Psychology Research

Readers’ replies to “Zen, choice and procrastination” were insightful and stimulated further writing and learning on my part. Here are some important distinctions about changing our intentions or failing to act on them. I like the title of Clay Shirky’s book Here comes everybody .  He’s writing about the social effects of Web 2.0 where everyone can be a contributor to, not just a consumer of, Internet content. The blog replies here at Psychology Today are a small example of this – here comes everybody (well, not everybody, but thousands of people have read these blog entries, it’s quite the growing community!). I learn from everyone as I write this blog. It’s much like my teaching. It’s a journey with my students. This blog is a journey in learning with you. Of course I can’t reply to every blog-posting comment (even though I would like to). I also get emails from my own Web site www.procrastination.ca . Again, it’s simply not possible to keep up with replies, but I enjoy hearing your perspective on the issues I discuss – sharing is part of learning. This week, in reply to my posting East meets West: Zen, choice and Procrastination , there were two replies that stimulated my writing. I’m going to provide excerpts of each of these replies below and then add some comments of my own. What these readers replied to was the story of the unfulfilled intention to run. As you may recall from this blog entry , having set the alarm for 5 a.m. to go for a run, when the alarm goes off, you don’t feel like running now, so you go back to sleep instead. The readers’ replies focus on two things: 1) the notion of choice, and 2) the difference between intention-update and intention-failure. Here are excerpts from both readers. You can read their full replies here . Reader 1 (MS): ONLY A ROBOT WOULDN’T SEE OPTIONS OR CHOICE I think you’re right in that there need not be choice involved, BUT ONE HAD TO BE A ROBOT NOT TO SEE IMMEDIATELY THE OPTION JUMPING RIGHT AT YOU to stay in bed and exercise another day. So I would certainly have to make the choice. In this case it’s not so hard to actually make it because RUNNING GIVES ALSO IMMEDIATE GRATIFICATION. I always feel better afterwards although I’m not yet fit enough to reach a runner’s high. (emphasis of all uppercase added) Reader 2 (Carl): INTENTION-UPDATE OR INTENTION-FAILURE . . . there’s a difference! It sounds to me as though the “it’s about choice” people are seeing intention revision where you see intention failure. Obviously both phenomena are real and will need to be allowed for in any attempt at describing agency: changing your mind is clearly rational in some cases, and not all cases of going against earlier intentions can honestly be described as rational revision. Both weakness of will and intention-updating exist, the question is how to tell the difference between them . . . the run-don’t run case can’t be a rational case of intention-update because nothing is updated except the intention itself: no new information is gained overnight, we should’ve known for example that we’d likely not want to go for the run , etc etc. Nothing happened that was in anyway novel, we just wantonly decided to go against the earlier intention on the basis of shifting occurant desires. But if we take *that* as being a rational basis for decision-making, then we shouldn’t have been forming intentions in the first place. Rational updating requires new information or a new awareness of earlier error. That’s not present in the case you describe so as described we’re being irrationally inconsistent, plain and simple. Even so there’s a puzzle: the decision/intention-shift/gap being irrational doesn’t itself determine which of the decisions/intentions was the right/best/most rational one to have. I can say I was being irrational to go against the intention, or I can say I was irrational to form *that* intention in the first place (when I should’ve known how little it reflects what I will want when it’s time to carry it out). Either description seems possible: because we often form intentions out of externally derived guilt, wishful thinking or idealism borrowed from others which (if we thought about it) we don’t actually share. We’d need to know more about which intention coheres best with our long-term plans and goals… and therefore have a way to figure out what those are. END OF READER RESPONSES Wow. This is great. This is a discussion! We simply have to address these issues of whether it takes away from our humanity (becoming more like a robot) to exclude choice, and we need to make this crucial distinction between an intention-update (or change) that is rational and an intention-failure that is irrational (and  I have labeled procrastination). Perhaps the most rationale thing we can do is realize that the intention was irrational in the first place. If that’s the case, we have to examine goal setting, and I’ll do that too. I won’t do any of it in this entry, however. It’s long enough (and I write too much for a blog I’m told ☺). So, check in tomorrow where I’ll take on the difference between intention-update and intention-failure.

When asked “What do most people do on a date?” Martin (age 10) replied: “On the first date, they just tell each other lies, and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date.” I doubt that Martin realized just how accurate he was. There is more deception in dating than in any other social context in our culture. So the obvious question would have to be something like this: “If deception runs rampant when I am in the dating scene, how can I know whether I am dating a jerk? How can I tell whether this is someone who is going to tilt the nice-to-nasty ratio so that I end up with more nasty than I had bargained for?” I would like to offer the following litmus test. [By the way, next week I will offer a litmus test for discerning a jerkett.] One day in class a young woman remarked: “I just can’t understand why men don’t want to get intimate — why won’t you get close?” To this, a man in the back of the room piped up (obviously without thinking a whole lot before speaking): “We do too want to get close, but you women just won’t put out.” For a moment, I thought a fight was going to break out right there on the spot, but in the end, we had a lively, engaging, and fruitful discussion. The bottom line is this: Men are inclined to use intimacy to get sex. The problem is not that we men don’t know how to be intimate — in other words, how to show fondness and affectionate, how to be warm and romantic, how to touch and hug, how to listen to what is going on in your life. We know how — we have done it many times in the past and we will do it many more times in the future. The problem is that we typically only do these things when there is a pay-off. We were talking about this phenomenon one day in a different class and a female student had a flash of insight as she suddenly blurted out: “Just last week, my partner and I were having this great conversation and in the middle of it, he said, ‘Have we talked enough yet?’ I didn’t get it at the time, but now I know just what he was saying!” She was angry. (This couple is no longer together.) So here is the litmus test. Is he capable of touch that is not a part of foreplay? Is he capable of simply holding you without it leading to a pay-off for him? Does he express his affection for you even when he doesn’t have his sights set on getting you into bed? Does he spend time listening to you / talking with you even when sex is not going to be an outcome? This gets somewhat complicated because of the fact that women are inclined to use sex to get intimacy. So we man have grown rather accustomed to this tit-for-tat arrangement. But if you want to know whether he is a prince or whether he is a toad hidden behind a prince’s mask, see if he is capable of intimacy — is he capable of warmth, fondness, touch, affection, romance, sincere give-and-take conversation — without sex being an expected part of the package? If he is, then there is a pretty good chance that the nice-to-nasty ratio will not unexpectantly be flipped over, adding to the scar tissue on your heart.       Using Intimacy To Get Sex Custom Teaser When asked “What do most people do on a date?” Martin (age 10) replied: “On the first date, they just tell each other lies, and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date.” Teaser Image SexIntimacy.jpg Love Bytes Editors Pick:  0Editors Pick

I had a newspaper route up until I was in the ninth grade, and what I dreaded about the job was going door-to-door collecting subscription fees. The worst part was probably the odors in some of the houses. One house emanated a toxic mixture of Lysol, alcohol, pet dander, and cigarette smoke. These people inevitably were out of cash, so I had to return again and again until I finally was able to negotiate payment — sometimes months overdue. But maybe the smell was prejudicing my judgment. Lots of people couldn’t pay me right away. Why should I only hate the ones with drinking/pet/smoking/air freshener problems? Other than the fact that they had all those problems, they weren’t any better or worse than anyone else (aside from the nice old ladies who baked me cookies I could smell a half-block away). Hmm… come to think of it, there’s a lot a smell can tell you about a person. Are they overperfumed, undermouthwashed, sweaty, smoky, or infused with motor oil? Different scents clearly have different meanings. But some smells are too subtle to be detected. You might not be able to discern your wife’s perfume by the end of the day, although traces are still present. What if someone else was wearing her perfume, still at levels you don’t consciously notice? Would that affect your impression of them? We know from studies on subliminal images and sounds that even when we’re not conscious of these things, they can affect our judgments and actions. But researchers have had difficulty finding any effect of odors that we can’t consciously identify. A team led by Wen Li saw procedural problems in those early studies: An odor that one person can’t detect might still be obvious to someone else. Even the same individual might perceive an odor sometimes and not others (“I thought I smelled smoke, officer!”). Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

I had a newspaper route up until I was in the ninth grade, and what I dreaded about the job was going door-to-door collecting subscription fees. The worst part was probably the odors in some of the houses. One house emanated a toxic mixture of Lysol, alcohol, pet dander, and cigarette smoke. These people inevitably were out of cash, so I had to return again and again until I finally was able to negotiate payment — sometimes months overdue. But maybe the smell was prejudicing my judgment. Lots of people couldn’t pay me right away. Why should I only hate the ones with drinking/pet/smoking/air freshener problems? Other than the fact that they had all those problems, they weren’t any better or worse than anyone else (aside from the nice old ladies who baked me cookies I could smell a half-block away). Hmm… come to think of it, there’s a lot a smell can tell you about a person. Are they overperfumed, undermouthwashed, sweaty, smoky, or infused with motor oil? Different scents clearly have different meanings. But some smells are too subtle to be detected. You might not be able to discern your wife’s perfume by the end of the day, although traces are still present. What if someone else was wearing her perfume, still at levels you don’t consciously notice? Would that affect your impression of them? We know from studies on subliminal images and sounds that even when we’re not conscious of these things, they can affect our judgments and actions. But researchers have had difficulty finding any effect of odors that we can’t consciously identify. A team led by Wen Li saw procedural problems in those early studies: An odor that one person can’t detect might still be obvious to someone else. Even the same individual might perceive an odor sometimes and not others (“I thought I smelled smoke, officer!”). Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

Babies can say volume without saying a single word. They can wave good-bye, point at things to indicate an interest or shake their heads to mean “No”. These gestures may be very simple, but they are a sign of things to come. Year-old toddlers who use more gestures tend to have more expansive vocabularies several years later. And this link between early gesturing and future linguistic ability may partially explain by children from poorer families tend to have smaller vocabularies than those from richer ones. Vocabulary size tallies strongly with a child’s academic success, so it’s striking that the lexical gap between rich and poor appears when children are still toddlers and can continue throughout their school life. What is it about a family’s socioeconomic status that so strongly affects their child’s linguistic fate at such an early age? Obviously, spoken words are a factor. Affluent parents tend to spend more time talking to their kids and use more complicated sentences with a wider range of words. But Meredith Rowe and Susan Goldin-Meadow from the University of Chicago found that actions count too. Children gesture before they learn to speak and previous studies have shown that even among children with similar spoken skills, those who gesture more frequently during early life tend to know more words later on. Rowe and Goldin-Meadow have shown that differences in gesturing can partly explain the social gradient in vocabulary size. Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

The mainstream media are just queuing up to fail in their reporting of the propranolol story from a couple of days ago. To reiterate: Propranolol is commonly used to treat high blood pressure and prevent migraines in children. But Merel Kindt and colleagues from the University of Amsterdam have found that it can do much more. By giving it to people before they recalled a scary memory about a spider, they could erase the fearful response it triggered. The critical thing about the study is that the entire memory hadn’t been erased in a typical sci-fi way. Kindt had trained the volunteers to be fearful of spidery images by pairing them with electric shocks. Even after they’d been given propranolol, they still expected to receive a shock when they saw a picture of a spider – they just weren’t afraid of the prospect. The drug hadn’t so much erased their memories, as dulled their emotional sting. It’s more like removing all the formatting from a Word document than deleting the entire file. The drug is not a ” memory-wiping pill ” (Guardian). It cannot “erase bad/painful memories” ( Sun / Fox News / Metro / Daily Mail ) and it won’t give you a ” spotless mind ” (Scotsman). Perhaps it’s unsurprising given that massive wire agencies said similar things. The Press Association led with claims that the drug can ” erase fearful memories “. Reuters at least said more cautiously that it was a ” step towards erasing bad memories “. To quote the person who actually did the research (and thanks Merel for chiming in on the earlier post):  “There was no memory erasure, just elimination of the fearful response.” The problem with all of this, of course, is that people have straw-manned the research and are falling over themselves to publish trite editorials that (a) are irrelevant to the actual study and (b) serve to stoke public outrage over an ethical dilemma of their own concoction. There are exceptions. The Boston Globe got it right and has a brilliant bit at the end that lays out in four simple sentences the bottom line, cautions, what’s next, and where the research was published. It has however accompanied the article with an incongruous photo of a koala, presumably some sort of mix-up with the Australian bushfire story. The mental health charity MIND released a long and well-considered statement , which showed that they had actually read the paper and understood the science. The charity’s CEO, Paul Farmer, said: “This is fascinating research that could transform the treatment for phobias and post traumatic stress disorder. Around 10 million people in the UK have a phobia and about 3.5% of the population will be affected by post traumatic stress disorder at some point yet our understanding of how to treat these conditions is still limited. While we welcome any advancement in this field we should also exercise caution before heralding this as a miracle cure. “Eradicating emotional responses is clearly an area we would need to be very careful about. It could affect people’s ability to respond to dangerous situations in the future and could even take away people’s positive memories. We would not want to see an ‘accelerated Alzheimer’s’ approach. “We still have limited research on how to treat complex mental health problems, with the focus often on pharmacological solutions. Drugs are a somewhat sledgehammer approach and can have unintended consequences. We know from other psychiatric drugs, for example antipsychotics and antidepressants, that individuals react in hugely varied ways to treatments and are often vulnerable to unpleasant side effects. “We would need to see much more research into the risks and benefits into this treatment before it becomes a reality.” All of that was culled by the BBC into the following: But British experts questioned the ethics of tampering with the mind. Paul Farmer, chief executive of mental health charity Mind, said he was concerned about the “fundamentally pharmacological” approach to people with problems such as phobias and anxiety. He said the procedure might also alter good memories and warned against an “accelerated Alzheimer’s” approach. Do you think it carries the same meaning or sense? Read the comments on this post…

Research out of Princeton University and noted at this past weekend’s annual AAAS meeting gives weight to an idea that cognitive and social scientists have tentatively considered for years: Given sufficient provocation, men view women as sex objects. Men are more likely to think of women as objects if they have looked at sexy pictures of females beforehand, psychologists said yesterday. Researchers used brain scans to show that when straight men looked at pictures of women in bikinis, areas of the brain that normally light up in anticipation of using tools, like spanners and screwdrivers, were activated. Scans of some of the men found that a part of the brain associated with empathy for other peoples’ emotions and wishes shut down after looking at the pictures. Susan Fiske, a psychologist at Princeton University in New Jersey, said the changes in brain activity suggest sexy images can shift the way men perceive women, turning them from people to interact with, to objects to act upon. This makes perfect sense, given that when males view pictures of NASCAR events, daffodils, and human waste, anecdotal evidence suggests that they are inclined to think of not only various power tools, but also limitless varieties of copulatory activity. In the study, Fiske’s team put straight men into an MRI brain scanner and showed them images of either clothed men and women, or more scantily clad men and women. When they took a memory test afterwards, the men best remembered images of bikini-clad women whose heads had been digitally removed. This is merely a symbolic leveling of the playing field. If men in lust-struck states are operating without benefit of their brains, then it is only just that the objects of their lust be rendered similarly decerebrate. In the final part of the study, Fiske asked the men to fill in a questionnaire that was used to assess how sexist they were. The brain scans showed that men who scored highest had very little activity in the prefrontal cortex and other brain regions that are involved with understanding another person’s feelings and intentions. “They’re reacting to these women as if they’re not fully human,” Fiske said. “Not fully human” is as likely to mean “superhuman” as “subhuman,” correct? Looks like further research is needed . Read the comments on this post…

Put some random people in a group, give them a task and soon enough a leader will emerge. What is it about that person that makes others grant them the honour of being in charge? New insight comes from a study published in Personality and Social Psychology , which suggests that leaders emerge through a combination of their own outspoken behaviour, and how this outspoken behaviour is perceived by others. In two studies Anderson and Kilduff (2009) from the University of California, Berkeley, looked at how dominant individuals in a group were perceived by others in the group. Perceived competence is important because, everything else being equal, it’s very difficult to become a leader if everyone in the group thinks that person is a dunce, even if they are extremely dominant. But what Anderson and Kilduff’s research showed is that there is a big gap between the actual competence of leaders and the way in which they are perceived by the others. In the second of two studies Anderson and Kilduff had participants attempting a series of maths problems in competition with another group. The groups were videotaped and the behaviour of their members carefully examined. They found that dominant participants tended to offer more suggestions to the group, and that these individuals were perceived by the group, plus those observing the group, as the most competent. Crucially, though, the study showed that not only did a leader’s dominant behaviour of itself encourage others to see that person as competent, but this was true even though their suggestions to the group were no better, or even worse than others. In reality the leaders did not always make the best contribution to the task, but their voices were usually heard first and most often. This study suggests leaders emerge through more subtle processes than the word ‘dominance’ might imply. Rather than brow-beating or bullying others into submission, leaders-in-waiting effectively signal their competence to the group by making greater verbal contributions to discussions. Others then assume that their greater contribution will mean their group will be more likely to succeed. Outside of the laboratory, of course, money and power has more to do with who leads organisations like corporations or nations. In reality groups of people don’t start on egalitarian terms and people don’t always ‘emerge’ from groups of their peers on the basis of who shouts loudest and longest. But this study does tell us something useful about more informal, everyday groups similar to those studied in this research. » See also: 7 Reasons Leaders Fail . [Image credit: Nod Young ]

Isn’t this supposed to be the United States of America?  The united part seems to be endangered as we watch partisan politics play out in Washington.  The recent votes on the stimulus package were cast explicitly along party lines.  Such partisanship sends a message of failed cooperation among our leaders that detracts from the successful passage of the bill.  If our legislators honestly can agree only with members of their own party as to the strengths and weaknesses of the stimulus package, then the dramatic disagreement across parties as to the bill’s merits is quite worrisome.  If, however, our legislators believe that voting with their own political party and against the opposition is more important than seriously considering the merits of the bill, are they not putting partisan politics ahead of the national interest?  Either possibility undermines trust in our leaders and what they tell us.  Few natural events — including strictly partisan votes — can be neatly explained according to a single level of analysis such as an in terms of the political forces at work.  Although I grant the political and other social forces in play, I believe there may be forces emanating from individual personalities that make such group behavior more likely.  For example, I am concerned that perhaps we have become a nation of people so disrespectful of one anothers’ beliefs that we have lost the habit of respecting those with whom we disagree.  Rather, we prefer to demean others so as make ourselves look better, or to amuse one another, or simply because it is so much easier than seeing the other person’s point of view.  If I were a member of the legislative branch and I truly, deeply respected those on the other side of the aisle, I believe I would be deeply disturbed by the sort of inter-party attacks and struggles that are currently taking place.  Many national legislators have spoken of their political principles in the past weeks, but what about their personal principles of respecting not only those with whom they agree, but also those with whom they disagree? If members of Congress and the executive branch extended genuine respect to one another, wouldn’t they recognize that it is more important to vote for that which is best for the country rather than for that which may promote their political party?  If they truly respected one another, wouldn’t the best and brightest among them join in a thoughtful give-and-take to promote good legislation above partisanship? I hope I am wrong that our lawmakers are so partisan that it is interfering with their ability to work together.  I hope I am wrong that our lawmakers see one another as opponents first and citizen-leaders of this nation second.  I further hope that those lawmakers are behaving on behalf of us all in ways that perhaps I, as a non-politician and Washington outsider, cannot discern.   If, however, I am correct that this partisanship is both excessive and weakens our nation, then I ask our lawmakers to remember their personal as well as their political principles.  I would ask both our legislators and we ourselves to respect and judge charitably others’ motives and beliefs. I realize that to make judgments that are sympathetic and charitable in these times may not feel either natural or easy, particularly when the media regularly report on various individuals’ corrupt and illegal behaviors.  Nonetheless there are many reasons wise people from many cultures extol the virtues of judging with care.   (If we are worried about corruption, instead of condemning everyone, let us enhance our enforcement agencies, and vote out problematic leaders).   There are gains for us all when we extend respect to those with other political opinions.  After all, to answer my opening question, this is the United States, and with the good work of our leaders, it will remain so in the future.  Unity doesn’t require agreement on all counts, but it does require a personal reaching out, a mental effort to understand the other and to find common ground.  There are times when other people are so dangerous and potentially destructive that compromising is not an option.  That is not the case, however, with the Republicans, Democrats, and Independents currently in Congress.  What is required in crafting legistlation is finding common ground.  What makes that so challenging at the personal level, however, is that the best compromises often require us to question our own beliefs and our own ideas, to realize that we ourselves are as prone to be mistaken as the next person. Although such self-awarness is challenging, it allows us to better understand what is really more open to pragmatic negotiation than might first appear to be the case. There are, of course, many political forces that have led to (what I regard as) overly partisan politics, such as the nature of electoral districts , and national tradition .  Those political forces, however, do not act by themselves.  They cannot be divorced from influences originating at other levels, such as the individual and personal.  Personally, I think this would be a good time to see members of congress working together effectively and generously.  Even if the opposing parties weren’t able to fashion a good compromise now, increasing such bipartisanship today could lead to better legislation tomorrow.  * * * Caveat Emptor: The author is a psychologist and possesses no special political expertise.  This post represents his personal opinion as a citizen and a voter.   © 2009 Psychology Today. 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Painting of the face and body has a history dating back at least 10,000 years. According to Pliny the Elder even 2,000 years ago the Romans were using natural products in ways we would instantly recognise: they had rouge, deodorants, hair dye, wrinkle removers, breath fresheners and much more. Over the years those using cosmetics have attracted admiring glances from others for all sorts of reasons – including ritualistic and honorific – but often, especially in modern times, the context has been sexual. But does the application of these products make any difference to the way other people behave? While it might affect perceptions both positively and negatively, does it actually encourage others to make the first move? A direct approach Now some answers come in a new study by social psychologist Nicolas Geugen ( Geugen, 2008 ). In his experiment, reported in the North American Journal of Psychology , Geugen had two young women sit in a bar in France, in the first condition with makeup on, and in the second condition with their faces simply cleaned and moisturised. Then they waited for men to chat them up. When a man tried to start a conversation (nonverbal behaviours didn’t count) one of the women signalled to experimental confederates that contact had been made by crossing her arms. Then she politely turned the man down, saying they were waiting for friends to arrive. This procedure was repeated over 60 observational periods of one hour in two different bars. Here’s what happened: No makeup condition : The first man ‘made contact’ with the two women after an average of 23 minutes, and thereafter they were hit on 1.5 times per hour. With makeup condition : The first man tried it on after only 17 minutes and the average number of chancers per hour was 2. These results certainly suggest the makeup was effective in changing men’s behaviour, with one third more men approaching the two women when they were made-up. But while this study is good fun, there are a couple of problems the authors acknowledge. First wearing makeup could have given the two women more confidence, subtly changing their behaviour and encouraging men to approach. This may well have accounted for the men’s behaviour instead of the makeup. Second it may be difficult to generalise as the study was carried out in France – men in very different cultures might respond in quite another way. How does makeup work? These aside, though, the other interesting question it raises is exactly how makeup works. While makeup seems to work by increasing perceived attractivity, it can also signal a willingness to interact or even availability. Further, cosmetics can send signals about status: one study published in the International Journal of Cosmetics Science has found that people judge women wearing cosmetics as higher earners with more prestigious jobs ( Nash et al., 2006 ). Researchers have even looked at which components of makeup are most attractive to men. A recent study has found that eye makeup has the most powerful effect on female perceived attractivity, followed by foundation; lipstick, surprisingly, was found to have little independent effect ( Mulhern et al., 2003 ). Nowadays, though, discussions about makeup seem tame, even quaint, considering the more radical methods people use for changing their appearance, like cosmetic surgery. But one aspect is still cutting-edge: men wearing makeup. So, I wonder how long it will be until Nicolas Geugen is returning to these bars on the west coast of France, this time with two young men wearing makeup, ready to see who approaches? [Image credit: Uh ... Bob ]