Thinking about the Future

Knowing how you will feel in the future should be straight forward enough shouldn’t it? Having lived for 23 years I should have a pretty good idea about what I do and don’t like and what will and what won’t make me happy. But we don’t always. Far too often we regret choices and get our thoughts about the future terribly wrong. How enjoyable a house party will be, how sick I will feel halfway through a massive dessert I ordered and how unbearable work will be after 4 hours sleep are classic examples. In hindsight you can see that there were a number of reasons why the house party was going to be rubbish and that you shouldn’t have bothered going and therefore shouldn’t be sat moaning about it. But you went and are now moaning. So through the knowledge shared in this blog let us try and do something to prevent it ever happening again (or perhaps more realistically: not as often).

A study by Jepson et al (2001) using a group of patients on the kidney transplant waiting list underlines our failings in affective forecasting (knowing how we will feel in the future). Patients were asked to predict their quality of life one year later if they a) did not receive the transplant they were understandably desperate for and b) if they did get the transplant. A year later some had received transplants and others had not been as lucky and researchers returned and both groups were asked to report their current quality of life. Those that had received a transplant originally over-predicted their quality of life and weren't as happy as they thought they would be. Conversely, those who didn’t get a transplant under predicted their quality of life. They were in fact a lot happier than they had thought they would be. Although it is fairly unlikely that you will ever need a kidney transplant, important lessons can be learnt. First of all, as human beings we are incredibly resilient. We can adapt. Even if some patients didn’t receive the kidney transplant they were desperate for, they still enjoyed life to a far greater extent than they originally imagined. We have all had problems and tribulations that were serious (may not be as major as needing a new organ) but nevertheless we have overcome them and often unexpectedly quickly. The loss of a spouse or parent is heartbreaking and we may think we will never be as happy as we were before, but chances are we will recover and enjoy life once again.

The second important lesson is that when thinking about the future we often 'focalise' or focus too much on 'stand out stuff' and ignore the many other slightly less glamorous but important parts that make up our day to day experiences. The thought of a new kidney or huge lottery win is just often too big and ‘stand out’ for us to think about all the other stuff we will face in the future. For example, getting a new kidney may well be amazing at first but with or without a new kidney the day to day hassles and relationship problems that make our lives less than perfect still remain. Conversely, not receiving that kidney will be a blow and may make you feel down a lot of the time, but birds still sing, food still tastes good and popcorn and scary films still go hand in hand nicely. Changes in circumstance probably will have some impact on some aspects of our life, but one should think carefully what they will and won’t change.

As well as occasionally focalising about the future we can also be strongly influenced by our present state and feelings. Sometimes our present frame of mind determines how we think we will feel in the future even if how we feel in the present has little or no relevance to the future. Hunger is a fine example and research by Read & van Leeuwen (1998) supports the age old piece of wisdom that shopping on an empty stomach is generally a bad idea. Researchers approached office workers and asked them to make a choice between an unhealthy (and filling) or healthy (yet less filling) snack that they would receive a week later after a lunch time meal. Hungrier participants opted for the unhealthier choice significantly more than their satiated counterparts. Even though both groups would have been equally full up a week later the hungry groups present feelings of hunger couldn’t help but influence their feelings about the future.

If you’ve seen a friend getting back with a boyfriend almost immediately after breaking up you may have seen another example of how present feelings distort thoughts about the future. Too often people will break up for a very good reason (i.e. they are less compatible than dieting and fast food) but the inevitable feelings of loneliness that come with the end of any relationship may cause one to change their mind, as based on their current feelings they can’t imagine ever feeling normal again. Resulting in them both getting back on a rickety wagon that wasn’t and still isn’t right for either passenger. Present state drives thoughts about the future and it can be all too easy to forget how different the world will look with time. It could be ordering a ridiculous amount of food that you will never be able to finish when peckish or tricking oneself into thinking our ex-partners make us happy when we are lonely. Thus, it can be all too easy to be trapped in the present when thinking about the future. You have been warned……..

Related Thoughts

Thinking about the future is tricky, especially when we have strong feelings and cravings in the present.

Please bear in mind an extra kidney or lottery win aren’t definite keys to happiness (although I would definitely take the latter and maybe even the former, as one can never be too careful).

Shock horror: shopping on an empty stomach is a bad idea.

Who am I?

We spend every waking minute in our own company. Such continued exposure to our own thoughts, feelings and experiences can make us feel like experts on ‘ourselves’. However things are not always so simple. This blog pursues my earlier discussion on the weaknesses of memory into even murkier waters, suggesting that we sometimes simply have no idea about how we really feel.

There is good reason to believe that deep within our brain there is a lot going on that we don't know about. The current thinking in academic psychology is that our brain is split almost into two distinct ‘minds’ – the unconscious and the conscious. A lot of our brain work goes on unconsciously, in the background and unnoticed. Walking is a perfect example, our brain automatically and unconsciously co-ordinates balance, timing and muscle tone to get us from A to B. Having to think about every aspect of movement – gait, speed, balance etc. would be both mentally exhausting and mind numbingly slow. Such automatic and unconscious work takes place in an older (in terms of evolution) part of the brain which we will call the ‘unconscious mind’. The other part of the brain (which I will aptly name the ‘conscious mind’) is where our conscious and deliberate thinking goes on.

This final part of my little neuroscience lesson is the one to remember though. The two minds won’t always necessarily work in sink. Furthermore, due to the architecture of the brain we can’t just have a good think and look into the unconscious mind to find out what is going on. Take walking – I honestly have no real idea about all the intricate goings on that makes me walk as I do. But psychologists have gone one step further (wank pun) and tested the possibility of hidden attitudes lurking in the unconscious mind. The way to do this is through an implicit test of attitude. In such a test participants are required to quickly categorise two types of pictures when paired with either positive or negative words.

For example, if we consider an implicit attitude test of heroes and villains. When the pictures of heroes are presented with positive words we observe that participants are much faster at correctly categorising the image as a hero. On the other hand, when the pictures of villains are presented with negative words participants are faster at categorising. These finding appears because we have an automatic association between villain and 'bad' and one between hero and 'good'. When two associations match up it facilitates speed and accuracy of categorising. This type of test is interesting as participants are not consciously controlling their response times: it’s an automatic and unconscious measure. In the case of heroes and villains conscious (I like heroes) and unconscious (implicit association between heroes and ‘good’) attitudes match up. But they don’t always.

Fazio et al. (1995) investigated a controversial topic: Race. Examining the implicit attitudes of white participants towards white and black people. Their first finding was that the white participants differed in their reaction times by racial profile of photograph: suggestive of a stronger negative association towards blacks over whites. Additionally, participants also filled out a questionnaire asking about attitudes towards racial issues and prejudice, before finally meeting with a black confederate for a brief chat. Unbeknown to participants ratings were made by the black guy on how friendly and interested he thought they were. First of all, participant’s questionnaire responses about racial issues and prejudice did not predict their friendliness and were not related to the implicit attitude test. But you guessed it – the implicit attitude test did predict behaviour. Those with higher unconscious negative attitudes were far less friendly towards the black guy. This study was a landmark as not only did it show that we can possess unknown feelings towards people or things, but it also showed that these unconscious attitudes can drive our behaviour. And to hammer home the point, as the word ‘unconscious’ suggests - we are none the wiser.

But how can we understand this hidden mind? Expert in the study of self knowledge Professor Tim Wilson suggests that if we are to better understand the seemingly hidden parts of our minds we should become very interested in our own behaviour. For example, if you find that you haven’t seen your grandmother in over a year and spend very little on her Christmas presents it may be because you don’t much like her company. You just don’t realise. It may be that over the years you have found her deafness, boring anecdotes and general smell more and more unpleasant. And although society teaches us that we should visit family as it is ‘normal’, it isn’t always the most desirable thing to do. When confronted with the opinion that you don’t much like your grandmother you are adamant it isn’t the case. But you may well be kidding yourself. You may possess a negative implicit attitude and not be fully aware of it yet. But when you think about it more – do you really like sweet old grandma that much?

Thus, looking at our own behaviour and questioning whether the explanations we assign to our actions are fully accurate may help us become more self aware. But don’t worry too much! You can still have some confidence that you like your girlfriend as unconscious and conscious attitudes will often match up. It’s the fact that they sometimes might not which should keep us on our guard.

A final hypothetical example that will pull on the heart strings. Relationships: Fiona could have negative unconscious feelings towards ‘love’ due to a childhood in a broken home in which she regularly witnessed people supposedly ‘in love’ being hurt. Because of this she continues to make mountains out of molehills and convinces herself early on that Adam Grafton is wrong for her when in fact he is very right for her. But Fiona doesn’t know and isn’t the type to think too much about life. Her friends may have witnessed the same pattern with every other bloke and ‘get it’ as they are viewers from the outside. Poor Fiona isn’t though and continues to make the same mistakes over and over again from the inside.

And The Point Is What?

-Try and watch your own behaviour every now and again as you might see something interesting.

-If you know a Fiona then be a good friend and tell her what you think.

-Avoid girls like Fiona, they are a nightmare.

-If you always plan to do something but never quite get round to it be honest with yourself. Is it really that things keep cropping up or is it because you don’t much like them?!

It Was the Best of Times - or at least I remember it to have been ...

How good was that family holiday?
Can you remember what you had for lunch this day last week? How about yesterday? Chances are you answered no to the first question and struggled with the second. This exercise is a good reminder of how questionable human memory can be (terrible pun there, but at least its out of the way now). Yet, forgetting what I had for lunch yesterday probably isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things. Forgetting about that baked potato isn’t the end of the world. However, there are many other instances in which inaccurate, distorted and biased memories could be very important in the scheme of things.

When strolling around the world and deciding what will and won’t be enjoyable in the future we are almost completely dependent on our memories. For example, when deciding whether to order a baked potato we don’t consult a notebook with scores for every previous baked potatoes we have eaten (it would be time consuming and just a bit weird). We instead rely on how enjoyable we remember eating a baked potato to be. But what if our memory for our enjoyment of baked potatoes isn’t accurate? We may end up making the same error in food choice over and over again. This blog will discuss how such hypothetical memory errors may be quite common and can therefore have significant influence on what we choose to do with our lives.

Take a study by Wirtz et al (2005). Prior to spring break (an American academic holiday that you only ever hear about in films) researchers recruited university students. Two weeks prior to their break participants popped into the laboratory and predicted how much they thought they'd enjoy their holiday. During their holiday participants were provided with tiny hand-held computers and at random intervals (signalled by a beep) would be asked to rate how happy, sad and satisfied they were with the holiday at that moment. After a couple of weeks of holidaying, beeping and rating participants then returned to the laboratory and recalled and rated how much they had enjoyed their holiday. The researchers then used their hand held computers to average each participants online ratings to produce a score for their overall holiday enjoyment.

As you might expect participants memory for their overall holiday enjoyment wasn’t very accurate. Their memories were ‘rose tinted’, tending to remember the overall experience as being more positive than it actually was. One explanation for these results is a tendency to remember and rely upon the stand out parts of events (we unknowingly rely on the good parts of the holiday as they’re more memorable). What is even more interesting is that when asked how likely they would be to repeat the holiday, analysis revealed that they based this upon their rose tinted memories rather than the actual online experience. So this study shows that not only do we misremember (which is worrying enough), but we then use this information to shape our future. Think back: were the dreaded suitcase weigh in (please god don’t let it be 20.1kg), plane delay, hangovers, arguments and 12 o’clock room kick out really worth it?

Another memory error is known as the ‘end effect bias’. This being a bias to give a disproportionately large weighting to the end parts of an experience when recalling how enjoyable the overall experience was. This effect has been replicated in numerous studies. For example; listening to a piece of music with a very enjoyable segment at the end of the experience results in a far more positive memory of the music overall, compared to placing that segment at the start or middle. At first glances this doesn’t seem all that important. But it really is. A poor first 12 days in Menorca ended with 2 exceptional days makes another wise substandard holiday appear to be something it wasn’t. It might not even be too far fetched to suggest that DVD sales for films with outstanding endings such as Atonement, Fight Club and The Sixth Sense may have profited from this unobvious memory bias.

End effects can even have rather large ramifications in the medical world too. Take a study by Kahneman et al. (2003). The researchers were interested in further examining end effects and whether or not they could manipulate and distort participant memories. Colonoscopy – this is a very painful medical procedure involving a tube, camera and your anus. Enough said. Working with a massive group of patients that were due to undergo this procedure the researchers split their participants into two groups. The first group had the usual procedure. The second group had exactly the same procedure except for a twist: the surgeon left the tip of the tube in for an additional 10 seconds. This extra 10 seconds was slightly less painful than the rest of the procedure (it was only the tip). However, participants still experienced an extra 10 seconds of moderate discomfort!

To the results – due to this end effect bias patients with the slightly less painful ending (but actual longer experience of pain) remembered the procedure to have been significantly less painful than the normal patients. As well as ranking the procedure as less painful compared to several other aversive experiences they’d had before. And it gets even better: patients in the second group were also far more likely to return for repeat a colonoscopy several months later. Thus, as memory plays a pivotal role in driving behaviour we should be aware that it can be prone to inaccuracies and biases.


A serious and not so serious applications and a question

-When recalling how good something was ensure you weight up the good and the bad as well as the less obvious and sometimes boring parts of the experience. To avoid ignorance they should all count.

-Don’t worry too much about the first ¾’s and leave your most engaging anecdotes till last when on a date. It could be the difference between scenario 1 and scenario 2.

Scenario 1 – A second date.
Scenario 2 -Checking your phone every 5 minutes and getting by on extremely wishful thinking that your phones text message receiver is broken.

The Power of the Group

Humans tend to be social creatures. It’s the norm to be seen as part of some form of social group and over time we associate with a plethora of different social gangs, groups and cliques; families, friendship groups, football teams, blog readers and so on. Presumably most of us would like to think that although we enjoy being a part of such groups, we are still very much our own autonomous selves. We like to think we make our own decisions and although we listen to others opinions, ultimately we control our own lives and are manning the steering wheel. Yet, there are dozens of psychologists with study upon study that paint a very different picture. Throwing us into a group makes us behave very differently indeed.

Social psychology is a massive area and there are far too many interesting studies and findings to do justice to them here. Thus, I will be covering just a few; the ‘bystander effect’, group biases even when groups don’t exist and why eating in a group is a bad idea.

Have you ever walked past/over an ill homeless person asking for help? Been caught gawping at a couple having an overly aggressive argument at full throttle and then looked away? Driven past a very sad looking motorist flagging down traffic for help in the rain? If you said yes to any of those or have done something similar you were a ‘Bystander’. Deciding whether to help a stranger in trouble can be a difficult one. However, I suggest making this decision can be made a lot less difficult when in a group, as you are far more likely to decide to do absolutely nothing.

Participants in a study (I can’t for the life of me remember the researchers name) were told they were to discuss the difficulties of settling in at university with another ‘student’ (yet the experimental set up meant that the other 'student’ could not be seen). The other 'student' was actually an actor and at some point during the study would reveal that he was epileptic and later pretend to suffer from an epileptic attack. Ethical? Probably not. Traumatic for the real student? Definitely! What would you have done? Surely report it to the experimenter straight away? Well, it depends who you were with.

The experimenters varied the number participants that the real student thought were present (on their own to 5 other people witnessing the attack). In a victory for humanity, when alone 85% of participants reported the attack to the experimenter (shame on you the other 15%). However, here is where it gets it interesting: when in groups of 2 only 65% reported the attack, and when in even larger groups of 5 only 32% reported it. Meaning that a staggering 68% of participants (compared to 15% when participants were alone) happily ignored a person very obviously suffering from a potentially fatal epileptic attack. Worrying. One explanation to such negligent behaviour is ‘diffusion of responsibility’; assuming someone else will step in. But if everyone else is thinking the same then we have problems.

We all have our favourites; we prefer our friends over strangers and immediate family to long lost cousins and aunts. Why not? It makes perfect sense to exhibit favouritism to those close to us. However, experimental studies show that even being made part of a temporary group with no purpose, history, aims or future is enough to make individuals exhibit all sorts of favouritism to their own groups and treat out-group members rather negatively. What is even more interesting is that studies using all sorts of age groups in varying cultures have found extremely similar findings and very often participants are not even aware of these glaring and seemingly nonsensical bias. For example, a University of Liverpool study showed that simply noticing someone is wearing a football shirt that is different to the team you support substantially decreases your likelihood of helping them after falling over!

Here is a real world example of how worrying about your own group can harm you. Brown (1978) report a case in which factory toolroom workers were receiving a wage that was slightly higher than some production workers in the same factory giving them a slightly higher status. When a round of factory wage negotiations came round. rather than focusing on increasing their own wage (you'd think you might want to do this during wage negotiations), the toolroom workers became worried about preserving the group pay difference. Subsequently they rejected a settlement that would have given them substantially more money but at the same time given the production workers a higher wage than themselves. They instead accepted a much smaller settlement that resulted in them still being higher paid than the production workers. Thus, even though they could have substantially improved their own wage, the toolworkers preferred not to, instead preferring a settlement that maintained their status as a superior group. Faces, noses and spite come to mind.

Ever decided upon a choice in a restaurant or bar and then for some unknown reason changed your mind as others have started ordering? If so, look away now.
Spending many an hour annoying the public in bars and restaurants, psychologist Dan Ariely has run a number of studies which suggests our dining partners often unknowingly sabotage our dinner. The experiments were very simple. Groups in bars or restaurants would be approached and given menus with 4 options to choose from. For example, they could be 4 different types of beer. Now here is the interesting part; For half of the groups the waiter/researcher in disguise would take the tables orders asking each individual what beer they would like to order. This is normal in a bar. For the other half of the tables the waiter/researcher in disguise would provide each person with an individual ordering slip and pencil and ask them to write down their order and keep the identity hidden from their friends/work colleagues/family. This isn't normal in a bar. Once the order was taken our waiter/researcher in disguise then brought the drinks over and provided each group member with another slip to report how much they enjoyed their beer.

What would the difference between the two groups be? Well, when ordering out loud as you would do in a normal bar, the group tended to order more different types of beer per table. Thus, even the less attractive beers would be more likely to be ordered, as the group members who announced their order in the later stages felt as though they had to choose different beers from other group members, even if they had initially wanted a beer that was now 'taken'. We obviously like to portray that we are all very unique and don't follow the crowd. But when individuals were ordering in secret on a piece of paper, they could in no way be influenced by others choices and tended to go for the more desirable sounding beers. Furthermore, the researchers found that when reporting how much they enjoyed the beer, because they had often opted for variety over what looked the best, the 'out-loud' ordering group (what we do in everyday life all the time) tended to enjoy their beer significantly less than the ordering in private group. Perhaps notepads, pens and eyes down could be the way forward?

Applications and Advice

Don’t let the crowd stop you from being a good person. Ask yourself why you’re not helping someone? If it’s because you don’t like them: fair enough. If it’s because you expect someone else will: be that someone else.

Always be the first to order at a restaurant.

Or at least always be the most vocal about what you intend to order.

Don’t ever get involved with a toolroom worker: they are massive tools.

Attraction

From behind the bike sheds, to the back of the cinema, to a cheap Italian restaurant you have vouchers for, attraction and romances occur all the time. There is something magical and intriguing about those butterflies in your stomach when you are around somebody you are head over heels in love with/slightly obsessed with/stalking from a far. Some people might say that such feelings of attraction, romance and love could not possibly be investigated scientifically: How could any scientist put their finger on something we have struggled with for hundreds of years?

Well……… those people would be wrong. The study of attraction in modern psychology is very common. In this blog I will touch on a few different points of interest; how attractive people really do have more going for them than just looks, why your girlfriend is potentially disastrous for your health! and clearing up the age old question – who is more loose with their morals? Men or women?

A wide base of research suggests that if you are attractive then others will make some very positive assumptions about your character. This has been examined using several experimental variations in academic psychology. For example, participants are given a photograph of a member of the opposite sex and a short text describing the person’s background or recent situation they found themselves in. However, although all participants receive the same piece of text the researchers give participants photographs with varying degrees of attractiveness to accompany the text. Thus, participant 1 might end up with a photograph of a stunner accompanying the text and participant 2 will receive the exact same text, but with a photo of a distinctively average looking member of the opposite sex. Participants are then asked to rate the person on several characteristics. This design is tweaked by researchers and slightly changed here and there but the general principles remain the same (everything the same for each participant apart from attractiveness of the person they are to make judgements about).

As you may or may not expect the results of such experiments appear to suggest we are terribly biased towards the beautiful. We assume that the more attractive a person is: the better their personalities are, the more psychologically stable and happy they are (Dion et al., 1972). As well as assuming them to be more honest and trustworthy (Yarmouck, 2000). Additionally, we generally assume attractive individuals to be younger and more successful in life than their unlucky unattractive counterparts. What’s even worse is that toddlers are getting in on the act too – Slater et al. (1998) have found that babies tend to spend far longer gazing at attractive faces than unattractive ones. Yet, the overwhelming majority of participants in psychology studies, people in the real world (and presumably babies too) don’t realise that so many appraisals are significantly influenced by attractiveness. Big deal? Maybe. But probably not if you’re in the waiting room for a job interview reading this and the competition is short, pale and looking a little bit rough.

Lonely and between boyfriends? Maybe it’s not such a bad thing? Especially if you attract the wrong type of boyfriend. Research examining the potential effects relationships have on physical and psychological health suggests so anyway. A study led by epidemiologists at University College London (UCL) suggests that the quality of a romantic relationship can have quite significant ramifications on your body. The study suggested that ‘bad’ relationships can have damaging effects. Following around 9,000 civil servants the researchers showed that being in a relationship that produced anxiety and hostility greatly increased the chance of developing heart problems. Based on the data this was calculated to be around a 34% increase in risk of developing heart problems.

Who is looser with their morals? Men or women?

Courtesy of Clark & Hatfield's (1989) study I will now explain why. This study is hilarious and probably on the short list for the greatest psychological experiment of all time. Two moderately attractive confederates to the researchers (1 male and 1 female) approached members of the opposite sex on a University campus. I tell no lies when I inform you that they were instructed to say 'I've been noticing you around campus. I find you to be very attractive'. To a third of approached students the confederate followed this up by asking 'Would you go out with me tonight’, the second third ‘Would you come over to my apartment tonight?' and the final third 'Would you go to bed with me tonight?’

I should also inform you that after participants responded to the question the study ended there. There was no night time goings on (I hope).To the results: Around 50% of men and women agreed to the date. To me that is shockingly high! But it is the answers to the other two questions that really tickle me. 69% of men agreed to go round to the apartment, in comparison to a 6% of women. But perhaps the benefit of doubt should be payed to the males in this study. It may just be this sample consisted of an awful lot of naïve people, unaware of what may have taken place at the apartment.

So, the big question is – When confronted by a complete stranger and offered sexual intercourse, how many men and women (if any at all) happily replied with 'oh, yes please'. Deep down are men and women just as promiscuous and sexually excitable as each other? A very respectable 0% of women agreed to the sex. Good on them. And the men?

75% of males agreed to the offer of sex with a complete stranger who was ‘moderately attractive’. Appalling behaviour!

Application?

-Make more of an effort with your appearance if babies regularly blank you.

-Dump your boyfriend if he annoys you quite a lot.

-If you want to have sex with a male student…… approach 100 blokes on a University campus and you can probably have your pick of 75 of them.