.............Bad Memes .............

In the last blog I talked about how we sometimes have goals in life that aren't necessarily 'good for us' so so to speak. Some of these goals naturally occur because of our evolutionary heritage. The poor pacific salmons quest to reproduce, which ultimately results in rapid deterioration and death is an extreme example of this. A less extreme example in humans is the finding that having children makes people seemingly less satisfied and happy in life, during child rearing years. This blog discusses similar goals or ways of living that won't necessarily be good for us, but for some reason we have acquired and believe in. The difference is that these ways of living or ideas are determined as a result of cultural transmission. We learn them through our experiences in the world, rather than being born with them. In popular psychology and science they are also sometimes described as 'memes'.

Memes are numerous and all around us. An example of one that a significant proportion of people adhere to is the idea of 'a healthy body houses a healthy mind'. This is an idea or way by which we should live life that has been culturally transmitted. It's first appearance dates back to a philosopher/poet of ancient Rome (Juvenile). Thus, over the centuries, individuals have donned spandex and ran around quite a lot. This turns out to be a pretty accurate meme. Exercise is thought to be preventative in developing depression and as early as 1984, McCann & Davis reported findings from a large scale clinical trial that indicated enrolling in intensive exercise classes can be rather useful in combating depression.

But there are of course memes aren't always entirely accurate. A good example is the idea that eating lots of fruit will reduce the risk of you catching flu, because of all the lovely vitamin C inside of it. For the royal college of GP's, Joshi (2007) reviewed studies involving around 11, 000 participants and the data indicated that regular consumption of vitamin C had no effect on common flu incidence. What was found was that a large daily dose of vitamin C could have a very small effect on the length of a cold once you've got one, but it certainly doesn't look like it can prevent flu and nor is it a cure.

The vitamin C is a good example, because many common beliefs about illness and health are confused or just complete rubbish (carrots and night vision for example). But are these really a problem? Unless you are paying big money for vitamin C, these probably aren't real problems for people like me. There are some terrible reports from Swaziland concerning a belief that blood or body parts coming from an albino person can cure HIV. This is a super bad meme; both in terms of its accurateness and effect it has had on innocent people who happen to lack skin pigment. This blog will instead talk about one meme that we, as well off middle class and educated white westerners are more likely to come across in life. My main focus is modern day religion.

The problems with most modern day religions are numerous. First of all; which to choose? They can't all be right, and some of the practises in one directly disobey practises of others. Secondly, things often don't addup. Catholicism and Christianity adhere to the gospel and although it is a lovely little book, it doesn't match up to reality. We know a fair amount about our past in terms of the age of the Universe and earth and there also appears to be strong evidence for an evolutionary account in explaining how we got to where we are today. Unless somebody made a lot of copying and pasting errors, the bible is just wrong on many things; the age of the earth is ridiculously wide of the mark. Nor can it account for evolution. Furthermore, should we base our entire lives on a collection of stories that were written by numerous different authors, at different points and such a long time ago? How do we know it is accurate? What we do know is that a lot of it is inaccurate.

There are many arguments as to why you should believe in a god or somekind of higher transcendence and I am still to come across a good one. You will sometimes hear 'how could there be so much beauty without a creator?' as an argument. One obvious reply is how can there be so much misery and pain? Another is that things happen by chance, but us humans don't much seem to like the idea of chance and randomness. Occasionally the condensation on my window makes a pretty picture. I rarely find myself wondering how could something so beautiful occur without a creator.

If people really want to be religious regardless then fair enough. There is good reason probably. Religion can give structure and meaning in life. These are the types of things that make people happy. Religion can also help us avoid worrying questions about what happens after death. Religion often results in strong social networks and support groups, which are again useful. Yet, if one thinks about things rationally and not driven by 'faith' then there is surely only one real answer to whether any of the modern day religions stand up to the test. Religion is a 'bad' meme in the sense that it's fundamental preachings are very unlikely to be true. In many ways religion does possess strong and valiant messages; love thy neighbour, be a good Samaritan and so on. Generally speaking these are 'good'. But do we need religion to lead prosperous, satisfying and 'good' lives? I think we don't and I also think living ones life to a lie feels wrong.

Most religions instruct us to live our lives in certain ways. Catholicism hasn't liked condoms for a very long time and condemned the use of them. Catholicism was and is quite widespread in Africa. As is HIV. The bible directly promotes homophobia - "If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death.". Jewish religious law prohibits eating of a whole host of foods. Sausages taste nice. My mother remembers moments of her childhood when she couldn't sleep at night because she was struck with worry that her father wouldn't get into heaven, as he didn't attend church on a Sunday regularly. This is a bit cute, but still wrong. There are enough real worries in the world we have to tackle. The list of laws by which religions instruct people the correct and incorrect ways to live are endless.

Thus, religion really is the super meme. What it promises and preaches just isn't accurate. Attending church services regularly increases the chance of eternal life to a similar degree to regular attendance of neo-nazi white power rallies. One might argue that unless religious people are less happy than non religious people, then it isn't a bad meme after all. But living ones life by what seems most likely to be a lie doesn't seem right. Truth feels important in life.

Although religion probably helps to provides strong social support and structure and meaning in some cases, these can be achieved elsewhere in pursuits that aren't shrouded in falsehoods. One can find social support and make close friends though a shared interest for example. One can find meaning through belief in their job. If one loves teaching or caring for others, then one can form meaning and value in life from the belief that what they are doing is inherently right. Furthermore, education and nursing don't condone homophobia and don't arbitrarily denounce all manner of other seemingly inoffensive behaviours.

If the ideas in this blog are interesting, then I think it is because they introduce the idea of the meme and might make us think more carefully about what we do and don't subscribe to in life. As the study of human behaviour and emotions, psychology should be able to highlight what memes may let us down, so to speak. For example, the meme that lots of money will make us happier in life is very questionable (http://psychologyshared.blogspot.com/2010/09/show-me-money.html), but is nevertheless believed by some and will shape the way those people choose to lead their lives, maybe for the worse. So how can one spot a meme? A lot of memes sound fairly convincing and perhaps because of this they are even more likely to be believed; as one feels less compelled to test or question their credibility. Careful evaluation and consulting science when possible (now highly accessible on the web), would seem like good places to start.

Overcoming Evolution

If one is to lead a ‘good’ or ‘successful’ life and achieve whatever it is one wants from life, then understanding what causes us to behave the way we do would seem like a good place to start. This blog discusses some causes of behaviour that we are thought to have acquired as a result of our evolutionary heritage. Generally speaking, evolution is a well supported theory that tells us how we got to where we are today. Perhaps the major point of interest for this blog is that we have developed certain behaviours and traits because they were adaptive for the replication of our genetic make up. They did the job, so to speak, and were advantageous for the survival of our genes.

Yet, genes essentially use human bodies as a form of vehicle in which they can travel and replicate. Certain behaviours or traits are useful in ensuring gene replication (i.e. through sex or looking after our children) and when we reproduce they appear in future generations. The key idea here is that our evolutionary history produces behaviours that are ‘good’ for our genes, but not necessarily for our happiness or life satisfaction. A very good example of how genes could be described as ‘selfish’ is the pacific salmon.

The pacific salmon has a relatively short life and at the tender age of 4 it embarks on a monumental journey to mate, because they are hard-wired to do so as a result of their genetics. Over several months they travel 3000 miles in an attempt to return to mate in the fresh waters in which they were hatched. Although this sounds romantic, it really isn’t. The course of their journey leads millions to be killed by killer whales, stella sea lions, salmon sharks and bald headed eagles. If they are lucky enough to make it to fresh waters, then the risk of parasites and infections is huge, even in the fresh waters they battle against powerful torrents before reaching the spawning ground.

When they finally arrive they are tired and their battered bodies are easy prey for patrolling bears, but their hard wired behaviour means they won’t leave the spawning area until they have mated. Yet, the very water which they are drawn back to will eventually kill them. Kidneys and organs adjust to lack of salt water, resulting in a physiological response which renders appetite obsolete. After eggs are laid and fertilized, most salmon have (at the most) two weeks of rather uncomfortable life left in them, before their bodies which have been rapidly deteriorating for weeks, finally give up on them.

To me, this is a bit of a sad story. Genetic drives cause these salmon to undergo what would seem like tremendous suffering if human. I in no way think that salmon have thoughts and feelings, so maybe it isn’t all that sad. But we too are like salmon, in the way that often of our life can be driven by behaviours that might be useful for our genes, but not necessarily ‘us’. Many modern thinkers have described our genes as ‘selfish’, as they don’t really care about our happiness or life satisfaction and as the case of the pacific salmon underlines, they would happily cause much suffering if it meant there replication and survival was significantly increased. In this blog we will discuss some evolutionary drives and how they can get in the way of us leading ‘better’ lives.

Children. Perhaps the strongest evolutionary drive is to make some cute little kids. Women start to get very broody at 30 and warm to the idea of having another person living inside of them for 9months and men start to imagine how great it would be if they had a son who was a professional footballer. Although the popular conception is that children = great joy in life, this isn’t necessarily accurate. One thing that children do seem to do is have a big negative effect on how happy one is in their marriage. And as spousal relationships have a big impact on general life satisfaction this is fairly significant. This isn’t particularly new news.

Walker and colleagues (1977) report data which shows that marital satisfaction drops dramtically once the stork makes his drop off and doesn’t tend to recover until they have buggered off to university and flown the nest. Furthermore, Kahneman and colleagues use a very clever method of sampling how much joy individuals feel moment by moment and show that women tend to be significantly less happier when caring for their children than when shopping or watching T.V for example! This thrown in with the tremendous financial strain and stress children cause is perhaps somewhat saddening news (I have even heard that childbirth is a little bit painful as well). What this might suggest is that for some people children mightn’t be that good an idea. Does this reduce the genetic drive to reproduce? And do our genes care about this? The answer is no to both.

A further drive that has been proposed is our need for social acceptance and belonging to those around us. Pin pointing whether this is a definite evolutionary drive is difficult. Baumeister & Leary (2000) believe there is good reason to think there may be, as achieving such things would be helpful in aiding survival. If magnified, the need to be accepted and respected by others can be problematic. Although only speculatively, Baumeister and Leary (2000) go on to suggest that the reoccurring pattern of victims of domestic violence returning to their abusers may be testament to this. In addition, there is thought that the now all too familiar appearance of individuals working ridiculously long hours in stressful jobs for money that they don’t even need may be due to a similar mechanism, as such positions are coupled with elevated social standing. Furthermore, the extra income that such jobs provides is likely to have little effect on life satisfaction and happiness. If you were to ask yourself: what is more important? My life satisfaction and happiness or the extent to which others think I am at the top of my game? I would guess that on the balance of things most people would be picking the first one.

The first two examples are quite interesting but perhaps difficult in knowing what to do about. Are children for me? is a difficult question to answer. Yet, the final example is perhaps a bit more practical and straight forward. Humans appear to be quite neophobic about food, when young. We are risk averse and sometimes don’t like new things that we try. This would seem sensible, as new things can be dangerous or be toxic and until we have learnt about them we shouldn‘t probably take the risk. A fine example of evolution in action is our pickiness over vegetables. Naturally occurring toxins and poisons often are bitter tasting and previously if we had come across such foods when foraging, eating them would have been potentially fatal. It is because of this, it is thought that we have inherited a dislike and avoidance for bitter tastes in general.

Yet, many vegetables are bitter tasting. Although I personally love vegetables, a lot of people don’t and choose to avoid them, children even more so. However, many studies have shown that eating vegetables might good for a lot of things; significantly reducing the risk of heart diseases and maybe even promoting longevity if enough are eaten. Although slightly less dramatic than the pacific salmon example, this shows how our inherited tendencies aren’t always so good for us. There is good news concerning vegetables though. Our evolutionary past has also left us with fairly useful memory systems, by which we can learn from our past experiences and use such information to guide behaviour in the future. For example, Lakkakula and colleagues (2010) have shown that repeated taste exposures to vegetables increases their acceptance in school children (eventually learning that veg isn’t all that bad), which suggests that we can overcome such inherited obstacles with enough persistence.

Application

Don’t bother with children; get a micro-pig instead. They are cheaper, cuter and have funny little curly tails.

Avoid bitter tasting foods when foraging, they may contain toxins.

Befriend a pacific salmon and have a serious chat.

I'm great. fact.

Compared to most other people, how intelligent do you think you are? Or how attractive do you perceive yourself to be? The overwhelming majority of individuals would answer these questions with a great deal of optimism. Most think they are cleverer and more attractive than the average man or woman. This blog discusses research that shows people tend to have a very positive view of themselves and what the implications of this bias towards liking oneself may be.

The opening questions are a good example of what is known as ‘the above average effect’. Reseachers ask people a question like ‘Compared to other college students, how clever do you think you are?’ and get them to rank themselves into a percentile category. Essentially, do you think you are about average intelligence (50%)? Very clever (77%)? Or plain stupid (5%)? What do people think? Westerners tend to rate themselves well above average. Some obviously will be above average for looks or intelligence, or maybe even both (Greg Moorlock), but not everybody can be. Life isn’t fair like that. So a lot of people are conning themselves and think they are better than they actually are. This effect is well replicated; University lecturers think they do more work than their peers, drivers think they are much better motorists than they are and so on.

The question that stems from this is whether people do actually believe they are that good. Or when asked such questions, do they just give themselves the benefit of the doubt and rate highly for the sake of it. A study by Williams and Gilovich (2008) suggests people really do believe in it and are willing to bet on it. The researchers first asked participants to rate their creativity, maturity, intelligence and positivity. As you’d expect, participants tended to rank themselves a lot higher than the average. Next, participants were given some money and asked to partake in some gambling on a mock lottery draw and to win as much money as possible. The method is fairly complicated to explain here, but in part of the experiment participants were asked to gamble on the likelihood of a randomly drawn student being above them on the 4 traits they had rated earlier. If we really do believe that we are above average then we would expect to see participants using this belief when trying to take home as much money as possible. Participants tended to behave in this way. They consistently bet that the random student would be less clever, mature, intelligent or positive.

What this shows is that a) people probably really do believe they are better than most people in a lot of things, and b) this belief is likely to influence behaviour. Generally this probably isn’t a bad thing, as confidence can be useful. But there are times when individuals probably do grossly over-estimate their abilities and this has negative consequences. Trying to wing exams or presentations because you think your intelligence will pull you through is a fairly good example. A slightly different example is how we can often feel hard done by in life because we didn’t get what we deserved; we believe we worked harder than others on a project for example.

The above average effect can be described as a form of self serving bias. In the sense that it allows us to see ourselves in a positive light. A further example of a self serving bias is the tendency to attribute success to our own abilities or effort and failure to external factors like chance or other people. If you do well in an exam you think it is because you prepared well. If you do badly in the next one, all of a sudden it is more likely to be because it was a particularly hard one and not your preparation that was important. Mezulis et al. (2004) took a look at all the studies that examined this attribution bias and came to the conclusion that it clearly exists and it is a very strong effect. Everybody seems to do it. All across the globe individuals tend to attribute success to themselves, but then shy away from responsibility when things don’t turn out quite so rosy.

Furthermore, some argue it is a very adaptive bias to possess. Perhaps if we were too realistic about how good or bad we really are it would all be a bit depressing. Interestingly, in Mezulis’s review the researchers found that the self serving attribution bias was smaller in depressed participants than non depressed. Researchers have also shown that the size of this bias is associated with greater happiness, lower rates of depression, as well as health implications in the form of immune system function and even life expectancy. Being a bit big headed isn’t all that bad then as it probably makes us feel like coherent, successful and likeable people who are doing well in life.

Yet, this liking for oneself obviously can hit snags. Not knowing when you are in the wrong or being unfair seems to be one of mans great fortays. We all have friends or colleagues who just seem to think too much about themselves, never able to be humble or put their hands up and say they are wrong. They take themselves too seriously and because of it they are annoying and if only they could see this they would probably have better friendships and lead happier lives. If only.

Such people are testament to how the self serving bias is also likely to be particularly troublesome when individuals are in need of settling arguments or negotiating. George Lowenstein and colleagues have shown that when arguing we process and use information for our own needs, we are terribly biased towards our own point of view and because of this co-operating or settling disputes with others can be difficult sometimes. For example, if evidence backs up our claims we believe it’s source is more reliable than if it counters our argument and we generally think our points of view hold more validity than others. And of course, all of this is far from ideal when trying to settle disagreements or disputes.


Application

Knowing all of this is interesting, but knowing how we can avoid being so biased may be even more useful. Lowenstein et al. report that after informing their participants about these types of biases and then asking them to write about weaknesses in their arguments, individuals were more likely to behave in a co-operative manner. So, every time you have an argument; attend a lecture on self serving biases and write an essay about the weaknesses it posseses. Alternatively, having now read this blog, in the future try to consider both sides of the coin and others points of view more….

Know your limitations, weaknesses and be prepared to accept you might have failed and it is your fault. People that don’t have these qualities are really annoying.

If your friends think they are attractive but they blatantly aren’t, then please tell them the truth and help to put a stop to this above average delusion.

I can't be alone

I feel so sad today.... just want to be loved...and feel so alone, do you ever feel this way?? San. Extract taken from internet forum, answerbag.com

The answer to San’s question for most people would be yes. Feeling alone is common and is not enjoyable and because of this we strive to belong, to make friends and to form meaningful relationships with others. To some, San’s declaration of loneliness and such a need to belong might be perceived to be over the top. Yet, this blog discusses how such a need to belong is probably underestimated by many. This drive or ‘need to belong’ shapes who we are and how we live.

I (and academics) argue that this need is an exceedingly strong drive and is up there with other biological drives such as hunger and thirst. Why would we have to strive to belong? Evolutionary explanations are always popular when it comes to explaining human behaviour and forming tight knit social relationships and having friends does make some sense in terms of promoting survival. Such close relationships would be likely to be beneficial to both our own and our off-springs wellbeing. So, if there is good reason for such a drive to exist, what is the evidence for it? In this blog we will look at four lines of evidence. The first is the notion that we prefer those we have bonded with in order to maintain the feeling of belonging. The second is we are often extremely hesitant to break any bonds that fulfil this need. The third is that a failure to belong is damaging (which therefore promotes our desire to belong) and the fourth and final line of argument is that we rapidly attempt to replace bonds or attachments if we lose one. Then we will think about how the need to belong can backfire and not serve us well in life.

1) We prefer those we have bonded with in order to continue to be liked and maintain the feeling of belonging. Numerous studies show that if we feel attached to a person or we feel we belong to a similar cause (i.e. we see ourselves as part of a group), we are more likely to treat them well or help them out. For example, the bystander effect is a phenomena whereby individuals have the tendency to ignore others in need when part of a large group (‘surely somebody else will help?’). However, if we identify with the person in need the chances of ignoring their peril are significantly reduced. Another study that shows this preference is a somewhat unethical one by Masserman and colleagues (1964). The researchers taught monkeys that pulling a chain would provide them with food but also administer an electric shock to a nearby monkey friend. When a monkey had been cage mates with the poor monkey getting shocked, they would refrain from pulling the chain, to the extent that they would starve themselves for several days to avoid harming their monkey friend. It would appear that both we and monkeys want to maintain social relations and are more than happy to put ourselves out to do so.

2) We avoid breaking social bonds in order to feel as though we belong. The fact that most of us have friends that we find annoying is quite good evidence, but not very scientific. Kunz & Woolcott (1976) report a nice study that sums up this avoidance of breaking bonds. The researchers sent Christmas cards to would be participants. However, the cards were written by fictional people, who couldn’t possibly have been friends with participants in this study. What happened? A large proportion of participants sent cards back! Even when we aren’t sure whether people really are our friends, we appear to be motivated not to break bonds through the dreaded ‘you’re off my Christmas card list’. A less humorous example is provided by Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary (1995). Through surveying the literature they suggest a likely mechanism by which victims of domestic violence fail to abandon their abusers is because of the need to belong. They suggest that ‘the fact that people resist breaking off an attachment that causes pain attests to how deeply rooted and powerful the need to belong is’. We can therefore be mistaken in striving to maintain bonds even if they aren’t necessarily good for us.

3) If the need to belong really is a strong evolutionary drive then failure to achieve belonging should have negative consequences. This again is another well supported argument. In reviewing the empirical findings concerning this, Baumeister & Leary (1995) conclude that individuals who have strong emotional bonds compared with those that don’t, i.e. married or in a relationship vs. divorced, widowed or single, are less likely to experience psychological or health problems. Furthermore, 'alone' individuals tend not to live as long and these effects are further supported by findings that suggest remarrying (fulfilling the need to belong) reverses some of these negative consequences. In addition, perceived loneliness (failure to achieve belonging) has been dubbed as the most direct antecedent of psychopathology. If we don’t belong then things aren't great, which makes trying to belong something of a need.

4) We attempt to replace bonds or attachments if we lose one. This line of evidence I particularly like, as there are so many everyday observations of this. My favourite; A friend who disappears into the wilderness and makes little effort with their friends when in a romantic relationship, but then come crawling back wanting to catch up when it all goes down hill. It isn’t just my opinion that qualifies this argument either. Vaughan (1986) observed that when marriages are on the rocks and soon to be done and dusted, individuals begin to actively seek out new friendships and relationships. In addition, it is also likely that people are more likely to leave a relationship if they have some prospect of forming another one soon. Knowing there are plenty more fish in the sea is comforting, but knowing you will probably be able to catch one (and fulfill your need to belong) is even more persuasive to end a stuttering relationship.

It appears that there is good evidence for a strong need to belong - loads of it in fact. But how is it relevant? I would suggest it is very relevant as this need drives behaviour and can change the way we might behave. For example, a study by US researchers shows that individuals with a high need to belong are more likely to copy how much and how quickly a drinking partner is drinking. Although drinking a little more isn’t the end of the world, in the long run it is likely to be damaging. There are lots of other examples of how this need can make individuals follow the behaviours of groups in order to belong. Yet, these copied behaviours may well be at odds with our well being. Furthermore, the need to belong is likely to have driven individuals into bad relationships, caused poor decision making and made life harder for some. There is no avoiding it; we all want to fit in.

Perhaps the ultimate examples of the need to belong backfiring are religious cults. Such cults are thought to often prey on isolated individuals or families, possibly because being valued as an important member of a group that offers unconditional love and an identity helps to satisfy needs to belong. Yet, religious cults aren’t just a bit of a laugh. November, 1978; the ‘People’s Temple’ cult orchestrated a mass suicide in Jonestown, involving over 900 civilians, which included close to three hundred children.

Application

Turn old friends away when they come crawling back after having been dumped. They don’t like you, they just like the feeling that they belong.

If you are struggling to make friends, befriend a monkey. They are adorable, but more importantly, value friendship dearly and would probably give up their lunch for you.

Attention! Middle aged people – are you really married because they always have and will be ‘the one’ or is it because you are oh so afraid of waking up and feeling completely alone in the world?

Fickle Me

“I look in the mirror each day & feel different about the way I look... 1 day I feel I look pretty another day comes and I feel ugly! Why is it like this?” - sotchick. Extract from funadvice.com internet help forum.

Sotchick is confused by what she really thinks of her self. One day she holds one attitude but the next day her attitude is entirely different. It might be enough to make Sotchick question who she really is. If today you have the sense of being someone completely different to the person you were yesterday, which day matters more? Which is the ‘real you’?

A friend of mine was in a similar situation some time ago. He suffered from switching from truly believing his relationship with a girlfriend was great and so was she, to wanting to break it all off completely. This looked as though it could happen in a matter of hours. So, how should he decide which is his real belief or attitude and what should he do? This blog will discuss how the world can seem completely different from one day to the next and how it may be relevant in the long term.

To suggest that we can be completely different from one day to the next is something of an exaggeration. Our personalities and traits don’t normally change from day to day. In general, extroverts will be outgoing on Wednesdays as well as Saturdays and, if you’ve got plenty of self esteem, you will probably believe in yourself regardless of whether it is raining or snowing. Yet, the examples outlined earlier underline how the effect of the moment can be somewhat disconcerting. Such ambivalence and flipping to and from different beliefs and behaviours can make us question the coherent view we have of ourselves.

Mood is one of the reasons why we can feel differently from moment to moment. Obviously when in a good mood you feel rather happy and in a bad mood you feel the inverse. Yet, the indirect effects that mood can have can be particularly important. For example, there is good evidence of mood-congruent memory retrieval.

Studies examining mood-congruent memory test the speed at which, and the number of positive or negative memories that participants recall when made to feel in a pleasant or unpleasant mood. To evoke these changes in mood the researchers normally have participants watch a pleasant or unpleasant film or piece of music etc. The general findings are that when in a positive mood, positive memories are recalled much quicker and in greater number.

These effects are well replicated; when in a bad mood we almost automatically retrieve negative memories and also react to events more negatively. Thus, if you happen to be evaluating whether your job is what you really want to be doing when in a particularly good mood, there is a chance your evaluation will be different to another day’s evaluation. Positive thoughts about your job come more easily and are factored into the decision making process. This could prove problematic if you make the decision there and then, as it may not be the most representative evaluation. The converse can be said about trying to work out things when in a low mood; it can all seem impossible.

A more level-headed approach, evaluating important decisions across several times, would seem most sensible. But it can often be all too easy to make rash decisions based on present thoughts. Especially when you have an erection.

The worrying amount of sexually transmitted diseases is a good example of this. People meet and things get heated, but don’t end up using a condom. The moment is too passionate and although when asked outside of the bedroom whether they think using condoms are a good idea they will say ‘‘yes’’ and that they intend to do so, in the heat of the moment they choose not to. Indeed, there is good reason to believe our attitudes can be very different in and out of bed.

M.I.T.’s Dan Ariely reports interesting study concerning how people can differ from moment to moment, with potentially disastrous consequences. Participants answered a series of questions across two sessions: in the first session (the ‘cold session’) they were asked to imagine themselves sexually aroused and then answer questions on a laptop such as ‘Would you keep trying to have sex with your date after they say “no”?’ and ‘Would you always use a condom if you didn’t know the sexual history of a new sexual partner?’. Here comes the fun part - in the second session (the ‘hot session’), the male participants were asked to take home the laptop and complete the same questions, but whilst masturbating to pornography provided by the researchers. This is psychology at its best and if you doubt it, this is a very real study (published in The Journal of Behavioural Decision Making).

Desires to partake in these dangerous sexual activities were dramatically higher when in an aroused state. Furthermore, even though participants answered the questions imagining being aroused in the ‘cold state’ there was still a massive discrepancy between answers in the two sessions. This suggests that a) our current state has a big influence on us and b) we underestimate the effect of current state.

So what is the significance of all this? First of all, there is good reason to believe that from moment to moment our attitudes and behaviour can differ. In the case of serious decisions and actions that will have long term implications, perhaps we should evaluate and make judgements over several occasions before making any decisions.

Furthermore, perhaps considering whether we would feel similarly happy about a decision or action on another day before acting would result in better decision-making.

For much of life the effect transitory feelings probably isn’t a real problem. For example, you have to make quick decisions when in a restaurant and it would not be convenient to wait and decide on the basis of several inferences whether ordering a starter is a good idea. Yet, when the stakes have longer term implications (i.e. disease) and we think current state might be playing a role (i.e. her hand is on my crotch), then consideration probably is needed.

Not particularly useful or serious application:

Sleeping on important things is a good idea after all.

Be aware how mood or current state can affect judgement, and make use of it:
Wait for friends to be in a good mood before asking for help.

Don’t make major life decision whilst masturbating.

Sotchick – You are beautiful to all of us.

Show Me The Money

Money is fairly important, so much so that we normally have to dedicate eight hours a day of our life to get hold of it. It is a major shaping force in our lives. More is generally perceived as better and whilst a lot can buy nice holidays, cars and gifts, a lack of it can also cause jealousy and annoyance. It isn’t uncommon to overhear all sorts of people suggesting that, ‘if I just had a bit more money, life would be a lot better’. But is money and wealth all that good? In a lot of situations the answer is obviously yes. You couldn’t function without food, water, the internet or designer clothes. And money buys all these things. But the question of whether money can buy happiness is more interesting (or at least I think it is). Depending on your view point you may believe it does or you may buy into the age old cliché that money can’t buy you happiness and because of it the world is full of Ebenezer Scrooge characters. However, both are somewhat off the mark. This blog discusses what research tends to shows concerning money and happiness and how we might be able to make the most of our earnings.

There has been a fair amount of research examining the relationship between wealth and life-satisfaction. It has generally come to rather unimpressive conclusions. In developed countries, income only tends to explain 2-5% of variance in individuals ratings of wellbeing (measures of well being tend to ask individuals how satisfied they are with life or what their ‘general happiness’ is). This really isn’t very much and what this suggests is that income may play only a very small role in shaping happiness. Furthermore, there is some suggestion that these small effects are largely the result of the very poor being very unhappy because of bad living conditions. So, when you have enough money to live comfortably (i.e. being able to afford to read blogs on the internet) the effect money has on happiness gets tiny; A 40k a year job being no better than a 55k job in terms of promoting greater life satisfaction and happiness.

If massive increases in happiness are unlikely to follow an increase in bank account size, then why do people work themselves into the ground? A 2003 survey commissioned by Boys and Girls Clubs of America found that the majority of parents surveyed had little or no time, or wished they had more time to spend with their children. The major reason given for this was their work schedules. In addition, a study by Kahneman and colleagues (2006) showed that individuals with higher incomes do not spend more of their day partaking in enjoyable activities anymore so than individuals with lower incomes. The two did however differ in the amount of stress they tended to experience during the day, with the higher earners feeling significantly more stressed out.

Esteemed research psychologist Martin Seligman also cites research that shows, although lawyers (who work notoriously long and hard hours) are one of the best paid professions in the US, they are also one of the unhappiest. With one of the highest depression rates of all professions and significantly more alcohol and family problems than non lawyers. Thus, as well as doing little for us in terms of happiness, in some instances our drive for money may even encourage unhappiness.

Now we know that money is unlikely to provide us with everlasting happiness, two potentially even more interesting questions that follow on from this are:-

a) why do we continue to chase it regardless?
b) is there anything we can do with it to make us happier or more content with life?

One obvious reason as to why we may continue to chase money is that we are simply mistaken and believe that more money = more happiness. But it is probable that there are also other things going on. Another explanation is that we are trying to satisfy other needs with money. Our need for social approval and status may be particularly relevant. Advertisements are everywhere and generally teach us that money is normally associated with respect from peers and a symbol of success. Our heroes and role models in society don’t tend to be working in Somerfield and tend to wear quite expensive clothes. It is therefore likely that an implicit association between money, power, success and respect can’t help but be formed. These desires are strong; everybody likes to be seen as someone important and valued, and earning high wages is a way to achieve this. The way this may work is akin to the fashionable status of obesity during the reigns of the likes of Henry VIII. A bulging waist line was a sign of wealth and thus revered. Today, earning lots of money is associated with success and importance and therefore likely to be similarly revered.

But can we make any use of the money we have or should we just throw it all away then? The fact that money has been shown to have a small influence on life satisfaction would suggest that if used wisely, maybe it can enrich our lives. Luckily there is evidence of this; Gardner & Oswald (2007) followed UK citizens that were lucky enough to win between £1000 and £120,000 in lottery draws. Compared to control groups these winners showed a greater improvement in mental wellbeing 2 years later at follow up. So how did they do it? Regrettably the study can’t answer this question because they only tracked mental well being and not what they actually did with the money. But work by University of Columbia’s Elizabeth Dunn may provide some clues as to how money could be used to promote well being.

What would make you happier? Spending money on yourself or others? In a 2008 study Dunn gave participants $5 or $20 in the morning and asked to either spend the money on themselves or someone else/a worthy cause. Their happiness was then measured later on in the day. The findings were encouraging for those that are kind hearted. Spending the money on others resulted in individuals feeling much happier at the end of the day and even more interestingly the amount spent had little effect on mood. Spending $20 dollars on your self is seemingly no more rewarding than spending $5. Dunn also reports data that suggests individuals that have a habit of spending money on others tend to be happier than their miserly counterparts. Using ones money for good seems even more appealing now.

Application

Quit your grad schemes with Price Waterhouse Coopers and do something worthwhile with your life.

Feel sorry for lawyers; they may be rolling in money, but they are miserable alcoholics with failing families.

Find a job you feel enriched by and you value as important. This is far more likely to be satisfying than whatever career happens to currently be bringing in big bucks.

Feel there is now good reason to help starving children in Africa or to buy family members birthday presents.

Pick Your Friends Carefully (they may carry viruses)

We are hugely social animals and spend much of our time around others. Our nine to five jobs, our family, choice of friends and our choice of spouse mean that we spend a lot of time in the company of the same people day in and day out. It is almost unavoidable not to be surrounded by others. But why? Aside from the way the modern world is set up, there is also some strength in an evolutionary approach that would suggest we are social because it has served us well in the past. Avoiding sabre tooth tigers, hunting and raising young are probably a little easier with social support.

This blog will discuss a side effect of being surrounded by the same people everyday. The side effect is almost Hollywood in its nature and implies that to some extent, we might be able to ‘catch’ depression or obesity from those around us. An infamous study of health and well being is known as the Framington Heart Study and the set up of this piece of research allowed the investigators to track the mental and physical health of extremely large numbers of individuals over 20-30+ year time frames. It is a gold mine for evaluating and assessing how behaviour and people change over time. Furthermore, researchers have access to similar information for spouses, friends and neighbours. Therefore, using longitudinal statistical methods it is possible to examine some quite interesting research questions.

Does your spouse or sibling gaining weight increase your chance of becoming obese? Does the happiness of those around us make us happy and optimistic people too? These questions have been addressed by Harvard researcher Nicholas Christaki & University of California’s James Fowler. The effects are interesting to say the least. For example, data appears to suggest that having a friend close to us who becomes happy greatly increases the likelihood of the level of our happiness also shooting up in the near future (as is the case with neighbours and spouses). What’s more, in one study the researchers report that having a friend that has become obese greatly increases your chances of becoming obese (an alarmingly big 50% increase). Furthermore, data is suggestive that depression may also work similarly. A now dated study from the 80’s supports this premise by showing how being assigned to a university dorm with a roommate that was mildly depressed resulted in increased depressive symptoms over several months.

The analysis is also interesting because in some of the studies we see that such social spreading of emotions or weight are dependent on gender. In that you are much more likely to be affected by a person if they are of the same gender. There is also suggestion that it isn’t simply a case of people surrounding themselves with others who are similar. (E.g. two friends happiness could be similar not because ones mood has made the other happier, but because both only tend to associate with happy people) Because the data analysis can help to control for this and track individuals over time, the researchers suggest that things like happiness or obesity can ‘spread’ through social networks, almost akin to a computer virus.

If this is really happening then how can it be explained? One such mechanism is social norms. We look out to those around us to help us define what is normal and acceptable. Therefore, if our friends around us are splitting up with husbands and wives we consider this option too. This may be particularly important when considering the possible spread of obesity. Could having friends that eat a lot result in us eating a little bit too much on a regular basis? In a study with University of Birmingham students, our laboratory has presented some results that back this idea up. Leading participants to believe that ‘previous participants’ had either eaten a lot or eaten very little during our experiment greatly influenced the amount of snack food the participants decided to eat later on in the session. A problem with this social norm idea is that it probably can’t fully account for happiness or depression. It doesn’t seem quite right that somebody may become depressed because it seems the normal thing to do.

One explanation may be quite direct; seeing someone happy is quite nice and one can’t help but smile. Yet, there is a further and perhaps more intriguing explanation. A large amount of research has shown that we have a tendency to unconsciously mimic the actions and facial expressions of others. It could be thought of as a form of social ritual and there is some suggestion that this takes place to ease social relations. Indeed, people do tend to like those that are similar to them. A study reported by Rick van Baaren and colleagues in 2004 has shown that mimicry can lead to advantages. Researchers instructed a waitress to either mimic customers and repeat their order or stay quiet. The mimicking waitresses ended up being awarded significantly more tips! In addition, we are more likely to mimic facial expressions of people we view as part of our group and similar. So, this natural inclination to mimic those around us may result in us copying their expressions and behaviours, which over time could be for the good or the worse. Fingers crossed your friends smile a lot then.

Findings concerning the impact on (effects) those around us have on us raise some interesting questions. If these results hold up then it is conceivable that previously a husband will have completely unintentionally tipped a wife into a series of depressions. If they were to become aware of this then what would they do? Is it right to cut off people that make us unhappy? Secondly there are also parallels to passive smoking. Because the habits of smokers result in adverse health effects we now see a nationwide ban on smoking in public places. Using the same logic, should we be making depressed people huddle together outside nightclubs and bars? Or have separate sections for obese people in restaurants? Both depression and obesity have been associated with a variety of illnesses and reductions in life expectancy…..

Pay Attention

Over 60% of America is overweight or obese and the UK isn’t trailing too far behind either. Furthermore, depending on which statistics you choose to look at there are projections that near enough everybody will be obese in the not too distant future. So why is everybody so fat? The obvious answer is that energy intake (how much food you eating) and energy expenditure (how many calories you are burning) are imbalanced. Which is a shame because obesity is quite a big health problem. With it often comes heart problems, type two diabetes or even an early grave. Additionally, even if you aren’t obese, sitting next to a very large person on a long distance flight is unpleasant. Nobody is a winner when it comes to obesity. Although there are many mechanisms by which people end up over eating this blog will describe some research that suggests that a lack of attention and failing memory may be contributing to bigger waist sizes and broken scales.

A study by Wansink and colleagues (2006) helps to underline one of these ideas well. During the Superbowl the researchers invited some university students to a free Superbowl party (very kind). At the party was of course a big screen with the game on, but also free drinks and a chicken wing buffet. Participants were invited to go to the buffet as many times as they liked, pick up some wings and then return to their tables to enjoy the game and food. However, there were also some waitresses involved. Tables of participants were assigned to one of two conditions. In the first condition the waitresses would clear the plates of chicken wing bones as they mounted up. In the second condition the waitresses were instructed to leave the plates on the table. So half the participants were surrounded by evidence of the amount of food they had eaten (in the form of bones) and the other half were reliant on their memory of how much they had eaten. Why do this? The idea here was that by leaving the bones on some tables this would direct attention towards how much each individual had eaten. Whereas, constantly clearing the plates has essentially the opposite effect.

The difference this made was fairly substantial. Having the bones as a reminder of food intake resulted in these participants consuming around a third less than participants that had their tables continuously cleared. The dirty plates appeared to serve as a record of how much had been eaten and informed participants whether to over eat and go back for more. Thus, having reminders of what food we have eaten might be rather useful, as our memory for fine detail can be questionable. For example, buffet style restaurants evoke a tendency to horrendously over-eat. Although greed probably has something to do with it, a failure to recognise and register how many of those very average tasting prawn crackers you’ve already put away may also be fuelling further overeating.

Television viewing also appears to be a bit of a problem in relation to obesity. Watching TV doesn’t burn many calories but there are further problems, especially if you are eating whilst channel surfing. An ample number of studies have shown that putting a bowl of M&Ms or popcorn in front of a person watching TV is a bad idea. Watching television serves as a distraction from eating. You aren’t monitoring what you are eating and because of this intake will tend to increase dramatically. Attention is on the television screen and not to how much you’ve eaten or how hungry you are. But the effects don’t end there. Watching TV whilst eating lunch at midday may even cause a degree of over eating later on in the day. Dr Suzanne Higgs (my PhD supervisor and very nice person) devised a clever experiment underlining this point. Participants came into the lab and ate a standardised lunchtime meal. Some ate the lunch and watched TV, others ate in the absence of TV. Later on in the afternoon all participants returned and were asked to take part in a mock ‘taste test’ which would involve tasting some cookies and making ratings about them. Luckily there were a lot of cookies and participants were told that after completing the ratings they could eat as many of them as they liked. Of course, there was more to it than that. The taste test was a cover story and what the researchers were really interested in was how many of the cookies participants chose to eat.

The results indicated that participants that had eaten the lunchtime meal whilst watching TV ate significantly more cookies than those who ate in the absence of TV. Why? The likely explanation is memory. The theory being that participants who had watched TV would have paid little attention to the meal and therefore have a reduced recollection of how much they’d actually eaten at lunchtime. This in turn resulted in participants overeating later on because when making decisions about how much we should eat we are reliant on our memory of recent intake. Yet, if that memory is not particularly accurate then we end up eating more than we would normally

Paying attention to what one is eating would therefore appear to be important in both the short term (how many times have I been up to the buffet?) and perhaps more unexpectedly the long term too (how big was that cake I had at lunch?).

Application

Be mindful about what you are eating.

Sense Making

Often in life things happen that make us extremely happy or extremely sad. But even sudden and unexpected occurrences such as receiving a pay rise because you have been great at work, or news that one of your friends has been saying nasty things behind your back don’t take a hold of us forever. The effects eventually wear off and often a lot quicker than we expect. But why and how does this occur? Why do we move on past great disappointments and why does thinking about our promotion at work have less ‘fuzziness’ over time?

This blog will provide one likely explanation.

One area of psychology that has received a fair amount of attention is known as the ‘expressive writing paradigm’. The basic gist of this is that researchers get participants to write about a previously traumatic or upsetting life experience on a regular basis for a few weeks or so and see what effects such a task may have. One could be forgiven if they guessed that writing about the bad times might actually make you feel more depressed over time, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. Harris (2006) pooled together all of the studies that had examined the expressive writing paradigm in normal run of the mill participants. The results suggest a very positive effect, in the form of reducing the amount of health care participants needed in subsequent follow ups weeks or months after the study had finished. Similar findings of increased happiness and life satisfaction have been reported from other studies too.

An interesting question is why? Luckily a further set of studies by Lyubomirsky et al. (2006) can help to shed some light on this. Psychologists have theorised that the expressive writing paradigm may produce such beneficial effects because instructing individuals to write about painful past experiences helps them come to understand and make sense of what happened and why. Hence, once an explanation has been provided and individuals feel as though they understand the experience and it eventually becomes just another past event in their life, becoming less inclined to think about it. This type of idea is backed up by other research that has shown that spouses that lose a loved one tend to recover better if they can come to terms with what has happened and give meaning or understanding to it.

The Lyubomirsky studies tested this kind of prediction. In one study they had participants partake in the usual expressive writing programme or instead of writing, instructed some participants to only think about the past negative experience. The theory was that because whilst writing is especially conductive for structure, organisation and thus sense making, thinking can be more difficult and thoughts can often become repetitive and go round in circles. Thus, participants assigned to the writing condition were hypothesised to show greater benefits in a follow up. This was the case, with the writing condition reporting greater psychological well being at follow up.

In a further study the researchers addressed the question even more directly by manipulating how participants wrote about their past experiences. In one condition participants were encouraged to analyze and find meaning from the negative event, whilst in the other they were guided to repeat and rehearse the experience. Those analyzing and finding meaning again tended to come off better than those instructed to replay the negative event over and over again.
Such studies are interesting and may even be useful if one faces something nasty in life. They suggest that by providing an explanation to, and understanding a past experience that evoked great emotion we make it more normal and this results in it invoking less of an emotional reaction. But what about the flip side of the coin? Should we analyze the good times too? Wilson & colleagues (2005) answer this question in a number of studies and the take home message would appear to be that one should be careful when thinking about the good times.

In one study participants were approached on campus and given a small card with a free dollar attached to it. Receiving a free gift is always mood lifting. But the researchers manipulated the message on the small card so that participants received one of two cards. The first card provided very general information with no real explanation, whilst the second type of card appeared to explain why the coin had been given away (without actually providing much more detail) Posing to be part of another study a different researcher then returned 5 minutes later and asked participants to fill out a mood questionnaire. The results showed that participants that believed they had an explanation to the random act of kindness actually felt less happy than those who were still unaware as to why they had received the gift.

The explanation here is that whether positive or negative, by making sense of a past experience we ‘normalize’ it, making it more like any other run of the mill event in life, effectively reducing its emotional value. Blissfully ignorance might not be such a bad thing after all at least when it comes to thinking about past triumphs or good news.

Application

Writing or trying to explain and understand a hurtful experience may at first be painful but in the long rather adaptive.

Unless one is searching for meaning or understanding, mentally replaying bad experiences is probably a bad idea.

Thinking about how and why your friend was able to pick out such an amazing birthday present may actually be a good idea if you don’t want that mood to fade.

Love Fool

“I believe everything happens for a reason and I never have regrets...But I regret ever meeting this girl. She hurt me worst than any girl ever has. Now my problem is,should I say now it's over for us, or should I say for her I’m still massively attached to her. She has moved on and already has another guy… she treated me balyd and I can't understand this myself. I embarrassed myself today by calling and texting her and I could tell she no longer had any interest in me at all” Andy79

I came across this on a self help forum whilst desperately trying to find out how to write a best man speech and couldn’t help but feel sorry for Andy79. But after some thinking I also felt quite frustrated about not being able to put Andy79 straight with some psychology talk about love, break ups and getting over ‘the one’ (this phrase is horrific). From the looks of things Andy79 didn’t get treated particularly well at all and this girl is almost definitely not right for him. But Andy79 can’t seem to see this, stuck hoping and desperate to get back with someone that has treated him terribly. What has gone wrong with poor Andy79?

First of all Andy believes that everything happens for a reason. People who say this are largely idiots for numerous reasons. But I will not bang on about fate or destiny regardless of the fact they are ridiculous ideas. Instead we will discuss some research that suggests Andy is going to be a lot better a lot sooner than he realises and that although when writing that tear-wrenching post he thought his life was terrible - in reality it probably wasn’t all that bad.

People break up and within days they are back together. What does this mean? That they got it wrong and quickly rekindled the flame? Perhaps in some cases, but in other cases it is likely to be very strong feelings of loneliness and loss clouding their judgement. Eastwick et al. (2008) did some interesting research examining break up’s and individuals predictions and feelings of happiness as a consequence of the break up. University students signed up to the study at the start of the academic year and the researchers literally waited for relationships to fall to pieces. On a weekly basis participants rated how happy they though they would be if they were to break up with their boy/girlfriend, as well as some additional questions. If a participant broke up with their partner they then continued to answer questions every week, but instead were asked about how happy they were, amongst other things. Heartbreakingly quite a few did break up with their respective partners.

From this kind of design the researchers can examine a number of things. First of all, they could examine whether people overestimate how much of an impact the break up will have on their happiness. Additionally, they could examine whether people are wise to the fact that the pain eases in time. Interestingly there was a large bias in the expected direction. Although participants predictions indicated that they appreciated the pain would become easier over time, they overestimated how bad they would feel. Furthermore, there were some individuals that made this over-estimation to an even greater extent. Participants that; a) thought they would be unlikely to enter a new relationship any time soon, b) played less of a part in the break up and c) rated themselves as being very much in love with their partner, all underestimated how happy they would be feeling in the near future.

How can this help Andy79? Probably because a, b and c are all applicable to him. At a bit of a guess he doesn’t seem to truly believe he will be happy again. This is unlikely to be true. Additionally, if you have broken up with someone that you very much loved and didn’t have much of a say in it, it is likely you will be feeling really quite bad and the future doesn’t look too rosy. Yet, it probably won’t be the case. As humans we are extremely resilient, but it seems as though when break ups occur we tend to lose our minds in this respect.

A second piece of research that is of relevance underlines how we can have a tendency to add too much weight to our love life in terms of how happy it can or will make us. A classic study asked participants two questions ‘How happy in life are you in general? And ‘How often do you normally go on a date?”. When asked in that order there was next to no correlation between the two questions. Yet, when the order was reversed and the dating question came first, the two became highly correlated. In essence, participants based their life satisfaction response more on how often they dated as it was recently thought about. The fact that there was no association between the two when the order was: life in general question > dating question, suggests dating habits really don’t have too big an impact on how happy we really are.

In no way do I even suggest that relationships aren’t any good. There is very good reason to believe they can make us happier, healthier and more satisfied with life. But what I do suggest is that for the average singleton dwelling on dating habits may lead him/her to believe they are less happy in life than they actually are.

A final mention is more speculative. Philosopher Alain de Botton suggests that when we meet someone special we are overwhelmed by how lucky we have been and this can make us fall even deeper in love. What were the chances of having to have bumped into her or him as a result of your delayed train and then helping her or him pick up her bag they had dropped, as well having happened to both be reading the same books? At first glance it is 1/100000 and almost like fate. The importance of numbers and probability might also be important in the reverse of getting over a lover. Perhaps some of the participants in Eastwick et al.’s study were down and so negative in predicting future happiness because they were at odds with the numbers and probability of them ever finding anyone quite as special as the ex. Maybe finally realising he/she isn’t ‘the one’ and that the probability of meeting someone else you will probably also end up calling ‘the one’ is good is a big step in recovering from the break up blues. Maybe.

Application

Don’t watch Sex and the City.

Although it is difficult, give things a try and attempt not to let emotions override good decisions. You broke up for a reason, he was probably rubbish. Go girlfriend!
Dating: Andy79 is single and from the sounds of things quite desperate.

Great Expectations

Thinking about how enjoyable and how much fun future events will be is a great joy of life. If we didn’t have things to look forward to it would be a sad, sad world. But at the same time we sometimes really don’t look forward to things at all. We often dread upcoming dental surgery and visits to annoying relatives. The consequences of anticipation and expectation are possibly more important than you would assume. This blog will hopefully outline how expectations can change the experiences we have and also our subsequent memories of such experiences. Additionally we will address the age old question of when awaiting some potentially bad news, should one optimistically hope for the best or pessimistically fear for the worst?

Often you drag a friend to the cinema to watch a very well reviewed film. The critics think it is good and there is no reason that it shouldn’t be enjoyed. However, from the very start you can tell your friend simply won’t like it. You tell them that they have come with a negative attitude and they expect it to be quite boring, but should give it a chance. However, they couldn’t be any les enthusiastic. Well more fool them, because there is very good reason to believe that our expectations shape how enjoyable we find future experiences. If you expect something to be very enjoyable you will be more likely to enjoy it. If you expect a meal to be extremely tasty, this expectation is likely to influence how tasty you find it.

A nice study by Wilson and colleagues (1989) underlines this idea. The researchers showed participants a series of cartoons. The first half of the cartoons were funny and the other half not very funny at all. When participants looked at the cartoons without any prior expectations they reported exactly that; funny first half, not very funny second half. However, the researchers also led some participants to believe that previous participants had found all of the cartoons extremely funny. The result: these participants also reported that the three not particularly funny cartoons were a hoot. Furthermore, they didn’t only just report they were funnier but their facial expressions followed suit too. They exhibited a greater ‘facial humour’ response than participants with no prior expectations.

There is also good reason to believe that expectations are likely to be important when it comes to remembering the past too. A set of experiments by McDonald & Hirt (1997) using a fictional character called ‘J.W’ show this effect. Participants were led to believe that they were participating in a study examining interviewing skills and recruitment. At the start they were provided with a performance sheet of our friend J.W. Here it had noted down some old exam marks amongst other seemingly relevant items. After completing various tasks to back up the cover story, they were then led to believe one of two things through reading a counsellors report about J.W. One half of participants were led to believe that after getting those older grades J.W had acquired a girlfriend that he loved very much and that was extremely good for him and helped him greatly with his academic work (thus, they were implicitly led to believe he would be likely to improve his grades). The other half of participants were led to believe J.W hadn’t been so lucky with his choice of girlfriend. She was bad for him and their relationship hampered his usual hard working nature. What a bitch (these participants were implicitly led to believe J.W’s grades would get worse).

Shortly afterwards all participants were then given a sheet with J.W’s most recent grades on. Finally, participants were asked to make a number of judgements about J.W as well as noting down his older exam grades. This is now the interesting part! Participants that had expected J.W to have improved his academic ability (because of his amazing girlfriend) remembered his initial grades to have been lower than they actually were. The reason? To fit in with their expectations. They had his current grades right in front of them and because they expected him to have improved significantly they remembered his older results to have been worse than they were. Conversely, participants that were expecting a decline in J.W’s performance because of his horrid girlfriend actually remembered his original grades to have been better than they actually were. By selectively remembering J.W’s grades to have been higher or lower than they actually were participants were able to satisfy their expectations about changes in J.W’s academic performance.

This may come across as a slightly complicated study. A simpler analogy that has research backing is as follows. Couples generally like the idea that they are very happy with their partner and over time they have grown to love each other more. This can thus lead them to remember themselves as being less happy than they actually were in the relationship a year or so earlier to fulfil these expectations. In a slightly over the top and tabloid like analogy – expectations shape memory to almost trick people into remembering the past in a way that falls into line with current expectations. In the same way that your arse of a friend didn’t enjoy that film, he will probably remember it to have been even worse than it actually was.

The final set of studies that will be covered here examine an expectation related old wives tale. If you don’t get your hopes up and expect the worse, when you get bad news the impact won’t make you feel quite so bad. The classic ‘I tell myself and believe I’ve probably failed so that when I hear my results I will feel relieved whatever.’ Golub and colleagues (2009) suggest this is probably isn’t such a good idea after all. In one of a series of studies the researchers examined how student’s expectations about their scores on midterm exams influenced how they felt both before and after receiving the dreaded results. Seventy two hours before receiving their test results participants filled out an online questionnaire measuring how worried they were about their soon to be received grades, as well as measurements of current mood. Then twenty fours hours after receiving their grades participants again filled out the mood measurements.

Analysis revealed that expecting the worse and worrying about the results made individuals feel much worse in the run up to the exams. However, participant’s expectations about the exam results had no effect on how they felt 24 hours afterwards. Thus, expecting the worse didn’t make individuals feel any better after the event and actually made participants feel much worse prior to getting the exam results. Fearing for the worst probably isn’t such a good idea as you spend the build up to the event literally living in fear. And according to this study there isn’t any benefit of this as early as 24 hours after the feared event. Admittedly expecting the worse could have some effect immediately after the event (‘relief’ experienced in the first few minutes or so), but one must wonder if this is worth it, especially if you’ve spent the days running up to the dreaded exams results feeling quite worried and down.

Application?

If participating in Come Dine With Me ensure that your menu descriptions are insanely appetizing. Raising individuals expectations about what they will be eating may be rather beneficial on their later enjoyment.

If you are stuck with a future event you can’t duck out of then try and be a little more optimistic.

Don’t be afraid to question your memory for past events.

David Owen isn’t an idiot after all…

Being able to get inside the mind of another person and take their perspective would be a handy skill. Knowing what a friend is feeling would probably be quite useful a lot of the time. I would also suspect that the majority of us think we are quite good at this. The good news is that we probably aren’t too bad after all and that there is some quite interesting relevant research that will be covered in this blog. The first study underlines that:- a) we are quite good at it, and b) we can use it to improve our dating success (always a good thing). The second study is something quite different. The flip side of perspective taking is revealed and it is somewhat unexpected. It is either good or bad news dependent on whether you see yourself as an academic type or more of a cheerleader.

Place et al. (2009) designed a nice study to examine how good participants would be at judging a fairly important and common social phenomena - whether or not individuals on a date are interested in their dating partner. At the Humboldt University of Berlin the researchers set up a speed dating event and had an awful lot of speed daters attend numerous 3 minute dates during the evening and after each date make a simple decision of yes (a.k.a ‘I would love to see you again’) or no (‘you’re not fit or interesting’). In return for a free evening of speed dating the researchers filmed the dates and asked participants to complete some short questionnaires (I have been speed dating and am not sure participants did get a great deal here). The researchers then randomly selected a proportion of the many dates and invited some undergraduate participants to watch them and guess what the responses of each daters were.

Before I move on to the results of the study, I would like to let you know some interesting stats. As is the case with speed dating in general, males were far more likely to say yes (a lot of desperate men and picky women knocking about) and very few dates resulted in two yes’s (15%). These stats suggest that men might consider not bothering with 10-15 potentially terrible 3 minute interactions. Now to the results; Interestingly participants tended to perform quite well (well above what we would expect from chance) and whether participants watched 10 or 30 seconds of the date didn’t seem to have any impact on performance. Obviously quite a lot can be read in a little time. What is also interesting is that female daters were a lot harder to read than males. Participants performed only marginally better than chance when they were trying to figure out if the girl was just not into him. The researchers suggest that women tend to be harder to read as they are more likely to mask their true intentions – bad times for the single men amongst us. Finally, participants that were in a relationship consistently outperformed singletons. Why? Perhaps because they are inherently better at picking up on dating signals or perhaps because the singletons don’t get out and see people very much. Whatever the reason it is an interesting finding.

A friend and housemate of mine during final year exams came up with the idea of dressing in a suit and tie everyday for his 9-5 revision hours as he thought it would get him in the right frame of mind - quite odd in itself. But to add to this, he was revising in his bedroom. I thought he was a massive idiot for it. However, it turns out he may well have been onto something very clever and in my ignorance I was blind to his brilliance (an explanation I am not fond of). Recent research suggests that taking the perspective of another can have marked effects on how we view ourselves and influence our behaviour accordingly. A series of experiments by Gallinsky et al. (2008) underline this idea well. The general experiments involved participants listening or reading about another person and then either being asked to a) imagine and write about spending a day in their life (taking their perspective) or b) do something else that was similar but didn’t involve perspective taking. In one study the researchers found that simply taking the perspective of a cheer leader resulted in participants later viewing themselves as more attractive, sexy and gorgeous! In another, participants took the perspective of an academic and accordingly later viewed themselves as more intelligent.

This is all quite nice, but what about effects on behaviour? To answer this question the researchers carried out two studies involving an analytical test (kind of like an intelligence-problem solving test). Prior to doing the test some participants took the perspective of our blond and beautiful cheer leaders and others took the perspective of academics. The results? Taking the perspective of a cheer leader resulted in participants performing worse in the exam and taking one of an academic resulted in improved performance. It would appear that when we do take others perspectives we might be getting more than we bargained for. We seemingly end up unknowingly utilizing stereotypes and perceptions of that person to shape who we are and what we subsequently do.

Points of Interest

Be very wary of females on speed dates. Regardless of all those signals they probably find you quite repulsive.

Conversely, if you are in a relationship and speed dating:
a) you might waste less time on lost causes
b) you probably aren’t a very good girl/boyfriend.

Premonition or Superstition

“A Computer expert who dreamed of scooping the Euro Millions jackpot has won £6.4million in the draw. Ryan Magee had a premonition last week he would win a share of a £96million stake on Friday – and was so certain he bought 11 tickets in four different towns on the day.” (Extract from metro online August 2008)

Ryan Magee would appear to be a very lucky man. Not only did he win the lottery but according to metro online he also has some form of supernatural/paranormal ability to see into the future. So what is going on here? I would suggest nothing paranormal, but a lot of other interesting things that can tell us a lot about how we think. To suggest that someone could see into the future, retrieve information and then act on it is rather far fetched and problematic. It would require us to completely re-think our knowledge of space, time and free will. Luckily there are a number of other explanations.

First of all we seem to have a natural problem handling very large numbers and working out probabilities. To the naked eye, what happened with Ryan Magee is far too much of a coincidence to be explained away by chance or numbers. He had a dream he was going to win the lottery and then goes and does it. But some very quick calculations can show us that it really isn’t that much of an impressive coincidence. If we guess that the average person has 3 dreams a night that he/she can recall then over a space of a week that is 21 dreams and over the space of a year it is around 1150. I have 601 friends on Facebook (nearer 6 actual friends). So between me and my Facebook friends we experience over an astonishing six hundred thousand dreams a year (600,000). We dream about things that go on in life all the time – sooner or later a coincidence will happen. It is inevitable.

Furthermore, we possess extremely selective memory systems. What stands out from the ordinary is more easily remembered than what doesn’t. Thus, all the seemingly realistic and wishful dreams of getting a raise, meeting a handsome dark stranger or winning the lottery that don’t come to fruition are quickly forgotten. The number of forgotten dreams that Ryan will have experienced that never ‘came true’ will be in the tens of thousands probably. A further consideration in this particular case is the idea of supposed ‘visions’ causing a self fulfilling prophecy. If we are told by a psychic at a gipsy fair that we will be meeting a new love this month, then there is a very realistic chance we will be on the look out for one and thus change our behaviour based on what that bizarre old hag said. Ryan went and bought a load of more tickets and in doing so increased the likelihood of him winning the lottery by over 1000%. If you believe something is going to happen then there is a decent chance you will start to behave in a manner that will make it a lot more likely.

A final interesting explanation for why it is all too often easy to jump to paranormal explanations is that we sometimes often struggle to understand how cause and effect work. A study by American parapsychologist Cox (1956) is a fine example. Cox tried to examine whether we could unconsciously sense danger and avoid it. Cox’s analysis interestingly showed that passenger rail traffic was significantly lower on days of accidents in comparison to days on which everything went tickityboo. A suggestion here is that some individuals were unconsciously ‘sensing’ the accident yet to occur and avoiding the train that day for whatever reason. But things aren’t this simple. A lot of other stuff could be going on to decrease the number of passengers using trains on days when there are accidents. Let’s look at the weather for example. Bad weather puts people off leaving the house and increases the chances of a rail accident. The problem is that if your attention is drawn towards two things that are superficially related we appear to have a tendency to jump to conclusions about cause and effect, without too much consideration of what else could be going on. Perhaps it can be traced back to it being fairly adaptive many millennia ago. To understand and navigate through our worlds we have to continuously infer cause and effect. It is key that we will readily attribute cause and effect – ‘eating that plant caused me to be sick’, ‘speaking loudly attracted that rather nasty looking animal’s attention’. But occasionally this mechanism will misfire as it isn’t perfect.

So, if we can’t trust self reports of these supposed premonitions, what should we do? Scientifically test for such ability is the obvious answer. Do I happen to know anybody that has done it? Yes. Yes I do. There are a few researchers that report odd results supporting the idea that this might actually go on. But luckily I have conducted and supervised a number of experiments testing this seemingly crazy idea. In the first experiment we asked participants to try and use any precognitive ability to guess which image from pairs of pictures would later be presented on the screen. Males, females, believers and non-believers all scored what we would expect through pure chance. In the second, participants kept dream diaries to examine whether the content of their dreaming could in any way predict the contents of a video clip they then watched the following day. Did our group of participants do anything that goes beyond chance expectation? Not really I am afraid. I’m sure that Ryan won’t lose too much sleep though.

Implications

1. Be very wary of weirdo’s with crystal balls.

2. Avoid journeys when it is raining or the carriages seem a little empty. Something bad might happen.

3.Take a bit of time to think through actual causes of effects in your life, rather than settling with what sounds alright. 

Dear Friend, please tell me how much to eat…

How much of that cake should I eat? How much of that broccoli should I serve myself? Neither are highly thought provoking questions and it is for this reason that such questions are actually quite interesting. There is an explicit assumption that we eat based on hunger and our body telling us what it needs. But the story isn’t so simple. Often factors in our environment will be making us do things we probably don’t want to do. Most people like company, but at the same time most people want to maintain a fairly slender build and not overeat. This blog discusses how the two don’t always go hand in hand, very much akin to dieting and cheesecake.

A wealth of research examining the psychology of eating behaviour suggests that we model how much we eat on what those around us are eating. A good example of such a study is that of Salvy et al. (2009). Here participants were invited to participate in a study that was cheekily labelled as an investigation of social interaction. Little did the participants know it was actually about food. Participants were either paired up with a friend or another participant and left at a table with a running tape recorder to discuss favoured past times. The researchers also conveniently left some bowls of snacks on the table.

The findings were pretty clear. The more one participant ate, the more the other did. Whether with a stranger or friend this finding was the same. If you eat more, so will I. Quite interestingly this was very much the case with female participants, but didn’t appear to influence males in the same way. What was going on? We don’t have the time here to go too far off topic. But previous research has actually found that males can also be prone to this social influence effect too.

Other studies have used some clever deception by getting one of the researchers to pretend to be the ‘other participant’ in the study. Therefore, the researchers can control exactly how much is being eaten by one party. Again, the more the fake participant eats the more our real participant eats. It is a striking effect. Such an effect is even observed when participants have been instructed not to eat for a day! In a study by Goldman et al. (1991), even when massively hungry if the confederate ate next to nothing our starving participants followed suit. Eating behaviour being massively driven by social cues ahead of signals coming from the depleted and hungry body.

Why such a big effect? One explanation is the need to use other’s behaviour as a guideline for what we should do. Nobody wants to come across as greedy or a bit weird. So eating similar amounts to our eating partners may in part help us out with this problem and reduce feelings of being different or an outsider. Yet, research by Roth et al. 2001 takes this social eating effect even further and shows social eating without any socialising! Here participants were left alone with a plate of cookies and asked to complete ratings concerning sensory qualities of the cookies. Before leaving the researcher told each participant to ignore a piece of paper on the table he had left there ‘by mistake’ which noted down how much previous participants had eaten. As you might expect this was either quite a lot of cookies or very few. And as you are right to guess, regardless of participant weight, hunger, gender or dieting status, the amount of cookies eaten was strongly influenced by a group of people that weren’t present and didn’t even exist.

If we all had friends that eat very little in social situations then surely we would be onto a winner? This seems like a logical explanation, but an awful lot of research suggests most of do eat quite a lot when with others. Psychologist John De Castro has done a huge amount of research tracking how the number of people present at a meal influences amount eaten. Usually this has involved participants keeping a stringent diary of their days activities, including when, what, where and whom they ate with. The general finding: the greater the number of meal companions, the greater the number of calories consumed. Individuals often eat as much as 40-50% more when eating in a group than when eating alone. Friends seem to come at a price.

So what I hear you say? Who cares if I eat a lot with my friends? You only live once. This is true. But as we all know – unhealthy eating and weight gain all come at a cost which is likely to reduce the longevity of our one shot at life. Furthermore, there is evidence that suggests that you really are what you eat (well at least in others eyes). When it comes to food we can forge some quite terrible stereotypes based on what others eat. For example, Vartanien et al. (2000) showed participants a video of a young female eating a small or large meal alone. The findings ? If participants saw the young lady eating a lot she was thought to be more manly and also messier. The latter trait is quite intriguing. One suggestion is that it is due to an association that people who eat less are more self controlled and thus tidier.

Some Thoughts

Think before you eat. What do you really want from this meal? Nourishment or social approval?