once they have reached the first stage, it may be possible to incite a fighting spirit within. Identify one or more perceived evil from their perspective, and make appeals to help to overthrow it. Professor James explains,
From these words, James encourages us to use inspiring narratives of those who, through acts of courage, made a real and wonderful difference. In the essay, Professor James’s examples are very dated. Therefore, readers may prefer to turn to my 
Some promote the idea that depression is a disease with genetic factors playing an important role in its development. This line of thinking is theorized to reduce stigma because it reduces any blame for the person who is having the experience. But others say that promoting the idea that this group of people have faulty genes will actually increase stigma even if it does reduce blame.
The current study attempted to replicate the initial findings with a large sample of over 38,000 people of European ancestry, using methods that are viewed as “rigorous best practices.” The team of researchers involved in the study found that the presence of the 5-HTTLPR genotype did not increase a risk of depression, even in those who experienced significant life stressors and traumatic events. However, as expected, stress and trauma by themselves were strongly associated with the development of depression.
As we have seen above, the argument that depression is a genetic disease currently has little scientific support. Nevertheless, there are people who will continue to insist that it is due to genetics because some research indicates that if you have family members who experience depression, you are at an increased risk of also having this type of experience.
There are many examples of people who, when they become depressed, take to their beds for a period of time. And indeed, some people who become depressed, though not most, will violently end their lives.
I am not seeking to eliminate this support, though I bemoan the fact that for many the only support that is offered is a prescription for drugs which I believe in the long run leads to far more harm then good.
To counter stigmatizing these individuals, it is far better than pathologizing their experience if we focus on pointing to the numerous examples of people, such as Abraham Lincoln, who suffered deeply from depression experiences, and yet made enormous contributions to our society. Equally important is to explain that simply being at an increased risk for something doesn’t mean someone has a disease. Risk takers, such as the Wright brothers, are well known to be at an increased risk of an early death, but that characteristic allows some folks to bravely enter into a tiny capsule to explore the moon.