753 posts · 542,378 views
Reports on the latest psychology research plus psych gossip and comment. Brought to you by the British Psychological Society.
BPS Research Digest
753 posts
Sort by Latest Post, Most Popular
View by Condensed, Full
- July 23, 2012
- 04:49 AM
- 252 views
Blue Monday does not exist
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
The weekend is over and a long slog of five days work awaits. No wonder most of us hate Mondays. But are we really at our most miserable at the start of the week, as the Blue Monday myth suggests? A new study conducted in the US claims not.
Arthur Stone and his colleagues made use of data collected by Gallup in 2008. Over 340,000 US citizens were interviewed over the telephone during that year and one of the questions was about their mood the day before. They were asked to say "yes or no" whether they'd felt enjoyment or happiness for a lot of the day, and whether they'd felt worry, sadness, stress or anger for a lot of the day.
A clear pattern emerged, with people reporting far more positive mood and far less negative mood on Saturdays and Sundays, compared with weekdays - an effect that diminished with age and with retirement. Although the contrast with weekdays for them was weaker, retirees still reported being happier at weekends, perhaps because of the availability of friends and family at that time. The pattern of better mood at weekends also held regardless of gender, and regardless of whether interviewees had a partner or not.
Although not as dramatic as the weekend effect, there was also evidence of enhanced mood on Fridays, relative to other days of the week - supporting popular belief in a "Thank God It's Friday!" effect.
But comparing mood on Mondays against mood on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays revealed no evidence of a dip.
"Despite our global beliefs about lousy Mondays, we conclude that this belief should, in general, be abandoned," the researchers said. "The perception of Blue Mondays is likely prevalent due to the extreme contrast in mood from Sunday to Monday, even though there is no real difference in mood with Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday."
Stone and his team criticised earlier research on this topic for relying on small samples, often made up of student participants. But this new study also had its limitations, as they acknowledged. The methodology was cross-sectional, in that participants only rated their mood at one point in time. This means there's a possibility of a sampling bias - there may have been something different about people who agreed to participate on some days of the week compared with others. Also people may have misremembered their mood from the day before. And the simple yes/no format for the questioning was unusual - studies of this kind usually deploy a sliding scale for answers. On the plus side, the sample was massive and allowed for the first ever examination of demographic factors in relation to day of the week effects on mood.
Are you convinced by this research, or are you certain that your mood is at its lowest on Mondays?
_________________________________
Arthur Stone, Stefan Schneider, and James K. Harter (2012). Day-of-week mood patterns in the United States: On the existence of ‘Blue Monday’, ‘Thank God it's Friday’ and weekend effects. Journal of Positive Psychology DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2012.691980
Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.
... Read more »
Arthur Stone, Stefan Schneider, & James K. Harter. (2012) Day-of-week mood patterns in the United States: On the existence of ‘Blue Monday’, ‘Thank God it's Friday’ and weekend effects. Journal of Positive Psychology. DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2012.691980
- October 18, 2012
- 04:02 AM
- 248 views
Mums don't play so well with their toddlers' electronic toys
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Attention toddlers of the world! The brightly coloured Cookie Shape Surprise toy from Fisher-Price promises a world of fun. Push the right shapes through the right holes and enjoy the reward of flashing lights, music and even the names of the shapes! The bad news? Well, frankly - with this toy, your mum's play skills are likely to take a dive.
That's the message from a new study by psychologists in Vancouver. Where other studies have focused on the potential adverse effects of young children and teenagers spending too much time staring at screens - a controversial issue - this new study by Michaela Woolridge and Jennifer Shapka is the first to examine how electronic toys affect the way mothers and toddlers play together, compared with how they play with traditional, tech-free toys.
Twenty-five highly-educated mothers and their toddlers (average age 20 months) were filmed playing for ten to fifteen minutes with three traditional toys - a board book; the Shape & Sort it toy; and a plastic farm set. And then they were filmed playing for the same length of time with three electronic versions of those kinds of toys - an electronic book, from Touch and Teach Busy Books; the Fisher-Price Cookie Shape Surprise; and the Funderful Roll Along Safari plastic toys with flashing lights, music and activating buttons. For half the mother-child pairs, it was the electronic toys that were played with first.
The videos were analysed by two independent coders who were trained to look for important aspects in the way mothers play with toddlers. The results showed that when mums played with a toddler with electronic toys, they were less responsive, less educational in their play style (for example, providing fewer labels, less often expanding children's words etc), and slightly less encouraging.
In past research, these factors in mother and child playing style have been linked with later outcomes for the kids, for example in terms of language development. In the case of the poorer teaching scores when playing with electronic toys, the difference from the conventional toy play time was substantial and could "have very real implications," the researchers said. In contrast, the type of toy - electronic or conventional - made no difference to the ratings of the mothers warmth whilst playing.
Woolridge and Shapka think that one reason mothers play differently with electronic toys is because they are noisy and so interrupt or deter mothers and children from communicating with each other. Another thing is that mothers seem to tend to try to use the electronic toys in the way they were designed, which constrains their play skills. They showed a lot more creative use of the conventional toys, initiating more make-believe play with them.
Rather than demonising electronic toys, it's worth remembering that electronic toys might well have benefits of their own that were untapped by this research. Moreover, it might be productive to inform parents how to make the most of the new toy gadgets without completely forsaking their traditional pretend-play skills. As the researchers said - "perhaps parents can ... be taught how to mediate manipulative and interactive products to more positively support their infants' and toddlers' development and learning." It would also be interesting for future research to see if these findings replicate when fathers play with their toddlers.
_________________________________
Michaela B. Wooldridge, and Jennifer Shapka (2012). Playing with technology: Mother–toddler interaction scores lower during play with electronic toys. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology DOI: 10.1016/j.appdev.2012.05.005
Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.
... Read more »
Michaela B. Wooldridge, & Jennifer Shapka. (2012) Playing with technology: Mother–toddlerinteractionscores lower during play with electronic toys. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology. DOI: 10.1016/j.appdev.2012.05.005
- September 17, 2012
- 05:51 AM
- 245 views
How the presence of an irrelevant photo makes a statement more believable
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
When we're making a snap judgement about a fact, the mere presence of an accompanying photograph makes us more likely to think it's true, even when the photo doesn't provide any evidence one way or the other. In the words of Eryn Newman and her colleagues, uninformative photographs "inflate truthiness".
Ninety-two students in New Zealand and a further 48 in Canada looked at dozens of "true or alive statements" about celebrities, some of whom they'd heard of and some they hadn't, such as "John Key is alive". As fast as they could, without compromising their accuracy, the students had to say whether each statement was true or not. Crucially, half the statements were accompanied by a photo of the relevant celebrity and half weren't. The take-home finding: the participants were more likely to say a statement was true if it was accompanied by a photo. This was the case for claims about celebrities being alive or dead, but the effect was stronger for unfamiliar celebrities.
Another study with 70 New Zealand undergrads was similar but this time uninformative photos accompanied obscure general knowledge facts. For example, "Macademia nuts are in the same evolutionary family as peaches" was presented alongside a photo of macadamia nuts. The same effect was found - the students were more likely to wager that a fact was true when it was accompanied by an uninformative photo.
Why do photos have this truthiness effect? One possibility is that it's something specifically to do with pictures. To check this, another, similar study was conducted but sometimes celebrity "dead or alive" statements were accompanied by simple verbal descriptions of the celebrities that weren't helpful for judging the dead-or-alive claim. These verbal descriptions also had a "truthiness" effect, which suggests the truthy effect of photos isn't unique to them, but must instead have to do with some kind of non-specific process that makes it easier for the mind to seek out confirmatory evidence for the claim that's being judged. Or, perhaps some feature of the verbal descriptions or photos is being taken as evidence for the attached claim. The researchers can't be sure: "We speculate that nonprobative photos and verbal information help people generate pseudo evidence," they said.
_________________________________
Newman EJ, Garry M, Bernstein DM, Kantner J, and Lindsay DS (2012). Nonprobative photographs (or words) inflate truthiness. Psychonomic bulletin and review PMID: 22869334
Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.
... Read more »
Newman EJ, Garry M, Bernstein DM, Kantner J, & Lindsay DS. (2012) Nonprobative photographs (or words) inflate truthiness. Psychonomic bulletin . PMID: 22869334
- December 4, 2012
- 04:30 AM
- 244 views
The Memory Palace mnemonic strategy works with virtual environments
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
The "Method of Loci" or "Memory Palace" mnemonic strategy of placing to-be-remembered items mentally along a well-known route has been used since Ancient times. When the items need to be recalled, one simply imagines walking the chosen path. The technique takes advantage of the fact that we're naturally better at remembering routes than we are at recalling arbitrary bits of information. It's a handy device that's gained a higher profile lately thanks to Joshua Foer's best-selling book Moonwalking With Einstein, in which he uses the method on route to becoming a memory champion.
There's little doubt the technique works but it's been tricky to perform controlled tests on the psychology that underlies it. That's because people are usually encouraged to use a personal route such as around their own homes, or a journey to school or work. The existing research also varies hugely in how much training people undertake in the technique, from many hours to days.
Eric Legge and his colleagues tested the viability of avoiding these issues by having people use unfamiliar virtual environments as their Memory Palaces (a Memory Palace is a nickname for the environment that's used for mentally locating to-be-remembered items).
Prior to a word-learning challenge, 142 participants spent five minutes navigating a virtual environment on a computer - either an apartment, a school, or a warehouse. Two thirds of them were then given instructions in the Memory Palace mnemonic strategy. Some were told to use an environment, such as their home, with which they are very familiar. The others were told to use the virtual environment they'd just navigated. The remaining third of participants acted as controls and were given no specific memorising instructions or tuition. All the participants then got to work attempting to memorise 10 lists of 11 unrelated words.
When asked to recall the word lists, the main result is that both the Memory Palace groups outperformed the control participants, being between 10 and 16 per cent more accurate. Against expectations, the advantage was greater for the mnemonic groups when scoring was based simply on number of correctly recalled words, rather than on recall in the correct order.
Crucially, the participants who used the virtual environment to help them memorise performed just as well as the group who followed the more conventional approach of using a familiar environment (the specific form of the virtual environment didn't make any difference). The same result held when the researchers focused only on those participants who were compliant with the instructions (defined as using their specified mnemonic for at least half the word lists). Participants using a virtual environment were more compliant on average than the participants using a familiar environment.
Taken altogether, these findings show that it's feasible to use a virtual environment for the Memory Palace technique - in fact people seem to take to it more readily than the conventional approach. This could allow psychologists to conduct more research on the mnemonic under standardised conditions. There could also be practical applications - for people struggling with memory problems, or "professional mnemonists may use such software to create many diverse environments," the researchers said, "allowing them to tailor the richness and theme of each space to the list of items they wish to remember."
_________________________________
Legge, E., Madan, C., Ng, E., and Caplan, J. (2012). Building a memory palace in minutes: Equivalent memory performance using virtual versus conventional environments with the Method of Loci. Acta Psychologica, 141 (3), 380-390 DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2012.09.002
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
... Read more »
Legge, E., Madan, C., Ng, E., & Caplan, J. (2012) Building a memory palace in minutes: Equivalent memory performance using virtual versus conventional environments with the Method of Loci. Acta Psychologica, 141(3), 380-390. DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2012.09.002
- August 21, 2012
- 04:28 AM
- 241 views
The psychology behind the appeal of original artwork
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Why do we place such value on original works of art? Consider The Disciples at Emmaus - believed to be an original Vermeer, it was held in high esteem and sold in 1937 for £1.8 million. Later exposed as a piece by master forger Van Meegeren, however, and its value plummeted overnight.
You could say that we covet originals because of the value that wider society places on them. But that just pushes the question back - why does anyone value originals in the first place? And why with art so much more than other manufactured items?
In a new study, George Newman and Paul Bloom have tested at least two possible explanations - one is that we value original art work because of the originality of the creative performance that led to it; the other is that we feel an original piece is somehow infused with the unique essence of the artist, much like we cherish mundane items that once belonged to a rock star or other celebrity.
In one of Newman and Bloom's five experiments, 180 participants were asked to estimate the value of two paintings they hadn't seen before, both depicting the same scene (one was Son of a Covered Bridge, the other was A Covered Bridge, both by Jim Rilko). Half the participants were told that two different artists had painted the same scene by coincidence. The other participants were told that one artist had produced one of the paintings, and that another artist had seen it and decided to make a copy. All participants were told that there was only one of each painting in existence.
Participants who thought that two paintings had been produced of the same scene by coincidence tended to rate them as having a similar value. By contrast, participants who thought one painting was a copy of the other, tended to value that second painting especially low, and to value the first version of the scene especially high. This shows how we appreciate the originality of the creative performance behind a painting.
In the final experiment, 256 participants read about either a sculptor or a craftsman and their work creating either a bronze sculpture or a piece of furniture, respectively. For the participants who read about the sculptor, those who heard that the process was very hands-on tended to rate the value of the sculpture much more highly than those who read that the creative process was hands-off (involving machinery). By contrast, this distinction made far less difference to the valuations made by the participants who read about the craftsman's work.
In other words, participants placed more value on the bronze sculpture when they thought the artist had touched it more with his own hands, almost as though infusing it with his essence. This effect was enhanced further for participants who read a version of the vignette in which the sculptor made just one copy of his sculpture.
So when we cherish an original piece of art, it seems we do so partly because we value, not just the end product, but the originality of the performance that created it. Moreover, we believe that the work has a special quality about it because it came from the very hand of a particular artist. Copies and forgeries, no matter how close to the original, fall down on both these counts.
"We hope that the research here will engender interest on the broad topic of art within psychology," the researchers said, "as well as more specific questions regarding the role of authenticity in judgments of value."
_________________________________
Newman GE, & Bloom P (2012). Art and authenticity: The importance of originals in judgments of value. Journal of experimental psychology. General, 141 (3), 558-69 PMID: 22082113
-Further reading- A brain-imaging paper published last year reported that the same works of art triggered different brain activity depending on whether they were labelled as authentic or as copies.
Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.
... Read more »
Newman GE, & Bloom P. (2012) Art and authenticity: The importance of originals in judgments of value. Journal of experimental psychology. General, 141(3), 558-69. PMID: 22082113
- August 9, 2012
- 06:56 AM
- 238 views
Phew! Made it! How an uncanny proportion of psychology findings just manage to reach statistical significance
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Like a tired boxer at the Olympic Games, the reputation of psychological science has just taken another punch to the gut. After a series of fraud scandals in social psychology and a US survey that revealed the widespread use of questionable research practices, a paper published this month (pdf) finds that an unusually large number of psychology findings are reported as "just significant" in statistical terms.
The pattern of results could be indicative of dubious research practices, in which researchers nudge their results towards significance, for example by excluding troublesome outliers or adding new participants. Or it could reflect a selective publication bias in the discipline - an obsession with reporting results that have the magic stamp of statistical significance. Most likely it reflects a combination of both these influences. On a positive note, psychology, perhaps more than any other branch of science, is showing an admirable desire and ability to police itself and to raise its own standards.
E. J. Masicampo at Wake Forest University, USA, and David Lalande at Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, analysed 12 months of issues, July 2007 - August 2008, from three highly regarded psychology journals - the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; and Psychological Science.
In psychology, a common practice is to determine how probable (p) it is that the observed effects in a study could have happened if the null hypothesis were true (the null hypothesis usually being that that the treatment or intervention has no effect). The convention is to consider a probability of less than five per cent (p < .05) as an indication that the effect in question is real (known as null hypothesis significance testing).
From the 36 journal issues Masicampo and Lalande identified 3,627 reported p values between .01 to .10 and their method was to see how evenly the p values were spread across that range. To avoid a bias in their approach, they counted the number of p values falling into "buckets" of different size, either .01, .005, .0025 or .00125 across the range.
The spread of p values between .01 and .10 followed an exponential curve - from .10 to .01 the number of p values increased gradually. But here's the key finding - there was a glaring bump in the distribution between 0.45 and .50. The number of p values falling in this range was "much greater" than you'd expect based on the frequency of p values falling elsewhere in the distribution. In other words, an uncanny abundance of reported results just sneaked into the region of statistical significance.
"Biases linked to achieving statistical significance appear to have a measurable impact on the research publication process," the researchers said.
The same general pattern was found regardless of whether Masicampo and Lalande analysed results from just one journal or all of them together, and mostly regardless of the size of the distribution buckets they looked at. Of course, there's a chance the intent behind their investigations could have biased their analyses in some way. To check this, a research assistant completely blind to the study aims analysed p values from one of the journals - the same result was found.
Masicampo and Lalande said their findings pointed to the need to educate researchers about the proper interpretation of null hypothesis significance testing and the value of alternative approaches, such as reporting effect sizes and confidence intervals. " ... [T]he field may benefit from practices aimed at counteracting the single-minded drive toward achieving statistical significance," they said.
_________________________________
Masicampo EJ, and Lalande DR (2012). A peculiar prevalence of p values just below .05. Quarterly journal of experimental psychology PMID: 22853650
Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.
... Read more »
Masicampo EJ, & Lalande DR. (2012) A peculiar prevalence of p values just below .05. Quarterly journal of experimental psychology . PMID: 22853650
- April 10, 2012
- 04:00 AM
- 237 views
Would you cheat for charity?
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Financial dishonesty was one of the contributing factors that caused the recent global economic crisis. Against this backdrop, a new study led by Alan Lewis at the University of Bath has provided an elegant lab demonstration of the way that for most people, right and wrong aren't clear cut. Instead, the research shows people look for ways to justify their financial cheating, probably to maintain their perception of themselves as essentially good. Oh, and the research also suggested that economics students are more dishonest than psychology students - not great news for the future of the financial world!
The first part of the study involved 94 psychology and economics undergrads rolling a die under a cup, and then looking through a hole in the cup so that they alone could see the number. They then reported that number to a researcher on the understanding that it would be translated into a cash donation by the researchers for Cancer Research UK (1 on the die would equal a 10p donation; 6 would equal 60p and so on). Afterward the researcher gave this amount to the participants, who inserted it into a donation box.
The key finding here is that the students tended to report higher numbers than you'd expect from a fair die. So, for example, 24.5 per cent of participants said they'd rolled a six whereas a fair die should have produced a figure of 17 per cent. The researchers estimated that this means 9 per cent of participants lied about rolling a six. This is substantially higher than the figure obtained in a previous study when participants were playing for their own cash reward and it therefore shows how people indulge in moral relativism. More people seem to think it's okay to cheat if it's for charity, than if it's for their own gain.
The second part of the study involved a thought experiment. The same students were asked to imagine rolling a die three times (each time for their eyes only), over and over. They were given twenty hypothetical sequences of the numbers they produced (e.g. 1, 1, 1). In each case, the first number represented the cash reward they would get, where a 1 would equal £1 and so on. The second two numbers represented two further rolls, to establish that the die was fair and to make the sure the die was left in a re-set position. The hypothetical question for each sequence - what first number would the participant tell the researcher they'd obtained? Would they tell the truth, or lie to claim a higher cash reward?
The main finding for this part of the study is that the proportion of lies varied according to the numbers produced in the second and third rolls. For example, if a person (hypothetically) produced a six in either the second or third rolls, they were far more likely to lie and say the first roll produced a six when it didn't. It's as if getting a six in one of the later, irrelevant rolls somehow made it easier to justify lying about getting that number in the first roll. Overall, 73 per cent of the participants' hypothetical responses were honest, 16 per cent were "justified" lies of this kind, and 9 per cent were out-and-out lies (it's intriguing that so many participants were willing to be honest about the fact that they would have lied, but that's a whole other story).
Lewis and his colleagues also used the data from the second part of the study to compare rates of (self-confessed) hypothetical lying between psychology graduates and economics grads. Economists were much more likely to lie (for example, their rate of outright lying was 13 per cent vs. 6 per cent for psychologists). This was only partly explained by there being more male economists than male psychologists, with men being the more dishonest sex across both disciplines. Of course, another way to look at these data is that the economists were more honest about the fact that they would lie, but again that's another story and an issue not addressed here by the researchers.
"At the level of individual differences it has been demonstrated that economists are more willing to cheat," the researchers said. "This is of some concern given that people with economics degrees hold prominent positions in financial institutions."
_________________________________
Lewis, A., Bardis, A., Flint, C., Mason, C., Smith, N., Tickle, C., and Zinser, J. (2012). Drawing the line somewhere: An experimental study of moral compromise. Journal of Economic Psychology, 33 (4), 718-725 DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2012.01.005
Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.
... Read more »
Lewis, A., Bardis, A., Flint, C., Mason, C., Smith, N., Tickle, C., & Zinser, J. (2012) Drawing the line somewhere: An experimental study of moral compromise. Journal of Economic Psychology, 33(4), 718-725. DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2012.01.005
- June 8, 2012
- 04:31 AM
- 237 views
Race and foul judgments in football - it's not black and white
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Racism continues to cast its ugly shadow over football. As the European Football Championships kick-off today, the British government has advised fans of Asian or Afro-Caribbean descent to "take extra care" when in Ukraine, host nation with Poland. Meanwhile, England defender and ex-captain John Terry awaits his trial for alleged racism. Against this background, a team of Swiss psychologists has just published a preliminary investigation into the potential effect of racial prejudice on fans', players' and referees' judgements about the severity of fouls by Black and White players.
Pascal Gygax and his colleagues presented 43 White football players, 17 White referees and 22 White football fans with 64 challenge sequences created with the Xbox 360 console game Fifa 2005. Each sequence featured one player tackling another, and the clips had been rated by independent judges as ambiguous as regards the legality of the challenge. Players in the clips were White or Black and wore either green or white shirts. After watching each clip (between one and two minutes in length), the participants had to say whether a foul had been committed, and if so, rate its severity.
Based on previous evidence of racial prejudice towards Black athletes, the researchers anticipated that challenges by Black players would be judged harshly, particularly if they were challenges against a White player. Although the results did uncover evidence that race affects people's judgements of fouls, the pattern of results was complicated.
There were signs the participants were sensitive to the risk of appearing biased, in that they were less likely to judge a foul had occurred whenever a sequence involved two players of different skin colour. Referees specifically were less likely to judge that a foul had occurred when a challenge was by a Black player. Paradoxically, participants overall were quicker to decide that a foul had occurred when a challenge was by a Black player, possibly because they harboured implicit expectations that Black players will be more likely to commit fouls.
When it came to the severity ratings, there was evidence for bias against White players - fouls by them were always judged as more serious, perhaps a consequence of compensatory efforts by the participants to appear non-biased. On the other hand, challenges on Black players were rated as less severe than challenges on White players, perhaps indicative of prejudice by the White participants.
"In essence," the researchers explained, "participants have conflicting sources of information which result in differential treatments of White and Black players, at times discriminatory to Black players, and at times to White players." An alternative, more pessimistic explanation put forward by Gygax and his team is that the participants expected Black players to be more aggressive and so raised the threshold for what they considered to be severe when judging their challenges.
The researchers acknowledged the limitations of their study - most obviously that they'd relied on video game clips rather than real-life footage. However, they said they'd uncovered evidence of discrimination in the judgement of football challenges, and that crucially, "those were not always against Black players: thus, differentiation judgments in soccer based on skin colour may not be a black or white judgment."
_________________________________
WAGNER-EGGER, P., GYGAX, P., and RIBORDY, F. (2012). RACISM IN SOCCER? PERCEPTION OF CHALLENGES OF BLACK AND WHITE PLAYERS BY WHITE REFEREES, SOCCER PLAYERS, AND FANS. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 114 (1), 275-289 DOI: 10.2466/05.07.17.PMS.114.1.275-289
Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.
... Read more »
WAGNER-EGGER, P., GYGAX, P., & RIBORDY, F. (2012) RACISM IN SOCCER? PERCEPTION OF CHALLENGES OF BLACK AND WHITE PLAYERS BY WHITE REFEREES, SOCCER PLAYERS, AND FANS . Perceptual and Motor Skills, 114(1), 275-289. DOI: 10.2466/05.07.17.PMS.114.1.275-289
- July 10, 2012
- 04:37 AM
- 234 views
Self-licensing: when you indulge through reason, not lack of willpower
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
We usually think of over-indulgence in terms of a lack of willpower. I scoff the doughnut because I can't marshal the necessary self-control to resist it. A great deal of psychology research has pursued this particular line, demonstrating, for example, that willpower seems to be a finite resource. Expend it in one situation and you'll have less left over for another.
A new study by Jessie de Witt Huberts and her colleagues at Utrecht University takes a different perspective. They point out that we often over-indulge, not because we can't help it, but because we reason that it's okay to do so. After that half-hour run, we tell ourselves, we deserve the doughnut! de Witt Huberts' team call this self-licensing and they say it's suprisingly under-researched.
Previous studies have shown how self-licensing affects our choices. For example, after working harder, people are more likely to choose a cake over a fruit-salad. But before now, no-one's looked to see how self-licensing might affect actual indulgent consumption.
Before they got started, de Witt Huberts and her team had to confront a complication with researching this topic - the need to separate out the effects of low energy from self-licensing. If someone's been working hard, not only might this encourage them to think they deserve a naughty snack, their lack of energy might also deplete their willpower (indeed, studies have suggested that low sugar levels reduce willpower).
To get arount this problem, de Witt Huberts and her colleagues needed a way to trick people into thinking they'd worked hard (inviting self licensing) without actually diminishing their willpower levels. They did this by having participants test-out what they were told was a new screening tool for dyslexia. It involved looking at 200 words on a computer screen, one at a time, and pressing the key on the keyboard that corresponded to the first letter of each word. Crucially, one group of participants did this for five minutes, and were then told they had to do it all over again for another five minutes to check the reliability of the screening tool. The other participants simply had a one-minute break between two 5-minute sessions.
In a pilot study with 106 women, the group who thought they'd had to test the screening tool twice, felt like they'd worked harder than the other group, who thought they'd done it just once (even though both groups had worked for the same length of time). Next, both groups completed the Stroop test, a classic measure of self control that requires people to read colour words (e.g. blue), whilst ignoring the ink colour they're written in. This test confirmed that both groups had the same levels of self control even though one group felt like they'd worked harder than the other.
When it came to the study proper, 39 women were split into two groups - one did the dyslexia screening tool in two phases, to make them feel like they'd worked harder, and the other group did it in one bash. Next, ostensibly as part of a separate consumer research study, all the women taste-tested some crisps, M&Ms, Wine gums and Chocolate chip cookies.
The take-home finding? Both groups said their willpower levels felt the same, but the women who thought they'd worked harder tended to eat more of the naughty food. In the ten minutes available, they consumed an average of 26 grammes of more snack-food, which equated to 130 more calories. As well as feeling like they'd worked harder, they also said they felt more hungry, but this wasn't correlated with the amount they ate. The researchers speculated that the feelings of hunger could have been a further form of self-licensing - "I've worked hard and I'm hungry".
This study is one of the first steps towards uncovering the part that self-licensing plays in giving in to temptation. It's limited in that the sample only included women and the self-licensing was implicit. The women who thought they'd worked harder were more indulgent, but we don't know anything about the way they reasoned with themselves, or if the effect was conscious at all. "Nevertheless," the researchers concluded, "although many questions about self-licensing require further investigation, the current studies demonstrate that sometimes people strategically choose to indulge and that gratification of our desires is not inevitably governed by our impulses."
_________________________________
ESSIE C. DE WITT HUBERTS, CATHARINE EVERS, and DENISE T. D. DE RIDDER (2012). License to sin: Self-licensing as a mechanism underlying hedonic consumption. European Journal of Social Psychology DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.861
Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.
... Read more »
ESSIE C. DE WITT HUBERTS, CATHARINE EVERS, & DENISE T. D. DE RIDDER. (2012) License to sin: Self-licensing as a mechanism underlying hedonic consumption. European Journal of Social Psychology. DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.861
- November 8, 2012
- 04:33 AM
- 233 views
Labs worldwide report converging evidence that undermines the low-sugar theory of depleted willpower
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
One of the main findings in willpower research is that it's a limited resource. Use self-control up in one situation and you have less left over afterwards - an effect known as "ego-depletion". This discovery led to a search for the underlying physiological mechanism. In 2007, Roy Baumeister, a pioneer in the field, and his colleagues reported that the physiological correlate of ego-depletion is low glucose. Self-control leads the brain to metabolise more glucose, so the theory goes, and when glucose gets too low, we're left with less willpower.
The breakthrough 2007 study showed that ego-depleted participants had low blood glucose levels, but those who subsequently consumed a glucose drink were able to sustain their self-control on a second task. In the intervening years the finding has been replicated and the glucose-willpower link has come to be stated as fact.
"No glucose, no willpower," wrote Baumeister and his journalist co-author John Tierney in their best-selling popular psychology book Willpower: Rediscovering Our Greatest Strength (Allen Lane, 2012). The claim was also endorsed in a guide to willpower published by the American Psychological Association earlier this year. "Maintaining steady blood-glucose levels, such as by eating regular healthy meals and snacks, may help prevent the effects of willpower depletion," the report claims.
But now two studies have come along at once (following another published earlier in the year) that together cast doubt on the idea that depleted willpower is caused by a lack of glucose availability in the brain. In the first, Matthew Sanders and his colleagues in the US report what they call the "Gargle effect". They had dozens of students look through a stats book and cross out just the Es, a tiresome task designed to tax their self-control levels. Next, they completed the famous Stroop task - naming the ink colour of words while ignoring their meaning. Crucially, half the participants completed the Stroop challenge while gargling sugary lemonade, the others while gargling lemonade sweetened artificially with Splenda. The participants who gargled, but did not swallow, the sugary (i.e. glucose-containing) lemonade performed much better on the Stroop task.
The participants in the glucose condition didn't consume the glucose and even if they had, there was no time for it to be metabolised. So this effect can't be about restoring low glucose levels. Rather, Sanders' team think glucose binds to receptors in the mouth, which has the effect of activating brain regions involved in reward and self-control - the anterior cingulate cortex and striatum.
The other study that's just come out was conducted by Martin Hagger and Nikos Chatzisarantis based in Australia and the UK. Their approach was similar to Sanders' except that participants gargled and spat out a glucose or artificially sweetened solution prior to performing a second taxing task, rather than during. Also, this research involved a series of 5 experiments involving many different ways of testing people's self-control, including: resisting delicious cookies; reading boring text in an expressive style; unsolvable puzzles; and squeezing hand-grips. But the take-home finding was the same - participants who gargled, but did not swallow, a glucose drink performed better on a subsequent test of their willpower; participants who gargled an artificially sweetened drink did not. So again, willpower was restored without topping up glucose levels. Moreover, the benefit of gargling glucose was displayed only by participants who'd had their self-control taxed in an initial task. It made no difference to participants who were already in an untaxed state.
Hagger and Chatzisarantis agree with the interpretation of the Sanders' group, except they make a distinction. The effect of glucose binding to receptors in the mouth could either stimulate activity in brain regions like the anterior cingulate that tend to show fatigue after a taxing task. Or they say that glucose in the mouth could trigger reward-related activity that prompts participants to interpret a task as more rewarding, thus boosting their motivation. The explanations are complementary and need not be mutually exclusive.
The key point is the new results suggest depleted willpower is about motivation and the allocation of glucose resources, not about a lack of glucose. These findings don't prove that consuming glucose has no benefit for restoring willpower, but they suggest strongly that it's not the principle mechanism. It's notable that the new findings complement previous research in the sports science literature showing that gargling (without ingesting) glucose can boost cycling performance.
"While our findings are consistent with the predictions of the resource-depletion account, they also contribute to an increasing literature that glucose may not be a candidate physiological analog for self-control resources," write Hagger and Chatzisarantis. "Instead ego-depletion may be due to problems of self-control resource allocation rather than availability." An important next step is to conduct brain-imaging and related studies to observe the physiological effects of gargling glucose on the brain, and on motivational beliefs. There are also tantalising applications from the new research - for example, could the gargle effect (perhaps in the form of glucose-infused chewing gum) be used as a willpower aid for dieters and people trying to give up smoking?
_________________________________
Hagger, M., and Chatzisarantis, N. (2012). The Sweet Taste of Success: The Presence of Glucose in the Oral Cavity Moderates the Depletion of Self-Control Resources. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin DOI: 10.1177/0146167212459912
... Read more »
Hagger, M., & Chatzisarantis, N. (2012) The Sweet Taste of Success: The Presence of Glucose in the Oral Cavity Moderates the Depletion of Self-Control Resources. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. DOI: 10.1177/0146167212459912
Sanders, M., Shirk, S., Burgin, C., & Martin, L. (2012) The Gargle Effect: Rinsing the Mouth With Glucose Enhances Self-Control. Psychological Science. DOI: 10.1177/0956797612450034
- August 15, 2012
- 04:48 AM
- 232 views
How to turn time spent living abroad into creative success
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Spending time living abroad can set the creative juices flowing. But it doesn't work for everyone and a new study helps explain why. To extract maximum benefit from time in a foreign land, what's needed is a "bicultural" perspective - the ability to identity with your new home, but all the while continuing to connect with your native country too.
This form of dual acculturation breeds creative and professional success, the new findings suggest, because it encourages a sophisticated style of thought. Juggling the conflicts and complexities of a dual-identity fosters an ability to register multiple perspectives and to understand the conceptual relations between them ("a habitual tool for making sense of the world", in the researchers' words).
Carmit Tadmor and his colleagues began by studying 78 MBA students of 26 different nationalities at a European Business School. All had spent time living in one of 31 different foreign countries. Factors such as personality and age were taken into account through all the study analyses.
Those students who'd assumed a bicultural perspective (as opposed to those identifying steadfastly with their original culture only, or those who'd gone entirely native and rejected their home identity) performed better on a lab test of creativity - coming up with new uses for a brick. Moreover, this advantage was mediated by their scores on "integrative complexity" - the thinking style mentioned earlier, in which multiple perspectives are appreciated and linked.
A second study involved 54 MBA students at a business school in the USA, all of whom had spent time living abroad. This time the biculturals were found to have been more innovative in real life (in terms of setting up new businesses; inventing new products and services). Again, this creative advantage was mediated by the "integrative complexity" of their thinking.
Finally, the researchers surveyed 100 Israeli professionals, most of them working in Silicon Valley. Their average time in the States was 9 years. The biculturals in this sample had enjoyed more promotions and had superior professional reputations (based on the judgment of one of their peers), compared with the participants who identified only with their Israeli heritage or only with their adopted American culture. Again, this professional advantage was mediated by the biculturals' "integrative complexity" in their thinking.
Tadmor and his team acknowledge that their results are limited by being cross-sectional - it's possible that professional success encourages a complex thinking style; that a complex thinking style provokes a bicultural approach to life, and so on. But they pointed to past longitudinal research that showed biculturals' thinking became more integratively complex over time, as compared with the thinking of mono-cultural individuals - so it's certainly plausible that acquiring a bicultural perspective plays a causal role. The researchers also admitted that a bicultural perspective could have other positive benefits besides encouraging complex thought - for example, by catalysing better relations with colleagues. There could be downsides too. The process of becoming bicultural is likely a stressful demanding experience.
If you're planning to live abroad for creative benefit, there are clear lessons to take away from this research, but we still don't know how much it's possible to choose to adopt a bicultural perspective. More research will be needed to look into this. Another detail worth noting is that participants in this study who rejected both their original home identity and their new adopted identity (known as "marginals"), also showed greater integrative complexity and more creative success, though not to the same extent as biculturals. Perhaps, the researchers surmised, being culturally independent also fosters a complex style that aids creative thought.
_________________________________
Tadmor CT, Galinsky AD, & Maddux WW (2012). Getting the Most Out of Living Abroad: Biculturalism and Integrative Complexity as Key Drivers of Creative and Professional Success. Journal of personality and social psychology PMID: 22823287
--Further reading--
Living abroad linked with enhanced creativity
The Cure for Creative Blocks? Leave Your Desk.
Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.
... Read more »
Tadmor CT, Galinsky AD, & Maddux WW. (2012) Getting the Most Out of Living Abroad: Biculturalism and Integrative Complexity as Key Drivers of Creative and Professional Success. Journal of personality and social psychology. PMID: 22823287
- October 25, 2012
- 06:23 AM
- 231 views
Does owning an iPod make you happy?
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
As Apple launches its latest shiny products and the media work up their usual lather of excitement, a timely study has tackled the question of whether owning an iPod digital music player will make you happy.
Antje Cockrill surveyed 241 people (mostly students aged 18 to 25) about their digital music player and their life satisfaction. Seventy-seven per cent of the sample were iPod owners, with the remainder owning non-Apple brands of music player. The participants were asked how much they liked the design of their music player; whether they judged others by their playlists (or felt judged); whether they felt a bond with others who own the same brand of player; whether they felt their player was "cool"; whether, if they owned an iPod, they attended iParties (where playlists are shared and iPods compared); and whether they used their music player to create a private, "auditory bubble".
Answers to these questions were entered into an analysis alongside age, gender and employment status and the take-home finding is that for iPod owners, nearly 25 per cent of the variance in their life-satisfaction was associated with their answers to the music-player questions. "Considering the very wide range of potential variables that can influence life satisfaction for an individual, this is a very high result," Cockrill said. By contrast, for non-iPod owners, their answers to the music-player questions were virtually irrelevant to their life satisfaction.
The finding for iPod owners is consistent with a seminal theory proposed by Russell Belk in the 1980s that the things we own come to represent our extended selves. Also relevant is research showing how young people use their music preferences to express their identities and to fit in with their friends. It would appear that iPod owners gain satisfaction from their Apple toy and from identifying with, and gaining approval from, other owners of what they consider to be a "cool" product.
Other results to come from the study: iPod users reported using their music players more than non-iPod owners; iPod users were more likely to say their music player helped make boring activities more tolerable; and just under half of the iPod owners said it was important for them to own an Apple player rather than a different brand.
Cockrill said that Apple "can be congratulated for having created a product that has ... managed to retain the elusive 'cool factor'". However, she cautioned that her results also give cause for concern - she highlighted the likely negative consequences for people who desired an iPod but could not afford one, and for iPod owners who lost their treasured gadget.
Besides the dependence on a largely student sample, the study has another weakness - no attempt was made to create a psychological barrier between the questions about music players and the questions about life satisfaction, for example by presenting irrelevant questions or a distracting filler task. Although the order of questions was randomised, it's possible that thoughts about music players would have been foremost in the minds of many participants when they reported their life satisfaction. That said, it remains the case that only the iPod owners showed an association between their music-player answers and life-satisfaction.
Even more important - has this study really answered the question posed in its title, regarding whether iPods make us happy? Arguably, all the results show is that the happiness of people who care about their image, music players and trendy brands is affected by these very issues (hardly a surprise) and, furthermore, that these people tend to own an Apple iPod, the market-leading product (again, not that surprising). To probe the actual influence of the Apple iPod on people's happiness, future research would need to measure people's attitudes towards music and brands and follow them over time - to see if becoming an iPod owner (versus the owner of a different branded player) made any difference to their happiness.
_________________________________
Cockrill, A. (2012). Does an iPod make you happy? An exploration of the effects of iPod ownership on life satisfaction. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 11 (5), 406-414 DOI: 10.1002/cb.1385
Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.
... Read more »
Cockrill, A. (2012) Does an iPod make you happy? An exploration of the effects of iPod ownership on life satisfaction. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 11(5), 406-414. DOI: 10.1002/cb.1385
- June 4, 2012
- 05:41 AM
- 230 views
The new science of "Phew!"
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
There's a childish prank I never tire of. As soon as we've left the house and the front-door has slammed shut, I pat down all my pockets and say nervously to my companion "Er, you've got the keys, right?". Then, just when their dismay at the prospect of being locked out has peaked, I say "Only joking!" and watch with pleasure as relief washes over them.
I say "relief", but what exactly is that emotion my companion has just experienced? As Kate Sweeny and Kathleen Vohs write in a new journal article, "Although relief is readily identified and frequently experienced, it is not understood well from the perspective of psychological science." Investigations into the emotion, they observe, "are sparse".
Now Sweeny and Vohs have attempted to make a start at mapping out this uncharted emotional territory. They began with a pilot study asking 91 people to provide a personal example of relief. Roughly half the group described a "near-miss" kind of relief - rather like fearing that you've locked yourself out and then realising that you haven't. The other half described a kind of "task-completion" relief, in which a negative experience had come to an end. A second pilot study with dozens of American and Dutch participants established similarly that half their relief experiences in the preceding week were of the "near-miss" category and half were of the "task completion" kind.
Next, in a study in which 114 more participants reflected on recent relief experiences, the researchers found that near-miss relief was associated with having more thoughts about how much worse things could have been and feeling more socially isolated (regardless of whether they were on their own or not). Sweeny and Vohs said this is consistent with past research showing how excessive rumination can be harmful to close relationships. Experience of task-completion relief, by contrast, was associated with more thoughts about how things could have been even better.
Lastly the researchers had a go at inducing relief. They invited 79 participants to a lab and told them they'd have to sing a song into an audio recorder. Half the participants were then told the recorder was broken, thus prompting them to experience near-miss relief. The other half of the participants did the singing, which it was presumed would be followed by the experience of task-completion relief. Quizzed afterwards, it was again found that near-miss relief, more than task-completion relief, was associated with feelings of social isolation and thoughts about how things could have been worse. The negative counterfactual thinking mediated the social isolation - that is, the more thoughts about how bad things could have been, the more socially isolated people felt.
What does all this tell us about what relief is for? "Experiencing near-miss relief could increase the likelihood that people will act to avert an unfavourable fate in the future" the Sweeny and Vohs said. "In contrast, task-completion relief allows people to focus on the positive emotional experience with minimal distraction from downward counterfactual thoughts. This process might reinforce satisfaction in the completion of a job well done ... and therefore increase the likelihood that people will repeat the unpleasant experience."
"Our aim is to bring the neglect of relief to an end," the researchers' concluded, "for it is an emotion that deserves study."
_________________________________
Sweeny, K., and Vohs, K. (2012). On Near Misses and Completed Tasks: The Nature of Relief. Psychological Science, 23 (5), 464-468 DOI: 10.1177/0956797611434590
Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.
... Read more »
Sweeny, K., & Vohs, K. (2012) On Near Misses and Completed Tasks: The Nature of Relief. Psychological Science, 23(5), 464-468. DOI: 10.1177/0956797611434590
- June 19, 2012
- 04:55 AM
- 230 views
What your choice of shoe says about you
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
When you meet a stranger, look at his shoes (from Good Advices by REM)
The UK's fashionistas are abuzz after the Duchess of Cambridge was pictured at the weekend sporting a £300 pair of Le Chameau wellington boots. Does her shoe choice tell us anything about her? In a culture where so much attention is paid to the material we strap to our feet, a new study asks this very question more generally - how is shoe choice associated with personality and what assumptions do onlookers make about people based on their shoes?
The new research builds on an existing literature that's shown we form impressions of strangers incredibly quickly, discerning a surprising amount of information about their sexuality, background and personality. However, much of the past research on these thin-slicing abilities has involved participants looking at the faces of strangers, not their shoes.
Omri Gillath started by getting 208 undergrads (aged 18 to 55) to fill out numerous questionnaires about their personality and background, as well as submitting a photograph of "the pair of shoes they wear most often." Next, a separate group of 63 undergrads each looked at a sample of these shoes and gave their best guess as to the personality and background of the wearers.
The participants in the role of observer tended to agree with each other in their judgments, suggesting that we make consistent assumptions about wearers based on their shoes, regardless of whether those assumptions are accurate or not.
In decreasing order, observers were most accurate in identifying the shoe-wearers': age, gender, income, attachment anxiety (as measured by the wearers' agreement with statements like "I worry that romantic partners won't care about me as much as I care about them") and their agreeableness. Observers were unsuccessful at identifying other aspects of personality such as political ideology, extraversion and conscientiousness, despite tending to agree with each other in their ratings of these traits.
So what cues did the observers use to make their judgments? First off, let's look at some of their mistakes. The observers assumed that colourful and bright shoes belonged to an extravert person. In fact, the only shoe characteristics that correlated with wearers' extraversion were being worn out and being of greater height (the top part, rather than the heel). Observers thought that attractive shoes in a good condition probably belonged to a conscientious person. In fact, the only relevant factors here were that conscientious people tended to have higher-topped shoes and to photograph them against a colourful background. And they assumed wrongly that less attractiveness shoes, with less pointy toes, in relatively poor repair, and low value price, probably belonged to someone with liberal political views. In fact there were no significant associations between political ideology and choice of shoe.
On the other hand, the observers discerned correctly that more agreeable people tended to wear shoes that were practical and affordable (pointy toes, price and brand visibility were negatively correlated with agreeableness); that anxiously attached people tended to wear shoes that look brand new and in good repair (perhaps in an attempt to make a good impression and avoid rejection); that wealthier people wear more stylish shoes; and that women wear more expensive-looking, branded shoes.
The study is obviously limited by its use of a narrow sample of Western university students. The assumptions observers make from shoes could be completely different in another culture, as could the links between shoe features and the traits of wearers. Another shortcoming is the reliance on the self-report ratings of the shoe wearers. Perhaps, for some of the personality factors, the observers were "seeing through" the shoe wearers' idealised selves. "Do people buy and wear shoes strategically to portray an image, and can observers detect the 'acquired image'?" the researchers asked. "These are fundamental questions in personality and social psychology, and they play out in many domains - shoes are merely one attractive alternative to research."
_________________________________
Omri Gillatha, Angela J. Bahnsb, Fiona Gea, & Christian S. Crandalla (2012). Shoes as a source of first impressions. Journal of Research in Personality DOI: 10.1016/j.jrp.2012.04.003
Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.
... Read more »
Omri Gillatha, Angela J. Bahnsb, Fiona Gea, & Christian S. Crandalla. (2012) Shoes as a source of first impressions. Journal of Research in Personality. DOI: 10.1016/j.jrp.2012.04.003
- November 22, 2012
- 04:27 AM
- 229 views
The unscientific thinking that forever lingers in the minds of physics professors
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Young children are inclined to see purpose in the natural world. Ask them why we have rivers, and they'll likely tell you that we have rivers so that boats can travel on them (an example of a "teleological explanation"). Cute, but maybe not that surprising. Well, consider this - a new study with 80 physical scientists finds that they too have a latent tendency to endorse similar teleological explanations for why nature is the way it is. Oh yes, they label those explanations as false most of the time, but put them under time pressure, and their child-like, quasi-religious beliefs shine through.
Deborah Kelemen and her colleagues presented 80 scientists (including physicists, chemists and geographers) with 100 one-sentence statements and their task was to say if each one was true or false. Among the items were teleological statements about nature, such as "Trees produce oxygen so that animals can breathe". Crucially, half the scientists had to answer under time pressure - just over 3 seconds for each statement - while the others had as long as they liked. There were also control groups of college students and the general public.
Overall, the scientists endorsed fewer of the teleological statements than the control groups (22 per cent vs. 50 per cent approx). No surprise there, given that mainstream science rejects the idea that inanimate objects have purpose, or that there is purposeful design in the natural world. But look at what happened under time pressure. When they were rushed, the scientists endorsed 29 per cent of teleological statements compared with 15 per cent endorsed by the un-rushed scientists. This is consistent with the idea that a tendency to endorse teleological beliefs lingers in the scientists' minds. This unscientific thinking is usually suppressed, but time pressure undermines that conscious suppression.
The scientists' greater inclination to endorse teleological explanation under time pressure wasn't a non-specific effect of being rushed. Time pressure barely affected their judgments about other erroneous statements (i.e. simple false facts). Moreover, scientists who admitted having religious beliefs, or beliefs about Mother Nature being one big organism, were more prone than most to endorsing teleological explanation under time pressure, thus suggesting their latent unscientific thinking fed into their belief systems.
"A broad teleological tendency therefore appears to be a robust, resilient, and developmentally enduring feature of the human mind," the researchers concluded, "that arises early in life and gets masked rather than replaced, even in those whose scientific expertise and explicit metaphysical commitments seem most likely to counteract it."
In a follow-up study, humanities academics showed the same tendency to endorse more teleological statements under time pressure. Intriguingly, their levels of endorsement were lower than college students but no greater than the physical scientists. This suggests that further education of any kind leads to a greater masking of teleological belief, but only up to a point. "The [scientists'] specialised scientific training and substantial knowledge base does no more to ameliorate their unwarranted teleological ideas than an extended humanities education," the researchers said.
_________________________________
Kelemen, D., Rottman, J., and Seston, R. (2012). Professional Physical Scientists Display Tenacious Teleological Tendencies: Purpose-Based Reasoning as a Cognitive Default. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General DOI: 10.1037/a0030399
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
... Read more »
Kelemen, D., Rottman, J., & Seston, R. (2012) Professional Physical Scientists Display Tenacious Teleological Tendencies: Purpose-Based Reasoning as a Cognitive Default. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. DOI: 10.1037/a0030399
- August 7, 2012
- 04:54 AM
- 228 views
Is a taste for extreme answers distorting cross-cultural comparisons of personality?
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Data on how personality varies around the world is puzzling. Take the dimension of conscientiousness. Among individuals within a particular country, those with higher conscientiousness tend to earn more money and live longer. This makes sense given the behavioural sequelae of conscientiousness, including diligence and attention-to-detail. Compare across countries, however, and what you find is that richer countries with longer life expectancy tend to have lower average conscientiousness. Now a new study has tested a possible explanation for this paradox - perhaps there's a systematic bias between countries in people's tendency to tick more extreme scores on questionnaires.
How do you tell if a population's higher scores are a reliable reflection of their underlying traits, or if they're caused by a proclivity for more extreme answers? One way is to ask them to rate not just their own personality, but also the personality of a number of fictional characters described in vignettes. Exaggerated scores for the fictional characters would be a sign of a skewed response style.
A small army of researchers around the world led by René Mõttus at the University of Tartu in Estonia has taken on this challenge, recruiting 2,965 people across 20 countries (including European, African, American and Asian nations) and asking them to rate their own personalities and the personalities described in vignettes.
Mõttus and his colleagues uncovered systematic differences between nations in people's proclivity for extreme responding. One pattern to emerge was that richer East Asian countries tended to avoid extreme scores, whereas poorer countries in Africa and SE Asia tended to give more extreme ratings. Adjusting for cross-cultural response styles, the puzzling negative correlation disappeared between average international conscientiousness scores and national longevity and wealth.
The researchers acknowledged that they haven't shown conclusively that extreme response tendencies cause higher conscientiousness ratings. Theoretically the causal direction could run backwards, although common sense suggests this is unlikely. You'd expect higher scorers on conscientiousness to avoid extreme scores, not embrace them. Another possibility is that another unknown factor is at play, inflating conscientiousness scores and encouraging extreme responding. However, it's difficult to imagine what such a factor might be. Taken altogether, the researchers think the most likely explanation is that a proclivity in some countries for extreme responding has had the effect of inflating their conscientiousness scores.
All this raises a further intriguing question ... why should people in some countries be more prone to giving extreme answers? The answer remains beyond the current study, but the researchers suggested one factor could be "dialectical thinking ... 'an emphasis on change, a recognition of contradiction and of the need for multiple perspectives, and a search for the "Middle Way" between opposing propositions'". Countries where dialectical thinking is more common would be expected to avoid extreme scores. Consistent with this, there's some evidence that dialectical thinking is higher in East Asian countries that were found in this study to refrain from giving extreme scores.
_________________________________
Mõttus R, Allik J, Realo A, Rossier J, Zecca G, Ah-Kion J, Amoussou-Yéyé D, Bäckström M, Barkauskiene R, Barry O, Bhowon U, Björklund F, Bochaver A, Bochaver K, de Bruin G, Cabrera HF, Chen SX, Church AT, Cissé DD, Dahourou D, Feng X, Guan Y, Hwang HS, Idris F, Katigbak MS, Kuppens P, Kwiatkowska A, Laurinavicius A, Mastor KA, Matsumoto D, Riemann R, Schug J, Simpson B, Tseung-Wong CN, and Johnson W (2012). The Effect of Response Style on Self-Reported Conscientiousness Across 20 Countries. Personality and social psychology bulletin PMID: ... Read more »
Mõttus R, Allik J, Realo A, Rossier J, Zecca G, Ah-Kion J, Amoussou-Yéyé D, Bäckström M, Barkauskiene R, Barry O.... (2012) The Effect of Response Style on Self-Reported Conscientiousness Across 20 Countries. Personality . PMID: 22745332
- September 27, 2012
- 08:33 AM
- 228 views
Parents underestimate their children's worry levels and overestimate their optimism
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
It's well-established that parents frequently overestimate their children's intelligence and the amount of exercise they get. Now a team led by Kristin Lagattuta has uncovered evidence suggesting that parents have an unrealistically rosy impression of their kiddies' emotional lives too. It's a finding with important implications for clinicians and child researchers who often rely on parental reports of young children's psychological wellbeing.
It's previously been assumed that children younger than seven will struggle to answer questions about their emotions. Undeterred, Lagattuta and her colleagues simplified the language used in a popular measure of older children's anxiety and they developed a pictorial scoring system that involved the children pointing to rectangles filled with different amounts of colour. Time was taken to ensure the child participants understood how to use the scale.
An initial study with 228 psychologically healthy children aged 4 to 11 from relatively affluent backgrounds found that the children's answers to oral questions about their experience of worry (including general anxiety, panic, social phobia and separation anxiety) failed to correlate with their parents' (usually the mother's) written responses to questions about the children's experience of worry. Specifically, the parents tended to underestimate how much anxiety their children experienced.
A second study was similar, but this time the researchers ensured the parents and children answered items that were worded in exactly the same way; the parents were reassured that it was normal for children to experience some negative emotion; and the parents were able to place their completed questionnaires in envelopes for confidentiality. Still the children's answers about their own emotions failed to correlate with parents' answers, with the parents again underestimating the amount of worry experienced by their children.
A revealing detail in this study was that parents also answered questions about their own emotions. Their scores for their own emotions correlated with the answers they gave for their children's experiences. "These data suggest that even parents from a low-risk, non-clinical sample may have difficulty separating their emotional perspective from that of their child," the researchers said.
Finally, 90 more children aged 5 to 10 answered questions about their optimism, whilst their parents also answered questions about their own and their children's optimism. Again, parents' and children's verdicts on the children's emotions failed to correlate, with the parents now overestimating their children's experience of optimism. And once more, parents' own optimism was related to how they interpreted their children's optimism.
Lagattuta and her colleagues admitted that it's theoretically possible that the children were the ones showing a distorted view of their own emotions, and it's the parents who were painting the true picture. However, they think this is highly unlikely. For starters it's revealing that parents underestimated their children's negative emotion and yet over-estimated their positive emotion, which argues against the idea that the children were simply answering more conservatively, or giving systematically extreme answers in one direction. Moreover, the new findings fit with the wider literature showing how parents tend to have an unrealistically rosy impression of their children's wellbeing. An obvious study limitation is the focus on middle class US participants, so there is of course a need to replicate with people from other backgrounds and cultures.
"From the standpoint of research and clinical practice, this mismatch between parent and child perceptions raises a red flag," the researchers concluded. "Internally consistent self-report data can be acquired from young children regarding their emotional experiences. Obtaining reports from multiple informants - including the child - needs to be the standard."
_________________________________
Lagattuta KH, Sayfan L, and Bamford C (2012). Do you know how I feel? Parents underestimate worry and overestimate optimism compared to child self-report. Journal of experimental child psychology, 113 (2), 211-32 PMID: 22727673
Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.
... Read more »
Lagattuta KH, Sayfan L, & Bamford C. (2012) Do you know how I feel? Parents underestimate worry and overestimate optimism compared to child self-report. Journal of experimental child psychology, 113(2), 211-32. PMID: 22727673
- July 5, 2012
- 04:00 AM
- 227 views
Threaten a man's masculinity and he becomes a short-sighted risk taker
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
With Britain embroiled in yet another banking scandal, commentators are once again pointing their fingers at the macho culture of the City. "Put a bunch of confident, aggressive men in the same room and reward them for taking risks," Ian Leslie wrote, "and you create a pressure cooker, from which probity and prudence evaporate like steam."
Now a study has cast new light on the role that masculinity may have played in past and present financial crises. Jonathan Weaver and his colleagues at the University of South Florida report that threatening a man's sense of manhood makes him myopic and more prone to take risks, particularly in a public situation. The findings suggest that being surrounded by their sweaty, swaggering alpha-male peers may have provided just the kind of threatening environment to encourage bankers to become short-sighted risk-takers.
For an initial study, the masculinity of 19 heterosexual male university students was threatened by having them product test a pink bottle of "Sweet Pea" fruit-scented hand lotion; 19 others acted as a comparison group and tested a power drill. Ostensibly as part of a separate study, all the men were then filmed playing a gambling game. They started with $5 and had five chances to bet between $0 and $1 on whether a die roll would turn up odds or evens, with the potential to win or lose the amount they gambled. Over the course of the first four bets, the men who'd had their masculinity challenged tended to bet larger amounts; they also bet the maximum possible amount more often.
A second study was similar but this time the masculinity of half of 73 more men was threatened by having them recall 10 examples of times they'd behaved like a "real man". Chuck Norris aside, because it's difficult for most men to think of 10 examples off the cuff, this challenge has an undermining effect on their sense of masculinity. By contrast, thinking of 2 examples (as the remainder of the participants did) is easy for most men, and has the opposite, manhood enhancing effect. Next, all the men made a series of choices between smaller financial rewards now or larger rewards later. Half of the men in both groups thought they'd have to justify their choices publicly. The take-home finding here was that men who'd had their masculinity challenged, and thought their decisions would be public, tended to make more short-term choices, forfeiting about three times the amount of money available, as compared with men in the other conditions. Presumably acting impetuously in front of a crowd helped the men feel more manly.
Weaver and his colleagues acknowledged that the way they threatened the manhood of their participants was not a close simulation of the way that masculinity is threatened in a macho banking environment. However, they said that both their interventions had "the psychological consequence of reminding men that manhood is a precarious social status."
"Whether manhood threats were directly implicated in the recent financial crises that continue to plague the US [and UK] economy, the current findings are at least consistent with such an interpretation," they said. "Certainly, they are suggestive enough to warrant further investigation into this critically important question."
A weakness of the studies was the lack of a genuine control group, in which masculinity was neither threatened nor strengthened. As mentioned by the researchers, it would also be useful for further investigations to observe the effect of gender threats on women's risk-taking behaviour.
This new paper builds on several related findings that are pertinent to the role of a macho culture in the recent banking crises; for example: it's been shown that men, but not women, take higher-risk financial bets when surrounded by same-sex peers of similar status; men make more myopic decisions in competitive all-male situations; and male stock traders in London made higher gains on days that their testosterone levels were higher (probably because they took more risks).
_________________________________
Jonathan R. Weaver, Joseph A. Vandello, & Jennifer K. Bosson (2012). Intrepid, Imprudent, or Impetuous?: The Effects of Gender Threats on Men's Financial Decisions. Psychology of Men &; Masculinity DOI: 10.1037/a0027087
Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.
... Read more »
Jonathan R. Weaver, Joseph A. Vandello, & Jennifer K. Bosson. (2012) Intrepid, Imprudent, or Impetuous?: The Effects of Gender Threats on Men's Financial Decisions. Psychology of Men . DOI: 10.1037/a0027087
- October 8, 2012
- 04:30 AM
- 227 views
In search of the super-humane (those who identify with all of humanity)
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
The pages of psychology's journals are filled with sorry tales of people's intolerance and prejudice towards one another. Against this darkness, Sam McFarland and his colleagues urge us not to forget the brighter stories - the heroes of the past who put themselves at risk because they felt empathy towards outsiders.
Consider the French Pastor Andre ́ Trocme ́ and his wife, who helped save thousands of Jews from the Holocaust. "We don't know what a Jew is," Trocme ́ said when instructed to hand over the names of all the Jews. "We only know people."
The ability and inclination to identify with all of humanity was touched on by some of psychology's pioneers. Alfred Adler wrote about the innate potential of people to achieve "gemeinschaftsgefuhl", literally translated as "social interest", but also taken to mean "oneness with all humanity". The founder of humanistic psychology Abraham Maslow invoked the concept of "self-actualised individuals" - people able to identify with and have a concern with all mankind.
Yet despite these early ideas, there's been little subsequent research on the ability to identify with all humanity. One reason is the lack of an explicit measure. Some psychological scales come close - for example, there's the "Social Interest Scale" (measuring interest in community) and there are measures of "moral identity" (how central morality is to self-identity) and "universalism" (a oneness with the world), but none quite targets identifying with all humankind. Until now.
McFarland and his team have devised the Identification With All Humanity Scale (IWAH), consisting of 9 three-part items, including: "How much do you identify with (that is, feel a part of, feel love toward, have concern for) each of the following: a) people in my community, b) Americans, c) All humans everywhere". This version is aimed at US participants, hence the option for (b). The full version is online.
The researchers tested their new IWAH scale exhaustively across ten studies involving hundreds of participants. The researchers found:
a high score on the IWAH was more than just a lack of in-group bias and a disposition for empathy; the IWAH also taps into something other than Shalom Shwartz's broader and more abstract concept of "universalism" (the goal of "understanding, appreciation, tolerance and protection for the welfare of all people and for all nature").
high scores on IWAH correlated more strongly with people's concern for human rights than existing compassion measures
scores on the scale were stable across 10 weeks
close friends and family had a good idea of a person's score on the IWAH
members of Human Rights Watch and the Church World Service scored particularly high on the scale, just as you'd expect if it's measuring what it is supposed to
high scores on the IWAH correlated with the personality factors agreeableness, openness to experience and neuroticism (the researchers were baffled by this last association)
high scorers on IWAH valued American and Afghani lives more equally
high scorers had a greater knowledge of global humanitarian issues
and finally ... research via the your morals.org website, involving thousands of participants, showed that high scores on the IWAH predicted people's willingness to donate money to international charities, beyond traditional measures, such as of ethnocentrism.
McFarland and his colleagues concluded that their new scale has "substantial merit" and that it's now important to question why some people develop a deeper identification with all of humanity than others. They predicted that children who are neglected or spoiled will fail to develop this form of empathy for all mankind. "A lack of punitiveness coupled with affection may provide a foundation for later concern for humanity at large," they said. "Understanding how identification with all humanity develops is worthy of direct and extensive investigation." Let's hope their new scale helps inspire more research on this vital issue.
_________________________________
McFarland S, Webb M, and Brown D (2012). All Humanity Is My Ingroup: A Measure and Studies of Identification With All Humanity. Journal of personality and social psychology PMID: 22708625
Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.
... Read more »
McFarland S, Webb M, & Brown D. (2012) All Humanity Is My Ingroup: A Measure and Studies of Identification With All Humanity. Journal of personality and social psychology. PMID: 22708625
- November 20, 2012
- 05:12 AM
- 226 views
What's it like to have OCD?
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Research with people who have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is often impersonal. Participants' thoughts, feelings and behaviours are reduced to ticked boxes on a questionnaire. There's a risk the real story of what it's like to have OCD doesn't get told. Helen Murphy and Ramesh Perera-Delcourt have taken a different approach. They interviewed 9 people (one woman) with OCD, face-to-face, for about an hour each, to hear how these people felt about their condition and about any treatment they'd received.
The researchers transcribed the interviews and highlighted key themes. Regarding the experience of OCD, the main themes were "wanting to be normal and fit in", "failing at life", and "loving and hating OCD."
Participants found comfort in meeting other OCD support-group members. They also spoke of caring too much about what other people are thinking of them. OCD can interfere with education, relationships and careers and frequently, participants compared their own stalled life trajectories against what they perceived as the societal norm. "I feel like I've got to make up for lost time in a way," one man said. There were in-depth descriptions of the painful situations created by OCD - one man who house-shared had to scrub the entire bathroom with powerful cleaning product for an hour every day before he could use it. But at the same time, there was a fear of losing the crutch that the condition provides. "I wish I could do that [stop checking], I wish I could stop," another man said, adding: "Well, not totally."
In relation to therapy, the main themes were "wanting therapy", "finding the roots", and "a better self". Participants spoke of the relief that came from having their problems recognised and listened to. The importance of rapport between participants and their therapists was mentioned repeatedly, consistent with what's known about the importance of the therapeutic relationship. Although aspects of CBT were found useful by many ("it helped me focus on what is important to me in life," said one), others commented on the lack of interest in the roots of the condition. "There's been a 'stuff the past' sort of thing but it's like cutting a plant above the soil - the roots are still there," said another participant. CBT helped participants with self-esteem issues. "... reanalysing things ... has made me realise that I wasn't to blame for all kinds of things," one person said.
Murphy and Perera-Delcourt concluded that examining people's narratives can help to "understand the lived experience and lessen public and self stigma". Given the way their participants emphasised the value of rapport in therapy, the researchers questioned claims that computerised CBT is a valid substitute. They also highlighted the apparent importance to people with OCD of understanding its origins. "Developmental issues in the maintenance of the disorder have been generally neglected and our findings suggest that understanding and talking through the origins of OCD may lessen treatment resistance," they said.
_________________________________
Murphy, H. and Perera-Delcourt, R. (2012). ‘Learning to live with OCD is a little mantra I often repeat’: Understanding the lived experience of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in the contemporary therapeutic context. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice DOI: 10.1111/j.2044-8341.2012.02076.x
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
... Read more »
Murphy, H., & Perera-Delcourt, R. (2012) ‘Learning to live with OCD is a little mantra I often repeat’: Understanding the lived experience of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in the contemporary therapeutic context. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. DOI: 10.1111/j.2044-8341.2012.02076.x
topics
join us!
Do you write about peer-reviewed research in your blog? Use ResearchBlogging.org to make it easy for your readers — and others from around the world — to find your serious posts about academic research.
If you don't have a blog, you can still use our site to learn about fascinating developments in cutting-edge research from around the world.
