Tag Archives: psychology

Loyalty Matters A Lot; Facts, Not So Much

Posted by apt46 on May 17, 2012 None comments

The Washington Post took two polls during periods of high gas prices, one in 2006 and one in 2012. The question was the same: is there anything the president reasonably can do to reduce gas prices? The key factor is that the presidents were different. In 2006 when Bush was in office, only 47% of Republicans said he could; when it came to Obama, 65% said he could (but doesn’t, because he’s evil). Lest you think that people simply have more faith in Obama’s skills, Democrats responded the opposite way: 73% said Bush could’ve lowered the gas prices in 2006 (but didn’t, because he’s evil), but only 33% think Obama could (or else he would’ve, because he’s nice). Meanwhile in the real world, neither the president nor anyone except OPEC can influence oil prices, since they are global.

Dartmouth professor Brendan Nyhan points out that Republicans are running in 2012 the same guy Democrats ran in 2004: "a flip-flopping, out-of-touch elitist from Massachusetts."

 

What it boils down to is that Democrat or Republican, when your guy’s in office and bad stuff happens, it’s not his fault; when the other team’s guy is in office, it’s all his fault — facts be damned. NPR has some commentary on this which explains the situation via cognitive dissonance, which is the feeling you get when you find out your good friend Mike got fired: since he’s your good friend, and since you don’t associate with incompetent people, clearly his boss made some mistake or was out to get him.

In order to get rid of the discomfort of knowing you’re friends with an unsavory character (or that you voted for the wrong guy), you have to either change your loyalties and drop the friend (or politician), or rationalize the facts away. It turns out the latter is a lot easier — probably because we see loyalty as a pillar of the morality on which society is built. With society comes friends and happiness, but the facts never hugged you. And so, loyalty is greater than truth, simply to avoid being forever alone.

See also:

From The Washington Post, via NPR

3 Learning Tricks From A Psychologist

Posted by apt46 on February 7, 2012 None comments

UCLA has a Learning and Forgetting Lab and the guy who its named after gave Wired a few hints on how to learn and not forget:

  • Interleave: don’t just keep trying to learn one thing until you master it, but rather move on to something else for a while. The something else should be related though, so maybe break up a subject like the Cold War into decades.
  • Change venues periodically: if you study in only one location, you’ll only remember the stuff in that location.
  • Learn, wait a while, then recall: if you just learn a thing once, it’ll get more and more buried the longer you don’t recall it. But if you wait some time, until you can just barely remember it, then study it again, it will help you recall it easier the next time. In a sense, it’s like practicing retrieving that particular memory, because we have so many facts in our heads that we need that practice.

 

So come back and read this in three days from a different location.

From Wired

Circular Psychology

Posted by apt46 on November 27, 2011 None comments

Well, I seek out facts that seem to prove it and ignore facts that seem to disprove it. You're a dick. Earlier: how do you know confirmation bias is a real thing?

 

From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Some Psychological Myths

Posted by apt46 on September 12, 2011 None comments

Cracked loves their lists: 7 ways to do something, 6 companies that did something, 8 funniest whatevers. Anyway, they have a pretty good list of things people believe about psychology that are just plain false:

  • Myth: keeping anger in will make you blow at some point, while expressing your anger is good for you. Buddhist monks — probably all monks, actually — prove this wrong. Getting angry can become a habit, and it’s definitely addictive. Learning to control the anger is what’s good for you; expressing it rarely is.
  • Myth: high self-esteem leads to success. It turns out that being good at something leads to success and high self-esteem, not the other way around. Having high self-esteem for no reason just makes people wonder why you have an undeserved superiority complex, and is a major ingredient of a douchebag.
  • Myth: cult-members are gullible and stupid. Studies show that they’re actually smart and sane. The reason that people get into cults is not because they’re idiots, but usually it’s because they’re down on their luck and alone; cults give them help and a sense of belonging and make them feel better. Then they become part of the group, make friends with the cult members, so they just go with it because people are social animals designed to defend their social group. And the more ostracized they are from the mainstream, the more tightly knit the cult will be. Because pretty much everything we do — from the clothes we wear to the politicians we vote for — is determined by our social network. You are who you hang out with.

  • Myth: subliminal messages work. If they did, someone would’ve taken over the world already.
  • Myth: lie detectors work. In reality, they work a little better than a coin toss. Because they measure things like breathing rate, perspiration, and pulse, anything could throw them off, including being nervous. Not to mention all the spies that beat the lie detector.
  • Myth: homophobes are closet homosexuals. If they were, a huge percentage of the population would be gay. But really, there’s no such thing as “homophobia”: it’s not a scientifically recognized condition. People can respond strongly to homosexuality for a variety of reasons, like they’re morally against it, disgusted by homosexual sex, or just hate everyone that’s different. It doesn’t mean they’re in the closet.

From Cracked, via Neatorama

The Psychological Limits Of Caring About The Unfortunate

Posted by apt46 on August 15, 2011 None comments

‘Statistical Numbing’ is what an article in Psychology Today named what happens to us when we hear about the thousands of Africans dying of hunger. We just don’t care that much. But if you see a movie or hear a story about one starving African, you’re likely to care a lot more. The article outlines related research that came up with some interesting results:

  • People will donate twice as much money to save one anonymous child than to save eight
  • They will also donate twice as much money to save one specific starving African child named Rokia, than to save starving children in general
  • Just hearing the statistics of starving kids made people donate 40% less money to Rokia
  • Being asked to donate for two specific children caused donations to fall by 8% when compared to asking for just one specific child

What this shows is that people are probably pragmatic: they know they can’t save eight kids and therefore perceive it as much of a waste of money as trying to save all the kids; but they figure they can make a difference in one starving child’s life. Emotionally, stories can affect us a lot and numbers don’t affect us at all: Oliver Twist is really sad; in fact, it’s much sadder than anything on the news about 60,000 starving Somalians. Statistics also hit our psychological limits on abstract thought: the larger the number — any kind of number, — the harder it is for us to comprehend it. We can imagine one kid very well, but five kids only somewhat well. A dozen kids gets a little abstract, and a hundred kids is hard to even picture. When you get to 60,000, the emotional response that number evokes is probably the same if you’re talking about starving kids or people on unemployment.

So it looks like World Vision got it right by letting one person adopt one specific kid.

From Psychology Today, via Lifehacker

Personality Traits Of The Fat And Skinny

Posted by apt46 on August 12, 2011 None comments

The National Institute on Aging did some very interesting analysis on a group of people they have been following for 50 years and tied a few key personality traits to measurements of adiposity: BMI score, waist size, body fat and hip size. They found some interesting, if not unexpected, correlations: impulsive and extroverted people tend to be fatter; and conscientious, disciplined, organized people tend to be skinnier. This makes sense because people who are impulsive tend to eat more, as do social butterflies since so many social events are based around eating and drinking. Disciplined people however, will have either the will power or coping mechanisms in place to navigate their daily life without over-indulging in calories or exercising enough. Note however, that the two sides aren’t mutually exclusive: disciplined people can be extroverted, and vice-versa.

The traits were taken from the Five Factor Model in psychology, which describes human personality by scoring subjects on each of five areas. From Wikipedia:

  • Openness – (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious). Appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, curiosity, and variety of experience.
  • Conscientiousness – (efficient/organized vs. easy-going/careless). A tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement; planned rather than spontaneous behaviour.
  • Extraversion – (outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/reserved). Energy, positive emotions, surgency, and the tendency to seek stimulation in the company of others.
  • Agreeableness – (friendly/compassionate vs. cold/unkind). A tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others.
  • Neuroticism – (sensitive/nervous vs. secure/confident). A tendency to experience unpleasant emotions easily, such as anger, anxiety, depression, or vulnerability.

What the researchers found was that people who scored high on the Neuroticism and Extraversion traits were fatter, and people who scored high on the Conscientiousness trait were skinnier. They went a little deeper though and made finer measurements of ‘facets’ in each of the five main  personality traits, which gave them even more insight. These facets are more practical concepts to grasp, so here are the ones that had significant correlation to higher body fat — 0 means no correlation, 1 means complete correlation:

  • 0.26 – Impulsiveness, the only facet of Neuroticism that was significant
  • 0.13 – Warmth, part of Extraversion
  • 0.12 – Assertiveness, part of Extraversion
  • 0.07 – Positive Emotions, part of Extraversion
  • 0.06 – Gregariousness, part of Extraversion
  • 0.05 – Competence, part of Conscientiousness
  • 0.05 – Excitement-seeking, part of Extraversion

And the facets that had significant correlation to lower body fat, meaning a negative correlation higher body fat:

  • 0.12 – Order, part of Conscientiousness
  • 0.10 – Self-discipline, part of Conscientiousness
  • 0.09 – Straightforwardness, part of Agreeableness
  • 0.08 – Activity, part of Extraversion
  • 0.07 – Modesty, part of Agreeableness
  • 0.05 – Deliberation, part of Conscientiousness
  • 0.05 – Altruism, part of Agreeableness

So now we know why Paula Deen is fat and Michelle Obama is skinny. If you want to find out how much your personality puts you at risk for obesity, there’s a very good Five-Factor Model test here.

From The American Psychological Association

Challenging Situations Make For Stronger Relationships

Posted by apt46 on July 14, 2011 None comments

It turns out the end of the movie Speed was wrong:

Jack: I have to warn you, I’ve heard relationships based on intense experiences never work.
Annie: OK. We’ll have to base it on sex then.
Jack: Whatever you say, ma’am.

In fact according to several studies — some of which (PDF) are mentioned in this article from You Are Not So Smart – couples that engage in “intense experiences”, as Speed put it, report higher quality relationships. The psychological explanation for this depends on two concepts:

  1. The Self-Expansion Model
  2. Classical conditioning

The first concept says that what motivates us to do anything is a desire to expand our boundaries, to grow, to acquire new skills. So when we do things that are challenging, new, and exciting, we feel truly alive. That state is known in psychology as “arousal“, of which sexual arousal is just one kind. So when you go bungee jumping, the fear and exhilaration present means you’re psychologically aroused — that you’re firing on all cylinders and really experiencing the moment. This state of arousal is what we tend to like, and when we get there while with someone we also like, we associate them with the experience. If that keeps happening, classical conditioning makes us associate them with the psychological arousal, which makes us think the relationship is the source of all the good mental state and therefore makes us want more relationship. Kind of like falling in love with your drug dealer.

Photo by Christian Haugen

 

What’s even more interesting is that just spending generic time together with a spouse doesn’t have any effect on the quality of the relationship; it’s the challenging and exciting things that matter. So if Alice and Bob go on a romantic candlelit dinner, followed by a quiet walk on the beach and the end, it won’t be as good as if after walking they went skinny dipping in the ocean where they saw a shark while making out, and Bob scared it away by punching it in the nose and then they ran out of the water, but their clothes got blown away by the strong ocean wind so they had to break into a shop on the beach and steal some bathing suits, because it’s better to be arrested for shoplifting than public nudity — or at least it seemed better at the time. And then on the second date (yeah, that was just the first one) they go to see a scary movie, and on the third they go to Busch Gardens and ride the roller coasters and on the fourth they go skydiving, and before you know it, who comes knocking at their brains’ doors? Pavlov.

Alice and Bob will associate the relationship with all of these highs, and just like in Pavlov’s experiment where the dogs learned to salivate when the bell rang because bell meant food, so does Alice learn to mentally salivate when it’s time to hang out with Bob, because Bob means excitement, challenges, and ultimately self-expansion. This particular effect is known as “misattribution of arousal”, though we misattribute other things too – for example if you nod to a guy that’s talking about stuff you don’t care about, you’ll later tend to think you agreed with him.

 

Photo by Steve Cadman

 

So what’s the practical take-away from all of this? Well, the psychological arousal is what really makes you happy, but it’s kinda sad to go to Busch Gardens alone. So instead, do novel, exciting, challenging things with someone you like, because you’ll  like each other more due to the arousal from those activities. And don’t ever stop, because then you’ll fall in a rut and get bored and then also misattribute the boredom to the relationship and start hating it.

From You Are Not So Smart, via Lifehacker

Dog People Really Are Different Than Cat People

Posted by apt46 on July 12, 2011 None comments

Have you ever noticed that most people who like dogs don’t really care for cats — and vice-versa? And that dog owners tend to date other dog owners? It turns out that a lot of that is true, and the people that choose to own dogs are pretty different than the cat people. Hunch.com, which is like the Netflix recommendation engine but not just for movies, collected a bunch of data about dog and cat owners and compiled it into an infographic. But infographics are supposed to distill data so that it’s easily digested by us visual creatures, and this is not a very well done one as it’s pretty dense to read. So instead of re-posting it, here are the highlights; and a picture of a dog:

  • Most households have a pet (40% don’t), and the most popular arrangement is dog-only (26% of households), followed by cat-only (16%) and both (13%)
  • More cats are pets than dogs, but they’re in a lot less households. So this means that people who have dogs probably only have one dog, but people who have cats are crazy cat ladies. Which makes little sense from the animal’s standpoint since dogs run in packs and are generally very social, whereas cats are solitary. But it makes a lot of sense from a practical standpoint, since cats are clean and low-maintenance.
  • Cat people tend to fit the description of a single woman living in New York City: they’re more liberal and introverted, more likely to have a graduate degree (which is probably what makes them more liberal), to rent, to live in a city in Europe (which is probably what makes them more likely to rent), to be hipsters, to be less active, to be late adopters… and they like CSI.
  • Dog people tend to be Jonathan Kent: more likely to be conservative, to have kids, to own a house in a rural area in the Americas, to be very active outdoors, to like low-brow humor, to be early adopters and own an iPhone… and they like Curb Your Enthusiasm

Photo by -=RoBeE=-

 

So if we were to give in to broad over-generalizations, we would say Democrats like cats and Republicans like dogs. Even if that’s not strictly true, they’re better mascots than a donkey and an elephant, right?

From Hunch, via Laughing Squid

Mind Over Fatter

Posted by apt46 on June 8, 2011 None comments

According to two separate articles, a diet is only as good as you think it is. This revelation comes from two studies: one, in 2006, in which a group of housekeepers were told they got a pretty good amount of exercise, and it was healthy for them. The other group of housekeepers got told nothing. What happened? The first group lost two pounds in a month and their blood pressure dropped. The second group, bupkis.

Banksy's maid in Chalk Farm. Photo by Rachel Slack.

 

The second study in question, from last month, is based on more treachery: all of the subjects were given the same kind of milk shake, but some were told it had half the calories it actually did, and others were told it had twice the actual amount. The researchers then measured the levels of a hormone (called “ghrelin”) in the subjects’ blood, which are higher if you’re hungry. The people that thought they ate the half-calorie milkshake had a lot higher levels (almost unchanged from before they ate the milkshake) than the ones who thought they ate the double-calorie milkshake. Even though they had the same milkshake.

Sycamore Fig Tree

 

What does this mean? Well, maybe Jesus was on to something:

Early in the morning, as Jesus was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, “May you never bear fruit again!” Immediately the tree withered.

When the disciples saw this, they were amazed. “How did the fig tree wither so quickly?” they asked.

Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”

Matthew 21:18-22

 

So pray to lose weight, and if you have faith, it won’t actually matter if God heard your prayers.

 

From Psychology Today and IO9, via Lifehacker

Ten Ways Our Brains Distort Reality

Posted by apt46 on May 11, 2011 None comments

Our puny human brains are awesome at keeping us alive. But they do this at the expense of interpreting reality to only suit our survival, which sometimes gets in the way of things like success. Listverse has a list of ten of these “faulty” thinking patterns:

  • Confirmation Bias: people tend to cherry-pick information that support what they already think, and discard ones that don’t. If you’re for Obamacare, you’ll read a ton of articles on why it’s good and post them on Facebook, but ignore or dismiss the ones about why it’s bad — and vice-versa.
  • Availability Heuristic: people predict how likely something is by how many examples of it they can think of. How likely are kids to be abducted by strangers? Not very likely at all — kids are much more likely to die by accidentally drowning in a pool. But while you can’t think of any news stories about the latter, you can list off a handful about child abductions, because the news media covers them a lot more aggressively. Same with plane crashes: if we heard about every fatal car crash on the news the way we hear about plane crashes, we wouldn’t be as scared of planes and so lax about car travel.
  • Illusion of Control: people think they can control things they can’t, like if they stare really hard at the stop light, it’ll turn green. Or if they throw the dice a certain way, a seven will come up.
  • Planning Fallacy: people think they can do things more quickly than they actually can, even when they should know better. If you get asked how long it will take you to get to the movie theater, and you answer based on all the lights being green or trains running on time, then you suffer from this one. But if you get asked how long it’ll take your best friend to get there, you’ll give a more realistic answer. Why? Because you’re that much more awesome, that’s why! And you can control the stoplights: your friend obviously can’t, because that would be ridiculous. Also, you can think of at least half a dozen times when you made it to the movie theater way fast.

  • Restraint Bias: people think they can resist temptation, when in fact they can’t. You decide to give up junk food and you think it’ll be easy, so you don’t plan on how you’re actually going to act when faced with junk food and end up eating three of the donuts your coworker brought in to work. Giving up junk food is actually really hard, but people think they have more control over their urges than they actually do.
  • Just-World Phenomenon: everything happens for a reason. Those two yuppies got shot in the ghetto? They were obviously there to buy drugs from gangbangers.
  • Endowment Effect: your stuff is better. If you were to sell your iPod, you’d expect to get a higher price than you would actually think is fair, if you were out to buy one.
  • Self-Serving Bias: you’re the reason good things happen to you, but someone else is the reason bad things happen to you. If you get a promotion or win the lottery, it’s because you’re great at your job, or lucky. If you get into a car accident or your Wii breaks, it’s because that idiot can’t drive and your nephew must’ve spilled Yoo-hoo on it last time he was over.
  • Cryptomnesia: people remember something they heard/read/saw and think they came up with it. Sitcoms have an episode every so often where the wife has a brilliant idea for a children’s book character, draws up a wonderful book and goes to get it published, only to find out to her embarrassment that the character was actually from some obscure book her grandmother had when she was a child.
  • Bias Blind Spot: obviously these biases exist, because you see them in people all the time. Especially the self-serving bias. But you’re better than that. You’re honest with yourself, and you can’t recall a single time when you were biased. But you can recall a bunch of times when you yelled at the light and it turned green, like almost right away. And you once went for a whole week without coffee. And it’s not your fault you got a speeding ticket: the speed limit on that road is ridiculously low, plus there were like no cars on the road. Besides, you’re pretty awesome all around if you do say so yourself.

And ultimately, that’s the reason these biases exist: to give us the confidence to actually get up every morning and face the world, knowing that we’re better than at least most of the people out there, and therefore deserve to be part of society. Otherwise, we’d all need Prozac.

(If you’re interested, Wikipedia has a more complete list of cognitive biases that don’t apply to you.)

From Listverse, via Neatorama