Thomas Edison was famous for failing over 1,000 times when trying to create the light bulb.
Fewer than 1 in 10 people achieve their resolutions, research finds.
Attendance at fitness classes was 90% higher in the group that used this type of motivation.
Attendance at fitness classes was 90% higher in the group that used this type of motivation.
Competition is one of the best motivators, a new study concludes.
It works much better than friendly support, which could actually backfire and reduce motivation, the researchers found.
The research involved college students being encouraged to attend classes at the University fitness centre.
The programme was managed through an internet-based social network.
The researchers tested the effects of four different types of social network interactions, some involving competition, others not.
The results showed that when competition was involved, attendance rates at fitness classes were 90% higher.
Dr Damon Centola, one of the study’s authors, said:
“Most people think that when it comes to social media more is better.
This study shows that isn’t true: When social media is used the wrong way, adding social support to an online health program can backfire and make people less likely to choose healthy behaviors.
However, when done right, we found that social media can increase people’s fitness dramatically.”
Whether it was individual or in groups — competition emerged as critical to motivation.
Dr Jingwen Zhang, the study’s first author, said:
“Framing the social interaction as a competition can create positive social norms for exercising.
Social support can make people more dependent on receiving messages, which can change the focus of the program.”
Dr Centola speculated on why social support may not have worked:
“Supportive groups can backfire because they draw attention to members who are less active, which can create a downward spiral of participation.
Competitive groups frame relationships in terms of goal-setting by the most active members.
These relationships help to motivate exercise because they give people higher expectations for their own levels of performance.”
In comparison, competition kept people pushing for more:
“In a competitive setting, each person’s activity raises the bar for everyone else.
Social support is the opposite: a ratcheting-down can happen.
If people stop exercising, it gives permission for others to stop, too, and the whole thing can unravel fairly quickly.”
The study was published in the journal Preventive Medicine Reports (Zhang et al., 2016).
There is one thing that you need to develop an exercise habit that sticks that many people inexplicably discount.
There is one thing that you need to develop an exercise habit that sticks that many people inexplicably discount.
Exercise is a difficult habit to pick up.
It is not enough just to set aside a particular period in the day and rely on willpower to follow through.
Part of the reason is that people don’t necessarily start exercising because they enjoy it.
Instead, they start exercising to lose weight or look better.
When the changes are minimal, or not what they had hoped for, then it is easy to give up.
New research finds that one key to getting the exercise habit is tapping in to intrinsic rewards.
Intrinsic rewards are things like the pleasure we get from the activity itself.
This could be through socialising with others, the endorphin rush, or something else.
When intrinsic, internal rewards are linked up with a particular, regular slot in the day for exercising, then the habit can flourish in the long term.
Finding the missing key, then, is all about identifying those highly personal intrinsic rewards.
What is it about the exercise that makes you feel good?
If the answer is nothing, then it is time to think about different types of exercise that do make you feel good.
For example, gyms are not for everyone, some people prefer to play sports in teams, others prefer exercising alone.
Some people like rigid goals and structure, others prefer a more free-form approach.
Find your pleasure and the habit is much more likely to stick.
Dr Alison Phillips, who led the research, said:
“If someone doesn’t like to exercise it’s always going to take convincing.
People are more likely to stick with exercise if they don’t have to deliberate about whether or not to do it.
[…]If exercise is not habit, then it’s effortful and takes resources from other things you might also want to be doing.
That’s why people give it up.”
The study was published in the journal Sport, Exercise and Performance Psychology (Phillips et al., 2016).
Study tested how people feel 90 minutes after watching a tearjerking film.
Study tested how people feel 90 minutes after watching a tearjerking film.
People who watched a sad film were eventually in a better mood after watching it than they were before, a recent study found.
However, it took about 90 minutes, on average, to feel better after crying.
The research could help explain the function of crying.
Some argue that crying provides emotional relief.
And yet, when it is measured in the lab, crying makes people feel much worse.
The study showed 60 people two films known to be tearjerkers.
Their mood was measured right after watching the films, then after 20 minutes and 90 minutes.
Around half of the participants cried during the film: naturally they felt worse immediately afterwards.
The results showed, though, that after 20 minutes the criers had recovered their initial dip in mood.
It is probably this dip and then recovery that makes people feel that crying has improved their mood.
However, after another 60 minutes the criers felt even happier than they did before watching the films.
None of the mood shifts were related to how much people cried.
Asmir Gračanin, the study’s lead author, said:
“After the initial deterioration of mood following crying, it takes some time for the mood not only to recover but also to be lifted above the levels at which it had been before the emotional event.”
Talking of crying, here is another strange finding about happiness and crying:
https://www.spring.org.uk/2014/11/the-reason-overwhelming-happiness-makes-people-cry.php
The study was published in the journal Motivation and Emotion (Gračanin et al., 2016).
Watching film image from Shutterstock
Not all daydreaming is bad for focused thinking, new study finds.
Not all daydreaming is bad for focused thinking, new study finds.
Daydreaming and mind-wandering can have positive effects on mental performance in the right circumstances, a new study finds.
It used to be thought that when people are trying to solve puzzles, they perform best when the mind wandering part of the brain — called the ‘default network’ — is relatively inactive.
This makes sense given that ‘off-task’ thinking is likely to distract our focus.
In contrast to other research, though, a new study suggests the default network can sometimes help with tasks that require focus and quick reactions (Spreng et al., 2014).
Dr. Nathan Spreng, who led the research, said:
“The prevailing view is that activating brain regions referred to as the default network impairs performance on attention-demanding tasks because this network is associated with behaviors such as mind-wandering.
Our study is the first to demonstrate the opposite – that engaging the default network can also improve performance.”
Whether mind wandering helps or hinders comes down to how in sync it is with the task itself.
For example, daydreaming about an upcoming holiday is unlikely to help with solving a math puzzle.
In this study, though, people tried to match faces that were presented to them under time pressure.
The faces were either anonymous or of very famous people, like President Barack Obama.
As you’d expect, people were faster to match up the famous faces, as they’d seen them before.
But, the critical finding was that the brain’s default network — which is associated with reminiscing — supported people’s memory for these faces.
The more this area of the brain was activated, the faster they were at the task.
Dr. Spreng continued:
“Outside the laboratory, pursuing goals involves processing information filled with personal meaning – knowledge about past experiences, motivations, future plans and social context.
Our study suggests that the default network and executive control networks dynamically interact to facilitate an ongoing dialogue between the pursuit of external goals and internal meaning.”
In other words: mind wandering isn’t always bad, even when we’re trying to focus on a task that requires attention and speed.
Sometimes daydreaming helps rather than hinders.
Image credit: Xtream_I
The brain’s exercise motivation centre discovered and how it might help people with depression.
The brain’s exercise motivation centre discovered and how it might help people with depression.
The area of the brain which may control the motivation to exercise — along with other rewarding activities — has been identified by a new study.
The tiny area of the brain, called the dorsal medial habenula, was found to control mice’s motivation to exercise (Turner et al., 2014).
Since the brain structure is similar in humans and mice, it is likely that the effects on motivation and the emotions are the same.
Dr. Eric Turner, the study’s lead author, suggests the research might be the first step in developing new treatments for depression:
“Changes in physical activity and the inability to enjoy rewarding or pleasurable experiences are two hallmarks of major depression.
But the brain pathways responsible for exercise motivation have not been well understood.
Now, we can seek ways to manipulate activity within this specific area of the brain without impacting the rest of the brain’s activity.”
The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, used mice whose brains were genetically engineered to block signals from the dorsal medial habenula.
When compared with regular mice, the altered mice were lethargic and even took less interest in sugary drink that normal mice would have found rewarding to drink.
Dr. Turner explained:
“Without a functioning dorsal medial habenula, the mice became couch potatoes.
They were physically capable of running but appeared unmotivated to do it.”
A second study used sophisticated laser technology to allow the mice themselves to switch on or off their dorsal medial habenula by turning a wheel.
The mice much preferred to have this small part of their brains activated, thus showing it is tied to motivation and rewarding behaviour.
While it may be a long way off, the hope is that techniques can be developed to help people who are depressed ‘switch on’ their motivation and once again find pleasure in life.
Dr. Turner, who treats people with depression, concluded:
“Working in mental health can be frustrating.
We have not made a lot of progress in developing new treatments.
I hope the more we can learn about how the brain functions the more we can help people with all kinds of mental illness.”
Image credit: Banalities
The mental state which enhances learning, even of things we’re not that interested in.
The mental state which enhances learning, even of things we’re not that interested in.
When we are more curious about a topic, naturally it is easier to learn.
Now, a new neuroscience study reveals exactly what happens in our brain when we feel that tingle of curiosity and how it can boost our learning (Gruber et al., 2014).
The surprising finding is that once people’s curiosity is piqued, they learn better, even when they are learning things which they were not originally curious about.
Just being in a curious state — about anything — is enough to enhance learning.
Dr. Matthias Gruber, the study’s lead author, said:
“Curiosity may put the brain in a state that allows it to learn and retain any kind of information, like a vortex that sucks in what you are motivated to learn, and also everything around it.”
For the study, people rated their interest in learning the answers to a series of trivia questions.
While they waited 14 seconds for the answer to be revealed, they were shown a picture of someone’s face that was unrelated to the question.
Afterwards they were given a memory test to see which of the faces they remembered.
The results revealed that people had better memories for the faces which they’d seen while waiting for the answers to trivia questions that they were really curious about.
This was even true when they were tested a day later.
Brain scans revealed that when people were in an especially curious state about the answer to the question, their brains showed higher motivation.
Dr. Charan Ranganath, who led the study, explained:
“So curiosity recruits the reward system, and interactions between the reward system and the hippocampus seem to put the brain in a state in which you are more likely to learn and retain information, even if that information is not of particular interest or importance.”
Image credit: Stefano Bertolotti
This is a vital cause of low mood, poor health and lacklustre learning in teenagers.
This is a vital cause of low mood, poor health and lacklustre learning in teenagers.
Failing to get enough sleep causes low mood in teenagers, along with worse health and poor learning, a new review of the psychological evidence finds.
Although hormonal changes are partly to blame for teenage angst, being short of sleep significantly contributes to lack of motivation and poor mood.
Due to changes during puberty, teenagers require more sleep than adults and most find it hard to get to sleep before 11pm, with many staying up until 2 or 3am.
It’s not all down to late night video gaming or TV: the part of the brain which regulates the sleep-wake cycle — the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus — changes in puberty.
Teenage brains also secrete less melatonin so their ‘sleep drive’ reduces.
As a result, being forced to rise the next day at 6am for school or college means teens find it hard to get the 8 to 10 hours sleep that they need.
While educators and some parents seem to believe that teens are lazy, the problem is actually down to the adolescent biological clock.
The review of 30 years of research on this subject, published in the journal Learning, Media and Technology, finds that…
“…studies of later start times have consistently reported benefits to adolescent sleep health and learning, there [is no evidence] showing early starts have a positive impact on such things.” (Kelley et al., 2014)
Teenagers who are short of sleep consistently get worse grades in school, are more likely to be depressed and have more health problems, the research shows.
The study comes hot on the heels of calls by the American Academy of Pediatrics to delay start times to no earlier than 8:30am.
It’s not surprising: the evidence is overwhelming.
For example, one recent study, published in the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, delayed the waking up time of adolescents at a boarding school by just 25 minutes.
They found that afterwards the number of students getting more than 8 hours sleep a night jumped from 18% to 44%.
Students experienced less daytime sleepiness, were less depressed, and found themselves using less caffeine.
Some changes in the US have already begun, with the ‘Start School Later’ campaign and the National Sleep Foundation.
The United States Air Force Academy in particular have found much improved academic results with a new late start policy introduced for their 18 and 19-year-olds.
The study’s authors conclude:
“Good policies should be based on good evidence and the data show that children are currently placed at an enormous disadvantage by being forced to keep inappropriate education times.”
Image credit: acearchie
Could violent video games make you a more caring person, at least initially?
Could violent video games make you a more caring person, at least initially?
Breaking your moral code in a virtual environment may counter-intuitively encourage more sensitivity to these kinds of violations in the real world, a new study finds.
The study, which is published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, suggests violent video games make their players feel guilty for their moral indiscretions (Grizzard et al., 2014).
Matthew Grizzard, who led the study, said:
“Rather than leading players to become less moral, this research suggests that violent video-game play may actually lead to increased moral sensitivity.
This may, as it does in real life, provoke players to engage in voluntary behavior that benefits others.”
Participants in the study played a first-person shooter video game in one of two conditions:
“…participants in the guilt condition played as a terrorist soldier, while participants in the control condition played as a UN soldier.
The game itself informed participants of their character’s motivations to ensure that the experimenter did not bias result.” (Grizzard et al., 2014).
The researchers expected that people would feel guilty when playing the game as a terrorist, but not when they played as a peacekeeper.
Grizzard said:
“…an American who played a violent game ‘as a terrorist’ would likely consider his avatar’s unjust and violent behavior — violations of the fairness/reciprocity and harm/care domains — to be more immoral than when he or she performed the same acts in the role of a ‘UN peacekeeper.'”
Afterwards players were given tests of their moral feelings and how guilty they felt.
Grizzard explained the results:
“We found that after a subject played a violent video game, they felt guilt and that guilt was associated with greater sensitivity toward the two particular domains they violated — those of care/harm and fairness/reciprocity.”
This is not the first study to reach these conclusions.
Several studies have found that immoral virtual behaviours elicit real-world feelings of guilt — how long this guilt lasts, though, is not clear.
These studies can’t tell us what the long-term effects of these types of games are.
It may be that…
“…guilt resulting from playing as an immoral character may habituate from repeated exposures.
Under these conditions, we might expect that repeated play would not lead a gamer to become more sensitive to fairness or become more caring overall…” (Grizzard et al., 2014)
So while playing Grand Theft Auto — a game attacked for glamourising violence — may make you feel guilty the first couple of times, you may soon get used to to it.
Image credit: Steven Andrew
Join the free PsyBlog mailing list. No spam, ever.
