Category: Social psychology

A simple (nonsexual) arm touch can increase compliance, helping behaviour, attraction, and signal power.

To get around in the world, we mainly rely on our eyes and ears.

Touch is a sense that’s often forgotten.

But touch is also vital in the way we understand and experience the world.

Even the lightest touch on the upper arm can influence the way we think.

To prove it, here are 10 psychological effects which show just how powerful nonsexual touch can be.

1. Arm touch for money

A well-timed touch can encourage other people to return a lost item.

In one experiment, users of a phone booth who were touched were more likely to return a lost dime to an experimenter (Kleinke, 1977).

The action was no more than a light touch on the arm.

People will do more than that though; people will give a bigger tip to a waitress who has touched them (Crusco & Wetzel, 1984).

(Stop giggling at the back there!)

2. Arm touch for help

People are also more likely to provide help when touched.

In one study, strangers who were touched lightly on the arm were more likely to help an experimenter pick up things they had dropped (Gueguen, 2003).

The percentage of people who helped went up from 63% to 90%.

3. Arm touch for compliance

The power of a light touch on the upper arm often extends more broadly to compliance.

In a study by Willis and Hamm (1980), participants were asked to sign a petition.

While 55% of those not touched agreed to sign it, this went up to 81% of those participants touched once on the upper arm.

A second study asked people to fill in a questionnaire.

The same touch increased compliance from 40% to 70%.

4. Touch twice for more compliance

And you can increase compliance with a second light touch on the arm.

Vaidis and Halimi-Falkowicz (2008) tried this out when asking people in the street to complete a questionnaire.

Those touched twice were more likely to complete the questionnaire than those touched once.

The effects were strongest when men were touched by a female surveyor.

5. Or, touch for a fight!

However, the acceptability of touch, especially between men, depends a lot on culture.

When Dolinski (2010) carried out a compliance experiment in Poland, he got quite different results for men and women.

In Poland men asked to do the experimenter a favour reacted badly to a light touch on the arm.

This seemed to be related to higher levels of homophobia. Women, however, still reacted positively to touch.

6. Arm touch to sell your car

Unlike Poland, France has a contact culture and touching is acceptable between two men.

So French researchers Erceau and Gueguen (2007) approached random men at a second-hand car market.

Half were touched lightly on the arm for 1 second, the other half weren’t.

Afterwards those who had been touched rated the seller as more sincere, friendly, honest, agreeable and kind.

Not bad for a 1-second touch.

We can safely assume the results would have been quite different in Poland!

7. Arm touch for a date

You won’t be surprised to hear that men show more interest in a woman who has lightly touched them.

But here’s the research anyway: Gueguen (2010) found men easily misinterpreted a light nonsexual touch on the arm as a show of sexual interest.

Perhaps more surprisingly women also responded well to a light touch on the arm when being asked for their phone number by a man in the street (Gueguen, 2007).

This may be because women associated a light 1 or 2-second touch with greater dominance.

(Bear in mind, though, that this research was in France again!)

8. Touch for power

Touch communicates something vital about power relationships. Henley (1973) observed people in a major city as they went about their daily business.

The people who tended to touch others (versus those being touched) were usually higher status.

Generally we regard people who touch others as having more power in society (Summerhayes & Suchner, 1978).

9. Forearm touch to communicate

Touch comes in many different forms and can communicate a variety of different emotions.

Just how much can be communicated through touch alone is demonstrated by one remarkable study by Hertenstein et al. (2006).

Using only a touch on the forearm, participants in this study tried to communicate 12 separate emotions to another person.

The receiver, despite not being able to see the toucher, or the touch itself, were pretty accurate for anger, fear, disgust, love, gratitude and sympathy.

Accuracy ranged from 48% to 83%.

To put it in context, that is as good as we can do when we can see someone’s face.

10. Massage for maths

So, if you can do all that with a touch, imagine what you could do with a massage!

Well, one study has found that it can boost your maths skills (Field, 1996).

Compared with a control group, participants who received massages twice a week for 5 weeks were not only more relaxed but also did better on a maths test.

Once again, witness the incredible power of touch.

Boring disclaimer

All of these studies rely on the touch being appropriate.

Being touched can have quite different meanings depending on situation, culture and gender.

Generally the touch referred to is a light touch on the upper arm—the safest place to touch someone you don’t know.

Also, research has identified a small proportion of people—both men and women—who don’t like to be touched at all during everyday social interactions.

These people are not likely to respond positively in any of these situations.

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The idea that 93 percent of communication is nonverbal is a myth deriving from studies by Albert Mehrabian and others.

The idea that the vast majority of communication occurs nonverbally is quoted everywhere from advertising to popular psychology articles.

In fact the original experiments from which these findings derive only applied to communicating attitudes and feelings.

That hasn’t stopped them being applied universally.

Even just considering attitudes and feelings though, these studies on what percentage of communication is nonverbal have been questioned.

What percentage of communication is nonverbal?

Some of the most influential studies to claim high importance for the nonverbal component of communication were carried out by Albert Mehrabian (Mehrabian, 1972).

In one study, participants had to judge the positive, negative or neutral content of various words.

Three were chosen to be positive – ‘dear’, ‘thanks’ and ‘honey’ – three neutral – ‘oh’, ‘maybe’ and ‘really’ – and three negative – ‘brute’, ‘don’t’ and ‘terrible’.

Each was then read in either a positive, neutral or negative tone of voice.

In a second study, participants had to judge if the word ‘maybe’ was positive, negative or neutral from looking at a photograph of a person with a positive, negative or neutral face.

From these, and similar experiments, Mehrabian claimed the face conveyed 55 percent of the information, the voice 38 percent and the words just 7 percent.

Criticism of nonverbal communication study

The criticism of these experiments is pretty obvious.

Although they are interesting, they don’t provide an effective analogue for real social situations.

This is what psychologists call a lack of ecological validity.

It’s not often we use just one word on its own (unless you count swearing).

12.5 times more powerful?

A social psychologist, Michael Argyle, tried to address the problems with Mehrabian’s work.

In his studies whole passages of text were acted out in positive, negative and neutral tones.

The actual methodology was more complicated than Mehrabian’s work but also led to the conclusion that nonverbal channels are 12.5 times more powerful in communicating interpersonal attitudes and feelings than the verbal channel.

The same criticism comes to mind again.

Why should the reading of a paragraph be considered an analogue for spontaneous forms of speech?

Demand characteristics

Perhaps an even stronger criticism of these studies relates to their ‘demand characteristics’.

Demand characteristics is a term psychologists use when they are referring to participants in an experiment acting in ways they think the experimenter wants them to act.

People generally want to please, they want to go with the flow.

So, if they can work out what the experimenter is after, they’ll often try and give it to them.

So, when watching videos in these experiments it will be obvious to participants the speeches are acted, not spontaneous.

Participants pick up on what the experimenter wants from the social cues provided.

Indeed, one study has found that when the purpose of the experiment is actually well-camouflaged from the participants, the dominance of nonverbal communication disappears (Trimboli & Walker, 1987).

So, maybe most of the meaning from communication actually does come from the words that people use.

Boring, but probably true.

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It is remarkably easy to disguise yourself — indeed, to make yourself look unrecognizable, research finds.

Simple disguises, like a new hairstyle and makeup, are surprisingly effective at making people unrecognizable, research finds.

Makeup, hair style and colour and even facial hair growth or removal can make someone difficult to recognise.

For the study, models were recruited and told to try and change their appearance — to look unrecognizable.

Hats and dark glasses were not allowed as these are prohibited in real-life security settings.

Here are some examples:

The results showed that disguises reduced people’s ability to spot the same person by 30 percent.

This was despite the fact that they were warned the target’s appearance may have changed.

Participants were only able to see through disguises when they knew the person well.

Dr Rob Jenkins, study’s co-author, said:

“We shouldn’t be complacent about deliberate disguise in criminal and security settings. When someone puts their mind to concealing their identity, it can be very effective.

Familiarity with the people who are disguising themselves improves accuracy.

When you are unfamiliar with a face you are easily fooled by superficial changes in hairstyle or colouration.

However, when you ‘know’ a face you tend to rely more on internal facial features — the eyes, nose and mouth — which are much harder to alter.”

Evasion is the best way to make yourself look unrecognizable

The most effective form of disguise, to make people look unrecognizable, was trying not to look like yourself.

This is known as an evasion disguise.

In comparison, impersonating someone else was not as effective.

Dr Eilidh Noyes, the study’s first author, said:

“With evasion disguise, you can change your appearance in any way you like.

With impersonation, you can only change your appearance in ways that resemble your target, so your options are much more constrained.

Deliberate disguise poses a real challenge to human face recognition.

The next step is to test automatic face recognition on the same tasks.”

The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied (Noyes & Jenkins, 2019).

Beard psychology: what psychological effects does a beard have? Heavy vs light stubble vs clean shaven. All important questions answered!

If you’re having trouble telling men from women, here’s a clue.

Men are the ones with hair sprouting from their faces (alright more hair sprouting from their faces).

Some men attempt to cover up the effect of all those androgens by shaving off their beards.

Others prefer to send out manly signals in all directions (well, either that or they can’t be bothered to shave).

Who is right? What are the facts about beards everyone should know?

Here are four very important facts about beards.

1. Beards are attractive…or are they?

Whether or not beards are attractive to women is a big area of controversy in beard-related psychological research.

Some studies find that bearded men are more attractive to women than the clean-shaven, others not (e.g. Reed & Blunk, 1990; Muscarella & Cunningham, 1996).

The most recent research goes against both beards and being clean-shaven and is starting to show the benefits of stubble.

But do women prefer light stubble or heavy stubble?

The jury is still out, with one study suggesting light stubble (Neave & Shields, 2008) and another heavy stubble (Dixson & Brooks, 2013).

Just a matter of fashion?

Well, probably best for men to cover all bases by letting it grow through light to heavy stubble and into a full beard.

See what effect it has on the women in your life and adjust to taste.

It’s a social psychological experiment that’s easy to do and saves precious moments in the morning.

2. Fact about beards: increase age, social status and aggressiveness

Dixson and Vasey (2012) found that (European) women from New Zealand and Samoan Polynesians both thought that men with beards looked older and that they looked of higher social status.

On top of this, when men look angry and have a beard, they look even more angry than clean-shaven men.

Why not test this out by poking a bearded man with a stick.

How angry does he look?

Make sure to note down your results before being knocked unconscious.

Science is important.

3. Fact about beards and babies

Men with beards are good with babies, or at least that’s women’s perception according to Dixson and Vasey (2012).

This is a little mysterious given that beards are associated with masculinity and very masculine men are, on average, less likely to be good long-term bets.

But perhaps the beard as ‘good-daddy-signal’ operates through other variables.

Because men with beards look older and of higher social status, they are more likely to be able to provide for their offspring.

Or it could be, as Dixson and Vasey (2012) say, that it’s because they used pictures of bearded men who were smiling and this is a strangely potent combination.

Like a cage fighter baking a cake.

Or a fireman writing a poem.

You get the picture.

4. Fact about beards and fighting

Finally, let’s take an evolutionary perspective on the beard. What signal does it send?

Is it costly to produce in some way and therefore an ancient signal of good genes?

Perhaps.

Like a lion’s mane, beards may be a way of showing off.

Since one man can easily grab another’s beard in a fight, they could be a disadvantage.

So, any man with a long beard is saying: “I’m so good in a fight that even grabbing on to this beard won’t help you!”

(I’m not totally convinced by this argument, although the thought of men fighting by grabbing each other’s beards is inherently funny. You really don’t see enough beard-fights in movies nowadays do you?).

→ Read on: What A Hairy Chest Says About A Man’s Intelligence

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Teamwork is more important than ever — especially now that some of it has moved online.

Failures in teamwork have caused accidents in nuclear power stations, planes to crash and businesses to fail.

Many organisations are trying to do more with less by relying on the efficiency of teamwork.

However, a collection of individuals doesn’t become a team just because it’s a called ‘a team’.

There are a whole range of psychological processes that need to be nurtured in order for ‘teamwork to make the dream work’, as the saying goes.

While all teams are different, there are some universals that all teamwork need, or at least can benefit from.

Here is what psychologists have discovered over the decades:

1. Prioritise social skills for great teamwork

Surely if you want to build a fantastic group whether online or offline, you put the smartest people together?

Not necessarily.

According to research conducted by Woolley et al. (2010), highly performing groups need social sensitivity.

In their study, 699 people were observed working in groups of two to five.

They found that the intelligence of the group is…

“…not strongly correlated with the average or maximum individual intelligence of group members but is correlated with the average social sensitivity of group members…”

And this finding is not an isolated one.

The importance of social skills emerges in the research again and again.

So, it’s not about putting all the biggest brains together, it’s thinking about the social dynamic:

• Who will listen to others?
• Who will share criticism constructively?
• Who will have an open mind?
• Whose will back other people up?

Great teamwork requires great social skills.

Teamwork quote:

“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” – Henry Ford

2. Mix genders in teams

Since women’s social skills tend, on average, to be a little stronger than men’s, including women is one way of prioritising social skills for better teamwork.

Woolley et al.’s study reached the same conclusion: teams which included women did better than men-only teams.

But, that doesn’t mean you should take it to the logical extreme and build women-only teams: it’s all about the mix.

For example, Hoogendoorn et al. (2011) found that teams with equal gender mixes outperformed male-only and female-only groups in a business exercise.

Similarly, this Credit Suisse Research Institute report found that companies with at least some female board members have better share price performance than those that are men-only.

So, it makes sense to mix up the genders for effective teamwork.

Teamwork quote:

“A diverse mix of voices leads to better discussions, decisions, and outcomes for everyone.” — Sundar Pichai

3. Build trust for better teamwork

It’s very hard for people to work together effectively if they don’t trust each other — and this can be even harder online.

They also have to appear trustworthy to others or it may be difficult for them to do their job.

Teams that appear more trustworthy (hopefully because they are!) have been shown to perform better when negotiating with other groups (Naquin & Kurtzberg, 2009).

After all, would you do business with a team you don’t trust?

Not if you can avoid it.

The problem is that in groups people perceive the trustworthiness of the group by assessing the least trustworthy member.

So, in terms of trustworthiness, one bad apple really can spoil the bunch.

Teamwork quote:

“Teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.” – Patrick Lencioni

4. Build teamwork with humour

If group members don’t seem to trust each other, then perhaps it’s humour that’s missing.

One study by Professor William Hampes has found that people whose sense of humour is stronger are rated more trustworthy by others (Hampes, 1999).

Similarly, when teamwork is strong, people start joking around together and will tend to talk to each other outside work.

Humour can be a signal that groups are getting along and can even help create that buzz that makes some group’s teamwork so effective.

Humour has all sorts of benefits including reducing stress, boosting creativity, communication and team cohesiveness (Romero & Pescosolido, 2008).

Some studies have even found that humour can increase teamwork performance and the effectiveness of leadership.

It has to be the right type of humour though—not (all) put-downs.

Teamwork quote:

“If you can laugh together, you can work together.” – Robert Orben

5. Mix introverts and extroverts

We tend to think of the extroverts as superior at teamwork: they mix better, pipe up more in meetings and generally seem to be getting on with others more smoothly.

But introverts have their place in effective teamwork as well.

Introverts certainly don’t blow their own trumpets and aren’t often noticed at the outset, perhaps even more so online, yet eventually the group comes to value them.

That’s what Bendersky and Shah (2012) found in their study of introverts and extroverts working together.

In general, as the team evolves, extroverts do worse than people expect and introverts do better.

The quiet ones can come through in the end to boost teamwork.

Teamwork quote:

“Great things in business are never done by one person; they’re done by a team of people.” – Steve Jobs

6. Define goals for effective teamwork

One of the greatest barriers to effective teamwork is pretty simple: they don’t know what the goal is.

This problem can be even worse when teamwork is carried out online.

A study of 500 managers and professionals in 30 different companies found that it was an unclear vision of the goal that was stopping them performing effectively.

But, it is not only goals that must be defined for good teamwork…

Teamwork quote:

“There is immense power when a group of people with similar interests gets together to work toward the same goals.” – Idowu Koyenikan

7. Define roles

OK, everyone knows the goal, but do they know what they’re supposed to be doing to achieve this goal?

It seems like a pretty basic step, yet it’s frequently unclear to team-members exactly what their role is.

Unclear roles become particularly problematic when the situation changes and teamwork has to adapt.

If the roles aren’t clear then each person doesn’t know what they’re supposed to be doing.

And that’s a recipe for disaster.

Teamwork quote:

“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney

8. Teams need a story

For people to work together effectively, in particular online, they need to know what the story is in a more general sense.

Where have we come from and where are we going?

It’s about more than just goals and roles, it’s about the assumptions we are using and the knowledge that we share (or don’t).

Psychologists sometimes refer to these ‘stories’ as mental models.

We construct these mental models of the world outside to help us navigate it and work out what to do next.

When the mental models of groups are better aligned, they perform better.

For example, Westli et al. (2010) found that when medical staff at a trauma centre shared mental models their performance was better, over and above specific teamwork skills.

People who share the same story are more likely to know what to do automatically, almost without thinking about it.

Psychologists call this implicit coordination and it is the key to great teamwork.

Teamwork quote:

“It is the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) that those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” – Charles Darwin

9. Teamwork requires concise communication

When teams make mistakes, one of the most common reasons is that they failed to communicate effectively.

In complex environments, information will often be coming from many different sources online and off — this makes teamwork harder.

We’re all awash in information nowadays, or maybe drowning is a better word; emails get cc’d to everyone, and who knows what’s important?

Teams that perform best clearly communicate the most important information before they’ve even been asked for it and filter out the junk.

Teamwork quote:

“The kinds of errors that cause plane crashes are invariably errors of teamwork and communication.” — Malcolm Gladwell

10. Leadership enhances teamwork

Teamwork invariably benefits from good leadership.

Naturally it’s about motivation, structuring tasks, analysing what needs to be done, allocating goals and so on, but it’s more than that.

The best leaders are also trying to nurture their teams by addressing some of the soft skills above.

They are getting the mix of personnel right, encouraging concise communication, spreading the group’s story, using humour and building trust.

How do you do that? Well, leaders aren’t all born, some are made.

So you can learn the right way (How To Be a Great Leader) and the wrong way (7 Reasons Leaders Fail).

Teamwork quote:

“Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.” — Sheryl Sandberg

→ This post draws on work published by Salas et al. (2000)

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Opening umbrellas indoors – why do even the most rational people have superstitious instincts?

Superstition means beliefs or practices that are false or irrational, including magic, astrology, luck and fortune telling.

For example, put your rational hat on, if you will, and consider these questions:

• Will leaving your umbrella at home make it more likely to rain?
• Can simply pointing out an athlete’s run of success, ‘jinx’ them?
• Does swapping your lottery ticket make you less likely to win the jackpot?

My head gives me the same answer to all these questions: no.

I don’t believe in fate so it’s not possible to tempt it.

And yet I get a muffled message – call it instinct or call it superstition – from the depths of my mind about how deeply I would regret it if it did actually rain, my team lost or my (old) ticket won the lottery.

It would be as though I had tempted the gods and been punished for my arrogance.

Psychologists Jane Risen and Thomas Gilovich were intrigued by just how many otherwise rational people seem to hold superstitious beliefs, and what causes them.

In their research, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, they wanted to find out if people really do believe that negative outcomes tend to follow actions that tempt fate.

And, if so, what psychological processes are responsible for this strange superstition.

Could it be that both rationality and instinct have some role to play?

Superstitious about tempting fate

First, Risen and Gilovich wanted to see whether a (presumably) reasonably intelligent bunch of Cornell University students thought tempting fate was bad luck.

Sixty-two students were approached randomly on campus and told about a scenario where a fictional ‘Jon’ had applied to Stanford University.

Jon’s mother, being confident in his ability, sends him a Stanford t-shirt.

Participants then read either one of these two endings to the story:

1. Jon wears it while he’s waiting for the decision from Stanford, thereby tempting fate (gods are angered).
2. Jon stuffs the t-shirt in the drawer, not tempting fate (gods are mollified).

Participants were asked to rate his chances of being offered a place on a scale of 1 to 10.

People told he’d stuffed the t-shirt in the drawer responded that his chances were an average of 6 out of 10 – seems reasonable given there’s little other information provided.

But when Jon tempted fate people only rated his chances at 5 out of 10, a full point lower.

On average, then, this sample of Cornell University students believed tempting fate can increase the chances of a negative outcome.

This is surprising given that these students probably consider themselves intelligent and rational human beings.

Nevertheless a second experiment backed up this finding with a further 120 students.

It also tested an alternative explanation for the results: that participants were not reporting what they thought would happen, but what they wanted to happen.

No support was found for this alternative explanation suggesting participants really were displaying superstitious attitudes.

Are negative outcomes more accessible?

Next, Risen and Gilovich wanted to find out the reason for people’s superstitious behaviour.

They thought it might be because negative outcomes come to mind very easily.

To test this a further 211 participants were shown the start of 12 stories in some of which people tempted fate, and in others they didn’t.

They were then shown the ending of these stories and asked to indicate as quickly as possible whether it was ‘logical’.

Half of the stories were not logical – for example the main character changed or the topic was completely different – while the other half were logical.

Whether or not the endings were logical, though, was a bit of a red herring for the participants.

The experimenters weren’t so much interested in people getting the answer right, but in how quickly they did so.

Risen and Gilovich thought that if negative outcomes were more accessible when people tempted fate, then participants should correctly respond more quickly to those scenarios in which negative outcomes did actually follow tempting fate.

And that’s exactly what they found.

When people saw the outcome which didn’t ‘punish’ the characters in the story for tempting fate, they were slower to respond by almost half a second.

This suggested the negative outcome was more accessible so that participants were quicker to respond when the characters had tempted fate.

A further study confirmed that there was a causal link between people thinking negative outcomes were more likely and their accessibility.

Superstitions operate unconsciously

In many ways, these are strange findings.

In an age when many of us claim to be rational and free of superstition, it seems we still have some quite mysterious and irrational beliefs about how the universe works.

This naturally raises the question of what is going on here.

So, in a final study the experimenters examined the psychological process that might be responsible for this connection between tempting fate and negative outcomes.

They hypothesised that the connection is due to automatic, associative processes which occur outside of conscious awareness.

These instinctually create the link between tempting fate and negative outcomes.

To test this idea they carried out an experiment similar to those before.

This time, though, in some conditions participants were placed under ‘cognitive load’ (i.e. they were given something else effortful to do at the same time).

The results showed that when under cognitive load people were even more likely to behave as though tempting fate leads to negative outcomes.

The experimenters argue that they successfully disrupted the rational, deliberate thinking processes which were trying to tell participants that tempting fate is superstitious rubbish.

Consequently, people were more likely to rely on their intuition – but it’s these fast automatic processes which tend to conjure up negative visions of the future, make people superstitious.

In effect, the extra task they were given limited their ability to think rationally and override their superstitious instincts.

Cognitive processing: fast versus slow

This explanation of the roots of superstition is built on the now popular idea in psychology that many cognitive processes run at two levels:

• Associative processing: a fast, parallel processing mode characterised by spreading activation based on memory. This type of processing occurs outside focal awareness.
• Reasoning: a slow, serial type of processing that occurs within focal awareness and requires an active effort.

Our superstitions (‘don’t tempt fate!’) come from the fast, associative, parallel processing part of the mind, while our rational, logical side comes from the (relatively) slow, deliberate processing (‘come on, there’s no such thing as fate!’).

Rationally we know it is no more likely to rain if we don’t take our umbrella, but our mind can’t help reminding us how bad we’ll feel if we tempt fate.

Roots of superstition

What this research demonstrates beautifully is how easy it is for superstitions like tempting fate to be formed.

We absorb superstitions from around us, especially vigilant for their occurrence and reinforced by any events that fit the pattern, conveniently forgetting events that don’t fit.

Then the fast, automatic processes of our minds automatically anticipate the regret we might feel in the future, trapping us in a reinforcing loop.

Risen and Gilovich point to the importance of culture in this process: our shared cultural imagination provides a major source of superstitions about tempting fate.

But we also each have a private menagerie of superstitions, sometimes manufactured from only the tiniest fragments of personal experience.

Whatever their original source, all manner of negative events can find fertile breeding ground in our already suspicious minds.

This can give even the most rational person pause for thought while the mind’s rational systems work to overcome its intuitive superstition.

Given this model it’s a miracle that human societies have escaped as far as they have from the age of superstition.

Or perhaps we haven’t come that far at all and our age-old superstitions are now just wrapped in cloaks of rationality?

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Consumerism promises happiness through purchasing, but psychologists find six reasons why it is unsatisfying and how to fix it.

Consumerism is the idea that the consumption of goods is economically desirable.

Some would go further and say that consumerism means people’s happiness relies on acquiring goods — that people need to buy things in order to be happy.

Not everyone uses the word consumerism with this meaning.

Consumerism has also become a pejorative term since the 1970s, used to mean a frivolous and selfish collecting of products which has little regard for its effect on society or the environment.

The psychology of consumerism

Whatever the political angles on consumerism or anti-consumerism, psychologists have focused on some of its real-world effects on our happiness.

In the first place, everyone knows that buying stuff can be disappointing.

After swallowing the hype, checking out the options and trolling for bargains, finally you’ve got it; your brand new whatever-it-is.

Before long, though, the excitement fades.

Your whatever-it-is isn’t so great any more.

They’ve brought out a newer model with more features and anyway you’ve seen it cheaper elsewhere.

It’s happened to all of us.

Psychological research on consumerism tells us that this disappointment is particularly pronounced when people buy things like electronic devices or watches, compared with experiences like vacations or concert tickets (see: experiences beat possessions).

A study by Carter and Gilovich (2010) explores six reasons that material purchases are less satisfying than experiential purchases, and what we can do about it.

1. Consumerism encourages unfavourable comparisons

In their first study on consumerism, participants recalled past experiential and material purchases costing at least $50 and were asked to rate their satisfaction with them.

People were consistently more satisfied with their experiential purchases compared with their material purchases.

The reason is that experiential purchases are difficult to compare.

The band you went to see on that wet Tuesday after work on the spur of the moment is likely to be literally incomparable.

On the other hand, phones are much easier to compare: one has more memory while another looks prettier.

When it’s easy to compare two things, like salaries, dissatisfaction isn’t far away because there’s always someone who earns more than you or, in this case, has a better phone than you.

And if they don’t have it now, they will in six months because that’s the nature of consumerist culture.

2. Consumerism: the research is exhausting

There’s a crucial difference in the way we make decisions about material and experiential purchases, as revealed by the second study on consumerism.

When people choose material purchases they tend to use a strategy psychologists call ‘maximising’.

This means comparing all possible options.

But, because consumerism means we live in a world of endless choices, maximising takes a long time and is hard work; so people often end up irritated and unsatisfied even when they chose the best possible option.

However, when people choose experiential purchases they tend to use a strategy psychologists call ‘satisficing’.

This means setting a minimum standard for a purchase then choosing the first option that fits the bill.

Studies show that this leads to greater satisfaction with purchases and people are relatively untroubled by the existence of slightly better options.

Although maximising seems the better strategy, paradoxically it leaves people less satisfied than settling (sorry ‘satisficing’, ugh).

3. Finding it cheaper after purchasing is depressing

Consumerism means that it’s not just before purchasing that the availability of endless possibilities is problematic.

After purchasing, consumerism causes problems as well.

Imagine you buy a new electronic gadget costing $1,000.

After you’ve bought it, do you ever go back to look at the other options, just in case?

Would that change if it was a vacation you’d bought instead at the same price?

When researchers simulated the situation they found that, having bought a gadget, participants were more likely to continue investigating the alternatives than if they’d bought a vacation, despite not being explicitly asked to do so.

We automatically re-evaluate material purchases after we’ve made them.

In comparison, decisions about experiential purchases, once made, are not revisited and so we have less opportunity for disappointment.

4. Consumerism always produces new options

It’s always the way: right after you buy it they bring out a new, improved model, or introduce better options.

The nature of consumerism and consumerist culture means there are always plenty of new ‘better’ options.

When Carter and Gilovich simulated this situation in the lab, participants reported that the new option effect was more disturbing when buying a watch, a pair of jeans or a laptop than when buying a holiday, movie ticket or fancy dining experience.

Once again experiential beat material purchases.

5. The reduced price effect and 6. A cheaper rival

Like the introduction of new options, retailers also have a habit of dropping the price right after you buy something — that is the nature of consumerism.

Worse, the next day you spot it cheaper somewhere else.

Carter and Gilovich found that people were more troubled about the reduced price of laptops and watches than they were about cheaper holidays or meals out.

Similarly, participants reported being jealous of rivals who’d paid less for material purchases at another retailer, but weren’t so jealous when it came to experiential purchases.

Making consumerism more satisfying

Since consumerism is clearly with us to stay, this all begs the question of how we can be more satisfied with material purchases, other than simply trying to avoid all the above.

Carter and Gilovich wondered if it comes down to how we view our consumerist purchases.

Take music for example.

Buying music can be viewed as both an experiential and a material purchase in consumerism; it’s an object (even if digital), and it’s the experience of listening to the music: where you are, how it makes you feel and what you’re doing at the time.

Perhaps thinking experientially can help us avoid the disappointments inherent in consumerism?

In their last experiment on consumerism, the researchers encouraged half their participants to think of music as a material purchase and the other half as an experiential purchase.

They were then told the price had been reduced.

Sure enough participants who were thinking in experiential terms were less bothered by missing out on a bargain and therefore likely to be more satisfied with their purchase.

This experiment on consumerism suggests that thinking of material purchases in experiential terms helps banish dissatisfaction.

Try thinking of jeans in terms of where you wore them or how they feel, the phone in terms of how it changes your mood or outlook, even your laptop in terms of all the happy hours spent reading your favourite blog.

By thinking experientially we can make more of what we already have and ward off the invidious comparisons that can make the treadmill of consumerist culture so unsatisfying.

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Psychologists are particularly interested in why people have these sorts of beliefs in telepathy and ESP.

One common explanation is that people’s natural desire to make sense of what is a fundamentally random and confusing world is so strong that patterns are seen where there are none.

It’s like when we look at a visual illusion or watch a good magician: we’re easily tricked.

How to make people believe in telepathy

So what kinds of situations make us more prone to this magical thinking?

This is the question that inspired Fred Ayeroff and Robert P. Abelson to carry out a classic social psychology experiment on a group of students at Yale University in the 1970s (Ayeroff & Abelson, 1976).

They wanted to see if a simple experimental manipulation could be used to get people to act as though they believed in telepathy.

For their experiment they used 32 participants and a fairly standard set-up for a parapsychological ESP study.

One participant, the sender, was sent to a soundproof room and told to transmit a series of images telepathically.

The other participant, the receiver, was sent to another soundproof room and told to get ready to receive (this was the 70s remember!).

There were two experimental manipulations:

1. Good vibe. Some receivers and senders were sat down before the telepathy started to ‘practice’ together. This was designed to get a ‘good vibe’ going between sender and receiver.
2. Control. Some senders and receivers were allowed to choose which, from a set of cards, they actually used to transmit telepathically.

Then, once the experiment got under way, both sender and receiver were asked to say how confident they were that they had successfully transmitted (or received) each card.

Participants weren’t told how they had done on this apparent test of telepathy.

No evidence of telepathy, but something else…

Looking at the results, Ayeroff and Abelson found no support for telepathy.

The participants had done no better than chance.

But, when they looked at how confident the participants had been about their telepathic powers, they did find an interesting effect.

When participants had not been allowed to choose the cards nor allowed to speak to each other before the experiment, their confidence in their performance was absolutely accurate: they predicted they wouldn’t be able to beat chance.

But, when they spoke to each other first, and when they chose the cards to transmit and receive, their confidence in telepathy shot way up to almost three times that expected by chance (see graph above showing results for the 4 conditions).

Suddenly, participants were acting as though they had been converted into believers simply by chatting to their telepathic partner and choosing the cards.

Believers

So, no evidence of ESP via telepathy, but evidence of the kinds of social situations in which people can be induced to believe in telepathy.

1. When there is a good vibe between people they are more likely to believe that ESP or telepathy is possible.
2. When wannabe telepaths have control over the situation they are more likely to believe telepathy or ESP is possible.

What this experiment shows is how remarkably easy it is to (effectively) turn people into believers in telepathy.

This makes it much clearer why people have a tendency to grasp at straws when trying to make sense of what is a random and chaotic world.

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