Get psyched!

Ever wondered what makes people tick? In which case you might want to sign up for a home learning course in psychology. But with so many to choose from, how do you decide which one to go for? It’s a good question. Luckily the answer is here.

If you follow this link you can discover other home learning courses offered by NCC Home Learning.

A very significant buttock

We all use psychological 'short cuts' from time to time in order to make sense of the world around us. These short cuts can affect the way we behave and interact with other people. For example, we often rely on stereotypes to to make judgements about other people. These are usually simplistic over-generalisations about members of certain groups.

You might think that suppressing our stereotypes might prevent them from influencing our behaviour. Not so. In a study by psychologists back in the 1990s, participants were shown a picture of a ‘skinhead’ and were asked to spend five minutes writing about a typical day in this man’s life. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. In the first condition (the control condition) they were simply allowed to write their account with no further instruction. However, in the second, experimental, condition participants were instructed to try to not allow any stereotypical preconceptions they might have to influence their account. That is, they were asked to suppress any stereotypical thoughts.

Not surprisingly, the accounts of the man’s day produced by the control group tended to be more ‘stereotypical’ in content than the accounts produced by the participants who had been asked to suppress their stereotypes. But this wasn’t what the researchers were really interested in…

After the participants had completed their task they were taken into another room to meet the man in the photograph. When they got there, the man had apparently nipped out to go to the toilet, and had left his denim jacket and bag on the end chair of a row of eight chairs. So, the experimenter asked the participant to sit and wait in one of the remaining chairs. The researchers were interested in which chair each participant chose to sit in. And guess what, they found a difference between the two conditions. The people who had been instructed to suppress any stereotypical thoughts tended, on average, to sit almost one chair further away from the man’s chair at the end of the row than did the people who had not been asked to suppress such thoughts!

Macrae, C. N., Bodenhausen, G. V., Milne, A. B. & Jetten, J. (1994). Out of mind but back in sight: Stereotypes on the rebound. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 808–817.

Stay lucky

Well, whaddya know... it turns out that keeping your fingers crossed does help after all!

A study to be published in the June issue of the journal Psychological Science reveals that 'activating a superstition' by for example, saying "keep your fingers crossed" can have a real effect and enhance subsequent task performance.

The German researchers had female university students engage in a 'motor dexterity task', which involved getting 36 small balls into 36 small holes by tilting a perspex cube backwards and forwards (you know the kind of thing... those infuriating little puzzles that require a delicate hand!). The students were separated into three conditions. In one condition, just as they were about to start the task, the researcher said the German equivalent of "I keep my fingers crossed!" (which in fact is apparently "I press the thumbs for you!"... but in German). The other two conditions were control conditions. The students in the experimental condition went on to complete the task significantly faster than those in either of the control conditions!

Damisch, L., Stoberock, B. & Mussweiler, T. (in press). Keep your fingers crossed! How superstition improves performance. Psychological Science.

Some people...

A few posts back I mentioned a recently published book on Anomalous Experiences what I edited. A fairly descriptive review of the book can be found here.

All very well, but he doesn't even mention the index once.

A-Z of weird experiences

In June 2005, a few of us organised a conference called 'Developing Perspectives on Anomalous Experience'. A mere four and a half years later a book containing the papers presented at the conference has finally been published.

Topics covered include psychic phenomena (like telepathy and precognition), hauntings and apparitions, hypnosis, out-of-body experiences, alien abduction experiences, and even the kinds of experiences people report in seances. Contributors are academics from around the world.

It's hard to pick out a favourite chapter, but I'm particularly proud of the index. It took Rachel and I ages to do that. It's in alphabetical order and everything!

The book is called Anomalous Experiences, published by McFarland, and is available from Amazon.

Candid classic

I recently re-discovered this mildly amusing demonstration of conformity on YouTube:



Apparently, leading social psychologists Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo were both big Candid Camera fans. Milgram went on to conduct ethically questionable experiments that demonstrated the conditions under which we obey authority. Zimbardo's famous Stanford Prison Experiment had to be halted early because participants became so distressed at being required to role-play prisoners and guards in a mock prison.

At least Allen Funt, creator of Candid Camera, had the decency to just show people looking a bit silly in a lift.

Happy memories

Some initial results from Prof Wiseman's happiness experiment were announced yesterday. It seems that on average we, as a nation, were about 7% more cheerful at the end of last week compared to the beginning of the week. So there. This was determined by way of a couple of polls undertaken at the start and end of the week. Of course, it's not possible to determine how much, if any, of this increase in the nation's happiness might be attributed to the science of happiness experiment.

Participants in the study were assigned to one of five conditions. Four of these groups were asked to spend a few moments each day engaged in an exercise that previous research had indicated might influence feelings of happiness. One group was asked to use those moments to focus on expressing gratitude for one thing in their lives (this is the group I was assigned to) while a second group spent the time simply smiling. A third group was asked to carry out an act of kindness and the fourth group was instructed to recall a pleasant event from the day before. The remaining participants were in a 'control' group in which they were asked to just think about the previous day's events.

More than 26,000 people took part and it would seem that reported levels of happiness in all groups, including the control group, increased over the course of the week. So everyone's a winner! The biggest increase was seen in the group asked to recall a pleasant event from the day before. They showed a 15% rise in reported happiness over and above the folks in the control condition.

The difficulty is that even if these kinds of exercises do have an impact upon perceived happiness, and the initial results from this study seem to suggest they do, then the effects are likely to be rather transient and so many other things will have a far greater impact on our how we feel on a particular day. And are we dealing with underlying 'happiness' or whether we're in a good mood?

Still hats off to Richard for attempting such an ambitious project!

Happy now?

Compared to this time last week, are you more or less happy than you were? It's hard to tell isn't it? Unless, of course, you've taken part in a scientific experiment to measure just how happy you are. Well, I have. And I'm, er, still not sure if I'm any happier or not. I may have a better idea on Wednesday when some initial results from the study are to be announced.

Did you take part? Do you feel any happier?

The study was being conducted by Professor Richard Wiseman, Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. I know Richard well having worked as his Research Assistant a little over ten years ago and I have always been amazed at the way his research captures the public's imagination. This particular project is linked to his latest book 59 Seconds, which is "a triumph of scientifically proven advice over misleading myths of self-help" (not my words, the words of Derren Brown).

My copy of the book arrived from Amazon this morning. I'll let you know if it's as good as Derren thinks it is.

Joy to the World

How are you feeling this Monday morning? However you're feeling, my old friend Prof Richard Wiseman is up to his old tricks again and conducting an experiment for us all to take part in. This time he's trying to make the world a happier place. No he's not campaigning for all tapes of The Vicar of Dibley to be burned (though there's an idea...). He is simply wanting as many people as possible to take part in a week long happiness project at www.scienceofhappiness.co.uk.

It will take less than a minute a day to take part and, who knows, this time next week you may be as happy as, or even happier than, Larry.

More weird science

The book on anomalous experiences I mentioned in an earlier post will hopefully be published later this year or early next year. In the meantime I thought I'd draw your attention to a book editted by a former colleague of mine, and himself a contributor to the Anomalous Experiences book, Dr Craig Murray.

This book has the rather wordy title of Psychological Scientific Perspectives on Out of Body and Near Death Experiences and is published by Nova. More details can be found here. With chapters written by the leading researchers on OBEs and NDEs, it looks set to become a leading text dealing with these unusual, though not uncommon, experiences. Perhaps these experiences tell us something about consciousness, how our brains construct conscious experience, or even shed light on what happens after we die!

15 Steps to Tyranny

This week I have watched a TV documentary called Five Steps to Tyranny three times. It is something we show to our first year psychology students as part of one of their seminars. As I take three separate seminar groups, I have sat through the film three times this week!

The film is a very useful introduction to how social psychologists explain how it only takes a few key ingredients to turn any one of us into someone who might inflict terrible harm to others. Step 1 is that from an early age we identify with various 'in-groups' of which we regard ourselves to be a member, and can contrast those with 'out-groups' of which we are not a member (i.e., 'us' and 'them'). Step 2 is that we readily obey orders, often without questioning them. More worryingly, perhaps, when there is an authority figure who asks us, or commands us, to do something that we might normally not want to do (Step 3: do 'them' harm) we will often follow the command especially if we feel that someone else will take responsibility. The eye-opening research conducted by Stanley Milgram in the 1960's revealed the extent to which this was the case. Around two thirds of people who participated in his studies of obedience (who thought they were taking part in research on the effects of punishment on learning) would go on to deliver electric shocks to a co-participant of 450 volts when told to do so by an experimenter. (The co-participant was actually a confederate of the experimenter who never received the shocks, but the real participant wasn't told this until after the experiment.) Experts in human behaviour had predicted beforehand that only a very small percentage would administer these shocks.

Step 4: 'stand up' or 'stand by' shows how many of us are far more likely to stand back and do nothing when we see somebody who might need our help. Combine this with step 1 and we are particularly reluctant to offer help to someone who we see as being in an 'out-group'. By the time we get to the final step, 'exterminate', we've reached the point there is every chance that members of a more powerful 'in-group' will seek to get completely rid of any 'out-groups'. It was the research of another psychologist, Philip Zimbardo, which demonstrated this so effectively. In his Stanford Prison Experiment he turned the basement of the Psychology Department at Stanford University into a prison. Male students were arbitrarily split into either 'prisoners' or 'guards' and asked to role-play these roles as part of the planned 14-day experiment. As it turned out, after just 6 days the guards had become sadistic and were treating the prisoners so badly the study had to be stopped.

It is through these 5 simple steps that, according to social psychologists, tyrannical regimes can emerge and be allowed to continue to exert their power.

Bummer.

The full documentary can be found here.

Weird science

Today I finally submitted the manuscript for an edited book called Anomalous Experiences. It's a collection of papers that were originally presented at a conference called Developing Perspectives on Anomalous Experience in June 2005, and covers research on unusual experiences ranging from out-of-body experiences, alien abduction experiences, haunting experiences, and ESP. There were plenty of times over the last three years that it looked likely that it would never happen so I'm very pleased that it's finally been done. It's due to be published next year.

The Luck Doctors

It may come as a surprise to some of you to learn that I actually have a PhD ("oooh... get him!" I hear you cry). Believe me, it sometimes still surprises me. But 10 years ago I was awarded a PhD by the University of Hertfordshire, thereby becoming a "Dr". Perhaps even more surprising was the topic of my PhD... luck! The full title was Perceptions of One's Own Luck: The Formation, Maintenance and Consequences of Perceived Luckiness. A bit of a mouthful, I know, but PhD titles are supposed to sound clever and obscure, aren't they?

It was a study of the 'psychology of luck', and examined people's beliefs about luck and explored the psychological differences between 'lucky' and 'unlucky' people. Lucky people were those people who felt that seemingly chance events tended to work out in their favour, whilst unlucky people were those who felt they tended to work out against them. The aim of the project was to discover why some people believe themselves to be lucky whilst others believe themselves to be unlucky. Do these people really lead very different lives? And if so, is there any psychological reasons why this might be the case? Or do 'lucky' and 'unlucky' people actually lead rather similar lives but differ in the ways in which they make sense of the events that happen to them?

The research was the brainchild of Dr (now Professor!) Richard Wiseman who, in collaboration with Dr Peter Harris, had obtained a research grant from the Leverhulme Trust, a charitable organisation that supports research in a variety of areas. I was employed as the Research Assistant working on the project, and took the opportunity to register for a PhD at the same time with Richard and Peter as my supervisors. Together, we interviewed and collected other psychological data from self-perceived lucky and unlucky people for over three years.

The picture that emerged was quite remarkable. Lucky and unlucky people, on the whole, were very different from each other. For example, while lucky people tended to be far more optimistic, and more extraverted individuals, unlucky people were more likely to be anxious and experience depressed mood states. Moreover lucky and unlucky people differed in the extent to which they remembered the positive and negative events in their lives, and also in the way they interpreted events. Lucky people found it easier to remember events they considered lucky than unlucky events, and were more likely to label events as lucky in the first place. This latter point is nicely illustrated by following little experiment:

Imagine you are waiting to be served in a bank when an armed robber enters and fires a shot. The bullet hits you in the arm.

How lucky or unlucky would you regard this event? We asked people to rate the event (along with other events) on a scale from -3 (very unlucky) to +3 (very lucky), and found that there was a wide range of opinions regarding the luckiness of events such as this. While some people consider this event to be unlucky, others consider it to be actually rather lucky. In both cases, the judgement of how lucky or unlucky the event is made by imagining how the event might have been different from what happened. For example, those who consider the event to be unlucky can easily imagine a scenario where the bullet might have missed you altogether and so see it as being rather unlucky to have been hit by the bullet. Meanwhile, people who see the event as lucky are imagining a situation where the bullet might have hit you in the chest causing much more damage, perhaps even killing you. By comparison, a bullet in the arm is actually quite lucky. This just goes to show that an event is not necessarily lucky or unlucky in itself, it becomes perceived as such by the person making the observation. What was particularly interesting was that lucky people were more likely to rate the event as lucky while unlucky people were more likely to rate it as unlucky.

As I say, it is now 10 years since I was awarded a PhD for my contribution to this project on the psychology of luck. In the years since then my interest in this topic faded somewhat as I pursued other lines of research. In the meantime, my PhD supervisor, and the instigator of the 'luck project', Richard Wiseman, went on to conduct a whole lot more research on the psychology of luck which culminated in a best-selling book called The Luck Factor (Arrow Books, 2004) in which Richard identified four main principles that could "change your luck - and your life"!

The funny thing was that by the time this book was published I had developed a healthy lack of interest in whole 'luck' research. If anything, I was probably one of the most cynical about the ideas presented in this book. It was one thing to identify the various differences between self-perceived lucky and unlucky people, but another thing to suggest that you could change your luck by changing the way you think!

What is perhaps even funnier is that, not only am I now finding myself being drawn back to the ideas talked about by Richard in The Luck Factor, but I am also becoming convinced that Richard has barely scraped the surface. I've got a feeling that there could well be plenty more to discover about the psychology of luck, fate and destiny!

Donating my brain to science

Last week I was a subject in a psychology experiment. To be more precise I was actually a participant. Whereas in the old days I would have been labelled as a 'subject', these days we are participants in such things. Anyway, the procedure I was subjected to included filling in a cluster of personality questionnaires. Questions ranged from how often I trusted my hunches or instincts (I've got a feeling I answered that one wrongly) to whether I found it hard to make decisions (I left that one blank).

Following the questionnaires were a series of tasks. In one of these I had to arrange small wooden coloured blocks to match a pattern shown to me by the experimenter.

These were simple geometric shapes but the task for some reason reminded me of the joke in which a psychologist is showing one of his patients a series of Rorschach inkblots. "What do you see in this picture?" the psychologist asks as the first inkblot is shown. The patient hesitates for a moment before a replying "a man and woman having sex".


"And in this picture...?" the psychologist asks as he displays the second inkblot.

"A man and a woman having sex" the patient replies.

"And in this one?"

"A man and a woman having sex" comes the reply.

"I think you are preoccupied with sex" concludes the psychologist.

"I'm preoccupied with sex?" replies the patient, "you're the one with all the dirty pictures!".

Okay, I didn't say it was a funny joke. Sadly, the psychologist testing me didn't have any dirty pictures. At least none that he was showing me.