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The Psychology of Internet Dating

[Internet Dating Focus] You're single, perhaps painfully so. The large pool of potential partners that school or university provided is starting to seem like it was a lifetime ago. You've moved to an unfamiliar city for work or to get away from the past. You stick to your tried and trusted old friends and there seems little chance of meeting new people. Internet dating may look like a good option, a last hope even, of meeting some new people.

Encouraging research from the University of Bath suggests that internet dating might be more than a passing fad. A new survey asked 229 internet daters about their experiences of internet dating. What relationships had they had online? How long did they last? Was it all a complete waste of time and money? The results were perhaps surprisingly upbeat. 94% or people who had built up a significant online relationship went on to meet up more than once in real life.
"The more the couple engaged in simultaneous online chat before meeting rather than simply e-mailing one another, the more they were found to depend on one another emotionally and the more they understood one another."
Related article: Reasons For Online Dating Vary Widely

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Left blind-spot 'gives ADHD clue'

"Children who "miss" things on their left field of vision may have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Medical Research Council scientists say."
From BBC News

Panic Attacks and the Rise of CBT

A panic attack is a frightening experience - your heart begins to race and you feel as if you are about to die. The sufferer does not usually have a real reason to panic, the dangers are 'all in the mind', but the experience is very real. Research in the US has found that, of the patients arriving at A&E thinking they are having a heart attack, one in four is actually having a panic attack.

In treating panic attacks, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) has proven extremely effective. The treatment consists of two parts. The cognitive part addresses the question of why the patient feels they are about to die. For example I may be convinced that if I go outside I will die. At a rational level I may well realise that this will not happen. At another level, the causality might seem very real to me. The therapists job is point out the inconsistencies in my thought processes.

The behavioural part of the therapy is all about training the body to relax, rather than allowing the sensations of panic to spiral out of control. Think of this as akin to Pavlov teaching his dog to salivate when he rang a bell.

Researchers are still not quite sure whether it is the behavioural part or the cognitive part of the therapy that is most effective. Either way, when combined, the therapy has been shown to be extremely effective in treating panic attacks.
Panic attacks article from American Academy of Family Physicians

Leaving a Bitter Taste in the Mouth

You know that old philosophical question: How do I know we both see the same colour when we look up at a blue sky? Some research just published asks the same type of question, but of our sense of taste.

The study shows that our tongues respond quite differently to a particular bitter taste synthesised in the laboratory. In fact, some people are a 1,000 times more sensitive to this chemical than others. This seems to be a direct result of genetic differences between us.

It's this kind of research that underlines the fact that our most basic senses can differ in fundamental ways.
A summary of the research and the full heavyweight report

I'll Be There in About Ten Minutes

How much money will you have next week? How much time will you have next week? Chances are you are thinking much more time than money according to a study published this week. And if you're unemployed then you're probably right. Otherwise you're probably wrong. To the human mind, time really doesn't equal money - we treat the two quantities in quite different ways.

From The New York Times (Free registration required)

Tall Babies Earn More Later in Life

The link between height and earnings is well established. Studies in the US have shown that people earn an extra £500 a year for each additional inch in height. Now, here's the same research, but this time for babies.

You can see this principle informally on any urban underground line as it travels rapidly between areas of differing affluence. As the train moves into the more affluent areas, the passengers boarding the train get significantly taller.

A note of caution: This type of research only shows an association, it doesn't mean that one thing causes the other. So don't put your children on the rack - unless they're really annoying you.
From BBC News

Persuasion: You Are Gullible, I'm Not

Whether we realise it or not, we all spend a fair chunk of our day trying to influence each other. "Why don't you make us both a cup of tea?" Or perhaps, "Why don't we invade Iraq?"

How easy, though, do we think other people are influenced? Social psychologists have discovered that when estimating how much other people are influenced by undersirable media messages, we generally over-estimate. When the message is positive, however, we will tend to under-estimate it's effect on others, and over-estimate it on us. In other words, we have a very high opinion of our own critical abilities.

New research has confirmed this effect and clarified it. This was done by measuring the actual amount of influence rather than just the perception of the influence. The study found that people are, in fact, mostly under-estimating their own persuasability rather than over-estimating the persuasability of others. It also highlighted how bad we are at judging and reporting the beliefs that we used to hold before we were influenced.

The moral of the story is this: you're more gullible than you think you are (and so am I!)
Abstract from the British Journal of Social Psychology

Important Eurovision research

"Dr Bruine de Bruin, a researcher in social and division sciences, analysed results from the...Eurovision Song Contests between 1957 and 2003."

"...on average, the last competitor to appear in the Eurovision Song Contest was more than twice as likely to win as the one who went on first. The first candidate had only a six per cent chance of winning, compared with a 13 per cent chance for the final contestant."

No. I'm not going to give you any links to the Eurovision site or make any comment about Jordan. That would only encourage you.
From The Telegraph

Autistic savant explains his incredible abilities

"Daniel Tammet is an autistic savant. He can perform mind-boggling mathematical calculations at breakneck speeds. But unlike other savants, who can perform similar feats, Tammet can describe how he does it. He speaks seven languages and is even devising his own language. Now scientists are asking whether his exceptional abilities are the key to unlock the secrets of autism."

From The Guardian

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Antidepressant - suicide link reassessed

New research published in the BMJ this week reviews years of research into the link between antidepressants and suicide. The results are mixed and the statistics are open to intepretation. So some of the papers (*SIGH*) go with the usual option of putting the word 'fear' in the headline to cover their ignorance. I wonder if their aim is to inform, entertain or scare the living bejesus out of anyone taking them?

When the results cannot be summarised in one sentence, even a very long Guardian sentence, the papers get confused. One of the few papers that has actually written something intelligent about the study is, yet again, the New York Times.
From the New York Times (Free registration required)

Hocus pocus: x-ray eyes and spoon-bending

Did you know they've taken the word 'gullible' out of the dicitonary? This one went around endlessly at school and I almost fell for it the first time, but never again. Why would I?

And so I seque mysteriously (yet relevantly) into the Channel 4 'Bodyshocks' series of documentaries. This week's programme focussed on 'the girl with the x-ray eyes'. Natasha, a seventeen-year-old from Russia claims to literally see inside people in order to diagnose their medical conditions. Having submitted to the skeptic's tests, she was debunked, but not entirely satisfactorily.

And now my final, and not so mysterious seque, is into Professor Richard Wiseman's research into spoonbending. He had two sets of undergrads witness the trick. In half, the wannabe Yuri suggested that the spoon continued to bend after he put it down. Sure enough 40% reported the spoon continuing to bend - as if by magic.
Read on about why the debunking might not have been satisfactory.

The horny newt and other tales of animal personality

The assertiveness of hyenas, the emotionalality of rats, the timidity of mice, the sociability of yellow-bellied marmots, the anxiousness of pigs, the agitatedness of cows, the obduracy of donkeys (well what else?), the fearfulness of rhinoceri, the confidence of zebra finches, and, of course, the randiness of newts.

Research into the 'personalities' of a variety of different animals has been going on for a century. It wasn't until recently, however, that psychologists began to ask whether this research might illuminate the study of human personality traits.

The criticisms of this line of thinking are all too obvious. Hyenas can't talk (only laugh), pigs are don't have to work in open-plan offices (although they may prefer it to their current lot) and newts can't repeatedly forget important anniversaries. So what exactly can any of these species tell us about the human personality if they don't have to deal with human problems?

Science has always been keen to understand human kind through the study of simpler creatures. Whether we like it or not, many medical breakthroughs have been made through experimentation on animals - and let's face it, we humans are nothing more than the third chimpanzee.

Article abstract
BBC News report on dog personalities
NYT article about birds

Feminine features on men more attractive

New research, "...suggest that males with more feminine features are more widely attractive to women. Women who consider themselves highly attractive however, are more likely to go for classically masculine faces."
From (the excellent) Mind Hacks blog

Are you 'Information Literate'?

It's much easier to make a credible looking website than it is to make a credible looking book. So when you're on the web, how do you evaluate the credibility of the information you've found? On average, it seems, not very well!

Research carried out a couple of years ago found that people use only superficial cues when making judgements about a site. In other words, if it looks professional, then it is. People are generally 'cognitive misers', tending not to check the credentials of the author or their motivation in making the information available. The new buzz phrase for this type of skill is 'information literacy'.

One immediate practical implication is that every organisation needs a professional looking website or visitors won't take it seriously.
From the New York Times (Free registration required)

Spray your way to orgasm

A note of caution has been sounded for two drugs that claim to help female sexual dysfunction. Petra Boynton, the sex and relationship psychologist, denounces the media's uncritical presentation of the 'Intrinsia' hormone patch and Acrux's 'orgasm in a spray', saying:
"We're being conned into thinking all our sexual problems are hormonally based and require medical treatment. We need to ask in whose interest is it for us to think that?"
And more worryingly:
"What these drug companies don't tell women is if their sexual problems aren't linked to testosterone deficiency, and they start taking testosterone, they could experience side effects including increased growth of facial hair, losing head hair, deepening voice, and acne."
From Dr Petra Boynton's Blog

Handwriting interpretation consistent - but still wrong

Earlier in the month I reported that graphology, or handwriting analysis, has zero validity. Despite this, some businesses continue to use it in personnel selection.

Raj Persaud, writing in The Guardian, takes this point a little further by explaining why graphology proves so attractive to the popular consciousness. According to a new study, even those untrained in graphology tend to interpret people's handwriting in a consistent fashion. For example if you have untidy handwriting most people, on this evidence alone, would tend to characterise you as depressed. Simply because our interpretation is consistent, we have a tendency to think 'there might be something in it'. But there isn't anything in it at all.

Persaud compares graphology to phrenology - the Victorian obsession of analysing personality from the bumps on your head.
From The Guardian

Choosing your mate in three seconds

Researchers studying speed dating have found we might not need the full 3 minutes to size up a potential partner.
"Although they had three minutes, most participants made their decision based on the information that they probably got in the first three seconds," Kurzban said. "Somewhat surprisingly, factors that you might think would be really important to people, like religion, education and income, played very little role in their choices."
> From the University of Pennsylvania

St John's wort better than Seroxat

"A specially prepared extract of the herb St John's wort is at least as effective in treating depression as the powerful antidepressant drug Seroxat and has fewer side-effects, a study has indicated."

For a little more background on St John's wort (left) have a look at the Netdoctor site.
> From The Independent and Netdoctor

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Me funny man, you giggling Jane

Evidence, if it were needed, that women like men who make them laugh, and men like women who laugh at their jokes.

What's really entertaining about this story is that previously this researcher had found the exact opposite. In an attempt to explain the counter-intuitive nature of the original results, he claims that the stimuli used were of poor quality. In other words, he'd had trouble coming up with something funny to show his participants.

It's tragic, and it's funny.
> From Plebius Press

The next scientific revolution

The Guardian asks leading scientist to gaze into their crystal balls and ruminate on the next scientific revolution. V S Ramachandran, the neuroscientist, comes up with my favourite quote:

"The next revolution will be understanding the organ that made all the previous revolutions possible. Your mind, your ambitions, your love life, even what you regard as yourself, all of it is the activity of little wisps of jelly in your head. Once we figure out the code, that's going to be a big revolution and another humbling experience. The ultimate triumph of the human mind is to understand what the mind is."

> From The Guardian

Our psychological immune system

An excellent New Yorker article from Malcolm Gladwell arguing that the mind, when faced with psychological trauma, is suprisingly resilient. What's more, here is a writer who is prepared to research the psychological literature to back up his arguments. And he can write. It's a miracle!

If you've heard his name and can't quite place him then, he's the author of a new book on 'rapid cognition', called Blink.
> From The New Yorker

Awareness May Remain After Severe Brain Injury

"Patients in a minimally conscious state (MCS) -- those with severe brain damage who demonstrate intermittent awareness of their environment -- may retain some degree of cognitive function, even though they can't follow simple instructions or communicate, the findings from a small study suggest."
> From Yahoo News

Illness and your state of mind

This is speculative stuff, with many studies disagreeing. Still, can it hurt to be in a positive frame of mind, if at all possible?
"There is growing evidence that a patient's outlook on life can affect their chances of recovering from disease. And having negative thoughts could even make you sick."
> From The Independent

Left and right, a battle for the truth

Bad BBC News! Bad! Bad! The idea that the left hemisphere of the brain is solely responsible for language functions is wrong. The idea that the brains of all left-handers are functionally reversed is wrong. The idea that left-handers are likely to die younger or are more susceptible to disease is also wrong. The BBC news site manages to make two of these mistakes in reporting research from Nature Neuroscience.

The first two of these popular ideas, as ever, have a kernal of truth but are considerable simplifications of a complicated picture. The last idea is just plain wrong. If you don't believe me then read Chris McManus' excellent 'Right Hand, Left Hand'.
> From the (usually excellent) BBC News site

Neuroplasticity, evidence from rats and monks

The green box contains a brand new rat neuron. Why is this important? Well, until quite recently researchers were unsure of two things: whether it's possible for the brain to change and whether it can grow new cells. With the help of rats and monks, the answer is emerging: quite possibly yes.

This phenomenon is called neuroplasticity and is all the rage in neuropsychology at the moment. As none of us are getting any younger, it's good to know our brains still have the capacity for change.
> Read about rats in Science Daily, and monks in the Orlando Sentinel

The new science of happiness

For the last century or more, psychology has focussed on mental illness. It's challenge has been to help people with their problems, and to bring them back to 'normality' - whatever that is!

It wasn't until the late-90s that psychologists studying the science of happiness started to hit the headlines. Time magazine describes some of their surprising findings. One of my favourites is the idea that pleasure is not actually an important component of happiness.
> From Time Magazine

Alexander Shulgin, the godfather of Ecstasy

Ecstasy's emergence as a popular recreational drug can be traced back to one man. Although the drug was first synthesised by Merck in 1914, it was initially thought to be useless, and immediately forgotten. It wasn't until 1976 that an eccentric chemist, Alexander Shulgin (above), resynthesised it on the suggestion of a former student.

Shulgin wasn't particularly impressed with its effect, describing it as being like "...a particularly lucid alcohol buzz," but he did find that, "It opened up a person, both to other people and inner thoughts..." He wondered if perhaps it would be useful in psychotherapy and recommended its use. By the late 70s a number of therapists were encouraging their patients to use it - and with some success. In the following decades word eventually spread, and its recreational use began to take off.

Meanwhile Shulgin continued to research hallucinogens, synthesising and testing them first on himself, then on his wife and friends. He carefully catalogued the effects of every single one in his self-published works, 'Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved,' and 'Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved'.

Unsurprisingly, Shulgin has now become a hero of the counter-culture.
> From The New York Times [Free registration required]

Alcohol is a bigger killer than tobacco

Yesterday I posted research giving a big clue about the causes of excessive alcohol consumption. Today I read that an international team of doctors has worked out that alcohol is a bigger killer than tobacco. What, the authors ask, can we do to stop binge drinking?
'Professor Ian Gilmore, chairman of the Royal College of Physicians' alcohol committee, said: "There has been very little relevant research in this country, so we don't know why we drink the way we do and how we could change the culture."'
Very little relevant research. Oh really? Their solution is to raise the price of alcohol by 10%, restrict its availability and maintain draconian licensing laws. I'm not convinced. In Norway you have to remortgage your house to afford a beer, and they binge more than we do in the UK.
> From BBC News

Beliefs about alcohol predict binge drinking

With changes proposed to the licensing laws in the UK there's been lots of talk about binge drinking. The suggestion is that opening the pubs and bars at all hours will encourage binge drinking.

This is the same as saying that increasing the number of gyms will make us more healthy, or lowering the price of sofas will make us more lazy, or paying lawyers the same as binmen will decrease their number and make us less litigious and argumentative.

The answer to all these: it might but it won't necessarily.

Research carried out on students into binge drinking - and after all these guys are professionals - suggests that it has much more to do with our expectations for drinking. The student's belief that it made them more attractive, socially inviting and articulate, was directly predicting how much they drank.

Remember, reality is often not as important as our beliefs in affecting our behaviour.
> The abstract from the Journal of Addictive Behaviours
> You can check whether you're a binge drinker on the BBC site

Accurate judgement in the blink of an eye

Ever since I can remember, people have been going on about the importance of first impressions. Apparently we make our mind up about each other in the blink of an eye. Well, new evidence suggests that we simply don't need any longer. In this research students could judge a lecturer's quality as accurately after 10 seconds as they could after an entire term.

It's asking for a joke about students, isn't it? No, I just can't think of it.
> From Tufts Daily

Scrap 'unethical' mental health bill, doctors urge

"A controversial bill to reform mental health law is so draconian, unethical and impractical that ministers should scrap it and start afresh, doctors' leaders said today."
> From The Guardian

The new Volkswagen ad

My Dad is occasionally heard to mutter that TV programmes nowadays can't compete with the adverts. In this case, he's right.
> From The Guardian, you can download the ad here.

Heightism applies to women as well as men

"Both men and women judge a tall female on first sight as more intelligent, assertive, independent and ambitious. For good measure, they are also judged richer and more successful, whatever the reality."
> From The Independent

Graphology has zero validity (it's rubbish)

According to this report on BBC News there are 3,000 businesses in the UK that use graphology (handwriting analysis) as part of the recruitment process. I am astounded.

Back when I was at school, I had an English teacher who was learning graphology. She took a look at my scrawling and told me that I was becoming more outgoing. I was astounded, how could she tell that just from handwriting? Then she stopped, looked at it again and corrected herself. Or, she said, perhaps it's the opposite.

Obviously this is only anecdotal evidence, but what else is there? Well, after reviewing the research, the British Psychological Society has ranked all the procedures used in personnel selection in order of validity. Graphology shares its ranking position with astrology: zero validity.

So if your organisation uses this as a method of selecting new recruits, and you don't work for the British Institute of Graphologists, then it's time to think again.

» Read on about the connections between handwriting and personality.