Trees, Mental Outlook and Personality Disorders

A report released in Durham, North Carolina last year is often misinterpreted because the full story is just too jarring.

It notes that Durham is set to soon lose 13,000 of its hallmark street trees as they age out or finally surrender to butchering due to  anachronistic power lines.

The figure has occasionally been used as if this includes all urban canopy loss but it doesn’t come close.

Durham loses 18,000 to 36,000 trees on average every month to development.  That figure comes from taking the average number of acres per day developed over the last three decades and multiplying it by what urban forest researchers estimate as the number trees per acre.

Who cares, right?  Developers are sure to curb this desecration because research has repeatedly demonstrated the value of tree retention to home values, parking lots and commercial values, right?

Unfortunately, if some special interests have their way in the regressive-leaning state legislature here and tree ordinances are outlawed, trees may soon be something we only see in tree museums, otherwise known as public parks.

Speaking of mental illness, a recently published longitudinal study shows the remarkable ameliorating and lasting effect that more green infrastructure has on people with depressive disorders by looking at people who relocated to both more and less green areas.

The impact when people moved to a greener urban area with more trees, parks and greenways was that they experienced an immediate improvement that is sustained over the three years of the study.

Just one more justification for the societal value of tree conservation.

A similar boost occurs with marriage and other life changes, of course, but according to studies, that rapidly dissipates.  What makes green infrastructure so different is that the boost is sustainable over a much longer span of time if not permanently.

One of the tree conservation requirements a few state legislators want to outlaw are those that provide near-road buffers and screens.  An overview of their benefits was published recently,  co-authored by Dr. Rich Baldauf, a scientist doing research here in Durham.

Some in the legislature seem to only listen to whiners, unaware that the far greater number now known as “low impact” developers are far more successful because instead of whining, these developers, architects and site planners embrace and exceed these local green infrastructure conservation ordinances.

The 16-year old movement exploded more than a decade ago after a  case study was conducted on two developments south of Puyallup, Washington (southeast of Tacoma) comparing conventional development to “low impact” development” (LID.)

The LID approach saved over 20% on the cost of development while maintaining project density, reduced the size of storm retention structures and the need for eliminating catchments while preserving 62% of the site in open and green space, and lastly, achieved “zero” effective impervious surface.

One has to be pretty far along the scale for narcissism to be cool to the negative impact that wantonly sacrificing natural infrastructure creates on millions of other people.

Of course, having been a CEO for thirty-four year means that I, too, fall further along that measure than the general population.  So do politicians.

But you can spot those further up along the scale because they resist taking in new information, such as this essay, especially any information that is contrary to their prejudice.

But a new study shows that their low empathy for others “is not an inability or even disability,” it just “is not their default” response.  That their actions harm millions won’t break through that barrier.

As reviewed last Friday by Tom Jacobs in Pacific Standard – The Science of Society, the study sheds light on why some lawmakers here find empathy with one or two individuals who come to them with an isolated grievance, then seem to jump to universal solutions that instead harm millions.

Harboring petty grievances themselves, many elected officials seem to find it easier to accept anecdotal perspectives whenever presented with them.

The secret then is to help these policy makers take a more universal perspective.  Unfortunately, perspective-taking is one of the seven essential skills learned in childhood but far more difficult to grasp at later stages.

This may also be why Moral Mondays get under their skin.  The demonstrations put individual faces and stories to the large numbers of North Carolinians their actions harm.

Risk Takers Are Typically Also More Rational

During the first week of the year 2000, Sam Schmidt, an Indy Car race driver who was favored for the upcoming season, slammed into the wall on turn two during testing at Walt Disney World Speedway, leaving him a quadriplegic.

He fought back, got an MBA, bought his father’s company and with a  partner fielded Schmidt Petersen Motorsports, inspiration enough given the risks of racing.  But a new study shows that race drivers are actually more rational than the general population.

Fourteen years after his accident in the days leading up to last month’s Indianapolis 500, Schmidt drove a souped-up Corvette Stingray for several laps around the historic oval.

Using a semi-autonomous technology so he could handle the car with head movements, he hit 100 m.p.h.  Click here to see how it works.  Essentially he bites down to brake, tilts his head left or right to steer and tilts his head back to accelerate.

The development is part of a US Air Force-funded research project, but a new study shows that even amateur race car drivers are actually much “more rational” about choices than the average population.

Like motorcycle riders now who, on average, are in their 40s compared to the average of 24 during in the 1980s, the researchers found it isn’t risk they are immune from.  They are just better immune to “possibility bias.”

This is the overweighting of low probabilities that keep people from trying new things.

Instead they are less likely to overemphasize low-probability events including failure.

The latter fall on the risk-adverse “small-t” part of the T-Personality Spectrum refined by Temple professor and researcher Dr. Frank Farley over the last three decades.

Those who are immune to “possibility bias” are the “Big-T” or “T-Positive” personalities who take risks because they are motivated by intensity and innovation.

According to Farley, these “Big-T” personalities just have a much higher tolerance for uncertainty.  As nation’s go, over its history the USA has been a “Big-T” country according to Farley.

Over the course of its history, Durham, North Carolina has always been a “Big-T” community as are others who focus on being distinct.  “Big-T” is also why Durham’s destination marketing is more innovative than others.

While those who aspire to be “major league” by merely emulating others at the sacrifice of sense of place are probably “small-t” cities.

Farley also classifies gamblers and criminals as “T-Negative” personalities, a group that includes far too many business executives and government officials involved in “legal corruption” too.

When you take lessons to ride a motorcycle, you learn to sense your limitations, ride as though everyone is out to get you and always be alert to escape routes should a problem arise.

In general, motorcycle riders are expert at rationally calculating risk.

You also learn that the death rate for motorcyclists is 30 times higher than it is for drivers of motor vehicles overall, but that this rate falls dramatically depending on type of bike, e.g. sport bikes vs. cruisers like Harleys, and by speed and the age of rider.

I always wear a full-face, modular helmet because injuries occur more often to the jaw than the top of the head.  But ironically, 75% of the fatalities on sport bikes involved riders who also wore helmets of some type.

Interestingly, only half of those riding cruisers or standard motorcycles were wearing helmets when fatalities occurred, another reason perhaps that different types of bikes need to be differentiated for premiums.

But you don’t wear a helmet so you can take risks, you wear it because others who are less rational in vehicles of all type take them irrationally.  That may be why many race drivers feel safest while on the track.

Controlling speed, avoiding alcohol, staying alert and the wisdom of age bring the accident rate for riders down to near that of cars.  Overall, the fatality rate and crash injury rate for 100 million motorcycle miles traveled is 24.93 and 440 respectively.

The latter figure has fallen nearly 60% just since 1989 when I was just more than a third of the way through my now concluded career.

The biggest danger to riders is the same one it is for all vehicles: drivers of cars, trucks and SUVs who don’t pay attention.   And as we know from this assessment of what happened recently on Mt. Rainier, stuff happens no matter what you do to mitigate it.

Motor vehicle drivers are more likely than motorcyclists in my opinion to underestimate risk.  A new study by the National Highway Safety Administration computes that motor vehicle crashes costs society $871 billion annually, nearly $900 for each person living in the United States.

Nearly 70% of that comes from the lost of life as well as pain and decreased quality of life due to injuries. 

Nearly 75% of these costs are shouldered by non-participants through taxes, insurance premiums and congestion-related losses. Funny we don’t hear Tea Partiers whining about this!

The cost to society vs. the individual total $200 billion alone including nearly a fifth for direct medical care, another reason the new federal healthcare insurance requirement makes sense.

Here’s a thought for those obsessed with repealing this requirement: It may be your right to bang yourself up in a vehicle accident, but I shouldn’t later have to pay for it with my taxes or through other means.

Ride or drive stupid if you want, but insurance should be the minimum requirement.

The direct cost of a motorcycle fatality where failure to wear a helmet is involved is nearly $1.3 million alone.

But the direct economic cost to society for not wearing a seat belt is 11 times higher.

This failure results in killing 3,350 people and seriously injuring another 54,300 each year, costing society $13.billion alone, while using them prevented 12,500 fatalities and 308,000 serious injuries.

Using seat belts, which at one time was vigorously opposed by conservatives, saves society $69 billion in medical care, lost productivity, and other injury-related costs.

Two other new studies are disturbing.

One by University of Michigan researchers found that children of minority parents were far less likely to be given age-appropriate restraint while riding in a vehicle compared to the the children of white parents.

Other studies have often found that parents who are minorities, based on their own experiences, often try to counterbalance what they expect their children are going to face in society by being overly flexible, but this is one area where the requirement is a matter of life and death.

Motor vehicles are the leading cause of death and injury for children.

The other study, by the Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium (OTREC,) finds something even more disturbing.  An ongoing pilot study finds that pedestrians who are black are passed by twice as many cars before someone yields at an un-signalized marked crosswalk.

Black pedestrians were made to wait 32% longer than white pedestrians.  Subtle forms of racism surface when information and decisions must be processed very quickly.  This may also lead black pedestrians to take more risk in crossing.

Another new study by researchers at the University of Texas and UCLA finds that “executive functions,” the set of skills so essential to success in life and should be taught and learned at a very young age, also play a major role in our assessment of risk.

These include attention (shedding distractions,) working memory and self control, especially the latter.  Too little perhaps and we underestimate risk, too much and we overestimate the possibility or risk, resulting in “possibility bias.”

Both are harmful, one leads to truly dangerous choices, the other to a life not led.

The Essential Life Skills So Many Fail To Learn

Anyone who does hiring should be aware of the book, Mind In The Making: The Seven Essential Life Skills Every Child Needs by Ellen Galinsky.

As president of the Families and Work Institute, she also co-directs the now decades long trend analyses entitled, the National Study of the Changing Workforce and the National Study of Employers.

I first came across her work when Ms. Galinsky’s research think tank administered the rigorous national Sloan Awards for Business Excellence and Workplace Flexibility when I worked at the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau, now a five-time awardee.

Her research and analysis of other research reveals that the most important skills employers seek have little or nothing to do with course work, degrees and specialized knowledge.

They are the skills needed to solve problems:

• Focus and Self Control,
• Perspective Taking,
• Communicating,
• Making Connections,
• Critical Thinking,
• Taking on Challenges, and
• Self-Directed Engaged Learning.

At their core, they are all related to what are called “executive functions” skills that we should all begin to learn when we are very young children, such as the skills to “manage our attention, our emotions, our intellect, and our behavior…”

According to resources on “executive functions” at Harvard, in the brain these skills work as an “air traffic control mechanism” that “helps us focus on multiple streams of information at the same time, and revise plans if necessary.”

They begin with learning focus, working memory, cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control.  Galinsky explains that “as we grow older…these skills include reflecting, analyzing, planning and evaluating….” Sound familiar?

These are also the skill sets most crucial to strategy-making.

Researchers believe their development is also key to goals such as reducing drop-out rates and closing various achievement gaps. 

I listened to a program recently and then re-read the transcript that took me back to my childhood and the hours my parents would take to repeatedly go through several big albums of family photos with me.

The time they spent was crucial beyond the photographs.  They were weaving stories and narratives around each image, exercising my working memory and giving me a sense of self and inheritance.

They were also exercising executive function skills such as focus and working memory.  The point the expert made in the interview was it is the weaving of narrative that transcends image volume, a lesson lost in the age of smartphone apps.

I found ironic during my career that far too many reach executive levels or political office lacking “executive function” skills.  So they fall back on narcissistic traits instead.

Everyone who aspires to leadership has a healthy dose of narcissism but most are not narcissists.

True narcissists, by definition, are easy to spot.  They think they are special, act grandiose at times and manifest a sense of entitlement.  Their thirst for power and lack of empathy leads them to play games with relationships ranging from manipulation to exploitation.

Overly narcissistic leaders, and elected officials in particular, struggle with what researchers call “organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB),” the discretionary behaviors such as “civic virtue” and “altruism” that above and beyond reward systems make people stand out within communities, partnerships and organizations.

OCBs were first studied in depth beginning in 1970 by Dr. Dennis Organ who earned his Ph.D. in organizational behavior at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, a few miles from Durham, North Carolina where I live and finished my career.

He then taught and continued his research for nearly four decades at Indiana University and was already garnering attention when I was taking classes in 1972 on organizational behavior from another pioneer, Dr, BilL Dyer at BYU.

Organ’s 2005 book entitled, Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Its Nature, Antecedents and Consequences, was co-written with two other Indiana business school researchers.  It is a classic.

But overly narcissistic individuals find it difficult to grasp or exhibit OCBs, and they turn instead to counterproductive behaviors such as intrigue, forming cabals, blackballing, fronting for special interests, and playing other games.

They are primarily one-way street people.  They get things done by “my way or the highway.”  You’re either on their team or you’re not.

In researcher parlance, “narcissism is negatively related [not linked]
to (a) agreeableness, (b) the willingness to alter self-enhancing behaviors in close relationships, (c) commitment, and related
positively [linked] to interpersonal exploitativeness.”

Studies of “organizational citizenship behaviors” also find that when overly narcissistic individuals do try to exhibit them, usually with a false sense of humility, it is intended for the purpose of managing impressions.

Oh boy!

Overly narcissistic individuals take a huge toll on productivity within organizations and communities by starting fires, creating drama, reinventing the wheel, back-stabbing, second-guessing, foot-dragging, festering conflict and confrontation and meddling with decision-makers and governing boards.

These are behaviors that, as a result, drive up the cost doing business while putting an un-estimable drag on the productivity, time and attention of others especially when they ally with others who fall well up the narcissism spectrum.

By definition, overly narcissistic individuals have little or no regard for how their actions impact other people, which is why their ethical boundaries seem so often in flux.

Without this drag created by the handful that I came across in each of the communities where I did marketing, some of whom I considered friends, who knows?  I might have been able to accomplish twice as much in half the time.

The Narcissist’s Blind Spot - A Compelling Dividend

While taking a break recently from helping a friend clean out the huge walk-in “crawl space” under her home in the popular Buckwater Creek neighborhood of Durham, North Carolina, I was marveling that the property backs up to the forested slopes protecting the Eno River.

It occurred to me that I was standing just across the river from an even more unique development by the same builder, a Durham native, and a very early “green” builder.  A similar urban version is opening in the Central Park district of downtown Durham.

These developments are called co-housing, and Durham’s Eno Commons was the third completed of what will soon be 13 in North Carolina following two in Asheville.

Each of the homes or condos are actually individually owned by residents.

More than a hundred are now found in nearly 40 of the United States and Canada after the movement started in Denmark in the 1970s.  One completed in Salt Lake City about the same time as Eno Commons here is across the valley from where my daughter and grandsons live on the slope of the Rockies.

But early Mormon settlers including some of our ancestors experimented with variations of this idea in the late 1800s while other ancestors who created settlements further north along the Rockies and south onto the Colorado Plateau always incorporated the commons.

Planning for Durham’s Eno Commons began a few years before the Buckwater Creek development was completed.  It was a reality by the year 2000.  A park-like neighborhood, it has 22 energy efficient and sustainable households connected by a pathway.

Its residents share as commons the surrounding woodlands, an orchard, organic gardens, a playing field and a Commons House, complete with a guest apartment, along with a barn-shaped workshop including shared tools.

This is why they are often called “intentional” neighborhoods vs. those in name only.

There are many other ways that developments are now incorporating the commons.

One which Mugs and I hope to visit after collecting my grandsons on one of our annual cross country trips lies north of Eagle, Idaho where Dry Creek flows down from its headwaters near 7,000 ft. Deer Point, along the Boise Ridge and out under State Route 55.

Before heading up the western edge of Idaho past Cascade Lake on our way to the northern Rockies where we rendezvous with family each year, we will detour four miles up the creek valley to Hidden Springs, Idaho.

This master-planned community was launched in the mid-1990s about the time Buckwater Creek in Durham was completed.  It just reached build out during the last couple of years.

Hidden Springs is an almost 1,800-acre community of about 850 homes in five neighborhoods with a population of a few thousand residents, half of whom had already been Idahoans in this most conservative of states.

The home designs are neo-traditionals with garages accessed via rear alleys.

Along with its own water treatment facility and a mercantile/village green, 55% of this tiny community or more than 1,000 acres is open space.

This includes 44% of the overall development or 800 acres that is permanently preserved as forested and afforested areas including wetlands and other commons managed by a conservation trust.

Included is a native plant demonstration garden, nature trails, a community farm, an environmental education center, an orchard and a historic farmstead dating to the 1860s when Basques similar to those near our ranch in the Tetons.

Home sites adjacent to the protected areas usually sold first and at a premium ranging from 10 to 30 percent over other sites.  Hidden Springs is also formally certified as wildlife habitat by the National Wildlife Federation.

The community is featured as a case study in a book authored in the last few years by Ed McMahon, a friend of mine who is a sense of place expert for the Urban Land Institute.

The book is entitled, Conservation Communities: Creating Value with Nature, Open Space and Agriculture, and should be required reading not only for developers, but especially for those few whiners who have the ear of power-hungry regressives in the North Carolina legislature who seem bent on stripping communities of development requirements.

Most developers in far more conservative states welcome and exceed these requirements as mere guidelines.  McMahon cites a report showing that wooded properties increase home values as much as 20%, and lots with mature trees such as mine or those backing up to forested land have sold more than 50% faster than others.

This is the same reason that most of the people who buy homes along golf courses are not golfers.  They are guaranteed it will stay a natural area even if it’s not included in calculations of open space.

According to McMahon and the National Association of Realtors, “it is trails for walking/hiking and biking, not golf courses, that are the top choice for open-space amenities in a development.”

While only 1 to 2 percent use golf courses and 5 to 6 percent use swimming pools, anywhere from 50 to 60 percent use trail systems and pathways.

Nearly 60% of homebuyers say they would be more likely to purchase a home near green space.

The developers of Hidden Springs now wish they had done even more to protect open space beyond its boundaries according to McMahon whose book is a must read for developers, planners and policy makers.

Another good book is one that just came out this year, a series of 25 essays by Asheville, North Carolina native and law professor F. Kaid Benfield entitled, People Habitat: 25 Ways to Think About Greener, Healthier Cities.

Benfield’s essays are published on Huffington Post and elsewhere.

Most of my essay is probably lost on regressives in North Carolina but hopefully not on the majority of lawmakers on both sides of aisle who aren’t.

Two new studies may shed light on regressives.

One by a Michigan team of business, psychology and psychiatric researchers found that those who place independence above any interdependence such as ecological are 6 times less likely to carry a dopamine-receptor gene known as DRD4. 

From those I know, this I presume includes regressives.

Another deals with narcissist personalities (self-absorbed or “one-way street folks”.) You know, the folks without any boundaries when it comes to the rights of other people.  They are found in much higher proportions in elected officials than in the general population.

Also true of CEOs.

This group even at the normal range of the spectrum is found to be notoriously oblivious to the societal benefits of the environment.  The difference between normal and pathological is that one just doesn’t care about the welfare of others, while the other intends ill will.

According to medical professionals, the diagnostic manual lists nine traits of narcissists including arrogance, sense of self importance, fantasizing about unlimited power, seeing themselves above others, having a sense of entitlement, being exploitative, lacking empathy and being envious of others.

Business researchers at Fairfield and North Texas universities found that normal range narcissists could be manipulated to adopt environmentally-friendly products if it made them look good in public (an informative read is The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists.)

Because very few North Carolinians are empowered to vote them out of office, it falls on the rest of the legislature to be very wary, to read bills very carefully and to defend North Carolina from being harmed by their excesses, even when only through obliviousness.

While only adopted by the state 25 years ago, I dearly love North Carolina and hate to see it stripped any further of the things that make it so appealing.  It is hard to see the actions of regressives as anything other than intended harm.

The weakness of representative democracy is when the tyranny of the few who unelected by the majority of North Carolinians appear bent on its desecration or perhaps are just ignorant to the intent of special interests pushing them to do so.

God help us!

Infographic - Priorities