Category: Psychology

Every day, when you open your eyes in the morning, there is a huge flood of visual information from the external world into your mind.

Your brain edits this flood down to a trickle of things that are highly relevant: Where is the dressing-gown? Where is the curtain? Where is the door?

The rest of it–the state of the carpet, the shadows on the ceiling–all gets ignored.

Or does it?

How much processing does the brain allocate to things you’re not consciously aware of? What does ‘it’ see that ‘you’ don’t? (Obviously ‘you’ are ‘it’, but let’s not get into that!).

Fascinating new research, published in the journal Psychological Science, addresses this question.

Sanguinetti et al. (2013) had participants looking at the silhouettes of objects in the centre of a screen, while there were other shapes around the outside.

It’s like the everyday situation where you are concentrating on something, but there are all kinds of other objects and shapes in your peripheral vision.

By monitoring their brainwaves, the researchers were able to determine whether participants were processing these peripheral objects.

People don’t usually take much notice of what’s going on in their peripheral vision because they are concentrating on what they are looking at.

The same was true in this study: participants were not consciously aware of the peripheral shapes.

And yet, the electrical activity they measured suggested that their brains were processing these peripheral shapes for meaning.

This goes against how many theorists have suggested that vision works. Professor Mary Peterson explained:

“Many, many theorists assume that because it takes a lot of energy for brain processing, that the brain is only going to spend time processing what you’re ultimately going to perceive. But in fact the brain is deciding what you’re going to perceive, and it’s processing all of the information and then it’s determining what’s the best interpretation.”

Naturally, the brain edits information coming from the eyes, because only a portion of it is useful for us.

It’s like a film director who doesn’t bother showing you the hero going to sleep or brushing his teeth.

To follow the story, what you need is the salient details, and that is what the brain is trying to give you: the edited version of the most useful visual facts.

However, what this study suggests is that even information that isn’t that useful or relevant is still being processed in the brain for meaning.

The study is a fantastic reminder that what we see is the result of an extremely complicated editing and filtering process.

What we actually perceive is just what the brain thinks will be most useful to us. But, while we don’t perceive the rest, it seems much of it is still being processed unconsciously.

Image credit: Patrick McArdle/UANews

A lot of bad behaviour goes on at night. Too much drinking, eating, fighting and all the rest.

But is this just down to the fact that people are mostly at work during the day, or is it more than that?

Could it be that people’s self-control is sapped by everyday events and, by the evening, those with the relevant tendencies can’t stop themselves cutting loose?

Certainly every new day presents all of us with a series of little–and sometimes not so little–mental workouts.

Even small things like choosing what to wear, planning the day’s activities and attending a routine meeting take their toll.

All this mental effort depletes our reserves so that we can almost feel it seeping away with each new task.

We may start the day with all the best intentions, but by the time the evening rolls around, these have gone out of the window.

If this is really true, then it should be possible to see this decline in people’s self-control over the day.

If, say, we compare people’s moral behaviour in the morning with that in the afternoon, there should be a measurable difference.

That’s exactly what Kouchaki and Smith (2013) have done in a new study published in Psychological Science. Being positive souls, though, they called it the ‘morning morality’ effect: the idea that we are at our most moral in the mornings.

They checked out this theory of a ‘morning morality’ effect by giving participants in four studies opportunities to cheat while carrying out simple computer-based tasks.

Sometimes people were tested in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon. Each time, during the tasks, they were surreptitiously given chances to cut corners or tell little fibs.

Across the studies, the researchers found that people were less likely to cheat and lie in the morning than the afternoon.

People who cheated more in the afternoon also showed lower moral awareness, suggesting their moral character was bleeding away as the day proceeded.

So, perhaps all the bad behaviour that goes on at night is more than just opportunity, it’s also a result of the collective erosion of people’s moral fibre.

The authors of the study even suggest that the morning morality effect is worth knowing about if you’ve got some important decisions to make:

“The morning morality effect has notable implications for individuals and organizations, and it suggests that morally relevant tasks should be deliberately ordered throughout the day.” (Kouchaki & Smith, 2013)

Simply put: don’t make any really important decisions in the afternoon, especially those with moral implications; you’re more likely to act immorally.

Image credit: Sean Rogers

Synesthesia is a fascinating condition which causes a cross-wiring of the senses. People with it find they can taste numbers or associate particular colours with certain people.

Rather than being weird, spooky or mystical, it is now a recognised neuropsychological phenomenon which is thought to affect about 4% of the population.

Some argue that synesthesia may help to explain the claim that people have auras–a subtle field of energy around them which can be read.

It may be that seeing this ‘energy field’ is a type of synesthesia.

One example of this cross-over between New Age beliefs and recognised neuropsychological phenomena is the case of Esteban, a faith healer from southern Spain.

Researchers from the University of Granada have examined him and found that he has mirror-touch synesthesia (Milan et al., 2012). He experiences a sensation when he sees other people being touched; this means he can literally feel other people’s pain.

He also has face-colour synesthesia, which results from a crossover between parts of the brain responsible for face processing and colour perception.

These synesthetic phenomena, along with high levels of empathy, and a slightly delusional personality, mean Estaban has special emotional and pain reading skills.

In Estaban’s case it looks like there is some relationship between his synesthesia and his perceived special abilities.

To further examine the claim, though, Milan et al. looked specifically at four synesthetes who don’t claim any special ‘New Age’ abilities.

They then compared this with known faith healers and aura readers who do claim special abilities. A large enough overlap between the two might suggest a causal role for synesthesia.

The researchers, though, found too many differences between the experience of synesthetes and those claiming to read auras.

This does not mean that the aura readers are really seeing auras, just that their ‘powers’ can be explained by alternative means. Seeing auras may instead be a result of the normal functioning of the visual system:

“…the complementary colour effect, which results from a temporary ‘‘exhaustion’’ of the colour-sensitive cells in the retina, could account for the presence of auric colours seen by a sensitive viewer when staring at a person. Staring at a darker object (a human figure) against a bright background may induce the perception of a bright ‘‘halo’’ around the object.” (Milan et al., 2012)

Or it could be that ‘aura readers’ simply see what they want or expect to see, and perhaps invoking synesthesia is too complex an explanation for a much simpler cause.

Image credit: PhotoGraham

A new study finds that when social relationships provide an all important sense of belonging, people feel life has more meaning (Lambert et al., 2013).

The effect was revealed in one experiment in which participants were asked to close their eyes and think of two people or groups to which they really belonged. Then they were asked about how much meaning they felt life had.

This group was compared with two others where participants (1) thought about the value of other people and (2) the help that others had provided them.

Compared with these two conditions, participants who had been thinking about the groups they belonged to felt the highest levels of meaning in life.

So, belonging to a group provided meaning over and above the value of others or the help they could provide.

It’s more than just bonding, therefore, but really feeling like you are fitting in with others which is associated with higher levels of meaningfulness.

Just the reverse effect has been shown in previous studies. People who feel excluded from social groups tend to feel that life has less meaning.

Belonging and coherence

One of most people’s missions in life–whether they realise it or not–is to find meaning.

Feeling that life is meaningful is important because:

• People who feel life is meaningful are more likely to be in both good psychological and good physical health.
• People who feel life isn’t meaningful are more likely to be depressed, to require therapy and even feel suicidal.

Meaning is found in various ways–sometimes through family, religion and the sense of self.

But, certainly, one way to find meaning in life is by seeking out one or more places where we belong and where things make sense.

One reason that belonging increases meaning in life is it promotes the idea of continuity and of permanence.

If you belong to an organisation or group that is greater than yourself, there is comfort in the idea that it will outlast you.

Along with feeling like we belong, coherence in our environment also promotes meaning. When we experience things that don’t make sense, we feel life has less meaning.

Demonstrating this, one study has found that people who viewed the seasons in the correct order (spring, summer, fall, winter) felt life had more meaning than those who saw them out of order (Heintzelman et al., 2013).

So: where do you belong and does it make sense to you?

Image credit: Duncan Rawlinson

In short, the reason that cheaters sometimes cheat, despite tiny rewards, is that it feels good.

Although we tend to assume that cheating should mostly trigger negative emotions like guilt, that’s not the conclusion of a series of studies carried out by Nicole E. Ruedy at the University of Washington, and colleagues.

In their studies, people who cheated on a problem-solving task–while having little to gain–experienced a kind of ‘cheater’s high’ (Ruedy et al., 2013). They felt more satisfied with themselves and happier than those who didn’t cheat.

Some people were even specifically reminded after the study how important it was not to cheat. Perversely, these people felt even better!

Even more confusingly, when asked, most people in the study thought that someone who cheated would feel worse, or at least ambivalent afterwards. So, their prediction of how cheaters would feel was completely wrong.

Little to gain

One reason people’s bad feelings were likely limited in this study was that the cheating behaviour itself did not hurt anyone else. Participants were simply peeking at the answers to math and logic problems.

Nicole Ruedy explained:

“When people do something wrong specifically to harm someone else, such as apply an electrical shock, the consistent reaction in previous research has been that they feel bad about their behavior. Our study reveals people actually may experience a ‘cheater’s high’ after doing something unethical that doesn’t directly harm someone else.”

If you’ve ever wondered why people cheat when there seems little point–for example, by stealing something from a shop that they can easily afford–then this study may help explain it:

“The good feeling some people get when they cheat may be one reason people are unethical even when the payoff is small.”

Image credit: Craig Sunter

Here are the top 5 articles published on PsyBlog in August 2013.

1. Which Professions Have The Most Psychopaths?

According to a survey conducted by psychologist Kevin Dutton—called the Great British Psychopath Survey—here are the top 10 professions with the most psychopaths:

1. CEO
2. Lawyer… more—>

2. What Caffeine Really Does to Your Brain

Some of caffeine’s effects are strange and contradictory. In many ways caffeine’s effect on your mind is much more about what you expect than what it actually does… more—>

3. Eight Easy Bodily Actions That Transform Mental Performance

People tend to assume that body language just expresses how we feel inside. But it also works the other way: how we hold our bodies affects how we feel and think in all sorts of fascinating ways… more—>

4. Four Qualities of Truly Horrible Managers

Surveys keep telling us that between 65% and 75% of people rate their managers as the worst aspect of their jobs.

Is this just baseless moaning, or are they right? more—>

5. Debunked: ‘Right-Brain’ and ‘Left-Brain’ Personalities

There’s a popular assumption that ‘right-brained’ people are more creative, while ‘left-brained’ people are more analytical and logical.

Now researchers have done much to debunk this idea by examining the functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scans of over 1,000 people… more—>

Image credit: opensourceway

According to a new study, successful entrepreneurs are three times more likely to have engaged in illicit activities as teens like shoplifting, skipping out of school and even drug-dealing.

The insight comes from a nationally representative sample of 12,686 Americans who have been followed for other 30 years, since they were teenagers (Levine & Rubinstein, 2013).

They looked at what types of cognitive and other factors were associated with becoming a successful entrepreneur—especially one that had incorporated their business.

Naturally they found that successful entrepreneurs have to be smart, have high self-esteem and be well-educated; but they also need the attraction to risk.

Those who turned out to be the best entrepreneurs often had a history of being rule breakers in their teenage years. They were more likely to have smoked marijuana, to have bunked off school and even to have assaulted others.

But this illicit aspect was also coupled with a very stable family background. Successful entrepreneur’s were disproportionately likely to come from families that were:

• high-income,
• well-educated,
•  and stable.

So we’re not exactly talking about disadvantaged youths here.

We’re also not talking about women here: since men, on average, are more aggressive and are prepared to take on higher risks, they are more likely to become entrepreneurs. Women made up just 28% of the entrepreneurs who had incorporated their business.

Does more risk mean more reward?

But does this extra risk pay off?

This study found that in a financial sense, the risk may well pay off. Successful entrepreneurs earned 41% more per hour than similar salaried workers, although they also worked longer hours (on average, 27% more).

The study doesn’t, however, tell us anything about the effects of being an entrepreneur on family life or on psychological health. Perhaps these may not be as favourable as the economic benefits.

In a similar vein, the taste for risk-taking plus high self-esteem can provide a dangerous mix which can easily lead to lapses in judgement. Because of this, entrepreneurs are likely to need someone more risk-averse around who can rein them in when they go too far.

Image credit: Philip Daun

It’s a well-known fact that you can’t tickle yourself.

Try it; you (mostly) can’t. Brush your own fingers across the soles of your feet. You certainly feel a sensation, but it’s nothing like when someone else does it.

But why can’t you tickle yourself? If someone else can tickle you, then you should be able to tickle yourself. After all, I can feel my own touch just the same as someone else’s can’t I?

The answer is, psychologists think, that our brains have a basic function which is designed to tell whether some sensation is caused by ourselves, or whether it comes from outside (Blakemore et al, 2000).

Telling the difference between the two is important because otherwise your own touch might give you the same surprise as when someone comes up behind you and taps you on the shoulder.

To test this out some researchers have created a simple tickling robot (Blakemore et al., 1999). The way it works is you put your left hand on a little stick and move it around. This causes a sponge to move around on your right hand.

It turns out that when the robot works like this, people feel little, because it’s like they are causing the sponge to move themselves, through this ‘robot’. It’s like when you brush a feather duster across your own palm: your brain knows you’ve caused the sensation, so it doesn’t feel that ticklish.

But, when the robot introduces a delay of one-third of a second between their left hands moving the stick, and feeling the sponge move on their right hands, suddenly it tickles!

The reason is that the ‘robot’ has tricked the mind into thinking the source of the movement is external. And because it feels like someone else is causing the sensation, then it tickles!

Ah, tickling robot! Don’t tickle me!

Image credit: Matt Batchelor

It’s hardly controversial to say that most people believe more controversy causes more conversation.

For example:

• TV execs think more controversial programmes will attract the most viewers.
• Amongst people surveyed, 91% said controversy causes conversation (Chen & Berger, 2012).

This assumption about the benefits of being outrageous and controversial is barely questioned nowadays, but should it be?

Finding the sweet spot

The internet provides an easy way of seeing what topics provoke the most conversations. All you need to do is scroll down to the bottom of an article and see how many people are slugging it out in the comments section.

Effectively that’s what Chen and Berger (2012) did in a study which looked at articles posted on Topix.com, a news website.

They counted the comments to news articles that were rated as low, medium or high in controversy (Chen & Berger, 2012). Here are some examples:

• Low controversy: “New hybrid whale discovered in Arctic.”
• Medium controversy: “NY bill would ban ‘e-cigarettes’ until FDA action.”
• High controversy: “Oklahoma senator wants open carry, firearms on campus.”

Then they looked at how many comments each article received.

What they found was that when topics were either very high or very low in controversy, on average there were fewer comments posted. For sparking controversy, the sweet spot was in the middle.

These results seem surprising because we’d expect the most controversial articles to stir up the most chat, but apparently this didn’t happen.

Controversy makes people uncomfortable

To investigate further, the researchers moved into the lab. Here they manipulated the controversy of topics and then let participants have online conversations. Once again it was the moderately controversial topics that people talked about most. This was because:

• The most controversial topics were most interesting, but were also more uncomfortable to talk about, so tended to be avoided.
• However, it depends how anonymous you feel. When people talked anonymously online, they could bear more controversy than if they knew the person they were talking to.

So, our intuition that controversial subjects provoke discussion is tempered by the fact that people find it uncomfortable discussing them.

Whether you want people to talk about your website, product or business, or just talk to you (!), it seems that the sweet spot for controversy is right there in the middle.

Add a dash of controversy to heat up the debate, but not so much that people clam up.

Image credit: Pixel Fantasy

What do you feel right at the start of a long-term project that you’re involved with—whether at work, school or home?

Enthusiasm? Energy? Optimism?

Then as the deadline/big day/launch/test/whatever-it-is approaches, the shine starts to come off, doesn’t it?

Happy, open-hearted optimism about how it’ll turn out tends to give way to pessimism, cynicism and downright despair.

If you’ve experienced something like this then you’re not alone. This emotional slide or ‘sobering up effect’ has been documented in all kinds of areas (studies mentioned in Sweeny & Krizan, 2012):

• Results of medical tests: people who took a medical test were more optimistic when the results were four weeks away than a few minutes away.
• Performance in an exam: people think their exam marks will be higher when asked one month before the results compared with 50 minutes before getting their grades.
• Driving test expectations: people are more pessimistic about their own driving skills when told they have to take a test to prove it right away.
• Corporate earnings forecasts: when analysts predict how much money a company is going to make, they become less optimistic the closer the release of the actual results.

And it turns out that the more important the outcome is to us, the stronger the sobering up effect.

So, how come people dampen down their expectations and optimism about an outcome as the moment of truth approaches? According to Sweeny and Krizan, there are four main reasons:

1. Controlling the emotions: people manage how they will feel about an outcome by changing their expectations. It feels better if the outcome exceeds your expectations. An ‘A’ grade is more enjoyable if you expected a ‘C’ than if you knew it was going to be an ‘A’. The same is true of disappointing results.
2. It’s out of my hands: once the test is taken or project completed; control over the outcome is gone. Although people have no control over the outcome, they can still control their own expectations of the outcome. Managing personal expectations is another way of exerting control over the situation.
3. From abstract to concrete thinking: when outcomes are way off in the future, people tend to think more abstractly and, therefore, more optimistically about them. When they are closer, they see all the things that could go wrong, and then they get more pessimistic.
4. Now we’re accountable: as the outcome approaches, people worry that their predictions might be too optimistic. It seems better to be cautious to avoid looking foolish.

While many people are hardened optimists—indeed humans as a species show a bias towards being optimistic—as the moment of truth approaches, most of us become pessimists.

That’s because, as Thomas Hardy put it:

“Pessimism is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst possible circumstances, when better arise, as they may, life becomes child’s play.”

And there’s no time we need a ‘sure game’ more than when the chips are about to fall.

Image credit: Shandi-lee