James' World 2

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We come into the world screaming and vulnerable—entirely dependent on adult caregivers to keep us safe and teach us how to connect with others. The nature of these earliest relationships influences how we behave towards others and see the world long after we’ve grown, but in more complex and nuanced ways than researchers previously thought, according to the results of a large, decades-long study examining how the quality of children’s interactions with parents and close peers went on to influence their relationships in adulthood.

In particular, early dynamics with mothers predicted future attachment styles for all the primary relationships in participants’ lives, including with their parents, best friends, and romantic partners, the study found. “People who felt closer to their mothers and had less conflict with their mothers in childhood tended to feel more secure in all of their relationships in adulthood,” says Keely Dugan, an assistant professor of social personality psychology at the University of Missouri and lead author of the study, which was published in October in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. “That’s a really striking finding because it demonstrates the enduring impact of that first person who is supposed to be there for you.”

Early childhood friends also played a strong role in predicting how participants approached their future close friendships—and their romantic connections. “When you have those first friendships at school, that’s when you practice give-and-take dynamics,” Dugan says. “Relationships in adulthood then mirror those dynamics.”

The idea that earliest relationships have an outsized impact on our lives was popularized in psychology by Sigmund Freud. British psychiatrist John Bowlby later incorporated some core Freudian elements to create attachment theory, which helps explain variations in how people approach close relationships. “Some people are quite comfortable depending on others, opening up to them and using them as a secure base, whereas other people lack that confidence and trust,” says the new study’s co-author, R. Chris Fraley, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Researchers today define attachment styles by where people fall along two dimensions, each shaped by early experiences with caregivers. The first, attachment anxiety, measures your level of confidence in the availability and responsiveness of those you are close to. People high in attachment anxiety might have more intense fears of abandonment or need for reassurance. The second factor, attachment avoidance, involves how comfortable you feel opening up to others and depending on them for support. Those high in avoidance may believe that people cannot be counted on or trusted, so they avoid asking for help or emotional support—even if they need it. A relationship with high attachment anxiety, avoidance, or both is defined as more insecure, while a relationship that is low in both attachment anxiety and avoidance is considered to be secure: “You feel comfortable and close to the other person, you trust them to be there for you, and you feel supported,” Dugan says.

It can be difficult to study exactly how early relationships go on to influence attachment style, though, because people’s retrospective reports of what happened to them in childhood are skewed by memory failings and emotional and cognitive biases, Dugan notes. Of the relatively few studies that have examined associations between early caregiving experiences and adult attachment styles, she adds, all have focused almost exclusively on a single early relationship: the maternal one.

To more deeply understand how early relationships with a wider variety of people impact attachment styles, Dugan, Fraley, and their colleagues turned to a landmark longitudinal study of 1,364 children and their families from around the U.S. It began when the children were infants and ended when they were 15 years old. Once the young participants were old enough to speak, they were surveyed about the quality of their relationships with their fathers, mothers, and best friends. Researchers also surveyed participants’ primary caregivers—who were mostly their mothers—and observed them interacting with their children. That study showed robust evidence that early experiences with caregivers matter for social development.

Between 2018 and 2022, 705 of the original participants, who by then were 26 to 31 years old, agreed to a follow-up study to collect information about their current relationships with their parents, best friends, and romantic partners. For those 705 participants, Dugan and her colleagues analyzed associations between the quality of early relationships and later attachment styles in adulthood. They found several notable patterns. First, a person’s relationship with their mother tended to set the stage for their later attachment style in general, as well as for their specific approaches to individual relationships with friends, romantic partners, and fathers. For instance, people who had more conflict with their mothers, were less close to their mothers, or had mothers who were reportedly harsher and showed less warmth during childhood and adolescence, tended to feel more insecure in their adult relationships.

The researchers didn’t find many associations between participants’ relationships with their fathers and their future attachment styles—perhaps because most identified their mother as their primary caregiver. “This cohort’s first assessment was in 1991, and even though the burden of caregiving still heavily falls on mothers, fathers were even less involved back then, on average,” Dugan says. “In cases where a father was the primary caregiver, the results might be flipped—but we don’t have that data.”

Early experiences with close friends, though, were an even stronger predicter than maternal relationships for determining participants’ approach to—specifically—romantic relationships and friendships in adulthood. “In general, if you had high-quality friendships and felt connected to your friends in childhood, then you felt more secure in romantic relationships and friendships at age 30,” Dugan says. People who enjoyed increasingly close and deepening friendships across childhood and adolescence also showed significant gains in those departments as adults, she adds.

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Last month, Eliud Kipchoge finished a marathon in 1 hour, 59 minutes and 40 seconds – an audacious feat that no one had ever accomplished before. Kipchoge is from the Kenyan Rift Valley region.

A day after he made history, Brigid Kosgei destroyed the women’s world record at the Chicago Marathon. She’s also from the Kenyan Rift Valley.

And in the New York Marathon on Sunday, a Kenyan rookie took down her country’s rock star in the women’s race. Joyciline Jepkosgei ruined countrywoman Mary Keitany’s chance at a fifth women’s title in the contest, but the latter came in second. And Kenyan Geoffrey Kamworor won the men’s race, his second NYC Marathon victory.

They’re all from the Rift Valley region. And people are taking note – marathoners from all over the world go there to train before major races.

East Africans – especially Kenyans and Ethiopians – have dominated marathons for decades, dashing across finish lines as their exhausted competitors barely made it. In the process, they’ve toppled their own records or those of their fellow citizens.

Kenyan marathon runners are such a phenomenon that research organizations have done studies on why they dominate long-distance races.

And experts say it’s mixture of several things.

Most of the elite runners are from the same region

Most Kenyan elite runners hail from the same ethnic groups known as the Kalenjins and the Nandis. The groups make up just 10% of the nation’s population of 50 million – but bring in a majority of the nation’s marathon medals.

“Internationally, Kalenjin runners have won close to 73% of all Kenyan gold medals and a similar percentage of silver medals at major international running competitions,” says Vincent O. Onywera, a professor of exercise and sports science at Kenyatta University in Nairobi.

They’ve passed on the passion for running across generations, turning the Rift Valley – especially the small town of Iten – into a mecca for the nation’s elite long-distance runners. There, children start running at a young age.

A lot of the young people from these areas grow up surrounded by successful runners. Most of them look at running as a way to make money, says coach Bernard Ouma, who trains elite Kenyan runners.

“You see your neighbor run and win, it motivates you to run and win,” he says. As a result, their communities have a deep tradition of running excellence built over the years.

They train and live in a high-altitude area

Most of the Kenyan runners who dominate marathons worldwide train and live in the high-altitude Rift Valley.

Iten, one of the towns that produces elite runners, sits nearly 8,000 feet above sea level in western Kenya. Training at high altitudes contributes to a running dominance that makes running at lower elevation child’s play, Onywera says.

“There is a widespread belief in the athletic community that altitude training can enhance sea level athletic performance, with at least three independent studies demonstrating that altitude training increases both sea level maximal oxygen consumption and running performance,” he says.

Then there’s diet and constant motivation

Iten has become known internationally as the place where long distance champions are made. So much so, runners from around the world go there to train before major races.

Running aficionado and author Adharanand Finn spent a lot of time in the town trying to find out the secret to Kenyan marathon runners. “I had a lifelong fascination with the uninhibited running style of the Kenyans and had always wanted to know the story behind their incredible athletes – I wanted to know what their lives were like. And when I saw there was no book, or at that time no films, on the subject, I decided to go there and write one.”

His book, “Running with the Kenyans,” gives more insight into what he found out. And there is no one major secret, he says.

“As the famed coach of David Rudisha, Brother Colm O’Connell, says, the only secret is that there’s no secret. It’s not one thing but a perfect storm of elements that come together in Kenya’s Rift Valley region to make the people there so strong at distance running,” Finn says.

There’s the location, the way of life, the environment.

“For a start, you have the altitude, the tough rural upbringing, and the fact that children run around everywhere. Then there is the simple diet, the lack of junk food, and the perfect running terrain — rolling hills, dirt roads — all over the place,” he says.

And if that doesn’t lure you in, there’s the proximity to international elite runners to motivate anyone.

“Running offers a great chance to make good money, to transform lives, even to transform whole communities,” Finn says. “This is compounded by the hundreds of role models everywhere. Almost every village has someone who has come back from ‘abroad’ with winnings, and these stars are very accessible and open to supporting the younger athletes.”

As a result, everyone who can run, aspires to be a runner, he says.

“You end up with thousands of people training together, pushing each other, helping each other, inspiring each other. This attracts agents, sponsors, coaches … and it keeps getting bigger. With all this impetus, some great athletes are going to emerge out the other end,” he says. “So really, it’s not a simple answer.”

Some have wondered whether genes play a role

There’s so much speculation on why Kenyans and Ethiopians keep crushing marathon competitions, the phenomenon has long been a subject of study. Organizations such as the British Journal of Sports Medicine have concluded that it’s unclear whether genes have anything to do with it.

“The periodic domination of middle and long distance running by different regions of the world is not a new phenomenon,” it says. “Researchers are yet to confirm a genetic or physiological advantage in being a middle or long distance runner of East African origin, and it is most likely that the reasons for their success are many.”

And while many physiological and anatomical factors have been suggested to explain the East African dominance, research has not revealed any definitive advantage, the study says.

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“I am convinced that we would not have found these people if the DNA that was found at this theft hadn’t matched with this database,” said Gaëtan Poitevin, a criminal lawyer in Marseille whose master’s thesis was on France’s DNA database.

How does the DNA database work?

France’s database, the National Automated Genetic Fingerprint File, had 4.4 million DNA profiles at the end of last year. Those profiles have been collected over almost three decades from people suspected or convicted of crimes, as well as people killed in natural disasters.

It has become a staple of police investigations, with forensic investigators collecting bits of saliva, sweat, hair, skin, semen, and blood, then sending them to be sequenced at public and certified private labs. The labs send the results to be compared to the contents of the enormous database, looking for exact matches.

“In just a few hours now, we can have a positive DNA result,” said Olivier Halnais, the head of the national union of forensic police officers.

How did France’s DNA database start?

France began its DNA database in 1998, after the serial killer Guy Georges, known as the “Eastern Paris killer,” was finally arrested.

Mr. Georges had been imprisoned for assaulting a woman with a weapon, and the police collected his DNA. But France had no centralized database at the time, so officers were unable to check his DNA against that found at the scenes of five murders of women who had also been raped.

After his release from prison, Mr. Georges went on to rape and kill two more women. He was arrested again and eventually convicted of the murders of seven women. The case spurred the creation of a national DNA database.

Initially, the database contained only the DNA of sexual offenders. But, over the next five years, it grew to include people convicted — or merely suspected — of a much wider range of crimes, including murder, terrorism, drug trafficking, assault, theft, and property damage.

The process of being removed from the DNA database is so onerous that few pursue it, Mr. Poitevin said. Those who refuse to give a DNA sample face at least a year in prison and a fine of at least 15,000 euros, almost $17,400.

From 2018 to 2022, an average of 680 people a year were convicted of refusing to provide DNA, less than one percent of people charged each year, according to the Justice Ministry.

“Among my clients, absolutely zero refuse, because for them, it’s an admission of guilt,” said Mr. Poitevin.

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Members of a forensic team inspect a window at the site where burglars broke into the Louvre and made off with eight of France’s historic crown jewels last month. Credit…Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters

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The iconic shower scene in Psycho was originally supposed to play out without music. Instead, composer Bernard Herrmann created “The Murder”: as the killing transpires, violins shriek and scream along with the victim.

The film’s director, Alfred Hitchcock, reportedly later said that “33 percent of the effect of Psycho was due to the music.” In most horror flicks, the emotional current that carries the viewers is the music, which accelerates their anticipation and heightens the jump scares. It’s not just screaming violins, either: undulating synthesizers drive John Carpenter’s Halloween; “evil” clarinets underpin Hereditary; a recording from the 1930s enhances Get Out.

Studies have shown that certain fearful music activates the brain’s alarm-response system. So what is it that makes some music sound scary? Psychoacoustics researchers have found that some auditory features that are common in horror music are inherently frightening. The most obvious way music can scare us is by literally imitating screams, like Psycho does. Here, the instruments mimic a quality of human screams called roughness. When we scream, we press a high volume of air through our vocal cords, causing them to vibrate chaotically. This creates a sound wave with an amplitude that fluctuates rapidly, which our ears and brains perceive as rough or harsh.

To imitate this musically, violinists must push the limits of their instruments. “They’re pushing into that string, literally—just pushing the capacity of the instrument. You feel the whole instrument almost resisting the sound,” explains Caitlyn Trevor, a music cognition researcher and founder of the sound design consulting company SonicUXR. In a 2020 study, when Trevor was a researcher at the University of Zurich, she and her colleagues studied horror movie soundtracks and found many of these screamlike musical cues.

Rough vocalizations seem to have privileged access to our brain. In a study published in May, scientists found that the sound of a distant scream could elicit a response from the brain even in the deepest stage of sleep. When you hear a scream, it quickly activates the amygdala, a brain structure involved in processing danger, and it can trigger a cascade of alarm reactions in the nervous system. The short burst of sound may also trigger our startle reflex, which bypasses higher-order brain regions and goes straight to our body to help us respond fast.

Most horror music is not about directly inducing terror, however. Those moments of auditory release are usually preceded by long, roiling tracks that build suspense. “There are actually two very different types of music that are ‘scary’ or ‘fearful,’” Trevor explains. In 2023, she co-authored a study examining the musical differences between these two types of horror movie tracks. Participants rated the emotional effects of different excerpts. The results showed a distinction between anxiety-inducing and terrifying music; the two types “sometimes have completely opposite acoustic features,” Trevor says. Where terrifying music was loud, brash, and dense (a chorus of screamlike string instruments from Midsommar was ranked the most terrifying of all the examples in the study), anxiety-inducing music tended to be more varied. Here is where composers have the most room to play, using subtle auditory cues that are biologically ingrained to keep listeners on edge.

For example, some horror movies use (or are rumored to use) very low-frequency sounds on the border of human perception to give an intangible sense of doom. “Certain sounds mimic danger out there in the world,” explains Susan Rogers, a music producer and music cognition researcher at Berklee College of Music. “A low rumble is something we have evolved to be alert to,” she says—perhaps signaling a stampede, a storm, an earthquake or something else dangerous in the environment.

Fast tempos, especially ones that sound like a heartbeat, can also put us on edge, Rogers explains. In the theme from John Carpenter’s Halloween, a low thudding that is reminiscent of a heartbeat drives the music forward. “A predictable rhythm gives you a sense of momentum and that [the filmmakers are] leading toward something,” Trevor says. The listener doesn’t know where the music or the story are going, but they feel relentless and inevitable.

More commonly, though, horror movie music builds suspense by making itself unpredictable. Suspenseful music, Trevor found in her 2023 study, often keeps us on edge by sprinkling in bits of sound in unexpected places. Sometimes these scores use an unpredictable or lopsided beat, dropping notes here and there, to prevent the listener from settling into the rhythm, she adds.

“The soundtrack and the sound design are integral to letting you predict what’s going to happen, so sound designers in horror movies can use the technique of violating our predictions to get us to experience fear,” Rogers says. The brain is a prediction machine, and it allows us to tune out expected or constant noise. “Whether it’s a car engine or a rainstorm, we know how it’s going to go, so we move our spotlight of attention onto other things,” she continues. If you hear footsteps coming up the stairs, you might predict that they’ll continue until they reach the top; but if they stop halfway, you become alert. These sorts of “prediction errors” activate the amygdala and a memory-forming region called the hippocampus.

But some of the most frightening features of horror movie music are culturally learned and might not be inherently scary. For example, composers often build tension in music using dissonance, when the pitches of two or more notes seem to clash against one another. The idea that some harmonies are inherently dissonant has some truth—if two notes are too close together in pitch, the soundwaves can interfere, causing a “beating” pattern that can be unpleasant or grating on the ear. “But only at the most basic level is that universal. Above that, the musical concept of consonance and dissonance is entirely learned,” Rogers says.

Other harmonies that were once assumed to be inherently dissonant—for example, the so-called devil’s chord, or tritone, which is used often in horror movies—are perceived differently across different cultures. A 2016 study found that the Tsimane’ people of rural Bolivia, a group whose music does not use harmony, rated the tritone and other “dissonant” intervals as equally pleasant as “nondissonant” intervals.

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‘I’ve Always Had a Hard Time Making Friends — How Do I Not Be So Anxious About Putting Myself Out There?’

Hi Tefi!!

So I just recently turned 21! And as I’m starting to really enter “adulthood,” I guess I’ve realized that some of the relationships in my life don’t feel fulfilling on my end. I’ve always had a hard time making friends — I’m really quiet and shy when I first meet people, and I low-key come across as awkward. Obviously, that kind of turns people away, and if I’m being honest, I feel like that also holds me back from trying to talk to new people because I’m scared they won’t like me.

I have a small friend group, but I feel like they all have someone (either in the group or outside) who they’d rather hang out with. I feel like I’m a good friend. I’m genuinely caring and supportive, and I’d like to think I’m really funny. I don’t know, Tefi. I just feel like my friends hang out with me out of convenience, ’cause I’m the only one who drives. I also have a nine-to-five job, so it’s rare for me to be free during the week, but it sucks because I see them going out and hanging out and then when I finally get a day off, they’re all busy and can’t hang out. I don’t necessarily think there’s anything malicious behind it. I just think they’re not being very considerate of me or my feelings.

There are like three girls outside my social circle who I’d really like to be friends with, but I’m too scared to reach out and ask to hang out. Because I guess I don’t ever want them to feel pressured into hanging out with me or something, you know? But we’re always liking each other’s Instagram Stories and commenting, so I just feel like we’d be great friends. But I don’t know, I’m anxious about it.

I don’t want to go through my 20s all sad and lonely, but I don’t really know how to NOT be so anxious about putting myself out there more.

Sorry, this was so long! Thank you for your advice in advance!!
—Feeling Lonely

My sweet, sweet, lonely angel,

I caught myself smiling when I read “adulthood.” You’re right! You are an adult. But also, I can clearly remember myself at 21 and not feeling “adult” at all. I’m over a decade older than you, and I still think, Holy fuck, everyone is going to find out I’m really 17 cosplaying as 35. And by the way, you aren’t alone. I get ten-plus emails in the “Ask Tefi” inbox every single day asking me what to do about loneliness.

You’re currently in a weird period of life: outgrowing some of your friends. It fucking sucks, but it’s just one of those things we all go through. Now I have terrible news, and I need you to still like me after I tell you: You have to be brave and ask those girls to hang out.

Sometimes I go to events and I’ll feel like the biggest dork loser at the party. I even avoid checking my emails all day, so just in case no one talks to me, I can read them then and have something to do with my hands. I’ll see the coolest girls and I’ll think, how do I talk to them? Why would they talk to me? But! We have to be brave. And we have to reach out our hand ready to shake someone else’s and say, “Hi, I’m me. Who are you? It’s nice to meet you.”

Maybe that can be our act of bravery this week. Bravery isn’t like doing our own stunts in a movie or taming a wild animal. Sometimes bravery looks like wanting more friends and trying.

All my love,
Your friend Tefi

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