Psychology - Page 31 of 55

Does ‘Peer Review’ Mean Anything to You?

A discussion about ‘peer review’ suggesting science bloggers should use an icon to indicate when they are discussing peer reviewed research.

[Photo by marinegirl]

A new website, bpr3.org, has been set up to highlight peer reviewed research – the process by which academics check each other’s work.

A discussion about ‘peer review’ is ongoing over at Cognitive Daily suggesting science bloggers should use an icon to indicate when they are discussing peer reviewed research. Peer review is simply the system academics use for checking each other’s work. Before research is published in peer reviewed journals it gets sent to other experts in the field to be checked. Peer review is seen as the academic gold standard.

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Effectiveness of Mutual Support Groups

In stressful times we can all do with a little help from our friends.

In stressful times we can all do with a little help from our friends. Sometimes, though, our friends cannot provide – or we do not want to ask for – the kind of support required. Mutual support groups based around shared topics such as cancer or addictions have grown rapidly to meet this need. But, can mutual support groups really help people recover from mental health problems? A small but growing body of research suggests they can.

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How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker (Book Review)

Right from the outset Steven Pinker, a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, is apologising for the title of his book: ‘How the Mind Works’.

Right from the outset Steven Pinker, a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, is apologising for the title of his book: ‘How the Mind Works’. We do not yet know how the mind works, he explains. The ideas contained in his book are not, he admits, his own but culled from various other fields. But this is rather false modesty as reading on it soon becomes clear Pinker does indeed intend to tell us how the mind works, albeit one particular version.

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The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks (Review)

One book almost everyone interested in psychology will enjoy is Oliver Sack’s ‘The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat’.

It’s the centrality of human experience that makes this book such a rewarding and touching read.

One book almost everyone interested in psychology will enjoy is Oliver Sack’s ‘The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat‘. Sacks, a neurologist by training, describes some of the fascinating patients he has treated over the years. From the eponymous Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, through The Man Who Fell out of Bed, The Lost Mariner and The Dog Beneath the Skin, each chapter tells the story of ordinary human experience touched by unusual brain diseases.

Mercifully the narrative is devoid of medical terminology as what Sacks is most interested in is the patient’s perspective on the world. As a result the reader gains personal, subjective insight into the inability to recognise objects (visual agnosia), the experience of a dense amnesia stretching back decades (Korsakov’s), what it feels like to be completely disembodied and many other conditions.

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Group Therapy Online | Eye Movement Coupling | Macho Men Still Untrustworthy

Can group therapy work over the internet? A new study published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics suggests it can be useful in some circumstances.

Can group therapy work over the internet? A new study published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics suggests it can be useful in some circumstances. Golkaramnay et al. (2007) examined its effectiveness on those who had been discharged after receiving inpatient care. The research aimed to find out if gains made during intensive inpatient care could be maintained once patients had been discharged.

The controlled study, carried out over 15 weeks, had a group meeting online for 90 minutes each week to participate in group internet chat therapy. Twelve months after discharge, patients were at a lower risk of a negative outcome compared to the control group (24.7% versus 38.5%).

This looks like an extremely cost-effective way of improving outpatient care. However, it does mean that patients need to be familiar and comfortable with internet chat, which may not be for everybody.

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‘Good’ Wine Increases Food Consumption by 12%

If I give you a glass of wine, telling you to expect a taste-explosion, unless you’re an expert, you’re likely to experience it as being tastier.

Our expectations about the world have all sorts of knock-on effects for how we behave. Take something as simple as eating and drinking. If I give you a glass of wine, telling you to expect a taste-explosion, unless you’re an expert, you’re likely to experience it as being tastier than if I told you it was some cheap rancid rubbish I had lying around.

Not only that, this expectation might well be passed on to other aspects of your behaviour, such as the amount of accompanying food you eat. Don’t believe me? Check out this experiment by Wansink, Payne and North (2007).

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Why Academics Hide in Ivory Towers

How do people with no training and little exposure to psychological science view the work of academics and researchers?

In a recent post I asked ‘What is the point of psychology?‘ – a question to which you had some great responses. These responses reminded me that what can seem like a simple question of psychology can elicit a fairly complicated answer. Which sent me back to wondering how people with no training and little exposure to psychological science view the work of academics and researchers.

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237 Reasons For Sex | Vegansexuals | Toilet Seats | Encephalon 28

The authors then boiled these down to four general categories: physical, goal attainment, emotional and insecurity.

Here’s a guaranteed way of getting your study covered, well, everywhere: make sure it includes 237 reasons why people have sex. The authors then boiled these down to four general categories: physical (“beautiful eyes”), goal attainment (“for a bet”), emotional (“to communicate on a deeper level”) and insecurity (“duty”).

And, as if 237 wasn’t enough, the New York Times add a few of their own:

“…nowhere among the 237 reasons will you find the one attributed to the actress Joan Crawford: “I need sex for a clear complexion.” (The closest is “I thought it would make me feel healthy.”) Nor will you find anything about gathering rosebuds while ye may (the 17th-century exhortation to young virgins from Robert Herrick). Nor the similar hurry-before-we-die rationale (“The grave’s a fine and private place/ But none I think do there embrace”) from Andrew Marvell in “To His Coy Mistress.””

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What is the Point of Psychology Studies?

“Why do we need this study?” or “This just tells us what we already know!” or, “Rubbish!”

This may seem like a sacrilegious question to ask on a blog devoted to psychology studies, but it’s one that’s frequently raised elsewhere. I often see it buried in comment threads on social networking sites. Things like: “Why do we need this study?” or “This just tells us what we already know!” or, “Rubbish!” with no reasoned argument whatsoever.

Of course, all psychology studies were not created equal. Some provide marvellous insights into human nature, others are pretty banal. But even those apparently banal studies are usually valuable within the context in which they were conceived. They hope to plug a small specific gap in the wall of knowledge.

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5 Intriguing Studies of Human-Dog Psychology

Do owners look like their dogs? Do we think they understand us? And more fascinating questions…

1. Is talking to a dog like talking to a baby?

Are these people talking to their babies or their dogs:

“Coochie-coochie-coooo!”

“Who’s a clever little boy?”

“Oh my God, the living room carpet is ruined!”

Difficult to tell right? So Mitchell (2001) thought, which is why he decided to compare how people talk to infants with how they talk to dogs. He found both similarities and differences:

Similarities: high-pitched voice, repetitive use of grammatically acceptable words, present-tense verbs.

Differences: Dog-talk involved shorter sentences and more orders while baby-talk included more questions.

Which all raises the question of whether we’re treating our babies like dogs or our dogs like babies. Either way, the authors point out the main problem in talking to both babies and dogs is it “involve[s] communicating with a limited and inattentive addressee.”

I think that’s a bit harsh on dogs.

2. Do we think dogs understand us?

What with all that baby-talk going on, you’d think that dogs would pick up the odd word or two. To examine people’s perceptions of their dog’s understanding Pongracz, Miklosi and Csanyi (2001) gave Hungarian dog-owners a questionnaire. It asked them to rate the types of utterances they thought their dogs could understand. Top of the list came questions, followed by permissions and information giving. It seems these dogs are regular little Lassies.

But what proof is there that they really understand? Well, we can only tell by how the dog responds. So, next the authors asked dog-owners how often their dogs demonstrated understanding by obeying a command. Our hardy Hungarian dog-owners reckoned:

Dogs obeyed 31% of the time under all circumstances.
Dogs obeyed 53% of the time when the context was right

Seems pretty high to me. Or perhaps Hungarian dogs are very smart.

3. Are dogs ice-breakers?

Even if dogs can’t understand what we’re saying they’re still fantastic props for starting conversations. When taking a dog for a walk, you can’t help getting chatting to people. OK, so you’re mainly apologising to parents as your dog mauls their children, but at least its social contact, right?

The evidence for this one is provided by Rogers, Hart and Boltz (1993) in an observational study of elderly dog walkers. They found dog owners have more conversations in which, surprise surprise, they often talked about their dogs.

Not only that, but dog owners tended to report higher satisfaction with their emotional, social and physical states. So not only do dogs start conversations, they may also make you healthier.

4. Do dogs resemble their owners?

I recently covered a study finding that couples come to resemble each other facially over time. So what about dogs and their owners? There are a few studies on this – well actually there’s three academic articles and just one study.

a. Roy and Christenfeld (2004) find that, yes, dogs do resemble their owners, but only if they’re purebreds – that’s the dogs now, not the owners. So, the old chestnut is true. Hooray!

b. Levine (2005), reanalysing the data collected in the first study, say no – there’s problems with Roy and Christenfeld’s (2004) study. This means we can’t yet be sure purebred dogs resemble their owners. A new study is required. Booo.

c. The authors of the original study say yes their original study was correct (Roy & Christenfeld, 2005). Hooray! (I think?)

The world still awaits the conclusion…

5. Is it wrong to eat your dog?

Dog lovers: look away now. Cat lovers: sharpen your knives. Haidt, Koller & Dias (1993) wanted to find out how culture affects the way we moralise about different types of behaviours using fictional stories. One story participants were told goes like this:

“A family’s dog was killed by a car in front of their house. They had heard that dog meat was delicious, so they cut up the dog’s body and cooked it and ate it for dinner.”

Then they’re asked if the dog-chomping family should be stopped. Turns out the answer you give depends on your culture and socioeconomic status. If you live in the US and you’re well off you’re likely to agree that eating your dog may be disgusting but seeing as it isn’t harmful, shouldn’t be stopped.

On the other hand, if you’re a poor US citizen, or you live in Brazil, you’re much more likely to moralise and think the dog-chompers should be stopped in their tracks.

Image credit: Thomas Hawk

References

Haidt, J., Koller, S.H., & Dias, M.G. (1993). Affect, culture, and morality, or is it wrong to eat your dog? Journal of personality and social psychology, 65(4), 613-28.

Levine, D.W. (2005). Do Dogs Resemble Their Owners?. A Reanalysis of Roy and Christenfeld (2004). Psychological Science, 16(1), 83-84.

Mitchell, R.W. (2001). Americans’ Talk to Dogs: Similarities and Differences With Talk to Infants. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 34(2), 183-210.

Pongracz, P., Miklosi, A., & Csanyi, V. (2001). Owner’s beliefs on the ability of their pet dogs to understand human verbal communication: A case of social understanding. Cahiers de psychologie cognitive, 20(1-2), 87-107.

Rogers, J., Hart, L.A., & Boltz, R.P. (1993). The role of pet dogs in casual conversations of elderly adults. J Soc Psychol, 133(3), 265-77.

Roy, M.M., & Christenfeld, N.J.S. (2004). Research Report Do Dogs Resemble Their Owners? Psychological Science, 15(5), 361.

Roy, M.M., & Christenfeld, N.J. (2005). Dogs Still Do Resemble Their Owners. Psychological Science, 16(9), 743-744.