Psychology Research

The Economist has an excellent piece on crowd psychology and why group behaviour is essential in calming down street confrontations before they turn violent. Crowds are often associated with senseless aggression, and perhaps the most widely quoted, and most colourful example, is from Gustave Le Bon’s 1895 book The Crowd . He wrote that crowds showed several special characteristics such as “impulsiveness, irritability, incapacity to reason, the absence of judgment and of the critical spirit, the exaggeration of the sentiments, and others besides – which are almost always observed in beings belonging to inferior forms of evolution – in women, savages, and children, for instance”. You can imagine how he went down at parties. Nevertheless, this association between crowds and violence has remained a research focus for many years. Concepts such as deindividuation – a reduction in the feeling of personal identity and responsibility – are invoked to explain why ‘bad things’ supposedly happen when people congregate in groups. This also typically includes explaining why ‘bad things’ are allowed to happen without people intervening – the so-called bystander effect The Economist article is interesting because it looks at research which seems to turn these assumptions on their head. It discusses the work of psychologist Mark Levine , who studies crowd behaviour and has found that crowds actually act to reduce violence in many situations. He has been analysing CCTV footage of incidents that control room operators thought might turn violent, not all of which did. His first observation was that bystanders frequently intervene in incipient fights. The number of escalating gestures did not rise significantly as the size of the group increased, contrary to what the bystander effect would predict. Instead, it was the number of de-escalating gestures that grew. A bigger crowd, in other words, was more likely to suppress a fight. Some incidents did end in violence, of course. To try to work out why, Dr Levine and his colleagues constructed probability trees to help them calculate the likelihood that a violent incident such as a punch being thrown would occur with each successive intervention by a bystander. Using these trees, they were generally able to identify a flashpoint at which the crowd determined which way the fight would go. Judging the fight to begin with the aggressor’s first pointing gesture towards his target, the researchers found that the first intervention usually involved a bystander trying to calm the protagonist down. Next, another would advise the target not to respond. If a third intervention reinforced crowd solidarity, sending the same peaceful message, then a violent outcome became unlikely. But if it did not—if the third bystander vocally took sides, say—then violence was much more likely. It’s a really eye-opening piece that’s well worth reading in full as it overturns both some common popular assumptions and some well-worn psychological clichés. Link to Economist on ‘The kindness of crowds’.

Now that you’ve gained some familiarity with the first two proven strategies, it’s time to introduce the third strategy, which will help you bring all your awareness together in a way that you take positive action that will help you build the muscle to stop overshopping and start getting what it is that you’re really shopping for. Proven Strategy #3: Instead of shopping, tailor-make alternatives. Tailor-made alternatives are an important strategy for eliminating overshopping, a defense for when the urge is sharp and strong. A tailor-made alternative is an activity you prepare ahead of time to do instead of shopping, an activity carefully chosen to address your authentic needs. The process works on several levels. Do something instead of shopping and you’re taking control of your life and your habit. Do something instead of shopping and you’ll probably find that the urge has dissipated. And every time you do this, you reinforce your power to resist subsequent urges. To use this strategy successfully, however, you must choose or discover or invent tailor-made alternatives that genuinely address your needs, for when you do that you are strengthening the disconnect between those needs and shopping. Perhaps, for example, you overshop out of a craving for the easy personal attention of salespeople, the ready rapport available, buyer and seller joined (if only briefly) in transaction. Underneath this urge, in all probability, is loneliness, the feeling of being unconnected, not belonging, not engaged enough with other people in a way you find meaningful. Instead of shopping, you might choose to sit with and pet a beloved animal. You might call someone you feel close to and meet for coffee or a movie or conversation. You might volunteer your help or expertise, since what we get back when we do this is a feeling of connection. You might even choose some comforting way to connect with yourself, maybe a bath with bubbles and scent and candlelight and soft music. Now that you’ve thought about and listed your triggering emotions and authentic, underlying needs in Part I of this blog, start to think about tailor-made alternatives that meet those needs. These are activities that you will do instead of shopping. Be sure that each contributes to the genuine fulfillment of your specific, important, authentic needs. Take your time with this list and bring all your creativity to it. Triggering        Authentic             Tailor-made Emotion            Need                  Alternative ________       ________        _________________________________ ________       ________        _________________________________ ________       ________        _________________________________ ________       ________        _________________________________ ________       ________        _________________________________ ________       ________        _________________________________ ________       ________        _________________________________ ________       ________        _________________________________ ________       ________        _________________________________ ________       ________        _________________________________ ________       ________        _________________________________ ________       ________        _________________________________ ________       ________        _________________________________   Keep in mind : These three strategies outlined may appear simple on the surface, but each is a powerful new way of addressing your overshopping problem. Don’t be surprised if you try one and discover it may take some time to succeed. Overcoming a long-term destructive habit doesn’t happen overnight; it takes commitment and daily attention. Be patient with yourself, congratulate yourself for every step in the right direction, and above all, resist any tendency to judge yourself for the inevitable occasional step backward. What to Expect as You Stop Overshopping As you stop overshopping, you might feel worse before you feel better. The feelings that you’re trying to handle by buying can well up because you’re no longer anesthetized or distracted from them by your buying behavior. Be ready for this; having solid strategies for riding out those intense initial feelings is crucial. As you continue to resist the shopping impulse and begin to practice healthier ways of dealing with your feelings, the intensity of the difficult feelings will lessen and your power to resist overshopping will grow. The change you are making is a significant one-you wouldn’t be struggling with it if it weren’t-and anxiety always accompanies major change. Diffuse that anxiety by focusing on your new tools and strategies and by visualizing what you’ll gain: self-control, self-esteem, better relationships, relief from debt and shame and secrecy, and a general feeling of being grounded and competent. If the compulsion to shop is so strong that you can’t follow through on the strategies outlined above or if you want even more strategies and tools, you might want to consult To Buy or Not to Buy: Why We Overshop and How to Stop and Shopping Journals . We also offer group coaching to complete the work of the program. I wish you much success in stopping overshopping, and to moving from mindless buying to mindful being.

March 2, 2009 I’m returning to the Middle East after 9 months away, in the wake of the War in Gaza and the ongoing shelling of the south of Israel by Hamas. Read about our mission here . Our team is in Israel for 4 days: Amy, who runs our program of clinical supervision for our Israeli and Palestinian faculty. Dan and Lee-Ann, who coordinate both programs on the US side and Afrim and Jusuf, psychiatrists from Kosovo, whom I first met when they we’re refugees in Macedonia during the 1999 NATO bombing of Kosovo. Amy and I have worked together for 10 years. Afrim and Jusuf are like brothers. It seems that Dan and I have been everywhere together, and Lee-Ann, our newest member, has done a fabulous job with logistics for the trip. We hit the ground running, heading to Sderot, which has been shelled from Gaza for 8 years, as soon as we wake up on the first morning after our arrival. Naftali, our Israel program director, (we’ve trained some 300 health and mental health professionals in Israel over the last 5 years), is doing the driving, and will be introducing us to colleagues who are dealing with the ongoing trauma in Israel’s south. First stop: the SCIENCE AND RELIGIOUS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, a meeting with the principal, Dina Chouri as well as Miri Asoulin, a teacher who has come through part of our training program and heads up the “Havens of Calm” program. “Havens of Calm” is a room apart from the school with bean bag chairs, crayons, games, a place for kids to come express their feelings and simply hang out when they need to. Miri is exactly the kind of teacher you wish your children had-or wish you might have had yourself. She has the kind of smile that erases all the doubts you have about your own worthiness, that makes you feel that everything you do is not just alright, but really really interesting. Over the last 7 years, while shells fell in and around Sderot, perhaps 60 percent of the kids used the “Havens of Calm” room. During the recent war, and in its aftermath, everyone does.” “For a long time,” Miri tells us, “the children have been nervous and angry; they have trouble sleeping and are wetting their beds. Now, from the time the war began, there are new symptoms. Now the children tend to find scapegoats. One class had an election for what classmate they wanted to most to be dead. They cannot fight against the rockets, so the anger has to go somewhere,” she says. “In the beginning,” a psychologist who consults with the school, added, “the children were crying and anxious. Now, sometimes, they go into a total freeze when the red alert (the signal that a Qassam rocket is about to fall). One eight year old girl’s body was like a stone. She couldn’t move her hands or feet for four hours.” Miri and a number of the other teachers and counselors in this and other Sderot schools find the techniques they learned from The Center for Mind-Body Medicine to be enormously helpful for themselves-for they too work, and often live, amidst the falling rockets-and for the kids. She shows us pictures that the children have done of huge rockets falling on their town and of Gaza burning. The children seem more hopeful, but their parents are not. In Sderot, and in nearby Shaar Ha Negev, we hear voices of distress and disillusionment. “The people felt strong during the war,” one psychologist tells us. “They thought the rocket attacks from Gaza would be over. But now the war is finished, and still we have Qassams almost every day. What was the point?” More to come.

Today’s issue of Science has a letter from neuroscientist Martha Farah and theologian Nancey Murphy warning against ‘non-materialist neuroscience’ becoming the new front-line in the religion wars. Most religions endorse the idea of a soul (or spirit) that is distinct from the physical body. Yet as neuroscience advances, it increasingly seems that all aspects of a person can be explained by the functioning of a material system. This first became clear in the realms of motor control and perception. Yet, models of perceptual and motor capacities such as color vision and gait do not directly threaten the idea of the soul. You can still believe in what Gilbert Ryle called “the ghost in the machine” and simply conclude that color vision and gait are features of the machine rather than the ghost. However, as neuroscience begins to reveal the mechanisms underlying personality, love, morality, and spirituality, the idea of a ghost in the machine becomes strained. Brain imaging indicates that all of these traits have physical correlates in brain function. Furthermore, pharmacologic influences on these traits, as well as the effects of localized stimulation or damage, demonstrate that the brain processes in question are not mere correlates but are the physical bases of these central aspects of our personhood. If these aspects of the person are all features of the machine, why have a ghost at all? By raising questions like this, it seems likely that neuroscience will pose a far more fundamental challenge than evolutionary biology to many religions. Predictably, then, some theologians and even neuroscientists are resisting the implications of modern cognitive and affective neuroscience. “Nonmaterialist neuroscience” has joined “intelligent design” as an alternative interpretation of scientific data. This work is counterproductive, however, in that it ignores what most scholars of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures now understand about biblical views of human nature. These views were physicalist, and body-soul dualism entered Christian thought around a century after Jesus’ day. As I’ve noted before , I remain sceptical that this will pose much of a threat, largely due to the fact that non-materialist neuroscience is not particularly new – many famous neuroscientists (including the Nobel prize-winning John Eccles) have been explicitly non-materialist with few contemporary ripples. Unlike evolution, which bluntly contradicts what many religious texts claim, very few holy books describe any concepts of the soul that can be directly contradicted by neuroscience. However, there is certainly some interest in the neuroscience bashing among Christian fundamentalists, who recently held their first conference on the issue. We shall have to see how successfully they manage to enthuse their flock. Link to letter ‘Neuroscience and the Soul’. Link to DOI entry for same.

In honor of President’s Day in the U.S., I bring you this work of “art,” generated on the basis of a survey of 1,001 Americans’ preferences about art: The work was created to embody the survey responses. The respondents were asked questions like “what is your favorite color” and “would you prefer paintings of outdoor scenes or indoor scenes.” The artists, Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid, then tried to paint as many as possible of the survey responses into the scene. Thus, blue dominates in this painting of an outdoor landscape. There are wild animals (as opposed to pets), and a family group (rather than an individual). George Washington is present because people said if famous people were depicted, the preference would be for historical figures rather than contemporaries. The same survey was repeated around the world. Interestingly, the results were nearly the same almost everywhere. You can see the full set of paintings here . Here are the survey results . So, is this art? Is it even science? Discuss. Read the comments on this post…

Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and Nature has a podcast celebrating his work including some of his research on psychological development and emotion. For those of you not familiar with Darwin’s work, he’s most famous for his theory of revolutions that he discovered when he went on a voyage with his beagle. The theory of revolutions states that we tend to keep things we inherit if they make us sexier, even though the person who acquired it may have done so in a game of chance. Darwin is only really discussed by creationists these days, but he’s not completely irrelevant – the Darwin podcast notes that he was also one of the originators of developmental psychology. In his 1877 paper A Biographical Sketch of an Infant , Darwin completed one of the first comprehensive studies of the psychological development of a child – his own in fact – which was cited as an influence by many later child psychologists. Link to Nature podcast. Link to A Biographical Sketch of an Infant .

Reading groups are a great activity whether you are an undergraduate looking for ways to pad your CV and get good letters of recommendation, or a graduate student wanting to be more involved in your program. Seeking out groups that read, discuss and critique peer-reviewed articles is also a great way to immerse yourself in the literature of your field. In this post I will discuss three of the reading groups that I have participated in, as well as suggest some ways to choose and participate in these types of reading groups. The first reading group I was involved in at my current institution was called the Biological Basis of Behavior (BBoB) , a multi-domain (Neuroscience, Clinical Psychology, Philosophy, and more) discussion group sponsored by the Behavioral Neuroscience division of the psychology department. The discussion leader sends out an article 1-2 weeks before the group meets, and discussants email in comments and questions about the article. Every three weeks during the 1 hour meeting the leader begins by summarizing the paper, and then attempts to address the comments of the group. There is a mix of mainly faculty, some graduate students and a few undergraduates present. The discussion leaders are generally faculty in the fall and graduate students in the spring. The most advantageous aspect of BBoB is the option to e-mail in comments, this allows students to contribute even if they don’t have enough personality to compete with faculty in the actual meeting. It is also refreshing to see what papers students choose to present in the spring, and is a great opportunity for graduate students to advertise their interests to faculty. The disadvantage is the high proportion of faculty to students, which means that discussions can sometime revolve around minutiae of interest only to the most invested of readers, and domination of the discussion by faculty. Of course it is also worthwhile to hear faculty debate amongst themselves, and often quite entertaining. The second reading group I have been attending is the Animal Behavior Discussion Group (ABDG), sponsored by the biology department. This group is similar to BBoB, except that it meets every week, and has a much smaller faculty presence. While not always directly pertinent for my own studies, this discussion group has provided lots of valuable information on the perspectives of a field of science that is distinct but related to my own discipline. The big student presence means that discussions tend to focus on the methods and topics of the paper being presented, and often revolve around understanding the unique features and flaws of the science as published. It is also advantageous to network with students and faculty in related fields as they may be good choices for collaborators on future work. The last reading group I’ve been involved with is a grant writing group that hasn’t created an acronym yet. The goal of the group is to get students and faculty to help each other read and write grant proposals in an effort to secure more funding for the individuals and the institution. While this group has met irregularly and infrequently I have to say it has certainly been the most valuable. The grant writing process is both arcane and arduous, and having some guidance from those that have been through it has proven invaluable. So I would highly recommend any sort of skill-building group that can help you get an edge when entering unfamiliar territory. While this post has been entirely biased by my personal experiences, I’m hoping that it will help you recognize the advantages of getting involved in reading groups at your school. It’s a great way to become known by your professors and to learn about the recent events in psychology. If your school doesn’t have a reading group, check nearby schools, or start your own! © 2009 Psychology Today. This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact blogs@psychologytoday.com so we can take legal action immediately.

The Seven Questions project welcomes renowned brain expert and bestselling author Daniel Amen. You may have seen him preach his message of change on PBS , on bookshelves or at professional conferences. He’s not simply suggesting you can change your attitude or behavior, he actually believes you can change your brain. In an effort to illuminate the various clinical approaches to psychotherapy, this series asks the same seven questions to influential authors, theorists and policymakers. Dr. Amen, a revered and sometimes controversial figure in popular psychiatry is our honored guest today. Daniel G. Amen (MD, Oral Roberts University, 1982) is a psychiatrist, brain imaging specialist and the CEO and medical director of Amen Clinics , Inc. (ACI) in Newport Beach and Fairfield, California, Tacoma, Washington and Reston, Virginia. ACI has the world’s largest database of functional brain scans related to psychiatric medicine, now totaling nearly 50,000 scans, and the clinics have seen patients from 75 countries. Dr. Amen is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. No stranger to the public sphere, Dr. Amen is one of the hardest working and most diverse MD’s out there, sharing his wisdom in nutrition columns , on the Men’s Health Q & A forum and even paid a visit to  The View  to discuss brain-based gender differences. Dr. Amen is the author of 22 books , including two New York Times bestsellers, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life and Magnificent Mind at Any Age . He has also written and produced two highly successful specials for public television. His method employs a balanced approach to treating mood, attention and relational problems. A review of Magnificent Mind  states: "Dr. Amen has rendered the growing trend of not treating the whole person, and of using prescription medicine as the first or only choice for mental and physical health, completely obsolete." Dr. Amen shares his opinions on psychotherapy with us today. As a psychiatrist who believes in : "using the least toxic, most effective treatments for our patients, … from natural supplements, medications, dietary interventions and targeted forms of psychotherapy," I knew he’d contribute some unique thoughts to the discussion. For example, his answer to Q3 is an important reminder that many psychological symptoms can have a biological etiology. Please enjoy Dr. Amen’s responses to the Seven Questions. Seven Questions for Daniel Amen: 1. How would you respond to a new client who asks: "What should I talk about?" His or her biggest concerns. A good history is so critical to the therapeutic process. It starts with someone’s concerns and then expands from there. I take a bio-psycho-social-spiritual approach to my patients and want them to talk to me about all of these issues. 2. What do clients find most difficult about the therapeutic process? Being confused as how to help themselves. Most people who see me want to be better, but the therapeutic process is so foreign to them. I think they need very clear direction on how to be most effective in using the process. 3. What mistakes do therapists make that hinder the therapeutic process? The biggest mistake I see is that they rarely consider the brain. I often say psychiatrists are the only medical specialists that never look at the organ they treat. How crazy is that! How do we know unless we look? We call people who have brain damage personality disordered? We call people with toxic exposure resistant to treatment? We think of depression as a singular illness, when it has many types, like chest pain. We need to do much better and it will start when we really take brain function seriously. 4. In your opinion, what is the ultimate goal of therapy? Better brain function. I am convinced therapy goes much faster, and patients are better able to do their own lives when you help your patients have better brain function. 5. What is the toughest part of being a therapist? Not having enough information to be helpful. 6. What is the most enjoyable or rewarding part of being a therapist? Helping people change their lives in a positive way. I have so many stories of how when a person’s brain is better that they become more effective, more loving, more passionate … that it brings me joy on a regular basis. 7. What is one pearl of wisdom you would offer clients about therapy? Think about the brain, how to improve it and you will be more effective in all you do. ——– My gratitude to International Psychoanalysis , The Library of Economics and Liberty , Introductory Psychology Resources , Psychlinks Online and the American Psychological Association for blogging about or linking to the Seven Questions. There’s even a European magazine named  Charaktery asking seven questions to influential Polish psychotherapists. My goal was to get people talking about psychotherapy so it’s nice to see interest from such diverse venues. © 2009 Psychology Today. This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact blogs@psychologytoday.com so we can take legal action immediately.

I’ve just found this clever short essay that parodies Freud by imagining that he was a woman. It discusses the work of Phyllis Freud, rather than the better known Sigmund, who puts a female perspective in the centre of his male-centric theories. As Phyllis observed…there was “yet another surprising effect of womb envy, or the discovery of the inferiority of the penis to the clitoris, which is undoubtedly the most important of all…that masturbation…is a feminine activity and that the elimination of penile sensuality is a necessary pre-condition for the development of masculinity.” In this way, Phyllis Freud wisely screened all she heard from her testyrical patients through her understanding, still well accepted to this day, the men are sexually passive, just as they tend to be intellectually and ethically. After all, the libido is intrinsically feminine, or, as she put it with her genius for laywoman’s terms, “man is possessed of a weaker sexual instinct.” This was also proved by man’s mono-orgasmic nature. Apparently it’s taken from one of the many, many feminist critiques of Freud’s work, who famously focused on theories of male psychology because women just seemed too baffling. Link to ‘What if Freud were Phyllis?’

This month’s British Journal of Psychiatry has another one of its fantastic ‘psychiatry in 100 words’ series, with this month’s column focusing on literature. The short piece is by psychiatrist Femi Oyebode who is the author of a recent book (pictured on the left) on the subject that covers everything from literary accounts of drug abuse to the use of narrative in fictional accounts of mental illness. Literature and psychiatry — in 100 words Reading works of fiction and attending to the language, the dialogue, the mood is like listening to patients. In both activities, we enter into other worlds, grasp something about the inner life of characters whose motivations may be unlike our own. D. H. Lawrence referring to this aspect of the novel wrote: `It can inform and lead into new places the flow of our sympathetic consciousness, and it can lead our sympathy away in recoil from things gone dead. Therefore the novel, properly handled, can reveal the most secret places of life’. Is this not also, partly, the task of psychiatry? Link to ‘Literature and psychiatry — in 100 words’. Link to details of ‘Mindreadings: Literature and Psychiatry’ book.