Why Our Ideal Self Seems Further Away For Us Than Others
Is everyone else reaching their true potential quicker than you?
Because each of us is a perpetual work in progress, we live our lives with one eye on the future. In that future we see ourselves transformed into our true, ideal self - just as we would like to be.
While we take this for granted in ourselves, research finds we are much less likely to see other people's good intentions and hopes for the future as part of their selves. Instead we are likely to judge them just as they appear to us - defined by their past and present, stuck in the moment, unlikely to change and ultimately knowable.
Future selves: our own and others
This is the conclusion reached by Elanor Williams and Thomas Gilovich from Cornell University in a new study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. They devised a series of experiments examining how we see our future selves in comparison to others.In the first study 50 students were asked to assess how much their past, present and future selves contributed to their overall conception of themselves. Williams and Gilovich found that participants ascribed an average of 30.6% of their overall sense of self to their future selves1. Almost one-third of their self-concept, therefore, was future-oriented.
But when they thought about another person this went down to 21.6%. This suggested participants believed that more of their future plans were included in their own selves than in other people's selves.
Can I know myself?
The proportion of the self that people ascribe to the future is effectively unknowable, unlike the past and the present. Because people ascribe around one-third of their self to the future, but less to other people, this suggests people consider themselves fundamentally more mysterious than others.To test this theory a second study invited 68 students to think about the self as though it were an iceberg. Part of an iceberg, like a person's future self, lurks below the surface and so can't be seen. The students were asked to indicate for both themselves, and other people, how much of the future self lurks below the surface.
The results showed that people thought that more of themselves was hidden below the surface than for other people. This suggested people saw themselves as being more mysterious and mutable, while other people were more likely to be just who they appeared to be.
How far away is your ideal self?
Williams and Gilovich's research heads towards a somewhat downbeat conclusion: most of us feel we have further to reach than others to attain our ideal selves2. The researchers tested this conclusion in a final study where participants indicated how far advanced they were on 'life's journey' towards 'self-actualisation' both for themselves and for the 'average Cornell student'.When thinking about themselves students thought they were about 30% to where they wanted to be, while they thought the average student was about 50% towards becoming who they wanted to be. This confirmed their earlier studies which suggested we really do think other people are further towards fulfilling their potential than we are.
Future obsession
What Williams and Gilovich suggest is that the reason we feel others are doing better than us in the 'project of the self' is partly that we fail to take into account other people's dreams and aspirations4. Our own future intentions are only too clear to us, and they often serve to remind us just how far we are from our goals. But when thinking about others we often fail to acknowledge their goals and aspirations and wrongly assume how they are is how they want to be.As Williams and Gilovich put it:
"Understanding ourselves is largely an effort to understand where we are headed; understanding others is more of an effort to understand where they are."
Unfortunately for us understanding our own hopes and dreams can be a source of considerable pain when we realise how far we have to go3. This pain may be made worse when we compare ourselves to others who may appear so much closer to realising their full potential.
The irony is that actually most people feel like this. Contrary to what we might imagine, other people are just as obsessed with the future as we are, and just as worried that everyone else is getting there faster than us.
--
Notes
1. Like me, you may have baulked at the idea that the self can be sliced and diced into percentages for past, present and future. This assumes that if part of ourselves is yet to be revealed in the future then the rest is necessarily already exposed in the past and present. But this is a strange way of thinking about the self and may be unrepresentative.Williams and Gilovich, therefore, used an alternative method which didn't rely on absolute percentages but accessed the same ideas. They got the same pattern of results again, suggesting the conclusion from their percentage-based studies was correct.
2.The alternative, that we set higher standards for ourselves, they claim is ruled out by another completed, but as yet unpublished study.
3. People who are in very close relationships with others are more likely to understand the other person's aspirations. This may mean that the effect seen in this study is reduced in the case of close relationships.
4. Williams and Gilovich suggest that as people get older they may see their current selves as closer to their full potential. The findings in the current study may not, therefore, apply so strongly to older people.
[Image credit: javYliz]
Improve Your Mind-Reading: Focus on the Big Picture You
Don't sweat the small stuff - instead focus on the big picture you.
So how can we be so bad at reading other people's minds and what can we do about it?
Writing in the latest edition of Social and Personality Psychology Compass, Dr Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago argues that the biggest obstacle to our understanding how we are viewed by others is our egocentric bias. We are all stuck inside our own heads.
The egocentric bias means that when we try to imagine how we are seen by others, we can't help but be biased by the way in which we see ourselves. Effectively to read others' minds, we first read our own minds.
Unfortunately it turns out that we often don't see ourselves as other people see us. Here are two major reasons why:
- Attentional bias: we assume others are paying much more attention to us than they really are. People usually don't notice the details we think they do.
- Construal bias: We see everything filtered through our own beliefs, attitudes and intentions, especially when situations are ambiguous or when our own beliefs, attitudes and intentions are very different from our mind-reading target.
How can we improve our mind-reading?
The time-honoured approach for finding out what others think of us has been to try and take their perspective. In a series of unpublished studies, though, Tal Eyal and Nick Epley found that this was not effective in increasing people's accuracy.Instead three experiments they conducted suggested the answer was to think about yourself at a higher level of abstraction. Participants in one condition were asked to focus on central and defining features of the self rather than low level details. They were then able to judge what others thought of them more accurately.
Dr Epley explains: "You can look at yourself from the street level or you can look at yourself from the satellite level. Other people see you from the satellite level, so if you think of yourself from that big picture perspective, you'll tend to be more accurate."
"While we live our own lives under a microscope and we are present all the time when we do things, other people are not there with us," notes Epley. "That's a problem for intuiting other people's thoughts because we tend to evaluate ourselves in much finer detail. We look at ourselves from the street view, whereas other people are looking at us from space."
» There's a video with Dr Epley explaining the research and more details here.
[Image credit: nataliej]
30 Psychobabble Phrases - Which Do You Hate Most?
Perhaps it's time to 'get really OCD' about cleaning the fridge?
Have a read and then vote below so we can crown our most hated piece of psychobabble!
1. "My pet peeve is the use of OCD in, I get really OCD about cleaning my kitchen. What's really offensive about the usage is that it suggests one can spontaneously develop and un-develop a disorder. This is offensive to people who actually live with mental illness daily. Unless it's interfering with your functioning, it's not a disorder."
Erika
2. "Using fetish to mean 'a fascination with' rather than its true meaning (causing sexual arousal)."
Whistler
3. "Hands down, my biggest peeve is: reptilian brain. I heard two doctors on Oprah talk endlessly about how past life regression therapy works (!) because it bypasses your 'normal functioning brain' and goes straight for the 'reptilian brain', garnering knowing nods from the studio audience. I nearly chucked a shoe at my TV set."
Allison
4. "Every time I hear someone misuse the term acting out, I begin experiencing homicidal ideation. Of course 'acting out' is a psychoanalytic term denoting the enactment of an internal dynamic in the external world. You can't recognize the internal feeling states and so it is necessary to 'act it out.' But even among fully trained, licensed clinical psychologists this term has come to mean 'behaving badly' -- which of course makes it a useless term."
David Godot
5. "Unfortunately, retard has become a word of choice as far as insults go. The words moron, cretin and idiot began as medical terms that got absorbed into common use over time."
Romeo Vitelli
6. "I'm not a drug addict, I've been self-medicating."
Ron Frederickson
7. "Talk it out or talk it through. I understand why the therapist wants one to endlessly relive the moment, the rape, the abuse, the arguments with mommy, but I fail to see how the constant repetition does much of anything but reinforce it. Repressed feelings, if there is such a thing, don't automatically turn into mental bogeymen. In other places, it's called forgetting."
Troy Sumrall
8. "My favorites: He's totally projecting. She's definitely OCD/NPD/some other diagnosis."
Sara
9. "I'm stuck at denial (without a paddle, ha ha). A reference to Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' 'five stages of grief' which are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance. Dr. Kubler-Ross never suggested one stage had to be completed before the next and there's little evidence for these stages anyway."
Me
10. "Since I am not a native English speaker I didn't come across someone calling me anal until I started to study in England. At first I was shocked, since I didn't immediately understand my friend was not referring to my anus, but to my personality. I don't think many people realize that they are referring to one of the personality traits emerging from the failure to successfully complete one of Freud's developmental stages."
Anon
11. "Indigo Children. Bah. Humbug."
the mad LOLscientist
12. "Two terms that I think are way over used and misapplied are introvert and extrovert. Contrary to what people seem to believe, you're not one or the other, and the huge lists of attributes that get attached to each term are by no means accurate for everyone."
Stu
13. "When people claim they are bipolar when they're really just moody. Saying you're bipolar abdicates all responsibility for the control of your emotions."
bigstevec
14. "Their brains lit up in the scanner. Parts of the brain are said to 'light up' when we remember, lie, do our taxes and, probably, go to the toilet. Surely everyone knows this is just short-hand for increased blood-flow in a certain part of the brain? Do they hell.
Me
15. "In every mental health job I have worked, the real pain in the ass clients are referred to as borderline. Borderline has now ceased to be a disorder; it's psychobabble for 'this client is so annoying and needy I would gladly chew off my own foot to escape'."
Danny
16. "What annoys me most is conversational psychoanalysing - when someone you know (outside of a therapeutic context) frequently tells you that you don't really mean what you're saying, that you're in denial about your true feelings or ignoring what is going on at a subconscious level. Particularly annoying is when they then go on to tell you what you're really feeling!"
Lirone
17. "The most irritating one is the word schizophrenia which is wrongly used whenever someone refer to split personalities. I just can't hold myself back from being a besserwisser and telling them that they have no idea what schizophrenia is."
Violette
18. "Being addicted to...anything. If you do something more than twice a week it's an addiction: from sex, to video games to the internet. Are you a marketer with something to promote? Just use the word addiction and watch those headlines flood in."
Me
19. "When people describe themselves or others as being Type A, when in fact they're nothing like what Type A is supposed to be. Never mind the ridiculous dichotomy of dividing all human beings into 'having these collection of traits' and 'not having these collection of traits'."
Ruaidhri
20-22. "One of the richest sources of psychobabble is educational psychology, particularly in the area of giftedness. So we have every child is gifted. My favorite is the reduction of Dabrowski's overexcitabilities (in themselves a bit dubious) to OEs, as in 'I know I'm gifted because I'm an OE.' And we mustn't forget Gardner's 'intelligences,' which fertilized the ground for the creation of emotional intelligence."
Catana
23. "One of my most hated expressions is retail therapy."
Gary Brandon
24. "People don't talk about their emotions anymore, they vent. Contrary to the psychobabble, though, people are not like steam engines."
Me
25-26. "Here are two glorious examples of psychobabble from the world of business... socialize, as in, 'let's socialize that idea around the group and get some feedback' (translation: let's let people know what our idea is and see if they like it), and institutionalize, as in, 'once we've socialized our strategy and have gotten buy-in from our sponsors, let's make sure it gets institutionalized throughout the organization'."
Anon
27-28. "After a traumatic event (say, the VA Tech shootings) 'grief counselors' parachute in to help the survivors/witnesses get closure and move on. My father died over 20 years ago; I still don't have 'closure', though I stopped grieving after what apparently was an appropriate interval. His absence is an ongoing part of my life that I don't think will 'close'."
Gregory Luce
29. "When people confuse psychologists with psychiatrists. The general public seems to have a very rudimentary understanding of two very different professions."
kelligirly
30. "Hardwired is surely one of the most abused terms in both science journalism and everyday language. According to even usually quite reliable sources, we're 'hardwired' for money, risky behaviour, religion, feeling others' pain, art, fraud, oh, and liking pink, if you're a girl of course."
Vaughan at MindHacks
Now vote for the psychobabble that annoys you the most!
[Image credit: Erik]
Would You Ask Someone to Pick up Their Dog's Poop?
Which public incivilities do you hate the most?
Second I feel guilty because I don't say any of these things out loud, instead wandering off grumbling impotently to myself.
Most irritating incivilities
Many of us, especially city dwellers, will turn a blind eye to all sorts of uncivil behaviour which falls short of a crime. And yet if this French research is any guide, I'm not the only one whose blood frequently boils over these sorts of minor events. Apparently urban dwellers cite incivility as their top urban stressor.New research published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology looked at the types of uncivil behaviours that provoked the most anger (Chaurand & Brauer, 2008). Here are the top five:
- Failure to pick up after one's dog
- Littering
- Illegally parked car
- Graffiti
- Aggressiveness towards others
Using social control to curb incivilities
Unfortunately law-makers face a nigh-on impossible task with so many other apparently more important issues clamouring for attention. That usually leaves it up to individuals - you and me - to exercise social control to try and reduce these behaviours.But you only have to walk out of the door and down the street to see, especially in the city, that many of us are not exercising any sort of control.
To try and understand why we tend to do nothing, Nadine Chaurand and Markus Brauer from the University of Clermont-Ferrand, examined what factors affected whether people thought they would intervene in uncivil acts. Their results suggested three factors:
- Responsibility: People who feel they have a responsibility to a particular area are more likely to intervene.
- Legitimacy: We need to feel we have a legitimate reason to intervene. Once challenged, a litterer may ask: what's it got to do with you, buddy? People who do intervene are more likely to reply that they are personally inconvenienced by the uncivil act. Cleaning up their mess costs money and we pay our taxes, plus an untidy environment is unpleasant.
- Getting angry: Feeling anger and disdain were strong predictors that people would intervene. It is when people feel angry that they are most able to overcome the natural tendency to remain passive and avoid attracting attention.
Chaurand and Brauer argue that these three factors suggest ways in which we might all be encouraged to exert social control over our less civilised citizenry. Authorities can remind citizens that removing litter and cleaning up dog poop all costs money - money that comes straight out of our taxes; money that is better spent on schools, hospitals and other public services.
A nudge in the right direction
If you think all of this is pie in the sky, then just look at what Singapore has managed. Singaporeans who litter or spit in the street now face stiff, rigidly enforced penalties, making them one of the most litter-conscious countries in the world. Singapore is now rightly famous for its clean streets.Although many would consider a system of rigidly enforced fines control-freakery, at least the Singaporean experience shows that change is possible. It's the method that needs tweaking.
The Times reports that politicians in both the US and the UK are taking an interest in how social norms can be used to influence the public's behaviour. This interest has been catalysed by a new book from Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein called 'Nudge'. The idea is that people can be 'nudged' towards better choices through social norms and small adjustments.
This new French research provides a strong hint as to how societies can be nudged towards enforcing more civil behaviour through exercising subtle social control. Then perhaps we'll be able to enjoy cleaner streets, graffiti-free walls and altogether more pleasant public environments.
[Image credit: Leo Reynolds]
Reference
Chaurand, N., & Brauer, M. (2008). What Determines Social Control? People's Reactions to Counternormative Behaviors in Urban Environments. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38, 1689-1715.
Infants are Intuitive Physicists: Object Permanence
Professor Renee Baillargeon from the University of Illinois.
Perhaps young infants, brand new in the world, experience their environment as a kind of nonsensical dream in which even the simplest properties of objects surprise them. Wow, they wonder, where does the world go to when I close my eyes?
Or perhaps they do have some intuitive understanding that objects continue to exist even when they can't be directly experienced? This is the question psychologists have been trying to answer while researching what infants in their first year of life understand about 'object permanence'.
Object permanence
Object permanence is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when we can't actually see them. Famous Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget thought that children couldn't properly grasp this concept until they were at least 12 months of age.This idea was challenged by a series of studies carried out by Professor Renee Baillargeon from the University of Illinois and colleagues. These studies used children's apparent surprise at 'impossible' events to try and work out whether they understood object permanence.
A blocked road
In one study infants as young as 6.5 months watched a toy car travelling down a ramp. Half way through its journey, though, it went behind a screen out of the baby's view before exiting the other side, once more visible.In one condition the infants saw a block placed behind the screen in the way of the toy car. And yet when the car was released, experimental trickery was used so that the block didn't stop the car's progress. Miraculously it still appeared from the other side of the screen.
This 'impossible' condition was compared with another condition where the block was placed near, but not in the way of, the car's progress - the 'possible' condition.
Baillargeon found that the infants looked reliably longer at the seemingly impossible scenario. This suggested they understood that the block continued to exist despite the fact they couldn't actually see it. They also must have understood that the car could not pass through the block. This seems like reasonable evidence that infants can understand object permanence.
Simple explanation
In further studies Professor Baillargeon tested all sorts of variations on this theme. Toy rabbits, toy mice and carrots were all used, with some defying the laws of nature in the 'impossible' conditions and others studiously following them in the 'possible' conditions. Each time, though, infants looked longer at the apparently impossible events, perhaps wondering if they were dreaming.These studies have now shown that infants as young as 3.5 months seem to have a basic grasp of object permanence. While others have argued for alternative explanations and interpretations, when all these studies are taken together the idea that children understand object permanence is arguably the simplest explanation.
Intuitive physicists
Using these results Baillargeon and others have argued that young infants are not necessarily trapped in a world of shapes which have little meaning for them. Instead they seem to be intuitive physicists who can carry out rudimentary reasoning about physical concepts like gravity, inertia and object permanence.So, perhaps infants don't perceive the world as a completely nonsensical dream. Sure, they have many new things to learn and many things surprise them, but they do seem to understand some fundamentals about how the world works from very early on.
» Thanks to everyone who has sent in great suggestions of psychobabble you love to hate so far. I'm really enjoying reading them and I'll have fun sharing them with you in a definitive psychobabble post next week. Please keep them coming!
» Read other top 10 child psychology studies on the emergence of infant memory, self-concept, learning, attachment, social behaviour and theory of mind.
Labels: Child Psychology
Psychobabble: Which Expressions Do You Love to Hate?
Do you have issues with your dysfunctional inner child?
My first experience of 'psychobabble' was at school. Kids used to shout an abusive epithet across the playground and when some poor soul turned around to look they all cried in unison, "Complex!", as in the Freudian term 'Oedipus complex'.
As is usually the case with psychobabble it was a technical psychological term used out of context - not that I was sufficiently well-read (or stupid enough) to point that out at the time.
While this example is pretty lowbrow, psychobabble permeates all intellectual strata. Psychological discussions on the street, in print, on TV and online are filled with psychobabble, usually delivered with a straight face.
Sometimes respectable psychological terms escape from their cosy, sheltered academic homes and develop their 'babble' out in the wide world where they're ravaged by the uncultured masses and left almost unrecognisable. Other times the 'babble' is born fully-formed of various gurus, cultists, celebrities, columnists and others.
Here are a few pieces of psychobabble I currently love to hate:
- "Their brains lit up in the scanner." Parts of the brain are said to 'light up' when we remember, lie, do our taxes and, probably, go to the toilet. Surely everyone knows this is just short-hand for increased blood-flow in a certain part of the brain? Do they hell.
- "I'm alive so I must be addicted to breathing." If you do something more than twice a week it's an addiction: from sex, to video games to the internet. Are you a marketer with something to promote? Just use the word addiction and watch those headlines flood in.
- "Thank you for letting me vent." People don't talk about their emotions anymore, they 'vent'. Contrary to the psychobabble, though, people are not like steam engines.
- "You need to engage your right-brain". Refers to the purported importance of the right-side of the brain in creativity. I've moaned about this before.
- "I'm stuck at denial" (without a paddle, ha ha). A reference to Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' 'five stages of grief' which are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance. Dr. Kubler-Ross never suggested one stage had to be completed before the next and there's little evidence for these stages anyway.
Send in your favourite psychobabble
These are just a few to get your bile flowing. Once you've worked yourself up sufficiently please send in your personal favourite(s). It could be psychobabble from any context: work, home, school, childhood, sport, TV - anything you like as long as it has some connection to psychology.Then I'll publish them here as a list and we'll vote for our favourite bit of psychobabble!
Don't forget to include your name, or if you would prefer to submit anonymously then just let me know.
» You can post a comment below or email me directly. Look forward to reading them!
[Image credit: Ozyman]
When Children Begin to Simulate Other Minds
What is he thinking?
Although telepathy is still science fiction most of us can do something clever that, while only a pale imitation, does allow us to step inside other people's minds in a limited way.
We can do this because our brains are fantastic simulators - we can, for example, predict the paths objects will take through space and the decisions we should make now to cause a future event. Similarly, we can put ourselves in other people's shoes to try and imagine their thoughts, intentions and possible actions. In fact without the ability to simulate what other people are thinking we would be lost in the social world.
Theory of mind
Psychologists call this ability to simulate or work out what others are thinking 'theory of mind'. The emergence of theory of mind in children is a vital developmental milestone; some psychologists think that a failure to develop a theory of mind is a central component of autism.The first experiment to provide evidence about when theory of mind emerges using a test of false beliefs was carried out by Heinz Wimmer and Josef Perner from the University of Salzburg (Wimmer & Perner, 1983).
To test the emergence of 'theory of mind' the researchers wanted to find out whether children could pass a false belief test. To pass the test children have to understand that it's possible for other people to hold beliefs that are different to their own. This is a surprisingly tricky task when your brain is so new it's still under warrantee.
Test of false belief
Wimmer and Perner tested children between 3 and 9-years-old by telling them a story about a boy called Maxi whose mother had brought home some chocolate to make a cake. When she gets home Maxi sees her put the chocolate into a blue cupboard. Then Maxi goes out to play.Meanwhile his mother uses the chocolate for the cake but happens to put it back in the green cupboard. When Maxi comes back in he feels hungry and wants some chocolate. The children in the experiment are then asked, not where the chocolate is, but which cupboard Maxi will look in.
In the experiment the story is also acted out using dolls and matchboxes to make the story explicit for the children.
Results
The results showed that 3 to 4-year-olds tended to fail the test by pointing to the actual position of the chocolate rather than where Maxi thought it was. They seemed unable to understand that although they knew where it was, Maxi didn't.Wimmer and Perner (1983) argued that this was because they could not construct a separate mental model of the world that represented Maxi's experience - they weren't capable of a theory of mind.
From about 4 to 5-years-old the situation changed dramatically. Suddenly the children tended to point to the cupboard where Maxi thought the chocolate was, rather than where they knew it was. However in some variations of the experiment children up to 5-years-old still had problems understanding someone else's false belief.
Finally, at 6-years-old, the children did consistently understand that another person can hold a false belief about the world.
End of innocence
This experiment suggested that at about 4 to 6-years old a range of remarkable skills start to emerge in young children that are vital for their successful functioning in society. They begin to understand that others can hold false beliefs, they themselves can lie, and that others can lie to them.From one perspective it is a sad end to innocence, but from another it is a necessary base for a skill required for social success. At around 4-years-old children are starting to understand that we don't live out there in the world, we actually create a model of the world in our heads, a model that can easily be wrong.
Criticisms and alternative explanations
Like many child psychology studies, this experiment has sparked much debate about what its results mean. Here are some of the alternative explanations addressed by the experimenters:- Were the kids concentrating? Yes, they correctly answered questions that showed they were concentrating.
- Had the younger children forgotten the story? No, they were given a memory test which they passed.
- Were the younger children just pointing at where the chocolate was without thinking about the question? In another experiment children were specifically told to stop and think - this didn't help the younger children.
While this experiment has been criticised, and other methods have been developed for examining theory of mind in children, tasks like this one are still in use around the world to this day, helping to uncover how and when we first develop the ability to understand other people's thoughts.
» Read other top 10 child psychology studies on the emergence of infant memory, self-concept, learning, attachment and social behaviour.
[Image credit: Thomas Hawk]
References
Wimmer, H., & Perner, J. (1983). Beliefs about beliefs: representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception. Cognition, 13(1), 103-28.
Labels: Child Psychology
Which Cognitive Enhancers Really Work: Brain Training, Drugs, Vitamins, Meditation or Exercise?
Can 'brain training' software really increase useful, everyday cognitive function?
All kinds of methods for fighting back against this brain-wide slow-down have been suggested. There is training with computer programs, popping pills, taking nutritional supplements, meditating or even getting some more exercise.
Some want to ward off the scourge of a rapidly ageing population: dementia. Others are looking for competitive advantage against younger, faster brains.
So: what to choose? These methods, along with many others, are often presented as though they're all roughly equivalent, but this isn't true. The scientific evidence currently available is much stronger for some of these options than others.
This post examines what the research currently tells us about each method for cognitive enhancement and delivers a verdict on each.
1. Brain training
Computer programs that promise to improve cognitive function have become all the rage in recent years, mostly on the back of the success of Nintendo's 'Brain Age' game. Many other companies have now jumped on the bandwagon and the market for brain fitness software reached $225 million in the US in 2007 according to a report from SharpBrains.But what about the science behind the hype?
Certainly cognitive training has been shown to be effective in a few randomised controlled trials, but the evidence is still quite limited. The first large study in older adults without dementia failed to find an improvement in daily functioning from the training, but it did slow decline. Also, this study's method has been criticised.
Other studies have found benefits for specific groups such as children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and dyslexia. Whether advantages gained by these groups might be effective for others is a matter for debate.
The real challenge for brain training is showing that practising one type of mental skill transfers over into other real-life benefits. Doing puzzles like Sudoku or completing crosswords probably only improves your performance on those specific tasks.
One new study, though, does suggest that training working memory can increase fluid intelligence - what we use to solve problems which don't rely on things we already know. The study, recently published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that gains in fluid intelligence were proportional to the amount of working memory training completed.
Unfortunately this is still early-stage exploratory research and many are not convinced that the actual products available on the market are beneficial. Sandra Aamodt, the editor in chief of Nature Neuroscience and Sam Wang, a Princeton University molecular biologist explain in the New York Times:
"In the United States, consumers are expected to spend $80 million this year on brain exercise products, up from $2 million in 2005. Advertising for these products often emphasizes the claim that they are designed by scientists or based on scientific research. To be charitable, we might call them inspired by science -- not to be confused with actually proven by science."
It's telling that the best-selling brain training software - Nintendo's 'Brain Age' - has the lowest level of clinical validation according to a market report from Sharp Brains.
Verdict: Evidence for the benefits of cognitive training for everyday functioning is still very limited. Brain training software currently available is mostly 'inspired by science' rather than based on it. Treat marketers' claims with extreme scepticism. Side-effects are probably limited to repetitive strain injury and a depleted wallet.
2. Drugs
Until recently the main chemical cognitive enhancer most people used was caffeine. But there are a whole batch of new drugs that could challenge caffeine's dominance as the safe stimulant of choice. Of these, two well-known for their 'off-label' use are Modafinil (also known as Provigil) and Ritalin.Modafinil was originally developed to treat narcolepsy, but is now used by many people as a cognitive enhancer. Studies reported by the Academy of Medical Sciences have shown that Provigil does indeed improve aspects of memory: mainly verbal working memory, planning performance, working memory and executive inhibitory control (ability to stay on-task).
Other important aspects of cognitive function such as attention, however, were not affected by Modafinil. This study found Modafinil did not enhance spatial memory span, rapid visual information processing or attentional set-shifting. This study also found that Modafinil did not enhance attention.
The reason many use Modafinil is that it doesn't seem to have any short- or long-term side-effects and it is not addictive (although it's lack of side-effects may well have been exaggerated). For example it doesn't increase blood-pressure or heart-rate, as caffeine does. It may give you a headache, though, just like caffeine.
Ritalin was originally developed to treat ADHD yet adults have begun using it as a cognitive enhancer. It seems to work best in young people, enhancing spatial working memory and cognitive flexibility. Effects on other aspects of cognition such as verbal learning and long-term memory are relatively small.
In most people Ritalin tends to improve mood, increase activity and arousal, but it's effects are more varied and can include anxiety, tiredness and lowered mood.
Verdict: Amongst the chemical cognitive enhancers Modafinil is currently fashionable for grown-ups. But is it really that much better than caffeine? This study and this study suggest that in warding off sleep Modafinil is no more effective than caffeine - and caffeine is legal and readily available. Probably better to stick to tea or coffee.
3. Nutritional supplements
There are all kinds of claims for the abilities of nutritional supplements to enhance cognition. For example, vitamin B6 has been found to enhance memory (but far from conclusively) and there are many other claims being made by marketers for vitamins E, B12, folate, neurosteroids and so on.However, in reviewing the research the Academy of Medical Sciences points out that most of the studies are few, far between and small in scope.
Verdict: Unproven, but probably not dangerous as long as you're not exceeding the recommended daily allowances. On the downside supplements can be costly.
4. Meditation
Meditation, like nutritional supplements, is another modern cure-all, but what does the evidence tell us about its effect on cognitive function? A forthcoming review of the research published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences looks at the effects of meditation on cognitive function.There is some limited evidence that meditation can benefit cognitive function overall, and memory in particular. But this research is at a very early stage and needs to be replicated by different researchers.
A major problem in this research is the fact that there are many different types of meditation. It might be that there is some kind of common active ingredient in meditation, but this has yet to be identified.
Verdict: Meditation still has to be considered unproven as a cognitive enhancer but it probably won't do you any harm, plus it's free.
5. Exercise
Whether you're old or young, fit or even suffering from a neurodegenerative disorder, aerobic exercise has been found to be beneficial for cognitive health. Randomised controlled trials, along with reviews of many of these trials (such as this one in Neuromolecular Medicine), have shown that exercise improves cognitive function across the board. It has also been found to be particularly good at enhancing executive control processes (e.g. planning and working memory).Exercise is also thought to encourage the growth of new brain cells. In the past scientists always thought that neurogenesis - growing new brain cells - was impossible in humans. New studies, though, have shown that we can grow new brain cells.
Research reviewed in Neuromolecular Medicine suggests physical exercise can promote neurogenesis in the hippocampus - an area of the brain thought to be important in memory and learning.
Verdict: The evidence for exercise boosting cognitive function is head-and-shoulders above that for brain training, drugs, nutritional supplements and meditation. Scientifically, on the current evidence, exercise is the best way to enhance your cognitive function. And as for its side-effects: yes there is the chance of an injury but exercise can also reduce weight, lower the chance of dementia, improve mood and lead to a longer life-span. Damn those side-effects!
The results are in (for now)
Even though exercise is the current winner for enhancing cognition, this might change in the future. Maybe better drugs for enhancing brain function will be developed - possibly en route to improved treatments for conditions like Alzheimer's. Or maybe studies on nutritional supplements, brain training software or particular forms of meditation may provide firmer evidence.Maybe.
On current evidence exercise is clearly the best method for increasing useful everyday cognitive functioning. And in the future we may even have exercise regimes that are specifically targeted at enhancing cognitive function.