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.