March 03, 2010

Violent video games: small causal link with aggression:

A new study just published in Psychological Bulletin has reviewed studies on the effects of violent video games and concludes that they cause a small but reliable increase in aggressive behaviour and anti-social thinking.

The study, led by psychologist Craig Anderson, is a type of meta-analysis which attempts to mathematically aggregate the results of past studies to see what the overall effect is.

There have been several similar studies in recent years which have come to different conclusions, based on whether the results have been thought to have been affected by publication bias or not. In other words, while the published studies suggest there is a small reliable effect of video games on aggression some reviews have suggested this is because fewer of the studies that don't find a link actually get published.

This new study aimed to include unpublished studies and also looked at studies from both Western cultures, like the US and Europe, and Eastern cultures, such as Japan, to see if social environment influences any potential link.

The review included both observational studies, which look at what happens in the 'real world' but can't tell us whether gaming causes aggression (it could be just that more aggressive people play more violent games), and experimental studies which can determine cause, because participants are randomly assigned to groups and given either violent or non-violent games, but are a little more removed from everyday life.

The researchers examined whether violent video games led to changes in aggressive behaviour, thoughts and emotions, and for changes in empathy and helpful behaviour to others.

Overall, the analysis concluded that violent video gaming causes a small but reliable increase in aggression and possibly a reduction in helpful behaviour and empathy.

The results on empathy were the weakest, however, as only study was an experiment and the researchers lumped together research that used questionnaires and which tested bodily desensitisation (whether people bodily react less to emotional events when they re-experience them) which is not a good measure of someone's mental state.

One interesting aspect of the analysis is that the researchers looked at a number of game characteristics to see if they had an effect; for example, whether the people were playing in first- or third-person, whether the violence was towards human or non-human characters; and found that none of this made much difference.

What this suggests is that the effect is not due to non-specific priming, a psychological effect whereby experiencing one type of concept makes closely related concepts and actions more accessible and more likely. In this case, the fictional violence is assumed to make aggressive thoughts and actions more easily triggered.

It must be said that the overall effect was quite small. For the statistically inclined, the correlation was r = .19 for all studies and r = .24 when they looked only at the most rigorous research. This means that violent video games accounted for between about 3.6% and 5.8% of the total change in aggressiveness.

Interestingly, despite the fact that Japan, for example, is more culturally adverse to aggression than Western countries, the effects seems to be equally as apparent on either side of the world.

The journal published a discussion based on the study, including a criticism by psychologists Christopher Ferguson and John Kilburn, who have published previous analyses suggesting that the violence effect is down to publication bias.

The discussion focusses on various technical issues which are well answered by the original authors, although perhaps the most significant points of disagreement focus on two areas.

The first is that this new analyses only focused on simple relations, and didn't take into account whether other factors could be having an influence. For example, a previous study suggested that when pre-existing emotional, family and social problems are accounted for, the aggression increasing effects of video games disappears.

The second concerns how important this small effect is. On an individual level a small change may be undetectable amid the to-and-fro of everyday life, but at the level of the population it could conceivably increase the number of aggressive incidents, although these are often the hardest effects to track.

Link to PubMed entry for study.
pdf of full text.

—Vaughan.

March 02, 2010

Sex on drugs:

I just found a study which specifically investigated which drugs are preferred by clubbers for sex. The study was completed in Spain and it turns out booze is the punter's favourite, clearly contradicting the widely-held theory that alcohol was invented to help British people have sex.

[Which drugs are preferred for sex in nightlife recreational settings?]

[Article in Spanish]

Adicciones. 2008;20(1):37-47.

Calafat A, Juan M, Becoña E, Mantecón A.

Many people associate the use of alcohol and other drugs with sexuality. It is common to find that each drug is associated with a specific effect on sexuality. Weekend recreational nightlife settings are increasingly important places for the young, and frequented by them more and more in search of sex and drug-taking opportunities. In this research we are interested in the role the young attribute to recreational drugs with regard to their sexual practices. We interviewed a sample of 100 young people from four Spanish cities, using a questionnaire with both open and closed questions. Snowball sampling was used to find those who had had sexual experience, who had taken recreational drugs and who liked going to discos, bars, etc. at the weekend. We found that these young people have a very precise idea of how each drug functions within sexuality. Considering all four parameters analysed, alcohol is by far the most popular (to initiate the sexual encounter, for more unusual or the "hottest" experiences, to increase arousal, and to prolong sex), though in the last case in particular the preferred drug was cocaine. Cannabis does not interest them because of its relaxing effects, while ecstasy is chosen more for remaining active and enjoying oneself than for its sexual effects. Women use alcohol more than men (mainly to increase arousal, when they want unusual sex or to prolong sex) and use cocaine less.

The line "Snowball sampling was used..." made me laugh out loud at the unintentional innuendo. If you're not familiar with its various meanings, it simultaneously refers to a research method, a drug term and a [NSFW] sexual practice [Wikipedia link, but I did warn you].

Link to PubMed entry for study.

—Vaughan.

When the ship goes down:

The New York Times covers a new study on the co-operative behaviour of passengers when two famous sea-faring passenger liners sunk: the Lusitania sank fast, leading to every-man-for-themself type escape behaviour, whereas the Titanic took almost three hours to sink, meaning women and children were given priority and rank and social class were respected.

It reminds me of a famous, if not somewhat disheartening, study [pdf] on the predictors of survival after air crashes that was covered by Mary Roach's brilliant book on dead bodies, Stiff. From p87:

Here is the secret to surviving one of these crashes: Be male. In a 1970 Civil Aeromedical institute study of three crashes involving emergency evacuations, the most prominent factor influencing survival was gender (followed closely by proximity to exit). Adult males were by far the most likely to get out alive. Why? Presumably because they pushed everyone else out of the way.

Link to NYT piece on sinking study.
Link to summary of scientific study.
pdf of air crash report.

—Vaughan.

February 24, 2010

Touch me:

The New York Times has an interesting short article on psychology studies that have looked at the emotional influence of brief touches.

The evidence that such messages can lead to clear, almost immediate changes in how people think and behave is accumulating fast. Students who received a supportive touch on the back or arm from a teacher were nearly twice as likely to volunteer in class as those who did not, studies have found. A sympathetic touch from a doctor leaves people with the impression that the visit lasted twice as long, compared with estimates from people who were untouched. Research by Tiffany Field of the Touch Research Institute in Miami has found that a massage from a loved one can not only ease pain but also soothe depression and strengthen a relationship.

In a series of experiments led by Matthew Hertenstein, a psychologist at DePauw University in Indiana, volunteers tried to communicate a list of emotions by touching a blindfolded stranger. The participants were able to communicate eight distinct emotions, from gratitude to disgust to love, some with about 70 percent accuracy.

“We used to think that touch only served to intensify communicated emotions,” Dr. Hertenstein said. Now it turns out to be “a much more differentiated signaling system than we had imagined.”

The piece goes to to discuss research on sports team success and touch but it misses out one of my favourites studies in the area, that we covered back in 2007.

It found that a light touch on the arm increased the chances that a male research assistant would persuade a woman in a nightclub to dance with him, or to swap phone numbers.

UPDATE: Christian just sent me this study finding that a light touch from a doctor encourages patients to take medication properly:

Although the positive effect of touch on compliance has been widely found in the literature, a new evaluation has been carried out in a health setting. Four general practitioners were instructed to slightly touch (or not) their adult patients who suffered from a pharyngitis when they asked them for a verbal promise to take the prescribed antibiotic medication. One week later, patients were solicited at home to evaluate the number of tablets that were taken. Greater medication compliance was found in the touch condition.

Link to NYT piece on the psychology of touch.

—Vaughan.

February 23, 2010

Decorative skull reshaping:

Intentional reshaping of the skull during childhood has been reported from all over the ancient world but it seemed to be most popular among the peoples who lived in the Andes before the Spanish conquistadores arrived. On the left you can see two examples I found this morning in the national museum of the Banco Central del Ecuador, one of Quito's largest archaeological museums.

The pictures aren't the best as they were taken with my second-rate mobile phone camera, but click if you want a larger version.

These are skulls from the Machililla culture that dates from around 1,600 - 800 BC, although the practice was widespread.

Unfortunately, it seems not much has been written on the practice, but there is one excellent article 2005 that was published in the journal Child's Nervous System.

As the article notes, the practice was typically used to denote group membership or to indicate social class:

In large and complex societies, a uniform head shape reflected that the individuals belonged to the same or similar group. In smaller, less complex societies head shape demarcated group differences. The Indians in Oruro—in what is now Bolivia—serve as an example of what happened in small societies, where cranial shaping was used for cast differentiation: high-class Indians had tabular erect heads, the middle class had tabular oblique heads, and the rest of the people had ring-shaped heads.

In the Muisca culture, in Colombia, intentional cranial deformation was a sign of hierarchy, performed only in the high classes: it was a sign of social status like clothes, accessories, funeral ceremonies, and tombs. In certain pre-Columbine cultures like the Caribe Indians in Colombia, the Aymaras in Bolivia, and the Patagones in Argentina, cranial deformation was performed only on men and it was an important factor for becoming a member of the ldquowarrior classrdquo. In Borneo and on the European continent, head-shaping was performed only on women with an aesthetic purpose. Among the Calchaquí Indians in the north of Argentina, in the Philippines, and in the Celebes islands, head-shaping was performed on both sexes.

Some ancient writings linked the purpose of this practice to the intention by certain populations to dominate other people. According to Santa Cruz Pachacuti, the Inca leaders Manco Capac and Lrsquooke Yupanki ordered the heads of the newborn Aymara Indians to be tightly squeezed to make them foolish, unintelligent, and obedient. However, studies of indigenous groups who practiced cranial deformation in newborns, such as the British Columbian Indians or the Amazonian natives, did not find evidence of any neurological or psychological impairment.

The article also notes that the method used above, compression of the head using boards, was not the only method.

Two other methods were widely used that are illustrated on the right.

One involved tightly wrapping the head with a binding that was progressively adjusted, and the other required the child to be restrained against a portable cradle-board that had an additional plank that would push down on the skull.

Link to locked article on skull deformation in Andean people.

—Vaughan.

February 20, 2010

Shimmering madness:

There is an amazing blog, called either ru_medart or something I don't understand in Russian, that collects artistic depictions of the mad from the history of art.

It's a wonderful collection of images, and, as you might expect, many of the pictures depict the sort of 'raving madness' that was the stereotype of centuries past.

However, it also has portraits of famous people throughout history who have been mad or have been claimed as mad, as well as some more contemporary paintings and some wonderful illustrations of 'hysterics' from Charcot's clinic at the Salpêtrière in Paris.

The only obvious omissions are the paintings of Théodore Géricault who painted a series of 10 portraits of asylum patients in an attempt to capture the essence of madness, partly based on the belief that it was reflected in the physical features of the body.

The image on the right is of an absolutely stunning piece called 'Shimmering Madness' by the American artist Sandy Skoglund, made with jelly beans, wood, plastic, metal and motors. It looks stunning as an image but to see it in all it's glory you really need to watch the short movie, and believe me, it is amazing.

Link to madness in art blog (via BoingBoing).

—Vaughan.

February 14, 2010

Seeing red, feeling hot, realising nothing:

Seeing red leads men to view women as more attractive and more desirable despite them not being aware of any change in their perceptions. A delightful study from last year that, as the authors note, has 'clear practical implications'!

Romantic red: red enhances men's attraction to women.

J Pers Soc Psychol. 2008 Nov;95(5):1150-64.

Elliot AJ, Niesta D.

In many nonhuman primates, the color red enhances males' attraction to females. In 5 experiments, the authors demonstrate a parallel effect in humans: Red, relative to other achromatic and chromatic colors, leads men to view women as more attractive and more sexually desirable. Men seem unaware of this red effect, and red does not influence women's perceptions of the attractiveness of other women, nor men's perceptions of women's overall likeability, kindness, or intelligence. The findings have clear practical implications for men and women in the mating game and, perhaps, for fashion consultants, product designers, and marketers. Furthermore, the findings document the value of extending research on signal coloration to humans and of considering color as something of a common language, both within and across species.

pdf of full text of study.
Link to PubMed entry for study.

—Vaughan.

January 25, 2010

The evolution of death and dying:

The New Yorker has a wonderful article on the psychology of death and dying which is carefully woven into the curious life story of psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the originator of the 'stage' model of grief.

If you only read one popular article on grief, you'd do a lot worse than reading this carefully researched and sensitively written piece which journeys through both the social and cultural rituals of dying and how psychological theories have changed over the years.

It also tackles the fascinating life of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross who was responsible for the influential but now discredited 'stage' model that suggested that both dying and grieving people experience denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Subsequent studies have not supported these stages but Kübler-Ross was a pioneer in encouraging clinicians to address death with their gravely ill patients and her first book, On Death and Dying, opened up the practice of bereavement counselling for people who feel they need help coming to terms with their own death or the loss of loved-ones.

Kübler-Ross later became interested in a range of, it must be said, fairly flaky practices, such as mediumship and 'channelling' the dead, and she fell out of favour with the medical mainstream.

Late in life, she was disabled by a stroke and had a great deal of trouble coming to terms with her own mortality although the experience helped her write her final and widely regarded book, On Grief and Grieving, where she reflects on her own death and her life's work.

The New Yorker article looks at Kübler-Ross' legacy, but much more than that, examines a great deal of what we know about the process and how it is being integrated into modern medicine. Highly recommended.

Link to New Yorker article 'Good Grief' (via @mocost).

—Vaughan.

January 20, 2010

Lost in frustration:

New Scientist has a piece on culture and psychological distress by Ethan Watters, the same chap who wrote the recent and widely discussed New York Times article on the 'globalisation of mental illness'. This new article looks at similar territory but also pulls out some examples of where concepts and symptoms don't translate well between different societies.

The meaning matters as much as the event," says Ken Miller, a psychologist at Pomona College, Claremont, California, who studied in Afghanistan and elsewhere the reactions to war trauma.

He found many psychological reactions that were not on any western PTSD symptom list, and a few with no ready translation into English. In Afghanistan, for example, there was asabi, a type of nervous anger, and fishar-e-bala, the sensation of agitation or pressure.

Giathra Fernando, a psychologist at California State University, Los Angeles, also found culturally distinct psychological reactions to trauma in post-tsunami Sri Lanka. By and large, Sri Lankans didn't report pathological reactions in line with the internal states making up most of the west's PTSD checklist (hyperarousal, emotional numbing and the like). Rather, they tended to see the negative consequences of tragic events in terms of damage to social relationships. Fernando's research showed the people who continued to suffer were those who had become isolated from their social network or who were not fulfilling their role in kinship groups. Thus Sri Lankans conceived the tsunami damage as occurring not inside their minds but outside, in the social environment.

It's probably worth mentioning that this goes both ways and there are many everyday psychological concepts in English and Western society that don't translate well into other languages.

Some of these become obvious when you read studies that have attempted to translate questionnaires originally in English into other languages.

For example, here's an excerpt from a study that translated a mental health questionnaire from the World Health Organisation into Urdu:

This item ["Do you have trouble thinking clearly?"] presented considerable problems in translation. It measures the disturbance in concentration and cognition associated with depressive disorders. We could not find an exact substitute for the term, "clear thinking" in colloquial Urdu, and the nearest semantic and technically equivalent term that was acceptable in back translation was "wazay soch bichar"

Unfortunately, it doesn't say what 'wazay soch bichar' is in English, so if you're an Urdu speaker do get in touch as I'd love to find out.

It's also often the case that words such as 'anxiety' may have a related word in another language but the sensations associated with it are not the same.

The New Scientist piece, taken from a forthcoming book by Watters, argues that Western concepts are now being exported around the world and local people are increasingly describing mental and social distress in terms of Western, and particularly, American, diagnoses.

UPDATE: Many thanks to Mind Hacks reader Matt for getting in touch with the translation:

i have a translation of 'wazay soch bichar' for you. my colleague nasir says the literal translation of it is 'obvious thinking' and agrees there is no direct translation of 'thinking clearly' in urdu and that 'wasay....' is the best available.

Link to 'How the US exports its mental illnesses'.

—Vaughan.

January 18, 2010

You've got mail...:

A curious case of a woman who believed she was receiving email directly into her body near to where a diamond teddy bear was residing, published in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry:

We report the case of an elderly lady with no experience of using a personal computer or internet technology, whose delusional experiences included the direct personal receipt of email. Ms T, an 84-year old female with a 40-year history of schizoaffective disorder, presented with a delusional belief that something precious and of value ‘for all people’ had been inserted into her body by a doctor in Germany in the 1950s.

She had sought medical help because she believed that an abdominal operative procedure would be necessary to remove a ‘‘rat and a teddy bear made of diamonds’’ that she believed had grown within her. Following admission, she remained highly guarded, distressed and preoccupied with the need of urgent surgery, which she demanded every time she met her medical team.

When asked about the origins of this belief and her desire for surgery, she said that she had gained knowledge about this from a friend, whom she had seen last in 1945. She explained that she received emails from this friend. These arrived in her mind, exactly like electronic mail, but were managed without a computer. Rather than receiving messages in text form, she received what she described as ‘an impression in my mind’, which conveyed an unequivocal meaning to her.

She also believed that her friend had some valuable information for the medical team and that he would be able to contact the senior physician by a similar mechanism. Following 4 weeks of treatment with risperidone 1.0 mg bd her mental state improved to the point where she stopped receiving the emails, gained insight into her primary belief and told us that she was satisfied that surgery was no longer needed.

Link to PubMed entry for case study.

—Vaughan.

January 13, 2010

Bragging for beginners:

The BPS Research Digest covers an interesting study on the perception of boasting, looking at whether there are specific contexts in which bragging actually leads people to think more highly of you and whether there are those where people end up thinking you're a bit of an arse.

It turns out, there are. Participants were asked to rate the character and personality of a chap called 'Avi' who boasted about his A grade exam performance in a number of scenarios. The results showed that bragging only had the desired effect when someone else brought up the subject that Avi wanted to boast about:

The crux of it: context is everything when it comes to boasting. If Avi's friend raised the topic of the exams, Avi received favourable ratings in terms of his boastfulness and likeability, regardless of whether he was actually asked what grade he got. By contrast, if Avi raised the topic of the exams, but failed to provoke a question, then his likeability suffered and he was seen as more of a boaster.

In other words, to pull off a successful boast, you need it to be appropriate to the conversation. If your friend, colleague, or date raises the topic, you can go ahead and pull a relevant boast in safety. Alternatively, if you're forced to turn the conversation onto the required topic then you must succeed in provoking a question from your conversation partner. If there's no question and you raised the topic then any boast you make will leave you looking like a big-head.

I was interested that the study was from Israel and wondered how well the results apply to other countries.

I've informally noticed that the social acceptability of 'talking oneself up' varies greatly between countries - from the USA, where moderate self-praise is standard social currency, to the UK, where it is only acceptable when followed by a self-deprecating comment or joke, to Sweden where it is only acceptable when one is threatened by armed men or the future of the world hangs in the balance.

However, I've not been able to track down any studies on the topic, so I'm not sure how well my observations reflect the wider world.

Link to BPSRD on bragging study.
Link to DOI entry and abstract of study.

—Vaughan.

January 06, 2010

Fighting fatigue:

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) makes people angry. Not so much the condition itself, which is associated with diffuse body pain, persistent tiredness and loss of concentration, but the science around it. After an American team announced last year that they had found a novel virus in 68 of 101 CFS patients, a UK team just reported that they failed to find the virus in any of the 186 patients they studied. Knives have already been drawn in the latest round of a long-running battle.

To understand why this is such an emotive issue, you need to get a handle on some key issues.

The first is that there is a heated debate as to the causes of the condition. On one pole of the debate is a group, largely of people affected by the condition, who believe that the condition is entirely caused by a biological disruption to the body, most likely an unidentified viral infection. On the other, is a group, largely consisting of researchers, who believe that there is a significant psychological component to the illness.

This is, of course, a bit of a simplification, but it broadly captures the two main sides of the debate and if you're not familiar with how high feelings run, let me give you an example. I was contacted by one CFS researcher wanting a copy of a paper I wrote on extreme communities because their family was under police protection following death threats, subsequent to a public suggestion that psychology might play a part in the condition.

The emotion is fuelled by the common, insidious but wrong-headed notion that any condition that is influenced by mental states is not a 'real illness' and the widespread prejudice that individuals are more to blame for psychological problems because psychology is perceived as being just a matter of 'changing your mind'.

There is a mountain of research to show that both of these claims are plainly ridiculous and psychology is likely important in all illness, but perhaps the clearest example is the placebo effect. You can't just 'decide' to better but the placebo effect has been shown to improve the symptoms of almost any illness your care to think of, albeit to differing degrees.

But people affected by CFS are often on the sharp end of these prejudices and it is not uncommon that they have had the experience of someone telling them they are 'putting it on' or 'aren't trying hard enough'. When you are disabled to the point of immobilisation, this is pretty hard to take.

So it is not surprising that many are drawn to the exclusive 'viral infection' explanation, because it proves the idiots wrong, even if it does so using the opposite side of the same coin - prejudice about what constitute a 'real illness'.

Proponents of the idea that the condition is influenced by psychology, including beliefs about its effects, behaviour patterns and perceptions of how the body is reacting, note that numerous controlled studies have found that a psychological approach, in the form of a cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), is one of the most effective, if not the most effective treatment. Despite this, it is often rated as one of the least preferred among patients groups.

Into this hot button debate steps an American team who found evidence for the little understood retrovirus XMRV in about two thirds of patients with CFS. Proponents of the 'viral theory' rejoiced and the study made headline news around the world.

Considering the potential importance of the findings, a UK team then attempted to see if they could detect XMRV in British CFS patients. It has widely been described as a 'replication' of the original study in the media, but it really isn't, as the team used a different, although still reliable ways of looking for the virus, while attempting to make improvements in lab management to reduce the chances of cross contamination and detecting false positives.

They found nothing in any of the 186 patients they studied. No sign of the virus at all. The research was published in PLoS One and if you want a flavor of the feeling the research has generated, take a look at the ratings and comments on the article since it was published earlier today. You can almost feel the anger simmering through.

From an outsider's perspective, it's interesting to see how CFS is considered by many to be a single condition that must have a single cause. But in reality, the diagnosis is just made on a collection of symptoms - tiredness, pain, impaired mental abilities and so on.

These symptoms are interesting because they occur in a whole range of conditions: in diabetes, after concussion, after a viral infection, after any of stroke, brain injury or Parkinson's disease, alongside a range of mental illnesses, and so on.

In other words, there is unlikely to be a single cause for CFS, because the same symptoms can be caused by any number of underlying problems. The reason that CFS isn't diagnosed in all these other cases is because it is a diagnosis of exclusion - in other words, by definition, if you can't find a clear cause, the symptoms are labelled as CFS. However, it doesn't follow that all current cases of CFS will therefore by accounted by a single, currently unknown, problem.

I wouldn't be surprised if some cases of CFS are triggered by an unknown viral infection, but to think that this is the sole explanation is likely to be missing the bigger picture.

Similarly, to deny a psychological component to any medical condition risks denying a useful tool to help those who need it most. As an illustration, surgeons now widely recognise that psychological factors are essential to the long-term success of a transplant.

You would be hard pressed to find a more 'physical' condition and yet psychology plays a key role. But to promote the importance of thinking about the role of our own minds in how disability affects us, be with transplants or CFS, we need to fight the prejudice associated with mental explanations.

Link to PubMed entry for US study on the XMRV virus and CFS.
Link to UK CFS study in PLoS One.

Full disclosure: I'm an unpaid member of the PLoS One editorial board.

—Vaughan.

December 29, 2009

Personals from psychologists:

Adverts from psychologists in the Personals section of the New York Magazine.

Marriage-Minded Jewish Doctor - Successful. 43-year-old behavioral psychologist and entrepreneur. I'm 5'11", slim, considered handsome, and have many diversified social and cultural interests. More importantly, others judge me to be warm, sensitive, romantic, altruistic and capable of great love and devotion. I'd love to hear from you if you are a highly educated, emotionally mature woman, interested in a relationship leading to marriage. 9896

Slender, Dark-Haired, Very Pretty - Bright, funny psychologist, young 37, blues and jazz fan, seeks witty, sane, attractive man, 30-45. NYM M182

Your Mother's Dream: 28, handsome, caring Jewish psychologist. Into Jazz, arts, sports. Seeks and interesting attractive woman. Photo/phone. NYM H108

Dynamic, Attractive Psychologist - Seeks secure Jewish man: 30's. Be sincere, successful and witty. Enjoy NYC and nature. Bio/photo/phone. NYM S910

Tall, Slender, Attractive - Intelligent Black woman, 36, PhD psychologist, seeks warm, emotionally mature, active, successful, professional man, 30-46. Nationality unimportant. Please send letter, photo, phone. NYM B395

Affectionate, Attractive, Caring - Older NJ psychologist seeks attractive woman for a loving, enduring relationship. Please include photo and phone. NYM B341

Beautiful, Slim Jewish Divorcee - 45, successful female media psychologist with private practice, seeks male with usual demographics - but believes in chemistry above all. 9778

Handsome Psychologist - Sincere, down-to-earth, looking for bright attractive woman, 30-45. Photo. 4338

Very Attractive Single Woman - Psychologist / writer, seeks leftist man who is fit, funny and fortyish. NYM P036

Tanglewood anyone? - Lovely picnic, Boston Symphony... Engaging, cheeky LI psychologist, pretty, trim, 60s, understated, seeks like male. 5209

Woman Psychologist - 37, blond, sexy, great sense of humor, optimistic, love to cook and loves the outdoors, down-to-earth, voracious reader, whimsical. I am looking for a sensitive, sexy, successful, witty, generous, smart, kind man who wants an intimate relationship. If this is you, please send a note. 8477

True Romance - Desired by psychologist 44, 5'7", brown hair, serious artist - with pretty woman, intelligent, passionate, self-reliant, beautiful eyes, sexy smile, any race or age. Please write. 6806

Sensual-Spirited Psychologist - 40something, 5'5" brunette seeks handsome, humorous, honest professional with strong Jewish consciousness, family values and love of the arts - for joyful, marriage-minded relationship. 4148

Slim Pretty, Jewish Widow - Psychologist, 48; strong cultural interests, liberal politics. Enjoys country, beach. Intelligent, sensitive, emotionally stable woman seeks make counterpart to share life. Photo?/bio/phone. NYM G404

Attractive Psychologist, Male - 38, warm, funny, smart and successful would like to meet a truly beautiful woman (both inside and outside) under 34. Photo much appreciated. NYM G423

Successful Male, PhD, Psychologist - 41, 5'10", slim, warm, caring, sensitive, health conscious, non-smoker, Jewish (not religious). Seeks vivacious, tender, professionally accomplished woman with depth and emotional resources open to becoming best friend/lover/wife. NYM V320

Pretty School Psychologist - Caring, slim, Jewish woman, 36, with zest for the outdoors, seeks thoughtful, active, attractive, professional man, 35-45, for long-term. Note/photo please. 8624

"How But In Custom - And in ceremony are innocence and beauty born?" Jewish psychologist, 36, bright, verbal, attractive, a lover of Yeats, seeks man with romantic heart and high values. NYM K142

Send No Photo - Warm, loving, attractive, sexy psychologist, mother, 47, seeks professional man, 45-58, who values honesty, closeness, simple pleasures. Appreciate meaningful reply. NYM R372

—Vaughan.

Going gently:

The New York Times has an sensitive and in-depth article about the difficult decision to administer strong sedative drugs to terminally ill patients to ease their suffering at the expensive of potentially quickening their death.

It is, in all but one respect, a very good article, however it does contain a monumentally stupid paragraph:

For pain, the guidelines list opioid drugs, including morphine, methadone and fentanyl.

Doctors say that other drugs used for sedation are ketamine, an anesthetic and sedative popular at rave parties, and propofol, an anesthetic, which was ruled, with lorazepam, to have caused Michael Jackson’s death. In very high doses, sodium thiopental is used as a sedative in the three-drug combination used for lethal injections.

You could link almost any drug (or indeed, any substance - table salt - for example) to some nefarious use or lethal outcome. In fact, some of the most demonised street drugs - heroin and cocaine - have common and legitimate medical uses.

Medicine is always a case of balancing the positive and negatives of any treatment for the benefit of the patient. Context-less examples tell us nothing about this balance.

Other than that, the article is very good and really gets to the core of why end-of-life sedation is such as difficult topic, both emotionally and medically.

Link to NYT article 'Hard Choice for a Comfortable Death: Sedation'.

—Vaughan.

December 28, 2009

The isolation contagion:

The Boston Globe covers an interesting new study finding, seemingly paradoxically, that loneliness can be spread from person-to-person and can work its way through social networks.

The paradox is resolved by the important point, outlined by one of the study's authors, John Cacioppo, that “Loneliness isn’t being alone, it’s feeling alone". In other words, it's not about having social contact but about feeling like you have meaningful relationships.

This feeling, it turns out, was increased or was more likely to occur when one person had contact with a person who already reported themselves to be feeling lonely.

The paper Cacioppo co-wrote with Christakis and Fowler, published in the current issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, found that having a friend who reports feeling lonely makes a person 52 percent more likely to feel lonely. In another measure, they found that, for each additional day per week a person reported feeling lonely, his friends reported an additional lonely day per month. Not only that, having a friend who has a friend who feels lonely makes a person 25 percent more likely to feel lonely, and at three degrees of separation (a friend of a friend of a friend) the odds are still increased by 15 percent...

The spread of loneliness seems to have its own particular characteristics. Women, for example, seem to be more susceptible than men. Also, the more lonely people a person knows, the more likely she herself is to become lonely. That trait distinguishes loneliness from something like alcoholism: Having an alcoholic friend increases your odds of becoming an alcoholic, but having three alcoholic friends makes you no more likely than having just one...

Distance also seems to matter to the spread of loneliness. The authors found that living close to a lonely friend was more likely to make their loneliness contagious - if the friends lived more than a mile apart there was no significant effect. This was in contrast to obesity, which, Christakis and Fowler have found, doesn’t require physical proximity to spread. In other work, the two have found that an obese friend who lives in the next state can still make you more likely to gain weight.

Not mentioned by the Globe article was the interesting finding that loneliness spreads most strongly through mutual friends but only weakly through family members.

The study, which you can read the study in full as a pdf, was drawn from data from the famous Framington Heart Study which tracked the health of a small community over many years and, rather fortuitously, asked who was related to and friends with who, initially for the purposes of tracking people down if the researchers lost contact.

Link to Boston Globe article 'The loneliness network'.
Link to PubMed entry for loneliness study.
pdf of full text of study.

—Vaughan.

December 26, 2009

Trend setters may only be visible in rear view mirror:

I've just found this excellent Fast Company article from last year challenging the idea that there is a 'tipping point' in fashions or trends driven by small numbers of highly connected people who have a disproportionate influence over which new products or ideas become popular.

The piece is based on work by Duncan Watts, a physicist and sociologist, who created numerous computer simulations of how trends move through society in a similar way to how medical scientists model how diseases spread.

One study has suggested that the role of key highly influential people in starting fashions or trends is likely to have been vastly overstated. This conclusion has rattled the cages of many in the marketing world who have been focussed on identifying and targeting 'trend setters' for many years.

Watts set the test in motion by randomly picking one person as a trendsetter, then sat back to see if the trend would spread. He did so thousands of times in a row.

The results were deeply counterintuitive. The experiment did produce several hundred societywide infections. But in the large majority of cases, the cascade began with an average Joe (although in cases where an Influential touched off the trend, it spread much further). To stack the deck in favor of Influentials, Watts changed the simulation, making them 10 times more connected. Now they could infect 40 times more people than the average citizen (and again, when they kicked off a cascade, it was substantially larger). But the rank-and-file citizen was still far more likely to start a contagion...

Mind you, Watts does agree that some people are more instrumental than others. He simply doesn't think it's possible to will a trend into existence by recruiting highly social people. The network effects in society, he argues, are too complex--too weird and unpredictable--to work that way. If it were just a matter of tipping the crucial first adopters, why can't most companies do it reliably?

As Watts points out, viral thinkers analyze trends after they've broken out. "They start with an existing trend, like Hush Puppies, and they go backward until they've identified the people who did it first, and then they go, 'Okay, these are the Influentials!'" But who's to say those aren't just Watts's accidental Influentials, random smokers who walked, unwittingly, into a dry forest? East Village hipsters were wearing lots of cool things in the fall of 1994. But, as Watts wondered, why did only Hush Puppies take off? Why didn't their other clothing choices reach a tipping point too?

However, Watts' work is largely based on computer simulations. These have the advantage of having to be based on very explicit well-defined descriptions of the phenomenon, which many of the more popular accounts are not, but have the disadvantage or having to include various assumptions and simplifications about what actually happens when people pass on ideas.

The Fast Company article is interesting as it looks at how some core marketing ideas are being tested by Watts, and how the public relations world is reacting to having some of their assumptions questioned.

Link to Fast Company article 'Is the Tipping Point Toast?'

—Vaughan.

December 17, 2009

The ancient mind was planning earlier than thought:

Science News covers a fascinating new archaeological study that mapped the the remains of an 750,000 year-old settlement lived in by the ancestors of the human race and found evidence for tasks being organised in different areas, suggesting a degree of intelligence and problem solving that was not thought to have arisen until much later in evolution.

The study, just published in Science, analysed the pattern of artefacts in the Gesher Benot Ya’aqov site, located in what is now Northern Israel.

Previously, only modern humans, Homo sapiens, were thought to have developed the mental capacity to organise and separate their daily tasks. However, this site was settled by hominin ancestors of the human race and shows distinct signs of planned organisation:

Daily behaviors occurred in two main parts of a rectangular living area excavated at GBY, the researchers conclude. One area hosted primarily flint-tool making and preparation of fish for eating. In another area, situated around a large hearth, residents resharpened used stone tools, fashioned new tools out of basalt and limestone, ate fish and crabs, and cracked nuts after roasting them.

Roasting allowed the inedible shells of various nuts to be easily peeled off. It also reduced levels of bitter substances, called tannins, found in acorns.

“Hominids who were responsible for the organization of space at GBY had very advanced cognitive abilities that have generally been considered an important marker of human intelligence," Goren-Inbar says.

Many researchers have thought that the mental capacity to plan and organize living spaces around different activity areas first arose among Homo sapiens roughly 100,000 years ago, well after the species originated around 200,000 years ago.

Until now, hominid sites from before 100,000 years ago had yielded stone tools and bones of various animals but no signs of separate activity spots in common living spaces.

Link to write-up from Science News.
Link to summary of scientific study in Science.

—Vaughan.

December 16, 2009

On the soul of robots:

New Scientist has an interesting article discussing research on how we attribute personality traits to robots. This is not just the human-like android from research labs, it's the robots that are already in widespread use in the workplace and home like the floor-cleaning Roomba.

This is a fantastic snippet about a study on the commercially available Aethon TUG robot, used to deliver supplies on hospital wards, and what staff made of the machine:

TUG, which is made by Aethon, can navigate a building's corridors and elevators on its own and tell humans it has arrived with a delivery...

The lack of any social awareness led interviewees to complain that they felt "disrespected" by the robot. "It doesn't have the manners we teach our children," said one, "I find it insulting that I stand out of the way for patients... but it just barrels right on."

Luckily for TUG, its unvarying, one-size-fits-all social skills happened to be a natural fit in the relaxed atmosphere of the post-natal ward, says Mutlu. But the same default settings were interpreted as demanding and attention-seeking on the oncology ward, which is a more stressful and busy place to work. "If you are going to design robots with human-like capabilities you have to design the appropriate social behaviour that goes along with it," Mutlu says.

This reminds me of perhaps the only study that has evaluated what personality traits people attribute to the synthetic speech on a voice mail system, rating it as practical, intelligent, courteous, efficient, straight-forward, sophisticated, methodical, progressive and alert.

Link to NewSci article 'Learning to love to hate robots'.

—Vaughan.

December 15, 2009

Understanding witchcraft:

YouTube has a fantastic documentary about the work of the pioneering anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard who was one of the first researchers to try and understanding the psychology of people he was studying.

He is most well known for his 1937 book Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande where he studied the role of magic and prophecy in the lives of the Sudanese Azande people from their perspective.

This was one of the first times that an anthropologist had attempted to understand other cultural beliefs as a coherent system, rather than simply listing the 'odd' or 'irrational' practices from a Western perspective.

One of his main conclusions was that the Azande were making rational decisions based on different assumptions, in contrast to the general colonial opinion that the people of Africa were somehow 'backward'.

Evans-Pritchard became one of the founders of social anthropology and was influential in a change of perspective in understanding other cultures.

He was also a keen photographer and there is a fantastic collection of his photos that attempted to record the people he met at the Oxford University Pitt Rivers museum.

The documentary is a great overview of both the man and his work with the Azande and Nuer people in Africa.

Link to documentary 'Strange Beliefs: Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard'.

—Vaughan.

December 10, 2009

Fan violence: take a swing when you're winning:

Popular sporting occasions have long been associated with violence and it was long assumed that assaults were more likely to be initiated by losing fans taking out their frustration. This has been contradicted by recent research that suggests it is fans of the winning team whom are more likely to be violent.

These studies are from the Violence and Society Research Group at Cardiff University who have an interesting history. The group was started by Jonathan Shepherd who is not a psychologist, sociologist or criminologist but a facial and dental surgeon.

He noticed that many of the injuries that he was treating were due to attacks, as the face is a common target of attack, and wondered if he could go about reducing facial injuries by reducing violent incidents.

The medical school is near Cardiff's Millenium Stadium, one of the biggest sporting venues in the country, and so the group had the opportunity to study the effect of sporting events on assault and aggression.

In an initial study they found that violent incidents rose when the home team, Wales, won, rather than lost, regardless of the sport being played. A subsequent study evaluated fans on measures of aggressiveness, happiness and intention to drink alcohol before and after the match.

It turned out that aggressiveness was increased in winning fans but not losing fans. A win did not increase happiness but losing or drawing decreased it and intention to drink was not affected by the match result.

This concurs with the results of a somewhat disturbing study on domestic violence that found that assaults against women in the Washington area specifically increased when the Washington Redskins American football team won.

This is interesting in light of one of the main theories of violence, proposed by James Gilligan in his influential book Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic, that says violence is typically a response to humiliation and serves to restore a perceived loss of status.

We don't really have a good analysis of what triggers these specific violent incidents and it could be that winning sports fans are more sensitive to self-perceived humiliation, in line with the theory, but these sports violence studies could equally be evidence against this idea - with the rather unpleasant possibility that assaults are partly the result of a form of post-win triumphalism.

Link to Pubmed entry for study on effect of winning on assaults.
Link to Pubmed entry for study on effect of winning on aggression.

—Vaughan.

Mystery shoppers for mental hospitals:

The New York Times has an article on an interesting scheme by a Dutch hospital where three 'mystery shopper' psychiatric nurses were admitted onto the psychiatric ward pretending to be patients in an attempt to evaluate the care.

The article mentions a similarly to the famous experiment where psychologist David Rosenhan asked several volunteers to report to a psychiatrist that they heard a hallucinated voice say "empty", "hollow" and "thud". When admitted to hospital, all the 'pseudopatients' acted normally but none were suspected as faking. In a subsequent study, staff 'detected' a range of genuine patients as 'fakers'.

The similarity with the mystery shopper scheme is only cursory, however, as in this case the diagnostic systems are quite different, the 'mystery shoppers' extensively trained, and the staff were warned but were not deliberately looking out for the 'impostors'.

The article finishes with an interesting commentary by psychologist Richard Bentall on why the scheme is using 'mystery shoppers' at all and what this says about how we regard patients' own opinions:

“Having covert observation is going to provide you with information you probably wouldn’t get in any other way,” he said.

But Dr. Bentall also sees some irony in using proxy mental patients to illuminate the experiences of real ones. “Their stories are neglected,” he said, “and their understanding of how they got to be in the hospital is not considered important.”

Link to NYT article on mystery shopper patients (via AITHoS).

—Vaughan.

December 07, 2009

Possibly your average punter on sport talk radio:

I've just been reading a fascinating study on 'dysfunctional' sports fans who over-identify themselves with their team and become abusive and confrontational during matches. There was one incidental finding which was only based on a small sample but has the potential to explain a great deal about radio phone-ins: dysfunctional fans were overwhelmingly more likely to call into sports talk radio shows.

Here's the bit directly from the article:

Interestingly, although relatively few people are frequent callers to sports talk radio in this sample (n = 25; 5.5%) of predominantly highly identified fans, a disproportionate number of those who frequently call sports talk radio shows are highly dysfunctional (n = 9; 36%) fans and very few could he classified as less dysfunctional fans (n = 3; 12%).

Perhaps at least as interesting, 68% of this overwhelmingly highly identified sample of fans reported never calling into sports talk radio shows. Of these who never call in, 82.8% can be classified as non-dysfunctional fans.... Consequently, these results have intriguing implications regarding the makeup of the individuals who dominate the sports talk radio airwaves as callers.

More research is clearly needed into this important issue, even if it does confirm what we all already suspect.

Link to summary of study on 'dysfunctional sports fans'.

—Vaughan.

December 03, 2009

Men are from Earth, Women are from Earth:

One of the most regularly recited pieces of popular neuroscience is that women are more likely to use both hemispheres of the brain to process language while men tend only to use one. It turns out, this is a myth - it is simply not supported by the current evidence.

In 2008, a meta-analysis study looked at all the evidence for differences in the balance of language processing in the brains of men and women. It looked at studies on sex differences in handedness, brain structure, on perception of words heard exclusively in the left or right ears, and neural activity recorded by brain scans during language tasks.

When you look at all the studies together, there are no reliable sex differences in word processing or language-related brain activity. Men and women did not differ in how their brains processed language.

I came across this study from a fantastic talk by neuroscientist Lise Eliot, author of the book Pink Brain, Blue Brain that tackles many of the sex difference stereotypes.

She notes how an initial study, published in Nature in 1995, did find results in line with the common myth, but that these results were not replicated.

At the time, however, they got widely publicised - making headlines around the world - and they remain the basis for the common claim despite numerous subsequent studies that suggest this is not the case.

This, notes Eliot, is a common pattern in sex difference research. Results that confirm our steroetypes get widely reported, others are largely ignored by the media.

I really recommend her talk over at Fora.tv and I will look forward to reading the book once I get my hands on a copy.

Link to Lise Eliot on Fora.tv (via Channel N).
Link to PubMed abstract for damning meta-analysis.

—Vaughan.

December 02, 2009

Suicidal Tendencies or Kid Rock:

The latest edition of The Psychologist is a special issue on the psychology of music and it has a great article on how music has a social influence.

One particularly interesting paragraph deals with link between rock music, suicide and self-harm.

There is indeed some evidence that preference for certain types of music is linked to thoughts of self-harm, but the second paragraph is the kicker: there are various reasons why this association is unlikely a reflection of rock causing these thoughts - an in fact, the act of labelling certain music as 'causing suicide' may itself strengthen the association.

The rise of heavy rock with supposedly pro-suicide lyrics in the 1970s and 1980s led to legislation (e.g. attempts to ban sales of CDs featuring a ‘parental advisory’ sticker), public protest (e.g. by the Parents’ Music Resource Center), and many apparently bizarre local actions (e.g. the suspension of a Michigan high school pupil for wearing a T-shirt promoting Korn that featured no lyrics or words apart from the band’s name). The assumption on which these were based, namely that the music causes self-injurious thoughts and actions, is not so far-fetched as might seem, as several studies suggest at least a correlation between music and suicide. For example, Stack et al. (1994) found a link between suicide rates among teenage Americans and variations in subscriptions to a heavy rock magazine; and we (North and Hargreaves, 2006) have found that fans of rock and rap were more likely than others to consider suicide and to self-harm.

Other research, though, is less suggestive of a link. We have also found (North & Hargreaves, 2006) that thoughts of suicide and self-harm precede an interest in rock, so that the latter can’t have caused the former. Similarly, merely describing a song as ‘suicide-inducing’ or ‘life-affirming’ leads listeners to perceive it as such (North & Hargreaves, 2005); by labelling music as suicide-inducing, campaigners and legislators may be helping to create the problem they aim to eradicate. Other research (North & Hargreaves, 2006; Scheel & Westefeld, 1999; Schwartz & Fouts, 2003; Stack et al., 1994) shows that the correlation between suicidal tendencies and an interest in rock is mediated by family background and self-esteem, which raises the issue of which of the latter is the better predictor of the former.

The issue also contains a freely available article on mental turmoil in Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina if you're after something a little more literary.

Link to The Psychologist article 'The Power of Music'.
Link to The Psychologist article on the novel Anna Karenina.

Full disclosure: I'm an unpaid associate editor for The Psychologist and for those about to rock, I salute you.

—Vaughan.

December 01, 2009

Traffic accidents as social interactions gone bad:

I've just read a fascinating study in the journal Traffic Injury Prevention (yes ladies, I got it going on) that looked at which characteristics predicted the number of traffic deaths in particular American states.

The single biggest predictor was not statewide alcohol problems, safety belt use, number of older drivers or wealth, but the murder rate.

The researcher, psychologist Michael Sivak, argues that this is not because people are using cars as murder weapons, but because the murder rate is a proxy for aggression and "the same aggressive tendencies that contribute to homicides also demonstrate themselves, to a certain degree, in interpersonal behaviors on the road".

In other words, driving style is a way of relating to other road users and traffic accidents are as much a social problem as a problem with road layout, driving competence or mechanical safety.

Link to PubMed entry for study.

—Vaughan.

November 28, 2009

Reflected glory:

PsyBlog covers a study that explored the phenomenon of 'reflected glory' where sports fans will psychologically associate themselves with their team more closely if they are successful, but will distance themselves if the team loses.

The post discusses a classic 1976 study that looked at the 'basking in reflected glory' effect:

In the first of three experiments they compared what people wore when their college football team won with when they lost. On each occasion they went out and counted the number of students that wore shirts with their University's name on it. Sure enough students were more likely to wear apparel emblazoned with their university's name if their team had recently won a game.

In the second and third experiments the researchers found that people were much more likely to associate themselves with their team by using the pronoun 'we' if their team had won rather than lost. This effect was especially pronounced when people's public image was threatened. In other words: if people currently feel they look bad to others, perhaps due to some failure, they are even more likely to try and reach for some success from elsewhere and hope that it rubs off on them.

Since then, there has been quite a sizeable literature on the effects on the psychological effects of being a sports fan - something known in the literature as 'sport teams identification'.

One study found a clear link between team success and mood and a review even found a small effect on suicide attempts when you look at whole populations.

I don't know a great deal about sports psychology, but there's a small number of wonderful studies on how fans use pessimism to manage the psychology effects of wins and losses.

For example, one study found that dedicated fans of a team who'd just lost have an altered perception of how pessimistic they were before the game, perceiving their pre-match expectations to be much lower than they actually were.

Link to PsyBlog on the 'reflected glory' effect.

—Vaughan.

November 24, 2009

Going underground:

Slate has a great article discussing how psychologists have used the subway as a natural laboratory to study the social psychology of humans forced to interact in strange and unusual ways during their travels across the city.

I never knew before, but it turns out there's been quite a bit of research on the subways, metros and undergrounds of the world.

Spend enough time riding the New York City subway—or any big-city metro—and you'll find yourself on the tenure-track to an honorary degree in transit psychology. The subway—which keeps random people together in a contained, observable setting—is a perfect rolling laboratory for the study of human behavior. As the sociologists M.L. Fried and V.J. De Fazio once noted, "The subway is one of the few places in a large urban center where all races and religions and most social classes are confronted with one another and the same situation."

Or situations. The subway presents any number of discrete, and repeatable, moments of interaction, opportunities to test how "situational factors" affect outcomes. A pregnant woman appears: Who will give up his seat first? A blind man slips and falls. Who helps? Someone appears out of the blue and asks you to mail a letter. Will you? In all these scenarios much depends on the parties involved, their location on the train and the location of the train itself, and the number of other people present, among other variables. And rush-hour changes everything.

Link to Slate piece on 'Underground Psychology'.

—Vaughan.

November 19, 2009

Lady luck helps gamblers (lose not quite so badly):

A study on male gamblers just published in the Journal of Gambling Studies found that having a girl on your arm does bring 'luck' of sorts, as slot machine gamblers had fewer losses when accompanied by a female.

I am tempted to label this the 'James Bond Effect' but in gambling, good fortune is relative, so if you think good luck means pissing slightly less of your hard earned cash down the drain than you would have done anyway, may lady luck be your guiding light.

The study also found an interesting effect of slot machine gambling on mood: people feeling low beforehand cheered up, while those who felt happy or neutral felt worse afterwards.

Mood and Audience Effects on Video Lottery Terminal Gambling.

J Gambl Stud. 2009 Nov 17. [Epub ahead of print]

Mishra S, Morgan M, Lalumière ML, Williams RJ.

Little is known about the situational factors associated with gambling behavior. We induced 180 male participants (mean age: 21.6) into a positive, negative, or neutral mood prior to gambling on a video lottery terminal (VLT). While gambling, participants were observed by either a male peer, female peer, or no one. Induced mood had no effect on gambling behavior. Participants induced into a negative mood prior to gambling, however, reported more positive moods after gambling, whereas those with positive and neutral moods reported more negative moods after gambling. Participants observed by either a male or female peer spent less time gambling on the VLT compared to those not observed. Participants observed by a female peer lost less money relative to the other observer conditions. Degree of problem gambling in the last year had little influence on these effects. Some practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Link to summary of study on PubMed.

—Vaughan.

November 14, 2009

The illusion of a universe in our own back yard:

Science News covers a revealing new study on the Hadza people of Tanzania that has the potential shake up some of the rusty thinking in evolutionary psychology.

A common line of argument in this field is to suggest that sexual preferences for certain body types exist because we've evolved these desires to maximise our chances of mating with the most fertile or healthiest partner.

For example, studies have interpreted the fact that taller men are more likely to attract mates and reproduce in terms of evolutionary pressures on sexual desire. But most of these and similar studies have been completed on Western samples, while the authors draw conclusions about the 'universal' nature of these 'evolutionary' pressures.

To test how universal these body preferences really are, anthropologists Rebecca Sear and Frank Marlowe looked at whether similar preferences existed in the Hadza people, a hunter-gather tribe from Tanzania.

It turns out, these supposedly 'universal preferences' don't exist in the Hadza. You can read the full text of the paper online as a pdf, but this is taken from the Science News write-up:

Hadza marriages don’t tend to consist of individuals with similar heights, weights, body mass indexes, body-fat percentages or grip strengths... Neither do Hadza couples feature a disproportionate percentage of husbands taller than their wives, as has been documented in some Western nations, the researchers report in the Oct. 23 Biology Letters.

Almost no Hadza individuals mention height or size when asked to explain what makes for an attractive mate, Sear and Marlowe add.

People everywhere seek healthy, fertile marriage partners, Sear proposes. “But I suspect there may not be a preference for one particular signal of health in mates across every population,” she says....

Sear and Marlowe criticize evolutionary psychologists who have argued that physical size influences mating decisions in all societies. That argument rests largely on self-reports of Western college students and analyses of personal advertisements in U.S. newspapers for dating partners, they say.

The problems with relying on Western college students as participants in psychology studies is also addressed by a new paper just released by Behavioural and Brain Sciences which you can read online as a pdf.

The article reviews data from psychology experiments and argues that not only are college students a very restricted subset of society, but they are actually wildly atypical in comparison to the rest of the world's population.

In fact, the authors state that "The findings suggest that members of WEIRD [Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic] societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans".

Link to Science News on Hadza study.
pdf of scientific paper on mating selection in the Hadza.
pdf of BBS article on WEIRD people and selection bias (thanks Tom!)

—Vaughan.

November 03, 2009

Final destination, Golden Gate Bridge:

There's a remarkable article on the world's most popular suicide spot, San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, in the latest American Journal of Psychiatry.

The article has several case studies of people who have died from jumping from the bridge and some fascinating quotes from one of the few people who have survived their attempts.

It is full of curious snippets of information, and one of the clearest things to come through from the article is that the bridge has a sort of iconic attraction for those wanting to kill themselves (indeed, in hindsight, the name itself seems darkly ironic).

This is not just a morbidly romantic statement, it seems to be backed up by research:

Evidence that the Golden Gate Bridge serves as a suicide magnet is provided by Seiden and Spence’s study of individuals who jumped from either the Golden Gate Bridge or the Bay Bridge, both of which connect to San Francisco. The bridges were built within 1 year of each other, have similar heights, and are similarly lethal to jumpers. Seiden and Spence looked at individuals who drove onto either bridge to kill themselves. (They excluded suicides in which the person walked onto either bridge, as the Golden Gate Bridge has pedestrian access while the Bay Bridge does not.)

They found that between 1937 and 1979, 58 people drove across the Bay Bridge to commit suicide from the Golden Gate Bridge. However, no one drove across the Golden Gate Bridge to commit suicide from the Bay Bridge. This suggests that the Golden Gate Bridge has a powerful association with suicide in the minds of some individuals, to the extent that they would drive over one potentially lethal bridge to die at another.

The article also mentions some other facts: the idea that the death is painless is a myth - jumpers die from massive heart, chest or nervous system injuries or by drowning; jumping from the bridge has a 99% fatality rate; there are only 28 known survivors; the suicide rate is counted solely on recovered bodies, bodies washed out to sea, jumpers witnessed but not found, and unclaimed cars in the parking lot are not counted.

The article reminds me of the uncomfortable 2006 film The Bridge about people who jumped from the bridge.

It's uncomfortable viewing because it is one of the few documentaries to address the life history, psychological state, motivations and final moments of people who committed suicide (akin to the 'psychological autopsy' used by professionals), but also because it was made in quite an unethical way.

The filmmakers asked permission to place cameras near the bridge to capture the landscape, but instead filmed jumpers. They then contact the families of those who had died and interviewed them about the persons' life but without informing them that they'd got film of them dying.

The result is a equally fascinating, insightful, tragic and disturbing and I've never settled how comfortable I am with the final product.

The American Journal of Psychiatry article finishes by recommending, on the basis of good evidence, that a suicide barrier would prevent deaths at the bridge.

One of the clearest findings in suicide research is that reducing access to lethal methods reduces suicide (going against the myth that 'if someone wants to kill themselves, they'll always find a way').

Apparently, after much discussion a barrier for the Golden Gate Bridge has been agreed, but it is stalled while surveys are carried out and no final completion date has been agreed.

Link to PubMed entry for Golden Gate Bridge article.

—Vaughan.

October 30, 2009

Liberation psychology graffiti:

I've just seen my first genuine piece of psychology graffiti. The picture is from a wall in Universidad de Antioquia and the graffiti is promoting a conference on the application of 'liberation psychology' to preventing violence and helping the victims of violence in Colombia.

The text in Spanish is roughly translated as "We propose a scientific endeavour committed to historical reality and the problems and aspirations of the people" and is a quote from social psychologist and Catholic priest Ignacio Martín-Baró.

Martín-Baró was working in El Salvador during its bloody civil war and was using social psychology to research the opinions and views of the people and was producing results contrary to the propaganda of the army and government.

He was murdered by the El Salvadorian army in 1989 but he has had a massive influence on psychology and public policy in Latin America.

This in part was due to his strong belief in social psychology as an applied discipline to improve the society and the conditions of the poorest and most deprived.

While liberation psychology itself is typically associated with the left, one of Martín-Baró's legacies is the practice of using social psychology for social improvement, something which is widely accepted in Latin America, regardless of political orientation.

It may seem strange that a conference is being advertised through graffiti, but political graffiti is common on the university campus and ranges from spray painted slogans to huge colourful murals.

If you're interested in learning more about liberation psychology, The Psychologist had a 2004 article discussing both the discipline and Martín-Baró.

Link to The Psychologist article on liberation psychology.

—Vaughan.

October 28, 2009

Social networks of murder:

I'm just reading a long but gripping study that used social network analysis to look at murder as a social interaction between gangs in Chicago to understand how stable networks of retaliation are sustained over time.

However, I was struck by this bit in the introduction, which really highlights the social nature of murder:

But we know that murder is not in fact such a random matter. It is first and foremost an interaction between two people who more often than not know each other: approximately 75% of all homicides in the United States from 1995 to 2002 occurred between people who knew each other prior to the murder (Federal Bureau of Investigation, selected years).

We also know that the victim and offender tend to resemble each other socially and demographically (e.g., Wolfgang 1958; Luckenbill 1977). Young people kill other young people, poor people kill other poor people, gang members kill other gang members, and so on. Thus, contrary to stratification theories, a particular murder is not so much the outcome of the differential distribution of attributes as it is an interaction governed by patterns of social relations between people similar in stature and status.

It's an amazing paper which combines a social network analysis drawn from police murder records with field work that involved talking to gang members to understand their perception and use of violence.

Link to PubMed entry for 'Murder by structure'.
Link to DOI entry for same.

—Vaughan.

October 21, 2009

Disembodied voices of joy, silence and rage:

ABC Radio National's All in the Mind has a powerful and moving programme on the experience of 'hearing voices' that meets with two young women with quite different experiences of auditory hallucinations.

One of the young women, Kat, has largely positive voices and has come to understand and work with them, while another, Mel, has an abusive and taunting voice that has clearly caused a huge amount of distress and impairment.

Mel's story is difficult to hear in parts and the programme starkly illustrates the range of experiences that accompany auditory hallucinations.

The piece also tackles current ideas and approaches to 'hearing voices', from the medical and scientific to the grassroots and social approach of the Hearing Voices Network.

There's also an equally powerful video interview on the AITM site at the link below.

Link to AITM on 'Hearing Voices: stories from the coalface'.

—Vaughan.

September 30, 2009

Creative in love:

The Scientific American Mind blog Mind Matters has a fantastic article on the links between love and creativity and how just thinking of a romantic relationship can have an immediate effect on creative thinking.

The piece covers several studies which have shown that love or the concept of love promotes a 'big picture' thinking style while thinking of a quick shag seems to do the reverse:

The clever experiments demonstrated that love makes us think differently in that it triggers global processing, which in turn promotes creative thinking and interferes with analytic thinking. Thinking about sex, however, has the opposite effect: it triggers local processing, which in turn promotes analytic thinking and interferes with creativity.

Why does love make us think more globally? The researchers suggest that romantic love induces a long-term perspective, whereas sexual desire induces a short-term perspective. This is because love typically entails wishes and goals of prolonged attachment with a person, whereas sexual desire is typically focused on engaging in sexual activities in the "here and now". Consistent with this idea, when the researchers asked people to imagine a romantic date or a casual sex encounter, they found that those who imagined dates imagined them as occurring farther into the future than those who imagined casual sex...

A global processing style promotes creative thinking because it helps raise remote and uncommon associations.

Clearly there is a happy medium to be found here, and I have to say, "would you like me to balance your processing styles?" has the makings of a great chat-up line.

Link to Does Falling in Love Make Us More Creative? (via Frontal Cortex)

—Vaughan.

September 20, 2009

Connected by threads:

The Boston Globe covers several recent studies that have been able to work out sensitive personal details from information made public on social networking sites, possibly including your sexual orientation.

As we discussed earlier this week, huge amounts of information can be gleaned about your life through social network analysis simply from the patterns in your interactions.

In computer security and counter intelligence this is part of a technique called traffic analysis which has a long history in law enforcement. For example, before the days of the internet the UK police would use the Harlequin system to work out social networks from phone call patterns as these were much easier to obtain than court orders allowing phone taps.

Now, we put much of this information online ourselves but are unaware of how much the explicit personal information that we deliberately keep private is still available implicitly in the public data trail.

Sociologists have known this for years but the rapid spread of electronic communication has spurred the development of analysis tools as well as providing the real world data on which it can be applied.

Discussions of privacy often focus on how to best keep things secret, whether it is making sure online financial transactions are secure from intruders, or telling people to think twice before opening their lives too widely on blogs or online profiles. But this work shows that people may reveal information about themselves in another way, and without knowing they are making it public.

Who we are can be revealed by, and even defined by, who our friends are: if all your friends are over 45, you’re probably not a teenager; if they all belong to a particular religion, it’s a decent bet that you do, too. The ability to connect with other people who have something in common is part of the power of social networks, but also a possible pitfall. If our friends reveal who we are, that challenges a conception of privacy built on the notion that there are things we tell, and things we don’t.

Link to Globe article on social networks and personal info (via MeFi).

—Vaughan.

September 17, 2009

Mass hysteria, crazes and panics:

The Fortean Times has an article and some fantastic excerpts from a new encyclopaedia on mass hysteria, social panics and fast moving fads called Outbreak: The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behaviour.

The book tackles some of the most curious and surprising outbreaks from medieval times to the present day, covering everything from medieval dancing plagues to modern day penis theft panics to the worldwide hula-hoop craze of 1958.

It's by sociologists Hilary Evans and Robert Bartholomew both of whom are well known for their work on how unusual beliefs and experiences are shaped by culture. However, mass hysterias and the like and still one of the most mysterious aspects of human psychology.

There have been many attempts to account for the kinds of outlandish collect­ive behaviour that so fascinate forteans – the book provides entries on many of these related theories and explan­ations, from Altered States of Consciousness and Anxiety to False Memory Syndrome, Hysteria and Psychosomatic Phenomena. Many once-favoured ideas don’t really stand up to much scrutiny: consider the fad among 19th-century physicians for ‘curing’ masturbators with bizarre surgical ‘intervention’ and for terrifying their hapless patients with the prospect of bodily ruin and eternal damnation. It could be argued that none of the theories that have been put forward – even the more promising ones – actually applies in all cases.

Ultimately, it’s clear there is no consensus on just why human behaviour should include such anomalies, or how and why they occur. Just possibly, they may be pathological forms of the more healthy processes that cement our personal and social lives and which are only noticed when they go wrong. In many cases, the best that can be done is to understand the local social, political and cultural dynamics, but even so the causes of many such outbreaks remain obscure. This is important, because such erratic collective behaviour casts an awful shadow over human history, and we are no closer to understanding it now than Mackay was in 1841.

In fact, Bartholomew wrote one of my favourite books of all time. Called Little Green Men, Meowing Nuns and Head-Hunting Panics: A Study of Mass Psychogenic Illnesses and Social Delusion (ISBN 0786409975) it was the first book that made me wake up to the power of social influence on individual psychology.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must say that I was sent a PDF of the new encyclopaedia some months ago in the hopes that I would write some blurb for the back, which I was more than happy to do as it is a wonderfully complete collection of social curiosities.

The Fortean Times article has some great excerpts covering an outbreak of feinting in a marching band in 1973 Alabama (a classic case of mass hysteria), an outbreak of cat-like meowing in India in 2004, the 1958 hula-hoop craze, a goblin scare that affect Zimbabwe in 2002, a 'culture bound syndrome' with the unusual name of the jumping Frenchmen of Maine from the 18th and 19th centuries, various outbreaks of fears about chemtrails, a giant earthworm hoax that panicked a Texas town in 1993, and a version of Orson Well's War of the Worlds that caused widespread rioting in Ecuador in 1949.

And if you want more on 'mass hysteria', I highly recommend a 2002 article from the British Journal of Psychiatry by Bartholomew and psychiatrist Simon Wessely.

Link to Fortean Times article 'Outbreak!'
Link to more details on the book.
Link to BJP article on mass psychogenic illness.

—Vaughan.

September 16, 2009

Do deaf people hear hallucinated voices?:

I always assumed the question of whether people deaf from birth could hear hallucinated voices was similar to the question of whether a tree falling in a forest makes a sound if no-one is there, but it turns out that there have been several studies on auditory hallucinations in deaf people.

In fact, I've just read a remarkable paper that reports ten case studies of people who became deaf before they learnt language and who report hearing voices as part of a psychotic mental illness. And this isn't the only study, PubMed has several more.

I always assumed that a born-deaf person would hallucinate signs instead (and apparently, this has also been reported) but this study carefully asked the people concerned about and they seemed to be clear that they were 'hearing' the voices.

In one of the most interesting bits in the study they asked the deaf patients how they could 'hear' voices when they were deaf:

Although the patients were only rated as having auditory hallucinations if they were emphatic that they heard voices rather than received information in some other way, and several gave the sign for talking, questioning about how they were able to hear, being deaf, was typically uninformative. Most commonly the patients merely shrugged, gave a 'don't know' reply, or indicated that they could not understand the question.

Others made attempts at explanation which were superficial, facile or otherwise unsatisfactory, such as 'maybe talking in my brain,' or 'sometimes I'm deaf, sometimes I hear'. One patient argued that he could hear music if he turned it up loud (which probably represented perception of vibration), and implied that the same was true for speech. Still others made untrue or delusional claims that they could hear or used to be able to hear.

Such patients made statements like ‘I’m not deaf‘, or ‘I can hear on one side, on the right’, or ‘I used to be able to hear a little, a year ago’. One patient, who was diagnosed as deaf at the age of 2 years, stated that she could hear before the age of 5 years, but then she hit a brick wall and became deaf. One patient believed that his hearing had been restored by God.

These sorts of seemingly half-hearted explanations are not uncommon in patients with delusional syndromes. For example, if you ask a patient who is paralysed after brain damage but is unaware of it (something called anosognosia) to lift their hand they can often give answers like "it's fine where it is" or "I can't be bothered right now" while continuing to claim that they could move it if they wanted.

I notice a recent article criticises the idea that deaf people can hear voices saying that the interpretation of these hallucinatory experiences relies on hearing people imposing their ideas onto what they've been told. In the case studies above some of the deaf people clearing and unambiguously signed that they 'heard' the voices but sadly I don't have access to this critical article so can't say quite how convincing this argument is.

On a related note, I've heard several people discuss whether blind people could experience 'visual' hallucinations (usually in reference to LSD) but I've had no luck finding any reports of this.

Link to study of hallucinated voices in deaf people.
Link to PubMed entry for same.

—Vaughan.

Unweaving the tangled web:

The New York Times has a brilliant article on how human traits and behaviours, including everything from happiness to obesity, can spread through social networks.

It discusses the findings of the Framington Heart Study. Originally designed to be a study of heart disease in a small American town, it recorded each participant's family and friends in case the researchers lost touch with anyone.

This data allowed sociologists Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler to reconstruct the social networks of the participants and test how family, work and friendship connections affected the spread of things like happiness, obesity and smoking. Their data suggests that even quite nebulous experiences like happiness 'travel' through our web of relationships, as we discussed when they released this study last year.

Coincidentally Wired has also just published an article on the same topic which has some of the stunning network maps from the study, but I really recommend reading the New York Times in full as it is not solely on this one study, it also serves as a nuanced discussion about the usefulness and limitations of social network analysis.

Not least is the difficulty of judging to what extent these effects 'travel' through relationships or how much the 'birds of a feather' effect means similar people just flock together.

You need to understand social network analysis because it is becoming one of the most powerful method to understand human behaviour. As we've discussed before, the fact that digital communications technology is so common means that we're constantly creating data trails that can reveal surprising amounts of intimate information with relatively simple methods.

For example, the BPS Research Digest just covered a study that could infer about 95% of friendships just from looking at location data from mobile phones - something that is one of the most basic information trails in the rich data stream automatically produced by social media.

This approach to understanding human networks is also likely to be increasingly important for human science. The last few decades have seen a massive increase in understanding on how genetics influences our minds and behaviour and social network analysis will see us increasingly linking individual discoveries from biology and cognitive science to the role of our relationships in our lives.

Link to NYT piece 'Is Happiness Catching?'
Link to Wired piece 'The Buddy System'.
Link to Mind Hacks on 'The distant sound of well-armed sociologists'.

—Vaughan.

September 14, 2009

Splintered sexuality as a window on the brain:

Carl Zimmer has an interesting article in Discover Magazine on brain function and sex, one of the most neglected areas in contemporary neuroscience.

We know scandalously little about the neuroscience of sex. For example, we know more about the what the brain does during hiccups than during orgasm and yet very little sex research is completed in comparison to studies on other areas of human life.

Zimmer focuses on several recent neuroimaging studies on sexual desire and contrasts it with some case studies of altered sexuality after brain damage, particularly one of the first from 1945 - a patient named CW who showed a sharp increase in sexual desire associated with epileptic seizures.

Curiously though, the article implies that, in sex research, brain imaging is the way forward while case studies of brain damaged patients are a thing of the past, when this couldn't be further from the truth.

We have learnt far more about the link between brain circuits and human behaviour through studying patterns in what people can and cannot do after brain injury than we ever have through brain scans.

This is because scans can only tell us that activity is associated with a behaviour whereas studies of brain injury tell us whether the affected part of the brain is necessary for the function we're studying.

Think of it like this: if you didn't know how a car worked and wanted to work it out from scanning from the outside, seeing what parts were active when it moved would likely also identify the radio along with the engine.

But if we looked at a bunch of differently damaged cars we would be able to quickly work out that the radio was non-essential for driving because when it was damaged, the car could still move, whereas damage to the engine stopped it dead.

The same goes for sex research and as described in a recent scientific article on what altered sexual function after brain damage tells us about sexuality, 'lesion studies' have taught us a great deal, whereas the relatively few brain scanning studies are still just scratching the surface.

Both are important, of course, and there are advantages to each. Zimmer gives the example of an EEG study showing the progression of activity through the brain during sexual desire, something not possible just from studies of damage.

Nevertheless, researching brain dysfunction is still our most useful tool and one that has taught us the most about the neuroscience of human sexuality.

Link to Discover article 'Where Does Sex Live in the Brain?'
Link to article on what brain damage tell us about sex.

—Vaughan.

September 10, 2009

First among equals in the mind of a child:

Science News has a fascinating article on research suggesting that the desire for autonomy is a universal feature of human psychology that can be seen in children around the world and is not something solely prominent in Western children.

The stereotype is that Western society is individualistic and Eastern is collectivist, but as we've discussed before, this broad stereotype often doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Not without some scepticism, this new research suggests that children begin to develop concepts of autonomy from about the age of 10, regardless of which culture they grow up in.

[Psychologist Charles Helwig of the University of Toronto says] his new findings support the idea that universal concerns among children — such as a need to feel in control of one’s behavior and disapproval of harming others — shape moral development far more than cultural values do.

“It’s remarkable how little cultural variation we have found in developmental patterns of moral reasoning,” says Helwig, who presented his results in Park City, Utah, at the recent annual meeting of the Jean Piaget Society.

Helwig and like-minded researchers don’t assume that kids’ universal responses spring from a biologically innate moral-reasoning capacity. Instead, they say, children gradually devise ways of evaluating core family relationships in different situations. Kids judge the fairness and effectiveness of their parents’ approaches to punishing misbehavior, for example. These kinds of relationship issues are much the same across all cultures, from Helwig’s perspective.

Link to Science News article 'Morality Play'.

—Vaughan.

September 07, 2009

Latah and the rules of rule breaking:

Latah is a curious mental state seemingly localised to Malaysia and Indonesia where a person gets wound-up to such a degree that they show an exaggerated startle response, are highly suggestible, and may produce unintentional tic-like behaviour sequences when prompted by others.

It has been discussed as rare exotica in the medical literature but owing to the wonders of the internet, there are now many videos of it on YouTube (welcome to the age of armchair anthropology).

The name is also used to refer to people who have a tendency to get into latah states, and other people may deliberately trigger latah behaviours in the person as a sort of usually good natured social teasing.

For example, this video has some friends indulging in some good natured joshing by getting one of their latah companions to do a whole range of daft actions through demonstration or suggestion. The latah seems compelled to comply, occasionally snapping out of it to implore them to 'stop it!'.

There are many other examples online. Although the specific triggered behaviours vary, almost all have the element of good-natured group teasing.

The condition is described by Western psychiatry as a culture-bound syndrome as it is typically thought only to occur in Malaysian and Indonesian people although the medical literature has had an ongoing debate about whether other cultures have the same phenomenon under a different name.

This is from an article on culture bound syndromes from The Psychiatric Times:

This same physiology has been elaborated in a variety of societies that are unrelated either historically or culturally. Among the Ainu in Japan, the syndrome is called imu, and in a French-Canadian population in Maine it is called jumping. Thus, these syndromes are similar, but not identical, from society to society. This, of course, is true of the diagnostic entities described in DSM-IV as well. Like hyperstartling, sleep paralysis (a feeling of paralysis when either just falling asleep or waking up, sometimes accompanied by visual or audio hallucinations) has been elaborated into a culture-bound syndrome in a number of unrelated geographic locations. It is known as uqamairineq among the Yupik Eskimos and as old hag in parts of Newfoundland, Canada.

Anthropologists, who are much better at dealing with cultural variation without trying to shoehorn it into their familiar categories, have often loudly scoffed at the psychiatric definition of latah as a syndrome, suggesting it is just a defined social role of the local culture that has its own limits and and 'rules'.

The latah can break social convention by swearing or acting the fool, but violence or sexual indecency rarely occur and would be frowned upon.

In other words, it allows for socially sanctioned rule breaking while giving the person the justification of not being in control of their behaviour.

This is a common theme in society. Think about our ideas of a 'wild night out'. Someone gets really drunk and flashes their arse at a passing bus - craaazy! Someone gets really drunk and flashes their cock at a bus - sex offender.

The 'drunk' reason doesn't seem to excuse the latter quite so well, showing that there are limits to being 'out of control'.

This doesn't mean that we are fully in control either, it just means that all societies have established ways of allowing us to live on the boundaries (the liminal if you want the jargon).

From this perspective, Latah is a local example of a common human tendency.

Link to video of a latah (more here - thanks Ivan!)
Link to Psychiatric Times on culture-bound syndromes.

—Vaughan.

September 03, 2009

Scapegoats cause disease:

The New York Times has a fascinating piece on the historical tendency for societies to find scapegoats for outbreaks of disease.

The article gives examples from modern epidemics of how specific groups have been singled out as responsible for a disease as a simple explanation for complex situations.

One of the most interesting parts is where it tackles why certain groups may have been targeted.

In some cases, the author hypothesises that certain cultural practices may have meant some subcultures were less affected by outbreaks, making it easier for more affected population to point the finger of suspicion:

It is not uncommon for ethnic groups to have religious or cultural customs that protect against disease — but whether it was originally intended to do that or not is often lost in time.

Manchurian nomads, Dr. McNeill said, avoided plague because they believed marmots harbored the souls of their ancestors, so it was taboo to trap them, although shooting them was permitted. Butin the early 20th century, trapping by immigrants from China contributed to plague outbreaks.

And Tamils from India working as plantation laborers in Malaysia may have had less malaria and dengue than their Malay and Chinese co-workers did because they never stored water near their houses, leaving mosquitoes no place to breed.

The article reminded me of Jared Diamond's influential book Guns, Germs, and Steel. Diamond argues that it is impossible to separate the history of human culture from the influence of disease because disease has been one of the most powerful, if not unintentional, influences in competition between social groups.

Link to NYT 'Finding a Scapegoat When Epidemics Strike'.

—Vaughan.

August 26, 2009

The sexual transformation delusion:

Medical journal Epilepsy and Behavior has a curious case study of a female patient who had the experience of changing sex when she had a seizure.

The patient in question had a small tumour near the right amygdala and showed abnormal right temporal lobe activity on an EEG. Interestingly, when she had the experience of changing sex, she also experienced other females in the vicinity as also transforming into males.

She experienced a sensation of dull nausea rising from the epigastrium [abdomen] with concomitant fear, sometimes also accompanied by déjà vu, in isolation, several times per week. Occasionally this developed into a complex alteration of perception, which she explained as follows: ”I’m no longer feeling to be a female. I have the impression to transform into a male. My voice, for example, sounds like a male voice that moment. One time, when I looked down to my arms during this episode, these looked like male arms including male hair growth.”

This particular kind of perceptual disturbance was not restricted to herself, but also characterized her perception of female persons nearby during the episode: “One time another woman, a friend of mine, was in the same room, I perceived also her as becoming a male person including changing sound of her voice.” After introduction of anticonvulsive treatment with carbamazepine, only the elementary simple-partial phenomena of epigastric aura and déjà vu persisted. Secondary generalized tonic–clonic seizures never occurred.

Sex change delusions have been reported in the medical literature before, but usually in longer-term psychoses in people with diagnoses like schizophrenia, rather than occurring as a short-term effect of a seizure.

In fact, sex change delusions were reported by one of the most famous psychiatric patients in history: Daniel Schreber, a 19th century German judge who wrote about his experience of insanity in his book Memoirs of My Nervous Illness.

Among other experiences he describes how he believed that his mind was attracting 'rays' from God causing him feminising sensations of 'voluptuousness' which he noticed as female body changes.

Temporary sex change 'delusions' have also been created using hypnosis in highly hypnotisable people in two remarkable studies that attempt to understand how the mind justifies a belief clearly contrary to reality.

Link to DOI entry and summary of case study.

—Vaughan.

August 17, 2009

Standing together against combat trauma:

There is probably no more hostile environment to mental health treatment than the military. Recently, a new treatment method has been widely adopted by the UK Armed Forces and, perhaps for the first time in history, officers are requesting it in droves.

In major wars since the 20th century more fighters have been lost to psychiatric casualties than bodily injuries but psychiatrists and psychologists are still mistrusted by the corps.

It was explained to me rather tactfully that "soldiers are not necessarily the most psychologically minded of individuals" and it is likely a combination of the macho culture and conditioning to deal with discomfort by sheer grit that casts mental strain as weakness in the military.

This has made both mental health problems and their treatment a source of significant stigma in one of the professions most likely to cause trauma and breakdown in its employees.

Trauma Risk Management or TRiM was first developed by the Royal Marines, one of the UK's most hardened battle corps, and trains key members to recognise signs of mental strain in their comrades and provides support at the level of the unit.

It's a wonderfully conceived approach as it takes advantage of the esprit de corps, the intense group bond that forms between fellow soldiers, but which also makes them wary of accepting help from 'outsiders'.

But it also avoids the practice of sending in outsiders to provide 'debriefings' after traumatic incidents which have been found, in many cases, to make the trauma worse.

A recent paper [pdf] published in Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps outlines the TRiM approach. Non-medical mid-level soldiers are trained to assess their colleagues after a potentially traumatic event and look for risk factors for poor-coping, provide information on which psychological reactions to expect, give informal support and know when to refer to specialist medical staff.

More widely the approach aims to change attitudes to mental distress by making it both an acceptable topic and another form of operational training.

And it is clear that there is a currently a need for a different approach, particularly it seems, in the US military.

A recent review of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in soldiers deployed to Iraq found that, seemingly uniquely, US soldiers show increased levels of the disorder one year after returning from the war zone. This is exactly the opposite pattern to that which is typically seen in other soldiers and civilians.

Science writer David Dobbs has received a lot of flak for suggesting that the system that provides mental health treatment to US veterans is unintentionally encouraging long-term disability but the figures suggest he may be right.

TRiM could be an effective counter-measure to mental illness in the military and it is certainly popular. It is also being adopted widely in the civilian emergency services, but it remains under-researched.

The recent paper on TRiM notes that a trial is currently being run by the UK Ministry of Defence and preliminary results suggest cautious optimism although we still await the first published study its effectiveness when deployed on the ground.

In light of the lack of evidence, it's perhaps a little worrying that TRiM is being increasingly flashed around as a PR-friendly talisman of good practice whenever the military's mental health credentials are questioned and it has also now become the basis of a minor training industry.

Nevertheless, the simple fact that it has been accepted and requested by the armed forces themselves is a significant advance for military psychiatry.

pdf of 'Trauma risk management (TRiM) in the UK Armed Forces'

—Vaughan.

August 13, 2009

Seeing what we want to see in our friends:

The Boston Globe has an interesting piece on how bad we are at judging our friends' beliefs, opinions and values but why we tend to assume they match with our own.

The article covers various examples of this effect, but it mentions a finding from a shortly to be published study finding that the most socially connected people are typically the least accurate at judging their friends' attitudes:

A similar effect arises when people are asked questions about right and wrong rather than politics. Recent research by Francis Flynn, a psychology professor at Stanford, and Scott Wiltermuth, a doctoral student there, looked at people in tight-knit workplace and graduate-school settings.

The researchers found that people assumed, often unquestioningly, that their responses to a series of ethical dilemmas were shared by the majority of their close colleagues. In reality they often were not. More strikingly, it was the more socially connected among the test subjects who were more likely to be wrong.

The article has a bit of a quirk, however, by supposedly explaining "Psychologists call this projection: in situations where there’s any ambiguity, people tend to simply project their feelings and thoughts onto others".

Except, they don't. The effect discussed by the article, where we over-estimate the extent to which people share our own mindset, is called the false consensus effect.

Projection is a unverified psychological defence mechanism where people supposedly misperceive psychological states in other people that, in reality, they have themselves but unconsciously want to hide from their conscious mind.

This was a concept originally developed by Sigmund Freud and systematised, along with a range of other 'defences mechanisms', by Anna Freud in her landmark book The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence.

However, as with the majority of defences proposed in psychoanalysis, the basic process has been experimentally verified but the defence aspect (it's the unconscious hiding the unthinkable from us) has not.

Link to Globe article 'What you don’t know about your friends'.

—Vaughan.

August 10, 2009

Happiness is not universal:

The latest edition of the journal Emotion has a fascinating study comparing common concepts of happiness and unhappiness between Americans and Japanese people. While we tend to think that 'happiness' is a universal concept, it turns out that we think of it in quite culturally specific ways.

Happiness and unhappiness in east and west: Themes and variations.

Emotion. 2009 Aug;9(4):441-56.

Uchida Y, Kitayama S.

Cultural folk models of happiness and unhappiness are likely to have important bearings on social cognition and social behavior. At present, however, little is known about the nature of these models. Here, the authors systematically analyzed American and Japanese participants' spontaneously produced descriptions of the two emotions and observed, as predicted, that whereas Americans associated positive hedonic experience of happiness with personal achievement, Japanese associated it with social harmony.

Furthermore, Japanese were more likely than Americans to mention both social disruption and transcendental reappraisal as features of happiness. As also predicted, unlike happiness, descriptions of unhappiness included various culture-specific coping actions: Whereas Americans focused on externalizing behavior (e.g., anger and aggression), Japanese highlighted transcendental reappraisal and self-improvement. Implications for research on culture and emotion are discussed.

Link to PubMed entry for the study.

—Vaughan.

August 09, 2009

Revisting the 'Hawthorne effect':

The Hawthorne Effect is famous for showing that people will change their behaviour when observed, or that any change increases productivity, or perhaps that experimenters always influence their participants. It has become one of those legends of psychology that turns out to be not quite what we believe.

It's the subject of the second edition of BBC Radio 4's excellent Mind Changers series which discovers that the original studies, their interpretations and the effect itself have become somewhat mythical.

The studies were conducted on employees of the Hawthorne works in Chicago, a factory that built relays switches for the telephone industry.

The research, conducted between the 1920s and 30s, was not always as systematic as it could have been and was mostly close observations of five women, giving rise to fascinating experimenters' reports, some of which are read out on the programme.

Unlike studies today, the researchers carefully noted their opinion of the personality of the workers, their conversations, what was happening in their lives and how this affected their productivity.

The actual findings that give rise to the 'Hawthorne effect' are in doubt and are still debated (there was some fascinating news on the Advances in the History of Psychology blog about this just recently) but the study was hugely influential in that it was the first to connect the personal to the commercial.

Workers were no longer just cogs in the industrial machine who were lost from sight as soon as they left the factory, but people whose work was intimately connected to their home and social lives.

This is now the basis of modern management techniques and the Hawthorne studies, regardless of the debates over the evidence, were the inspiration.

Anyway, another brilliant documentary from the Mind Changers series put together by the ever-excellent Claudia Hammond.

Link to Mind Changers on the Hawthorne Effect.

—Vaughan.

August 04, 2009

The dark side of oxytocin:

Oxytocin is usually described as the 'trust hormone' owing to its involvement in social bonding but a new study covered by Scientific American suggests it may have a wider role in human interaction as it has been found it increase feelings of envy and gloating.

The study, led by psychologist Simone Shamay-Tsoory, used a familiar format in oxytocin research. It asked participants to play a competitive game while half were given a nasal spray containing the hormone and half were given a placebo spray.

Although they thought they were playing another participant, in reality, they were playing a computer programmed to act in a certain way to elicit competitive emotions:

The computer was programmed to either win more money than the players to trigger feelings of envy, lose more money to elicit a form of gloating known as schadenfreude (delight over another's misfortune) or to win or lose equal amounts of money. To encourage these negative emotions, the researchers gave the computer player an arrogant "personality". They did this by asking the volunteers to appraise their chances of winning more money than the other player; although nearly all volunteers predicted 50–50 odds, they were told their opponents gave themselves an 80 percent chance of winning.

When compared with a placebo, volunteers who inhaled oxytocin said they felt greater levels of envy or gloating when they lost or won more money than the computer, respectively—findings the researchers detailed online July 29 in Biological Psychiatry. On the other hand, when the volunteers were questioned after the game, inhaling oxytocin apparently had no effect either following gains of equal amounts of money or on mood in general.

The researchers also measured mood in general and found no change, suggesting the increase in negative feelings toward others couldn't be explained as a general intensifying of emotions.

In their paper, they note several exceptions to the media stereotype that oxytocin is a 'hug hormone', citing studies that it increases aggression and territorial defence in some species. Also contrary to the cliché, a recent study [pdf] found it had no effect on empathy for other people's pain.

They conclude that, rather than being a something that promotes trust and bonding, oxytocin enhances all social emotions, including the good, the bad and the ugly.

Link to SciAm on oxytocin and envy study.
Link to abstract of study.

—Vaughan.

August 03, 2009

Seized by Voodoo spirits:

I've just found a remarkable paper with several cases of epilepsy that were interpreted as voodoo possession. They were all people with roots in Haiti, where voodoo is the predominant religion, and where spirit possession is considered a common spiritual event.

For thousands of years epilepsy has been explained as spirit possession in religions around the world. Epilepsy is also known to trigger intense religious or spiritual experiences in some people but the majority of cases are from the West and so have a distinctly Christian theme.

This 36-year-old woman had several years of recurrent complex partial seizures that manifested as a strong sense of fear and epigastric coldness, followed by loss of awareness, utterances of nonsensical phrases, and complex motor automatisms. The local mambo attributed the events to her being taken by “Melle Charlotte,” a french loa [spirit], with the nonsensical speech being interpreted as a foreign language.

It is said that during the possession by this spirit, a person will speak perfect French or other languages, even though in life, the person has no knowledge of that language. She continued to have seizures despite the mambo’s attempts to conjure the spirit. He explained his failure to the fact that Melle Charlotte is a very particular loa who makes only sporadic appearances. She was not treated with AEDs [anti-epileptic drugs] until she left Haiti at the age of 34.

An EEG revealed a right anterior temporal focus, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed right hippocampal atrophy. Seizures improved with carbamazepine (CBZ), although compliance with medication was a problem, largely because of family interference.

The cases are interesting as they highlight how easily the 'possession' theory fits with the unpredictable course of epilepsy and its effects when it seems to briefly 'take over' the body and mind of the affected person.

It raises the question of how much observations of epilepsy, a condition that affects approximately 1% of the population, have contributed to the idea of possession throughout the world.

Link to paper on epilepsy and Voodoo experiences.
Link to PubMed entry for same.

—Vaughan.

August 01, 2009

Metro psychiatry:

This month's British Journal of Psychiatry has a poignant poem by Canadian poet and psychiatrist Ron Charach who muses on 'Psychiatrists on the Subway':

Apparently the poem is from his collection Selected Portraits that contains a number of other poems on psychiatry and mental illness.

Psychiatrists on the Subway

One rarely spots psychiatrists on the subway
rubbing the haze of a long day's sessions
from their lean temples,
or thumbing through paperbacks that deal
with anything-but.

Wouldn't they like an update on who's
In the world and how they're doing?
Or would the ridership be wary of men and women
whose briefcases rattle with the tic tac
of pills, whose ears perk
like armadillos' at conversations
two seats over?

More likely we locate them in a bad joke,
in a wing-chair beside a firm couch,
a suicide statistic, a product seminar
with deli sandwiches courtesy of Pfizer or Roche
or Eli Lilly;
perhaps on the beach of a convention hotel
with a panorama of thong-clad beauties
who seldom talk revealingly

Before bed a psychiatrist sets his ears
on the night-table
and prays for a night of long silence
from a god who prefers
to listen.

You can hear Charach himself reading poems from the collection, including 'Psychiatrists on the Subway' at this page. He reads in a calm deliberate manner which really suits the material.

Link to poem in the British Journal of Psychiatry.
Link to Charach reading his poetry.

—Vaughan.

July 31, 2009

Laughter the best medicine or a bitter pill to swallow:

Science News has a fascinating article on people with gelotophobia, a fear of being laughed at. It seems the phobia might be driven by a problem in perceiving the social meaning of laughter, so even light-hearted chuckles are perceived as scornful snickers.

The piece covers the surprising amount of research on the phobia, tracing the perceptual problems from possible learnt responses during childhood to difficulties in picking up visual cues from body language.

To scientists’ surprise, those that scored high for fear of being laughed at didn’t react more strongly to the sounds of negative laughter than did those with no fear. The gelotophobes did, however, perceive positive laughter, such as hearty or cheerful laughter, as unpleasant or spiteful.

The scientists also measured participants’ moods before and after the experiment. Those with no fear of laughter reported feeling more cheerful after hearing the sound tracks, while gelotophobes reported no change in mood, the researchers reported in the February Humor.

Laughter is a remarkably complex form of social communication that is still not well understood by cognitive scientists although one of the best accessible explorations of the topic was in an edition of RadioLab from last year.

Link to Science News on 'When Humor Humiliates'.

—Vaughan.

July 23, 2009

The wisdom of crowds:

New Scientist has an excellent piece on how new research on the psychology of crowds is challenging the idea that people become an 'unruly mob' in large numbers. In fact, recent research shows that people tend to cooperate and quickly achieve an altruistic and bonded group identity when in large numbers.

This partly relies on the fact that our group identity is fluid, as demonstrated by an elegant experiment by crowd psychologist Mark Levine that the article touches on:

The fluidity of group psychology was also demonstrated in a 2005 experiment on English soccer fans by Mark Levine at the University of Lancaster, UK. He found that supporters of Manchester United who had been primed to think about how they felt about their team were significantly more likely to help an injured stranger if he was wearing a Manchester United shirt, rather than an unbranded shirt or one of rival team Liverpool.

However, fans who were primed to think about their experience of being a football fan in general were equally likely to help strangers in Liverpool shirts and Manchester United shirts, but far less likely to help someone wearing an unbranded one (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, vol 31, p 443). This shows the potency of group membership, and also how fluid the boundaries can be.

The article mentions several studies of dangerous crowd situations where there seems to have been large scale spontaneous co-operation that seemed to have averted more serious problems.

We recently covered research that found that the more people present at a confrontation, the less likely there is to be a violence outcome, although there were specific turning points where violence could go either way.

As the piece mentions, this is particularly interesting in light of a tactic called 'kettling' commonly employed by UK police to control large crowds. It involves surrounding the crowd and letting individuals leave but not letting anyone back in.

The psychology of this tactic was discussed by Bob Hughes, the head of training at the Metropolitan Police's Public Order Unit, on a 2004 edition of BBC All in the Mind.

Interestingly, he describes it in terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where eventually the need to protest will be overtaken by the need to eat, drink, rest and so on, and so people will slowly disperse.

This is a distinctly individualistic approach to crowd psychology. It assumes that the crowd will be violent and so needs to be contained but that it can be broken down on an individual basis.

One implication from this new research on crowd psychology is that the kettling process itself may trigger violence on the first place, because it sets up a confrontational situation and strengthens the crowds' group identity at the same time.

Link to NewSci piece on the 'wisdom of crowds'.

—Vaughan.

July 22, 2009

More real than real:

An interesting aside from a 1983 study that describes how some elderly psychiatric patients experienced photos and TV images as real people with whom they could interact:

A new sub-type of perceptual disorder was identified in 7 patients who treated T.V. images and newspaper photographs (e.g. a nude calendar girl) as if they were real and existed in the three-dimensional space. These patients talked to the images, saw them moving freely and on occasions offered them food and drink. This disorder which the authors would like to term the "picture sign" can best be described as a "sensory delusion"; no significant association between this sign and sex, age, underlying pathology, impending death or cognitive score was identified.

I've often heard the cliché that patients with dementia believe that people on television are in the room with them, but this is the nearest I've come to discovering any published research on the topic. If you know of any, do let me know.

However, if you're a Spanish speaker, there was an interesting incident captured on a phone-in TV game show, where an elderly and presumably somewhat confused contestant calls the show, hears her own voice coming from the television and thinks it is someone else joining in the conversation.

Brilliantly, the exasperated game show host sticks with it and everything gets delightfully surreal.

—Vaughan.

July 16, 2009

Aimless excursions:

NPR has an interesting short article on wandering in dementia. Conditions likes Alzheimer's disease can cause patients to embark on seemingly aimless walks and sometime epic journeys, but nobody is quite sure why it happens.

We are fascinated by the pilgrim, the lost soul, the sovereign wayfarer. In others. In ourselves. The literature of wandering — Homer's Odysseus, Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, Steinbeck's Dust Bowl families, Star Trek's questing starships, for instance — fills shelves and shelves. "One wanders through life as if wandering through a field in the dark of night," writes Lemony Snicket.

For dementia-driven wanderers, the desire to ramble can be amplified...

Scientists are also not sure why dementia often leads to roaming. But there is this sobering statistic from the Alzheimer's Association: About 50 percent of people who wander will suffer serious injury or death if they are not found within 24 hours.

For this reason, wandering has been a subject of a fair amount of medical research. Unfortunately, it is still largely a mystery and all we know for certain is that patients who wander tend to be physically fitter but more cognitively impaired.

This had led to a number of innovative ideas to prevent patients getting lost, from electronic tracking by mobile phone to decoy bus stops on hospital grounds.

Link to NPR on wandering in dementia.

—Vaughan.

July 13, 2009

A reflector for violence:

I don't know what to make of this, but the discovery is quite startling. It's data from a World Health Organisation study on lethal violence, finding that the ratio between murder and suicide differs between countries, and in some countries differs between sexes.

It suggests an interesting hypothesis, that cultural differences affect whether lethal violence is typically directed outwards (murder) or inwards (suicide). Skip to the findings if you just want the bottom line.

An Analysis of WHO Data on Lethal Violence: Relevance of the New Western Millennium.

Rezaeian M.

Asia Pac J Public Health. 2009 Jul 2. [Epub ahead of print]

INTRODUCTION: Suicide and homicide are considered to be lethal violent acts with a clear difference in their directions, that is, inwardly "killing oneself" or outwardly "killing another," respectively. There are some studies in which these 2 violent acts are considered under the same framework mostly within Western countries. This article for the first time investigates this issue throughout the world. Material and methods. The present study uses data that have been estimated by Global Burden of Disease (GBD) project for 2000 for the 6 different regions of the world proposed by WHO. The suicide/homicide ratio has been calculated by dividing the suicide rate by the sum of the suicide and homicide rates within each age and sex groups.

FINDINGS. Three distinct groups have emerged. In the first group, that is, Southeast Asia, Europe, and Western Pacific, lethal violence in both males and females usually directs inward whereas in the second group, that is, Africa, lethal violence in both males and females directs outward. In the third group, that is, America and Eastern Mediterranean, in males lethal violence generally directs outward whereas in females it often directs inward.

CONCLUSION: Under the same framework if a factor causes external blame for the people's failures it will increase the likelihood that the suicide/homicide ratio is expressed as homicide and vice versa. Although this might explain the observed pattern to some extent, more in-depth studies are needed to better understand the causal root of the pattern.

Link to PubMed entry for study.

—Vaughan.

For whom the ball tolls:

I was just re-reading the excellent Prospect magazine article on psychotherapy and cricket when I was struck by a bit about the high rate of suicides in professional cricket players that I'd not noticed before.

It mentions David Frith's book Silence of the Heart which specifically focuses on the large numbers of ex-cricket pros who have taken their own lives. This from the New Statesman review:

Is this grim roll call of any significance? In 1998, 1.07 per cent of the 264,707 male deaths in the UK were attributable to suicide; according to David Frith's research, of the 339 England Test cricketers who had died by July 2000, 1.77 per cent were suicides. The figures are even higher for Australia (well, they have to beat us at everything, don't they?), South Africa (an astonishing 4.12 per cent) and New Zealand. In all, Frith has unearthed more than 100 examples from all levels of the game.

I looked in the medical literature and it seems it has also been discussed there. A paper in Australasian Psychiatry examined mental illness in professional Aussie cricketers and found high rates of mood disorders, suicide, and drug and alcohol issues, along similar lines to a recent study on professional jazz musicians.

During my search I came across the astounding and tragic life of South African cricketer Aubrey Faulkner (pictured), who came from a violent background to be a cricketing legend, war hero, sports mentor and finally a suicide statistic.

It's not clear whether cricket is particularly associated with mental illness, or whether this just reflects a trend in all elite level sportsmen, but it's an unusual connection that I'd never come across before.

Link to New Statesman review of 'Silence of the Heart'.
Link to PubMed entry for paper on mental illness and cricket.

—Vaughan.

July 05, 2009

Countering the fixated threat:

I've just found this interesting 2007 article on the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre, a combined unit of the British Police and health service that attempts to divert disturbed and potentially dangerous stalkers to mental health services before they attempt violence.

[Psychiatrist] David James - whose research helped to found the centre, and who now co-directs it - outlines its mission: 'We have discovered that letters written to prominent individuals can be a powerful tool in detecting people suffering from untreated psychotic illness,' he says.

But FTAC isn't just about preventing murders that haven't yet occurred, and is much less about protecting the powerful by using psychiatrists' powers to detain patients under the Mental Health Act. Its real innovation is to marry crime prevention with a new way of finding and helping those with therapeutic needs:

'This is an area where the interests of security and public health overlap,' James says. 'We're not just providing protection: we're helping to find care and treatment for those whose lives are being destroyed by untreated mental illness.' Some of the patients first identified by FTAC, James says, are now leading 'functional and relatively normal' lives.

We've featured research from the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre before on Mind Hacks, when we discussed a recent study on 'a classification of royal stalkers'.

As the article notes, the centre seems to have caused some controversy when it opened with news reports concerned that it would some sort of shadowy persecutor of oddballs and the obsessed.

For reasons that don't seem entirely clear, it's recently been the focus of interest from two British members of parliament who asked various written questions about the centre. You can read their questions and the answers provided by the government online which are another useful source of information about the service.

Link to Observer article on the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre.

—Vaughan.

June 29, 2009

Honey, I'm shrinking the kids:

I've just discovered a New York Times article from earlier this year about psychologists who are studying their own kids in the service of top flight scientific research.

Studying one's own kids has a long and proud tradition in psychology. Perhaps the first person to do so formally was Charles Darwin, who in 1877 published his paper A Biographical Sketch of an Infant which was based on observations of his own children.

Freud, of course, studied and analysed his own children (most famously Anna Freud) but perhaps the most influential was child psychologist Jean Piaget who based many of his ideas on observations of his own three children.

Also notable was one of the first women ever to be awarded a PhD in psychology, Milicent Washburn Shinn, who did her research on her own niece.

The New York Times piece covers many modern cognitive science projects that are based on observations of the researchers' children to get the sort of in-depth data it would otherwise be impossible to obtain.

The 'human speechome' project is probably the most well-known where developmental psychologist Deb Roy is recording virtually every sound made by his young child from birth to "observe and computationally model the longitudinal language development of a single child at an unprecedented scale".

Roy discusses the project and additional audio and video illustrates the article with more detail on the project.

The article also tackles some of the ethical issues of using your own children as research participants. This is an important topic because currently, there are no widely agreed guidelines on this long-established practice.

This exact topic sparked an article in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association earlier this year to mull over the rights and wrongs of the situation.

The article covers a wide range of studies although is quite US-centric. One of the most notable examples this side of the pond resulted in a book by UK psychologist Charles Fernyhough released as A Thousand Days of Wonder in the US and The Baby in the Mirror in the UK which describes the development of his daughter through her first three years of life.

Link to NYT 'Test Subjects Who Call the Scientist Mom or Dad'.
Link to JAMA article on 'Parent investigators: a dilemma'.
Link to PubMed entry for same.

—Vaughan.

The effect of the rats on the rat race:

Not Exactly Rocket Science covers an intriguing study on how people try less hard in a competition as the number of competitors increases.

The researchers started off with a simple observation that US students tended to get better marks when they took their exams in smaller exam rooms.

This could have been for many reasons of course, so they set about running several experiments to see if the effect was genuinely down to competitiveness.

These additional studies found that smaller groups do indeed increase competitiveness, and several also allowed them to attempt to explain why:

...they told 50 students that they would have a week to win $100 by adding as many Facebook friends as possible. They found that the students felt more motivated to compete when facing 10 competitors compared to 10,000, and they were also more likely to compare themselves against the others within the smaller contest. The number of competitors predicted the students' motivations to compete, but that association disappeared after adjusting for their tendency to compare themselves with others.

This same experiment allowed them to rule out the possibility that the students were more motivated in the smaller group, simply because they thought the task would be easier. They certainly felt that way (albeit wrongly - in both cases, the prizes went to the top 20% and the students understood that) but it didn't affect their behaviour. Adjusting for this perception of difficulty didn't strongly affect the link between number of competitors and motivation.

In other words, the effect of the number of competitors on our motivation seems to work through how likely we are to compare ourselves to others.

But contrary to what we might expect, those who compare themselves most to others are more likely to be competitive when there are fewer people.

The authors suggest that this may be because personal comparisons are easier when we can think of our competitors as individuals rather than having a more abstract idea of a nebulous 'group'.

Anyway, another great piece from Not Exactly Rocket Science, where you can get a more detailed low-down on the study.

Link to NERS on competitors and the motivation to compete.

—Vaughan.

June 27, 2009

It's just a booty call:

I've recently discovered the NCBI ROFL blog which collects funny and unusual studies from the PubMed medical research database. The latest post is an academic study on the booty call as an 'adaptive mating strategy':

The "Booty Call": A Compromise Between Men's and Women's Ideal Mating Strategies.

J Sex Res. 2009 Feb 27:1-11. [Epub ahead of print]

Jonason PK, Li NP, Cason MJ.

Traditionally, research on romantic and sexual relationships has focused on 1-night stands and monogamous pairs. However, as the result of men and women pursuing their ideal relationship types, various compromise relationships may emerge. One such compromise is explored here: the "booty call." The results of an act-nomination and frequency study of college students provided an initial definition and exploration of this type of relationship. Booty calls tend to utilize various communication mediums to facilitate sexual contact among friends who, for men, may represent low-investment, attractive sexual partners and, for women, may represent attractive test-mates. The relationship is discussed as a compromise between men's and women's ideal mating strategies that allows men greater sexual access and women an ongoing opportunity to evaluate potential long-term mates.

I suspect this study was completed just to allow the world's most awesome chat-up line to come into existence: "Hi, my name's Dr Jonason and I'm researching booty calls. Would you be interested in taking part in my study?"

Actually, where's that grant application form...

Link to NCBI ROFL blog.
Link to PubMed entry for booty call study.

—Vaughan.

June 23, 2009

Mass hysteria and dancing manias:

The July edition of the The Psychologist has an absolutely fantastic article on the 'dancing manias' that swept through Europe in the middle ages and triggered an exhausting compulsion to dance.

The piece looks at the history of these manias and discusses them in terms of dissociation, the 'unconscious compartmentalisation of normally integrated mental functions', which is something we discussed the other day with respect to modern day possession and trance rituals.

Dissociation is usually discussed as something individual, whether the person induces it deliberately through ritual, lets themselves be affected through hypnosis, or is affected involuntarily, as in the case of 'conversion disorder'.

However, there are hundreds if not thousands of cases of 'mass hysteria' or 'mass psychogenic illness' that have been documented and are that are thought to involve a similar mental process.

Unfortunately, these 'mass hysterias' tend to be widespread but fleeting affairs, meaning they're hard for researchers to study.

One of the commonest findings, however, is that they often occur where people find themselves in an intolerable situation that they're not able to influence or otherwise complain about.

If you're interested in learning more, I really recommend a 2002 article from the British Journal of Psychiatry by sociologist Robert Batholomew and psychiatrist Simon Wessely as an excellent introduction to the field.

Otherwise, Batholomew's books are excellent. My favourite is his 2001 book Little Green Men, Meowing Nuns and Head-Hunting Panics: A Study of Mass Psychogenic Illnesses and Social Delusion (ISBN 0786409975).

Anyway, The Psychologist article is a great place to start and one of the most enjoyable articles I've read on the topic for a while.

Link to The Psychologist on 'Dancing plagues and mass hysteria'.
Link to article from the British Journal of Psychiatry.

Full disclosure: I'm an occasional columnist and unpaid associate editor of The Psychologist. I also love dancing manias.

—Vaughan.

June 20, 2009

Hushed thunder:

ABC Radio National has a fantastic programme on El, a 27 year old woman with selective mutism - essentially a speaking phobia that enforces an anxiety-driven silence with everyone except her family.

The documentary is deeply poignant but has several moments of sublime irony that really stopped me in my tracks.

El stopped speaking to anyone except her family as a young child and has spent the large part of her life not being able to utter a word to anyone else.

The programme details the painful impact this has had on her life, how she was verbally attacked by pupils and staff in school, and how she has found it difficult to get a job, or hasn't been respected in the work she's done.

In one aside, she mentions she has a degree in communication.

In my mind, a thousand stories were unfurled by the breeze of this simple fact.

El, by the way, is an incredibly articulate communicator. The photo to the right is one of her own artworks and her words, spoken by an actress, are clear and evocative.

The ending to the programme is like hushed thunder.

The documentary is part of an innovative ABC Radio National series entitled Stories of Silence that explores the many meanings of quiet.

Link to El's story (via AITM Blog).

—Vaughan.

June 19, 2009

A phantom head:

I've just been reminded of one of the most remarkable case studies in the psychiatric literature, of a patient who believed he had two heads and who seriously injured himself with a gunshot wound trying to remove the 'second' head.

He described a second head on his shoulder. He believed that the head belonged to his wife's gynaecologist, and described previously having felt that his wife was having an affair with this gynaecologist, prior to her death. He described being able to see the second head when he went to bed at night, and stated that it had been trying to dominate his normal head.

He also stated that he was hearing voices, including the voice of his wife's gynaecologist from the second head, as well as the voices of Jesus and Abraham around him, conversing with each other. All the voices were confirming that he had two heads; the voice from the second head had been telling him that it was the 'king pin', and would also say to him that it was going to take his wife away. He did not describe any other hallucinatory or delusional experiences.

"The other head kept trying to dominate my normal head, and I would not let it. It kept trying to say to me I would lose, and I said bull-shit." "I am the king pin here" it said and it kept going on like that for about three weeks and finally I got jack of it, and I decided to shoot my other head off."

He stated that he fired six shots, the first at the second head, which he then decided was hanging by a thread, and then another one through the roof of his mouth. He then fired four more shots, one of which appeared to have gone through the roof of his mouth and three of which missed. He said that he felt good at that stage, and that the other head was not felt any more. Then he passed out. Prior to shooting himself, he had considered using an axe to remove the phantom head.

I was reminded of the case study by McKay and colleagues chapter in the academic book Delusion and Self-Deception. I've been sent a free copy to review for an academic journal and am currently ploughing through it. It's not very accessible for the general reader but is full of thought provoking theories on the cognitive science of delusions.

Link to case study.
Link to PubMed entry for same.

—Vaughan.

June 17, 2009

Possession and trance :

Neuroanthropology has collected videos of trance states in religious rituals, where intense movement, music and mental involvement lead to profoundly altered states of consciousness.

Trance is a fundamental part of many (probably most) religions. Although it is typically associated in the popular mind with 'voodoo' it's also common in many Christian denominations.

Indeed, there's a video of trance states in Candomblé, a fusion of Catholicism and voodoo-related Orisha worship, and one of trance states in a charismatic Christian church in the US.

Trance is usually described as involving 'dissociation' - originally defined by the French psychiatrist Pierre Janet as the 'unconscious compartmentalisation of normally integrated mental functions'.

Dissociation is thought to underlie a wide range of phenomena, including hypnosis, reaction to trauma, trance and some forms of spirit possession, hysteria, conversion disorder and, more controversially, multiple personality disorder.

One of the best guides to the range of experiences and the possible neuroscience behind these states is an excellent article by anthropologists Rebecca Seligman and Laurence Kirmayer.

One notable omission from the list on Neuroanthropology is video of the female possession rituals of the Zar Cult from Northern Sudan which has been quite widely discussed in the anthropology literature.

There's some brief footage of it online and in another video anthropologist Gerasimos Makris discusses the structure and social meaning of the possession rituals.

Link to Neuroanthropology collection of trance videos.
Link to article on trance, dissociation and neuroscience.
Link to good page on anthropology of possession.

—Vaughan.

June 11, 2009

Beautiful otherness:

New Scientist has a gallery of artwork by savant artists, people who show exceptional artistic talents despite having impaired mental abilities in other areas.

Savantism is typically associated with autism to the point where many people assume that having a stand-out exceptional ability is present in everyone with the diagnosis.

This is not the case and although many people with autism-spectrum conditions will have a special interest, only about 10% will have what autism researchers Francesca Happé and Uta Frith call 'the beautiful otherness of the autistic mind'.

Perhaps the most famous artist with autism is Stephen Wiltshire who can create stunningly vivid landscape paintings from a barely more than a single glance.

However, my favourite such artist is Jessica Park who paints the most striking paintings of buildings and architectural features but in the most inventively colourful way.

The New Scientist gallery is interesting take on the area as each picture has been selected to illustrate something about the psychology of savant abilities.

Link to New Sci 'Savant art: A window into exceptional minds'.
Link to excellent Happé and Frith article on savantism.

—Vaughan.

June 09, 2009

Why sigh?:

An interesting study from Psychophysiology attempting to understand why we sigh by studying in what contexts these wistful expressions are most likely to occur. It seems, we are most likely to sigh when relieved.

Why do you sigh? Sigh rate during induced stress and relief.

Psychophysiology. 2009 May 21. [Epub ahead of print]

Vlemincx E, van Diest I, de Peuter S, Bresseleers J, Bogaerts K, Fannes S, Li W, van den Bergh O.

Whereas sighing appears to function as a physiological resetter, the psychological function of sighing is largely unknown. Sighing has been suggested to occur both during stress and negative emotions, such as panic and pain, and during positive emotions, such as relaxation and relief. In three experiments, sigh rate was investigated during short imposed states of stress and relief. Stress was induced by exposure to a loud noise stressor or by anticipation of it. Relief was induced by the end of the stressor or the anticipation that no stressor would follow. Breathing parameters were recorded continuously by means of the LifeShirt System. Results consistently showed that more sighing occurred during conditions of relief compared to conditions of stress.

Link to

—Vaughan.

June 03, 2009

Revenge is sweet but corrosive:

Revenge may be a dish best served cold but it will probably leave you with a nasty aftertaste, at least according to an article in the latest edition of the American Psychological Society's Monitor magazine.

The piece looks at some of the growing number of studies on the psychology of retribution, examining cultural differences in triggers for revenge and explanations for why it is so common.

One of the most interesting bits is where it covers a study finding that while we think revenge will make us feel better after an injustice, it seems to have the opposite effect and makes us feel more unhappy.

The study in question involved participants taking part in a group investment game where, when it came to the crunch, one of the participants deliberately acted selfishly and took a whole lot of the money at the others' expense.

Then Carlsmith offered some groups a way to get back at the free rider: They could spend some of their own earnings to financially punish the group's defector.

"Virtually everybody was angry over what happened to them," Carlsmith says, "and everyone given the opportunity [for revenge] took it."

He then gave the students a survey to measure their feelings after the experiment. He also asked the groups who'd been allowed to punish the free rider to predict how they'd feel if they hadn't been allowed to, and he asked the non-punishing groups how they thought they'd feel if they had.

In the feelings survey, the punishers reported feeling worse than the non-punishers, but predicted they would have felt even worse had they not been given the opportunity to punish. The non-punishers said they thought they would feel better if they'd had that opportunity for revenge—even though the survey identified them as the happier group.

Link to article 'Revenge and the people who seek it'.

—Vaughan.

The benefits of blushing:

The New York Times has a short-but-sweet article on the social function of blushing, looking at several studies that have found that a flushed face has a placating and cohesive effect on those around us.

The article reports on studies where blushing has been found to soften other people's judgements of bad or clumsy behaviour and subsequently reinforces social ties.

Interestingly, it's not just when someone makes a mistake, one study looked the effect of blushing on friendliness after a blokey bout of name calling and piss-taking:

In a 2001 paper that contrasts teasing and bullying, an act of aggressive isolation, Dr. Keltner and colleagues from Berkeley discuss one experiment in which members of a fraternity at the University of Wisconsin came into his lab, four at a time, to tease one another, using barbed nicknames. Each group included two senior house members and two recent pledges.

The young men ripped each other with abandon, calling each other “little impotent,” “heifer fetcher” and “another drunk,” among many other names that cannot be printed. The researchers carefully recorded the interactions and measured how well individuals got along by the end. The newer members were all but strangers to the more senior ones when the study began.

“It was a subtle effect, but we found that the frequency of blushing predicted how well these guys were getting along at the end,” Dr. Keltner said. Blushing seemed to accelerate the formation of a possible friendship rather than delay it.

Link to NYT piece on blushing.

—Vaughan.

What makes a headline suicide?:

There's good evidence that media reporting of suicide can have an influence on the likelihood of further suicides, something known as the 'copycat suicide effect'. In light of this, a new study examined what makes a suicide likely to newsworthy and whether media reporting reflects the actual demographics of people who kill themselves.

The researchers, led by psychologist Thomas Niederkrotenthaler, looked at all 2005 press reports of suicides in the Austria and compared them to the national suicide statistics.

Additionally, the details of all Austrian suicides are recorded in a national database but not all get reported in the media. This allowed the researchers to see which characteristics of a suicide made it most likely that it would get written about in the press.

It turns out that suicides involving murder or murder attempt were over-represented in the media whereas reporting on mental disorders was under-represented.

In terms of which attributes made a media report more likely, younger people who killed themselves were more likely to hit the headlines, as were foreign citizens.

While hanging is the most common method of suicide in Austria, these cases were under-reported, while drowning, jumping, shooting and unusual methods were more likely to make the papers.

Media reporting of suicide is a serious public health issue because numerous studies, most recently in 2006, have found that these news reports are likely to increase the suicide rate.

For this reason, there are guidelines for journalists writing about suicide, although I sure you can remember cases high profile cases where the guidelines get ditched and the more sensationalist angles get the media focus.

Link to study.
Link to PubMed entry for same.

—Vaughan.

May 19, 2009

Send a signal to table three please:

There's a brief but interesting article in The New York Times about how we use consumer goods to 'send signals' to other people. It illustrates this with a fantastic example and then misses the point. Luckily another recent study on unconscious influences on doctors hits the punchline.

The idea that each product has a meaning and that we use our purchases to construct an identity from the 'language of brands' is not completely new, indeed, we've covered it before on Mind Hacks, but there's a nice illustration of this in the most recent NYT article:

Most of us will insist there are other reasons for going to Harvard or buying a BMW or an iPhone — and there are, of course. The education and the products can yield many kinds of rewards. But Dr. Miller says that much of the pleasure we derive from products stems from the unconscious instinct that they will either enhance or signal our fitness by demonstrating intelligence or some of the Big Five personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, stability and extraversion.

In a series of experiments [pdf], Dr. Miller and other researchers found that people were more likely to expend money and effort on products and activities if they were first primed with photographs of the opposite sex or stories about dating.

After this priming, men were more willing to splurge on designer sunglasses, expensive watches and European vacations. Women became more willing to do volunteer work and perform other acts of conspicuous charity — a signal of high conscientiousness and agreeableness, like demonstrating your concern for third world farmers by spending extra for Starbucks’s “fair trade” coffee.

Unfortunately, the article then goes on to say that we may do these things because we try and send signals to others but that people don't notice because who can really remember whether the guy we met the other day was wearing a designer shirt or not?

The reason this misses the point is that the influence can be both dramatic and entirely conscious as nicely demonstrated by a recent study on doctors that was also reported in the NYT and, ironically, seems to have done unnoticed.

Researchers asked medical students about their attitudes to two blockbuster anticholesterol drugs: Lipitor and it's competitor, Zocor.

The students were tested in two groups, but in one the researchers incidentally used Lipitor branded pens, clipboards and the like - the typical sort of banal junk that drug companies leave scattered around a typical doctor's office.

The researchers then tested unconscious associations using the IAT and found that students in the condition where researchers used the branded promotional material had much stronger positive associations with Lipitor.

Interestingly, the students reported no explicit preference for the drug, suggesting that the effect of the branding slipped in under the radar of consciousness. The message got through despite it being not being held as a conscious memory.

Social psychology has taught us that we are more much complex than we can understand at any one moment, but many of those messages still get through.

Link to NYT piece on consumer signalling.
Link to NYT piece on small gifts influencing doctors.
Link to full-text of study.

—Vaughan.

May 18, 2009

Medical fetish lacks passion:

Dr Petra has alerted me to an excellent article in The Boston Globe about a new campaign to get the 'doctor out of the bedroom' and de-medicalise sex and sexual problems.

The piece is particularly focused on how sex is being increasingly portrayed in terms of physiology, bodily mechanics and disorders while ignoring the role of psychology and relationships.

This is particularly pertinent at the moment, owing to millions being pumped into the so-far fruitless search for a 'female Viagra' intended to increase sexual desire in women.

Eager to replicate the outsized profits that erectile dysfunction drugs have brought, several pharmaceutical firms are in hot pursuit of a women's version. Because female sexual desire is far less straightforward than men's, success has been thus far elusive, but there are several candidates in the pipeline. Whether any of them will work well enough - and without significant adverse health effects - to gain FDA approval remains to be seen. (In Europe, a testosterone patch to boost sex drive in post-menopausal women has been approved, but its efficacy is debated.)

For critics, the problem is not whether a women's Viagra will work, but what happens if it does. They argue that the very concept of "female sexual dysfunction," the condition that such drugs would be targeting, is not an actual medical condition so much as a creation of the pharmaceutical industry. While surveys show that 20 to 40 percent of women describe themselves as having a lack of interest in sex (the higher figures tend to come from studies funded by pharmaceutical companies), only about a quarter of those women describe that as a problem. It's hard to call something a disorder or a dysfunction, some sex researchers argue, if the people who experience it don't tend to see it that way.

The piece looks at a group of sex researchers and clinicians who are arguing for a 'New View' that doesn't think of all sexual difficulties as medical disorders and focuses upon the important role of psychology in sexual arousal, motivation and exploration.

As Petra notes, it's unusual to see a mainstream article straying from the now well-worn path so get it while it's, er, hot.

Link to Boston Globe article 'The New Romantics'.
Link to Dr Petra on the piece.

—Vaughan.

May 13, 2009

The Dark End of the Street:

I've just found Steven Okazaki's 1999 documentary Black Tar Heroin: The Dark End of the Street on YouTube that follows the chaotic lives of heroin addicts in Southern California.

It's not polemic and tries as much as possible to simply document, but it's a dark journey into the void with many of the people involved in the 1990s heroin scene.

It's not easy to watch, but it is a rare insight into the lives of people who are often hidden in plain sight.

Link to Part 1 (links to other parts on right).

—Vaughan.

British twins in emotional sex shocker:

If you're all aflutter over the recent news reports that 'emotionally intelligent women have more orgasms' you may be interested to know that these sexual adventures have been exaggerated in the re-telling.

I really recommend Petra Boyton's analysis of the study which picks up on what was actually done and where its drawbacks were. As it turns out it was a postal survey of over 2,000 female twins, with a fairly low response rate and not particularly well-pitched questions on sexual experiences.

It also included an emotional intelligence measure, and found a small but statistically reliable link between 'EQ' and orgasm frequency during masturbation and sex.

And this is where it gets a bit over-the-top. The authors suggest, rather cautiously in the research article and, rather more strongly in the press reports, that higher emotional intelligence may help women communicate what they want in the bedroom and hence lead to more orgasms.

I shall now present the correlations between EQ and orgasm frequency as reported in the study:

EQ and frequency of orgasm during intercourse 0.13
EQ and frequency of orgasm during masturbation 0.23

If you're familiar with how to read correlations, you'll notice that the link is very small.

The correlation was done using a Spearman correlation that ranks everyone by EQ and then ranks everyone by orgasm frequency, and then sees how the rankings match.

A result of 1 mean the rankings are identical, a result of -1 means that one ranking is in exactly the opposite order to the other, and a result of 0 means there is no link at all between the two rankings. So in this case, the relationship is very minor.

And here's a neat trick you can do with the results of correlations. If you square them, you get the amount of variability or change in one value accounted for by change in the other as a percentage.

This means EQ accounts for 1.7% of self-estimated intercourse orgasm frequency and 5.3% of self-estimated masturbation orgasm frequency.

It's also worth noting that the relationship is stronger for masturbation than orgasm during intercourse, which kinda pours cold water on the 'asking for what you want in bed' angle.

Interesting, these results are statistically reliable, and the small but reliable effect was confirmed by a regression analysis, meaning that they are reasonably unlikely to have occurred by chance.

As Petra notes, it's an interesting preliminary study that merits further investigation, but even if we could be completely confident in the methods, the effect is nothing to shout about.

Link to Dr Petra on 'Do high EQ women have better sex?'
Link to study.
Link to DOI entry for same.

—Vaughan.

May 12, 2009

The study of a lifetime:

It is not often that articles on psychology studies are described as beautiful, but a piece in The Atlantic on the Harvard Study of Adult Development is quite sublime.

The project has followed two groups of men for almost seventy years, tracking physical and emotional health, opinions and attitudes, successes and failures, all in the hope of understanding what makes us happy.

It weaves the staccato train of numerical data with reflections and insights from the men themselves to attempt the impossible - it hopes to record lives.

From their brash early adulthood to their deaths or dotage the stories are brief but profound, sometimes tragic, sometimes joyful, sometimes mundane.

The study itself has generated some remarkable findings, such as the massive impact of relationships, the fading long-term effects of childhood experiences, or the role of defences in managing emotional well-being, but the piece is as much about the life of the project as its conclusions.

It serves as a meditation on the tension between meaning and measurement when trying to understand the individual, and on the potentially futile attempt to extrapolate an experience of a generation to a world of other times, people and places.

But the article also about psychiatrist George Valliant, who has been coordinating the study for over 40 years, and whose life is intricately woven into the project.

The ending of the article is both surprising and poignant, because it questions what we can truly learn from the lives of others.

Link to Atlantic article 'What Makes Us Happy?'

—Vaughan.

May 11, 2009

Binge and tonic:

There’s more to alcohol than getting pissed but you’d never know it from the papers. In a period of public hand wringing over ‘binge drinking culture’, our understanding of the ‘culture bit’ usually merits no more than an admission that people do it in groups and this is often implicit in the work of psychologists.

In a recent Psychological Bulletin review on the determinants of binge drinking, psychologists Kelly Courtney and John Polich devote only a few sparse paragraphs to the social issues in an otherwise impressive review, despite the fact that drinking alcohol is one of the most socially meaningful and richly symbolic activities in our culture.

In the UK at least, the social meaning of booze is often hidden behind the ordinariness of day-to-day consumption. If you can’t quite see past the barrier of banality, try buying one of your male colleagues a Babycham in public view and the symbolism of alcohol will quickly be made apparent.

But it is not just the meaning of drinks which determine the role alcohol plays in our lives, it is the meaning of drinking as well. Sociologists have been exploring this territory for years and we would do well to read their maps, because it shows us how culture influences not only our views on drunkenness, but the experience of being intoxicated itself.

In their classic 1969 book Drunken Comportment, MacAndrew and Edgerton compared alcohol use in cultures around the world, finding that what concerns us most today, drunken disorderliness, is not an inevitable result of getting pissed. A striking example was the Papago people of Mexico, who, during their traditional cactus-wine ceremonies, would imbibe so much as to become “falling-down drunk”.

Despite the large scale community boozing, the events were exclusively peaceful, harmonious and good tempered. Later, the availability of whisky brought with it the cultural connotations of European-style drinking, meaning it ‘produced’ an aggressive, anti-social drunkenness, despite it being the same chemical in a different style.

Recent research on binge-drinking in Western youth has indicated that the negative effects, both personally toxic and anti-social, have been reframed as an adventure and bonding experience.

While health campaigns are focusing on risk reduction, research by Sheehan and Ridge with teenage girls in Australia found that any harm encountered along the way tends to be “filtered through a ‘good story,’ brimming with tales of fun, adventure, bonding, sex, gender transgressions, and relationships”.

Puking in the gutter has been turned into Sex and the City. Not the complete story, of course, but we neglect the culture of alcohol at the cost of failing to understand why binge drinking is in fashion.

This is one of the occasional columns I write for The Psychologist and the editor, Jon Sutton, has kindly agreed for them to be posted on Mind Hacks as long as I include the following text:

The Psychologist is sent free to all members of the British Psychological Society (you can join here), or you can subscribe as a non-member by emailing sarsta[at]bps.org.uk.

He's also said that he might print particularly good or insightful comments in the magazine, after which fame and fine living will surely follow. If he's interested in publishing your comment, he'll contact you first to get permission.

—Vaughan.

May 09, 2009

Back channelling to the future:

The staff at Linköping University joke that the cognitive science students have kogvet-sjukan, Swedish for 'cognitive science disorder', because they have an incurable enthusiasm for anything related to understanding the mind. After two fantastic days at a conference there, I can see why.

I've been to a fair few conferences in my time, but few have been as friendly, interesting and well-organised as KVIT, and it is all the more impressive that it is entirely organised by students.

One of the most bits for me was linguist Jens Allwood's talk on intercultural communication, where he described cultural differences in how people manage conversation flow.

I've always been fascinated by why people from some cultures make sounds during conversations that, to my English-attuned ears, sound unusual. For example, Japanese speakers often make expressions of surprise or interest that seem quite colourful.

These 'yes, I'm listening' or 'yes, continue' vocal prompts and noises that we make are known as 'back channelling', and can also include movements such as nods, or the use of eye-contact.

In some cultures, such as in Japan, eye contact is used far less during conversation, because it might be considered too intense, or it's considered disrespectful, or even threatening.

So people from cultures that use less eye contact need to signal that they're following the conversation in other ways, and hence they rely much more on vocal noises, which, to many English speakers, sounds a little odd.

In contrast, people from cultures where eye-contact is frequently used during conversations, like in Latino countries, speakers typically use much less vocal back channelling.

There's a great review of some of this research in one of Allwood's papers that's available online as a pdf.

The others speakers at the conference included an art curator, a primate researcher, an AI consciousness engineer, a psychologist, an interaction designer and an emergency response co-ordinator, all of whom apply cognitive science to their work. Can you think of a more interesting line-up?

However, despite it being attended by people from Holland, Germany, and countries across Scandanavia, I was surprised to see few people from the rest of Europe.

As perhaps one of the best kept secrets in cognitive science, you should seriously consider going next year. The kogvet-sjukan affected Swedes will give you a warm welcome, stimulate your brain and put on impressive dinners with a tradition of raucous and risqué cognitive science sketches and songs.

Link to KVIT conference page.
pdf of Allwood's chapter on intercultural communication.

—Vaughan.

May 05, 2009

Mad pride of place:

Newsweek has a good article on the 'Mad Pride' movement in the US, a British import where those diagnosed with mental illness reject the medical view of their experiences and decide to live with 'extreme mental states' both good and bad.

It makes a good complement to last year's New York Times article on 'mad pride' although this focuses on the impressive The Icarus Project, a group of activists who campaign for mental health reform and work to support those who decide to forego psychiatric treatment.

After all, aren't we all more odd than we are normal? And aren't so many of us one bad experience away from a mental-health diagnosis that could potentially limit us? Aren't "normal" minds now struggling with questions of competence, consistency or sincerity? Icarus is likewise asking why we are so keen to correct every little deficit—it argues that we instead need to embrace the range of human existence.

While some critics might view Icaristas as irresponsible, their skepticism about drugs isn't entirely unfounded. Lately, a number of antipsychotic drugs have been found to cause some troubling side effects.

There are, of course, questions as to whether mad pride and Icarus have gone too far. While to his knowledge no members have gravely harmed themselves (or others), Hall acknowledges that not everyone can handle the Icarus approach. "People can go too fast and get too excited about not using medication, and we warn people against throwing their meds away, being too ambitious and doing it alone," he says.

Link to Newsweek article 'Listening to Madness'.

—Vaughan.

May 01, 2009

Between a rock and a kind face:

Newsweek has an article on human good and evil that trots out the usual Milgram-fuelled moral pondering before morphing into a fascinating piece on the psychology of compassion.

The most interesting part is where it discusses which psychological traits predict compassionate behaviour:

A specific cluster of emotional traits seem to go along with compassion. People who are emotionally secure, who view life's problems as manageable and who feel safe and protected tend to show the greatest empathy for strangers and to act altruistically and compassionately.

In contrast, people who are anxious about their own worth and competence, who avoid close relationships or are clingy in those they have tend to be less altruistic and less generous, psychologists Philip Shaver of the University of California, Davis, and Mario Mikulincer of Bar-Ilan University in Israel have found in a series of experiments. Such people are less likely to care for the elderly, for instance, or to donate blood.

The Newsweek article labels these characteristics 'emotional traits' but the researchers are actually using the psychological concept of attachment - an approach to relationships and human interaction style that can be seen throughout the lifespan.

The same research team has completed studies showing that increasing people's perceived security increases altruistic behaviour.

Link to Newsweek on 'Adventures In Good And Evil'.

—Vaughan.

April 27, 2009

Turn left at the surge of excitement:

We covered Christian Nold's brilliant project to create emotion maps of cities before, and I had the pleasure of going to the launch of his new book on Emotional Cartography on Friday. It's awesome for lots of reasons, but one of the best ones is that you can download it free from the project website.

Nold came up with the idea of fusing a GSR machine, a skin conductance monitor that measures arousal, and a GPS machine, to allow stress to be mapped to particular places. He then gets people to walk round and creates maps detailing high arousal areas of cities.

The biomapping website has some of the fantastic maps from the project.

His book, called Emotional Cartography: Technologies of the Self contains some of the wonderful maps images, but also chapters by artists, psychogeographers, designers, cultural researchers, futurologists and neuroscientists who examine the relationship between space and the self.

One of the chapters is written by our very own Tom Stafford who explores the neuroscience of the self through a case study of an amnesic patient from the scientific literature called SS, who seemed to be unaware of his own depression because of his profound memory problems. Tom also gave a great talk at the launch, which you can also read online.

If you want to read the books, and I highly recommend it, you can download the book as a screen quality or print quality PDF, and its released under a Creative Commons license so you can take it to your nearest copy shop if you want a hard copy.

Link to Emotional Cartography website.
Link to Biomapping website.

—Vaughan.

April 24, 2009

The suicidal attraction of the Golden Gate Bridge:

I've just found this morbidly fascinating article from a 2003 edition of The New Yorker that discusses the attraction of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge to people who are suicidal.

It's full of interesting snippets, like the fact that suicidal people tend to ignore the nearby and equally fatal Bay Bridge in favour of its more famous and more attractive cousin.

It also has quotes from some of the very few people who have ever jumped off the bridge and survived, and describes exactly what impact such a jump has on the body.

The article also touches on the debates over the erection of a suicide barrier on the landmark (it was finally decided in 2008 to put one in place) and the people-based suicide prevention methods.

It also has this lovely snippet about one of the police patrolmen, who has a wonderfully gentle way of talking to suicidal people:

Kevin Briggs, a friendly, sandy-haired motorcycle patrolman, has a knack for spotting jumpers and talking them back from the edge; he has coaxed in more than two hundred potential jumpers without losing one over the side. He won the Highway Patrol’s Marin County Uniformed Employee of the Year Award last year.

Briggs told me that he starts talking to a potential jumper by asking, “How are you feeling today?” Then, “What’s your plan for tomorrow?” If the person doesn’t have a plan, Briggs says, “Well, let’s make one. If it doesn’t work out, you can always come back here later.”

Apparently the article was the inspiration for the 2006 documentary film The Bridge which covered similar territory.

Link to New Yorker article 'Jumpers'.

—Vaughan.

April 09, 2009

What are we celebrating?:

I've just re-read the fantastic Social Issues Research Centre article on social and cultural aspects of drinking and it has an amusing section illustrating the difference between British and French drinking cultures which helps to explain why the British have a reputation for drunkenness when they visit the continent.

The article discusses the link between alcohol and the marking of celebrations in different cultures, noting that in the UK, serving alcohol socially is usually associated with marking the occasion as 'special' or 'different' in some way whereas in France, booze has a more neutral meaning, so social drink doesn't so strongly imply something is being celebrated.

The British visit France. Hilarity ensues.

McDonald (1994) provides an amusing illustration of the different perceptions of the drinking/festivity connection in different European cultures, and the misunderstandings that can result:

"Many modern visitors from Britain on a first visit to France have had experience of this for themselves. Drinks may be offered at ten o’clock in the morning, for example. This is obviously going to be one of those days. What are we celebrating? During the midday meal, wine is served. What fun! What are we celebrating? The bars are open all afternoon, and people seem to be drinking. What a riot! What are we celebrating?

Pastis is served at six o’clock. Whoopee! These people certainly know how to celebrate. More wine is served with dinner. And so on. Wine has different meanings, different realities, in the two contexts, and a festive and episodic drinking culture meets a daily drinking culture, generating a tendency to celebrate all day. This has often happened to groups of young British tourists, now renowned in France and elsewhere in Europe for their drinking and drunkenness."

Link to SIRC article 'Social and Cultural Aspects of Drinking'.

—Vaughan.

April 08, 2009

Follow your pride:

The New York Times has an interesting article on the psychology of pride and how it has an impact on ourselves and others.

The piece starts with the predictable 'credit crunch' hook, but goes on to discuss some of the few studies that have investigated the effects of pride.

Considering that it's supposedly one of the 'deadly sins', one study struck me as particularly interesting. The researchers asked participants to take a test and then gave them rigged scores...

The researchers manipulated the amount of pride each participant felt in his or her score. They either said nothing about the score; remarked, in a matter-of-fact tone, that it was one of the best scores they had seen; or gushed that the person’s performance was wonderful, about as good as they had ever seen.

The participants then sat down in a group to solve similar puzzles. Sure enough, the students who had been warmly encouraged reported feeling more pride than the others. But they also struck their partners in the group exercise as being both more dominant and more likable than those who did not have the inner glow of self-approval. The participants, whether they had been buttered up or not, were completely unaware of this effect on the group dynamics.

“We wondered at the beginning whether these people were going to come across as arrogant jerks,” Dr. DeSteno said. “Well, no, just the opposite; they were seen as dominant but also likable. That’s not a combination we expected.”

The article also makes the interesting point that pride is one of those psychological concepts we discuss on a day-to-day basis but which has been largely neglect by research psychologists.

Wisdom is another, and probably by this measure, one of the most neglected psychological areas.

However, I noticed this week that the Archives of General Psychiatry published a review article entitled 'Neurobiology of wisdom: a literature overview' which seemed very commendable if not a little over-enthusiastic.

I've no idea why it was published in a psychiatry journal. Presumably, a drug company will shortly try and market one of their medications as a treatment for 'judgement deficit disorder' or 'experience-based reasoning fatigue'.

You laugh now, but just wait six months.

Link to NYT article 'When All You Have Left Is Your Pride'.
Link to summary of wisdom article.

—Vaughan.

April 03, 2009

Solitary confinement as psychological torture:

The New Yorker magazine has just published an important article questioning whether the widespread use of solitary confinement in the US prison system should be outlawed as a form of torture.

It's an in-depth piece that piece that looks at numerous cases of people who have experienced solitary confinement first hand, either as hostages or legitimate prisoners, and discusses the psychological impact of this extreme form of social isolation.

I've just looked up the research on the effects of solitary confinement and there's remarkably little, although everything I could find that directly addressed the question found that it had a negative impact on the mind.

In fact, the 'The Istanbul statement on the use and effects of solitary confinement' [pdf], an international consensus statement on solitary confinement, notes that it "harms prisoners who are not previously mentally ill and tends to worsen the mental health of those who are" and questions whether it breaches UN Human Rights laws.

It also describes the punishment as being linked to "long list of symptoms ranging from insomnia and confusion to hallucinations and psychosis".

The New Yorker article contrasts the research findings with the fact that the US has a whole 'supermax' prison system dedicated to solitary confinement and the highest population of prisoners kept in these conditions in the world.

It also notes the fact that there is no evidence that solitary confinement actually reduces prison violence, which it is intended to do.

The article is an important and hard-hitting piece that tries to get to convey the impact of extreme social isolation and asks some difficult questions over a common practice in the US justice system.

Link to New Yorker article 'Hellhole'.

—Vaughan.

April 02, 2009

Chicks dig men in flashy cars, no word on penis size:

A study 'in press' for the British Journal of Psychology sadly supports the stereotype that chicks dig men in flashy cars.

The attractiveness-boosting effect only affects women's perceptions of men, however. Men were unmoved by chicks in hot rods, and neither sex's attractiveness ratings for same-sex drivers was affected by the car they were in.

Effect of manipulated prestige-car ownership on both sex attractiveness ratings.

Dunn MJ, Searle R.

Br J Psychol. 2009 Mar 19. [Epub ahead of print]

Previous studies have shown that male attractiveness can be enhanced by manipulation of status through, for example, the medium of costume. The present study experimentally manipulated status by seating the same target model (male and female matched for attractiveness) expressing identical facial expressions and posture in either a 'high status' (Silver Bentley Continental GT) or a 'neutral status' (Red Ford Fiesta ST) motor-car.

A between-subjects design was used whereby the above photographic images were presented to male and female participants for attractiveness rating. Results showed that the male target model was rated as significantly more attractive on a rating scale of 1-10 when presented to female participants in the high compared to the neutral status context. Males were not influenced by status manipulation, as there was no significant difference between attractiveness ratings for the female seated in the high compared to the neutral condition.

It would appear that despite a noticeable increase in female ownership of prestige/luxury cars over recent years males, unlike females, remain oblivious to such cues in matters pertaining to opposite-sex attraction. These findings support the results of previous status enhancement of attractiveness studies especially those espousing sex differences in mate preferences are due to sex-specific adaptations.

An interesting study testing a well-known stereotype, but what the world really wants to know is whether the cliché about men with flashy cars having small penises is true.

Considering the car industry and scientific psychology were born at about the same time, it's disgraceful that such a fundamental study in the psychology of social willy waving has yet to be completed.

Link to PubMed entry for study.

—Vaughan.

April 01, 2009

Hallucinating roman chariots and goats in overcoats:

I've just found a description of some spectacular and fantastical hallucinations from a case of Charles Bonnet syndrome, reported in a review article on the neuroscience of this curious hallucinatory state.

It's one of the most florid cases I've ever come across and the experience seems both wondrous and terrifying in equal measure:

A 73-year-old woman who lived alone presented with anxiety-provoking visual hallucinations. Inch-long black ants scurried across her kitchen floor, walls and windows. In desperation, she began spraying insecticide throughout the house. Her neighbour, whose features were seemingly masked by the insects, called an ambulance. Floating seahorses and featherless chickens joined the colonies of ants in the Emergency Department.

A Roman chariot, the rider dressed in gold, flashed across the curtain several times. On the ward, tropical vines grew from the foot of her bed. A man stood with thick brown tree trunks for legs and thick green branches for arms. Nurses’ heads would shrink and then expand before melting into the floor. Brightly coloured fairies carrying wands invited her for walks around the hospital grounds.

She once caught herself telling them to get off a road at which point they donned diamond coats, jumped into a wooden carriage, and rode up to her bedside. Ants in the mirror were at times replaced by an elephant’s trunk blotting out half her face. Her hair in the reflection flowed with cobwebs and the basin was matted with hair and whiskers.

Cobwebs spilled from her cereal bowl at breakfast. The bathroom floor was covered with water that vanished whenever she tried to mop it up. The carpet in the room would lift away from the floor, roll up in the form of a snake, and slither out the door. A little girl and boy with a black and white dog stood next to the bed, as did extraterrestrial-like beings with large domed-shaped heads and slitted black eyes.

Twisted heads with grotesque faces and bulbous eyes peered out from the wall, while little red carriages, trains and push bikes disappeared into it. Further history revealed an experience of ‘ant’ hallucinations 4 months previously but the images disappeared after 2 weeks. She did not seek medical advice at that time fearing that she might be considered ‘a bit odd’.

Throughout the hospital admission she was rarely free from hallucinations and would repeatedly ask for reassurance that she was ‘not going mad’. Two months after discharge the hallucinations were still intrusive. She owned a small black dog but would see several dogs resembling oversized greyhounds with unusually long snouts in her daughter’s yard.

A man and a goat, both wearing grey hats and overcoats, often stood beside her before wandering off together down a crooked road. She grew accustomed to seeing a baby seated on the lounge chair wearing grey clothes. It smiled but made no sounds. Caterpillars and tree frogs began joining her for the evening bath.

She began to notice that distractions, such as listening to the radio and attending to household chores, dampened the hallucinations, while solitude, particularly during the evening hours, tended to heighten them.

At follow-up 1 year later, she was experiencing very much the same hallucinations but was more cognisant of their unreality and less anxious as a result. The only new hallucination that had since appeared was that of a bright kaleidoscopic array which would transiently emanate from her central field of vision.

The article has another case study which is also quite spectacular, and, curiously, also features a Roman chariot.

One of the most interestingly things about Charles Bonnet syndrome is that fact that it is typically associated with the most complex hallucinations, but usually due to damage to the retina or early visual pathway.

In other words, damage to the part of the visual system which deals with the most basic aspects of vision (detecting lines, light and dark and so on) can cause the most spectacular visual distortions.

It's not fully clear why this is, but one of the most popular theories is that visual information gathered by the initial part of the system is used to limit the interpretations made by the perceptual processes later in the stream which are focussed on working out significance and meaning.

We can see this system breaking down a bit when we see momentary 'pictures' in TV static or in flames, as the fuzzy input means many interpretations can be made.

However, when we're looking at more ordered scenes, our interpretation is usually more constrained - it's more difficult to interpret light patterns from a pencil as something else.

The theory goes that when we can't process light patterns very successfully, owing to damage to the early visual system, the interpretation processes go wild, so hallucinations are 'released' and cavort unconstrained through our conscious mind.

Link to article on the neuroscience of Charles Bonnet syndrome.
Link to PubMed entry for same.

—Vaughan.

March 30, 2009

The attractions of humour:

The new edition of Scientific American Mind is out an it has an excellent cover article on the psychological effects of humour and laughter.

It's a remarkably wide-ranging article, covering everything from the effect on the immune system, to laughter's pain killing properties to its beneficial effect on mental health.

There's also an interesting aside on the role of humour in attraction:

In 2006 psychologists Eric R. Bressler of Westfield State College and Sigal Balshine of McMaster University in Ontario reported that women are more likely to consider a man in a photograph a desirable relationship partner if the picture is accompanied by a funny quote attributed to the man. In fact, the women preferred the funny men despite rating them, on average, less intelligent and less trustworthy.

Although the men in Bressler and Balshine’s study did not prefer witty women as partners, other research indicates that both men and women value a “sense of humor” when choosing a partner. Either way, males do seem to like ladies who laugh at their jokes. A 1990 study suggests that when women and men chat, the amount of laughing by the woman indicates both her interest in dating the man and her sexual appeal to the man. (The man’s laughter did not relate to attraction in either direction.)

The issue also has freely available online articles on 'brain training', the psychological effect of architecture and personality disorder with many more in the print edition.

Link to April's SciAmMind.

—Vaughan.

March 28, 2009

Copyshop suicide:

Bad Science has a great article on the 'copycat suicide' effect, where media reporting of suicide can increase the chances of suicide in other people.

Copycat suicide is sometimes called the 'Werther Effect', after Goethe published his 1774 novel 'The Sorrows of Young Werther' which depicted Werther's suicide and was reportedly followed by people imitating the same method to end their lives.

It's an interesting effect because it shows the influence on the media on what people usually think of the most extreme of decisions.

An excellent 2003 review article on the subject found that the effect holds for all media reports of suicides (including fictional ones) but celebrity suicide is most associated with subsequent deaths. Interestingly, it notes that the largest known increase followed the death of Marilyn Monroe.

The review also found found that the greater the coverage of the suicide, and the more details in the reporting, the larger the increase in subsequent deaths.

Because of this, there are now media guidelines for reporting suicide, and the Bad Science article reports on a particularly bad example where the journalist reported exactly the sort of thing most associated with increased risk in a single story - virtually nothing except details of the suicide method.

One of the most interesting bits of the Bad Science piece doesn't appear in the print version. However, it discusses research that found the majority of people who attempt suicide and survive are pleased they did some years later:

There is a literature which I think is extremely powerful, and yet unanimously ignored by mainstream media, and that is the follow-up data on what happens later in life to people who have felt so suicidal that they have made serious attempts on their own lives.

In extremis Pajonk et al followed up a large number of people who they picked up in intensive care after very serious suicide attempts. Amongst those who survived, and did not have serious psychotic illnesses, six years later, the majority were happy and well, living productive family lives, and were – we might reasonably interpolate - glad to be alive.

Link to Bad Science article on media reporting of suicide.
Link to review article on media and suicide (with open-access link).

—Vaughan.

March 27, 2009

Focus me:

The Journal of Sex Research has a fascinating article on the role of attention in sexual arousal and how we use our mental focus to explore and control excitement during sex.

We can see from our everyday lives that attention is important for sex. We can distract ourselves to avoid sexual arousal when our mind has wandered onto sexual topics and we don't want to get aroused, or we want to prolong sexual enjoyment without getting over-aroused.

We also can do the reverse and focus strongly on sexual fantasises or our partner to dispel other thoughts and lose ourselves in the sexual moment.

However, the article looks at the scientific research on attention during sex and discusses how this can help us understand and treat sexual problems.

The drug industry has a lot invested in telling people that sexual difficulties are almost entirely due to problems with the genitals.

For example, the website for Viagra promotes the line that erectile dysfunction is a problem with your cock, saying that "It happens when not enough blood flows to the penis".

Which is a bit like saying poverty is when not enough money gets to poor people. It describes the outcome but not the cause.

The article makes clear that many sexual problems can be best understood in terms of how the mind is working and many sexual problems can be equally well treated with psychological methods.

In other words, it's often not that the genitals are 'not working', but that we've got into a situation where it's hard to achieve the necessary level of sexual arousal because of, for example, distraction, anxiety or low self-confidence which cause a negative feedback loop that takes our focus away from making love and onto other non-arousing things.

Based on such findings, Barlow (1986) posited a model of erectile dysfunction, central to which is the idea that increased autonomic arousal results in a narrowing of attentional focus (Wiegel, Scepkowski, & Barlow, 2007). The model outlines a process whereby a male focuses his attention on either erotic cues or nonerotic, self-evaluative cues (e.g., fears over performance). In both cases, autonomic arousal (due to sexual arousal in functional men and anxiety in dysfunctional men) creates a feedback loop, further narrowing the man's attentional focus on the information to which he is already attending.

In sexually functional men, attention becomes increasingly focused on erotic information, creating a positive feedback loop. This feedback loop facilitates sexual response and erection, which in turn leads to approach behavior. In the case of sexually dysfunctional men, attention becomes more focused on nonsexual, task-irrelevant material, creating a negative feedback loop.

In clinical psychology, many problems, particularly with anxiety, are understood as malfunctioning feedback loops, where the person's attempt to control their anxiety actually serve to maintain it in the long-term.

Interestingly, the article touches on the use of mindfulness meditation, known to cause attention changes and anxiety reduction, in the treatment of sexual problems.

For example, some preliminary studies have been completed by psychologist Lori Brotto and colleagues with promising results.

Link to 'The Role of Attention in Sexual Arousal'.
Link to PubMed entry for same.

—Vaughan.

March 26, 2009

Why children don't make us happy (on average):

The Psychologist has a counter-intuitive article on research that indicates, contrary to popular belief, that having children tends not to make people happier. In fact, parents reliably report that they feel less happy than in their child free days, and less happy when compared to childless couples.

Over the past few decades, social scientists like me have found consistent evidence that there is an almost zero association between having children and happiness. My analysis in the Journal of Socio-economics (Powdthavee, 2008) is a recent British example of parents and non-parents reporting the same levels of life satisfaction, on average.

But the warnings for prospective parents are even more stark than ‘it’s not going to make you happier’. Using data sets from Europe and America, numerous scholars have found some evidence that, on aggregate, parents often report statistically significantly lower levels of happiness (Alesina et al., 2004), life satisfaction (Di Tella et al., 2003), marital satisfaction (Twenge et al., 2003), and mental well-being (Clark & Oswald, 2002) compared with non-parents.

It's an interesting article as it tackles not only why having children tends not to make us happier, but also why we think it does in cultures across the world.

Link to 'Think having children will make you happy?'.

Full disclosure: I'm an occasional columnist and unpaid associate editor for The Psychologist.

—Vaughan.

March 19, 2009

Psychotherapy with the Amish:

NPR has a fascinating segment on psychotherapist Jim Cates, who works with Amish youth who are experiencing the turbulent time of 'Rumspringa' - a period when they get to experience non-Amish life so they can decide whether they want to commit to their parents' culture and traditions.

The Amish are a community based around Anabaptist Christianity who, to varying degrees, refuse modern technology and the common social practices of North America.

However, during the time of Rumspringa, the youth are free to wear modern clothes, use technology, and may experiment with drink, drugs and sex - on the basis that the Amish want their youth to freely enter their tradition having had the opportunity to experience the alternative.

For some young people, this causes some difficulties, not least with some who encounter difficulties with drink, drugs or emotional adjustment and Jim Cates is a psychotherapist who helps the young people work through the issues.

He describes how he needs to take a radically different approach when conducting psychotherapy with Amish youth, owing to the markedly different way of thinking, particularly about the role of the individual in society.

Cates notes that while traditional American culture is individualist, Amish culture is strongly collectivist, to the point where talking about yourself is seen as prideful and individual work without the involvement of the family is at best uncomfortable and at worst inconceivable.

In the NPR piece, Cates gives some fascinating insights into his take on Amish psychology and discusses the innovative approach he needs when working with the culture.

It's one of the most interesting and surprising radio pieces I've heard in a while, and is by the excellent Alix Spiegel, who also produced the gripping 81 words.

Link to NPR 'One Man Tackles Psychotherapy For The Amish'.

—Vaughan.

March 16, 2009

The PTSD Trap:

Scientific American has a knock-out article that questions whether the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder is a coherent psychological concept or whether it is actually making the situation worse for soldiers with post-combat mental health problems.

As we've noted before, PTSD is a controversial diagnosis for two major reasons. The first is that it is not clear that the diagnosis describes anything different from other forms of anxiety and depression, except for that fact that it is related to a specific traumatic incident.

The second is that the diagnosis was largely introduced after pressure from veterans' lobbying groups after the Vietnam war. In fact, PTSD was originally called 'post-Vietnam syndrome' and there are concerns that while it was politically expedient at the time, the concept doesn't lead to good mental health care.

In fact, combat stress reactions have taken various forms through the years of which PTSD is the latest reincarnation.

The SciAm article tackles research in the US military suggesting that the syndrome is over-diagnosed and that the treatment plan is counter-productive and actually encourages people to remain disabled.

But one of the most interesting things about the article is that it tackles the one of the core features of the diagnosis - that the anxiety symptoms are directly tied to a specific traumatic event.

Many people who are diagnosed with PTSD turn out not to have been traumatised by the event they later attribute the trauma to, or may not have even been traumatised at all.

J. Alexander Bodkin, a psychiatrist at Harvard's McLean Hospital, screened 90 clinically depressed patients separately for PTSD symptoms and for trauma, then compared the results. First he and a colleague used a standardized screening interview to assess symptoms. Then two other PTSD diagnosticians, ignorant of the symptom reports, used another standard interview to see which patients had ever experienced trauma fitting DSM-IV criteria.

If PTSD arose from trauma, the patients with PTSD symptoms should have histories of trauma, and those with trauma should show more PTSD. It was not so. Although the symptom screens rated 70 of the 90 patients positive for PTSD, the trauma screens found only 54 who had suffered trauma: the diagnosed PTSD "cases" outnumbered those who had experienced traumatic events. Things got worse when Bodkin compared the diagnoses one on one. If PTSD required trauma, then the 54 trauma-exposed patients should account for most of the 70 PTSD-positive patients. But the PTSD-symptomatic patients were equally distributed among the trauma-positive and the trauma-negative groups. The PTSD rate had zero relation to the trauma rate. It was, Bodkin observed, "a scientifically unacceptable situation."

This does not necessarily mean the people are lying, but may simply be attributing true symptoms to an unlikely source.

It's a wonderfully thought-provoking article that's sure to ruffle a few feathers.

The writer, David Dobbs, has also put a load of background material and links to the relevant studies on his blog, so you can get a more in-depth perspective if it sparks your interest in the area.

Link to article 'Soldiers' Stress: What Doctors Get Wrong about PTSD'.
Link to David Dobb's background material for the article.

—Vaughan.

March 11, 2009

Far from the madding crowd:

The Economist has an excellent piece on crowd psychology and why group behaviour is essential in calming down street confrontations before they turn violent.

Crowds are often associated with senseless aggression, and perhaps the most widely quoted, and most colourful example, is from Gustave Le Bon's 1895 book The Crowd.

He wrote that crowds showed several special characteristics such as "impulsiveness, irritability, incapacity to reason, the absence of judgment and of the critical spirit, the exaggeration of the sentiments, and others besides - which are almost always observed in beings belonging to inferior forms of evolution - in women, savages, and children, for instance".

You can imagine how he went down at parties.

Nevertheless, this association between crowds and violence has remained a research focus for many years. Concepts such as deindividuation - a reduction in the feeling of personal identity and responsibility - are invoked to explain why 'bad things' supposedly happen when people congregate in groups. This also typically includes explaining why 'bad things' are allowed to happen without people intervening - the so-called bystander effect

The Economist article is interesting because it looks at research which seems to turn these assumptions on their head.

It discusses the work of psychologist Mark Levine, who studies crowd behaviour and has found that crowds actually act to reduce violence in many situations.

He has been analysing CCTV footage of incidents that control room operators thought might turn violent, not all of which did.

His first observation was that bystanders frequently intervene in incipient fights. The number of escalating gestures did not rise significantly as the size of the group increased, contrary to what the bystander effect would predict. Instead, it was the number of de-escalating gestures that grew. A bigger crowd, in other words, was more likely to suppress a fight.

Some incidents did end in violence, of course. To try to work out why, Dr Levine and his colleagues constructed probability trees to help them calculate the likelihood that a violent incident such as a punch being thrown would occur with each successive intervention by a bystander. Using these trees, they were generally able to identify a flashpoint at which the crowd determined which way the fight would go.

Judging the fight to begin with the aggressor’s first pointing gesture towards his target, the researchers found that the first intervention usually involved a bystander trying to calm the protagonist down. Next, another would advise the target not to respond. If a third intervention reinforced crowd solidarity, sending the same peaceful message, then a violent outcome became unlikely. But if it did not—if the third bystander vocally took sides, say—then violence was much more likely.

It's a really eye-opening piece that's well worth reading in full as it overturns both some common popular assumptions and some well-worn psychological clichés.

Link to Economist on 'The kindness of crowds'.

—Vaughan.

Delusions of pregnancy:

There is a small but fascinating medical literature on delusional pregnancy that reports cases of people who, in the context of psychotic mental illness, come to believe they are expecting a child. Interestingly, the cases are not solely women of child bearing age - delusional pregnancy has also been reported in men and the elderly.

In fact, almost as many cases of delusional pregnancy have been reported in men as in women. Unfortunately, no studies have been done on how common this delusion is or what it is associated with, so it's not clear whether men are equally as likely to have a delusions of pregnancy, or whether it's just because these cases seem more unusual and is more likely to be published.

Below is one of the cases from a classic 1994 article on delusion of pregnancy from The British Journal of Psychiatry:

B was a 39-year-old, single, female schizophrenic patient with treatment-resistant psychotic symptoms including delusions of pregnancy of 20 years' duration and amenorrhoea for the previous 18 years. On examination she was convinced that she had a triplet pregnancy - two boys and a girl - of four months gestational age. She reported that they moved about inside her abdomen and also talked to her.

When she was 19, her dancing partner kissed her and she believed that he had been repeatedly impregnating her by means of the same kiss. Regarding her previous pregnancies she believed that their father did not want her to deliver them and hence he 'withdrew' them. She did not have any physical symptoms of pregnancy other than amenorrhoea and attributed this to the 'supernatural nature' of the pregnancy.

In a curious twist, a recent article reported on a patient who had the delusional denial of pregnancy - where she was clearly heavily pregnant but had the delusion that she was not.

It's important to note that these cases are not the same as 'phantom pregnancies', something medically named pseudocyesis, where a women can show the signs of expecting a child (swollen breasts, enlarged abdomen etc) without actually being pregnant.

This is not a delusion, as the patient can be well aware that they are not actually pregnant or will accept the possibility that they are not when the results of medical tests come though.

Indeed, 'phantom pregnancy' can be due to clear disturbance to the hormones - one case was due to a brain tumour that disrupted the endocrine system - but other cases seem to be related to the strong desire to be pregnant.

However, even this has its male equivalent. Couvade syndrome is where men experience some of the physical effects of pregnancy (morning sickness, aches, weight gain) in response to their partner's pregnancy.

Link to classic 1994 paper on delusion of pregnancy.

—Vaughan.

Perfectionism and the impossibility of a perfect world:

The Boston Herald has an interesting article on perfectionism - a pathological pursuit of usually unobtainable high standards that is strongly linked to anxiety, depression and eating disorders.

Perfectionism is variously described as a personality trait or a type of dysfunctional assumption where people feel their self-worth is dependent on 100% or perfect success.

It can be quite hard to shift, owing to the fact that some people find it hard to see why doing something perfectly isn't a useful goal to aim for. However, when a desire for perfection is over-applied it tends to lead to harsh self-criticism and is self-defeating - ironically, people often perform worse as a result.

Psychologists Roz Shafran and Warren Mansell published an influential article on the role of perfectionism in mental illness in 2001, that really opened many people's eyes to the importance of understanding perfectionist tendencies in psychopathology.

The Boston Globe article is a little more of a gentle introduction, but does a great job of succinctly describing the personal impact of perfectionism, some of the research in the area, and current approaches to treating the problem:

"Perfectionism is a phobia of mistake-making," said Jeff Szymanski, executive director of the Obsessive Compulsive Foundation, which is based in Boston. "It is the feeling that 'If I make a mistake, it will be catastrophic.' "

Striving for perfection is fine, said Smith College psychology professor Randy Frost, a leading researcher on perfectionism. The issue is how you interpret your own inevitable mistakes and failings. Do they make you feel bad about yourself in a global sense? Does a missed shot in tennis make you slam your racket to the ground? Do you think anything less than 100 percent might as well be zero?

Link to 'When perfectionism becomes a problem'.
Link to review article on perfectionism and psychopathology.
Link to PubMed entry for same.

—Vaughan.

March 10, 2009

Delusions of a second jaw:

There's a brief but interesting case study in the General Hospital Psychiatry journal of a patient who is described as having 'extremely grotesque somatic delusions'.

The case was a 54-year-old man. He had no past history or family history of psychiatric disorders. His social and occupational histories were quite normal. In August of 2005, he felt that “something has stuck between under front teeth.” From September, he felt that “there is another lower jaw with teeth between the real upper jaw and real lower jaw, and there is another tongue between the false lower jaw and the real lower jaw”; “the teeth on the false lower jaw are growing steadily”; “I try to cut the false teeth off with the real teeth, but the false teeth do not stop growing”; “the false teeth melt into holes in the false lower jaw, but later grow again from those holes”; “something like spaghetti is coming into and going out from the holes” and “the false lower jaw rolls up and is coming into the throat.” Because of these annoying sensations, he had mild depressive symptoms such as depressed mood, decrease in appetite, restlessness and fatigue. Despite these symptoms, he was able to continue working.

The patient was treated with the antipsychotic drug risperidone and reportedly recovered well.

As part of his assessment he was also given a SPECT brain scan, that found reduced blood flow in the temporal and parietal lobes.

Although still not well studied, various other single case studies have found that delusions concerning body size, shape or transformation correlate with changes in parietal lobe function.

Owing to the role of the parietal lobe in maintaining our 'body image', it is thought that problems in this area could lead to unusual experiences of body distortion which could, in part, spark delusional beliefs.

Link to case study.
Link to PubMed entry for same.

—Vaughan.

March 07, 2009

Psychological characteristics of vicious dog owners:

An article on the psychological characteristic of vicious dog owners has just appeared online in the compelling academic publication, The Journal of Forensic Sciences, finding that those who who own dangerous dogs are more likely to endorse antisocial and psychopathic character traits and more likely to report criminal behaviour.

The study was led by psychologist Laurie Ragatz who collected data from 869 college students who completed an anonymous online questionnaire assessing type of dog owned, criminal behaviors, attitudes towards animal abuse, psychopathy, and personality.

It's only a correlational study but the introduction has a nice summary of the research findings as well as a previous study on the same topic:

Each year, 4.7 million people are bitten by dogs, of which 386,000 are seriously injured and over 200 die. Several dog breeds have been labeled "vicious" or of "high-risk" for aggression. To date, only one empirical study has examined the characteristics of persons who choose to own their high-risk dogs. Barnes et al. reports that owners of Akitas, Chow-Chows, Dobermans, Pit Bulls, Rottweilers, and Wolf-mixes endorsed approximately 10 times more criminal convictions than owners of nonvicious dogs. Further, vicious dog owners reported more crimes involving aggression, children, alcohol, and domestic violence than owners of nonvicious dogs.

The current research sought to replicate and extend these findings with a college sample. The present study compared nondog owners and owners of vicious, large, and small dogs on engagement in criminal behavior, general personality traits (i.e., impulsive sensation seeking, neuroticism-anxiety, aggression-hostility, activity, and sociability), psychopathy, and attitude towards animal maltreatment.

...As hypothesized, a significant difference in criminal behavior was found based on dog ownership type. Owners of vicious dogs were significantly more likely to admit to violent criminal behavior, compared to large dog owners, small dog owners, and controls. The vicious dog owner sample also engaged in more types (i.e., violent, property, drug, and status) of criminal behavior compared to all other participant groups.

Personality traits were examined and vicious dog owners were significantly higher than controls on impulsive sensation seeking. Examining psychopathic traits, owners of high-risk dogs endorsed significantly more characteristics of primary psychopathy (e.g., carelessness, selfishness, and manipulative tendencies) than small dog owners.

Comparing owners of vicious dogs to other groups, no significant differences were found regarding secondary psychopathy (e.g., impulsiveness or self-defeating behaviors) or attitudes towards animal maltreatment.

Among the college sample, the vicious dogs were predominantly male and weighed 68 pounds. The owners had more self-reported overall criminal behaviors as well as violent criminal behavior. They endorsed significantly more sensation seeking and primary psychopathic traits.

Link to article.
Link to DOI entry for same.

—Vaughan.

March 05, 2009

The cognitive neuroscience of eye contact:

The latest Trends in Cognitive Sciences has a fantastic review article on the cognitive neuroscience of eye contact, demonstrating how this fleeting social connection has a powerful impact on the mind and brain.

Past research has shown that making eye contact has an impact on social perception and subsequent behaviour.

The article notes that eye contact has been found to increase the likelihood of recognising someone and helps work out whether someone is male or female.

It also seems to increase general arousal and fixes attention - we're less likely to notice things happening on the periphery of our vision if we're staring at a face with eye contact than at a face where the eyes are diverted to the side.

In neuroimaging studies eye contact has been found to increase activity in a group of areas (medial prefrontal cortex, superior temporal gyrus, fusiform gyrus) that have often been associated with social interaction across a wide range of studies.

Interestingly, the authors suggest that basic eye contact information might be detected by a specific subcortical mechanism that quickly detects simple light/dark differences, presumably to pick out the direction of the pupil, which then triggers more complex social processing to make sense of its social meaning.

It's an interesting field, not least because recognising eye contact and following the gaze direction of others are thought to be some of the most fundamental building blocks on which social communication develops in babies.

Children with autism have been found to show radically different patterns of eye contact recognition and gaze direction, and the authors suggest that one cause could be a problem with the these eye contact neural circuits which leads to slow or impaired social understanding.

Link to article on eye contact.
Link to DOI entry for same.

—Vaughan.

The cognitive fallacy of East is East and West is West:

New Scientist has an excellent article on East-West psychological differences and why they may be more to do with local lifestyle than broad cultural generalisations.

Experiments that compare the responses of, for example, Americans and East Asians, are often used to support theories that Westerners have an analytical, individualistic world-view, while Easterners have a holistic, collectivist outlook.

This has been reported in studies that have compared how Westerners and Easterners categorise objects (shared features vs functional relationships), reasoning about causes for people's behaviour (individual state of mind vs social situation) and, most famously in recent years, how people view visual scenes (focus on objects vs focus on background).

However, the NewSci article discusses a number of studies suggesting that these differences may not be to be with broad cultural definitions but to do with the lifestyle of the local population. In fact, these exact same differences can be found within both Eastern and Western cultures.

So it's not all that surprising, perhaps, that other studies find that local and current social factors rather than the broad sweeps of history or geography tend to shape the way a particular society thinks. For example, Nisbett's group recently compared three communities living in Turkey's Black Sea region who share the same language, ethnicity and geography but have different social lives: farmers and fishers live in fixed communities and their trades require extensive cooperation, while herders are more mobile and independent.

He found that the farmers and fishers were more holistic in their psychology than herders, being more likely to group objects based on their relationships rather than their categories: they preferred to link gloves with hands rather than with scarves, for instance (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 105, p 8552). A similar mosaic pattern of thought can be found in the east. "Hokkaido is seen as the Wild West of Japan," says Nisbett. "The citizens are regarded as cowboys - highly independent and individualistic - and sure enough, they're more analytic in their cognitive style than mainland Japanese."

Even more surprisingly, the article describes how these same cognitive tendencies are malleable - they can be changed in individuals by simply priming them with individualistic or collectivist concepts.

The article is a thought-provoking challenge to the East - West psychological stereotypes common in both the popular press and the scientific literature and discusses some intriguing studies I was completely unaware of.

By the way, the author is Ed Yong, who writes the Not Exactly Rocket Science blog we often link to.

An excellent article that is highly recommended.

Link to 'Beyond east and west: How the brain unites us all'.

—Vaughan.

March 03, 2009

Uncannily beautiful:

Below are a couple of strangely beautiful delusions described in a 1993 paper on 'The reliability of three definitions of bizarre delusions' published in the American Journal of Psychiatry:

A 22-year-old woman had the delusion that thoughts and feelings emanating from her mother’s unconscious were being carried in raindrops that fell on her air conditioner. When the raindrops hit the air conditioner they made a noise, and simultaneously these thoughts and feelings merged with her own unconscious. This merging had resulted in her own mental illness.

A 27-year-old man had the delusion that the voice he heard throughout the day was that of an invisible girlfriend. His girlfriend gave him advice and told him to do things. At night she would come to him, although still invisible, and they would make love.

Link to PubMed entry for paper.

—Vaughan.

February 25, 2009

Match maker's intuition:

The BPS Research Digest covers an intriguing study finding that observers can reliably tell within 10 seconds whether a girl and a guy who have just met fancy each other.

The research was based on a speed dating study, which, to be honest, immediately put me off as they typically just correlate features of the individuals with their date choices - but this study is a little different.

The speed dating was used just to record videos of the daters meeting and interacting with each other, and the participants in the study were just asked to watch the videos and rate when they thought the chemistry was flowing between any particular couple.

From the BPS Research Digest write-up:

Skyler Place and colleagues made their finding using footage of couples on speed-dates. Fifty-four students observed dozens of 10-, 20- or 30-second clips of real speed dating interactions and attempted to say in each case whether each person was romantically interested in the other.

The researchers had access to the daters' real decisions about whether they were interested in any of their speed dates, and were able to compare these with the students' judgements.

The students performed more accurately than would be expected had they simply been guessing. They judged the interest of the male daters with 61 per cent accuracy and the female daters with 58 per cent accuracy. Their accuracy was unaffected by the length of each clip, but was higher when the clip was taken from the middle or the end of a dating interaction. Students currently in a romantic relationship outperformed those who weren't.

I was particularly interested in the results described in the last sentence.

In the scientific paper, the researchers suggest that this "could stem in part from learning through relationship experiences. Alternatively, it is possible that the social skills necessary to succeed in finding and maintaining a relationship also support the ability to correctly perceive romantic interest."

Link to BPSRD on perceiving the hots study.
Link to DOI entry for scientific article.

—Vaughan.

February 23, 2009

Social influences on the drug hit:

BBC Radio 4's eclectic sociology programme Thinking Allowed recently had a fascinating discussion on how drug users learn to experience the effects of a substance and how society has an influence on the personal drug experience.

We tend to assume that drugs have fairly fixed effects but sociology has a long history of studying how users learn to manage and steer the effects of particular drugs.

The programme touches on Becker's classic study [pdf] 'Becoming a Marihuana User' where he charted the informal social initiation into dope smoking in 1960s America.

Importantly, it wasn't just the rituals that accompanied the smoking that were socially acquired, but also knowledge about what 'counted' as the enjoyable aspects of the drug, how to steer the effects and so on.

This is known to be particularly important for psychedelic drugs, with the so-called set and setting having a big influence over the likelihood of having an enjoyable trip.

However, the same applies to drugs such as alcohol, where the effects of having a drink varies between cultures, largely ascribed to the beliefs each culture instils about what are the likely and permissible effects of drunkenness.

This was tackled in another sociological classic, David Mandelbaum's 1965 paper 'Alcohol and culture' where he described the different effects of alcohol in cultures around the world.

However, if you're looking for a punchy overview of the field, the Social Issues Research Centre has a great page on the social and cultural aspects of drinking which I highly recommend.

These situation or culture specific effects have been tackled on the cognitive and neural level, but unfortunately I can't access one of the key papers in the field [update: pdf], although the abstract has the main punchline:

In situations involving inter-neuronal events, these processes of adjustment may take the form of learned modifications that can be re-evoked on future occasions by events that co-occurred at the time of the original modifications.

Sensitization, defined as the enhancement of a directly elicited drug effect, though adaptive, appears to represent facilitation within a system, making the effect easier to elicit on future occasions.

Like tolerance, sensitization of a drug effect can become linked to the events that co-occurred when the effect was originally elicited, making it possible for sensitization to come under selective event control.

In other words, the article argues that learned associations have an effect on the overall experience of repeat drug taking. Of course culture can create learned associations, but changing the context can also mean certain associations are no longer triggered, leaving a great deal of room for situation specific effects.

UPDATE: Thanks to commenter dangermusic for finding a copy of the 'key paper' noted above. I've added a link into the text above or you can just grab it here as a pdf.

Link to Thinking Allowed on the sociology of drug effects.
pdf of 'Becoming a Marihuana User'.
Link to excellent SIRC page on 'Social and Cultural Aspects of Drinking'.

—Vaughan.

February 14, 2009

Love and immortality:

We have a burning instinct for life and yet we know, ultimately, that we will die. We fear the one thing we cannot escape.

The question 'why live?' has preoccupied thinkers from the alpha to the omega of human history, but only relatively recently have we considered the question of 'how' - how do we live with this fear, this knowledge of our own demise?

We recognise love as our companion and protector and we now think that it may even shield us from death itself, at least while we're alive.

'Terror management theory' sounds oddly militaristic to the modern ear, but it was never intended to makes us think of politics. It was developed by psychologist Sheldon Solomon and his colleagues to help explain how we live with existential angst.

The theory suggests we have various ways of keeping the fear of death out of our conscious mind, and of understanding what makes our life meaningful.

Traditionally, researchers have focused on the effect of a social element - how we feel we fit in to our culture's ideas about what makes a meaningful life, and a personal element - how we feel about ourselves, but more recently psychologists have been focusing on love as one of the most important ways of managing our existential fears.

Love beyond life is a constant poetic theme, and yet these are not simply poetic theories, they have been drawn from empirical research.

Never afraid to strip the poetry from the profound, cognitive scientists have labelled their most important existential paradigm 'mortality salience'.

It involves reminding people of death - an experimental memento mori - and numerous studies have found that simply focusing people on their time-limited lives changes how they think and behave.

One of the most reliable effects, is that being reminded of death makes us more socially minded - more likely to want to be physically close to others, more likely to want to have children, but also more likely to support the norms and stereotypes of your own social group.

A group of Israeli psychologists were inspired to wonder whether love might protect us against our fear of death, and whether our anxieties motivate us to seek out love.

In an ingenious 2002 study, they found that reminding people of their demise increased their self-professed romantic commitment, that thinking about a committed relationship reduced the effects of morality salience on harsh social judgements, and that thinking about the end of a relationship increased thoughts of death.

A year later, they reviewed research on love and death and came to the conclusion that close relationships help us manage the anxiety of mortality, partly through the strength of the bond, but partly through the fact that romantic partnerships give us a symbolic way of transcending death - as families provide a way for our contribution to 'live on' after the final curtain.

These studies are some of the first on what has been called 'experimental existential psychology' that seek to understand how we manage our lives in the face of the unknown.

But the fact remains that we will die, and hopefully, we will love. Perhaps we have no profounder response.

Link to 'The existential function of close relationships: introducing death into the science of love'.
Link to PubMed entry for same.

—Vaughan.

February 12, 2009

Leadership can be based on quantity not quality:

Time magazine reports on an intriguing new study finding that groups select natural leaders on the basis of how much each person contributes to group discussions, even when their contributions have no relation to their actual competence.

Psychologists Cameron Anderson and Gavin Kilduff, asked several groups to complete tasks for a $400 dollar prize.

They found that those who spoke more were rated as more competent and influential. Wondering whether this genuinely reflected their actual competence, they decided to test this out with a similar task where the group had to solve math problems.

But this time, they had the participants' mathematics exam results and could see exactly how many problems each person had solved.

When the work was finished, the people who spoke up more were again likelier to be described by peers as leaders and likelier to be rated as math whizzes. What's more, any speaking up at all seemed to do. Participants earned recognition for being the first to call out an answer, but also for being the second or third — even if all they did was agree with what someone else had said. Merely providing some scrap of information relevant to solving the problem counted too, as long as they did so often enough and confidently enough.

When Anderson and Kilduff checked the participants' work, however, a lot of pretenders were exposed. Repeatedly, the ones who emerged as leaders and were rated the highest in competence were not the ones who offered the greatest number of correct answers. Nor were they the ones whose SAT scores suggested they'd even be able to. What they did do was offer the most answers — period.

The researchers conclude that one way dominant people attain influence is simple through acting in ways that make them appear competent, even when this isn't the case.

Link to Time article 'Competence: Is Your Boss Faking It?'.
Link to PubMed entry for study.

—Vaughan.

February 05, 2009

Looking into the mind of God:

This week's New Scientist has an interesting article summarising the current thinking on the psychology of religion.

The research treats religion and belief in God or other supernatural entities as a natural consequence of how the brain works.

This has taken two main strands in the research literature: the first is that these tendencies to believe in supernatural forces have evolutionary benefits for social cohesion and kinship, which is why they have been selected for.

The other is that these beliefs are a side-effect of the actions of other useful cognitive processes we have developed. In other words, we have certain mental abilities, typically attributing intention and desire, which we unwittingly over-apply and hence attribute random uncontrollable events to mysterious but intelligent beings.

The article is not particularly in-depth but is notable for its breadth of coverage and will give you a taste for the direction in which the cognitive science of religion is heading.

Link to NewSci article 'How your brain creates God'.

—Vaughan.

February 03, 2009

Like tears in the rain:

The New York Times has a great short article on the science of crying, covering recent studies that have investigated the common idea that it is a useful way of releasing pent-up emotion.

The idea that crying is cathartic has been researched more than I realised with numerous large scale studies tackling in what situations people cry, as well what impact it has on our emotional state.

Now, some researchers say that the common psychological wisdom about crying — crying as a healthy catharsis — is incomplete and misleading. Having a “good cry” can and usually does allow people to recover some mental balance after a loss. But not always and not for everyone, argues a review article in the current issue of the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science. Placing such high expectation on a tearful breakdown most likely sets some people up for emotional confusion afterward...

In a study published in the December issue of The Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, Dr. Rottenberg, along with Lauren M. Bylsma of the University of South Florida and Ad Vingerhoets of Tilburg University in the Netherlands, asked 5,096 people in 35 countries to detail the circumstances of their most recent crying episode. About 70 percent said that others’ reactions to their breakdown were positive, comforting. But about 16 percent cited nasty or angry reactions that, no surprise, generally made them feel worse.

The science of crying was also covered in a recent BPS Research Digest post that discussed another one of Rottenberg's studies that focused entirely on females.

Link to NYT piece 'The Muddled Tracks of All Those Tears'.

—Vaughan.

Hello, my name is Trouble:

Time magazine has an interesting article on links between given names and behaviour, with a new study finding children with unpopular names are more likely to be get in trouble with the law.

This doesn't mean that being called an unusual name causes criminality - the article notes that boys with unpopular names are likelier to live in single-parent households and be poorer, which are also known to be linked to higher levels of offending.

However, it does add to a growing body of research suggests that our names have a curious influence on our life.

A great review article in The Psychologist from last year covered much of findings, including the fact that people tend to buy products they share initials with, those whose names start with C or D are more likely to receive those grades than are other students, and people called Louis are more likely to live in St. Louis, Mary in Marysville and so on.

The same effect also seems to happen with initials, so Marys are also more likely to live in Manchester.

However, the Time article focuses more on how your name affects how others react towards you and perceive you, which may have a reciprocal impact on your own life chances:

The short answer is that our names play an important role in shaping the way we see ourselves — and, more important, how others see us. Abundant academic literature proves these points. A 1993 paper found that most people perceive those with unconventionally spelled names (Patric, Geoffrey) as less likely to be moral, warm and successful.

A 2001 paper found that we have a tendency to judge boys' trustworthiness and masculinity from their names. (As a guy whose middle name is Ashley, I can attest to the second part.) In a 2007 paper (here's a PDF), University of Florida economist David Figlio found that boys with names commonly given to girls are likelier to be suspended from school.

And an influential 1998 paper co-authored by psychologist Melvin (a challenging first name if there ever was one) Manis of the University of Michigan reported that "having an unusual name leads to unfavorable reactions in others, which then leads to unfavorable evaluations of the self."

Link to Time on the effects of names.

—Vaughan.

January 28, 2009

The economics of crack hustling:

I just found this fascinating TED lecture by economist Steven Levitt on the social structure and economics of ghetto crack dealing. What's surprising is that hustling rocks is a below-minimum-wage occupation with a 7% per annum employee death rate - despite the hype, a very shitty job.

Levitt is famous for being one of the co-authors of the book Freakanomics but is mostly known in the academic world for his research on the economics of crime and the underworld.

His lecture recounts some of the findings of a 10-year research project into the economics of a crack-dealing gang from an inner city US housing project.

Unsurprisingly, being a hustler is incredibly dangerous, but perhaps more of an eye-opener is that the business is run very much like a franchise and that most street dealers had second jobs, moonlighting in the mainstream economy, because dealing crack pays below the minimum wage.

The career prospects are slightly better higher up the ladder, but are still surprisingly modest in the grand scheme of things.

In other crack news, The New York Times recently published an article discussing research on 'crack babies', now many children whose mothers were addicted to crack while they were pregnant have grown up to be adolescents.

During the 1990s, a huge fear was that the children of 'crack moms' would be neurologically impaired, as when born they tend to be smaller in body and head size.

Although there are detectable differences in the teenage years, these aren't as bad as expected, and it seems that being a 'crack baby' isn't a life sentence as it was once thought.

Link to Steven Levitt on sociology and economics of crack dealing.
Link to NYT on 'The Epidemic That Wasn't'.

—Vaughan.

War trauma and brain impact:

Although much of The Telegraph's science coverage seems to have gone down the pan recently, they've just published a remarkably well balanced and informative article on war trauma and how it is associated with measurable changes in brain structure.

Brain imaging studies have found that people with post-traumatic stress disorder tend to have smaller hippocampi, an area known to be key for emotional memory.

But it's not clear whether this is a direct consequence of PTSD, or simply that people with smaller hippocampi are more likely to develop the disorder after trauma.

The article does a fantastic job of presenting a balanced look at the causality hypnotheses, and quotes psychiatrist Simon Wessely, known for his research on the psychology, neuroscience and history of combat trauma.

But Prof Wessely has found that the very thing that exposes soldiers to PTSD might also help them deal with it: their job. According to his research at King's, group cohesion and firm leadership are critical in reducing the impact of psychological distress.

"You have to remember we are talking about professional soldiers who have been highly trained," he says. "Their training is designed to harden them against the unpleasant nature of war. The military is actually very effective at reducing the risk of PTSD with their training, their professionalism, esprit de corps and morale. War is a stressful business and this all prepares soldiers for that."

The flip side is that the memories that provoke trauma are not necessarily those of gruesome battles or injuries. "The kind of events that affect them are not simply seeing bad things and coming under fire – it is when the rules they have come to expect are somehow broken. It is when errors of omission or commission lead to the feeling they have been let down, or that they have let their comrades down, that mental health problems occur. This is why 'friendly fire' incidents are so psychologically damaging – it violates the soldiers' rules of who is supposed to be shooting at them. They will feel anger at those responsible."

The only bizarre bit is the second to last paragraph where it mentions "new treatment is being developed, drawing on neurolinguistic programming, relaxation techniques and even Eye Movement Desensitisation Therapy".

It mentions EMDR as if it is something unusual, when it is an increasing well researched evidence-based treatment, and NLP as if it is nothing out-of-the-ordinary, when it is largely pseudoscience that lacks even the most basic empirical support.

Link to 'How brain scans show the trauma of war'.

—Vaughan.

January 24, 2009

Corseting female sexuality :

The New York Times has an interesting and in-depth article on research into female sexuality that looks at the work of some of the most prominent female researchers in the field.

It does a great job of discussing the often surprising results of recent scientific studies but a commentary on Neuroanthropology really nails why it misses the mark.

The whole article is pitched to support that old tired cliché of sexuality that 'women are complicated, men are simple' and it uses the differences in research findings to suggest women are enigmatic, complex, they don't know what they want, or are torn by competing sexual desires.

But this is largely because the scientific studies have looked at specific research questions that don't relate to 'what do women want?' line, as if this is a question that could actually be answered.

Neuroanthropology uses a great analogy that demonstrates why this is just bad spin:

One can imagine an article with the title, ‘What do diners want?’, which bemoaned the fickleness and impenetrable complexity of culinary preferences: Sometimes they want steak, and sometimes just a salad. Sometimes they put extra salt on the meal, and sometimes they ask for ketchup. One orders fish, another chicken, another ham and eggs.

One day a guy ordered tuna fish salad on rye, and the next, the same guy ordered a tandoori chicken wrap, hold the onions! My God, man, they’re insane! Who can ever come up with a unified theory of food preferences?! Food preferences are a giant forest, too complex for comprehension. What do diners want?!

You get my drift. The line of questioning is rhetorically time-tested (can we say clichéd even?) but objectively and empirically nonsensical. So many of these experiments seem to be testing a series of different, related, but ultimately distinct questions.

Can they all be glossed as, ‘What do women want?’ Yeah, sort of, but you’re going to get a hopeless answer.

Rather ironically, the NYT article celebrates the complexity of female sexuality but ultimately suggests that it's the one-dimensional question that's important when this is nothing but a caricature of human nature.

It's worth reading for the coverage of the research, but the whole premise of the article is slightly askew. The Neuroanthropology piece is an excellent way of getting a broader vista.

Link to NYT article 'What Do Women Want?'.
Link to excellent Neuroanthropology commentary.

—Vaughan.

January 20, 2009

Cocaine nights, moral relativism, orgasms and gangs:

BBC Radio 4's wonderfully eclectic and vastly under-rated social science programme Thinking Allowed has had some fascinating programmes lately, covering the concern of 'cocaine girls' in 1915 London, the history of the orgasm, moral relativism, gang culture, the social meaning of scents and the culture of detectives, to mention just a few of the topics.

The programme is a mixture of social history and the latest in sociology research on contemporary issues that looks at the most amazingly diverse range of issues.

Although there are no mp3 downloads, you can listen to all of the programmes online as streamed audio.

Some of my recent favourites have included an exploration of the social panic about the cocaine scene in 1915 London, evidence for the existence of 'gang culture' in the UK and the psychology of the police interviews but you'll find discussions on pretty much anything you can think of (and probably plenty you'd never have thought about before) in the archive.

Some of the most interesting points relate to how our concerns of 'new threats' to society, for example the influence of popular culture or new technology, are old acquaintances but are presented as new by every generation.

Other interesting programmes often reveal a new angle to something I'd never considered. The programme on the sociology of smell discusses the 'language' of scents and perfumes. It asks why we think some scents are 'feminine' or 'masculine' and how have we come to associate certain smells with specific social meanings.

Link to Thinking Allowed website and archive.

—Vaughan.

January 16, 2009

I don't care about the bruises, just mind the clipboard:

Psychologist Jesse Bering has an interesting article in Scientific American about dangerous psychology studies where researchers have risked life and limb to carry out some of the more extreme experiments in psychology.

Some of the investigations are quite unethical by today's standards - two researchers simulating a sexual assault in the street to see how people would react, putting periscopes in public urinals to measure urine flow - but are an interesting insight into studies of by gone years.

Actually, psychologists are wusses in comparison to sociologists and anthropologists who often do ethnographic research in the most extreme of situations.

One of my favourites examples is sociologist Simon Winlow who was in a research group studying violence in the night time economy.

After debating how one could research the sociology of night time violence in all its gory detail, he decided that the only way to fully understand the culture was to get a job as a bouncer and see what transpires.

As it turned out, what transpired was a fair amount of fighting, most of which he wrote up and published as a fascinating insight into the culture of commercial violence.

His paper, 'Get Ready to Duck. Bouncers and the Realities of Ethnographic Research on Violent Groups', is fascinating, and full of wonderfully euphemistic academic phrases.

I love: "Before our covert research could begin we debated the safety and ethical issues that would no doubt arise". Translation: is it ethical to kick nine shades of shit out of your research subjects if they're fronting up for a scrap?

He wrote the whole lot up as a book, which I've not read, but is apparently excellent.

However, he wasn't the first sociologist to take a beating in the course of his research. In the paper he notes:

Sanchez-Jankowski (1990) in his ten-year study of gangs in Los Angeles, New York and Boston, was the subject of physical attack both as part of initiation rituals, and as a result of being falsely accused of being an informant, while Jacobs (1998) was robbed at gunpoint, and suffered telephone harassment by a crack dealer who was one of his research informants.

To return to Bering's SciAm piece, it turns out he's now writing a regular column for the magazine called 'Bering in Mind' which is freely available online.

As Bering is one of the most interesting evolutionary psychologists around, it should be a good read.

Link to 'Dangerous Psychology Experiments from the Past'.
Link to Winlow's ethnographic study of bouncers and violence.

—Vaughan.

January 14, 2009

Unusual forms of drug addiction, 1933:

I've just found a curious paper from 1933 on unusual forms of drug addiction that contains some charming old-world views on the diversity of intoxication.

It was apparently presented at the wonderfully named 'Society for the Study of Inebriety' and uses the term 'addiction' synonymously with general drug use but does describe a number of curious ways of drug taking in different cultures.

...perhaps our author is more to be trusted in his description of the curious method used by the Zulu Kafis when indulging in the drug [cannabis]. It appears that these people place some burning manure on top of a handful of hashish, and, having covered up all with a small mound of earth, they dig air holes in the heap with their fingers.

Each man then lies down in turn and inhales the smoke through these vents. After a few whiffs they retain the vapour in their respiratory organs for a while with the object of inducing a violent attack of coughing and expectoration. It is evident that they like their dope full flavoured and take their pleasures as sadly as an Englishman is reputed to take his!

Full flavoured indeed!

It also notes that the word 'muggles' was used as slang for marijuana in '30s New Orleans. Is there something you aren't telling us J.K. Rowling?

Link to paper 'Some Unusual Forms of Drug Addiction'.

—Vaughan.

January 12, 2009

The dialectics of the borderline:

Time magazine has an interesting piece on borderline personality disorder (BPD), a sometimes stigmatised diagnosis that implies the patient has unstable impulsive emotional reactions and tumultuous relationships.

In contrast to popular perception, the 'borderline' part doesn't imply the condition is between 'normal' and 'abnormal' but that the patient is on the borderline between a psychotic and non-psychotic disorder, as low-level distortions of perception (fleeting hallucinated voices for example) and magical or paranoid thinking are not uncommon.

The stigma of the diagnosis comes from the fact that people with the label are widely considered by mental health professionals to be 'difficult' or 'challenging'. The fact that self-harm is common in this group often leads to informal negative labels indicating that the patient is a 'cutter' or 'manipulative'.

This has been borne out by various studies. Two studies have found that the label of personality disorder is associated with staff perceiving the person as less deserving of care, more difficult, manipulative, attention-seeking, annoying, and more in control of their suicidal urges and debts - even when everything else about them is the same.

A study specifically with psychiatric nurses found that they were more likely to offer belittling or contradicting responses to statements from patients with the diagnosis.

Borderline is, perhaps, one of the mythologised conditions in psychiatry.

The fact that many mental health professionals believe that the condition is 'lifelong' and 'untreatable' is contradicted by studies that have found that the majority of people who have the diagnosis improve drastically. The most comprehensive study has found that 75% of patients with BPD no longer qualify for the diagnosis after six years.

The article also discusses one of the most promising new treatments - a type of psychotherapy called dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) - that has been found in early trials to improve the emotional tolerance, self-control and day-to-day functioning of patients with BPD.

It was invented by psychologist Marsha Linehan (who according to the article, used to be a nun), based in part on the Buddhist techniques of mindfulness and emotion regulation.

The Time piece is a little overly-dramatic in places, but is generally well-written and avoids the usual clichés associated with BPD and is well worth a look.

Link to Time on 'The Mystery of Borderline Personality Disorder'.

—Vaughan.

January 10, 2009

Personal genomics as a psychological mirror:

Psychologist Steven Pinker explores the impact of personal genome sequencing services and how this information may help us understand our behaviours and preferences in an article for The New York Times.

Pinker is known for advocating that many psychological traits and cognitive abilities are highly heritable. He's recently volunteered to have his entire genome sequenced and made freely available on the internet and so he explores what this information can actually tell us about ourselves.

One aspect of this information is that it can indicate the future course of your life - such as the vastly increased risk of Alzheimer's disease if you're the carrier of two ApoE ε4 alleles.

Like James Watson, Pinker has opted not to find out his ApoE ε4 status, preferring to avoid any additional "existential dread" that the knowledge might cause.

However, other genes predict weaker tendencies and 'cognitive genetics', the science of how genes interact with our mental functions, is beginning to blossom:

Dopamine is the molecular currency in several brain circuits associated with wanting, getting satisfaction and paying attention. The gene for one kind of dopamine receptor, DRD4, comes in several versions. Some of the variants (like the one I have) have been associated with “approach related” personality traits like novelty seeking, sensation seeking and extraversion.

A gene for another kind of receptor, DRD2, comes in a version that makes its dopamine system function less effectively. It has been associated with impulsivity, obesity and substance abuse. Still another gene, COMT, produces an enzyme that breaks down dopamine in the prefrontal cortex, the home of higher cognitive functions like reasoning and planning. If your version of the gene produces less COMT, you may have better concentration but might also be more neurotic and jittery.

The article covers a great deal of ground, aiming to educate about some of the basic principles of genetics as well as tackling the implications of knowing more about our own genetic codes.

By the way, if you're interested in a thorough grounding in the science of behavioural and cognitive genetics, I highly recommend the somewhat expensive but very well written and remarkably comprehensive book Behavioural Genetics.

Link to NYT piece 'My Genome, My Self'.

—Vaughan.

January 07, 2009

The attractive face unmasked:

Science News has an excellent cover article discussing the psychology of facial attractiveness and rounds-up some of the latest cognitive science research in the area.

It covers research on quite well-worn areas, such as symmetry, masculinity and femininity in faces, but also picks up on some of the new developments that have been tackled only recently.

Other missing elements in evaluating beauty have begun to emerge with the use of new technology. Video techniques have allowed for dynamic rather than static interpretations of beauty.

“Real faces move,” says Edward Morrison of the University of Bristol in England. “If you show someone a moving face, they can recognize it quicker. There is more information.”

And it turns out that how faces move may contribute to how good they look. In a 2007 paper [pdf] in Evolution and Human Behavior, Morrison reported that more of the movements known to be indicators of femininity — blinking, nodding and head tilting — made women’s faces more attractive to male and female volunteers.

“Movement can convey important meanings,” Morrison says. “If that person likes you or doesn’t. If that person is being aggressive. If the person is being flirtatious. The face can start to convey these kinds of things.”

Link to ScienceNews piece 'It’s written all over your face'.

—Vaughan.

January 06, 2009

Deodorants boost sexiness by getting men in the groove:

I keep running into fascinating articles that The Economist ran over the Christmas period and this one is no exception - it covers research that suggests that men's deodorants do increase sexual attractiveness, but by increasing confidence and hence the behaviour of the wearer. The smell alone seems to have little impact on women.

Craig Roberts of the University of Liverpool and his colleagues—working with a team from Unilever’s research laboratory at nearby Port Sunlight—have been investigating the problem. They already knew that appropriate scents can improve the mood of those who wear them. What they discovered, though, as they will describe in a forthcoming edition of the International Journal of Cosmetic Science, is that when a man changes his natural body odour it can alter his self-confidence to such an extent that it also changes how attractive women find him.

Half of Dr Roberts’s volunteers were given an aerosol spray containing a commercial formulation of fragrance and antimicrobial agents. The other half were given a spray identical in appearance but lacking active ingredients. The study was arranged so that the researchers did not know who had received the scent and who the dummy. Each participant obviously knew what he was spraying on himself, since he could smell it. But since no one was told the true purpose of the experiment, those who got the dummy did not realise they were being matched against people with a properly smelly aerosol.

Over the course of several days, Dr Roberts’s team conducted a battery of psychological tests on both groups of volunteers. They found that those who had been given the commercial fragrance showed an increase in self-confidence. Not that surprising, perhaps. What was surprising was that their self-confidence improved to such an extent that women who could watch them but not smell them noticed. The women in question were shown short, silent videos of the volunteers. They deemed the men wearing the deodorant more attractive. They were, however, unable to distinguish between the groups when shown only still photographs of the men, suggesting it was the men’s movement and bearing, rather than their physical appearance, that was making the difference.

The abstract of the actual study (I don't have access to the full-text unfortunately) also reports that non-verbal attractiveness (presumably, sexiness of 'body language') was predicted by the men's liking of the deodorant, independent of their facial attractiveness.

The researchers conclude by highlighting the remarkable influence of personal odour on self-perception, and how this can even influence how others perceive us, even when they can't actually smell the scent.

The Economist article also discusses the link between natural scent, genetic and pheromones, and sexual allure. An intriguing article and an excellent study.

Link to Economist article 'The scent of a man'.
Link to DOI entry for deodorant and sexual attractiveness study.

—Vaughan.

January 02, 2009

Sex, orgasm and childbirth: a discomforting mix:

Petra Boyton has a fantastic piece on the experience of orgasm during birth - the focus of an upcoming documentary and a subject likely to cause discomfort in some.

Petra discusses the relationship between sexual stimulation and labour noting that sexual pleasure has been reported during childbirth in the medical literature.

This is from a 1987 review article on sexuality and childbirth:

Newton (1971 , 1973) argued that women's three reproductive acts: coitus, parturition, and lactation are psychophysiologically interrelated and trigger caretaking behavior, a necessity for species survival. Features that are evident in both coitus (sexual arousal and orgasm) and in undisturbed childbirth include changes in respiration (hyperpnea and tachypnea), vocalization, strained facial expression, rhythmic uterine contractions, loosening of the cervical mucous plug, frequent supine position with thighs adducted, a tendency to become uninhibited, exceptional muscular strength, an altered state of consciousness with rapid return to alert awareness after orgasm or birth, and a profound feeling of joy or ecstasy following orgasm or delivery. In addition, clitoral engorgement usually associated with sexual arousal has been described in labor in a number of parturients, beginning at 8-9cm cervical dilation (clitoral engorgement has also been described on occasion during stressful situations, without sexual stimulation) (Rossi, 1973). Intense orgasmic sensations have also been described during the second stage of labor (Masters and Johnson, 1966; Sarlin, 1963).

However, there is also evidence that sexual stimulation during labour has been shown to help delivery and ease labour-related pain - such as research on the benefits of breast stimulation during birthing.

However, Petra's write-up makes clear that systematic research is still lacking, so we're still not sure about how many women experience orgasm during birth, or how effective all types of active sexual stimulation might be to assist birth.

However, this topic is contentious owing to the psychological discomfort it causes. Perhaps the clash between the stereotypes that birth is innocent and pure while sex is dirty and salacious mean that some people will just find the whole subject too much to handle.

There are many of these areas in medicine. For example, sexual relationships between people with learning disabilities.

The thought of two people with Down syndrome having sex causes great discomfort in many people, despite the fact that it is perfectly possible for some people with Down's understand and consent to the situation.

If we assume that all people who are able to consent and have found a willing consenting partner should be able to freely participate in a sexual relationship, perhaps it would be useful to develop a test to help evaluate people with learning abilities to make sure they are both able to understand and consenting.

These sorts of tests are common for testing the capacity for other sorts of decisions - such as financial responsibility, or decisions to refuse medical care - but discomfort factor tends to mean that these areas are under-researched.

With reference to the upcoming documentary, the website for the film has quite a curious tone, and I have to say, is slightly sensational.

Buy the DVD or CD!

Share Orgasmic Birth with your friends and family this holiday season with our special 5 pack of DVD’s and CD soundtrack and SAVE. Subtitled in French, Spanish, German, and Portuguese.

I can't say a 5 pack of the Orgasmic Birth (and soundtrack!) would the first thing that comes to mind when buying Christmas presents, but there you go.

Link to Dr Petra on 'Is there such a thing as an ‘orgasmic birth’?'

—Vaughan.

December 29, 2008

Voodoo correlations in social brain studies:

I've just come across a bombshell of a paper that looked at numerous headline studies on the cognitive neuroscience of social interaction and found that many contained statistically impossible or spurious correlations between behaviour and brain activity.

The article is currently 'in press' for the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science but the preprint is available online as a pdf file.

Social cognitive neuroscience is a hot new area and many of the headline studies use fMRI brain imaging to look at how activity in the brain is correlated with social decision-making or perception.

This new analysis, led by neuroscientist Edward Vul, was inspired by the fact that some of these correlations seem to good to be true, and so the research team investigated. The abstract of their study is below, and it's powerful stuff - indicating that many of the results are due to flawed analyses.

If you're not familiar with neuroimaging research it might be useful to know that what a 'voxel' is before reading the abstract.

Essentially, brain scanners digitally divide the scanned area into a block of tiny boxes and each one of these is called a voxel (think 3D pixel).

This allows the scans to be analysed by comparing the activity or tissue density in each voxel to another measure - which could be the same voxel during another scan, or it could be something entirely different, such as a measure of emotion or social decision-making.

The newly emerging field of Social Neuroscience has drawn much attention in recent years, with high-profile studies frequently reporting extremely high (e.g., >.8) correlations between behavioral and self-report measures of personality or emotion and measures of brain activation obtained using fMRI. We show that these correlations often exceed what is statistically possible assuming the (evidently rather limited) reliability of both fMRI and personality/emotion measures. The implausibly high correlations are all the more puzzling because social-neuroscience method sections rarely contain sufficient detail to ascertain how these correlations were obtained.

We surveyed authors of 54 articles that reported findings of this kind to determine the details of their analyses. More than half acknowledged using a strategy that computes separate correlations for individual voxels, and reports means of just the subset of voxels exceeding chosen thresholds. We show how this non-independent analysis grossly inflates correlations, while yielding reassuring-looking scattergrams. This analysis technique was used to obtain the vast majority of the implausibly high correlations in our survey sample. In addition, we argue that other analysis problems likely created entirely spurious correlations in some cases.

We outline how the data from these studies could be reanalyzed with unbiased methods to provide the field with accurate estimates of the correlations in question. We urge authors to perform such reanalyses and to correct the scientific record.

The paper notes that some of the most widely-reported studies in recent years contain this flaw and this new paper has the potential to really shake up the world of social cognitive neuroscience.

pdf of preprint of 'Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience'.

—Vaughan.

December 25, 2008

A Quantum of Christmas:

A not very good photo of an enjoyable Christmas afternoon spent watching James Bond movie A Quantum of Solace on the psychiatric ward of Hospital San Vincente de Paúl in Medellín.

In the service of international understanding, I'm being taught about Colombian cuisine and salsa music, and in return I've taught the hospital canteen how to make chip buttys and have introduced the tradition of the Bank Holiday Bond Movie.

Peace on Earth and Goodwill to All.

—Vaughan.

December 24, 2008

Seasonal wishes :

I would just like to take this opportunity to wish Mind Hacks readers a happy seasonal festival and I hope you experience an appropriate positive emotion during your marking of the period.

If you're interested in a little seasonal psychology, Frontal Cortex has an excellent piece on the psychology of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival that involves 8 days of gift giving.

Curiously, it involves the peak-end rule and research with colonoscopies and I'll leave you to discover the rest.

I'll be having a very Paisa Christmas with everything kicking off today so Feliz Navidad y Próspero Año Nuevo from Colombia.

Link to Frontal Cortex on Hanukkah and Colonoscopies.

—Vaughan.

December 23, 2008

Humour as social bargaining :

3QuarksDaily has an interesting piece on the psychology of humour and how it is used to negotiate and establish social hierarchies.

The article looks at two theories of humour that try understand what makes something funny. A common explanation is the 'incongruity' idea, that suggests when something is suddenly out of context it is more likely to seem funny.

But as the article notes, these theories "fail to explain why we are amused by certain instances of incongruity – a man showing up to his job at a real-estate agency with a “kick me” sign on his back – but not others – a man showing up to his job at a real-estate agency with a cure for cancer".

The other approach is the 'superiority' theory, that suggests that humour is used to establish social hierarchies - those considered objects of humour are further down the social ranking.

But it's also the case that we seem to use it as a form of flattery for our superiors - various studies (nicely summarised in this NYT article) find that we are much more likely to laugh at the jokes of people higher up the social hierarchy.

The 3QD piece considers the role, development, and rather intriguingly the morality of humour. It's a little short on links to actual studies which is a little frustrating but it otherwise an interesting and informative exploration.

Link to 3QuarksDaily article 'Is Humor Immoral?'.

—Vaughan.

December 19, 2008

Dreams and the Fear of the Dead:

Neuroanthropology has an excellent piece riffing on my recent article on grief hallucinations where I wondered about cultural differences in re-experiencing the dead.

The post discusses work by the evocatively-named anthropologist Donald Tuzin who studied the Ilahita Arapesh of northeastern Papua New Guinea and how they mesh their beliefs and practices of death and afterlife with everyday experience.

Some of Tuzin's work in this area is published in a wonderful article entitled 'The Breath of a Ghost: Dreams and the Fear of the Dead'.

It gets a bit spuriously psychoanalytic in places but has some wonderful descriptions of how funeral practices are linked to beliefs about ghosts and their influences. Crucially he argues that it is the demands of everyday life that shape these beliefs, and not vice versa.

At Neuroanthropology Daniel discusses it in light of more up-to-date work and the wider perspective from Tuzin's long career.

It's certainly an interesting area, but although re-experiencing of the dead is so common, I didn't realise quite what a touchy subject it could be. All hell broke loose (excuse the pun) in the comments to the original article.

This is my favourite:

Mr. Vaughn [sic] Bell might find himself in court for libel after accusing everyone who has seen or felt a presence of being a drug addict, alcoholic or ill in some way. His one-sided argument could be the result of stupidity or perhaps some mental defect that prevents him from being intelligent enough to know the difference between a hallucination and an actual ghost/spirit/spectre/haunt. Next he will tell us that the earth is flat, and anyone who thinks it is round is a heretic, and that big yellow thing we call the sun is just an illusion.

Sir, I grew up in Britain. We know the sun is an illusion.

Link to Neuroanthropology on 'Donald Tuzin and the Breath of a Ghost'.

—Vaughan.

December 16, 2008

'Internet addiction' built on foundations of sand:

A study just published in the journal CyberPsychology and Behavior has reviewed all of the available scientific studies on internet addiction and found them to be mostly crap. And not just slightly lacking, really pretty awful.

To quote from the research summary:

The analysis showed that previous studies have utilized inconsistent criteria to define Internet addicts, applied recruiting methods that may cause serious sampling bias, and examined data using primarily exploratory rather than confirmatory data analysis techniques to investigate the degree of association rather than causal relationships among variables.

Rather disappointingly though, the authors just suggest that better research is needed when it's quite obvious that the whole concept is fundamentally flawed.

So badly flawed that it's a logical fallacy, a category error, in fact. To revisit the point, the internet is a medium of communication and it is not possible to be addicted to a medium of communication because the medium does not specify an activity.

It's like saying someone is a 'language addict' or is 'addicted' to transport. It just makes no sense.

Unfortunately, none of the so-called diagnostic scales or indeed, researchers, actually get this point, so it's perfectly possible to be diagnosed with internet addiction if you're putting in a lot of long-stressful hours running a business. If you use the internet to communicate with your employees that is.

If, on the other hand, you're putting in a lot of long-stressful hours running a business and you use an alternative medium of communication, then you're not an internet addict. Same motivations, same emotional impact, same psychological effect. But if you use the internet you have a mental illness, and if you don't, well, you don't.

You can switch 'running a business' for anything that is stressful, preoccupying and intrusive (following a sports team perhaps) and if you use the internet as a tool, you're diagnosable.

At least with the current methods - which, it turns out, are not even based on even a semblance of scientific reliability.

This is not to say that there aren't people who use the internet excessively to the detriment of themselves and their families. But there are people who follow football in a similarly problematic way, and people who spend too much time going to folk concerts, and people who can't tear themselves away from the stock market.

This doesn't make them addicts and the sooner we stop trying to apply addiction to people as a clumsy way to trying to avoid the language of blame the quicker we can tackle their social and emotional difficulties in a more relevant and appropriate way.

There's a good write-up from Dr Shock and another on PsychCentral both of which I recommend as antidotes to the internet addiction foolishness.

Link to study.
Link to DOI entry for same.

—Vaughan.

December 08, 2008

Does going to Mecca make Muslims more moderate?:

As the annual Muslim Hajj pilgrimage comes to an end, I'm reminded of this interesting Slate article from earlier this year which reported on research that looked at whether going to Mecca makes Muslims more moderate.

Although Islam has been associated with extremism in recent years, one of the key parts of the Hajj is the wearing of Ihram clothing to emphasise the fact that all people are created equal.

The article discusses a recent study that used a quirk of the distribution of Saudi Arabian visas to Pakistani Muslims. Only some of those who apply will be randomly allocated a visa to attend the Mecca pilgrimage, meaning the researchers could compare the views of those who went with those who didn't.

Six months after the Hajjis of '06 returned home to Pakistan, Clingingsmith, Khwaja, and Kremer had a survey team track down 1,600 Hajj applicants, half of whom had been selected to go to Mecca and half who hadn't. The Hajjis were asked questions on topics ranging from religious practices (frequency of prayer and mosque attendance, for example) to women's issues. Perhaps not surprisingly, the study found that after a monthlong immersion in communal prayer, the pilgrims were 15 percent more likely to report following mainstream Muslim practices, such as praying five times a day and reciting the Quran. This came at the expense of local Pakistani religious traditions—Hajjis were 10 percent less likely to follow local rituals like using amulets or visiting the tombs of local saints...

Even more surprising, Hajjis were 25 percent less likely to believe that it was impossible for Muslims of different ethnicities or sects to live together in harmony—a finding that would seem to be of particular interest for those trying to bring peace to the streets of Baghdad. This greater sense of goodwill among peoples even extended to non-Muslims (who were obviously not represented in Mecca). Hajjis were more likely than non-Hajjis to hold the opinion that people of all religions can live in harmony. Hajjis were also less likely to feel that extreme methods—such as suicide bombings or attacks on civilians—could be justified in dealing with disagreements between Muslims and non-Muslims.

The article discusses some of the other findings from the study, including more tolerant views on the place of women in society, which suggests that the Hajj has an effect of increasing pilgrims' goodwill towards both fellow Muslims and other people in the world.

Link to Slate article 'The Pilgrim's Progressiveness'.
Link to study.

—Vaughan.

The big tease:

The New York Times has an interesting article arguing that the recent public trend for outlawing 'teasing' as a form of bullying is a step too far, owing to psychological research showing that it's part of normal social interaction and can actually enhance relationships.

The piece is by psychologist Dacher Keltner, and looks at teasing among children, as well as in adults and romantic partners.

He argues that teasing is not only wrongly outlawed, but is a form of social play that is essential for learning to manage complex social interactions.

Our rush to banish teasing from social life has its origins in legitimate concerns about bullies on the playground and at work. We must remember, though, that teasing, like so many things, gets better with age. Starting at around 11 or 12, children become much more sophisticated in their ability to hold contradictory propositions about the world — they move from Manichaean either-or, black-or-white reasoning to a more ironic, complex understanding. As a result, as any chagrined parent will tell you, they add irony and sarcasm to their social repertory. And it is at this age that you begin to see a precipitous drop in the reported incidences of bullying. As children learn the subtleties of teasing, their teasing is less often experienced as damaging.

In seeking to protect our children from bullying and aggression, we risk depriving them of a most remarkable form of social exchange. In teasing, we learn to use our voices, bodies and faces, and to read those of others — the raw materials of emotional intelligence and the moral imagination. We learn the wisdom of laughing at ourselves, and not taking the self too seriously. We learn boundaries between danger and safety, right and wrong, friend and foe, male and female, what is serious and what is not. We transform the many conflicts of social living into entertaining dramas. No kidding.

It's quite a comprehensive piece, looking at how we use the subtleties of language to signal the 'teasing mode' as well as passing on important social messages without being explicit.

I wonder how this translates across cultures. I'm always struck who the British tendency to 'take the piss' out of each other and themselves is not necessarily shared by other cultures, at least to the same degree or in the same situations.

Link to NYT piece 'In Defense of Teasing'.

—Vaughan.

December 04, 2008

Happiness ripples through social networks:

This week's British Medical Journal has a wonderful social network study that examined how happiness moved through social networks. It found that even when friends of friends become happy, the effect can ripple through and boost your own contentment.

It's a wonderfully conceived study that looks at how people in social networks change over time, both geographically and psychologically. It turns out the effect is stronger if we live near the person, but happiness doesn't ripple through workplaces, unless we consider the happy person our friend.

While there are many determinants of happiness, whether an individual is happy also depends on whether others in the individual’s social network are happy. Happy people tend to be located in the centre of their local social networks and in large clusters of other happy people.

The happiness of an individual is associated with the happiness of people up to three degrees removed in the social network. Happiness, in other words, is not merely a function of individual experience or individual choice but is also a property of groups of people.

Indeed, changes in individual happiness can ripple through social networks and generate large scale structure in the network, giving rise to clusters of happy and unhappy individuals. These results are even more remarkable considering that happiness requires close physical proximity to spread and that the effect decays over time.

However, the article is also notable for being astoundingly well written. It's not only a description of a scientific study, it's a plain language guide to social network analysis.

I don't think I've ever read a scientific paper that's so clear and informative. If you want to learn about how social network analysis works, this is a great place to start.

Link to text of BMJ study.
Link to write-up from The New York Times.
Link to write-up from Washington Post.

—Vaughan.

Roll out the barrel:

This week's British Medical Journal has an excellent short article on 'Diogenes syndrome', an unofficial name for the situation where an older person is living in squalor without seeming to have mental or neurological impairments that might explain it, but without seeming to mind either.

The syndrome is named after the Ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope who gave up mainstream life to live in poverty and made his home in a barrel.

Older adults found fit the description of the syndrome are often referred to psychiatrists, but the author, psychiatrist Brian Murray, wonders whether we're missing Diogenes' point - that happiness has nothing to do with material circumstances.

Alternatively, Diogenes syndrome may simply be a description of a social situation. This would fit with my impression that referrals for Diogenes syndrome have tailed off since reality television programmes started showing celebrity cleaning ladies helping "normal" people living in squalor. Age seems to be a factor: perhaps it is a sign of our paternalistic culture that a person younger than 65 living in squalor is seen by millions on television, whereas those past the age of 65 are seen by a psychiatrist.

Link to thoughtful BMJ piece on Diogenes syndrome.

—Vaughan.

December 02, 2008

The dead stay with us:

Scientific American Mind Matter's blog has just published an article I wrote on grief hallucinations, the remarkably common experience of seeing, hearing, touching or sensing our loved ones after they've passed away.

Grief hallucinations are a normal reaction to having someone close to you die and are a common part of the mourning process, but it's remarkable how often people are embarrassed to say they've had the experience because they worry what others might think.

I was inspired to write the piece after reading a wonderful paper, published in Transcultural Psychiatry, by psychiatrist Carlos Sluzki on the cultural significance of one Hispanic lady's post-grief hallucinations.

My reference to the shadow cat draws on the intro to Sluzki's article which must be one of the most beautiful openings to an academic article I've ever read.

I note that there's not a great deal of research on grief hallucinations, despite how common they are, although I picked up on a study during the last few days which addressed these curious phenomena in a study on psychotic symptoms.

A thorough population survey in France that appeared earlier this year found that grief hallucinations were the most frequent 'psychotic' symptom in individuals without mental illness.

It's also interesting to read the comments that the article has generated. I really seemed to have pushed a few buttons.

I'm quite proud of the piece though, and it's a vastly under-discussed and under-researched topic that affects huge numbers of people.

Link to SciAm piece 'Ghost Stories: Visits from the Deceased'.
Link to Carlos Sluzki's excellent article.
Link to DOI for same.

—Vaughan.

November 26, 2008

Inner space at the final frontier:

The Psychologist has a truly fantastic article on astronaut psychology, treating off-world mental health problems, and the interpersonal dynamics of the space mission.

It is thoroughly fascinating, exceptionally well-written and even contains an interview with astronaut Dr Jay Buckley "a crew member with STS-90, Space Shuttle Columbia’s 16-day Neurolab mission in 1998. The seven-member crew conducted life science experiments focusing on the effects of microgravity on the brain and nervous system."

I think I've just wet myself.

One of my favourite bits is where it discusses what measures they take to maintain the astronauts' mental health.

This is no small problem and the article notes that psychological problems have been the leading medical cause of long-duration mission terminations.

Depression is apparently a key problem. The article ominously notes that no-one has yet had to use the on-board antidepressant medication, but it does describe a computerised psychological treatment for depression as part of the on-board software package the 'Virtual Space Station'.

The Virtual Space Station's depression module will follow the problem-solving treatment (PST) approach to therapy. James Cartreine, the principal investigator on the Virtual Space Station project, says his team chose this form of intervention because it is empirically supported and has high face validity – in other words, it’s immediately apparent to users of the Virtual Space Station how the interactive programme is going to help them.

‘The active ingredient of PST is behavioral activation,’ says Cartreine, ‘getting people with depression to do something – and helping them to feel good about their efforts, whether or not their efforts were successful.’

Because of its focus on identifying problems and working out possible solutions, PST can help combat feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, which is particularly appropriate for people isolated in space in a confined environment. The fact that it’s tangible – it’s geared towards solving observable problems as opposed to cognitive problems – also makes it suitable for astronauts, who have proven to be accepting of the intervention. ‘Astronauts are physical scientists, engineers and programmers – they’re not necessarily used to thinking about their thought processes,’ says

If you're interested in how the same topic looked in 1959, we discussed some unintentionally hilarious articles from a special issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry on a rather Freudian 'space psychiatry' from that very same year.

Link to Psychologist article 'New horizons'.

Full disclosure: I'm an unpaid associate editor of The Psychologist and I've always wanted to be an astronaut.

—Vaughan.

When I get that feeling, I need sociosexual healing:

New Scientist has an article on the psychology and biology on sleeping around - which has been given the wonderfully gentle and inviting name of 'sociosexuality' in the research literature.

Rather predictably, the article contains the rather tired 'men spread their seed, women look for long term partners' evolutionary psychology explanation, but also does a good job of countering this with some interesting and sometimes surprising studies from the sex research literature.

One of the most interesting bits is where it notes that foetal testosterone exposure is correlated in men with masculine facial features and number of sexual partners in adulthood, and exactly the the same holds for women:

Another factor with strong links to sociosexuality is masculinity. Boothroyd found men with more masculine-looking faces scored higher on sociosexuality, and it seems to be the same story for women. Sarah Mikach and Michael Bailey of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, examined how women's sociosexuality related to the degree to which they looked, felt or behaved in a masculine way. They found that heterosexual women who had high numbers of sexual partners were more likely to show higher levels of masculinity.

The researchers argued that these women behave in a way that is more typically male and this could be due to early - probably prenatal - exposure to androgens, such as testosterone, that organise typically "male" brains differently from typically "female" brains (Evolution and Human Behavior, vol 20, p 141). Supporting this idea, Andrew Clark of McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, found a higher rate of sociosexuality in women with a smaller ratio of index to ring finger length - which some researchers believe corresponds to higher prenatal androgen exposure (Evolution and Human Behavior, vol 25, p 113).

If you want to rate your own sociosexuality, they've also put the questionnaire online.

Unusually for the normally rather coy New Scientist, the article is open-access. Is this a sign that New Scientist are realising that science is like love - it's better when it's free, or are they just using sex as a way of getting short-term affection?

We'll see how we feel in the morning.

Link to NewSci on 'The dizzying diversity of human sexual strategies'.

—Vaughan.

November 25, 2008

Mental illness in children: medical issue or fig leaf?:

Dana's online mind and brain magazine Cerebrum has a critical and thought-provoking article arguing that mental illnesses like ADHD and child bipolar disorder are too often being used as fig leaves for social problems that we prefer to think of as blame-free genetic disorders that can be treated with simple-solution medications.

The piece is by distinguished psychologist Jerome Kagan, considered one of the founders of developmental psychology, who discusses the various social changes that have encouraged differences and misbehaviour to be medically diagnosed and treated - particularly during the last two decades.

The article is timely, owing to it coinciding with recent revelations from an ongoing trial where parents are suing drug makers over the use of antipsychotic medication in children.

The documents show that pharmaceutical company Johnson and Johnson aimed to carry out research on child bipolar disorder with a specific intention of boosting sales of their medication, as well as countering unfavourable coverage from the media and spinning 'no result' studies on the drug.

We usually think of 'social factors' as increasing risk for mental illness in the individual, but we also need to remember that there are strong social factors that affect how we think about disorders in terms of their causes, effects and treatments.

One of the strongest social factors is financial pressure, and, as covered by Wired, drug companies are notorious for 'cooking the books' in an attempt to bury negative data and spin positive findings in the best possible light.

This has just been reported in yet another damning study on drug company data handling published in the most recent edition of PLoS Medicine.

Link to Dana article 'The Meaning of Psychological Abnormality'.
Link to PLoS Medicine study on bias in drug trials submitted to the FDA.

—Vaughan.

November 24, 2008

Grounding the helicopter parents:

The New Yorker has an extended review and discussion of various new books critical of the increasing trend for parents to be overinvolved in their children's lives owing to the trend for 'intelligence boosting' products and activities.

It's a nicely balanced article that highlights some of the worst trends in 'overparenting' while also pointing out some of the flaws with the recent wave of criticism.

To get some perspective, look at “Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood” (2004), by Steven Mintz, a professor of history at Columbia. Mintz’s story begins with the beginning of the United States, and therefore he describes children with troubles greater than overparenting: boys dispatched to coal mines, and girls to textile mills, at age nine or ten.

As for the current outbreak of worry over the young, Mintz reminds us that America has seen such panics before—for example, in the nineteen-fifties, with the outcry over hot rods, teen sex, and rock and roll. The fifties even had its own campaign against overparenting, or overmothering—Momism, as it was called. This was thought to turn boys into homosexuals. For the past three decades, Mintz writes, discussions of child-rearing in the United States have been dominated by a “discourse of crisis,” and yet America’s youth are now, on average, “bigger, richer, better educated, and healthier than at any other time in history.”

There have been some losses. Middle-class white boys from the suburbs have fallen behind their predecessors, but middle-class girls and minority children are far better off. Mintz thinks that we worry too much, or about the wrong things. Despite general prosperity—at least until recently—the percentage of poor children in America is greater today than it was thirty years ago. One in six children lives below the poverty line. If you want an emergency, Mintz says, there’s one

Over-involvement is certainly a risk, however, and this can be seen even in the very beginning of infancy. One of the key skills psychologists talk about in early life is the ability to self-soothe - in other words, learning to independently manage discomfort and strong emotions.

This begins when babies are getting into sleep routines in the months after being born. There is a temptation to attend to the baby and soothe it as soon as it cries but this can have the opposite effect and the child actually sleeps worse because they don't have the opportunity to learn to settle themselves.

A recent large study helped to confirm this and found that parents that encouraged independence and self-soothing by not attending to their baby at every cry reported that their child had extended and more consolidated sleep.

Link to New Yorker 'The Child Trap' article.

—Vaughan.

November 23, 2008

Making Sense of Bastards:

A 2005 article from business psychology journal Organization Studies discusses the psychology of being a bastard. It has a serious point, but is just hilarious for the contrast between the academic language and the subject matter.

The serious point behind the article, written by psychologist David Sims, is to look at how people in business organisations make narratives or stories about someone being a 'bastard' to demonize them and persuade others of the fact.

This can be to discount someone else opinion, undermine their status, or to create a dragon against which they can valiantly fight for their own glory.

However, because of the subject matter, it's frequently funny as it analyses the varied types of company bastards as they're constructed within organisations. Just some of the section headings are pure genius:

Narrative 1: Clever Bastard
Narrative 2: Bastard ex Machina
Narrative 3: Devious Bastard
A Narrative Understanding of Bastards
Making Sense of Bastards

Link to 'You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations' (thanks Olwyn!).
Link to DOI entry for same.

—Vaughan.

November 16, 2008

An unusual and poignant brain injury:

Sometimes, medical case studies are powerful as much because of what they leave out as what they contain, as in an uncomfortably moving 1935 case report of a young lady who attempted suicide with a hand gun.

It's available online as a pdf and the point of the article is to report the remarkable fact that she survived and was apparently neurologically normal afterwards, despite losing a considerable amount of blood and brain tissue.

Scientifically, this is indeed remarkable, but perhaps more striking is the photo, ostensibly of the wound, but haunting because of the what it captures of the young woman.

Her photo is painfully personal, showing a bleak, listless expression and suggesting a difficult life undescribed. It's a stark contrast to the stripped clean case study that contains only one line of personal detail:

On July 25, 1934, at 1pm, Mrs A., age about 30, attempted suicide at her home in Truckee, California, by shooting herself through the head with a 32-caliber automatic revolver.

Presumably the case report was published before the days when it became customary to anonymise patient photos to protect personal privacy. But these images remind us that this requirement protects the reader as much as it protects the patient, because while tragedy is important to understand in the abstract, it remains difficult to absorb in the personal.

Being able to abstract the data from the tragedy is one of the most important skills of working with people facing difficult situations, but it is barely mentioned in textbooks or training programmes. It's just something people are expected to develop and discuss if they find challenging.

Occasionally, even the most seasoned professional is caught off-guard, where the full impact of unchecked emotional engagement outflanks the abstraction process.

This 1930s case study reflects that same experience, where the medical facts are drowned out by the immediacy of the human emotion.

pdf of case study 'An Unusual Brain Injury'.
Link to PubMed Central entry for same.

—Vaughan.

November 08, 2008

The War of the War of the Worlds:

RadioLab make the most beautiful, compelling programmes. They recently broadcast a truly excellent edition on the War of the Worlds radio dramatisation, which has sparked mass panics, not once, not twice, but three times, over a period of more than two decades.

The most famous adaptation of H.G. Well's novel was created by Orson Wells in 1938 and the RadioLab team do a fantastic job of taking us through the original radio play and putting exactly in context how it was broadcast and what buttons it pushed in the society of the time to explain exactly why it had such an immediate impact.

One of the most interesting bits is where they read out transcripts of listener interviews where some claim to gave actually seen or smelt the smoke from the battle with aliens, or even seen the alien spaceships themselves. One fascinating bit suggests some listeners thought they were being invaded by Germans.

The stunt was repeated twice, each causing listeners to panic to different degrees. One broadcast in Ecuador caused mass rioting and several deaths.

It's a completely gripping programme and wonderfully produced, so take some time, listen on some headphones or good speakers, sit back and enjoy.

Apparently a new RadioLab series starts in two weeks, and we'll keep you updated when it hits the wires.

Link to RadioLab on War of the Worlds.

—Vaughan.

November 03, 2008

Trans children - trapped in a body, mind or society?:

The Atlantic magazine has an excellent article about the heated issues raised by children who want to be the opposite sex. It's an excellent piece that captures both the dilemmas of parents and mental health professionals sparked by potentially transgendered children.

I sometimes jokingly suggest that clinical child psychology would be better described as clinical parent psychology, owing to the fact that it almost always involves working as much with the parents' anxieties as the child's.

This is particularly important when it comes to behaviours which are not considered, in themselves, to be physically or mentally damaging, but which are socially unacceptable or stigmatised, because the pressure often takes the form of others wishing the child would conform to social norms.

The Atlantic article gives some vivid examples of some of the pressures, as the child, mother, father, professionals, peers and campaigning groups each have different opinions on how to manage a young child that dresses and acts like a child of the opposite sex.

As we discussed in a post about an NPR programme that covered the same territory, one of the big controversies is whether to try and treat the child to identify with their birth sex, or whether to help them cope with the stresses of adjusting to life as a transgendered child.

This is complicated by the fact that follow-up studies have shown that not all children who have cross-gender desires when young maintain them through puberty. However, hormone treatment exists which can delay puberty so it makes it easier for a child to pass as the opposite sex if this is thought the best course of action.

The Atlantic piece is a remarkably well-researched piece that covers a great deal of the mental health debate about the practice and ethics of treating what are known as 'gender dysphoric' children, but also gives us a revealing insight into some of the family and social dynamics that affect the individuals.

A compelling and thought-provoking insight into this contested area.

Link to Atlantic article 'A Boy's Life'.
Link to previous Mind Hacks piece on 'gender identity disorder'.

—Vaughan.

Lesbians - unicyle and be counted:

A single instance of unusual behaviour by a minority group may be enough for us to stereotype the whole group according to recent research published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Led by psychologist Jane Risen, the researchers ran four experiments that suggest that the reason we tend to think a single notable behaviour is typical of a minority group but not a majority group is because of our inbuilt cognitive biases in how we process anomalous information.

During the study participants were shown a series of sentences that described a group and a behaviour. The researchers found that just one report of a seemingly odd behaviour by a minority group member was focused on for longer and was more memorable.

Furthermore, participants were more likely to think that group membership was more like to be an explanation for the odd behaviour for minorities than in more representative groups.

In a final experiment, participants watched a video interview of either a white or Asian student where, rather unusually, they persistently asked to use the camera in a pushy manner.

Afterwards, the participants were shown a picture of another person, again either white or Asian. In one part the person was holding up words with missing letters than the participants had to fill in to complete the word.

For example, the prompt could have been "D E _ _ N D", which can equally well be completed as "DEPEND" or "DEMAND".

This sort of technique is often used in psychology because things that are already active in the mind, such as emotions, concepts or stereotypes, will unconsciously influence the participant to complete the word in one of the two ways.

DEPEND is a positive word, whereas DEMAND is related to pushiness, so if a video of a pushy Asian student only affects word completion presented by another unrelated Asian person and not when presented by a white person, you can see the behaviour has activated a race specific bias.

This is exactly what happened. The researchers confirmed the effect by a follow-up task where participants were asked to select interview questions for an unrelated white or Asian person, where they tended to select questions that enquired about how brazen the interviewee might be for the minority group.

This study was published in 2007 and I've only just discovered it. I'm surprised I've not heard of it before as it strikes me as an incredibly important study on the psychology of stereotype formation.

The researchers call it 'one shot illusory correlation' and I wonder if it also explains the 'my bad holiday' effect where people say they "don't like the British [or whoever], because I went on holiday there once and someone was rude to me".

Obviously, the person was not a minority in their country, but was in the context of the visitor's life.

By the way, the paper is also very well written and the introduction is well worth reading solely for it's engaging introduction to the area.

Link to study article.
Link to PubMed entry for same.

—Vaughan.

October 29, 2008

In the age of paranoia, my MTV wants me:

Psychotic delusions change with the times and a new study looking back over almost 120 years of hospital records has found that it's possible to track how cultural upheavals are reflected in the themes of madness. Changes in politics, technology and psychiatry all seem to colour the preoccupations of the deluded as reported in the patient records.

A Slovenian research team, led by psychiatrist Borut Skodlar, discovered that the Ljubljana psychiatric hospital had patient records going as far back as 1881. They randomly selected 10 records from every 10 year period to see how delusions matched up to the society of the time.

One key finding was that paranoid and persecutory delusions seem much more common now, with a big jump after the 1960s, in line with other studies that have found that paranoia is much more common in the modern age.

Another interesting finding concerned the widespread availability of radio and television:

A very interesting finding was a significant increase in outside influence and control delusions with technical themes following the spread of radio and television in Slovenia. To the best of our knowledge, no such studies exist with which to compare our results.

Both of these new technical devices, which served as a means to powerfully and quickly disseminate information, apparently became appropriate for 'serving' as a means of influence and control in the eyes of schizophrenia patients.

We found this change much more expressed in the case of television, where the increase of delusions of outside influence and control was dramatic. Perhaps an accumulation of both television together stimulated the increase. Or perhaps the two-dimensional auditory and visual nature of television opened up more opportunities to perceive it as a possible source of influence.

One aspect of the study looked not at how wider cultural changes altered the theme of delusions, but how changes in the culture of psychiatry did the same.

Psychiatrist Kurt Schneider listed a number of symptoms which he argued were characteristic of schizophrenia and still form the basis of modern schizophrenia diagnoses.

They include audible thoughts, hearing voices arguing, voices commenting on your actions, feeling that your body, mind or emotions are being controlled by outside forces, thought insertion and withdrawal, thought broadcasting, or delusional interpretations of everyday perceptions.

Interestingly, these 'first rank symptoms' were reported much more commonly after they had become widely known in the psychiatric community.

This is one of the key issues in the epidemiology of psychiatry: when the rate of reported symptoms changes over time, is it because they're just being noticed more, because psychiatrists have moved the goalposts, because patients are learning to report symptoms in the language that doctors use, or that the experiences are more common in the population with all things being equal.

Of course, it can be a mixture of all or some of the above, as culture is one of the key influences on how we experience and express our distress - both physical and psychological.

Link to paper on cultural influences on delusions.
Link to PubMed entry for same.

—Vaughan.

October 25, 2008

I am a committee, chaired by a hedonist:

Psychologist Paul Bloom has written a wonderfully eclectic article for The Atlantic magazine about the psychology of pleasure and why it suggests that we have multiple situation-specific selves.

The piece is a little disjointed in places but it is packed full of information and if nothing else you get a good sense of the enthusiasm for this developing field.

One area of pleasure research not mentioned in Bloom's piece is the fascinating work of Michel Cabanac, who has a theory that pleasure is the decision-making currency of the brain.

New Scientist had an excellent article on Cabanac's work which you can read online, and makes an excellent complement to The Atlantic piece.

However, Bloom is more concerned with how we resist the temptation of pleasure using 'self-binding' - in other words, doing things that will reduce the chances of us succumbing to temptation later on. Like getting someone to hide your cigarettes if you're trying to give up.

For adult humans, though, the problem is that the self you are trying to bind has resources of its own. Fighting your Bad Self is serious business; whole sections of bookstores are devoted to it. We bribe and threaten and cajole, just as if we were dealing with an addicted friend. Vague commitments like “I promise to drink only on special occasions” often fail, because the Bad Self can weasel out of them, rationalizing that it’s always a special occasion. Bright-line rules like “I will never play video games again” are also vulnerable, because the Bad Self can argue that these are unreasonable—and, worse, once you slip, it can argue that the plan is unworkable.

For every argument made by the dieting self—“This diet is really working” or “I really need to lose weight”—the cake eater can respond with another—“This will never work” or “I’m too vain” or “You only live once.” Your long-term self reads voraciously about the benefits of regular exercise and healthy eating; the cake eater prefers articles showing that obesity isn’t really such a problem. It’s not that the flesh is weak; sometimes the flesh is pretty damn smart.

Link to Atlantic article 'First Person Plural'.
Link to NewSci piece 'The Pleasure Seekers'.

—Vaughan.

October 23, 2008

Towards a neuropsychology of religion:

This week's Nature has a fascinating essay by anthropologist Pascal Boyer discussing the quirks of spiritual belief and how they may result from the evolution of our mind and brain.

Boyer is best known for his book Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought where he argued that religion can be understood as where the cognitive abilities we've developed through evolution are applied to things like group identity, ritual, or the explanation of otherwise mysterious things, such as weather or disease.

Essentially, Boyer argues that there are cognitive restraints on religious practice and belief, which he illustrates by pointing out some interesting inconsistencies in our intuitive ideas about spiritual agents. According to Boyer, this suggests that our mental capacities define what are supposed to be all-powerful or all-knowing entities.

This clip of Boyer being interview by Jonathan Miller is fascinating because he points out, contrary to popular belief, what most religions are concerned with. He notes most religions do not concern themselves with the creation of the world or the afterlife, while the presence of unseen agents is almost universal.

There is now a growing interest in the cognitive science of religion and one of my favourite articles is by psychiatrist Quinton Deeley who discusses how different form of religious ritual may influence specific cognitive functions to pass on religious teachings and commitments (full disclosure: Deeley is a friend and research collaborator).

Deeley argues that the well-known distinction between 'doctrinal' rituals which are frequent and low intensity (such as everyday prayers or practices), and 'imagistic' high-intensity, less-frequent rituals (such as exuberant religious celebrations) serve different psychological purposes.

'Doctrinal' rituals help create semantic memories of key concepts and emotional response through associative learning, while 'imagistic' rituals help create episodic memories of specific situations that may involve altered states of consciousness and the experience of other realities.

Deeley also did a fascinating talk on 'Ritual, Possession Trance, and Amnesia' where he discusses some of the neuropsycholgical mechanisms that might underlie trance and possessions states.

Link to Boyer's Nature essay 'Religion: Bound to believe?'.
Link to brief interview with Boyer on religion.
Link to Deeley's article 'The Religious Brain'.
Link to video of talk 'Ritual, Possession Trance, and Amnesia'.

—Vaughan.

October 18, 2008

The sexual distractions of cheese crumbs:

Another fantastic quote from Bonk, a book about sex research by science writer Mary Roach, this time about the effects of distraction on female sexual arousal (from p251):

A thousand images can play on a woman's mind: work, kids, problems with Ultrasuede. One nonpharmaceutical solution is to teach women to redirect their focus and pay more attention to physical sensations - a practice called mindfulness.

A pilot study - meaning it's a preliminary investigation with no control group - by Lori Brotto and two colleagues at the University of British Colombia had promising results. Eighteen women with complaints about their ability to become aroused participated in mindfulness training. Afterward, there was a significant jump in their ratings of how aroused they'd been feeling during sexual encounters.

If it's any solace, even female rats have trouble focusing. I give you a sentence, my favourite sentence in the entire oeuvre of Alfred Kinsey, from Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female: "Cheese crumbs spread in front of a copulating pair of rats may distract the female, but not the male".

Full disclosure: I was sent a free copy of the book by the publishers about six months ago but I've only just got round to reading it.

Link to Mary Roach's website.
Link to previous Mind Hacks review of Bonk.

—Vaughan.

October 09, 2008

The science of shrinking human heads:

I've just found a wonderful article on how the Jivaro-Shuar, an indigenous people from the upper Amazon basin, shrink human heads after killing their enemies in battle. It's from the medical journal Neurosurgery but it's most fascinating for what it reveals about the complex customs and social relations that surround the practice.

The actual head shrinking is the end point in a raid on an enemies camp which apparently happens periodically, as they are almost always in revenge for being the victim of an earlier raid.

The victim of the revenge raid is not necessarily the perpetrator of the last attack. The new target is picked out by the shaman while under the influence of a hallucinogenic beverage called natéma (apparently a type of ayahuasca).

The significance of this vengeance cycle is remarkably similar to the one described by Jared Diamond in a New Yorker article on violence in the Handa people of New Guinea that we covered earlier this year.

The article does explain the process of shrinking heads, if ever you find yourself with a spare one, as well as the complex ritual and ceremonies that accompany the process and seem to pervade the whole life and identity of the Jivaro-Shuar.

Anyway, on to the head shrinking. After carefully removing the skin from and discarding the skull, a ritual pot is used to heat water.

As the water begins to grow warm, with a command, the headman leads the warriors in the rite: he seizes what remains of the head by its hair and, with the warriors’ hands laid upon his hand grasping the victim’s head, he dips the head three times in the water. As he does this, he intones, “I dip the head in the boa’s water.” The warriors in turn respond, “He is boiling the head.” The skin of the head is then placed in the vessel and allowed to steep for 15 to 20 minutes as the participants watch in silence. When the water reaches a boil, the vessel is removed from the fire, and the skin is recovered from the water with a stick and hung up on the tip of a spear to dry....

They retrieve the skin from its place on the spear and bind the hair on its scalp. Eyelet holes are pierced through the base of the neck, transforming the skin into a sort of pouch. The mouth is sewn shut with darts from below as the participants intone: “He is sewing.” The eyelids are sutured closed in a similar manner.

With the enemy’s skin now a pouch with a single mouth, the base of the neck, the skin is dried with heated sand and stones. The sand is heated on a round, hollow plate. The senior member of the party leads the warriors involved in the kill in scooping up the sand with a vessel and pouring it into the head, then shaking the head to drive the sand as far into the pouch as possible. This is repeated for hours as the participants repeat the chant, “I am pouring sand.” A large flat stone is likewise heated in the fire and used, held with the help of a leaf folded for the purpose, on the outside layer of the skin. The head is then complete.

Interestingly, once made, the heads are usually discarded as the significance lies in the process rather than the product.

It's a completely fascinating article and really worth reading in full.

Link to article 'The science of shrinking human heads'.
Link to PubMed entry for same.

—Vaughan.

October 06, 2008

An intuitive sense of humour:

I've just discovered a delightful article by English comedian Stewart Lee on why British people don´t get German humour. He argues that the English language is full of ambiguities and that many jokes rely on resolving these in ways which are much less possible in the German language owing to the sentence structure.

It reminded me of a more recent article by another English comedian, Simon Pegg, on why Americans sometimes miss the irony in British humour. He argues that it's not that they don't understand irony, as the stereotype suggests, but that British people use it in situations which Americans are not familiar with, making it harder to understand as intentional humour.

Neither are scientific and both are really just opinion pieces, but it struck me that there are interesting parallels with the recent series of articles where professional magicians have collaborated with cognitive scientists to understand the consciousness and attention.

The gist was that stage magicians have developed a keen intuitive sense of how the human attentional system works in order to fool it, and cognitive scientists can benefit from this knowledge as it is eminently useful in designing experiments.

As far as I know, no similar collaboration has happened with professional comedians and cognitive scientists studying the psychology of humour, despite the fact that both the articles mentioned above seem to demonstrate an intuitive sense of the what makes things funny.

Richard Herring (a one-time comedic partner of Stewart Lee in a past double act) recently wrote a shorter piece on honing jokes that seemed also to capture some of this intuitive knowledge.

A beautifully chosen, unexpected adjective can transform a comedy routine into poetry, while the banal repetition of a common place noun can make that word, and consequently all language, suddenly appear ridiculous.

If you are a stand-up you can hone your material over successive performances, based on the audience response. Changing a single word or altering the pace or emphasis can make a previously failed witticism work.

You might be saying too much. Let the audience discover the consequences of a comedic notion themselves. A pause can be as effective as a paragraph of exposition.

Finally, remember that you will learn the most through trial and error.

Link to 'Lost in translation' on humour and the German language.
Link to article 'What are you laughing at?' on Americans and irony.
Link to article on honing a joke.

—Vaughan.

October 01, 2008

Autism in 100 words:

A micro explanation of autism by Simon Baron-Cohen from this month's British Journal of Psychiatry as part of their monthly feature which tries to explain a key concept in psychiatry in 100 words.

Autism - in 100 words

Simon Baron-Cohen

Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) occur in 1% of the population, are strongly heritable, and result from atypical neurodevelopment. Classic autism and Asperger Syndrome (AS) share difficulties in social functioning, communication and coping with change, alongside unusually narrow interests. IQ is average or above in AS with average or even precocious age of language onset. Many areas within the `social brain' are atypical in ASC. ASC has a profile of impaired empathy alongside strong `systemising'. Hence, ASC involves disability (when empathy is required) and talent (when strong systemising would be advantageous). Psychological interventions that target empathy by harnessing systemising may help.

Link to piece in BJP.

—Vaughan.

September 18, 2008

Robotic thoughts:

The Economist has a good write-up of a recent PLoS One study that found that the perceived 'human-ness' of another player in a game altered the extent of activation in brain areas associated with understanding others' mental states.

The participants were asked to play the prisoner's dilemma game in a brain scanner and were introduced to four opponents - software on a laptop, a laptop controlled by robotic hands, a humanoid robot and a real human. In reality though, the other players' moves were all randomly generated.

Dr Krach and Dr Kircher chose the “prisoner’s dilemma” game because it involves a difficult choice: whether to co-operate with the other player or betray him. Co-operation brings the best outcome, but trying to co-operate when the other player betrays you brings the worst. The tendency is for both sides to choose betrayal (thus obtaining an intermediate result) unless a high level of trust exists between them. The game thus requires each player to try to get into the mind of the other, in order to predict what he might do. This sort of thinking tends to increase activity in parts of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex and the right temporo-parietal junction.

The scanner showed that the more human-like the supposed opponent, the more such neural activity increased. A questionnaire also revealed that the volunteers enjoyed the games most when they played human-like opponents, whom they perceived to be more intelligent. Dr Krach and Dr Kircher reckon this shows that the less human-like a robot is in its appearance, the less it will be treated as if it were human. That may mean it will be trusted less—and might therefore not sell as well as a humanoid design.

It's an interesting extension of a type of study first pioneered by psychologist Helen Gallagher and colleagues where she asked people to play 'paper, scissors, stone' supposedly against human and computer opponents in a PET scanning study.

Like with this recent study, all 'opponents' were actually just a series of randomly generated moves but the participants showed significantly greater brain activation in the frontal cortex when playing against the supposedly 'human' opponent than versus the computer.

The philosopher Daniel Dennett suggests that attributing mental states is a particular way of thinking about something that he calls the 'intentional stance'.

For example, we might play a chess computer and treat it if it was 'intending' to take our our bishop, or as if it 'believed' that getting the Queen out would be an advantage, but this says nothing about whether the machine actually has intentions or beliefs.

Of course, we can apply this to humans, and just because we find it useful to talk about others' beliefs, it doesn't mean belief is necessarily a scientifically sound concept.

Link to Economist article 'I, human'.
Link to full-text article in PLoS One.

Full disclosure: I'm an unpaid member of the PLoS One editorial board.

—Vaughan.

September 17, 2008

Pump up the vino:

PsyBlog has a delightful article discussing whether louder music increases alcohol consumption. It turns out it does, and surprisingly, there seems to have been quite a few studies done to examine the effect.

One research group even did a sort of randomised controlled trial on bars and music in a fantastic real-world experiment.

One study by Gueguen et al. (2004) found that higher sound levels lead to people drinking more. In a new study published in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, Gueguen et al. (2008) visited a bar in the west of France to confirm their previous finding in a naturalistic setting. Here, they observed customers' drinking habits across three Saturday nights, in two different bars in the city.

The level of the music was randomly manipulated to create the conditions of a true experiment. It was either at its usual volume of 72dB or turned up to 88dB. For comparison: 72db is like the sound of traffic on a busy street while 88db is like standing next to a lawnmower.

Sure enough when the music went up the beers went down, faster. On average bar-goers took 14.5 minutes to finish a 250ml (8 oz) glass of draught beer when the music was at its normal level. But this came down to just 11.5 minutes when the music was turned up. As a result, on average, during their time in the bar each participant ordered one more drink in the loud music condition than in the normal music condition.

Link to 'Why Loud Music in Bars Increases Alcohol Consumption'.

—Vaughan.

Social influences on the beautiful face:

People in close social groups, such as family and friends, were more likely to agree on the attractiveness of a face, according to an interesting study published in Perception.

It's a novel take on face perception research, which usually implies that there are some general features of attractiveness which we all can perceive, but rarely looks at how other people can influence this.

Beauty is in the 'we' of the beholder: greater agreement on facial attractiveness among close relations.

Perception. 2007;36(11):1674-81.

Bronstad PM, Russell R.

Scientific research on facial attractiveness has focused primarily on elucidating universal factors to which all raters respond consistently. However, recent work has shown that there is also substantial disagreement between raters, highlighting the importance of determining how attractiveness preferences vary among different individuals. We conducted a typical attractiveness ratings study, but took the unusual step of recruiting pairs of subjects who were spouses, siblings, or close friends. The agreement between pairs of affiliated friends, siblings, and spouses was significantly greater than between pairs of strangers drawn from the same race and culture, providing evidence that facial-attractiveness preferences are socially organized.

Link to PubMed entry for study.

—Vaughan.

September 16, 2008

Here we are now:

BBC Radio 4 have just finished broadcasting Team Spirit, a great series of five 15-minute programmes on the psychology of group dynamics by taking a look at a diverse range of teams - from paramedics to Morris dancers.

Each programme looks at specific team chosen to reflect different forms of groups dynamics, meets the people and then discusses the social processes with psychologists working in the field.

The teams selected are air-ambulance paramedics, an Antartic research team, a girls football team, a backstage theatre crew and a group of Morris dancers (non-British people: Morris dancing is an excuse for ale drinking and maid chasing thinly disguised as a folk dance tradition).

It's a fun and informative 'bite-size' series presented by the faultless Claudia Hammond. It's archived online but only as realaudio streams, so no podcasts I'm afraid but definitely worth checking out.

Link to BBC Radio 4 Team Spirit series.

—Vaughan.

September 12, 2008

Drug addiction and white rabbit theories:

I've just got round to listening to ABC Radio National's two part Health Report special on the drug and alcohol dependence and was pleasantly surprised about how well constructed and informative it was.

These sorts of programmes can be a little dry, if you'll excuse the pun, but this two-parter in a compelling look into the effects of a number of substances, talks to some addicts in treatment, explores some residential services and discusses the evidence for various treatments.

The interviews are quite revealing and they're a good demonstration that addiction is not solely about the drug. People who become seriously addicted change their lives to accommodate their addiction, and can live quite precariously as a result.

This often alters people's behaviour, often in quite an adaptive way considering the unpredictable and dangerous circumstances, but not in a way that is best suited to mainstream life.

For example, one gentleman notes that he had to get out of the habit of lying to people as a short term fix to problems.

This is not a direct effect of the drug, but these sorts of maladaptive behaviours also need to be addressed during treatment for addiction for it to be successful.

Stopping the drug is only a part of the battle - stepping out of an ingrained lifestyle, mindset and pattern of behaviour can be the real challenge.

Addiction is more than just problem with taking too much of a chemical, it's equally a social and emotional issue and we are often guilty of downplaying this aspect while clumsily trying to avoid the language of blame. The pure 'disease model', that says addiction is nothing more than a genetic brain disorder triggered by a particular substance, is a case in point.

It is, of course, possible to highlight individual responsibility without victimising people, but this is a difficult task for many in a society that has many double standards over the issue of drug taking.

The situation was wonderfully described in a 2003 article in the Journal of Applied Philosophy that noted that we often accuse addicts of self-deception while pushing our own self-deceptions about addiction as a substitute:

We frequently accuse heavy drinkers and drug users of self-deception if they refuse to admit that they are addicted. However, given the ways in which we usually conceptualize it, acknowledging addiction merely involves swapping one form of self-deception for another. We ask addicts to see themselves as in the grip of an irresistible desire, and to accept that addiction is an essentially physiological process. To the extent this is so, we, as much as the addicts, suffer from self-deception, and the responsibility for their state is in part ours. Conversely, since addicts are compelled to accept a self-deceptive image of themselves, they are at least partially excused from blame for their self-deception.

Parts one and two of ABC Health Report on drug dependence and treatment.
Link to 'Self-Deception and Responsibility for Addiction' article.
Link to DOI identifier for article.

—Vaughan.

September 11, 2008

Gay genes, environment and gin:

Psychologist Jesse Bering has written a witty and informative post on the science of homophobia, evolutionary theories of homosexuality and why some hypotheses just don't work without large quantities of strong gin.

Bering notes he's both gay and an evolutionary psychologist, and some people find it surprising that a homosexual male works in a field that might suggest he's a biological anomaly.

Needless to say, his whistle-stop tour through the field is both informative and funny. The final bit summarises evolutionary theories of homosexuality and the last paragraph made me laugh out loud:

• E.O. Wilson's kin altruism theory states that homosexuality was a rare but functional alternative to traditional routes of increasing inclusive fitness because gay people in the ancestral past, who weren't burdened with their own kids, helped to raise, care for, and provide resources to their other genetic relatives, such as nieces and nephews. (This one doesn't quite gel, especially when you consider that a gay person's resources are usually funneled to their same-sex partners. Also, for most people, being gay doesn't exactly endear you to your relatives.)

• Evolutionary psychologist Frank Muscarella's alliance formation theory proposes that, in the ancestral past, homoerotic behaviours by young men with high status older men would have been an effective strategy for climbing up the social ladder. (Think Ancient Greece, or maybe Mark Foley?)

• John Maynard Smith is often credited with what is colloquially called the "sneaky f*cker theory," which argues that gay men in the ancestral past had unique access to the reproductive niche because females let their guards down around them and other males didn't view them as sexual competitors. (I rather like this one: remember, we're not infertile, we're just gay. Although in my case, it'd take a lot of gin to work.)

To do it in style, presumably you'd be drinking pink gin.

Bering is one of the most inventive researchers working in evolutionary psychology, and his work on our everyday theories of souls, ghosts and the supernatural is fascinating.

One of my favourites is his study [pdf] finding that simply telling people the lab is haunted improves their honesty in a computer task, whereas another creative study [pdf] investigated which mind and brain functions children think continue after death and how this differs by age and religious schooling.

Link to 'The Sneaky F*cker Theory (and Other Gay Ideas)'.

—Vaughan.

September 08, 2008

Laughing in the face of death - unintentionally:

KQED's science programme Quest has put some completely fascinating audio and video segments online on the science of emotion and how neurological disorders can lead to almost instant laughing and crying that are not always accompanied by the strong emotions we normally associate with them.

The condition is called 'pseudobulbar affect' by neurologists although virtually the same behaviour in the context of mental illness is usually called 'labile affect' by psychiatrists.

If you're not familiar with the term 'affect' used in this context it refers to anything to do with mood or emotion. Pseudobulbar refers to the fact that the damage can impair the control of 'bulbar' cranial nerves VII - XII (although the damage is not to the nerves themselves - hence the pseudo prefix) and labile simply means changeable.

One of the most difficult aspects of pseudobulbar affect is the fact that it can appear inappropriately potentially causing some awkward social situations. For example, the person in the programme, who is affected by the degenerative brain disorder ALS, describes laughing at a funeral and one video shows how easily these reactions can be triggered.

Out of place emotional reactions are not uncommon in neurological disorders. In fact, there is a type of seizure which causes laughter and has the wonderfully evocative name of gelastic epilepsy.

The other video segment is a fantastic introduction to functional neuroimaging studies of emotion. Look out for the explanation of MRI physics using Whirling Dervishes as an example of proton spin!

There's also a fantastic audio segment specifically on researching emotion in pseudobulbar affect and how the findings might help us understand emotions in depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and PTSD.

It's a wonderfully made piece that shows how affected people experience this rapid form of emotional weather and does a great job of communicating the scientific research. Good job KQED.

Link to video segment 'Emotions from the Inside and Out' (thanks Jennifer!).
Link to video segment 'Watching the Brain at Work'.
Link to audio segment 'Decoding the Emotional Brain'.
Link to additional online notes.

—Vaughan.

September 06, 2008

The distant sound of well-armed sociologists:

If you listen carefully you can hear a distant rumble from over the horizon. It's the sound of sociologists advancing slowly towards our online data trail, about to release the mother of all data analysis campaigns that will rain from the internet like a storm from above.

Yesterday's New York Times had a fascinating piece about online social networking tools, discussing how different forms of social relationships are being formed through the use of 'broadcast to subscriber' tools like Twitter and Facebook.

These articles pop up quite frequently, discussing how young people live in a 'post-privacy' world, or how our personal lives become increasingly public to our friends and acquaintances, but they rarely mention the ways in which these social networks can be used to reveal and exploit the dynamics of social power.

Sociology gets a bad rap in science as being 'wooly' or 'vague', but it's often not to do with the methods its uses, but with the way of gathering data.

When attempting to understand social networks, traditional studies may ask people to fill in questionnaires about their social contacts and then the researchers draw inferences about who are the most important players in the community.

Two developments have made this much more powerful. The first is social network analysis, or rather, the application of rigorous mathematical methods from graph theory and network theory to social network analysis.

This allows the quantification of the network in important an interesting ways - such as who is most connected, whether the network is tightly integrated or how fragile it is.

One of the most interesting findings from these studies is that the most connected people, or those with the most explicit status (such as being the boss) aren't always the most important people in a network.

For example, 'friend collectors' on Facebook and MySpace may seem to be the most socially connected, but they're not necessarily the most influential because many of the connections represent very superficial social connections. Similarly, someone who has only a few connections may be connected to people influential in other subgroups, and so might have a huge knock-on influence. Social network analysis can identify these people.

The second development that has made sociology much more powerful is that the 'wooliness' in gathering data is increasingly disappearing because services like Facebook and Twitter mean we are creating the data ourselves, in incredible detail.

One use of this data is to sell to advertising space to marketing companies. Targeted advertising is now common, by location, age, sex or whatever explicit data you enter into your profile.

A much more powerful approach is to target advertising so it appears on the profile of the most influential people on the network. Indeed, Google has just registered a patent that describes exactly this process.

One of the advantages is that it can take advantage of the explicit data, and can identify the key people in a group, and is fairly resistant to friend collectors because it doesn't just rely on totting up friends, it looks at the network as a whole.

So you could identity the most influential people in the 18-25 age bracket, or the most influential in a small town, or the most influential people that like a certain type of movie.

Online networks can then sell advertising space ranked by influence, like Google sells adwords based on popularity.

Better still, it gives a quantified way of sponsoring highly selected people. You could be the David Beckham of 18-35 year old salsa fans in your town, sponsored to put the latest Latin sounds on your playlist.

Like celebrities, each of us will have an individual worth to advertisers, a price on our profile, and we will be the commodity that technology companies sell to marketers.

These new online social networking tools allow the companies that operate them an insight into the social power structures that run through our lives, and the opportunity to influence them.

Link to NYT piece 'Brave New World of Digital Intimacy'.

—Vaughan.

September 04, 2008

Playing doctors and nurses with sex:

Psychologist Petra Boyton has written a fantastic piece about the increasing medicalisation of our sexual life as behaviours that were considered personal difficulties are now been re-packaged as disease to be treated by the medical establishment.

Petra focuses on 'sex addiction' and 'female sexual dysfunction', two concepts that get frequently discussed in the media despite them being seriously questioned as valid disorders by researchers in the field.

Because we’re used to hearing about sex addiction nowadays, criticising it can be difficult. After all doctors are telling us we have it, the media talks about it a lot, and it sounds very serious. To question it surely means denying people have problems or perhaps allowing dangerous health problems to run unchecked? Well, no. We do need to question the idea of medicalising sexual behaviour - particularly when ‘treatments’ offered are frequently endorsed by people without adequate training, supervision, or awareness of the wider scientific literature on this issue.

Let’s be clear. Some people do behave in sexually risky ways. They don’t practice safer sex, they cheat on partners, they fail to control impulses or experience sex as a form of compulsive behaviour, or they use sex to make themselves feel better while inside they feel sad, lonely or angry. This is a problem and something that therapy can definitely tackle. But it doesn’t mean people who are acting in this way are ’sick’. Rather than slapping an addiction label on them we need to work with them to identify what is driving problems within their lives or relationships. And we need to get away from the idea that looking at porn, masturbating, enjoying (safer and consensual) sex with multiple partners, having pre marital sex, or being homosexual is a sign of sex addiction.

There's also a link to an mp3 podcast of an interview with psychologist Leonore Tiefer who discusses problems with the concept of sex addiction, despite its place in popular culture.

I've been reading about addiction recently and I'm struck at how poorly the 'behavioural addictions' (i.e. non-drug compulsions) actually fit into the addiction model.

A review paper in the latest Behavioural and Brain Sciences aims to identify the core problems and breaks down each type of addiction into the various factors involved.

It includes addiction to cocaine and stimulants, opiates, nicotine, alcohol, caffeine and gambling.

What is most striking is that the authors relate gambling to one gambling-specific vulnerability that is not listed as a factor in any of the other addictions.

In other words, they had to create a mini gambling theory to account for it because it just didn't fit in any of the other drug-based addiction evidence.

Link to Petra Boyton on medicalising sexual behaviour.
mp3 of interview with Prof Tiefer on the sex addiction con.
Link to BBS review paper on addiction.
Link to PubMed entry for same.

—Vaughan.

September 03, 2008

The Gene Genie meddles with relationships:

Not Exactly Rocket Science has a great article on the recent finding that the AVPR1A gene is linked to relationship problems in heterosexual men.

Unfortunately, it's been widely reported in the mainstream media as being a 'gene for relationship problems' or a 'gene for marital bliss' but it's really not.

In this case, the gene codes for the receptor of vasopressin, a hormone thought to play a role in bonding in some mammals, but it's still a long way from the gene to the behaviour.

The media reporting of genetics studies often makes the common mistake of explaining these sorts of findings as 'a gene for...' - misdescribing the gene as being specifically for a high-level behaviour and implying a sort of mysterious Gene Genie that magically allows this tiny part of a molecule to influence our lives.

However, these studies only report a statistical association and usually do not tell us about how the gene is linked to behaviour.

This is nicely illustrated in a number of studies that have linked genes to some really quite surprising things.

One of my favourite studies has found that the gene hTAS2R16 is reliably associated with alcoholism. It would be easy to explain this as "a gene for alcoholism" but we know exactly what it codes for: a bitterness receptor on the tongue.

One hypothesis is that people with this version of the gene are less sensitive to bitter things, so they find drinks such as beer more enjoyable, so they tend to drink more, are exposed to more alcohol and so have a higher chance of becoming alcoholic.

From tongue to addiction through the fog of everyday life - maybe. We need to do further studies to test this out and you can see how complex it could get.

Even more counter-intuitive is evidence from a twin study that 'life events' are heritable. 'Life events' are what psychologists euphemistically called stressful or traumatic things that can happen to us - death of loved-ones, loss of employment, serious injuries. Essentially, they're the shit in 'shit happens'.

Unlike molecular genetic studies, twin studies can't tell us which genes are involved, they just roughly estimate how much of a risk is to do with genetic vs environmental effects, and it turns out that life events are partly inherited.

In other words, we can inherit the chance of 'shit happening' from our parents. But in this case, it's how we explain the 'happens' in 'shit happens' that matters.

A further study found the risk seems to be related to anxiety and depression so maybe that people with a higher chance of emotional stress might make worse choices in some instances, or maybe more likely to be fired, or keep a relationship going, or maybe have relatives with poorer health (both depression and anxiety are related to physical health problems).

Again, this is a clue, but actually working out a sound scientific explanation that covers the influence of genetics on life events is a massive task.

In other words, genetics studies don't tell us how the link works, they just tell us it exists, and we need to be careful not to invoke the Gene Genie in our explanation before we've done further studies that actually explain the mechanism.

Link to NERS on exploring the genetics of commitment.
Link to study text.

—Vaughan.

August 30, 2008

Through a lab darkly:

Cognitive scientists should be explorers of the mind, forging a path through the chaotic world of everyday life before even thinking of retreating to the lab, according to a critical article in the latest edition of the British Journal of Psychology.

Cognitive science often works like this: researchers notice something interesting in the world, they create a lab-based experiment in an attempt to control everything except what they think is the core mental process, they then test the data to see if it predicts real-world performance.

A new approach, proposed by psychologist Alan Kingstone and colleagues, suggests this is fundamentally wrong-headed and we need to completely rethink how we study the human mind to make it relevant to the real world.

The authors suggest that the standard approach relies on a flawed assumption - that mental processes are like off-the-shelf tools that do the same job, but are just assembled by the mind in different ways depending on the situation.

But imagine if this isn't the case and mental processes are, in fact, much more fluid and adapt to fit the environment and situation. Not only would we have to change our psychological theories, we would have to change how we study the mind itself because the assumption that we can isolate and test the same mental process in different environments justifies the whole tradition of lab-based research.

The authors suggest an alternative they call 'cognitive ethology' and it focuses the efforts of cognitive scientists on a different part of the research process.

Let's just revisit our potted example of what most cognitive scientists do: they notice something in the world, they create a lab-based experiment, they test to see if it predicts real-world performance.

The first part of this process (noticing -> lab-experiment) is often based on subjective judgements and rough descriptions and isn't validated until the lab-based experiment is tested.

Kingston and his colleagues argue that scientists should be applying the techniques of science to the first stage - measuring and describing behaviour as it happens in the real world - and only then taking to the lab to see what happens when conditions change.

They give an example of this approach in an interesting driving study:

A Nature publication by Land and Lee (1994) provides a good illustration of a research approach that is grounded in the principle of first examining performance as it naturally occurs. These investigators were interested in understanding where people look when they are steering a car around a corner. This simple issue had obvious implications for human attention and action, as well as for matters as diverse as human performance modelling, vehicle engineering, and road design.

To study this issue, Land and Lee monitored eye, head, steering wheel position, and car speed, as drivers navigated a particularly tortuous section of road. Their study revealed the new and important finding that drivers rely on a ‘tangent point’ on the inside of each curve, seeking out this point 1–2 seconds before each bend and returning to it reliably.

Later, other researchers used a lab-based driving simulator study to systematically alter how much of this 'tangent point' was available to see what caused abnormal driving.

The authors also make the point that this approach is much better at helping us understand why something happens the way it does, because it ties it to the real world and helps us integrate it with the our knowledge of personal meaning.

It's an interesting approach and meshes nicely with a recent article on cultural cognitive neuroscience in Nature Reviews Neuroscience. It looked at a number of fascinating studies on cultural influences on mind and brain function and discusses how we can go about understanding the interaction between culture and the brain.

If you want to skip the theoretical parts, Box 1 is worth looking at just for a brief summary of some intriguing cultural differences in the way we think.

The piece was also rather expertly covered by Neuroanthropology who cover the main punchlines and discuss some of the claims.

Link to 'cognitive ethology' article.
Link to PubMed entry for 'cognitive ethology' article.
Link to 'cultural neuroscience' article.
Link to PubMed entry for 'cultural neuroscience' article.

—Vaughan.

August 28, 2008

Unreality TV and the culture of delusions:

Today's New York Times has an interesting article on the tug-of-war over the cultural influence on paranoid delusions and whether contemporary-themed psychosis is a new form of mental illness or just a modern colouring of an old disorder.

The article focuses on the recent interest in the 'Truman Show delusion', splashed over the media by two Canadian psychiatrists.

It's quite hard to judge what they're aiming to do as they've not published a scientific paper, and the article suggests they're writing a book (is that the sounds of alarm bells I hear?), so I'm solely going on secondary sources.

But if they're saying that delusions specifically about being in the Truman Show are somehow new and interesting, then they're right in a way. Popular culture often turns up in paranoid beliefs - I worked with a gentleman once who believed he was in The Matrix - but its not earth shattering. It happens all the time.

If they're saying that the general experience of The Truman Show - feeling that the world is being controlled, is unexplainably altered, or is uncannily mysterious - is somehow new, then they're wrong by a good 100 years.

This was described by the German psychiatrist Karl Jaspers in the early part of the 20th century who called it Wahnstimmung, which is translated in the modern English literature as delusional mood or delusional atmosphere.

This is the description from Andrew Sims' book on descriptive psychopathology Symptoms in the Mind:

"For the patient experiencing delusional atmosphere, his world has been subtly altered 'Something funny is going on'; 'I have been offered a whole new world of meaning'. He experiences everything around him as sinister, portentous, uncanny, peculiar in an undefinable way. He knows that he is personally involved but cannot tell how. He has the feeling of anticipation, sometimes even of excitement, that soon all the separate parts of his experience will to reveal something immensely significant."

Actually, the article has a quote from me, although miscasts my view a little. I'm quoted as saying:

“Cultural influences don’t tell us anything fundamental about delusion,” said Vaughan Bell, a psychologist at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College in London, who has studied Internet delusion.

“We can look at the influence of television, computer games, rock ’n’ roll, but these things don’t tell us about new forms of being mentally ill,” said Dr. Bell, who said he had also treated patients who believed they were part of a reality television show.

Actually, I do think that cultural influences are fundamental in understanding delusions, but not in themselves. [Squiggly sound of tape rewinding] It seems the crucial qualification "in themselves" was missed off the quote.

In fact, in the paper I wrote on delusions about the internet I concluded by saying "The extent of influence may not be equal for all aspects of society and culture, although the fact that there is an influence at all, suggests that psychosis is only fully understandable in light of the wider social context."

To quote John Donne, "no man is an island" and we can only fully understand or thoughts and behaviour, either everyday or pathological, with reference to the cultures we live in. But this doesn't mean that each aspect of cultural influences us equally on all levels.

Link to NYT article 'Look Closely, Doctor: See the Camera?'.

—Vaughan.

August 27, 2008

Extracting the stone of madness:

Art-science blog Bioemphemera has an excellent piece on how Renaissance artists depicted madness as involving a stone in the head. Numerous paintings from the 16th and 17th century show operations to remove the stone and presumably cure the insane of their 'folly'.

Despite the widespread depiction of this procedure, many examples of which are wonderfully illustrated in the Bioemphemera post, it's not clear whether these paintings were documenting widespread practices of medical fakery, or whether they were entirely metaphorical.

Perhaps owing to this element of mystery, and to the striking artworks, the topic is often featured in science and medical journals.

A 1999 article in Trends in Neurosciences is probably the most comprehensive treatment, and makes an excellent complement to the Bioephemera piece.

Link to Bioephemera post 'The Stone of Madness'.
Link to TINS article 'Psychosurgery in Renaissance art'.
Link to PubMed entry for article.

—Vaughan.

August 26, 2008

Somatosphere:

Somatosphere is an excellent new blog on medical anthropology, the study of how culture influences our understanding of health, illness and medicine.

While we tend to think of illnesses as specific encapsualted 'things' that happen to the body, it turns out that our culture and psychology has a huge influence on not just what we think of illness, but how we actually become ill.

Culture also shapes what we think of as 'healthy' and 'unhealthy', 'normal' and 'abnormal' and this is one of the main driving forces behind how we express physical or psychological distress and expect it to be treated.

Of course, in the West, drug companies are persistently trying to shape our cultural understanding of what constitutes illness to better promote their product.

The picture is taken from an interesting Somatosphere post on methylphenidate (Ritalin) and ADHD. It's a 1960s advert for the drug showing it was marketed as an antidepressant before ADHD was ever talked about.

The blog is written by several professional medical anthropologists and let's hope it continues as it's started as I'm throughly enjoying reading it.

Link to Somatosphere (via Neuroanthropology).
Link to Somatosphere post on Ritalin.

—Vaughan.

August 19, 2008

Judging trustworthiness in the face:

The Boston Globe has a fantastic article on the psychology of trustworthiness judgements and how they can be taken advantage of by con-men.

The article explores studies which have looked at various influences on our judgements of trust. One of the most interesting parts is where they cover research that has systematically altered pictures until the researchers generated faces that seem the least trustworthy (picture of the left) and most trustworthy (picture of the right).

According to recent work by Nikolaas Oosterhof and Alexander Todorov of Princeton's psychology department, we form our first opinions of someone's trustworthiness through a quick physiognomic snapshot. By studying people's reactions to a range of artificially-generated faces, Oosterhof and Todorov were able to identify a set of features that seemed to engender trust. Working from those findings, they were able to create a continuum: faces with high inner eyebrows and pronounced cheekbones struck people as trustworthy, faces with low inner eyebrows and shallow cheekbones untrustworthy.

In a paper [pdf] published in June, they suggested that our unconscious bias is a byproduct of more adaptive instincts: the features that make a face strike us as trustworthy, if exaggerated, make a face look happy - with arching inner eyebrows and upturned mouths - and an exaggerated "untrustworthy" face looks angry - with a furrowed brow and frown. In this argument, people with "trustworthy" faces simply have, by the luck of the genetic draw, faces that look a little more cheerful to us.

Just as in other cognitive shorthands, we make these judgments quickly and unconsciously - and as a result, Oosterhof and Todorov point out, we can severely and immediately misjudge people. In reality, of course, cheekbone shape and eyebrow arc have no relationship with honesty.

There's plenty more fascinating studies discussed in the article, including an amazing study found that people are more likely to take the advice of someone who has bought the same volume of paint as them compared with someone who buys a different volume of paint!

Link to Boston Globe article 'Confidence game'.
pdf of study of facial structure and trustworthiness.

—Vaughan.

August 16, 2008

Psycho killer - Qu'est-ce que c'est?:

Bad Science has an excellent article about the almost unreported news that homicides by people with mental illness have dropped dramatically in England and Wales, despite the fact that murders by people without mental illness have increased.

Right now I’m looking at a press release on a story which seems pretty important to me: people with serious mental illnesses are committing fewer murders than ever before, by a truly enormous margin. Homicides in this group increased from around 40 a year in the 1950s to 100 a year in the 1970s, in line with a similar increase in the general population. But while murders by people like you have continued to increase, and roughly trebled (0.6 per 100,000 of population in the 1950s, and almost 2 per 100,000 now), murders by people with serious mental illnesses, despite the hype and the fear, the public pronouncements and the headlines, have come down massively since the 1970s, to fewer than 20 a year today.

Ben laments the fact that even a hint of a connection between mental illness and murder makes front page news, stigmatising those with mental disorders and unnecessarily increasing prejudice, while news based on thorough research showing that these fears are unreasonable and unfounded barely raises a byline.

Indeed, it's rare that positive mental illness news is made 'sexy' by the media. The nearest we get is when celebrities admit that they've suffered depression. Eating and anxiety disorders are occasionally discussed but it's rare that psychosis is ever discussed in terms of recovery and by celebrities who have experienced it.

By the way, the picture is of bluesman and ex-Fleetwood Mac guitarist Peter Green who spent some tough years in psychiatric hospital, apparently diagnosed with schizophrenia, but is still as rock n' roll as ever - recording and touring with some of his best material.

Link to Bad Science on 'The news you didn’t read'.
Link to full-text of study.

—Vaughan.

August 14, 2008

YouTribe:

Anthropologist Michael Wesch gave a thoughtful and engaging talk on 'An anthropological introduction to YouTube' to the Library of Congress earlier this year and, rather appropriately, it's available online as a video on the popular video sharing site.

Wesh runs a digital ethnography project which looks at how cultures form and operate on the net.

The project's blog is also full of fascinating insights and is well worth checking out if you thought anthropology was only ever about people who don't have electricity.

Link to talk 'An anthropological introduction to YouTube'.

—Vaughan.

August 06, 2008

Trapped: Mental Illness in America's Prisons:

Photographer Jenn Ackerman has created a stunning and extensive video essay on Kentucky's correctional facility for prisoners with mental illness, interviewing the inmates, staff and clinicians who form part of America's biggest provider of residential psychiatry - the prison system.

Of course, the prisons were never designed to be providers of mental health care, but as a recent Time article noted, they have become the default treatment facility for the many people who fall through the cracks.

Ackerman has created a introductory film and also has put several prisoner interviews online, where we meet people in various states of distress and recovery. There's also a fantastic film on 'inmate watchers' who have the responsibility to checking on vulnerable, volatile or suicidal inmates.

The films are sometimes disturbing, bleak in places and occasionally sublime, but are immensely revealing and show remarkable sensitivity in their construction.

From Ackerman's written essay that accompanies the piece, I suspect that we only get to see the least affected people as those who are most ill are unlikely to be able to consent to being interviewed, meaning that even this bleak portrayal is likely to be a relatively positive depiction.

A man has been singing songs at the top of his lungs for the last two days, while another, hunched on his bed, wails from under a blanket. In a cell across the hall, a man shakes as he yells to his wife he has not seen in five years and to the thug down the street. In reaction to the noise, another man bangs endlessly on his cell door until an officer comes by and asks him to stop. He smiles and says he just wanted someone to talk to.

"We are the surrogate mental hospitals now," says Larry Chandler, warden at the Kentucky State Reformatory in La Grange, Ky. With the rising number of mentally ill, the reformatory was forced to rebuild a system that was designed for security. Never intended as mental health facility, treatment has quickly become one of their primary goals.

Unfortunately, this situation is not unique to Kentucky. The continuous withdrawal of mental health funding has turned jails and prisons across the US into the default mental health facilities.

A 2006 report by the U.S. Department of Justice shows that the number of Americans with mental illnesses incarcerated in the nation’s prisons and jails is disproportionately high. Almost 555,000 people with mental illness are incarcerated while fewer than 55,000 are being treated in designated mental health hospitals.

Ackerman also has a gallery of still photographs and says she intends to make a feature length film which, if it has the impact of her online work, is likely to be profoundly moving.

Link to Trapped: Mental Illness in America's Prisons.

—Vaughan.

July 28, 2008

Detecting suicidal intent in the unconscious mind:

The Situationist has just alerted me to a fantastic article in the Boston Globe on the development a cognitive test for suicidal thoughts that doesn't rely solely on the conscious mind.

The test is a variant of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) that has been used to look at our automatic associations between different concepts, based on how quickly we can categorise them.

We've discussed in it more detail previously but it essentially relies on the fact that if you have an pre-existing association between two concepts, say, the concepts 'blonde' and 'stupid', making similar associations will be faster than associating 'blonde' and 'clever' because you're going to be quicker doing whichever classification best matches associations you already have.

Most of the research has been done on implicit social biases, finding that even people who have no explicit prejudices against blondes, foreigners, men or whomever, might find they automatically associate certain negative concepts with these groups.

However, as the test purely measures associations between concepts, it can be used to look for other implicit biases. In fact, the researchers featured in the Globe piece have used it to test for implicit associations between the concept of self and suicide.

Most suicidal patients will admit they are at risk of harming themselves. Contrary to popular belief, suicidal patients don't necessarily want to die, they just want the pain to stop and will be upfront if they think professionals can help.

Some, however, may have decided that death is the only relief, or they may be unable to see clear alternatives owing to the effects of mental illness on thinking.

Suicide risk is assessed on the basis of people's actions and what they say, so a completely determined person can talk their way through a risk assessment.

This new research is testing the IAT as a way of assessing suicide risk, even if the person is denying they are suicidal.

The study, led by Dr. Matthew Nock, an associate professor in the psychology department at Harvard University, is called the Suicide Implicit Association Test...

But critics question whether the test is actually practical, and up until now no one has tried to apply it to suicide prevention. As part of his training, Nock worked extensively with adolescent self-injurers - self-injury, such as cutting and burning, is an important coping method for those who engage in it, though they are often unlikely to acknowledge it. Nock thought that the IAT could serve as a behavioral measure of who is a self-injurer and whether such a person was in danger of continuing the behavior, even after treatment.

In their first major study, Nock and Banaji asserted that the IAT could be adapted to show who was inclined to be self-injurious and who was not. And more important, they said, the test could reveal who was in danger of future self-injury.

It's an interesting idea and the early results look intriguing, although as the article notes, the proof will be how well it actually works in practice.

One difficulty with risk assessment in psychiatry is its almost impossible to do 'ideal' outcome studies because of the ethical implications.

For example, lets say your new risk measure predicts someone will kill themselves. From a statistical point of view, you'd want to wait and see if they do, so you can compare these positive predictions with the negative predictions and get an accuracy measure.

But from a purely humane point of view, you're going to intervene and try and help the person, meaning risk assessments are not always based on 'ideal' statistical information.

The article has an excellent discussion of some of the wider ethical and practical issues involved, drawing on the writers own experience of his brother's suicide.

Link to Boston Globe article 'On the Edge' (via The Situationist).

—Vaughan.

July 21, 2008

Oliver Sacks' Rage for Order:

Oliver Sacks' fantastic 1996 autism documentary Rage for Order is now available on Google Video, where he meets some completely remarkable people and explains some of the more curious features of the syndrome.

The programme explores the sort of interests, behaviours and talents that are associated with autism through Sacks' irresistible interest in the human condition.

It includes the artist Jessica Park, who creates the most stunningly colourful paintings of buildings with perfectly accurate star constellations in the background (that's one of her pictures on the left).

It's a really wonderful piece of television and was part of a six-part series that Sacks' made called Mind Traveller.

Sadly, the other parts of the series seem to be lost to the internet, but do get in touch if you have a copy as I would to see them.

Link to 'Rage for Order' on Google Video.

—Vaughan.

July 09, 2008

Imagine all the people:

The BPS Research Digest covers an intriguing study that found that imagining friends, parents, and romantic partners differently affected how we rate ourselves on personality measures.

The study suggests that being primed with certain sorts of relationship seems to alter either our personality, or how we perceive our personal characteristics.

Dozens of female university students were led to believe they were participating in an investigation into the effect of visualisation on heart rate, with the appropriate medical paraphernalia in place to make the story more convincing.

The students were asked to visualise a range of fairly mundane items or experiences and then at the end they were asked to visualise in detail either one of their parents, a recent romantic partner, or a friend. Afterwards they completed a range of personality and self-esteem tests. Post-experimental debriefing confirmed they hadn't guessed the true purpose of the study.

Students who visualised a parent subsequently rated themselves as less sensual, adventurous, dominant, extraverted and industrious, than did students asked to visualise a friend or romantic partner, consistent with the idea that people revert to a more submissive "child role" with their parents.

The paper itself doesn't mention it, but the study has some striking relevance to rather confusingly named 'object relations theory', which could be much more clearly named 'human relations theory'.

It's a development of a Freudian idea, but instead of suggesting that sex and aggression are the core drives which shape our psychological landscape, it suggests, rather more sensibly, that relationships are the main factor that influence who we are.

In fact, it suggests that the 'self' is malleable and tends to be defined in terms of the people we interact with.

One of the genuinely useful legacies of psychoanalytically-inspired psychology has been the focus on the emotional interaction between people as an important shaping force in how we think and behave.

Most of Freud's original (lets be polite and say) 'kookiness' has been stripped away, which leaves us with an approach that is often both empirically testable and supported by scientific studies.

For example, psychologist Susan Anderson has done a huge amount of experimental research on 'transference', where feelings from one relationship affect another because the two people are perceived as similar in some way.

Link to BPSRD article 'Mind who you think of'.

—Vaughan.

Interrupting the final curtain:

One of the myths of suicide is that if a person wants to kill themselves, they'll always find a way. While this can occur in some cases, evidence that making methods of self-harm less accessible can reduce the suicide rate suggests that deaths can be prevented with simple safety measures.

The New York Times has a thought-provoking article on exactly this topic looking at how, particularly impulsive suicides, can be prevented.

What makes looking at jumping suicides potentially instructive is that it is a method associated with a very high degree of impulsivity, and its victims often display few of the classic warning signs associated with suicidal behavior. In fact, jumpers have a lower history of prior suicide attempts, diagnosed mental illness (with the exception of schizophrenia) or drug and alcohol abuse than is found among those who die by less lethal methods, like taking pills or poison. Instead, many who choose this method seem to be drawn by a set of environmental cues that, together, offer three crucial ingredients: ease, speed and the certainty of death.

The NYT article focuses on jumping and firearms and how erecting barriers and storing guns in locked boxes are effective preventative measures.

However, if you want a flavour of really how simple the safety measures need to be to make a difference to suicide rate, research has found that putting pills in blister packs reduces lethal overdoses.

It's amazing if you think about it, simply making it necessary to pop each pill out of its plastic packaging rather than tipping them out of a bottle means less people kill themselves.

The difference is likely a matter of minutes, but it gives time for brief impulsive urges to pass, and every popped pill requires a single deliberate action towards suicide that gives a chance for the distressed person to reconsider. Obviously, many do.

The article merits a read in full, and Liz Spikol has an interesting video commentary on the piece that's also well-worth checking out.

Link to NYT article 'The Urge to End It All'.
Link to Liz Spikol on 'Is Suicide Preventable?'.

—Vaughan.

July 08, 2008

The ambiguous gift of sign names:

BBC Ouch! magazine has a completely fascinating article on sign names in the deaf community. They are like mandatory formal nicknames decided by a consensus of your peers that reflect something distinctive about you.

The article describes how assigning and accepting one can be a tricky social negotiation with some having to mount campaigns against unwanted sign names.

Sign names are a weird and wonderful thing, where your average hearing names like Matt, Jack or Jane look positively plain.

But before you get too excited about the possibility of throwing your dull, former identity away, let me point something out: you don’t get to choose your sign name. You don’t even get power of veto on it. It is given to you.

It makes sense. If deaf people could choose their name, you'd get loads of guys wandering around calling themselves Stud, Beer Belly or Jackie Chan's Lovechild. Women would probably call themselves Lip Gloss, Model or Soft Hair. I'm generalising, and stereotyping, but you get my point.

When a sign name is given to you, it's special. A bit like losing your deaf virginity. It’s thought up after an intense period of observation, when people have worked out firstly whether they like you enough to give you one (a sign name, that is), and they've taken all your habits and mannerisms into account to find a name that best sums you up.

I have to say, I find watching sign language completely enthralling. It always seems like a wonderful form of cognitive ballet to me.

Obviously, it has its practical uses to, as demonstrated by this video tutorial on how to flirt using sign language.

Link to article on the social complexities of sign names (via MeFi).

—Vaughan.

July 06, 2008

The economics of a prisoner of war camp:

R.A. Radford was an economist taken prisoner during World War Two who later wrote about the complex cigarette-based economy that thrived in the POW camps in a fascinating 1945 article.

You can also read it online as a pdf if you want to see it in its original type-print glory, which I have to say, does rather add to the atmosphere it so wonderfully evokes.

It's a vivid insight into the social organisation of the camps, and just the descriptions of the market pressures are quite interesting in themselves.

For example, the standard currency was a cigarette, but heavy air raids meant people would smoke more, presumably owing to stress, thereby altering the value of the currency through scarcity.

The camp residents imposed trade regulations, had trading areas, and some even developed businesses:

Around D-Day, food and cigarettes were plentiful, business was brisk and the camp in an optimistic mood. Consequently the Entertainments Committee felt the moment opportune to launch a restaurant, where food and hot drinks were sold while a band and variety turns performed. Earlier experiments, both public and private, had pointed the way, and the scheme was a great success.

Food was bought at market prices to provide the meals and the small profits were devoted to a reserve fund and used to bribe Germans to provide grease-paints and other necessities for the camp theatre. Originally meals were sold for cigarettes but this meant that the whole scheme was vulnerable to the deflationary waves, and furthermore heavy smokers were unlikely to attend much. The whole success of the scheme depended on an adequate amount of food being offered for sale in the normal manner.

To increase and facilitate trade, and to stimulate supplies and customers therefore and secondarily to avoid the worst effects of deflation when it should come, a paper currency was organised by the Restaurant and the Shop.

It's completely readable even if you're not familiar with economics and is a captivating window into POW camp society as seen through the eyes of a monetary expert.

Link to article (via MeFi).
pdf of article.

—Vaughan.

July 04, 2008

Selling the 'battle of the sexes':

Slate has just finished an excellent five-part series on two recent books which have attempted to paint men and women as vastly different in mind, brain and behaviour by exaggerating the science of sex difference.

The books in question are Louann Brizendine's The Female Brain and Susan Pinker's The Sexual Paradox.

Both have been influential because the authors write from an explicitly feminist angle, and both claim to be drawing on the latest neuroscience, suggesting that they're overthrowing the mushy political correctness of "everyone is the same".

The Slate series pulls no punches though, saying "Ultimately, the evangelists aren't really daring to be politically incorrect. They're peddling one-sidedness, sprinkled with scientific hyperbole."

Of course, there are cognitive differences between men and women, but the punchline of almost all sex difference research is that the extent of the difference between any two individuals, be they male or female, tends to vastly outweigh the average difference between the sexes.

Furthermore, while some of these books suggest the differences are innate many studies have found the differences change markedly over time and are influenced by cultural or social factors.

The series is well-researched, easy to digest and looks at the areas of communication, empathy, maths ability and development during childhood. It's also accompanied by a three-part video discussion, which tackles similar issues.

Slate have been doing a great job of getting some accessible, level-headed neuroscience out there recently, and this is another great example. Good work science writer Amanda Schaffer.

Link to Slate series on 'The Sex Difference Evangelists'.

—Vaughan.

June 28, 2008

Psychotic visitors to the White House:

In 1965, The American Journal of Psychiatry published a curious article on delusional people who had visited the White House in Washington DC, wanting to see the President.

The article reviewed the cases of 40 people admitted to the Washington D.C. General Hospital from 1960-1.

It also outlined 10 cases in more detail, this is number 6:

Case 6. A 44-year-old Negro woman "was invited" to see the President many times and prior to her trip wrote that she was finally coming. She hoped the President would stop the "gum chewing" in her head and would stop the police persecution that had caused her ears to flop and her body to go out of shape. She complained of policemen in her ears and riding up and down her nose. The patient was acutely psychotic and her stream of thought disorganized, but she claimed that she had first visited the governor of her home state and the Pentagon before trying to see the President. She refused to discuss previous hospitalization. Diagnosis: schizophrenic reaction, paranoid type.

The paper also contains some interesting speculation: "In 1960, when Mr. Eisenhower was President, only nine patients were admitted, but 32 were hospitalized in 1961, Mr. Kennedy's inaugural year. This would suggest that some personal characteristic of the President was important."

The study was actually based on similar research conducted more than 20 years before, on psychotic visitors to government offices in Washington DC.

Link to full text of 'Psychotic visitors to the White House'.
Link to 'Psychotic visitors to government offices in the national capital'.

—Vaughan.

June 23, 2008

Breakdown in the Globe and Mail:

All this week, Canada's Globe and Mail has a fantastic special on mental health entitled Breakdown, relating the personal experiences of people who've experienced the extremes of thought and mood, and talking to some of the mental health professionals who work to assist people through times of mental turmoil.

During the coming week, articles on employment and mental health, addiction, mental illness and the law, fighting stigma and the Canadian way of treating mental disorder will be published on a day-by-day basis.

It's already incredibly comprehensive though, with video interviews, articles and audio slideshows focusing on the life stories of people who've been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and anxiety disorders, as well as an interview with psychiatrist David Goldbloom, one of Canada's head honchos in mental health.

From what I've seen already, and I'm still exploring, it's a wonderfully put together, powerful and engaging project.

Hats off to The Globe and Mail.

UPDATE: I just watched the interview with psychiatrist David Goldbloom and the last five minutes have a striking reading from an 1841 letter. After hearing the letter, the author might surprise you. Well worth checking out.

Link to Globe and Mail special (via MeFi).

—Vaughan.

June 19, 2008

Reality at the far reaches of the world:

Anthropologist and explorer Wade Davis gave a couple of inspiring talks to the TED conference on how the beliefs and traditions of different cultures fundamentally alter not only views about the world, but the experience of reality itself.

Both are fantastic, not only because Davis is a gripping speaker, but also because he highlights the sheer beauty and diversity of the world's peoples and cultural practices - from Voodoo rituals in Haiti to the Inuit of Northern Canada.

The first explores cultures in some of the world's harder to reach areas, while the second focuses on the diversity of belief and ritual across the planet.

Davis is perhaps best known for his early work on Voodoo, the process of zombification, and his discovery that the neurotoxin tetrodotoxin may be an essential part of the process.

This work was published in the scientific literature, but also in two well-known books, The Serpent and the Rainbow and Passage of Darkness.

Administration of tetrodotoxin is unlikely to be the sole explanation for zombification, however.

A 1997 paper in the medical journal Lancet reported on three cases, where what Western medicine would call mental illness and neurological impairment seemed to be present in three cases of people labelled zombies by locals in Haiti.

Anthropology is perhaps one of the smallest schools of human study, but, I think, one of the most important. It constantly reminds us that our way of seeing the world is firmly located in the culture that we live in, and that everything we understand is filtered through our own perspective.

Link to video of 'Cultures at the far edge of the world'.
Link to video of 'The worldwide web of belief and ritual'.
pdf of 'Clinical findings in three cases of zombification'.

—Vaughan.

June 18, 2008

Good vibrations:

While looking through the Journal of the American Medical Association, I found this fascinating and glowing review of Rachel Maines' book 'The Technology of Orgasm' that uncovers the history of how vibrators were originally popularised created to cure 'hysteria' in women as a Victorian medical treatment.

Hysteria has had many medical meanings through the millenia, but at the time Maines was writing about, it was a catch-all anxiety-related diagnosis usually applied to women.

While perusing turn-of-the-century magazines such as Modern Priscilla and Woman's Home Companion, Maines was surprised to find any number of advertisements for electric vibrators. As early as 1899, she writes, machines that closely resemble modern sexual aids were marketed to women as health-promoting, antiaging devices. "All the pleasures of youth will throb within you," proclaimed one such advertisement for White Cross vibrators in 1913. Was this early vibrator, which predated the invention of the vacuum cleaner and electric iron by a decade, merely a sexual toy sold under the guise of a medical device?

Not so, according to Maines, who describes how the vibrator was invented in the 1880s as a medical appliance. In a scrupulously researched chapter—one of the best in her book—Maines provides a unique and fascinating history of hysteria, ending with Freud's revision of the diagnosis in the early 1900s. Maines shows that hysteria is described in medical texts as early as 2000 BC in Egypt. Although physicians throughout history disagreed about the exact symptoms of hysteria, "anxiety, sleeplessness, irritability, erotic fantasy, sensations of heaviness in the abdomen, lower pelvic edema, and vaginal lubrication" were said to be among its many manifestations.

Believing hysteria to be caused by sexual frustration, physicians proposed that the uterus became engorged with "seed" and wandered upward inside the body until it threatened to choke its host. Treatments for hysteria, described as early as the fifth century, include stimulating the vagina and labia of the afflicted patient in order to induce a "hysterical paroxysm." This "crisis," during which a patient might thrust her pelvis suggestively, utter cries of pleasure, and briefly appear to lose consciousness, was thought to return the uterus to its rightful place. Maines goes on to say that treatment for hysteria was protracted, with patients typically seen weekly for an indefinite period.

Probably for those cases of treatment resistant hysteria I would imagine.

Slate has a NSFW slideshow tracking the early history of the vibrator with photos of some of these original adverts and 'medical aids'. Although, it's NSFW, it's not really that erotic I'm afraid. Sorry about that.

The review is from 1999 and it turns out that the book won two prestigious academic history awards after publication.

Sadly the JAMA book review is closed-access and behind a pay wall. Don't the American Medical Association know information is like love? It's better when it's free.

Link to JAMA book review, closeted behind a pay wall.
Link to Slate slideshow on the history of the vibrator.
Link to more info on Rachel Maines' book.

—Vaughan.

June 17, 2008

Number of bumper stickers predicts road rage:

Pure Pedantry has picked up on a wonderful study that has found that incidences of road rage correlate with the number of bumper stickers a person has on their car.

The abstract below suggests that bumper stickers are potentially an expression of territorial markers and that aggressive people are more likely to use more, but I think we all know it's just down to the fact that "my other car is a Ferrari" just isn't funny any more.

Territorial Markings as a Predictor of Driver Aggression and Road Rage

Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Vol 38 (6) p1664-1688, June 2008

William J. Szlemko, Jacob A. Benfield, Paul A. Bell, Jerry L. Deffenbacher, Lucy Troup

Aggressive driving has received substantial media coverage during the past decade. We report 3 studies testing a territorial explanation of aggressive driving. Altman (1975) described attachment to, personalization of, and defense of primary territories (e.g., home) as being greater than for public territories (e.g., sunbathing spot on a beach). Aggressive driving may occur when social norms for defending a primary territory (i.e., one's automobile) become confused with less aggressive norms for defending a public territory (i.e., the road). Both number of territory markers (e.g., bumper stickers, decals) and attachment to the vehicle were significant predictors of aggressive driving. Mere presence of a territory marker predicts increased use of the vehicle to express anger and decreased use of adaptive/constructive expressions.

Link to Pure Pedantry on the study.
Link to abstract of scientific study.

—Vaughan.

Return of the 'gay brain':

News that a neuroimaging study has found that the brains of gay participants more closely resemble those of their straight, opposite sex counterparts is being widely reported, but one of the most interesting details is largely being ignored.

The study was completed by neuroscientists Ivanka Savic and Per Lindstrom and had two parts.

The first and most widely reported part compared the brain structure of 25 homosexual men, 25 heterosexual men, 20 homosexual women and 20 heterosexual women.

The punchline is that in a measure of brain symmetry, straight men and gay women were similar, and gay men and straight women were similar.

But this isn't the most interesting part in itself. Structural brain differences between gay and straight participants have been reported before, although this new study was better designed as it included both males and females.

What is most intriguing about this new study is a further investigation assessed amygdala function in each side of the brain. In particular, it looked at the balance of activity between the two hemispheres when the participants were asked just to breath in unscented air.

The study found that straight men and gay women had greater right sided activity, whereas gay men and straight women showed equal activation on both sides. As with the structural comparisons, the measurements from homosexual participants were similar to their straight, opposite sex counterparts.

The reason this new study is interesting is because it found a functional brain difference in a task that was not specifically linked to sex or attraction.

Previous studies have found functional differences in the brains of gay and straight people, but they have tended to use experiments where participants were presented with either sexual images, gender specific faces, or stimuli linked to sexual activity, such as pheromones.

These are interesting findings, but they may be the result of same-sex sexual activity, rather than an explanation for why people seek it out.

If you have experience of sleeping with same-sex partners, it's hardly surprising that you may have a different response to same-sex material.

These new findings were from a neutral task. Now it's possible that lots of same sex experience could affect your brain response to fresh air, but it's highly unlikely.

It is possible, of course, that same-sex experience could alter the function of specific brain circuits which affects even non-sex related tasks, but these results also suggest the possibility that some more general differences in brain organisation are responsible for a number of effects, including sexual orientation.

This last explanation is what the researchers suggest, and it is another clue that sexual orientation is not simply the result of experience.

Of course, it's not definite proof, but it is an interesting and important pointer.

Link to abstract of study.
Link to write-up from New Scientist.

—Vaughan.

June 16, 2008

Bling of the hill:

The Atlantic magazine has an interesting article on how conspicuous consumption - the practice of showing off luxury goods - differs across social groups and seems to be more common when your peers are low earners.

The piece discusses work led by economist Kerwin Charles who was interested in why, despite being less well off on average, black and latino Americans spent a larger proportion of their income on visible goods.

Their research found that race, in itself, wasn't important, as conspicuous consumption was explained in all racial groups as being almost entirely due to the wealth of the community in which the person lives.

It turns out that the poorer the community, the larger the level of conspicuous consumption. In other words, people from less well off communities have a greater need to advertise their wealth through the visible goods they buy.

The full paper is available online as a pdf if you want the full details, but the Atlantic article goes on to observe that in higher-income communities people tend to spend their money on luxury goods others can't see, but which provide experiences.

Russ Alan Prince and Lewis Schiff describe a similar pattern in their book, The Middle-Class Millionaire, which analyzes the spending habits of the 8.4million American households whose wealth is self-made and whose net worth, including their home equity, is between $1 million and $10 million. Aside from a penchant for fancy cars, these millionaires devote their luxury dollars mostly to goods and services outsiders can’t see: concierge health care, home renovations, all sorts of personal coaches, and expensive family vacations. They focus less on impressing strangers and more on family- and self-improvement. Even when they invest in traditional luxuries like second homes, jets, or yachts, they prefer fractional ownership. “They’re looking for ownership to be converted into a relationship rather than an asset they have to take care of,” says Schiff. Their primary luxuries are time and attention.

Based on nothing but complete speculation, I wonder whether this simply provides a form of consumption which is conspicuous through other means - conversation or public display of action.

A study published last year (and covered by the Economist) found that priming people with ideas about attracting members of the opposite sex did trigger conspicuous consumption, at least in men, but also resulted in conspicuous altruism.

Perhaps a more subtle form of economic signalling, but with a similar intent - to display our status to others.

Link to Atlantic article 'Inconspicuous Consumption'.
pdf of full text of study.
Link to Economist article on 'conspicuous altruism'.

—Vaughan.

June 13, 2008

Culture shock:

Neuroanthropology has an excellent article on how culture influences the experience of trauma, particularly in light of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

We tend to think of trauma as being similar across cultures. Something awful happens, we have 'trauma'. In actual fact, both the experience and expression of trauma are heavily culturally influenced.

The Neuroanthropology piece makes the point that what counts as traumatic differs between individuals because not all dangerous situations are perceived as traumatic whereas some have a deeply personal and disturbing effect.

The author is apparently doing research on US combat veterans and has noted a common element in his interviews:

The classic example of this, and a running theme in [non-commissioned officers'] trauma stories, occurs when a lower-ranking soldier is hurt while following orders to which the NCO personally objects. For example, one veteran told me about the day when one of “his” soldiers was wounded while following the unnecessarily risky orders of his superior, orders that he protested at the time but ultimately felt compelled to obey.

His story, and others like it, reveal that the trauma of these events lies not only in the wounding of a fellow soldier, but in the inability to protect a subordinate for whom one feels deeply responsible, and the sense that the damage might have been prevented. Thus the meaning of events creates much of their resonance, and their cultural embeddedness – e.g. in the communal socialization and strict power structures of the military – is partially responsible for the emotional overload that defines trauma.

The expression of trauma is also culturally influenced as can be seen in the differing presentation of combat stress in Western soldiers during the last 150 years.

During the American Civil War and the Boer War, most expressions of trauma took the form of heart troubles and were diagnosed as 'soldier's heart', 'effort syndrome' or Da Costa's syndrome.

However, it quickly became clear that the majority of affected soldiers had no physical problems with their hearts, and seemed to be expressing their psychological stresses as physical problems.

During these wars, trauma seemed most commonly expressed as problems with the autonomic system (heart function, breathing, blood pressure etc), while by the time the First World War came round, the expression seems to have largely shifted to problems with motor function and the senses.

Labelled 'shell shock', film footage shows that the effects were dramatic, but despite early theories of brain disturbance caused by 'concussion', no neurological damage could be detected in most cases.

The UK government quickly banned military psychiatrists from diagnosing 'shell shock', and as as World War Two approached combat stress was labelled as 'psychoneurois', 'neuraesthenia' and a number of other non-specific labels instead.

It wasn't just the labels that changed though. Dramatic 'shell shock' presentations were rarely seen during the Second World War, with the effects of trauma more commonly resembling how we think of it today: intrusive memories, intense anxiety, disrupted sleep.

The Vietnam War was a turning point for the diagnosis of trauma, as veteran's pressure groups, not unreasonably, wanted, medical care for psychological problems when they returned from service.

They successfully lobbied to have a new disorder included in the diagnostic manuals so the problems could be officially diagnosed and treatment funded. Originally called 'post-Vietnam syndrome' in the literature it was quickly renamed to post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD for its official diagnosis.

For many people today, including clinicians, PTSD is trauma, but its construction owed as much to political expediency than cut-and-dry scientific evidence.

That's not to say that traumatised people aren't suffering or don't exist, just that our ideas about trauma are fluid, malleable and culturally influenced.

Indeed, a recent review of the assumptions behind the definition of PTSD concluded that "virtually all core assumptions and hypothesized mechanisms lack compelling or consistent empirical support".

When watching the debate unfold over trauma and mental health in the current wars, it's possible to see some striking parallels in the push and shove of cultural influence.

In 1922 the UK government stopped doctors diagnosing 'shell shock' to reduce war pension costs. A recent leaked email from the US Veterans Administration advised doctors to avoid diagnosing PTSD to reduce disability payment costs.

World War One 'shell shock' was originally thought to arise from concussion from nearby explosions but was later attributed largely to trauma. Physical problems after mild traumatic brain injury in Iraq have been attributed to nearby explosions but are largely explained by depression and PTSD.

One of the most powerful things to come out of both a historical view and contemporary research is that our beliefs about how should trauma affect us, partly dictates how it does.

In other words, our bodies, beliefs and culture are bound together and when damaged, each contributes to how disability expresses itself.

Needless to say, with this much diversity from a relatively short space of time in similar Western cultures, the difference across cultures can be even more striking.

While being traumatised is a universal experience, the experience of trauma is not, and our expression of distress is a reflection of both our common humanity and our cultural diversity.

Link to Neuroanthropology on Cultural Aspects of PTSD.

—Vaughan.

June 09, 2008

Memes exist: tell your friends:

High-end talking shop, TED, has a couple of video lectures on 'memes' - the supposedly self-contained units of information, ideas or actions that replicate through human culture and are selected by a process akin to natural selection.

The first is by philosopher Daniel Dennett from 2002, while the second is from earlier this year and was presented by psychologist Susan Blackmore who updates the idea by proposing that new technology is having a unique effect on the cultural transmission of ideas.

The concept of memes is controversial, not least because it's hard to see exactly what empirical predictions follow from the theory. Rather than a set of specific hypothesis, it's really a different framework with which we can re-interpret aspects of culture.

What particularly annoys the critics is the idea that cultural ideas are subject to a Darwinian-style process of selection and (presumably) evolution.

In an exchange with Dennett, philosopher Michael Ruse defended his Darwinian credentials by saying to Dennett "[I am] more hardline than you are, because I don’t buy into this meme bullshit but put everything... in the language of genes".

Link to Dennett talk on 'the awesome power of memes'.
Link to Blackmore talk on 'memes and temes'.

—Vaughan.

June 05, 2008

You are what you buy, and definitely what you don't:

During the 1960s, a sudden upsurge in anti-consumerist rebellion threatened the profits of the world's big corporations. The solution to the problem turned out to be packaging the counter-culture and selling the concept of rebellion back to a receptive youth audience.

How has this become possible? Salon has an excellent book review that discusses how brands are no longer simple trade marks but have become socially meaningful to the point where consumers know enough about the symbolism to be able to communicate complex messages through what we buy.

The book under review is Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are by Rob Walker which aims to uncover the psychology and anthropology of social consumerism.

This only makes sense if you argue, as Walker does, that commodities can have real significance. Some objects -- trophies, wedding rings, souvenirs from trips -- patently do stand for important aspects of our lives. (They have what Walker calls "authentic" meaning.) Most people, however, don't want to admit that they believe meaning can also be bought, that Converse sneakers make you a cool outsider or that a MacBook demonstrates one's creativity and unconventionality. Walker thinks we should acknowledge that the things we buy do carry meaning, as long as we also recognize that we're the ones who gave it to them. A wedding ring, for example, only represents the relationship between two people because those two people (along with the society around them) agree that it does. We are the ones who invest these objects with symbolic power, and, furthermore, to do so is a universal human activity. Kidding ourselves that we relate to the objects and products in our lives in a purely rational way (something scientists have disproved over and over again) leaves us open to unconscious manipulation by advertisers.

In other words, advertising is not solely about selling products but is concerned with constructing meaning around a product so it can be used in the language of social communication.

I was fascinated by a recent psychology study that found that one crucial aspect of 'communication' in the language of social consumerism is to avoid symbolism associated with social groups that are perceived as particularly contrary to a person's self-image.

This is from the Science Blog write-up:

“Although past research has confirmed that consumers often choose products and brands that represent who they are, the current research suggests that consumers also choose products in ways that demonstrate who they are not,” explain Katherine White (University of Calgary) and Darren W. Dahl (University of British Columbia).

Through a series of studies, the researchers found that people are only motivated to avoid products related to “disassociative reference groups” – that is, groups with which the consumer seeks to avoid association. However, this avoidance tendency did not occur in response to products associated with an “outgroup,” or, a group in which the consumer does not belong, but is also not particularly motivated to avoid. For example, the baby boomer who avoids geriatric shoes might not be a basketball fan, but may be neutral about basketball in general and gladly wear basketball shoes.

The Salon book review is well-worth reading on its own and contains many fascinating points, but I'll be interesting to track down a copy of the book myself as if it's supported by good research it could be a fascinating look into one of our most implicit but pressurised methods of social communication.

Link to Salon book review.
Link to abstract of study on avoiding negative brand associations.
Link to ScienceBlog write-up.

—Vaughan.

June 02, 2008

Battering Bobo:

Albert Bandura's 1961 'Bobo doll experiment' examined whether watching aggressive behaviour could trigger violence in children and is one of the most famous studies in in psychology. The video from the experiment is now available online so you can hear Bandura narrating the study as various children knock ten bells out of a plastic doll.

The study has been widely cited in debates about whether TV violence makes children more aggressive, but Bandura never referred to television at all in the article that described the study.

Undoubtedly, the study came at a time of peak concern about the effect of TV on children and so was highly topical, but it also caught the changing mood in psychology as a science.

In 1961 psychology was moving away from behaviourism toward a cognitive approach. Behaviourism suggested that all thought and behaviour arose from stimulus-response or paired-stimulus learning.

In contrast, cognitive psychology argues that the mind is more like a computer, and so processes information and builds internal models of the world.

The Bobo doll experiment was designed as a study of social learning theory, an approach Bandura innovated which attempts to explain how we can learn from others simply by observing them.

While individuals might get rewarded for successfully learning by observation, there are many other instances when this doesn't happen even though learning still successfully occurs.

Therefore, social learning theory implies that we have internal models, internal motivations and non-conditioned learning - all of which are incompatible with a purely behaviourist approach.

The study could be applied to social concerns about TV and caught the spirit of the new psychology, making it popular with the public and psychologists alike.

Link to video of Bandura's 'Bobo doll experiment' (via MeFi).
Link to full text of the original paper.

—Vaughan.

To the Madhouse:

This month's British Journal of Psychiatry reprints a poignant poem from the late English physician and poet Edward Lowbury:

To the Madhouse

What she has told us all a hundred times -
That old, unwanted women can again
Be hunted down, accused of pointless crimes
And burned in the public square; that it is vain
To plead – or prove – one's innocence; that men
With solemn looks will come into the house,
And say, fearing a scene, `You'll feel no pain;'
`It's for your good;' `We're not ungenerous;'
What she foretold, when we dismissed her fear
Saying `You dreamed such things' – it now comes true:
The door is open, and the men are here.
Calmly they question her, and with a new
Smiling indifference drag her from the room
And through the streets to the expected doom.

The poem is apparently from one of his collections, entitled New Poems 1935–1989.

The image of the 'mad woman' is a recurrent theme in poetry and literature, particularly of times past, and was famously discussed in the 1979 book The Madwoman in the Attic.

One of the Wordworth's most famous poems, The Mad Mother, is, perhaps, the best known example and recounts the words of a young lady who is experiencing what we would now call postpartum psychosis.

On the surface, it has a more cheerful outlook than Lowbury's poem, although the content of the mother's words belie the situation of the subject, rending the piece considerably more disturbing in many ways.

The picture on the right is by the 18th century French painter Théodore Géricault and is entitled Portrait of a Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy and is from his series of ten 'portraits of the insane'.

At the time it was believed that madness could be seen in the face, and Géricault wanted to capture how different forms of insanity expressed themselves - a project that preceded later attempts to do the same with photography.

Sadly, only five of the portraits survive, but they remain some of the most important works in the history of portraiture.

Link to short BJP article on the poem.
Link to Wordworth's poem The Mad Mother.
Link to piece on Géricault's 'portraits of the insane'.

—Vaughan.

May 26, 2008

Free choice and the female science divide:

The Boston Globe has a provocative article that sheds some new light on the old debate over why there are so few women in maths and physical science subjects. One important factor seems to be that they simply choose other professions, but if you think this answer is too simplistic, there may be more to it than meets the eye.

It no longer seems to be the case that women are being explicitly blocked from maths, physics and engineering jobs, although the number of women in these professions is still very small.

One strong argument for why women are in the minority is that they suffer from the effects of implicit sexism, a system designed to take advantage of male attributes and life choices.

Some argue that the lack of support and consideration for women's lives puts them off, and so they decide against what seems like a bad option.

However, the article presents an interesting piece of evidence against this as being the major influence.

In her controversial new book, "The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women, and the Real Gender Gap," [Susan] Pinker gathers data from the journal Science and a variety of sources that show that in countries where women have the most freedom to choose their careers, the gender divide is the most pronounced.

The United States, Norway, Switzerland, Canada, and the United Kingdom, which offer women the most financial stability and legal protections in job choice, have the greatest gender split in careers. In countries with less economic opportunity, like the Philippines, Thailand, and Russia, she writes, the number of women in physics is as high as 30 to 35 percent, versus 5 percent in Canada, Japan, and Germany.

"It's the opposite of what we'd expect," says Pinker. "You'd think the more family-friendly policies, and richer the economy, the more women should behave like men, but it's the opposite. I think with economic opportunity comes choices, comes freedom."

If the gender gap in many fields has its roots in women's own preferences, that raises a new line of questions, including the most obvious: Why do women make these choices? Why do they prefer different kinds of work? And what does "freedom of choice" really mean in a world that is still structured very differently for men and women?

Of course, this doesn't deny that there are still other reasons why women might be put off these careers (lack of female role models, perception / effect of a 'boys club' etc) but it's interesting that support for female physical scientists seems not to correlate with their numbers.

The article also mentions an interesting point that women with high maths ability tend to have good verbal ability (meaning they have a much wider potential choice of careers) whereas this is less often the case with men. In essence, the article argues that women would rather select jobs with more human contact.

It's probably worth saying that in the life sciences, females predominate. In fact, in psychology, men are typically outnumbered 10-1. Clinical psychology tends to be even more extreme.

Despite the vanishingly small number of male psychology undergraduates, I've never heard of any effort to recruit or attract more males to the subject.

I'm always curious as to why having few males in life sciences doesn't seem to bother people but having few females in maths or physics does.

Can't we have some equality in our equality?

Link to Boston Globe article on women in science and engineering.

—Vaughan.

May 22, 2008

What do you need to do to be considered an expert?:

Sociologist Harry Collins is interviewed in American Scientist on his fascinating mission to find out what we need to do to be considered an expert and what different types of expertise exist.

Collins has spent many years studying how science works. Not how it is supposed to work, through experiments and falsification and gradual knowledge building, but how it actually works, through social networks, economics and traditions.

He studied physicists who research gravitational waves and realised he was able to have in-depth conversation with gravitational wave theorists even though he couldn't run the equipments or do the maths. As most expertise plays out in conversation, how much of an expert was he?

Collins and his colleagues wanted to test the difference between tacit knowledge, what we can do without being able to explain, and explicit knowledge, so they devised some fascinating experiments to see if people could tell the difference.

One ingenious experiment involved testing whether people could tell the difference between a colour blind person and normally sighted version from just talking to them about colour. It turns out, they can't.

Technical decision-making is often a matter of debating in committees and the like, so the way expertise works itself out in conversation was always going to be a central concern. We decided to use the forerunner of the "Turing test"—the "imitation game"—to see whether one kind of expert could be distinguished from another in conversational tests. In the imitation game, a judge asks open-ended questions of, say, a full-blown expert and someone with interactional expertise only, without knowing who is who. The judge tries to tell the difference. In the best-known of the experiments we did in Cardiff, color-blind people were found to be indistinguishable from color perceivers, and we argued this was because the former had been immersed in the language of the latter all their lives.

As a result of this project, the research team have created a 'periodic table' of different types of expertise and how they manifest themselves.

Collins' research is also discussed in an interview for this month's Scientific American and many of his publications on expertise are available on his website.

Link to American Scientist interview.
Link to Scientific American interview.
Link to Collins' expertise publications.

—Vaughan.

May 21, 2008

Crowded thoughts: the 70s boom in multiple personalities:

Below is an excerpt from psychologist John Kihlstrom's ­2005 review article on dissociative disorders where he talks about the sudden 'epidemic' of multiple personality disorder, now know as DID, in the 1960s and 70s.

Dissociative Identity Disorder or DID is a diagnosis that describes where someone manifests various personalities, often of a diverse range of people - from children to adults of either sex.

It is controversial partly because diagnoses seemed to massively increase when two famous films on the disorder were popular.

Kihlstrom makes the interesting point that the increase in the number of people diagnosed with the disorder was also matched by an increase in the number of personalities each person seemed to have.

An interesting feature of the DID “epidemic” is an increase not just in the number of cases but also in the number of alter egos reported per case. In the classic literature, the vast majority of cases were of dual personality (Sutcliffe & Jones 1962, Taylor & Martin 1944). By contrast, most of the new cases compiled by Greaves (1980) presented at least three personalities; in two other series, the average number of alter egos was more than 13 (Kluft 1984, Putnam et al. 1986).

As Kenny (1986) noted, it was almost as if there were some kind of contest to determine who could have (or be) the patient with the most alter egos. The famous Eve, of course, appeared to have three personalities (Osgood & Luria 1954, Thigpen & Cleckley 1954). But when popular and professional interest in MPD was stimulated by the case of Sibyl, who was reported to possess 16 different personalities (Schreiber 1973), Eve replied with her own account of her illness, eventually claiming 22 (Sizemore & Huber 1988).

Despite the almost-infinite number of possible synaptic connections in the brain, one might say that the mind simply is not big enough to hold so many personalities. The proliferation of alter egos within cases, as well as the proliferation of cases, has been one of the factors leading to skepticism about the disorder itself.

In general, dissociative disorders are where one part of consciousness seems to be 'split off' or inaccessible to another.

For example, psychogenic amnesia or conversion disorder ('hysteria') are more common examples and hypnosis seems to reliably induce the phenomena in some people.

These are still some of the most mysterious processes in psychology and are fraught with controversy, particularly as they're often linked to repressed memories from abuse or trauma.

This is one of the more difficult areas to study scientifically because it largely relies on self-report, and Kihlstrom notes there is still no convincing evidence that trauma or abuse leads to amnesia for the event.

Link to PubMed abstract of Kihlstrom's review.
Link to full-text of pre-print.

—Vaughan.

May 20, 2008

Virtual Iraq used to treat post-war trauma in US vets:

Continuing yesterday's virtual reality theme, The New Yorker has an in-depth article about how US Iraq veterans diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder are being treated in a VR simulation of battle situations.

The VR simulation is actually a modified version of Full Spectrum Warrior, a military tactics video game that was first developed to train US army soldiers before being released as a commercial product.

PTSD is an anxiety disorder that can be diagnosed if a person has experienced a potentially life threatening experience, and has intrusive traumatic memories, persistently increased arousal, and avoids reminders of the event.

Helping someone re-visit aspects of the original experience is an important part of the psychological therapy. This is relatively easy for someone who was traumatised in a traffic accident, but is considerably more difficult for a soldier who was traumatised in a distant and still-active war zone.

Virtual reality aims to safely simulate the environment and features of combat. The idea is that the intensity can be controlled by the therapist to manage exposure and to make sure the patient is never challenged with more anxiety than they can manage.

“This shows you why you need a trained therapist,” Rizzo said, turning off the machine and watching Aristone, who was bent over, with his hands on his knees, taking deep breaths. “Someone who knows exposure therapy, who knows how little things can set people off. You have to understand the patient. You have to know which stimuli to select. You’d never do what I just did—you’d never flood them. You have to know when to ramp up the challenges. Someone comes in and all they can do is sit in the Humvee, maybe with the sound of wind, and may have to spend a session or two just in that position. For P.T.S.D., it’s really intuitive. We provide a lot of options and put them into the hands of the clinician.”

One of these is Karen Perlman, a civilian psychologist who uses Virtual Iraq with patients at the Naval Medical Center San Diego. Perlman is an apple-cheeked, middle-aged native Californian with cascading brown hair, who, when I met her, was wearing an elegant short black dress with a pink-blue-and-purple tie-dyed silk scarf. At first glance, Perlman does not seem to be the sort of person a young marine would cotton to, but Rizzo says that she has a gift, and so far eight of the nine patients she has treated no longer meet the criteria for P.T.S.D. (This number does not account for those who dropped out.) “It’s a very collaborative relationship,” she told me in February, when Skip Rizzo and I drove down to San Diego. “I know which stimuli I’m going to add as the therapy progresses. I’m not going to overwhelm them. There are no surprises. I say, ‘I think you’re ready for the I.E.D. blast or for more airplanes.’ I’m not only adding more, but increasing the duration of each one. It’s intensive, but for P.T.S.D. you need a treatment that is intensive.”

The team have published some published some initial studies from the treatment which looks promising.

The project joins a growing number of studies that have found VR a promising method for treating trauma.

Link to New Yorker article 'Virtual Iraq'.

—Vaughan.

The Strange Case of the Electronic Lover:

The Strange Case of the Electronic Lover was an influential article by Lindsy Van Gelder that examined how a case of gender-bending identity faking from the early days of online chatrooms impacted on a virtual community.

I'd read it many years ago when it was published in the book, Computerization and Controversy, but have just found a scanned copy on the net as a pdf.

It's entirely anecdotal but it's a fascinating read (although has been scanned in sideways, so you'll have to print it, or rotate it on screen - Acrobat users, you can right click to rotate documents).

What I hadn't remembered was the identities of the person and the alter-ego:

I soon learned that [Talkin' Lady's] real name was Joan Sue Green, and that she was a New York neuropsychologist in her late twenties, who had been severely disfigured in a car accident that was the fault of a drunken driver. The accident had killed her boyfriend.

Joan had spent a year in hospital being treated for brain damage, which affected both her speech and her ability to walk. Mute, confined to a wheelchair, and frequently suffering from intense back and leg pain, Joan had been at first so embittered about her disabilities that she literally didn't want to live.

Then her mentor, a former professor at John Hopkins, presented her with a computer, a modem, and a year's subscription to CompuServe to be used specifically doing what Joan was doing - making friends online...

Over the next two years, she became a monumental on-line presence who served as both a support for other disabled women and as an inspiring stereotype-smasher to the able-bodied. Through her many intense friendships and (in some cases) her on-line romances, she changed the lives of dozens of women.

Thus it was a huge shock early this year when, through a complicated series of events, Joan was revealed as being not disabled at all. More to the point, Joan, in fact, was not a woman. She was really a man we'll call Alex - a prominent New York psychiatrist in his early fifties who was engaged in a bizarre, all-consuming experiment to see what it felt like to be a female, and to experience the intimacy of female friendship.

I first came across the case in Sherry Turkle's book on the psychology of online identity, Life on the Screen, where she described the story as already having "near-legendary status" in 1995 cyberculture.

There is now a growing body of scholarly work on the psychology of the internet but several episodes seem to have become part of the mythos of the subject, partly because they were used to illustrate psychological points before rigorous empirical work had been started.

Incidentally, I tried to look up the author, Lindsy Van Gelder, on the net but found few details. However, I did find this article from the 1980s where she defends her counter-culture credentials against the fact she owned an IBM PC! (a 5150 if I'm not mistaken).

pdf of Van Gelder's 'The Strange Case of the Electronic Lover'.

—Vaughan.

May 19, 2008

Virtual paranoia:

The Royal College of Psychiatrists podcast has a fascinating interview with psychologist Daniel Freeman who discusses his recent study that used virtual reality to study paranoid thinking.

Freeman has pioneered the use of VR in studying paranoia to try and understand how individual psychological differences contribute to suspiciousness and fear.

Of course, it's possible to use real life environments to see how exposure relates to paranoid thinking. In fact, the same research group has studied how patients with paranoid delusions react to urban environments.

Those familiar with South East London might be interested to know that stressful urban stimulus in this experiment was a walk down Camberwell High Street (as a resident of Camberwell it is disconcerting, although not entirely surprising, to find out I'm living in an experimental condition used to induce paranoid reactions).

For a scientific point of view, one difficulty with using real-life environments to study paranoia is that they are constantly changing and reactive.

This latter point is important because people who are very paranoid might, for instance, behave in a manner that other people find strange and that attracts attention, or in a way that sparks hostility in others.

One way of getting round this is to expose all participants to a virtual reality environment programmed to be identical, so any differences in paranoid thinking between individuals are almost certainly related to how they interpret the situation and not how the environment reacts to them.

In this latest VR study, the environment was programmed to be neutral (a simulation of the London Underground carriage) but about a third of participants from the general population reported paranoid thoughts.

Some of the paranoid thoughts reported in the paper are really quite striking: "There was an aggressive person – his intention was to intimidate me and make me feel uneasy" and "One guy looked pissed off and maybe one guy flicked the finger at me".

I've actually been in the simulation, having taken part in a pilot study for a related project, and although it's a bit clunky (as you can see from the picture) it's remarkable how its difficult not to have human reactions to the 'people' on the train.

Interestingly, the study found that anxiety, worry and the tendency to have anomalous perceptual experiences were associated with paranoid thoughts, as was 'cognitive inflexibility' - the tendency to be unable to see alternative explanations for ideas or beliefs.

In the audio interview, Freeman discusses this latest study in more detail and how it relates to what we know about the psychology of paranoia.

UPDATE: Thanks to PsyBlog for alerting me to the fact that a streamed video from the Wellcome Trust has an interview with Dan Freeman and footage from the experiment itself.

Link to RCPsych to podcast on VR and paranoia study.
Link to abstract of study.

—Vaughan.

Survivor search robots to comfort disaster survivors:

The St Petersburg Times has an article on the new generation of rescue robots that search for survivors after disasters. Their creator, engineer Robin Murphy, is designing robots that will aim to provide psychological comfort to trapped victims until the rescuers can reach them.

Murphy has been designing and deploying rescue robots for many years, assisting the rescue teams after the World Trade Centre attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the Utah mine disaster to name but a few.

Recognising the need to alleviate the psychological suffering of trapped survivors, she's just won a $500,000 grant from Microsoft to develop robots that attempt to comfort the people they reach.

The Survivor Buddy would act as an emergency companion to people stuck in the crossfire of snipers or under the rubble of an earthquake-ravaged building like the ones now littering China.

She envisions a robot that plays soothing music to trapped victims and features a monitor showing the faces of loved ones and rescuers trying to reach them. It will deliver water and transmit a victim's vital signs to doctors. And it should be friendly, she said.

Link to The St Petersburg Times on Survivor Buddy (via AI&Robots).

—Vaughan.

May 18, 2008

The philosophy of suicide:

The most recent edition of ABC Radio National's The Philosopher's Zone discussed the philosophy of suicide, looking at how our concepts of self-killing have changed throughout history and whether there is any such thing as a rational reason for ending our own lives.

The philosopher Albert Camus famously stated that "there is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide", something that surely struck Socrates as he killed himself by drinking hemlock.

Suicide in its many forms has inspired everything from condemnation to romanticisation, most focusing on the morality of taking one's own life and whether it can be justified as a reasonable option.

The programme touches on many of these issues and I was also interested to see a link from the page to an entry on suicide from the excellent Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Link to Philosopher's Zone on suicide with audio and transcript.
Link to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on suicide.

—Vaughan.

May 15, 2008

Orgasm and brain:

Scientific American Mind tackles the neuroscience of orgasm in a feature article which has just been released online.

One of the merits of the article is that it avoids the 'men are simple, women are complex' stereotype and presents results from scientific studies that suggest there are both subtle similarities and differences in sexual response.

One problem with the area of sexual neuroscience is that it largely relies on brain scanning studies in humans.

You'll see from the article that there's lots of speculation as to what the changes in orgasm-related brain activity mean. It's largely blue sky thinking though, because it's always difficult to decide what is happening in the mind from the activity of particular brain areas. Take these paragraphs for example:

But when a woman reached orgasm, something unexpected happened: much of her brain went silent. Some of the most muted neurons sat in the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex, which may govern self-control over basic desires such as sex. Decreased activity there, the researchers suggest, might correspond to a release of tension and inhibition. The scientists also saw a dip in excitation in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, which has an apparent role in moral reasoning and social judgment—a change that may be tied to a suspension of judgment and reflection.

Brain activity fell in the amygdala, too, suggesting a depression of vigilance similar to that seen in men, who generally showed far less deactivation in their brain during orgasm than their female counterparts did. “Fear and anxiety need to be avoided at all costs if a woman wishes to have an orgasm; we knew that, but now we can see it happening in the depths of the brain,” Holstege says. He went so far as to declare at the 2005 meeting of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Development: “At the moment of orgasm, women do not have any emotional feelings.”

It's like trying to guess what's happening in a city just by looking at changes in traffic flow. The upsurge in traffic on the high street could mean it's a busy shopping day, but it could also mean there's a carnival, or a riot, or funeral, or any other strange or unusual occurrence you might never have predicted.

Brain scanning just finds associations, but to find out whether an area is causally involved in a particular function, or whether it is necessary for the function, research with brain injured patients is one of the most powerful methods.

For example, if you think a brain area is necessary for orgasm, or a certain component of orgasm, a person with damage to that area should not experience what you've predicted.

We know that sexual problems are common after brain injury, but virtually no research has been done to see how damage to specific brain areas affects orgasm.

This would be important, both to help us understand the neuroscience of orgasm beyond general speculation, but also to begin to understand how we can help brain injured people regain satisfying sex lives.

Link to SciAmMind article 'The Orgasmic Mind'.

—Vaughan.

May 13, 2008

The gift of pure hypomania?:

A forthcoming study from the Journal of Affective Disorders looked at people who seem to have the 'ups' of manic depression but none of the 'downs'. While people with pure hypomania were more likely to have had legal troubles and be impulsive, they were also more likely to earn more and be married.

The study looked at people who had never been diagnosed with a mood disorder but, during a general population survey, seem to have experiences akin to hypomania - an upswing in activity and energy that falls short of the extremes that can lead to psychosis in full blown mania.

This is normally only classified when it accompanies depression, which could lead to one of the bipolar disorder diagnoses.

In contrast, the study found 'pure hypomania' was generally not distressing, had its benefits, but could lead to complications.

Pure hypomanics were characterised by physical and social overactivity, elevated and irritable mood, as well as increases in extraversion, sexual interest, and risk-taking behaviors.

They had higher monthly incomes and were more often married than controls. Subjective distress due to hypomanic symptoms was virtually absent.

Quality of life and treatment rates for mood and anxiety were not different from controls, although sleep disturbances, substance abuse and binge eating were more frequent.

The absence of subjective distress is interesting, as it is part of a realisation that psychiatry has traditionally based its ideas about psychopathology on a sample bias - it's only studied people who are treated by psychiatrists.

This means that classifications have often based on people who are either distressed or impaired. People who experience similar symptoms but who didn't become significantly disabled by them were not considered.

In the last 20 years, efforts have been made to survey the community and discover who has benign 'symptoms'. For example, a ground breaking study by Romme and Escher found that only one third of people who hear voices had ever needed psychiatric help, despite the fact is traditionally considered a tell-tale sign of mental illness.

Link to abstract of 'pure hypomania' study.

—Vaughan.

May 12, 2008

The battle over infants with cross-gender desires:

NPR Radio's All Things Considered just had an interesting feature on two six-year old boys who identify with and want to be girls. It's something that might be diagnosed as gender identity disorder or GID and the programme looks at how the two psychologists dealt with the issue in very different ways.

One psychologist, Ken Zucker, suggested that the family encourage their son to only associate with traditionally male toys and activities to encourage him to be more comfortable with his born sex, while the other, Diane Ehrensaft encouraged the family to allow their son to explore his cross-gender interests.

Whatever your immediate reaction to these approaches the psychologists in the programme make interesting points on both sides of the debate:

Ehrensaft sees transgenderism as akin to homosexuality, she says, she thinks Zucker's therapy — which seeks to condition children out of a transgender identity — is unethical.

But that isn't how Zucker sees it. Zucker says the homosexuality metaphor is wrong. He proposes another metaphor: racial identity disorder.

"Suppose you were a clinician and a 4-year-old black kid came into your office and said he wanted to be white. Would you go with that? ... I don't think we would," Zucker says.

If a black kid walked into a therapist's office saying he was really white, the goal of pretty much any therapist out there would be to make him try to feel more comfortable being black.

Gender identity disorder is a controversial area. The diagnosis requires "a strong and persistent cross-gender identification" and significant distress related to the birth gender.

Some cross-gender people feel they are being labelled as mentally ill for having atypical gender desires and suggest that any associated distress is because they have to live in a society that marginalises their life choices.

There are some proponents that maintain that any cross-gender identification is an illness, although these are often the same people that think that being gay is a disorder and run 'treatment centres' for homosexuality.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it seems Zucker's work is quoted rather favourably by many of these organisations - something that has given him a bad name amongst some parts of the the LGBT community. Although, from what I can make out, he's never associated himself with any of these views or organisations.

The mainstream professionals who defend the GID diagnosis usually suggest that the distress, rather than the desire itself, is key and this legitimises its classification and treatment. From this point of view, happy and adjusted transgender people would not be considered to have a disorder.

The program is well worth listening to as it tackles many of these thorny issues of gender politics.

Incidentally, the producer is Alix Spiegel, who produced 81 words, one of the finest documentaries on the history of psychiatry I've ever heard.

It looks at the how homosexuality was de-listed as a mental illness, but is more than that, it's also a moving story from Spiegel's family. The remarkable thing was that the the two were inextricably linked.

I've mentioned it before on Mind Hacks, but I highly recommend it if you've not encountered it before.

Link to NPR programme on cross-gender desires in children.
Link to audio archive of 81 words (click 'Full Episode' for free stream).

—Vaughan.

May 11, 2008

Mad pride and prejudice:

An article in today's New York Times looks at the 'mad pride' movement and meets many of the people who aim to destigmatise mental illness by being upfront about their experience of altered states of mind.

The article features journalist Liz Spikol, who we interviewed back in 2006, and professor of law Elyn Saks, who we featured last year, among a host of others who are associated with what might loosely be termed as 'mad pride'.

'Loosely' is certainly an apt description, because, apart from fighting stigma, views within the mad pride movement vary widely.

There are a few lingering Marxists who see all psychiatry as part of the capitalist system to oppress the working class, but most simply want better care for mental distress and society to be more accepting of differing states of mind.

Mad Pride is often rather clumsily related to 'antipsychiatry' but they are often at the forefront of campaigns when essential services are threatened.

In London, the campaign against the shutting of the Maudsley Hospital psychiatric emergency clinic was spearheaded by several 'mad pride' organisations - who had a mischievous and witty banner at one demo saying "We must be mad! We want the emergency clinic kept open!".

I do share Phil Dawdy's bemusement at being overlooked, as he's surely one of the most thorough and effective of campaigning writers, but good to see the NYT continue its tradition of high quality mental health journalism.

Link to NYT article 'Mad Pride Fights a Stigma'.

—Vaughan.

May 08, 2008

Male body symmmetry, more female orgasms:

The link between attractiveness and facial symmetry seems to hold across both black and white faces, but also in non-human primates, according to a study just published in the open-access science journal PLoS One.

One of the most striking studies in sex and symmetry research isn't mentioned, however. A 1995 study found that the likelihood of female orgasm during sex was related to the extent of bodily symmetry in the male partner.

The study was led by biologist Randy Thornhill and recruited 86 young couples who completed a number of relationship questionnaires, including one on how often the female partner orgasmed during sex. The males then had their bodies measured and assessed for how much one side differed compared to the other - a measure of bodily asymmetry.

In the final analysis neither the male's age, wealth, social skills, physical attractiveness or relationship style predicted the frequency of female orgasm. Only male bodily symmetry was statistically associated with the chance of the women climaxing during sex.

The researchers thought that maybe women who have more orgasms, or who are just more sexual, simply get the more symmetrical (maybe hotter) guys. But when they looked at frequency of orgasm outside copulation (such as during oral sex or masturbation), the relationship to male symmetry disappeared, suggesting that this wasn't the case.

This study, and the new study published in PLoS One, also suggested that symmetry was associated with more masculine features generally - a bigger body in the orgasm study, and a more typically male face in the PLoS research.

The evolutionary explanation suggested by the authors is that female orgasm during copulation may make pregnancy more likely, so it's an adaptive strategy to increase fertility when making love to males with genes more likely to lead to healthy children.

How orgasm increases with body symmetry is not clearly understood, though. The authors speculate that female perception of a highly symmetrical male might psychologically prime sexual arousal, but the mechanism is left largely to guesswork.

Link to PLoS One study on attractiveness and symmetry (via Anthro).
Link to abstract of orgasm and symmetry study.

—Vaughan.

May 06, 2008

A rough guide to self-harm:

The New York Times has a concise article that discusses adolescents who self-harm through cutting, burning or deliberately damaging themselves. Self-harm is curious because it is one the most psychologically complex of behaviours and yet we have a simple but largely inaccurate cultural stereotype - attention seeking teenagers.

There are many, many types of self-harm, some more culturally acceptable than others. Self harm is often accepted as part of fashion or ritual (piercings, scarring), or can be due to genetic abnormalities (e.g. Lesch-Nyan syndrome), or as a result of learning disabilities or brain injury.

It can be because of delusional or psychotic ideas; OCD type urges, like hair pulling or skin picking, which people often want to resist but can't; or can be an indirect result of other difficulties, such as damaging the body through drugs, alcohol, or an eating disorder.

The type discussed in the article, and what we normally think of in our cultural stereotype, is often an adolescent or young adult who cuts or burns themselves.

The motivations vary, and yes, a minority do give 'wanting attention' as a reason. Sometimes this is a learnt response when they've been in an environment where the only time they have been given any care or attention is when they've damaged themselves.

However, the vast majority try their best to hide what they do and it can be a source of significant shame.

As noted in a recent review on the area, this group tends to use self-harm as a way of managing strong emotions and cutting is associated with a build-up of tension and the feeling of relief at the time of committing the act.

People who self-harm are more likely to be depressed, impulsive and poor at problem-solving and self-harm is often a way they've found, at least temporarily, to control otherwise overwhelming emotions.

Although the risk of suicide is increased in adolescents who self-harm, only a minority will go on to kill themselves. Just over 1% in a recent study with a 26 year follow-up.

There's still not a great deal of research on which are the best treatments with the biggest reviews being inconclusive, but recent findings suggest that self-harming problems can be treated with psychological therapy.

Link to NYT article on self-harm.

—Vaughan.

May 05, 2008

Brain trends exposed in 'state of the neuron' study:

A fascinating study on the social trends in neuroscience research has found that New York is happening but Boston is hot, dementia researchers are the most influential, high-level processes are hip and that neuroscientists need to practice professional 'birth control' to avoid mass starvation.

The results come from a paper just published in PLoS One that used the abstracts from five years' worth of Society for Neuroscience annual conference presentations to map out emerging trends in brain research.

The study did a series of 'bibliometric' analyses. That is, it used software that looked for links between people, topics, geographical location and other points of interest over time by analysing the text of presentation summaries.

The SfN conferences always happen in the States, so there's certainly a bias, but they're generally considered the most important international meeting of the year, so the paper is full of gems about neuroscience now and in the future. I've pulled out a few below.

The global "hubs" for neuroscience research seem to be concentrated in the northeast region of the United States (Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore/DC vicinity), Southern California, Tokyo, Montreal, and London.

New York City consistently ranks as the top producer of neuroscience research, but when population size is included, Boston and Baltimore come out particularly well, as they rank high in both the raw number of authors and per population participation in SfN meetings.

There has been a shift in general scientific interest from 'low-level' research on cellular processes such as ion channels, synapses, and cell membranes, towards more 'high-level' research on things like vision, movement, and neuroimaging.

A useful graph shows words which have decreased in frequency in the research summaries over the years on the left, and words increasing in frequency on the right.

In a social network analysis, the neuroscientists with the largest betweenness centrality, a measure of influence over the network, were not necessarily those with their name on the largest number of research presentations.

Interestingly, most of these scientists conduct research in the field of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, and the authors of the study speculate that this may be because the area is well funded and that it involves a diverse range of research techniques. Therefore, the researchers are likely to be connected with many others in the field.

A cluster analysis of themes looked at which research areas formed coherent groups. It's interesting to compare SfN's traditional classification of topics with the results of the analysis which found spontaneous groupings.

While there is some overlap, areas like 'pain and trauma', the 'behaviour of song birds' and 'sleep' seem to have formed strong groupings by themselves.

In terms of the population shift in neuroscience, about 60% of researchers seem to be 'transitory', probably students or outside collaborators who don't remain in the field for long.

However, the growth of the neuroscience community has been massive, while the total funding has remained steady.

The authors suggest that like in any population boom, research institutions should use the equivalent of 'birth control' to keep numbers down, otherwise they'll be more people than jobs, and lots of people will be work-starved.

Starvation, of course, regulates a population, although is a rather painful process for those who expire due to lack of resources.

Link to full text of PLoS One paper on neuroscience trends.

—Vaughan.

May 04, 2008

Vengeance and the recycle of violence:

Two recently published articles on inter-group violence highlight the how the cycle of vengeance is remarkably similar across two different cultures: one in tribal peoples from New Guinea, the other in street gangs from Chicago.

In an article for The New Yorker Jared Diamond writes about the cycles and social customs surrounding vengeance in New Guinea by examining how one Handa tribesmen sought to exact revenge on another tribe for the death of his uncle.

The social customs about what counts as vengeance, how and whom it may be exacted upon are complex, but it's interesting that Diamond concludes that the desire for vengeance is a powerful motivation (ranking alongside love, anger, grief, and fear) which feeds the cycle of retribution even past the point where the original cause of the conflict has been lost in the sands of time.

A similar theme is echoed in an article published in today's New York Times on gang violence in Chicago. It focuses on a project called CeaseFire started by epidemiologist Gary Slutkin.

The project uses an interesting method which thinks of violence like a disease which can be transmitted through vengeance, and so applies an approach taken from disease prevention models to try and stop the spread of shootings.

Slutkin employs mostly ex-members of the Chicago underground who know both the streets and the players to intervene and mediate disputes when violence has flared on when the situation seems ready to explode.

The idea, just like in clinical epidemiology, is to target the most 'infected' members to reduce transmission - in this case, by engaging those causing the most violence and cooling the need for vengeance.

After a quick search, there seems to be remarkably little research on the role of vengeance in violence (although almost all supports its role).

This tends to parallel the research into violence in general. As one of the biggest killers in the world, I'm always struck by how little attention it gets.

Link to Jared Diamond article 'Vengeance is Ours'.
Link to NYT article 'Blocking the Transmission of Violence'.

—Vaughan.

April 28, 2008

Evolution of the troubled mind:

I just listened to a recent edition of ABC Radio National's All in the Mind on evolutionary approaches to mental illness. While the topic isn't new, it's interesting that the two clinicians try to directly apply some of the ideas to their work treating patients with mental disorders.

Almost all evolutionary accounts of mental illness attempt to explain why we still have mental illness when it so markedly reduces the chances of reproductive success.

Most theories, and indeed the ones discussed on the programme, argue that in small doses the genes that raise risk for mental illness are useful in promoting creativity (e.g. psychosis / mania), maternal withdrawal (e.g. in post-pregnancy depression), self-preservation (e.g. anxiety) or some other presumably adaptive behaviour in specific situations.

I'm fairly tolerant of these theories, on the basis that they're hard to demonstrate but plausible, but I have less time for Paul McClean's 'triune brain' theory which one of the interviewers seems to favour.

In fact, everytime I hear the phrase 'reptilian brain', I reach for my spear.

This is often invoked in discussions about evolutionary psychology as a seemingly more sensible alternative to Freudian theories.

What makes me chuckle is that they are remarkably similar. Freud argued that we are a subject to evolutionary ancient drives of the Id that must be controlled by the Ego, McLean suggested that we are a subject to evolutionary ancient drives of the reptilian brain that must be controlled by the neocortex.

For an updated and significantly more sophisticated version of these arguments, neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp's 2002 article [pdf] on the weakness of evolutionary psychology without neuroscience is well worth a read.

While we're on the subject, distinguished biologist and sufferer of depression Lewis Wolpert recently published an open-access article on 'Depression in an evolutionary context' which is well worth a look.

Link on AITM on evolutionary approaches to psychiatry.
pdf of Panksepp's article on 'neurevolutionary psychology'.
Link to Wolpert's article on evolution and depression.

—Vaughan.

April 16, 2008

Growing up on antidepressants:

The New York Times has an article on the increasing number of people who have been on antidepressants drugs since their childhood years and have experienced 'growing up' while medicated.

Still, what do we know about the effects of, say, 15 to 20 years of antidepressant drug treatment that begins in adolescence or childhood? Not enough.

The reason has to do with the way drugs are tested and approved. To get F.D.A. approval, a drug has to beat a placebo in two randomized clinical trials that typically involve a few hundred subjects who are treated for relatively short periods, usually 4 to 12 weeks.

So drugs are approved based on short-term studies for what turns out to be long-term — often lifelong — use in the world of clinical practice. The longest maintenance study to date of one of the newer antidepressants, Effexor, lasted only two years and showed the drug to be superior to a placebo in preventing relapses of depression.

In fact, there are no reliable long-term studies even of drugs like methylphenidate (Ritalin) that are widely used in children.

One of the most interesting things is the huge amount of comments the article has attracted, with many people sharing their own experiences of a medicated adolescence.

Link to NYT article 'Coming of Age on Antidepressants'.
Link to 'editors choice' of comments.

—Vaughan.

April 13, 2008

Reality trails by mobile phone:

MIT's Technology Review magazine has an interesting article on 'reality mining' - using mobile phone call and positioning data to build advanced models of social networks.

The article is part of their 2008 emerging technology series and looks at how data gathered from the mobile phone network can tell us about human behaviour.

The core technology is hardly new. The police have been generating social networks from phone records since the early to mid 90s in an attempt to solve cases.

What is new, however, is MIT's Sandy Pentland has been using positioning data from mobile phones to look at how close people are to each other over time, to make the social networks much more accurate and information rich.

To create an accurate model of a person's social network, for example, Pentland's team combines a phone's call logs with information about its proximity to other people's devices, which is continuously collected by Bluetooth sensors. With the help of factor analysis, a statistical technique commonly used in the social sciences to explain correlations among multiple variables, the team identifies patterns in the data and translates them into maps of social relationships.

Such maps could be used, for instance, to accurately categorize the people in your address book as friends, family members, acquaintances, or coworkers. In turn, this information could be used to automatically establish privacy settings--for instance, allowing only your family to view your schedule. With location data added in, the phone could predict when you would be near someone in your network.

In a paper published last May [pdf], ­Pentland and his group showed that cell-phone data enabled them to accurately model the social networks of about 100 MIT students and professors. They could also precisely predict where subjects would meet with members of their networks on any given day of the week.

This may strike you as equally terrifying and exciting. Obviously, it has huge potential for abuse by authorities, but the possibility of doing research on fully consenting participants who agree to be tracked for short periods for scientific research is huge.

There's also a great short video where Pentland discusses the technology in a bit more detail, and mentions the possibility of using the data for informing how diseases spread through social networks,

While we're on a social / mobile network tip, the New York Times has a fascinating article on the work of a Nokia anthropologist. He works largely in the developing world to try and understanding how phones are used and what effects they have on the social fabric and economic potential of the area.

Neuroanthropology also has a commentary on the article, pulling out some of the key social concepts it touches on.

Link to TechReview article on 'reality mining'.
Link to video of Pentland discussing the technology.
pdf of full-text scientific paper.
Link to NYT article 'Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?'
Link to Neuroanthropology commentary.

—Vaughan.

April 03, 2008

Female anger at work seen as worse, a character flaw:

Psychological Science has just published an eye-opening study that found that women who express anger at work were thought of more negatively than men and were assumed to be 'angry people' or 'out of control'. Male colleagues who did the same were typically viewed in a more positive light and were assumed to be upset by circumstances.

The study was led by psychologist Victoria Brescoll and the abstract of the study is below:

Can an angry woman get ahead? Status conferral, gender, and expression of emotion in the workplace.

Psychol Sci. 2008 Mar;19(3):268-75.

Three studies examined the relationships among anger, gender, and status conferral. As in prior research, men who expressed anger in a professional context were conferred higher status than men who expressed sadness. However, both male and female evaluators conferred lower status on angry female professionals than on angry male professionals. This was the case regardless of the actual occupational rank of the target, such that both a female trainee and a female CEO were given lower status if they expressed anger than if they did not. Whereas women's emotional reactions were attributed to internal characteristics (e.g., "she is an angry person,""she is out of control"), men's emotional reactions were attributed to external circumstances. Providing an external attribution for the target person's anger eliminated the gender bias. Theoretical implications and practical applications are discussed.

Along similar lines, a study we reported last year found that women who bargained for more money during job interviews were typically thought of as more 'difficult' than men who did the same, particularly when a man was doing the evaluating.

Link to abstract of study on women and workplace anger.

—Vaughan.

March 26, 2008

Demanding sex differences:

Language Log has a great post looking at differences in empathy between males and females, and highlights a new study showing race differences as well.

The punchline is that it's actually really hard to say whether either of these results reflect true differences because the samples tend to be unrepresentative of the population, and measures of empathy tend to be influenced by the social situation in which they're taken.

They grab this paragraph from a review article on empathy measurement:

In general, sex differences in empathy were a function of the methods used to assess empathy. There was a large sex difference favoring women when the measure of empathy was self-report scales; moderate differences (favoring females) were found for reflexive crying and self-report measures in laboratory situations; and no sex differences were evident when the measure of empathy was either physiological or unobtrusive observations of nonverbal reactions to another's emotional state.

This article is from way back in '83, but more recent studies have tended to support the main idea that the overall difference between men and women in empathy is fairly negligible when behaviour, rather than self-report, is examined.

These sorts of social influences on experimental findings are known as 'demand characteristics'.

The classic example is an attractive female researcher asking men about penis size, but the effects can be quite subtle and only come to light in subsequent replications of the study (if at all!).

One of my favourite studies in this area looked at the supposed tendency for people who experience 'sensory deprivation' to have hallucinations and suffer severe emotional and cognitive impairment.

In 1964 psychologists Martin Orne and Karl Scheibe compared two groups of participants in a sensory deprivation experiment.

One group of participants was greeted by white coated researchers standing next to emergency equipment, were asked for their medical history and given serious looking tests, were told to report any strange sensory distortions and were informed that if they wanted to stop the experiment, they had to press a panic button.

The other group was greeted informally by researchers in casual clothes, weren't given any medical checks, and were told to report their experiences freely as they occurred. To stop the experiment, they just had to knock on the window.

The actual sensory deprivation procedure was the same for both groups, but the participants given the formal medical introduction reported greater emotional disturbance, unusual experiences and mental distress. Furthermore, they tended to do much worse on the cognitive tests given afterwards.

While this didn't 'disprove' any of the unpleasant effects of sensory deprivation, it did show that they are heavily mediated by expectation which is implicitly inferred from the testing situation.

Needless to say, this can affect any type of study, so scientists are always on the look out to see if it might be responsible for new findings.

Link to Language Log article on empathy, sex and race.
Link to study on demand characteristics and sensory deprivation.

—Vaughan.

March 25, 2008

The Lives They Left Behind:

PsychCentral has alerted me to a wonderful online exhibit based on the lives of several psychiatric patients whose belongings were found in suitcases in an old asylum attic years after they had passed away.

All the individuals were patients at the Willard Asylum, some for as long as 62 years.

Unfortunately, the site is a bit over-Flashed which means it's not the most intuitive to navigate, but it's worth grappling with the menus at the bottom of the screen as the stories are incredibly touching.

The photo on the right is of 'Frank':

On June 7, 1945, Mr. Frank #27967 went into the Virginia Restaurant on Fulton Street in Brooklyn and was served a meal on a broken plate. He became upset and caused a disruption outside the restaurant, yelling and kicking garbage cans. The police were called, and, instead of arresting him, brought him to the psychiatric ward at Kings County Hospital. From there, he was transferred to Brooklyn State Hospital, and on April 9, 1946, he was admitted to Willard, one of a growing number of African American patients transferred to Willard from New York City in the 40s, due to over-crowding...

Mr. Frank # 27967 never escaped the consequences of that day outside the restaurant in 1945. In 1949, he was transferred from Willard to the Veterans Administration hospital in Canandaigua, NY, and in 1954 to the VA hospital in Pittsburgh. He died there 30 years later, having spent more than half his life in an institution.

The site also has a great deal of information about the hospital itself, audio recordings of memories of the institution and more information about the book and touring exhibition which is on the road right now.

In fact, it's currently on show at the Cayuga Museum of History and Art in Auburn, New York.

Link to The Lives They Left Behind online exhibit.

—Vaughan.

Where angels no longer fear to tread:

The Economist has an article which serves as an interesting summary of some of the recent work on the psychology and neuroscience of religious belief.

It's a little bit clumsy in places. For example, it summarises some of the work on the role of the temporal lobes as saying that "religious visions are the result of epileptic seizures that affect this part of the brain".

Certainly, temporal lobe seizures are associated with religious experiences. A recent review reported that about 0.5% to 3% of people with the condition experience them.

But this work suggests that this is only one factor and actually minor functional changes are probably more important in the general population [pdf].

It's also important to note that this sort of neuroscience research typically looks at beliefs and experiences concerning the 'supernatural' elements of religion.

However, the Economist article also discusses some recent psychological research looking at the influence of religion on social reasoning and touches on the possible evolutionary explanations for the widespread and persistent nature of religious ideas.

Link to Economist article 'Where angels no longer fear to tread'.

—Vaughan.

March 22, 2008

Normality bites:

BBC Radio 4 has just concluded another run of its fantastic series Am I Normal? which looks at the science of differences in our minds, brains and abilities.

The series has done a remarkably good job in exploring the psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience of common human concerns and how they differ across the population.

This stretches from distinct pathologies and medical disorders at one end, to normal variation at the other - although 'normal variation' itself contains a diverse array of differences.

The latest series looked at shyness and social phobia, dyslexia, maths and selective mathematical difficulties and, finally, insomnia and sleep.

Insomnia is particularly interesting because psychological concerns are known to play a huge role in maintaining the patterns of broken sleep and subsequent anxiety.

For example, a well-replicated finding is that people with insomnia vastly under-estimate the amount of sleep they get during the night, sometimes sleeping several more hours that they think they do (Tom discussed some of this research in on Mind Hacks back in 2004, and the full text of a recent scientific paper on the topic is available online as a pdf).

Evidence also suggests that worry feeds into this biased perception of sleep, and that there is also quite a discrepancy between how people with insomnia perceive the impairments they experience in their waking life, and what neuropsychological tests actually find.

This isn't to suggest that people with insomnia are exaggerators (it's worth noting that they do have genuine sleep difficulties), simply that one of the main difficulties is how they evaluate their sleep and its impact - which tends to prolong or make the problem worse.

This is why psychological and behavioural treatments (such as cognitive therapy or changing the environment or daily routines) are particularly effective in treating sleep difficulties.

Link to BBC Radio 4 Am I Normal? series (via BPSRD).

—Vaughan.

February 29, 2008

Autism reconsidered:

Wired covers the beginning of a possible revolution in how we understand autism from both a humanistic and a scientific point of view.

The article starts by discussing Amanda Baggs who is a non-speaking but incredibly articulate young woman with autism.

We discussed her video previously on Mind Hacks which remains a remarkably inspiring challenge to how we understand and value people who experience the world differently.

This alternative view of autism as a variation rather than a disorder in human neurology has been taken up by some researchers, and the article also looks at how recent neuropsychology research is starting to reframe the condition.

The first test, known as the Wechsler Intelligence Scale, has helped solidify the notion of peaks of ability amid otherwise pervasive mental retardation among autistics. The other test is Raven's Progressive Matrices, which requires neither a race against the clock nor a proctor breathing down your neck. The Raven is considered as reliable as the Wechsler, but the Wechsler is far more commonly used...

What the researchers found was that while non-autistic subjects scored just about the same — a little above average — on both tests, the autistic group scored much better on the Raven. Two individuals' scores swung from the mentally retarded range to the 94th percentile. More significantly, the subset of autistic children in the study scored roughly 30 percentile points higher on the Raven than they did on the more language-dependent Wechsler, pulling all but a couple of them out of the range for mental retardation.

While the majority of autism research is very much disorder based, the article is a wide-ranging look at the autism spectrum and a great review of some of the new thinking that beginning to challenge the status quo.

Link to article 'Scientists Reconsider What They Think They Know'.

—Vaughan.

February 21, 2008

An Unquiet Lecture:

Someone's uploaded a video to YouTube of the fantastic Kay Redfield Jamison discussing her own experiences with bipolar disorder.

Jamison is a psychologist and one of the world's leading experts on the science of the condition that's often called manic depression.

She was known for her groundbreaking work on the disorder for many years before she 'came out of the closet' and described her own experience in her powerful and lyrical autobiography An Unquiet Mind.

Having attempted suicide and become quite psychotic at times, she has experienced the most extreme edges of the condition.

In this lecture, rather than presenting any of her considerable scientific research, she discusses the subjective experience of the highs, lows and distortions of thought that can occur in this mood disorder.

Link to Kay Redfield Jamison lecture (via AHP/WoP).

—Vaughan.

Child's play is a tough problem:

Children's play has long fascinated psychologists. The post-Freudians saw it as a direct expression of the human unconscious and its often been seen an essential, if not slightly mysterious, element of a healthy childhood.

The New York Times has a wonderfully in-depth article on the latest scientific discoveries on the role of play in development, most of which attempts to answer the question 'if play is so energy consuming and dangerous, why do almost all mammals engage in it when young?'.

One fascinating bit discusses 'play signals', body postures that are specifically used by humans and other mammals to advertise the fact that they're playing, and so none of the rough-and-tumble is mistaken for aggression:

Social play has its own vocabulary. Dogs have a particular body posture called the ‘‘play bow’’ — forelegs extended, rump in the air — that they use as both invitation and punctuation. A dog will perform a play bow at the beginning of a bout, and he will crouch back into it if he accidentally nips too hard and wants to assure the other dog: ‘‘Don’t worry! Still playing!’’

Other species have play signals, too. Chimps put on a ‘‘play face,’’ an open-mouthed expression that is almost like a face of aggression except that the muscles are relaxed into something like a smile. Baboons bend over and peer between their legs as an invitation to play, beavers roll around, goats gambol in a characteristic ‘‘play gait.’’ In fact, most species have from 10 to 100 distinct play signals that they use to solicit play or to reassure one another during play-fighting that it’s still all just in fun. In humans, the analogue to the chimp’s play face is a child’s smile, an open expression that indicates there is no real anger involved even in gestures that can look like a fight.

...[in humans] Brown could detect some typical gestures that these 2- and 3-year-olds were using instinctively to let one another know they were playing. ‘‘Play movement is curvilinear,’’ he said. ‘‘If that boy was reaching for something in a nonplay situation, his body would be all straight lines. But using the body language of play, he curves and embraces.’’

The article also looks at the possible benefits of play for brain development, and what role play takes in the learning of social roles and moral behaviour.

Link to NYT article 'Taking Play Seriously'.

—Vaughan.

February 19, 2008

Personality plagiarism rife on internet dating sites:

When you present yourself to potential suitors in an online dating profile, you are, in the terminology of psychology, 'constructing the self'. Perhaps it's not surprising then, that the most attractive profiles are being ripped off and plagiarised by lazy daters wanting to freeload on the most creative members' personalities.

The Wall Street Journal has an article which looks on how this practice has developed and uncovers several cases where romantic lines, funny descriptions and personal reflections are copied over and over again.

Psychologist Sherry Turkle's ground-breaking book Life on the Screen looked at the online construction of the self during the days of text based communication, MOOs and MUDs.

As we become increasingly tied to our online profiles, owing to the popularity of sites like MySpace, Facebook and numerous dating services, it's not surprising that they become more intimately associated with our own ideas about who we are.

They are also more easily copied than offline ways of expressing ourselves, leading to the situation where daters wanting to get lucky can just remix other people's personalities to maximise their chances of success.

Link to WSJ article 'The Cut-and-Paste Personality'.

—Vaughan.

February 15, 2008

Them and Us:

I remember a recently admitted patient, nose-to-nose with his psychiatrist, screaming at her "you don't know what I'm going through - how the fuck do you know what it's like little missy?".

The psychiatrist finished the discussion, saying she'd come back to him later, and after a brief pause to collect herself, moved on to the next patient in the ward round.

It is still an incredibly vivid memory for me, partly because everyone else in the room knew that the psychiatrist had been a patient herself, as she had a lifetime's worth of experience dealing with her own mental health issues.

Study after study has shown that psychiatrists have higher rates of mental illness than the general population.

Research published in 2001 revealed that 56% of female psychiatrists have a family history of mental illness, and just over 40% have experienced one themselves - almost twice the rate of other doctors. Undoubtedly as a consequence, psychiatrists have double the rate of suicide of the general population.

Psychiatry is certainly a stressful job, but research has also found that there are higher rates of mental disorder in future psychiatrists, suggesting many go into the profession precisely because of their experiences.

Other mental health professionals are much less studied, but from my own experience, I suspect the histories and motivations of mental health nurses, psychologists and social workers and so on are are likely to be similar.

The reason I mention this is because Phil Dawdy has just written a powerful article on responses to a recent murder of a psychologist in New York.

Several people wrote comments to his original notice saying that the murderer was likely on a whole bunch of meds that were making him crazy; and, mental health workers hurt patients all the time, so they get what they deserve.

It is quite apparent that unlike in other areas of medicine, the mental health system has a 'them and us' attitude.

Ironically, it is the single area of medicine where 'them' are most like to be 'us', regardless of whether you're a patient or a professional.

Link to Phil Dawdy on murder of a New York psychologist and reaction.

—Vaughan.

February 14, 2008

Love blossoms in the lab:

Love is the most exalted and sublime of human emotions. It has inspired breathtaking works of art, journeys through continents and even the tragedies of war. Given its powerful hold on humanity it's surprising that it's been traditionally neglected by the brain sciences. In spite of this, a new dawn in romance research has begun to bud in recent years, and love has finally blossomed in the lab.

While romantic love has always been an obsession of the psychoanalysts, they were often creating little more than a new poetry of emotion, often beautiful, often bizarre, but rarely explaining more than their own metaphors.

Always a little late to the game, it wasn't until the end of the 1990s that neuroscience fell head over heals for love. The first to become inspired by this new passion was, as if we needed to ask, an Italian.

Psychiatrist Donatella Marazziti and her colleagues measured levels of a protein that transports the neurotransmitter serotonin in the blood of 20 people who had recently fallen madly in love, 20 people with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and 20 healthy comparison participants.

People with OCD experience intrusive, obsessive thoughts and are often described as having an 'over-valued idea' - an almost semi-delusional state where a particular thought becomes the focus of attention.

Marazziti, already an established OCD researcher, knew that serotonin had previously been linked both to obsessional thoughts and to sexual attraction, and wondered whether something similar might be going on in the early stages of romance.

She found that the group of patients with OCD and the recently love-struck were no different in terms of the serotonin transporter protein, suggesting the brain began to function markedly differently as love blossomed.

Although measuring the blood is a fairly crude way of looking at how the brain works, the researchers were struck by the similarities between these two states:

This aspect we believe underlies the obsessive pre-occupation so characteristic of the early stage of love (which, in rare instances, might persist for a lifetime of abstract idealization that leads to poetry and music dedicated to the love object). As far as we are aware, this is the first report of changes in the 5-HT [serotonin] transporter during a physiological state; it would suggest that being in love literally induces a state which is not normal - as indeed suggested by a variety of colloquial expressions used throughout the ages in different countries, all of which refer generally to falling 'insanely' in love or to being 'lovesick'

Since this initial flirtation, love has become a hot topic in the neurosciences, with whole conferences dedicated to it and numerous scientific studies being published every year.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the traditional connection between love and madness has not been dispelled by these recent studies.

In fact, a 2007 study that looked at new love in adolescents found so many striking similarities between the intensity of teenage romance and hypomania, a symptom of manic-depression, that the authors warned researchers to look out for the love-struck when conducting research with young people, so as not to bias their results.

Link to abstract of study of the serotonin transporter and romantic love.
Link to abstract of study on hypomania and adolescent love.

—Vaughan.

February 13, 2008

Faking a labour of love:

I've just found an interesting page on Wikipedia that discusses the concept of 'emotional labour': where employees are expected to regulate their outward emotional reactions so they are consistent with the company's goals, regardless of their internal feelings.

A classic 'emotional labour' worker would be a shop assistant or a waitress, where the employee has to control their emotions and maintain a pleasant demeanour even when customers are being difficult, annoying or even abusive.

This concept was apparently first devised by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild in the book The Managed Heart.

However, a distinction is made between 'surface acting', where the display doesn't need to match internal feelings at all (as when waitressing), and 'deep acting' where the employee is expected to genuinely feel the emotions (like in nursing).

Apparently, 'surface acting' jobs are associated with stress, feeling inauthentic and depression, while 'deep acting' jobs are associated with increased job satisfaction.

How well this is supported by empirical evidence is anyone's guess, but it's an interesting concept.

Link to Wikipedia page on 'emotional labour'.

—Vaughan.

February 11, 2008

Orgasm and the brain: body, soul and sensory nerves:

How does the brain generate orgasm? It's one of the most under-investigated human experiences but two articles, one in the LA Times and another in The Psychologist, discuss some of the key developments of recent years.

The LA Times article is a good description of some of the most interesting neuroscience studies in this developing field, but is a little uncritical in places.

Apparently "About 43% of women and 31% of men in the U.S. between ages 18 and 60 meet criteria for sexual dysfunctions, according to a 1999 report on the sexual behavior of more than 3,000 U.S. adults".

This report was a research study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that classified sexual dysfunction as reporting any one of the following during the last 12 months:

(1) lacking desire for sex; (2) arousal difficulties (ie, erection problems in men, lubrication difficulties in women); (3) inability achieving climax or ejaculation; (4) anxiety about sexual performance; (5) climaxing or ejaculating too rapidly; (6) physical pain during intercourse; and (7) not finding sex pleasurable

Almost all of which fall within the normal range of a year's worth of regular sexual experiences, which probably explains why a third to almost half of people surveyed experienced at least one - but hardly a marker of a serious medical problem in itself.

There's a much better article on orgasm in this month's The Psychologist by Barry Komisaruk, Carlos Beyer and Beverly Whipple, authors of a recent book on 'The Science of Orgasm'.

It looks at the research on the roles of neurotransmitters in orgasm, as well as what the brain scanning literature tells us about brain activity during sexual arousal and release.

Most interestingly, it has a good discussion of non-genital orgasm:

As reviewed in Komisaruk et al. (2006), there are published reports of orgasms elicited by stimulation also of lips, hand, knee and anus occurring during dreaming sleep, of phantom limbs, from electrical or chemical stimulation of the septum, amygdala or thalamus of the brain and of the spinal cord.

Orgasms have also been described by men and women when they suffer epileptic seizures that are triggered by specific activity (e.g. brushing the teeth: Chuang et al., 2004), or that occur spontaneously. While these epileptic orgasms are in some cases described as ‘unwelcome’ (Reading & Will, 1997), others describe them as pleasurable, one woman refusing anti-epileptic medication for that reason (Janszky et al., 2004)

We have measured autonomic and brain activity during orgasms that women have produced by thought alone. During the thought orgasms, the magnitude of the increases in heart rate, blood pressure, pain threshold, pupil diameter, and brain regions are similar to those that we observe during vaginal or cervical self-stimulation-induced orgasms (Whipple et al., 1992). It is not surprising that in those cases of thought-induced orgasms, the specific genital sensory thalamic and cortical, and specific limb-motoric regions, are not activated.

The article notes that a number of different nerve pathways may serve to communicate sensual stimulation to the brain, which may account for why different sites of stimulation can produce orgasm.

Link to LA Times article 'Science of the orgasm'
Link the The Psychologist article on orgasm.

Full discloser: I'm an unpaid associate editor of The Psychologist.

—Vaughan.

February 07, 2008

The he-haw boys and the eye-drillers:

A 61 year-old lady was admitted to a Florida hospital with florid hallucinations after suffering a stroke to her thalamus. She saw curious strangers and visitors with odd clothes, but rather unusually, the ones on the right always seemed pleasant and happy, whereas the ones on the left always seemed fearful and unsettling.

The case was reported in the journal Cognitive Neuropsychiatry and is of interest because the emotional content of the hallucinations seem to match the dominant emotion of the corresponding hemisphere of the brain.

[The patient] described the right visual hallucinations as consisting of "college age boys in colourful Hawaiian shirts" that "are too happy, talk too much", and that are somewhat "too energetic". The patient called them the "he-haw boys," and reported that she could hear them talking.

The left visual hallucinations were described as "men in black religious clothes that make no noises." The patient called them "the eye drillers", and stated that "they look a hole right through you". The patient provided vivid drawings of the hallucinations that accentuated the positive and negative associations she had with each hallucination. The patient provided vivid drawings of the hallucinations that accentuated the positive and negative associations she had with each hallucination.

This is not the first time that hallucinations have been reported to be differing in emotional tone depending on which side of space they appear.

This is likely due to the way emotion is processed in the brain.

Perception of negative emotions often relies largely on the right hemisphere, where positive emotions are processed by both the right and the left hemispheres. In fact, this pattern of brain response has been found in children as young as 10 months old.

The woman in this case report didn't suffer damage to the hemispheres directly, but to the thalamus. This area is often called the brain's relay station as it is extensively connected to hemispheres, so damage in this area can often mimic damage to the cortex.

Link to PubMed abstract of case report.

—Vaughan.

February 06, 2008

Impostors and the subtleties of self-presentation:

'Impostor Syndrome' is where someone feels they aren't as competent as everyone else thinks they are and fears they could be found out.

I've heard the term used by psychologists and in everyday language to describe this situation but never realised it's been the subject of serious psychological research.

Several studies have looked at the issue and The New York Times has a brief article on the findings. They suggest that the 'syndrome' is actually more subtle than the simple description lets on - in fact, it may be a way of managing others' expectations.

In a study published in September [pdf], Rory O’Brien McElwee and Tricia Yurak of Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J., had 253 students take an exhaustive battery of tests assessing how people present themselves in public. They found that psychologically speaking, impostorism looked a lot more like a self-presentation strategy than a personality trait.

In an interview, Dr. McElwee said that as a social strategy, projecting oneself as an impostor can lower expectations for a performance and take pressure off a person — as long as the self-deprecation doesn’t go too far. “It’s the difference between saying you got drunk before the SAT and actually doing it,” she said. “One provides a ready excuse, and the other is self-destructive.”

Link to NYT article on 'impostor syndrome'.
pdf of McElwee and Yurak's paper.

—Vaughan.

February 05, 2008

Girl power comes of age:

Clinical psychologist Dan Kindlon has been researching children and adolescents for over 20 years and argues that the psychology of American girls has radically changed in recent years owing to the effect of feminism and increased equality.

Harvard Magazine has an article on what he calls 'alpha girls' in his new book - confident girls and young women with high expectations and high self-esteem.

"The psychological demons that used to affect girls and women in this country just don’t affect today’s girls in the same way," Kindlon asserts. In the 1980s and early ’90s, Carol Gilligan (formerly Graham professor of gender studies at Harvard Graduate School of Education and now a professor at New York University) and other feminist psychologists wrote that girls in their teens compromise their authenticity to fit gender roles, thereby "losing their voice." In 1992, influential American Association of University Women (AAUW) research on late-1980s data on girls born in the 1970s found that girls' self-esteem plunged in middle school, compared to boys', and that classroom sexism (such as teachers' calling on boys more than girls, or more competitive than cooperative learning) was a cause. The AAUW report recognized positive trends, such as young women’s ascent in college enrollment, while recommending correctives for the continuing shortfalls.

Alpha girls are created in large numbers when the society that they are born into has sufficient equal opportunity, Kindlon says: "It wasn’t until the early to mid '80s—when schools really started to get serious about Title IX, when women first began to outnumber men in college, when women began moving into leadership roles, such as Congress, in significant numbers—that societal conditions had changed enough to permit the alpha girl explosion." He set out to discover how Beauvoir's "inner metamorphosis" has changed girls' psychology in the years since the AAUW report.

Link to Harvard Magazine article 'Girl Power'.

—Vaughan.

February 03, 2008

Illegal ink: reading meaning in criminal tattoos:

Until fashions changed in recent decades, a tattoo was widely considered the mark of the soldier, the sailor or the criminal. The tattoos of offenders have sparked particular interest as they can be highly symbolic coded messages that have been thought to be a glimpse into the psychology of the criminal underworld.

The interest in 'criminal ink' stretches back to the 19th century when Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso started collecting pictures of tattoos from captured or murdered Mafiosos.

Lombroso believed that persistent offenders were biologically defective who reflected an 'atavistic' throwback to a primitive stage of human development.

He further believed that criminal tendencies could be seen in the shape of the face, skull and body, and could be divined by studying tattoos, which were a reflection of the "fierce and obscene hearts of these unfortunates".

While Lombroso's ideas on criminality and the body proved to be little more than prejudice and conclusions drawn from poorly guided research (he failed to compare how often the same traits appear in non-criminals) the idea that criminal tattoos were a sort of 'symbolic code' proved to be closer to the mark.

Russian prison tattoos from the Soviet era are some of the most complex of these symbolic codes and determine an offender's place within the strictly organised and brutally enforced criminal social order.

Russian prison guard Danzig Baldaev collected pictures of these tattoos for over 40 years, mostly during the period of Soviet-run gulags, and carefully documented the images and their meanings.

He published a Russian book on the tattoos in 2001 and later his work was re-published in English in two volumes of the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia.

Racist, graphically pornographic and violent images are common but apparently accurately reflect the vicious and oppressive nature of the prison camps. Others are political, some romantic, and many a combination of a number of these themes.

The images are satirical, offensive and disturbing both in their explicit content and their implicit meaning. While some are 'earned', others are forcibly applied and intended as punishments.

The tattoos are intended to reflect the life, status and experiences of the prisoner, and most importantly, they allow others to 'read' the person in the most literal sense.

The Russian criminal tattoo is a means of secret communication, an esoteric language of representational images which the thief's body uses to inform the world of thieves about itself. This language resembles thieves' argot and it performs a similar function - encoding secret thieves' information to protect it from outsiders (fraera). In exactly the same way as argot endows standard, neutral words with 'strictly professional' meanings, the tattoo also conveys 'secret' symbolic knowledge through the use of ordinary allegorical images which at first glance seem familiar to everyone. Even the tattoo 'Heil Hitler!', when applied to the body of a Russian 'legitimate thief' (vor v zakone) may have absolutely nothing to do with Hitler or National Socialism in general. As a rule it is a sign of a thief's attitude of denial (otritsalovka) or the symbol of a refusal to submit to the prison and camp administration and also, in a broader sense, a total refusal to cooperate in any way with the Soviet authorities. (p33, Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia Vol II).

In effect, these tattoos embody a thief's complete 'service record', his entire biography. They detail all of his achievements and failures, his promotions and demotions, his 'secondments' to jail and his 'transfers' to different types of work. A thief's tattoos are his 'passport', 'case file', 'awards record', 'diplomas' and 'epitaphs'. In other words, his full set of official bureaucratic documents... Tattoos acts as symbols of public identity, social self-awareness and collective memory. They shape stereotypes of group behaviour and set out the rules and rituals necessary for maintaining order in the world of thieves. (p27, Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia Vol I).

The symbols are extensive and complicated, and owing to their importance, the penalty for faking an unearned tattoo could be a swift and brutal death.

There is a grim irony in the fact that many in the Russian criminal underworld saw themselves as rebelling against the Soviet system while creating a subculture which was more oppressive and almost as bureaucratic. I suspect, however, the irony was lost on many.

The tattoos from the Soviet gulags are not the sole examples, of course. Many criminal gangs use tattoos as a pledge of allegiance and a record of past experience, to the point where Mara Salvatrucha gang members are now trying to avoid getting their distinctive tattoos so the authorities can't identify and 'read' them so easily.

Link to NSFW info/images from Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia I.
Link to NSFW info/images from Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia II.
Link to SFW images from the same collection.
pdf of good essay on Cesare Lombroso, his theories and influence.

—Vaughan.

February 02, 2008

Neuroanthropology:

I've been enjoying the Neuroanthropology blog recently which discusses how the cognitive and neurosciences can help us understand culture and social diversity.

For example, trance states are common in some cultures, where they may form the part of certain religious rituals or spirit possession experiences.

There is now increasing interest in understanding the neuroscience of trance states, with a view to better understanding both how they occur and how they are used as key parts of social life by cultures across the world.

The Neuroanthropology blog disusses how culture shapes and interacts with brain function, and what new research tell us about our cultural quirks.

Link to Neuroanthropology blog.

—Vaughan.

January 30, 2008

The bitchy world of online match making:

The New York Times has an interesting yet ironically funny article about the curious world of online dating companies who use 'psychological profiles' to try and make love blossom, but who can't get along with one another.

These are sites like eHarmony, Chemistry and PerfectMatch that instead of letting you browse members' profiles, ask you to fill in questionnaires and suggest dates based on your 'psychological compatibility'.

They use various methods to make the matches that are supposedly based on psychological science, but which haven't been published or released so others can see how valid they are (is that the distant sound of alarm bells I can hear?).

Most amusingly, they seem to be constantly putting each other down in a bid to get the most attention from potential lovers.

In the battle of the matchmakers, Chemistry.com has been running commercials faulting eHarmony for refusing to match gay couples (eHarmony says it can't because its algorithm is based on data from heterosexuals), and eHarmony asked the Better Business Bureau to stop Chemistry.com from claiming its algorithm had been scientifically validated. The bureau concurred that there was not enough evidence, and Chemistry.com agreed to stop advertising that Dr. Fisher's method was based on "the latest science of attraction."

Dr. Fisher now says the ruling against her last year made sense because her algorithm at that time was still a work in progress as she correlated sociological and psychological measures, as well as indicators linked to chemical systems in the brain. But now, she said, she has the evidence from Chemistry.com users to validate the method, and she plans to publish it along with the details of the algorithm.

"I believe in transparency," she said, taking a dig at eHarmony. "I want to share my data so that I will get peer review."

And Bravo to that. Largely because, as the article notes, the information from the millions of people filling in these questionnaires is a potentially valuable source of scientific data.

If the questionnaires become scientifically validated and the algorithms tested, these sites could make an important contribution to understanding the psychology of attraction.

I doubt very much whether they will improve the chances of a long-term relationship (John Gottman's fascinating work suggests the crucial aspects are in interaction style, not the attraction) but they may tell us a few things about how we get drawn towards potential mates.

Obviously though, the companies will have to be a little more open and stop being so defensive. Learn to trust one another. Open their hearts. Stop in the name of love.

And if you're still cynical, you may want to check out an article in this month's Time by the fantastic Carl Zimmer, looking at the evolution of romance.

Romance, it seems, is not a uniquely human pursuit, as it occurs throughout the animal kingdom - unaided by technology. A beautifully romantic idea if you think about it.

Link to NYT article 'Hitting It Off, Thanks to Algorithms of Love'.
Link to Time article 'Romance is an Illusion'.

—Vaughan.

January 23, 2008

Why we love (and flirt):

Time magazine has a couple of articles on the psychology of love, sex and attraction. The first looks at the science of love, from thoughts to hormones, and the second at what we know about flirting.

The love article is a more in-depth look at the topic of the two articles, and touches on studies that have taken place everywhere from the delivery room to the brain scanner.

It's a little basic in places (e.g. it uses the dopamine = reward line a little uncritically), but is otherwise an interesting read.

A deep voice, also testosterone driven, can have similarly seductive power. Psychology professor David Feinberg of McMaster University in Ontario studied [pdf] Tanzania's Hadza tribesmen, one of the world's last hunter-gatherer communities, and found that the richer and lower a man's voice, the more children he had. Researchers at the University of Albany recently conducted related research [pdf] in which they had a sample group of 149 volunteers listen to recordings of men's and women's voices and then rate the way they sound on a scale from "very unattractive" to "very attractive." On the whole, the people whose voices scored high on attractiveness also had physical features considered sexually appealing, such as broad shoulders in men and a low waist-to-hip ratio in women.

This suggests either that an alluring voice is part of a suite of sexual qualities that come bundled together or that simply knowing you look appealing encourages you to develop a voice to match. Causation and mere correlation often get muddied in studies like this, but either way, a sexy voice at least appears to sell the goods. "It might convey subtle information about body configuration and sexual behavior," says psychologist Gordon Gallup, who co-authored the study.

The flirting article is, rather predictably, a bit more light-hearted and largely talks about theories rather than evidence.

You're probably better off trying your luck with the guide to flirting from the Social Issues Research Centre that looks at what sociology can tell us about being playfully alluring.

Link to Time article 'Why we love'.
Link to Time article 'Why we flirt'.
Link to Social Issues Research Centre guide to flirting.

—Vaughan.

January 13, 2008

The psychology of the moral instinct:

The New York Times has a fantastic in-depth article by Steven Pinker on the origins of morality and the psychology of moral reasoning.

It's a comprehensive and enjoyable review of most of the main areas of the recently invigorated 'moral psychology' field.

As well as discussing how lab-based studies are helping us to understand the cognitive neuroscience of moral reasoning, it also contains a number of examples and thought experiments that bring the anomalies in our moral cognition into sharp relief.

Pinker argues that we have a specific reasoning framework for moral situations and that when we deem a situation to have moral implications, this comes into play.

The starting point for appreciating that there is a distinctive part of our psychology for morality is seeing how moral judgments differ from other kinds of opinions we have on how people ought to behave. Moralization is a psychological state that can be turned on and off like a switch, and when it is on, a distinctive mind-set commandeers our thinking. This is the mind-set that makes us deem actions immoral (“killing is wrong”), rather than merely disagreeable (“I hate brussels sprouts”), unfashionable (“bell-bottoms are out”) or imprudent (“don’t scratch mosquito bites”).

Pinker suggests that this process can easily be seen at work, as some things that were previously thought to be an personal difference have now become a moral issue (e.g. smoking) whereas other things that were previously thought to be a moral issue have now become a personal difference (e.g. atheism).

He also covers the development of morality in children, the role of genetics, and the anthropology of morality - how the hypothesised universal moral principles express themselves differently across different cultures.

Highly recommended if you want a guide to this burgeoning area of research.

Link to NYT article 'The Moral Instinct'.

—Vaughan.

January 11, 2008

The art of first impressions:

Frontal Cortex has found an absolutely fantastic video art piece that explores the psychology of first impressions.

It really brings home the fact that first impressions vary so much between individuals and can be vastly wide of the mark as character judgements.

The piece is by film-makers Lenka Clayton and James Price.

The pair also created the fantastic short film People in Order, another very simple premise which is a perceptive look at how people change as they age, and New Love Order, which briefly introduces us to couples arranged in the order of the length of their relationship.

All insightful pieces that are alternately, challenging, poignant, funny and original.

—Vaughan.

January 09, 2008

Opinion leaders impotent in ideas economy:

Science News has a remarkably clear and concise article on a study that looked at how ideas spread through social networks. It found that under most circumstances a critical mass of more easily influenced people, not 'opinion leaders', are key to making ideas popular.

One of the major theories in marketing is that new ideas are taken up by the wider population because they are adopted by 'opinion leaders' - respected individuals who others listen to.

The theory goes that when opinion leaders adopt an idea, lots of other people quickly follow. Sort of like a 'leader of the pack' theory.

Researchers Duncan Watts and Peter Dodds wondered whether this was really the case, or whether instead, large numbers of people would embrace a particular idea when a certain number of their more easily influenced peers started to champion it. More of a 'birds of a feather' theory.

Watts and Dodds research how the mathematics of networks can tell us about how social systems work, and so they created various simulated social networks, set up some rules, and then ran the experiments to see how easily ideas would spread.

They simulated individual differences in the model by making each person more likely to adopt an idea if a certain percentage of their social network already believed it.

As some people are more easily influenced than others, the 'people' in the network varied in what percentage of their peers were needed to influence them - in effect, a mathematical simulation of individual scepticism.

The researchers compared how far an idea would spread depending on whether it started with a random individual or with an influential individual who was connected to a lot of other individuals. They found that highly influential individuals usually spread ideas more widely, but not very much more widely. For example, if an individual had three times as many connections as the average person, ideas espoused by that individual almost always spread substantially less than three times as far as the ideas of an average individual. Sometimes, the researchers found, the difference wasn't even measurable...

More important than the influencers, the researchers found, were the influenced. Once an idea spread to a critical mass of easily influenced individuals, it took hold and continued to spread to other easily influenced individuals. In some networks, it was far easier to get an idea established this way than in others. The entire structure of the network mattered, not just the few influential people.

The full-text of Watts and Dodds' paper is available online as a pdf if you want to read the study in more detail, but the Science News article is a great summary.

Link to Science News on 'The Power of Being Influenced'.
pdf of study 'Influentials, Networks, and Public Opinion Formation'.

—Vaughan.

A phobia of bridges:

The New York Times has a short but interesting piece on people with gephyrophobia, a morbid fear of bridges.

Phobias are often described as an irrational fear, but most have a reasonable basis to them, as reflected in the fact that phobias most commonly concern things that have an element of danger or risk - such as heights, dogs, spiders or water.

However, the fear gets exaggerated so the perceived danger vastly outweighs the actual danger.

Often the disabling aspect is not the fear itself, but how people begin to restrict their lives to avoid the fear. In a sense, people can become driven by a fear of fear.

Mrs. Steers, 47, suffered from a little-known disorder called gephyrophobia, a fear of bridges. And she had the misfortune of living in a region with 26 major bridges, whose heights and spans could turn an afternoon car ride into a rolling trip through a haunted house.

Some people go miles out of their way to avoid crossing the George Washington Bridge — for example, driving to Upper Manhattan from Teaneck, N.J., by way of the Lincoln Tunnel, a detour that can stretch a 19-minute jog into a three-quarter-hour ordeal. Other bridge phobics recite baby names or play the radio loudly as they ease onto a nerve-jangling span — anything to focus the mind. Still others take a mild tranquilizer an hour before buckling up to cross a bridge.

Link to NYT article 'To Gephyrophobiacs, Bridges Are a Terror'.

—Vaughan.

January 07, 2008

Castration anxiety, of a non-Freudian kind:

This interesting study published in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine compared the psychological effect of castration on two quite different groups of people: on people with prostrate cancer for whom the procedure was a medical necessity, and for people who wished to castrate themselves on a voluntary basis.

Motivations for voluntary eunuchs vary, but in certain forms the condition is thought to be related to apotemnophilia or 'body integrity identity disorder' - where individuals have a pathological desire to have a limb amputated, often taking quite severe and damaging measures to achieve their aim.

However, eunuchs have had a long and complex social and symbolic role in history that belies the simple fact of the operation.

In fact, there is quite a large online eunuch community, who share an interest in the procedure, whether they're personally motivated to have it, or whether they're just interested in it for, well, whatever reason sparks your interest I suppose.

Modern-day eunuchs: motivations for and consequences of contemporary castration.

Perspect Biol Med. 2007, 50(4), 544-56.

Wassersug RJ, Johnson TW.

This article compares the motivations for, and responses to, castration between two groups of males: prostate cancer patients and voluntary modern-day eunuchs with castration paraphilias or other emasculating obsessions. Prostate cancer patients are distressed by the side effects of androgen deprivation and typically strive to hide or deny the effects of castration. In contrast, most voluntary eunuchs are pleased with the results of their emasculations. Despite a suggested association of androgen deprivation with depression, voluntary eunuchs appear to function well, both psychologically and socially. Motivation, rather than physiology, appears to account for these different responses to androgen deprivation.

Probably not quite the literal form of castration anxiety Freud had in mind when he invented the psychoanalytic term.

Link to abstract of study on PubMed.

—Vaughan.

Milgram's notorious conformity experiment replicated:

The Situationist has a fantastic post on a recent replication of Stanley Milgram's (in)famous conformity experiment which is usually always described as being 'too unethical to perform today'.

In Milgram's original study, participants were asked to give increasingly severe electric shocks to someone supposedly trying to learn a series of word pairs.

In fact, the 'learner' was an actor and no shocks were given, but they screamed as if they were in increasing amounts of pain, while the experimenter ordered the participant to increase the voltage.

The experiment tested how far someone would go in giving pain to another human being when being ordered by an authority figure. 65% of participants continued despite indications that the 'learner' might be unconscious or dead.

It's been a hugely influential study, but was thought to be so stressful for the participants, that it has never been replicated in real life and it was assumed it would be impossible to do so.

However, this replication was carefully designed by Prof Jerry Burger to be as close as possible to Milgram's original study while being modified so it could be fully ethically approved by a research ethics committee (the mark of all good research).

I went to great lengths to recreate Milgram’s procedures (Experiment Five), including such details as the words used in the memory test and the experimenter’s lab coat. But I also made several substantial changes.

First, we stopped the procedures at the 150-volt mark. This is the first time participants heard the learner’s protests through the wall and his demands to be released. When we look at Milgram’s data, we find that this point in the procedure is something of a “point of no return.” Of the participants who continued past 150 volts, 79 percent went all the way to the highest level of the shock generator (450 volts). Knowing how people respond up to this point allowed us to make a reasonable estimate of what they would do if allowed to continue to the end. Stopping the study at this juncture also avoided exposing participants to the intense stress Milgram’s participants often experienced in the subsequent parts of the procedure.

Second, we used a two-step screening process for potential participants to exclude any individuals who might have a negative reaction to the experience. . . . More than 38 percent of the interviewed participants were excluded at this point.

Third, participants were told at least three times (twice in writing) that they could withdraw from the study at any time and still receive their $50 for participation.

Fourth, like Milgram, we administered a sample shock to our participants (with their consent). However, we administered a very mild 15-volt shock rather than the 45-volt shock Milgram gave his participants.

Fifth, we allowed virtually no time to elapse between ending the session and informing participants that the learner had received no shocks. Within a few seconds after ending the study, the learner entered the room to reassure the participant he was fine. Sixth, the experimenter who ran the study also was a clinical psychologist who was instructed to end the session immediately if he saw any signs of excessive stress.

Although each of these safeguards came with a methodological price (e.g., the potential effect of screening out certain individuals, the effect of emphasizing that participants could leave at any time), I wanted to take every reasonable measure to ensure that our participants were treated in a humane and ethical manner.

Interestingly, the study found that levels of obedience were about the same now, as they were in the early 1960s when the original experiment was first run.

This is not the first time that someone has tried to replicate Milgram's experiment. The BPS Research Digest reported on a virtual reality version of the study (admittedly, not a true replication), the full-text of which is available online.

The Situationist post also includes a embedded video of a TV documentary on the replication and notes some disturbing examples where the experiment has been inadvertently replicated when a prank caller directed staff to give shock to two emotionally disturbed teenagers.

Link to Situationist on Milgram replication (thanks Tom!)
Link to Wikipedia page on Milgram's original study.

—Vaughan.

January 04, 2008

Sleep disorders in Disney characters:

A study published in Sleep Medicine has found that several Disney films have surprisingly accurate depictions of clinical sleep problems, particularly a disorder called 'REM sleep behavior disorder'.

Also known as RBD, REM sleep behavior disorder is where normal sleep paralysis doesn't happen during REM sleep, so to varying degrees, a person might 'act out' what they're dreaming.

Three additional dogs were found with presumed RBD in the classic films Lady and the Tramp (1955) and The Fox and the Hound (1981), and in the short Pluto's Judgment Day (1935). These dogs were elderly males who would pant, whine, snuffle, howl, laugh, paddle, kick, and propel themselves while dreaming that they were chasing someone or running away. In Lady and the Tramp the dog was also losing both his sense of smell and his memory, two associated features of human RBD. These four films were released before RBD was first formally described in humans and dogs.

In addition, systematic viewing of the Disney films identified a broad range of sleep disorders, including nightmares, sleepwalking, sleep related seizures, disruptive snoring, excessive daytime sleepiness, insomnia and circadian rhythm sleep disorder. These sleep disorders were inserted as comic elements. The inclusion of a broad range of accurately depicted sleep disorders in these films indicates that the Disney screenwriters were astute observers of sleep and its disorders.

This is not the first time that Disney films have featured in the medical literature.

One 2004 study published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry looked at the representation of mental illness in Disney movies (and found, rather disappointingly, that mental illness was typically referred to when one character was denigrating another).

Link to abstract of study on Disney and sleep disorders.
Link to abstract of study on Disney and mental illness.

—Vaughan.

January 03, 2008

The year in sex and psychology:

Psychologist Dr Petra Boyton has just completed her yearly review of the past year in sex, revisits last year's predictions and looks forward to possible developments in 2008.

One of her predictions is that the media will become obsessed with 'future sex'. Indeed, the recently published book Love and Sex with Robots got a huge amount of media coverage, including a review in The New York Times, despite being big on speculation and short on current evidence.

My own personal barometer of the progress of sex research is the balance of how many papers have been published on the neuroscience of orgasm compared to the neuroscience of hiccups.

At the time of writing, PubMed lists 99 papers on the neuroscience of hiccups, whereas only 71 are listed as discussing the neuroscience of orgasm.

Let's hope 2008 does a better job of redressing the balance than 2007.

Link to Dr Petra's review of 2007.
Link to review of last year's sex predictions.
Link to predictions for 2008.

—Vaughan.

December 29, 2007

Finding Alzheimer's:

The New York Times has a fantastic article on the neuroscience of Alzheimer's disease, as well as the human impact of the disorder on individuals and their families.

The article is accompanied by two video reports that weave together personal stories with some of the latest developments in understanding the disorder.

Alzheimer's is a form of dementia, which is where the mind and brain break down quicker than would be expected through normal ageing.

Like many forms of dementia, the first symptoms (such as memory, attention, language or movement problems) appear after a significant amount of brain damage has already been done.

One of the key aims of dementia research is to identify this process while it is still 'silent' to understand how it forms and try and prevent it developing further.

Genetics are one focus, but they are known to be complex. Certain genes (most famously 'ApoE') are known to alter the risk of developing the Alzheimer's in older people, but they're only one part of the puzzle.

However, there is one form of Alzheimer's that is inherited in an autosomal dominant pattern, meaning that if one of your parents has it, you've got a fifty percent change of getting it too.

It means that if you've inherited the gene or genes (autosomal dominance implies a single gene, but several are currently candidates), you're almost definitely going to develop the disorder.

Interestingly, this autosomal dominant version of Alzheimer's tends to happen much earlier in life, in the early 60s, 50s or in some cases, even the 40s.

A similar thing happens with other similarly inherited dementias, like CADASIL, where a single gene has been fairly confidently identified.

It's both terrifying and amazing to think that a difference in a single gene, expressing a single different protein, can cause such as massive break down in brain function.

The article also looks at a new type of dye which allows abnormal clumps of amyloid protein, a brain change characteristic of Alzheimer's, to be seen on a PET brain scan done on living people.

At the moment, Alzheimer's can only be diagnosed with 100% accuracy after death, but this new technique could allow brain changes to be tracked in people before they develop any symptoms.

However, it's become clear that you can have protein clumps without having the disease.

Researchers are increasingly talking about 'cognitive reserve', a measure of 'wear and tear' or 'fitness' of the brain, with the idea that the disease happens where various factors tip the brain 'over the threshold' into physical decline.

The 'threshold' is thought to be set by a combination of genetics, physical health, cognitive ability, education and level of activity.

The New York Times article is a wonderful guide to the scientific debates behind the quest to understand the disorder, and the videos really bring home the effect of it.

Link to NYT article 'Finding Alzheimer’s Before a Mind Fails' with videos.

—Vaughan.

December 13, 2007

Fighting the tide of prison suicides:

The Boston Globe has produced a powerful video documentary and article series on prison suicide and mental illness.

Treating mental illness in prison is a complex business. As Time reported earlier this year, the rates of mental illness are much higher among offenders, confinement is known to worsen mental health, and prison treatment facilities are usually poor.

On top of this, some prisoners attempt to fake mental illness to gain hospital privileges, so working out whether someone is genuinely at risk of harming themselves can be quite tricky.

All of these factors can contribute towards the high suicide rate in prisons, and create tension between staff and families.

As prisons become the asylum of last resort for the mentally ill, desperation, frustration and violence are rising on both sides of the cell door. About 50 times each month, inmates are assaulting prison staff members. And, at nearly the same rate, inmates, many of whom say they are abused by officers, attempt to kill or injure themselves. The Spotlight Team examines the tension between mentally disturbed inmates and their jailers.

The Boston Globe has produced a remarkably comprehensive resource, with video, articles, prisoners suicide notes, official reports, and personal stories.

Link to Boston Globe special report on prison suicide.

—Vaughan.

December 07, 2007

The tickbox revolution in intensive care:

The New Yorker has a completely gripping article on intensive care medicine that while fascinating in its own right, is also interesting as it contains an amazing account of a how a three year old girl was resuscitated and recovered brain function after near drowning, and stresses the importance of behavioural interventions in high-tech medicine.

The article is essentially about an incredibly simple idea that is vastly reducing infection rates and improving survival rates in intensive care - using checklists to make sure that each step of complex procedures are completed.

It's been championed by physician Dr Peter Pronovost and is simple but effective way of reducing cognitive error in high pressure situations.

It's interesting that the idea has found a fair amount of resistance among some doctors, who think that it somehow diminishes their expertise if they have to check against a list, despite the fact that common slips affect even the most competent of people.

One illustration of how complex the intensive care process has become is given near the beginning of the article when it describes a case of a three-year-old girl saved from drowning with what has become a hugely complex, multi-expertise, high-tech medical effort.

Consider a case report in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery of a three-year-old girl who fell into an icy fishpond in a small Austrian town in the Alps. She was lost beneath the surface for thirty minutes before her parents found her on the pond bottom and pulled her up. Following instructions from an emergency physician on the phone, they began cardiopulmonary resuscitation. A rescue team arrived eight minutes later. The girl had a body temperature of sixty-six degrees, and no pulse. Her pupils were dilated and did not react to light, indicating that her brain was no longer working.

But the emergency technicians continued CPR anyway. A helicopter took her to a nearby hospital, where she was wheeled directly to an operating room. A surgical team put her on a heart-lung bypass machine. Between the transport time and the time it took to plug the inflow and outflow lines into the femoral vessels of her right leg, she had been lifeless for an hour and a half. By the two-hour mark, however, her body temperature had risen almost ten degrees, and her heart began to beat. It was her first organ to come back.

After six hours, her core temperature reached 98.6 degrees. The team tried to put her on a breathing machine, but the pond water had damaged her lungs too severely for oxygen to reach her blood. So they switched her to an artificial-lung system known as ECMO—extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. The surgeons opened her chest down the middle with a power saw and sewed lines to and from the ECMO unit into her aorta and her beating heart. The team moved the girl into intensive care, with her chest still open and covered with plastic foil. A day later, her lungs had recovered sufficiently for the team to switch her from ECMO to a mechanical ventilator and close her chest. Over the next two days, all her organs recovered except her brain. A CT scan showed global brain swelling, which is a sign of diffuse damage, but no actual dead zones. So the team drilled a hole into the girl’s skull, threaded in a probe to monitor her cerebral pressure, and kept that pressure tightly controlled by constantly adjusting her fluids and medications. For more than a week, she lay comatose. Then, slowly, she came back to life.

First, her pupils started to react to light. Next, she began to breathe on her own. And, one day, she simply awoke. Two weeks after her accident, she went home. Her right leg and left arm were partially paralyzed. Her speech was thick and slurry. But by age five, after extensive outpatient therapy, she had recovered her faculties completely. She was like any little girl again.

It's a wonderful article that speaks to a number of important issues in medicine, including the self-perception and culture of clinicians, the importance and power of simple changes in behaviour, and why low-tech capital-free solutions are often the hardest to implement.

Link to New Yorker on checklists and intensive care medicine.

—Vaughan.

November 27, 2007

Morality tales:

The science of morality is becoming a hot topic at the moment, and this week two articles, one in Time and one in Reason, have both tackled the issue.

The Time article is a particularly good example. It's wonderfully written and takes a comprehensive look at the field, taking in evolution, empathy, cognitive neuroscience and culture.

If the entire human species were a single individual, that person would long ago have been declared mad. The insanity would not lie in the anger and darkness of the human mind—though it can be a black and raging place indeed. And it certainly wouldn't lie in the transcendent goodness of that mind—one so sublime, we fold it into a larger "soul." The madness would lie instead in the fact that both of those qualities, the savage and the splendid, can exist in one creature, one person, often in one instant.

Link to Time article 'What Makes Us Moral'.
Link to reason article 'The Theory of Moral Neuroscience'.

—Vaughan.

November 23, 2007

The joy of sexology:

The Charlie Rose Show had a recent discussion on the science of sex, and the video of the programme is available to view online. It's a fascinating discussion, largely focusing on biology and neuroscience, but as Dr Petra Boyton notes it's quite a narrow consideration in some respects.

For me, simply seeing a discussion of sex research in the still remarkably prudish American media is a huge step.

I suspect their achingly academic approach to the subject reflects the need to be seen to be serious, but it's also interesting that the Charlie Rose show is sponsored by Pfizer, the makers of Viagra, which may also account for the almost unrelenting focus on biology.

Petra Boynton suggests areas which weren't tackled by the programme, and highlights that there's much more to sex research than measuring the mechanisms of our bodies.

It's well worth watching, but definitely with some of the context in mind.

One of the best programmes on sexuality I have seen on TV was The Truth About Female Desire, which was a collaboration with the Kinsey Institute and involved several women taking part in a number of scientific experiments on female sexuality.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be available on public servers, but I'll post on Mind Hacks if ever I find a reliable torrent.

Link to Charlie Rose discussion on Human Sexuality.
Link to Petra Boynton on the programme.

—Vaughan.

November 20, 2007

It's not denial, it's filtered acceptance:

The New York Times has a brief but interesting article on the psychology of denial, which according to the piece has got a bad rap. It's actually a useful and necessary process in many types of relationship.

Yet recent studies from fields as diverse as psychology and anthropology suggest that the ability to look the other way, while potentially destructive, is also critically important to forming and nourishing close relationships. The psychological tricks that people use to ignore a festering problem in their own households are the same ones that they need to live with everyday human dishonesty and betrayal, their own and others'. And it is these highly evolved abilities, research suggests, that provide the foundation for that most disarming of all human invitations, forgiveness.

In this emerging view, social scientists see denial on a broader spectrum — from benign inattention to passive acknowledgment to full-blown, willful blindness — on the part of couples, social groups and organizations, as well as individuals. Seeing denial in this way, some scientists argue, helps clarify when it is wise to manage a difficult person or personal situation, and when it threatens to become a kind of infectious silent trance that can make hypocrites of otherwise forthright people.

The article also discusses a number of experiments where participants 'cheat' on certain aspects, but which demonstrate that we seem to manage not only how much we admit to others about the deception, but we also our own awareness of what we're doing (mostly unconsciously it seems).

Link to NYT article 'Denial Makes the World Go Round'.

—Vaughan.

November 14, 2007

Ten of the best in social psychology:

PsyBlog has just concluded a great series of articles, each of which tackled a classic experiment in social psychology that demonstrated something counter-intuitive, curious or even shocking about ourselves.

You may recognise some of them, as they've become various shades of legendary to notorious, even to people without a special interest in psychology.

Others are well known within the field but have yet to filter out to the general consciousness.

To my mind, one of the best is the theory of cognitive dissonance. Perhaps one of the most important findings in social psychology - explaining how we are motivated to reconcile conflicting beliefs and actions.

The rest of the experiments have been equally as influential and the whole series makes for a great overview of some of the foundation stones of the modern science of mind.

Link to "Why We do Dumb or Irrational Things: 10 Brilliant Social Psychology Studies".

—Vaughan.

November 05, 2007

LSD psychotherapy artwork:

Someone's posted examples of artwork created by patients that were undergoing LSD psychotherapy when it was originally trialled by Stanislav Grof, before research in this area was suspended by panicked world governments when the drug became widely used.

The images are from Grof's book LSD Psychotherapy, and range from the whimsical, to the abstract, to the terrifying.

The early explorations of using psychedelic drugs in psychotherapy seemed promising but were over far too soon to give a definite answer of whether they helped overcome any mental health or behavioural problems.

It's only very recently that scientific research into this area has re-started, largely due to the careful work of MAPS - the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.

Link to artwork of patients undergoing LSD psychotherapy.

—Vaughan.

November 04, 2007

Charley says...:

Filmmaker Jo McGinley has created a brief and adorable film about her cat, Charley, who has cerebellar hypoplasia - a disorder in the development of the cerebellum that causes marked movement and coordination problems.

Cerebellar hypoplasia also occurs in humans and can lead to similar movement difficulties.

The complete function of the cerebellum is poorly understood, but it is well known that it is a key part of the brain's movement system.

Damage to the cerebellum can affect coordination and timing, and the effect of alcohol on movement may, at least in part, be explained by its effect on the cerebellum.

'Hypolasia' means 'incomplete growth' and so the 'cerebellar hypoplasia' refers to the physical growth problem with this part of the brain.

The movement problem associated with this, as can be seen in Charley, is known as 'cerebellar ataxia'.

'Ataxia' literally means 'without order' and refers to the coordination of muscles. So, 'cerebellar ataxia' refers to a disordered movement of muscles caused by problems with the cerebellum.

The film of Charley is wonderfully endearing, and it makes the point that kittens are often destroyed if they have this problem, despite the fact that they are in no pain, need no special care, and have a normal life span.

Link to film 'This is Charley'

—Vaughan.

November 02, 2007

Any good direction:

I found this quote from Charles Dickens on the first page of Samuel Barondes' book Mood Genes. It is both sage advice and reassuringly optimistic.

To lighten the affliction of insanity by all human means is not to restore the greatest of divine gifts; and those who devote themselves to the task do not pretend that it is... Nevertheless, reader, if you can do a little in any good direction - do it. It will be much, some day.

Dickens himself was no stranger to mental distress. Despite being recognised as one of the greatest writers of his generation, he reportedly suffered severe bouts of depression.

Unfortunately, Barondes' book doesn't mention the source of the quote, so if anyone knows which of Dickens' works it comes from, do let me know.

UPDATE: An answer gratefully received from crabbydad. Grabbed from the comments:

Apparently, the quote is from "A Curious Dance Round a Curious Tree," an essay written by Dickens after a visit to St. Luke's hospital, a hospital for the "impoverished mentally ill." You can find more info here.

As well as the commentary linked to above, the full text of Dickens' article is also available online.

—Vaughan.

October 25, 2007

The psychological hazards of war journalism:

Harvard journalism magazine Nieman Reports has a brief 2004 article (pdf) by psychiatrist Anthony Feinstein on how war journalists respond to what they witness and why they return to cover traumatic situations.

The article briefly summarises some of Feinstein's research on war journalists, and also notes the results on an interesting study that looked at differences between final year journalism students who wanted to become war journalists, and those who did not.

Given the dangers confronted, the high mortality, and increased risk of developing PTSD and depression, what motivates journalists to return repeatedly to war zones?

The journalists in my study spent, on average, 15 years covering war. Those I interviewed spoke of factors such as the importance of bearing witness, keeping the public informed of important events, having a ringside seat as history unfolded, and personal ambition. Yet there seems to be another pivotal factor that may override all of these. There is evidence that individuals who are attracted to risky and dangerous professions are to a high degree biologically primed for this type of activity...

Preliminary data from a recently completed study in my laboratory demonstrate that final year Canadian journalism students who propose following a career in foreign lands not only have a fundamentally different personality profile from their peers who wish to remain at home, but also possess different cognitive attributes. This last point refers to a certain pattern of thinking and approach to problem solving that correlates with well-defined neural networks.

Feinstein has written a book on the subject called Dangerous Lives that apparently explains his work in more detail.

pdf of 'The Psychological Hazards of War Journalism'.

—Vaughan.

October 21, 2007

Power of birth order:

Time magazine has a great article discussing psychological differences that have been picked up by research looking at birth order effects. Interestingly, while first and last borns seems to have distinct traits, middle children are still a bit of a mystery.

Birth order effects seem to be one of those things that can be reliably found when examining large groups but, because of the large amount of individual variation, strong effects are not reliably present on the level of single families.

Nevertheless, the research has found over the population there are, on average, some interesting psychological differences linked to birth order - particularly between first and last borns.

...personality tests show that while firstborns score especially well on the dimension of temperament known as conscientiousness — a sense of general responsibility and follow-through — later-borns score higher on what's known as agreeableness, or the simple ability to get along in the world. "Kids recognize a good low-power strategy," says Sulloway. "It's the way any sensible organism sizes up the niches that are available."

Even more impressive is how early younger siblings develop what's known as the theory of mind. Very small children have a hard time distinguishing the things they know from the things they assume other people know. A toddler who watches an adult hide a toy will expect that anyone who walks into the room afterward will also know where to find it, reckoning that all knowledge is universal knowledge. It usually takes a child until age 3 to learn that that's not so. For children who have at least one elder sibling, however, the realization typically comes earlier. "When you're less powerful, it's advantageous to be able to anticipate what's going on in someone else's mind," says Sulloway.

We featured some studies previously on Mind Hacks that suggested that first born children have marginally higher IQ scores, although a similar study in Thai medical students found the reverse effect, younger siblings tended to be more intelligent.

This highlights the role of culture in these effects, and the Time article illustrates a similar point with regards to girls. Perhaps fifty years ago when girls were less expected to go to college and have careers, the birth order effect may have been much less clear because of the cultural limitations on female work and education.

Now the cultural expectations have changed, the effect of birth order on psychological development may also be different.

Link to Time article 'The Power of Birth Order'.

—Vaughan.

October 18, 2007

The relationship between money and happiness:

Newsweek has a brief article on what research has told us about the link between money and happiness. Essentially, more money makes you happier until you're comfortable, and then, it really doesn't do much good.

Interestingly though, a study that looked at how happy a number of similarly earning young people were, found that the happier ones went on the make more money later in life.

If money doesn't buy happiness, what does? Grandma was right when she told you to value health and friends, not money and stuff. Or as Diener and Seligman put it, once your basic needs are met "differences in well-being are less frequently due to income, and are more frequently due to factors such as social relationships and enjoyment at work." Other researchers add fulfillment, a sense that life has meaning, belonging to civic and other groups, and living in a democracy that respects individual rights and the rule of law. If a nation wants to increase its population's sense of well-being, says Veenhoven, it should make "less investment in economic growth and more in policies that promote good governance, liberties, democracy, trust and public safety."

(Curiously, although money doesn't buy happiness, happiness can buy money. Young people who describe themselves as happy typically earn higher incomes, years later, than those who said they were unhappy. It seems that a sense of well-being can make you more productive and more likely to show initiative and other traits that lead to a higher income. Contented people are also more likely to marry and stay married, as well as to be healthy, both of which increase happiness.)

It's not only the case that money doesn't buy happiness, being materialistic is also associated with worse mental health and overall adjustment.

Link to article 'Why Money Doesn't Buy Happiness'.

—Vaughan.

October 13, 2007

Art in the asylum:

ABC Radio National's All in the Mind has just broadcast the first of a two-part series on two of the most important collections of art by psychiatric patients. The programme considers the ethical and artistic issues raised by displaying the creative work of people who may be experiencing profound alteration in their thinking.

The first part explores Australia's Cunningham Dax Collection, named after Eric Cunningham Dax, a psychiatrist who realised the therapeutic potential of art and encouraged artistic expression by patients.

Cunnigham Dax collected the artworks not for the aesthetic value, however, and saw their interest largely in clinical terms - as a way of better understanding the problems of the mind.

In contrast, the Prinzhorn collection (which we discussed earlier on Mind Hacks) was meant to highlight the artistic talents of people with mental illness, and so historically has had quite a different approach.

The programme is incredibly thought provoking both in terms of how we understand the artistic significance of these works, and the ethics of these collections.

For example, considering the works purely of clinical interest seems to rob the creator of any artistic voice or creative credit, while considering them of purely artistic interest perhaps robs the creator of the rights of confidentiality ascribed to medical patients.

The programme also touches on the power of these artworks to stir strong emotions and communicate seemingly alien experiences and has obviously generated a lot of interest, as the Dax Collection website has slowed to a snail's pace.

Next week's programme will examine the Prinzhorn Collection and its remarkable survival during a period when the Nazi's attempted to eradicate what they considered 'degenerate art'.

Link to AITM on 'Art in the Asylum'.
Link to Cunningham Dax collection.

—Vaughan.

October 11, 2007

Following the evolution of language:

Nature has put a couple of short video interviews online to accompany two papers published in this week's edition that explain how certain aspects Indo-European languages have evolved over time.

The first study is by the inimitable Erez Lieberman and looks at why the used of 'ed' to make past tense verbs in the English language (e.g. 'juggled') has become so widespread despite historical competition with other irregular versions, only a few of which now exist.

The researchers found that the more frequently the a verb is used in the language, the less quickly it becomes regularised in the language.

A similar technique was used in a study by Mark Pagel and colleagues, who found that in Indo-European languages, the more frequently a word is used the less likely it is to be replaced.

The video interviews are with two members of the Pagel lab, who describe their findings and their significance.

Link to Nature video interviews on the evolution of language.
Link to Nature editorial with links to studies.
Link to write-up from Nature News.

—Vaughan.

October 04, 2007

Strippers' earning potential affected by hormone cycle:

A study shortly to be published in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour found that lap dancers in their most fertile phase of the menstrual cycle earned much more than dancers in the least fertile phase. In contrast, dancers who took the contraceptive pill, which 'flattens' the hormone cycle, earned much the same throughout the month.

This adds to the increasing evidence that women's sexual behaviour changes during their monthly cycle, and that the external signs of this change are picked up by males.

We've covered a couple of other studies that have reported that women dress more attractively and show a greater neural response to rewards at their most fertile time.

Other studies have found that the most fertile time is associated with increased facial attractiveness, decreased waist-to-hip ratio, higher levels verbal creativity, a heightened interest in other partners (and a greater 'protective' interest from their primary partner) - to name but a few of the effects.

The researchers of the latest study, led by psychologist Prof Geoff Miller, asked 18 dancers to record their menstrual periods, work shifts, and tip earnings for 60 days via a web site.

Although 18 participants is relatively few for a psychology study, they recorded a large amount of data over time - 296 work shifts in total, representing about 5300 lap dances.

Dancers who were not on the contraceptive pill and at their most fertile time earned an average of $70 dollars an hour, twice the $35 average of women at their least fertile phase.

Dancers who took the contraceptive pill, which 'flattens' the hormone cycle, didn't show a peak in earnings when the peak in fertility would normally occur.

The researchers suggest that this is evidence of 'estrus' - an external display of peak fertility - seen in almost all other animals but supposedly missing in humans. One theory goes that women have 'concealed ovulation' as estrus has been lost during evolution.

But the fact that tip earnings peak during estrus perhaps suggests that men can detect female fertility more accurately than the 'concealed ovulation' idea suggests.

They also argue that studying lap dancing may also be a particularly powerful way of understanding change in female sexual attractiveness as the interaction with the men is 'multisensory' and there is a clear measure of appreciation - the tips from patrons:

Because academics may be unfamiliar with the gentlemen's club subculture, some background may be helpful... Club patrons will often "sample" several different dancers with one lap dance each before picking one for a more expensive multisong bout of dancing. Thus, patrons can assess the relative attractiveness of different women through intimate verbal, visual, tactile, and olfactory interaction, and those attractiveness judgments can directly influence women's tip earnings, through the number of 3-min dances that patrons request from each dancer.

Link to abstract of scientific study (thanks Matthew!).
Link to write-up from Psychology Today.

—Vaughan.

October 02, 2007

'Self-silencing' may affect women's health:

The New York Times discusses recent findings suggesting that not expressing feelings during marital arguments is bad for women's health, but not for men's.

The article draws on the results of a study that followed over 3,500 people and looked at both the quality of their marriage and whether they developed heart disease.

Interestingly, the overall level of marital satisfaction and total number of disagreements were not related to heart problems.

However, women who "self-silenced" during conflict with their spouse, compared with women who did not, had four times the risk of dying. This was not the case with men.

The tendency to bottle up feelings during a fight is known as self-silencing. For men, it may simply be a calculated but harmless decision to keep the peace. But when women stay quiet, it takes a surprising physical toll.

"When you're suppressing communication and feelings during conflict with your husband, it's doing something very negative to your physiology, and in the long term it will affect your health," said Elaine Eaker, an epidemiologist in Gaithersburg, Md., who was the study's lead author. "This doesn't mean women should start throwing plates at their husbands, but there needs to be a safe environment where both spouses can equally communicate."

Other studies led by Dana Crowley Jack, a professor of interdisciplinary studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., have linked the self-silencing trait to numerous psychological and physical health risks, including depression, eating disorders and heart disease.

Keeping quiet during a fight with a spouse is something "we all have to do sometimes," Dr. Jack said. "But we worry about the people who do it in a more extreme fashion."

Nevertheless, men are not without their seemingly gender specific health risks. The study found that men with wives who were upset by work were almost three times more likely to develop heart disease.

The study is another example of how mental and physical health are completely intertwined.

Link to NYT article 'Marital Spats, Taken to Heart'.
Link to abstract of scientific study.

—Vaughan.

September 25, 2007

PR for the self: managing identity on social networks:

The New Atlantis magazine has an intriguing article that considers the social effects of sites like MySpace and Facebook and discusses how we are increasingly using these tools to carefully manage our public image - something that was previously only a concern for celebrities and media figures.

The article describes by describing the social networking sites and how they work and discusses a little of their history, but shortly after, it tackles the psychology of how we use them to manage our online identities.

The world of online social networking is practically homogenous in one other sense, however diverse it might at first appear: its users are committed to self-exposure. The creation and conspicuous consumption of intimate details and images of one’s own and others’ lives is the main activity in the online social networking world. There is no room for reticence; there is only revelation. Quickly peruse a profile and you know more about a potential acquaintance in a moment than you might have learned about a flesh-and-blood friend in a month. As one college student recently described to the New York Times Magazine: "You might run into someone at a party, and then you Facebook them: what are their interests? Are they crazy-religious, is their favorite quote from the Bible? Everyone takes great pains over presenting themselves. It's like an embodiment of your personality."

The article also covers some key studies in social network analysis, the science of understanding how relationships between people facilitate large scale social interaction.

And it also discusses some recent ideas on how these tools might be changing the nature of our relationships as a consequence of simply becoming part of the equation.

Link to article 'Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism'.

—Vaughan.

September 24, 2007

Trauma from events that never occurred:

A study just published in the medical journal Psychosomatics reports four case studies of people who developed PTSD after experiencing a traumatic event that never occurred - while their emotional reaction was real, the events were hallucinated.

Post-traumatic stress disorder can occur when someone has experienced a traumatic event over which they had no control. PTSD is diagnosed when memories of the event intrude into everyday life, the person feels the need to avoid anything which could remind them of the situation, and they feel excessively anxious and on edge.

The patients described in the article had all been admitted to intensive care for serious medical conditions, but this was not the direct cause of their trauma.

While in intensive care the patients became delirious, a state where consciousness is clouded, thinking is impaired, and delusions and hallucinations are common.

In these cases, the delusions and hallucinations led the patients to believe they were about to die horrible deaths, were being threatened or were experiencing horrific events.

Later, when they recovered from their primary condition, they had all the symptoms of PTSD - but specifically for the incident that had only occurred in their disturbed thinking.

Here's one of the case studies:

"Mr. A" was a 56-year-old white man who developed end-stage liver disease from a combination of alcohol and viral hepatitis. Aside from remitted alcohol dependence, he had no other psychiatric history. After liver transplantation, he experienced a difficult medical course, with sepsis, renal failure, biliary reconstruction, respiratory failure, and immunosuppressive medication neurotoxicity from tacrolimus. Several electroencephalograms showed diffuse generalized slowing of the background rhythms and documented seizures. He had persistent delirium for several months postoperatively.

While having delirium, he was extremely agitated, requiring restraints to prevent him from hurting himself and/or dislodging lines and catheters. He appeared awake, but was frequently incoherent and disorganized. However, he was able to articulate paranoid delusions that the staff were trying to kill him and his son. He was also observed to be responding to auditory and visual hallucinations.

Four months after the transplant, when he was discharged from the hospital, his delirium had resolved. He was no longer confused or disoriented, was not actively hallucinating or delusional, and his mood was good, with only occasional, transient symptoms of anxiety.

Several months later, in the transplant clinic, he reported reexperiencing events he had hallucinated while having delirium in the intensive care unit (ICU), and, thus, he met DSM–IV criteria for PTSD. He recalled detailed paranoid delusions that the hospital staff had chained his son to his bed and were beating him to death. He recalled struggling against the restraints, hoping to free himself to save his son. He described hearing his son's screams for help and sounds as if his son was being pummelled.

He reported recurrent nightmares of these events and even daytime flashbacks of these experiences, typically when spending time alone. He attempted to avoid thinking about these events and the hospitalization, but described difficulty doing so because the thoughts were intrusive and difficult to dismiss. Not only did he avoid discussing the events, but he also had difficulty returning to the hospital because it caused him to recall these images. He was observed to be restless and hypervigilant in the transplant clinic.

Both the medical illness and the psychoactive painkillers can contribute to the disturbed thinking that lead to delirium. This in turn can significantly affect how people remember their recovery.

In fact, one study found that some patients had no factual recall of intensive care at all, their only memory of the time was of their delusions. This group were particularly likely to be traumatised.

People are sometimes embarrassed to talk about these experiences, but they are surprisingly common. Studies have estimated that between between 12.5% and 38% of ICU patients experience delusions and hallucinations.

Link to study abstract.

—Vaughan.

September 18, 2007

Music, love survives the densest amnesia:

Oliver Sacks has written an engaging piece for the latest edition of the The New Yorker on how musical ability can survive even the most severe amnesia, with particular reference to the famous case of Clive Wearing.

Wearing was a renowned classical musicologist and conductor, involved in recreating some of the most challenging Renaissance works. You can still find him in the sleeve notes of some of his professional recordings, usually described as having retired due to 'ill health'.

In his case, ill health meant being struck by herpes simplex encephalitis, a viral infection that is known to attack the key memory areas in the brain, leaving him with a dense amnesia.

Even today, he is severely memory-impaired and remains unable to maintain anything in his conscious memory for more than a few seconds.

But in an almost Homeric twist of fate, as if he had bargained with the Gods themselves, he retained the memory that he loved his wife, and his ability to play music.

Clive has been the subject of two documentaries (clips of which are available online) and a recent book by his wife, entitled Forever Today (ISBN 0385606265).

He's also been the subject of various scientific studies, summarised in a chapter of the book Broken Memories: Case Studies in Memory Impairment (ISBN 0631187235).

This chapter is co-written by Clive's wife and Prof Barbara Wilson, a respected British neuropsychologist who specialises in memory.

The chapter contains a wealth of information about the neuropsychology of his memory, but also contains this interesting snippet:

For many years, Clive has experienced auditory hallucinations. He hears what he thinks is a tape of himself playing in the distance. He refers to this in his diaries as a 'master tape' (a term used in broadcasting for the original audiotape which should be protected from casual use and should certainly not leave the studio).

If asked to sing what he can hear - a sound only ever heard in the distance - he picks the tune up in the middle and is puzzled that no-one else can hear it. Half an hour later when asked to sing what he can hear it is usually the same tune but sometimes sung in a different style as if it were replaying in variations.

The New Yorker article is written with Sacks' trademark sensitivity and wonder, and is a engrossing exploration of music and memory.

It comes shortly before the release of his new book Musicophilia, of which there is a short audio excerpt on the bottom of the book's webpage.

Link to New Yorker article 'Music and amnesia'.

—Vaughan.

September 12, 2007

Learn first aid for psychosis:

This post tells you to how to help someone who is experiencing psychosis, based on first aid guidelines that have just been published in the medical journal Schizophrenia Bulletin

Psychosis is a mental state where someone might experience hallucinations, unusual beliefs, paranoia, mixed emotions, muddled thoughts, hyper-awareness or show unusual or puzzling behaviour.

The guidelines have been drawn from an international committee of professionals, patients and carers. The detailed points are in table 1 of the paper which is available online as a pdf file.

If you want additional mental health first aid information, there's more on a dedicated website.

Recognising and acknowledging psychosis

Psychosis is the mental state where someone might experience hallucinations, unusual beliefs, paranoia, mixed emotions, muddled thoughts, hyper-awareness or show unusual or puzzling behaviour. If someone seems distressed or impaired by their experiences, even if they're quite subtle at first, it's best not to ignore them and hope they'll go away. It's good to give the person the opportunity to discuss the situation.

Approaching someone who might be experiencing psychosis

People experiencing the early stages of psychosis may be worried, and may be concerned about discussing their experiences because of what others might think. Also, the experiences might be frightening in themselves.

The key is to be caring, gentle and non-judgemental. Find somewhere where they can talk safely and that's free of distractions. Say why you're worried about them, but avoid talk of mental illness or diagnoses - you could be wrong and it might just make them more frightened. Don't force a conversation if it's not wanted and don't touch them without permission.

Ask the person what will help them feel safe and in control, and allow them to talk about their experiences at their own pace, even if they seem quite unusual to you. Let them know that help is available, and if they don't want to talk, they're welcome to talk at a later time.

Giving support

It's important to respect the person's beliefs, even if you don't agree. Someone who is experiencing psychosis might find it hard to distinguish what's real from what's not, so telling people that they're wrong rarely helps. However, it's always possible to empathise with whatever emotions are stirred up by the experience and this can be very comforting.

Avoid criticising or blaming the person. They may be talking or behaving differently because of their experiences. Although the person might be having some odd experiences and difficulty focusing, their intelligence is unlikely to be affected, so you can talk to them as any other adult. However, sarcasm might be misunderstood by someone who is very suspicious, so should be avoided. Be honest, and don't make promises you can't keep.

Dealing with delusions and hallucinations

Delusions (false beliefs) and hallucinations (false experiences) will probably seem real to the person. Avoid denying, dismissing, laughing at, or arguing about their perceived reality. Try not to be alarmed, horrified or embarrassed about any unusual ideas or paranoia.

Dealing with communication difficulties

People with psychosis are often unable to think clearly. Speaking at your normal pace is fine and usually you will be understood perfectly well, but you may need to give the person extra time to absorb and respond to what you say, and you may need to repeat anything they haven't been able to focus on. The person may seem to show little emotional reaction - but be aware that they may well be feeling strong emotions inside.

Discussing whether to seek professional help

Ask the person if they've felt this way before and, if so, what helped then. Find out what sort of assistance the person thinks will help them this time. If the person has supportive family or friends, encourage the person to contact them. The person might need practical or emotional support when using mental health services, and if the person lacks confidence in the medical advice they've received, encourage them to get a second opinion.

What to do if the person doesn't want help

Some people with psychosis don't realise there's anything wrong, even when they're quite distressed or impaired, and may actively resist encouragement to get help. However, many people understand what's happening and have a right to refuse help. Threatening the person with hospitalisation or mental health law is likely to make matters worse.

If you're worried about someone you should encourage them to talk to people they trust or get a medical check-up. You may need to be patient, and remain friendly and open to the possibility that the person will seek help in the future as some people will need some time to feel comfortable with the idea.

What to do in a crisis when the person is very unwell

Try to remain as calm as possible, talking in a normal tone of voice and answer any questions the person might have. Your aim is to make the person feel more comfortable and calm the situation.

Try and evaluate whether the person is at risk of being harmed, harming themselves, or is suicidal. If you think this is the case, call for medical assistance immediately. If the situation seems risky, check how to leave and keep yourself safe.

If you need to call medical assistance, make sure they know the seriousness of the situation by describing specific observations about the person. If new people arrive, explain who they are, that they they're here to help, and how they're going to assist.

Find out if there's anyone the person can contact who they trust and might be able to help. If you can help with any requests that aren't unsafe or unreasonable, it might help the person feel in control.

What to do if the person becomes aggressive

It is very rare that people with even severe psychosis become aggressive. They are much more likely to be a risk to themselves.

However, people who are extremely suspicious, feel persecuted or are worried about their own safety may be jumpy or feel 'on edge'. The best response is to make the person feel safe and calm. A good way is to lead the way by acting in a calm, reassuring, non-challenging manner. Try to avoid doing anything that might look 'shifty' or suspicious or avoid restricting the person's movement.

Take any threats or warnings seriously. If you are frightened or worried about your own safety leave and call for help. If you call the police, describe any symptoms and immediate concerns and tell them if the person is armed. If possible, explain that you've called help to get medical treatment and because you're worried about their aggressive behaviour.

—Vaughan.

September 10, 2007

BBC sexual behaviour series begins:

BBC Radio 4 is running a special season on sexuality that will cover everything from the history cultural views on sex to the medical aspects of sexual dysfunction.

The season spans a number of the BBC's regular programmes over the next two weeks and has a remarkably wide remit.

Programmes tackle social issues, behaviour and medical aspects of sex - for example, looking at the history of how attitudes to homosexuality have altered, how sexuality has been depicted in art and what can be considered 'normal', among many others.

By the looks of it, all the programmes should be available online after they've been broadcast.

It looks like a really well put-together season and should make for some interesting listening.

Link to BBC Radio 4 'The Sex Lives of Us' page (via Dr Petra).

—Vaughan.

September 07, 2007

Autistic children immune to contagious yawns:

The BPS Research Digest reports that children with autism are seemingly 'immune' to contagious yawning - perhaps as a result of their reduced social awareness.

Yawning is mysterious: no-one really knows why we do it, but we do know it's reliably 'contagious'.

Seeing someone yawn, or indeed, just thinking about someone else yawning, makes us more likely to do the same. For example, this article may well be enough to trigger a yawn in some people.

One of the three key aspects of autism is a difficulty with social interaction (the other two being difficulties with certain types of abstract thinking and a restricted or repetitive range of interests or behaviours).

So a group of researchers, led by psychologist Dr. Atsushi Senju, wondered whether children with autism might be less susceptible to yawn contagion.

They came up with the 'I wish I'd thought of that' idea of showing videos of people yawning to groups of typically developing children, and children with a diagnosis of autism.

The study [pdf] showed that children with autism were far less likely to yawn in response to watching others do the same.

Often, autistic social difficulties are put down to a problem with 'theory of mind' the ability to understand other people's beliefs, intentions and desires, but it's not clear that contagious yawning relies on this.

The researchers don't have any easy answers for why yawn contagion is reduced in autism, but suggest, without committing, that known differences in viewing faces, possible differences in mirror neurons or problems with imitating others might be linked.

The BPSRD has a talent for picking up on previously obscure but striking studies, and this is another great example.

Link to BPSRD on autism and contagious yawning 'immunity'.
pdf of full-text of scientific paper.

—Vaughan.

September 06, 2007

Gambling on social hype:

There was a interesting segment on NPR Radio's Talk of the Nation the other week on the psychology of the stock market that discussed what the science of social behaviour can tell us about the causes of booms and busts.

The guest on the show was Michael Mauboussin, professor of finance and author of a recent book on the psychology of the markets.

There's a lot of talk about the wisdom, and indeed, folly, of crowds, particularly in light of the recent economic turmoil, but perhaps the show lacks a mention of Charles McKay's 1841 book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

McKay notes how the herd mentality can lead to financial crises because people get excited about obviously foolish investments, simply because of widespread social hype.

It's a classic in the literature that was not equalled until sociologist Robert Bartholomew examined the topic in more detail in a number of books, of which the wonderfully named Little Green Men, Meowing Nuns and Head-Hunting Panics is undoubtedly my favourite.

Link to NPR on 'The Psychology of Stocks'.
Link to Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds info.

—Vaughan.

September 03, 2007

RadioLab on the science of morality:

I've just discovered another episode of the excellent WNYC RadioLab - this one on the psychology and neuroscience of morality. It tackles everything from the development of moral reasoning as a child, to the neuroscience of ethical decision-making, to the psychology of prisons and solitary confinement.

If you've never heard RadioLab before, have a listen, not least because of the beautiful production. It often contains some wonderfully illustrative moments - something akin to the radio equivalent of the 'hip hop montage' film editing technique.

One segment looks at how researchers are attempting to tackle moral reasoning in the lab, something which is becoming an increasingly important research area - as demonstrated by the popularity of Marc Hauser's book Moral Minds.

This research, as well as observational studies on non-human primates, has suggested that some moral behaviour may inherited.

The idea that pro-social behaviour may be the result of evolution has led to the cover story in this week's New Scientist to pose the related question "If morality is hard-wired in the brain, what's the point of religion?'

Sadly, the article isn't open access (pro-social behaviour not being fully evolved in the NewSci offices) but it's an interesting review of some recent studies on the psychology of religion, with some speculative commentary on the possible evolutionary roles of spiritual faith:

Psychologists Azim Shariff and Ara Norenzayan from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, found that by presenting people first with a word game unscrambling either religious or non-religious phrases, even atheists could be primed to be more generous to an anonymous partner by exposure to the religious words [pdf]...

So why do religious concepts provoke moral behaviour even in non-believers? It's because both religion and morality are evolutionary adaptations, says Jesse Bering, who heads the Institute of Cognition and Culture at Queen's University, Belfast, UK. Morality does not stem from religion, as is often argued, he suggests: they evolved separately, albeit in response to the same forces in our social environment. Once our ancestors acquired language and theory of mind - the ability to understand what others are thinking - news of any individual's reputation could spread far beyond their immediate group. Anyone with tendencies to behave pro-socially would then have been at an advantage, Bering says: "What we're concerned about in terms of our moral behaviour is what other people think about us." So morality became adaptive.

Link to RadioLab on the science of morality.

—Vaughan.

September 02, 2007

Oxytocin and understanding other minds:

The Scientific American's Mind Matters has a special on whether key bonding hormone oxytocin boosts our ability to understand other people's beliefs, intentions and desires.

Oxytocin seems to play a role in bonding between mother and child, and between romantic couples.

The article discusses recent research that found that using an oxytocin nasal spray boosted participant's performance on a task that measured 'theory of mind' - the ability to infer other people's beliefs from their actions.

Like 'mirror neurons', oxytocin is something which is currently overhyped but still genuinely interesting.

The article is by psychologist Prof Jennifer Bartz and psychiatrist Prof Eric Hollander and discusses this new study, and some of the theories that attempt to explain how oxytocin has its effect:

Both our lab and the Domes lab have found that oxytocin facilitates the processing of social information gathered through at least two different sensory modalities -- that is, through both hearing and vision. This raises questions about just how oxytocin actually facilitates social cognition and theory of mind.

Previous research indicates that oxytocin plays a role in regulating stress and fear reactivity. Thus oxytocin may facilitate theory of mind by reducing the social anxiety that is inherent in many social encounters -- and which is felt keenly by many individuals with autism.

Another possibility is that oxytocin may increase motivation to attend to social cues by reinforcing social information processing.

Link to article 'The hormone that helps you read minds'.
Link to abstract of scientific study.

—Vaughan.