On the Tip-of-the-Tongue: Blocked Memories

Castanets

What is this instrument called? Is it on the tip of your tongue?

"What's the name of that guy who was in that film with...you know the one...he's...no, no it's not Denzel Washington, the other guy. Oh God, I know it, it's right there. This is driving me crazy...! I can see his face. This is ridiculous! No, not Denzel Washington!"

The tip-of-the-tongue or 'TOT' phenomenon is now well-documented in psychology. It is a very common example of what Daniel L. Schacter calls 'blocking', one of the seven sins of memory (Schacter, 1999). It's the subjective experience that the memory is right there and yet for some reason you can't quite access it.

Sometimes all you can think about is something similar, say another actor who is often in the same types of films. It's this memory that seems to block the retrieval of the one you really want. Other times there's apparently nothing blocking the memory's retrieval other than your mind's stubborn refusal.

Studies on blocking have shown that around half of the time we will become 'unblocked' after about a minute. The rest of the time it may take days to recover the memory.

As anyone getting on in years will tell you, blocking increases with age. Older adults certainly experience more problems recalling names than younger adults. One study finds college students have one or two TOTs a week, while older adults have between two to four per week.

The taste of words on the tip of the tongue


One fascinating aspect of the 'TOT' phenomenon is the study of synaesthetes. Synaesthesia is a fairly common condition where people have a cross-wiring in their brains between senses. This means that people with synaesthesia may experience numbers as colours, sounds as images or even words as tastes.

This last category, a rare form known as lexical-gustatory synaesthesia, provides an opportunity to study the TOT phenomenon in an unusual way. Simner and Ward (2006) figured that if the cross-wiring in synaesthetes' brains turns words into tastes, perhaps they would literally be able to taste words that are on the tips of their tongues before they could even recall the word itself.

Magically, there's evidence this really does happen.

Simner and Ward (2006) set about inducing TOT states in the lab by showing 6 participants with this rare form of synaesthesia pictures of unusual objects, such as a platypus. In some trials, the experimenters managed to successfully induce a TOT state in the synaesthetes.

Amazingly, these lexical-gustatory synaesthetes did actually feel a taste on their tongues as they struggled for the word to describe the picture. In one case a participant tasted tuna when she was trying to remember the word 'castanet'.

To check the answers were correct, participants were asked after the study which taste they associated with each word in the study. The tastes they reported being on the tip of their tongues matched up with their word-taste associations.

But what if the synaesthetes are just making these tastes up? Well, to check, the experimenters called them up more than a year later in a surprise retest. Sure enough, the participant who reported that the word 'castanets' was associated with the taste of tuna, still did so, even after a year. Similarly, the other 5 synaesthetes in the study all consistently reported their particular connections between tastes and words.

While these sorts of experiences are alien to the majority of us, Simner and Ward suggest that this link between words and tastes may nevertheless be active in all of us, but at an unconscious level.

I've remembered, it's Will Smith!


So how do we finally remember what's on the tip of our tongues? One theory has it that our memory can be jogged by hearing a word that sounds similar. (James & Burke, 2000). While this is probably true, in real life it's just plain good luck if our memory is jogged by the environment. Nowadays, though, we have a new tool for resolving those tip-of-the-tongue nuisances: look it up on the internet.

This post is part of a series on the seven sins of memory:
  1. How Quickly We Forget: The Transience of Memory
  2. Absent-Mindedness: A Blessing in Disguise?
  3. » On the Tip-of-the-Tongue: Blocked Memories
  4. How Memories are Distorted or Invented: Misattribution
  5. When Suggestibility is a Liability: Wrongful Convictions
  6. How the Consistency Bias Warps Our Personal and Political Memories
  7. The Persistence of Memory



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References

James, L. E., & Burke, D. M. (2000). Phonological priming effects on word retrieval and tip-of-the-tongue experiences in young and older adults. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 1378-1391.

Schacter, D. L. (1999). The seven sins of memory. Insights from psychology and cognitive neuroscience. American Psychologist, 54, 182-203.

Simner, J., & Ward, J. (2006). Synaesthesia: The taste of words on the tip of the tongue. Nature, 444, 438.

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Absent-Mindedness: A Blessing in Disguise?

Memory head

This is the second in a series on the 7 deadly sins of memory. In this one, absent-mindedness: how we would forget our heads if they weren't screwed on and why absent-mindedness could be a blessing in disguise.

We've all done it: forgotten someone's name, where we parked the car, or left the house without the front-door key. These are all examples of Schacter's (1999) second sin of memory: absent-mindedness.

While the first post in the series looked at the transience of memory, how memory degrades over time, absent-mindedness occurs when we're not really concentrating in the first place.

There are two central factors in how and why we are absent-minded. One is how deeply we encode a memory, the other is how much attention we're paying at the crucial moment. Let's look at attention first.

Attention: Gorillas in our midst


One of the most striking experimental demonstrations of how central attention is to absent-mindedness is seen in psychology experiments on change-blindness. In one well-known example, participants watch a video of people passing a basketball between each other, and they are asked to count the number of passes. I've been a participant in this experiment, and it worked like a treat on me.

I sat watching the video, counting the passes. Then, after the video was finished, I was asked if I noticed anything unusual. I was completely bemused: "What do you mean anything 'unusual'," I said. "I've just seen people passing a basketball to each other. What are you talking about?"

The experimenter smiled and set the video clip running again, but this time with no instructions to count the passes. I watched in amazement as after about 30 seconds of people passing the basketball, a person dressed in a gorilla suit walks right through the centre of the scene, stops, turns, looks at the camera, then turns again and walks out of shot. The gorilla is visible for fully 5 seconds. I didn't notice a thing.

And I'm not alone. In the version carried out by Simons and Chabris (1999), on average around half the people who took part didn't notice the gorilla. The original version of this experiment was carried out more than 30 years ago, but it still has the power to amaze (Neisser & Becklen, 1975).

The door study


Another well-known demonstration of how absent-minded we can be is the 'door study'. Here unwitting students are asked by an experimenter for directions. While they are talking, two men carrying a door walk between the experimenter and the student. Also hiding behind the door is another person who swaps places with the original experimenter and carries on the conversation with the student.

The student is now continuing the conversation with someone completely different. Do they notice?

Like the gorilla experiment, only about half the students notice that they were actually talking to a different person. Another failure of attention.

Memory encoding: depth of processing


The second element vital to absent-mindedness is the depth at which we process information. This is demonstrated by a classic experiment carried out by Craik and Tulving (1975). They set about testing the strength of memory traces created using three different levels of processing:
  1. Shallow processing: participants were shown a word and asked to think about the font it was written in.
  2. Intermediate processing: participants were shown a word and asked to think about what it rhymes with.
  3. Deep processing: participants were shown a word and asked to think about how it would fit into a sentence, or which category of 'thing' it was.

Participants who had encoded the information most deeply, remembered the most words when given a surprise test later. But it also took them longer to encode the information in the first place.

Crucially, though, participants also had to do the right type of encoding. For example pondering a word's meaning for a long time did help its recall, but putting equivalent effort into thinking about its structure didn't help recall.

Prospective memory lapses


We're not always trying to remember something we've already been exposed to, sometimes we're trying to remember to do something in the future. This is what psychologists call prospective memory.

Call your mother after supper. Fill up the car with petrol on the way home from work. Buy those concert tickets at the weekend. Drain the pasta in 8 minutes. Take the medication at 12pm. All these tasks involve us setting ourselves a mental alarm clock that is either triggered by some event occurring, like finishing supper, or by a particular time.

Psychologists have found the ways in which we are absent-minded in prospective memory can depend on whether we are trying to remember a future event or a future time. Normally we depend on external cues to jog our memories. For example we drive past the petrol station, or write a note to ourselves to buy the tickets.

We tend to forget event-based prospective memories when we fail to spot the cue. For example we don't notice the petrol station on the way home as we are distracted by an accident on the other side of the road. Time-based prospective memories, though, depend more on how good we are at generating cues for ourselves. For example you might remember to take your medication at the same time by always doing it after lunch.

Absent-mindedness: curse or blessing?


Given our propensity for absent-mindedness, it's sometimes amazing that anything run by humans works at all. Slips of memory in so many different types of vital activities - e.g. surgeon, train driver, pilot - can have disastrous consequences. The fact that things often run smoothly shows we are remarkably adept at focussing when we need to and attending to important cues in our environment.

Absent-mindedness might even be seen as a blessing. The case of the Russian journalist Solomon Shereshevskii illustrates the point dramatically.

Shereshevskii's memory was so perfect he could remember everything that was said to him and maybe even everything that had ever happened to him. Tested by the famous neuropsychologist, Alexander Luria, no limit could be found to his memory.

But this amazing gift had its down-side. He found it difficult to ignore insignificant events. As a result, a simple cough would be imprinted on his memory forever. Also, all his memories were so highly detailed that he found it difficult to think in the abstract. It can be difficult to think about the idea of, say, a bridge if your mind is immediately assaulted by hundreds of specific examples of bridges.

It is reported that Shereshevskii became so tortured with the accumulation of memories that he developed a special technique to help him forget. He would imagine the memories he wanted to ditch written on a blackboard and then mentally erase them. This seemed to work for him.

Perhaps we should be thankful for our absent-mindedness. It saves us from remembering all of life's crushingly dull moments as well as setting us free to think in abstract terms.

This post is part of a series on the seven sins of memory:
  1. How Quickly We Forget: The Transience of Memory
  2. » Absent-Mindedness: A Blessing in Disguise?
  3. On the Tip-of-the-Tongue: Blocked Memories
  4. How Memories are Distorted or Invented: Misattribution
  5. When Suggestibility is a Liability: Wrongful Convictions
  6. How the Consistency Bias Warps Our Personal and Political Memories
  7. The Persistence of Memory

» If you enjoyed this post, subscribe to PsyBlog (RSS).

[Image credit: slo]


References

Craik, F. I. M., & Tulving, E. (1975). Depth of Processing and the Retention of Words in Episodic Memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 104, 268-294.

Neisser, U., & Becklen, R., (1975) Selective looking: Attending to visually specified events. Cognitive Psychology, 7, 480-494

Schacter, D. L. (1999). The seven sins of memory. Insights from psychology and cognitive neuroscience. American Psychologist, 54, 182-203.

Simons, D. J., & Chabris, C. F. (1999). Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events. Perception, 28, 1059-74.

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The New Science of Happiness

Euphoria

A new and blossoming field of psychology - positive psychology - has begun to uncover fascinating, evidence-based answers to many questions about happiness. I've been sizing up the most recent findings to reveal the emerging science of happiness.

What are the everyday sources of happiness?


Because happiness is something most of us aim for, how we define it has important implications for how we conduct our lives. To see why, compare these two competing definitions of happiness.

Happiness is not just a headlong charge towards whatever makes us feel pleasure, it is about finding satisfaction in ourselves and in what we have done. But what can modern psychological research tells us about the everyday sources of happiness? These three articles explore this question:

How can happiness be increased?


Since most of us want to be happy, what practical steps does psychological research suggest we can take to increase our happiness?


Is being happy any use?


Is there an optimum level of happiness and will happiness help us succeed in life?

Happiness advice: ancient and modern


Advice on how to live the good life comes from many different countries and cultures around the world. There's self-help advice from the ancient Greeks, the ancient Chinese, 19th Century German philosophers and modern Americans, to name only a few.

But how does all this advice compare with what we observe today about the conditions of happiness? As you'll see, some advice certainly fares better than others:


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[Image credit: Kalos Eidos]

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How to Be Happy, Confucian Style

Cycling

"The one who would be in constant happiness must frequently change." --Confucius

In China two and half thousand years ago one man, Kong Qui, and his followers, synthesised the traditions of the Chinese people to create what they believed were the fundamental principles of humanity. Of course what Westerners now call Confucianism has changed over the years, just like the other major philosophies that have flourished in the East: Buddhism and Taoism. But to have survived this long, these systems of thought must have at their cores a useful set of principles that help people live the 'good life'.

Following on from previous posts on philosophers Epicurus and Schopenhauer, as well as the modern obsession with self-help books, I look at what Ancient Chinese philosophies have to teach us about how to be happy.

In an article in the Journal of Happiness Studies, Zhang and Veenhoven (in press) compare the ancient Chinese versions of Taosim, Buddhism and Confucianism with the modern conditions of happiness. They use findings from the multitude of studies collected in the World Database of Happiness to reach the conclusion that, compared to ancient Buddhism and Taoism, it is Confucius' philosophical teachings that are most likely to lead to a happy life.

So, here (briefly) is Confucius' advice on how to live the good life, contrasted with some of the tenets of Taoism and Buddhism.

1. Invest in intimate ties


Confucianism's view of life is built on the idea of 'Jen'. This means a feeling of concern for the wellbeing of others. Those following Confucianism should bring Jen into both their social relations and, so far as they are able, into society itself.

Compared with the modern observed conditions of happiness this looks like good advice. Generally speaking marriage makes us happier, more friends make us happier and people are especially happy if they have someone to confide in. Classical Taoism goes along with this point but ancient Buddhism runs counter to the evidence, advising the avoidance of intimate ties.

2. Embrace society


Society is accepted within Confucianism and the philosophy encourages its followers to engage in it. Looking at the research, this is also good advice. People who are members of clubs, churches and other organisations are happier, people who have a job are happier, and so on. The evidence shows that this is also true at a societal level. Countries in which people have the densest networks of friends are also those in which people are the happiest.

In comparison, ancient Taoism says retreat to nature and Buddhism says withdraw completely from society - both these points of view are suspect if happiness is your goal.

3. Be successful


Confucianism recommends a devotion to your occupation. The wealth earned from working is also seen in a positive light within Confucianism. Generally speaking people with more money and higher status are happier (but bear in mind that more money doesn't always equal more happiness). In contrast both ancient Taoism and Buddhism are sniffy about earnings.

4. Have fun


Confucius thought moderate amounts of fun were acceptable. This is backed up by modern research finding that people who engage in pleasurable activities are happier (I know, surprise surprise!). Follow-up studies show no long-term disadvantages to a bit of short-term fun. So there's no point rejecting the possibility of happiness, as does ancient Chinese Buddhism, which warns that the pursuit of happiness will only end in disappointment.

5. Live healthily


Still in the land of the blindingly obvious - yes, people who are healthier are happier. Still, just because the advice is obvious doesn't mean it's any less relevant, or any more likely for people to actually act on! Despite this the self-evident nature of this advice, ancient Chinese Buddhism actually recommends physical privation. Again, we'll stick with Confucius on this one.

6. Meet your obligations


One of the most important aspects of ancient Chinese Confucianism is a sense of duty and responsibility. There's some sparse evidence from the individual level that this might lead to greater happiness. At a societal level, however, people who live in collectivist societies, like the Chinese, tend to be less happier than those who live in individualistic societies. This may be because collectivist societies stifle the individual's search for self-actualisation.

7. School yourself


You've guessed it, the well-educated are also happier. On the other hand education mostly contributes to happiness by enabling you to get a better job, and lots of education doesn't necessarily lead to more happiness. One thing is clear though, it is better to live in a more educated society, even if others are more educated than us.

Education is partly endorsed by Taoism, while classical Buddhism advises avoiding school completely. Again, Confucianism wins on this one.

Ancient wisdom


Perhaps it is no surprise that the man who the West knows as 'Confucius' is revered by many as the 'Ancient Teacher' and 'Perfect Sage'. I'm particularly impressed with the prescient quote at the top of the article. This clearly anticipates modern research finding that we quickly get used to new positive experiences so that they no longer continue to increase our happiness.

On the other hand it's important to note that these comparisons are made on the basis of the ancient Chinese versions of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. There is a considerable variation within each of these schools of thought - so much so that for the present purposes the modern versions might as well be completely different schools of philosophy.

Ancient Buddhism does fare badly in this comparison, but people do vary considerably in what they want from philosophical teachings. Not everyone's main aim in life may be to achieve happiness, some may place a higher value on different goals.

» Discover more articles in this series on the new science of happiness.

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[Image credit: gwenddydd]

Reference

Zhang, G., & Veenhoven, R. (in press) Ancient Chinese philosophical advice: can it help us find happiness today? Journal of Happiness Studies, 1-19.

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How Quickly We Forget: The Transience of Memory

Canoeing

This is the first in a new series on the 7 deadly sins of memory. First up, how the passage of time affects our memories.

My memory continues to surprise me, and not usually in a good way. I recently reread a book which I first read, and greatly enjoyed, about 13 years ago. It is fiction by one of my favourite authors - the writing is vivid, the story exciting and the set-piece action breathtaking.

Despite all this I had almost no memory of reading the book the first time. Almost everything about the book seems to have seeped away in the intervening years. I couldn't remember the plot, most of the characters or any of the scenes. The only thing I vaguely remembered was the main character's name, but I couldn't be sure I hadn't invented that memory, after all I couldn't recall anything else about the book.

This is an example of what Harvard psychologist Daniel L. Schacter calls the first deadly sin of memory: transience (Schacter, 1999). Transience can be seen in both short- and long-term memory. Short-term memory, for psychologists, means the things that are in your mind right now, and only those things. On the other hand long-term memory is anything you store to be retrieved at a later time. Studies have shown that both types of memory can be extremely fragile over their respective timescales.

Short-term memory: fast forgetting


A classic experiment on fast forgetting was carried out by Peterson and Peterson (1959). They asked participants to memorise a three-letter sequence, then count backwards in sets of threes. Participants were then asked to try and recall the three-letter sequence after different lengths of time counting backwards.

Participants did surprisingly poorly on this test. After only six seconds of counting backwards in threes, on average half of the original three letters had disappeared from memory. By the time participants had been counting backwards for 12 seconds, less than 15% of the original memory remained. Finally after 18 seconds it was all but gone.

This experiment clearly shows how quickly information leaks out of short-term memory. So perhaps the book I was reading just went straight in and straight out again? No doubt a lot of it did, but surely some of it must have stuck. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to follow the story and would have ended up reading the first page again and again.

Long-term memory: slow forgetting


No, some aspects of the book must have become lodged in my long-term memory, so what types of processes affect how much we retain from long-term memory? In fact relatively little is known about how we forget over substantial periods of time. Thirteen years is a long time for an experimenter to wait just to find out if I can remember the details of that book.

Nevertheless, studies do suggest that forgetting probably follows a power function. That means we lose a lot of information soon after it goes in, then, over time, the rate of forgetting slows down.

Storage, retrieval and rehearsal


Of course not all memories are created equal, and so the reasons why we fail to recall information are many and varied. Indeed, some psychologists have argued that we never really forget anything. Perhaps, they say, the memory is still in our minds but we can no longer access it.

Cues are clearly important to retrieving memories. The smell of varnish might remind us of the day we spent canoeing in the rain, lost in solitary thought. Conversely some experiences can hinder the retrieval of certain memories. The memory of a parent's anger at our childish misdemeanour might completely block out the memory of what we actually did.

Memory is certainly more likely to fade if we don't use it. The retrieval and rehearsal of memories has been shown to enhance their storage. Interestingly there's no actual evidence in humans that memories which remain unrehearsed or unretrieved actually do dissipate over time. Perhaps all our memories really are still in there.

Gone, and forgotten


But even if my memory of reading that book the first time is still in there, it's doing a very good job of hiding. Especially since rereading the book should be a massive cue to its recall. Maybe we do completely forget or maybe I have just forgotten that I didn't actually read the book in the first place. Either way, perhaps I'll be able to enjoy the same book all over again in another 13 years!

This post is part of a series on the seven sins of memory:
  1. » How Quickly We Forget: The Transience of Memory
  2. Absent-Mindedness: A Blessing in Disguise?
  3. On the Tip-of-the-Tongue: Blocked Memories
  4. How Memories are Distorted or Invented: Misattribution
  5. When Suggestibility is a Liability: Wrongful Convictions
  6. How the Consistency Bias Warps Our Personal and Political Memories
  7. The Persistence of Memory



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[Image credit: Peter Bowers]

References

Peterson, L. R., & Peterson, M. J. (1959). Short-term retention of individual verbal items. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58, 193-198.

Schacter, D. L. (1999). The seven sins of memory. Insights from psychology and cognitive neuroscience. American Psychologist, 54, 182-203.

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6 Self-Help Books for Depression Recommended by Experts

Cycling

There are many, many self-help books for depression around these days, but which ones do experts recommend and which ones work? Liz Anderson from the University of Bristol and colleagues examined the use of self-help books for treating depression (Anderson et al., 2005). They found six books that were recommended by experts, although only one book had evidence for its effectiveness.

1. Feeling Good
This self-help book for depression has been evaluated in a number of randomised controlled trials, although small ones (Anderson et al., 2005). The book itself is rooted in cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), currently one of the most successful methods psychologists have for treating depression. Broadly speaking, CBT tries to identify problematic thought processes, then uses mental activities designed to modify them.

Six studies have evaluated the use of this book in treating mild depression and overall they have showed it can be an effective treatment.

2. Control Your Depression
Like 'Feeling Good', this book is also based on cognitive-behavioural therapy. It has been evaluated in two studies, but neither of these found strong evidence for its effectiveness. This doesn't necessarily mean the book isn't useful, just that these studies failed to find an effect. The fact that it has been used in these two studies, however, underlines the fact that experienced clinicians believe it can be beneficial.

3. Mind Over Mood
While this book hasn't been evaluated in any randomised controlled trials, it is frequently recommended by experienced clinicians. Like the two previous books it is also based on cognitive-behavioural therapy and contains a large number of exercises and worksheets (cognitive-behavioural therapists love to dole out homework!)

4. Overcoming Depression and Low Mood: A Five Areas Approach
Again, this one also uses a cognitive-behavioural approach and is also frequently recommended by clinicians, although studies have yet to be carried out into its effectiveness.

5. Climbing out of Depression
Unlike the previous four books, this one isn't based around CBT. Instead it uses a psychodynamic approach. This focuses on understanding, reflection and contemplation. Again there's currently no evidence from randomised controlled trials, but this book is recommended by organisations like the Mental Health Foundation, MIND and the Depression Alliance.

6. Depression: The Way Out of Your Prison
This book falls into the same category as 'Climbing out of Depression', it is based on a psychodynamic approach, hasn't been formally evaluated but is recommended by depression organisations.

CBT or psychodynamic?


One of the main questions when choosing a self-help book is the psychological theory on which it is based. The six books recommended here fall into two categories: CBT and psychodynamic. Some people prefer the hands-on practical activities used in CBT, others prefer the more reflective techniques used in the psychodynamic approach.

Of course, there are books using many other types of approaches to depression, but CBT and the psychodynamic approach are two theories which have a large evidence base for their effectiveness in conventional face-to-face psychotherapy.

Note


Bear in mind that studies on bibliotherapy are at an early stage. The ones that exist have only examined a few of the books available, and generally these books are only for mild depression.

» Discover more articles in this series on the new science of happiness.

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References

Anderson, L., Lewis, G., Araya, R., Elgie, R., Harrison, G., Proudfoot, J., et al. (2005). Self-help books for depression: how can practitioners and patients make the right choice. British Journal of General Practice, 55, 387-392.

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Experiences Beat Possessions: Why Materialism Causes Unhappiness

Shoe Shopping

Materialism is a dirty word. It also gets a bad rap in psychology. Studies consistently show that people who agree with statements like "You will buy things just because you want them," tend to be:
  • Less satisfied with life,
  • Less happy,
  • More likely to be depressed,
  • More likely to be paranoid,
  • More likely to be narcissistic.

Not a pretty picture, right? But, just like studies examining the connection between success and happiness, many of the findings are correlational. As a result we can't say for sure that materialism causes all these things, only that they're associated. So, for better evidence, cue the experiment.

Experiential versus material purchases


Leaf Van Boven from the University of Colorado and Thomas Gilovich from Cornell University carried out an intriguing experiment that gets at this question of whether materialism results in less happiness (Van Boven & Gilovich, 2003).

They randomly divided students into two groups and gave each group slightly different instructions:
  1. This group was asked to write a description of a material purchase that had made them happy. Material purchases include things like clothing, gadgets, computers and so on. This could be either something they had bought themselves or that had been bought for them.
  2. The task this group had was only slightly different. They were asked to write a description of an experiential purchase that had given them pleasure. Examples of experiential purchases are meals out, admission tickets to concerts and travel.

To see how they were feeling in the moment, participants were given surreptitious measures both before and after writing these short descriptions. Then, after about a week, the same participants were given back their own descriptions of their purchases and asked to reflect on it. Again, they were asked to report on their feelings in the moment.

Comparing these two groups provided a way of comparing how participants felt about two different types of purchases. The results showed that participants felt better when they were contemplating their experiential purchases than their material purchases.

Thinking about experience


As a result of this experiment, Van Boven & Gilovich predicted that people spend more time overall contemplating their experiential rather than material purchases. To test this out they asked participants to think about experiential and material purchases they were particularly happy with. Then they were asked which they thought about more often. The results clearly showed it was the experiential purchases people thought about more often (83%).

Why do experiences fare better than possessions?


It seems, then, that at some level we understand that our experiential purchases give us more pleasure than our material purchases. But why is that? Van Boven (2005) suggests three reasons:

1. Experiences improve with time (possessions don't).
The reason why experiences improve with time may be because it is possible to think about experiences in a more abstract manner than possessions. For example if you think back to a fantastic summer from your youth, you might easily remember an abstract sense of warm sunshine and exuberance, but you're less likely to remember exactly what you did day-by-day. On a moment-by-moment basis you might have been quite bored, although you'll tend not to remember that.

Material possessions are harder to think about in an abstract sense. The car you bought is still a car, that great new jacket you picked up cheap is still just a jacket. It's more likely the experience of that summer has taken on a symbolic meaning that can live longer in your memory than a possession.

2. Experiences are resistant to unfavourable comparisons
It's well established that social comparisons can have a huge effect on how we view what might seem like positive events. One striking example is the finding that people prefer to earn $50,000 a year while everyone else earns $25,000, instead of earning $100,000 themselves and having other people earn $200,000 (Solnick & Hemenway, 1998).

In other words it's not about how much we earn, it's about how much we earn in comparison to other people. It's the social comparison, then, not the actual amount of money, that affects how we feel about our earnings.

A similar effect is seen for possessions. When there's so many flatscreen HD TVs to choose from, it's easy to make unfavourable comparisons between our choice and the others available (check out Barry Schwartz on why too much choice is bad for us).

Experience, however, seems to be more resistant to these sorts of unfavourable comparisons. To explain this phenomenon, Van Boven puts forward the idea that it is because of the unique nature of experience. It's more difficult to make an unfavourable comparison when there is nothing directly comparable. After all, each of our youthful summers is different (even if only a little).

I also think it's hard to really compare our own experiences with those of other people. Comparing possessions, however, is generally easy.

3. Experiences have more social value
There are two reasons experiences have more social value than possessions. First, experiences tend to encourage social relationships and increased social relationships are good for our happiness. Second, it is more socially acceptable to discuss our experiences with others. People who bang on about their possessions are considered much less likeable than those who talk about their holiday adventures.

Limitations


Of course, it has to be acknowledged that this type of research is at an early stage. Van Boven points to a couple of potential problems yet to be investigated:
  1. The experiments examined here looked at short-term emotions - will these short-term emotions add up to long-term happiness?
  2. Highly materialistic people might actually get more pleasure out of material purchases than experiences.

Materialist dilemmas


Despite these limitations, it seems that along with experimental evidence, there are also some good psychological reasons why experiences are more likely to make us happy than material possessions. On top of this, at some level we do seem to understand that experiences probably beat possessions in terms of happiness.

Set against this is the fact that we clearly live in a society awash with materialism, where objects are valued way beyond their possible contribution to our happiness. So how can this conflict possibly be resolved?

One answer to this question is that while we're likely to think that other people are materialist, we defend our own purchases as necessary and at worst, indulgent. After all, materialism is a dirty word. A dirty word that's on everyone's minds.

» Discover more articles in this series on the new science of happiness.

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[Image credit: Orin Optiglot]


References

Solnick, S.J., & Hemenway, D.(1998). Is more always better? A survey on positional concerns. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 37, 373-383.

Van Boven, L. (2005) Experientialism, Materialism, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Review of General Psychology, 9, 132-142.

Van Boven, L., & Gilovich, T. (2003). To do or to have? That is the question. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 1193-1202.

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9 Ways Happiness Leads to Success

Meditation
[Image credit: premasagar]
The psychological literature clearly shows there is a strong relationship between success and happiness. For example, people who have a comfortable income, or high status in society are usually happiest. But which one comes first, happiness or success?

There's almost an unwritten assumption that it is primarily success that leads to happiness. This is tacitly backed up by psychological research which tends to talk about how success affects happiness.

Of course it's not an either/or situation. The two are probably interrelated in all sorts of complicated ways. But to only talk about how success leads to happiness is ignoring half the story. So says psychologist Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky and colleagues who have pointed out there is plenty of evidence that happiness can, in fact, lead to success (Lyubomirsky, King & Diener, 2005).

The best evidence that happiness causes success comes from experimental studies. These usually work by inducing participants into positive and negative moods and then comparing their behaviour in particular situations like social interactions or health behaviours.

These studies have produced a raft of fascinating results, finding that people in a positive mood are more likely to:
  1. Talk to others. In one experiment men in a positive mood were more likely to talk to a woman and to make self-disclosures, which are important in social relations.
  2. Be interested in leisure activities. People in a good mood want to throw a party, go on vacation or go out for a meal.
  3. Enjoy those social interactions and leisure activities more.
  4. Resolve conflicts effectively. Studies have found people in a good mood are more likely to try and collaborate rather than avoid conflict and compete when they are put in a positive mood.
  5. Help others. When in a good mood, people are more likely to display what psychologists call 'prosocial behaviour' - helping others and being generous with both time and money.
  6. Feel healthier. Experimental evidence shows that people in a good mood experience less pain and perceive themselves to be more healthy.
  7. Be more creative. People in a positive mood are more likely to think with originality and flexibility - perhaps through encouraging playfulness.
  8. Perform complex tasks better. Somewhat controversial this one but some evidence supports it although it probably depends on the nature of the task.
  9. Attribute success to their own skills. Good moods improve people's self-efficacy (our confidence in our own abilities).

The strength of this evidence is that it is based on experimental studies with control groups which provide some of the most persuasive data in science. On the other hand it's important to note that positive affect isn't the only factor that's involved in success - there are plenty others. Still, this is an impressive list.

Making room for happiness


How we think about happiness and success has profound implications for how we run our lives. If we think that success mainly leads to happiness then we are more motivated to focus on success to the exclusion of happiness right now, assuming that happiness will naturally flow from success when we obtain it.

If the psychological research is right, though, the strategy would still be to pursue success, but not, crucially, to the exclusion of happiness. Feeling better in the moment is not only more pleasant but is also likely to open our minds to opportunities at work, play and in our personal relationships. It's recognising and taking these opportunities that will lead us to success.

» Discover more articles in this series on the new science of happiness.

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References

Lyubomirsky, S., King, L. & Diener, E. (2005) The benefits of frequent positive affect: Does happiness lead to success? Psychological Bulletin, 131, 803-855.

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What Everyone Should Know About Their Own Minds: 6 Introspective Insights From Psychology

Cycling
[Image credit: Paddy Wight]
Classic psychology studies show just how little access we have to the workings of our own minds.

Ever wondered where your opinions come from, how you manage to be creative, or how you solve problems? Well, don't bother. Psychology studies examining these areas and more have found that while we're good at inventing plausible explanations, these explanations are frequently completely made-up.

In this series of posts, I examine some of the classic findings in psychology that show we have precious little insight into our own thought processes.


1. The Hidden Workings of Our Minds
How do great artists create? How do brilliant scientists solve the hardest problems in their field? Listen to them try to explain and you'll probably be disappointed. Artists say mysterious things like: "The picture just formed in my mind." Writers tell us that: "I don't know where the words come from." Scientists say they: "Just had a hunch."

» Read on about the hidden workings of our minds -»


2. Our Secret Attitude Changes
When you change your attitude about something, do you know why? Psychologists have argued that the inner workings of our minds are largely hidden away from us. One aspect of this is the surprising finding that people are often unaware when they have changed their attitudes.

» Read on about our secret attitude changes -»


3. Why Problem Solving Itself is a Puzzle, Even to Poincare and Picasso
The process of human creativity is both fascinating and, at the same time, mystifying. Understanding the mental processes of great thinkers offers an enormous reward to any who can replicate them: immortality. Perhaps if we really understood what was going through their minds, we too could create an object or idea that would live long after our deaths

» Read on about why problem solving is a puzzle -»


4. What We Don't Know About Shopping, Reading, Watching TV and Judging People
Here are four everyday situations - shopping, reading, watching TV and judging other people - and four experiments that show how little we know in each situation about what's really going on in our minds.

» Read on about shopping, reading, watching TV and judging people -»


5. When We Are Fools to Ourselves
Are the mistakes we make about our own thought processes systematic in any way? Nisbett and Wilson (1977) provide five factors likely to have a huge effect on how accurately we report our own higher mental processes. These give us useful clues about when we're most likely to be fooling ourselves.

» Read on about when we are fools to ourselves -»


6. At the Heart of Attraction Lies Confusion: Choice Blindness
Across a crowded room your eyes lock with an attractive stranger. You look away, you look back. The first hint of a smile plays across their lips. Suddenly you're nervous, your mind goes blank, you want to go over and you want to run away, both at the same time. You turn around too fast, bump into someone, almost spilling your drink. 'Wow,' you think as you recover, 'Now, that's what I'm talking about!'.

» Read on about choice blindness -»


What's your view on these studies?


Do share your views on these studies by commenting below.


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What is Happiness?

Because happiness is something most of us aim for, how we define it has important implications for how we conduct our lives. To see why, compare these two competing definitions of happiness:

1. Happiness is all about minimising pain and maximising pleasure.
The underlying idea here is that there is a kind of mathematics of happiness. Imagine if on our deathbeds we were able to add up all the moments of pleasure in our lives and then all the moments of pain. The amount by which the pleasures exceeded the pains would tell us how happy we were during our lives.

2. Happiness is satisfaction with life as a whole.
On the surface this looks like the same idea but actually it's completely different. Consider the case of Clea Koff, a forensic anthropologist who spent nine years working in Rwanda, digging up the remains of people killed in the 1994 genocide (Bergsma, In press). While this was clearly a gruesome task that would have given most people nightmares, afterwards she explained that the work was meaningful, which made it worthwhile. For Koff, then, happiness was satisfaction that she had done the right thing with her life.

Pleasure and pain


The first definition of happiness is perhaps the one most associated with hedonism, and one that is implicitly accepted by many people. But I think the second definition is much better because it makes room for the idea that we give meaning to the things we do.

Happiness is not just a headlong charge towards whatever makes us feel pleasure, it is about finding satisfaction in ourselves and in what we have done. Even when what we have done has been painful, like Clea Koff's work.

» Read more on the science of happiness.

What's your view?


Would you agree with either of these definitions, or does the answer lie somewhere in between, or even elsewhere completely?

» If you enjoyed this post, subscribe to PsyBlog (RSS).

[Image credit: sean-b]

References

Bergsma, A. (In press) The advice of the wise. Introduction to the special issue on advice for a happy life. Journal of Happiness Studies.

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Is Modern Self-Help Just a Massive Money-Making Scam?

Happiness now
[Image credit: wrestlingentropy]
From humble beginnings, self-help books have now colonised huge and ever-growing areas of bookshops. Best-selling titles like 'Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus', or 'Don't Worry, Make Money' promise to teach us how to fix our relationships and live 'more fully'. But are these, and other come-ons, just empty assurances designed to sell a product?

While the advice of philosophers like Epicurus and Schopenhauer, comes to us with the lustre of intellectual achievement, modern self-help books often don't. Worse, they can seem tacky, opportunistic and filled with psychobabble.

Of course self-help books vary considerably, in both quality and popularity - but are the most popular also the highest quality? In an article to be published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, Ad Bergsma looks at the most popular self-help books and asks whether their advice can really help us (Bergsma, in press).

Reasons to be sceptical


Despite their huge sales and continuing popularity, self-help books have faced fierce criticism over the years. Respected psychologists like Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi have argued that self-help books will clearly not help people to become thin, rich and well-adjusted; indeed they will probably have no effect whatsoever.

Worse, some have claimed self-help books are actually bad for us by promoting 'false hope syndrome'. More radically, Steve Salerno, author of 'Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless', claims self-help is responsible for the high divorce rate, increasing drug abuse and the end of romance.

While claims like Salerno's are hard to justify, there's no doubt that self-help is a massive industry. Salerno's estimate is $8 billion a year in the US alone. That's a lot of cash and all the more reason to take a closer look at what self-help books actually contain and whether it is useful.

Is this cynicism unfounded, merely motivated by jealousy or is there some substance to it?

What are self-help books about?


The first problem is deciding exactly what self-help is given the number of different books on the market. Bergsma (in press) contacted a local publisher for the highest selling self-help books in a variety of bookstores.

Broadly speaking here is what these books covered:
  • Personal growth: these were mainly focussed on improving the self.
  • Relationships: giving advice on communication skills and how to improve our personal relations.
  • Coping: how to deal with difficult events and situations. These often concentrated on dealing with stress at work.
  • Identity: about gaining personal insight, although some overlap with the personal growth category.

What self-help books get wrong


Comparing the advice given in self-help books with psychological research about the conditions of happiness reveals two sides to the story. Let's start with the negative. There is evidence from previous studies that self-help books sometimes perpetuate psychological myths. Paul (2001) points out some common ones:
  1. Venting your anger is good. Wrong. Research shows that expressing your anger helps maintain it.
  2. When depressed, think happy thoughts. Wrong. Research shows that trying to think happy thoughts when we're depressed can actually make our current unhappiness even more obvious.
  3. Visualise your goals.Not the whole story: in order to achieve a goal we need to focus on the problems that stand between us and reaching our goal.
  4. Use self-affirmation: "I'm a tiger!" Doesn't work, it seems we don't believe our own praise. What we really need is praise from others to raise our self-esteem.
  5. Use active listening to communicate with your partner No luck here either. Loving couples don't seem to use this technique.

What self-help books get right


On the other hand, when Bergsma compared the advice given in his sample of self-help books, most of it corresponded with findings from happiness research. For example, self-help books pointed out the importance of our families, friendships, intimacy and love-lives, all of which are highly correlated with happiness.

Even if self-help books contain the right advice, though, there's still the question of whether reading a book will make any difference to people's lives. In other words: is there any evidence that after reading the advice, that people actually put it into practice, resulting in an improvement.

Do self-help books work?


To answer this question Bergsma argues we have to make a distinction between two different types of self-help books. The first focus on the idea of personal growth and the second tackle a particular problem, for example depression or anxiety.

Research into the use of problem-focused self-help books - sometimes called 'bibliotherapy' - has found that they can be effective for less severe problems, like mild depression and anxiety. As for growth-oriented books, there's no evidence for whether they work or not, although people do claim, when asked, to find them useful. Unfortunately we have to be sceptical about these sorts of reports - see my series on the hidden workings of the mind.

It's notable, though, that in the sample Bergsma examined, the vast majority of books were growth-oriented, not problem-oriented. This doesn't mean the growth-oriented ones are no good, just that we don't know whether they're effective or not.

The hope factor


If self-help books do work, and there's evidence that some do, why are they effective? Bergsma argues that it may have less to do with the specific advice they contain, and more to do with a factor common to all self-help books: hope.

To explain this point, let's draw an analogy with psychotherapy and the research into its effectiveness. Psychotherapists operate using a variety of different techniques, e.g. cognitive-behavioural, psychodynamic, person-centred and so on. Research into the effectiveness of these different types of psychotherapy has suggested there is a common factor in all of them. This common factor is probably the beneficial effect of having someone listening to you and providing support. The actual techniques used may be less important.

Perhaps the same is also true of self-help books. One thing that all self-help books have in common is that they all tell us that change is possible. In other words they give us hope. Exposing ourselves to a hefty dose of hope probably helps us cope better with life, even if it can't really make us all thin, rich and ecstatically happy.

False hope


The dark side of hope is that claims about potential improvement can, and are, grossly exaggerated, in order to prise open our wallets. Similarly a bright and breezy approach to potential change may lead us to believe that changing ourselves is easy, when often it requires considerable, sometimes monumental, effort.

» See also: 6 self-help books for depression that are recommended by the research and by clinicians themselves.

» Discover more articles in this series on the new science of happiness.

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References

Bergsma, A. (In press) Do self-help books help? Journal of Happiness Studies, 1-20.

Paul, A.M. (2001). Self-Help: Shattering the Myths. Psychology Today, March.

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Schopenhauer's Extreme Self-Help for Pessimists

"The worst is yet to come." -- Schopenhauer

German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer was such an extreme pessimist that he thought we live in the worst of all possible worlds and happiness is an illusion. This is what makes it surprising that he wrote a best-selling book containing a self-help section. And yet he did. Although calling it self-help is somewhat misleading; the main aim of his advice was really reducing misery.

Yup, old Arthur was full of fun.

Schopenhauer's advice is interesting because it is so incredibly contrarian. Pessimists, though, recognise a kindred spirit when they hear his views of people and the world we live in. Perhaps his recommendations for living have the potential to be useful for those who would normally run a mile from advice on how to be happy.

Schalkx and Bergsma (in press), in an article to be published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, argue that it is possible to evaluate Schopenhauer's advice by comparing it with modern psychological findings on life satisfaction.

To do this they first examine Schopenhauer's advice, which can be split into three parts. First are his general rules for life, second, how we should manage our relationship with ourselves and, third, how to manage our relationships with others.

General rules for life


In short the key to making life bearable for Schopenhauer was simply this: extremely low expectations.

This piece of advice flows naturally from Schopenhauer's philosophical position. Like Greek philosopher Epicurus, Schopenhauer thought that happiness was the absence of pain, frustration and dissatisfaction. He was a kind of extreme hedonist (see my post on Epicurus for the meaning of hedonism here).

We live, thought Schopenhauer, in the worst of all possible worlds, constantly on the brink of destruction. Our will, or our desires, are continually demanding things from the world that cannot always be satisfied. And so we are continually frustrated.

Even when our desires are satisfied it will only be brief. This satisfaction will then lead to an increase in our desires and, ultimately, to boredom when our desires are finally exhausted.

Life, then, is suffering (an idea well-known to Buddhists). The answer for Schopenhauer was not to seek happiness, but to try and get through life with the minimum of suffering. His goal was for a bearable life.

Our relationship with ourselves


Here are some practical suggestions Schopenhauer put forward for managing ourselves:
  • Live in the present, making it as painless as possible.
  • Make good use of the only thing we can control, our own minds.
  • Our personality is central to our level of happiness.
  • Set limits everywhere: limits on anger, desires, wealth and power. Limitations lead to something like happiness.
  • Accept misfortunes: only dwell on them if we're responsible.
  • Seek out solitude, other people rob us of our identities.
  • Keep busy.

Our relationship with others


For Schopenhauer relationships with others are mainly sources of stress and hurt. As far as he was concerned true friendship is a near impossibility. As a result his advice is mostly aimed at protecting us from the inevitable damage other people will cause us:
  • People are selfish: they are easily flattered and easily offended. Their opinions can be bought and sold for the right price. Because of this friendship is usually motivated by self-interest.
  • Behaving with kindness towards others causes them to be arrogant: therefore other people must be treated with some disregard.
  • Displaying your intelligence makes you incredibly unpopular: people don't like to be reminded of their inferiority.
  • Truly exceptional people prefer to be on their own because ordinary people are annoying.
  • Accept that the world is filled with fools, they cannot change and neither can you.

It's no coincidence that Schopenhauer spent 27 years living alone except for a series of poodles called Atma and Butzas as his only form of company. (For a modern version of Schopenhauer, watch the character 'Greg House' in 'House M.D.', or, for sci-fi buffs, Marvin the Paranoid Android).

What Schopenhauer got right


Nowadays, of course, psychological research tells us a lot more about the conditions of happiness in the modern world. So how does Schopenhauer's advice stack up? Schalkx and Bergsma (in press) argue that a couple of Schopenhauer's self-help principles do indeed stand the test of time.

1. Don't seek wealth
Good, well done Schopenhauer, more money doesn't necessarily equal more happiness.

2. Personality is crucial
Again, tick, well done Schopenhauer. As much as 50% of our happiness levels are genetically preset.

What Schopenhauer got wrong


Unfortunately for Schopenhauer, that's all the good news. The rest, when compared to modern findings, was often wrong:

1. Don't seek status
Probably wrong. Studies often find correlations between higher status and higher levels of happiness.

2. Avoid people
Definitely wrong. Social bonds are highly correlated with happiness.

3. Don't get married
Probably wrong. Like Epicurus, Schopenhauer wasn't a fan of marriage, or living with a partner. But modern research shows that living with someone probably makes us happier - it certainly doesn't do us any harm, on average (Bergsma, Poot & Liefbroer, in press).

4. Avoid problems
Mostly wrong. Setting goals and following our dreams both involve dealing with the world and overcoming problems. Having very low expectations and avoiding trouble probably result in failing to achieve. Research finds that goal-setting and facing and overcoming problems are associated with happiness.

Does Schopenhauer's advice benefit the extreme pessimist?


As you'll have gathered, Schopenhauer was the kind of chap who always thought the glass was half-empty. Modern psychology shows that pessimism has some negative consequences, for example having lower well-being and being seen in a negative light by others. On the other hand optimists have all sorts of advantages, like faster recovery from negative events.

But as Schopenhauer pointed out, people are different and, to a certain extent, we're stuck with the way we are. So while Schopenhauer's approach might not suit the 'average' person, perhaps it might suit people who are like Schopenhauer?

This question is difficult to answer mainly because, in the light of modern research, Schopenhauer's advice about being distrustful and avoiding other people is completely counter-intuitive. Indeed, Schalkx and Bergsma argue that most of Schopenhauer's advice probably isn't much good, even for other people like him.

Do the opposite


Like Epicurus, though, we have to give Schopenhauer a certain amount of latitude because we are taking his advice out of its historical context. Nevertheless when we compare his advice with modern psychology, most of it is misguided. The few points that he does get right are mainly in the section on our relationships with ourselves. We're probably better off doing the exact opposite of what Schopenhauer recommends, pessimist or not.

» Discover more articles in this series on the new science of happiness.

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References

Bergsma, A., Poot, G., & Liefbroer, A. C. (In press) Happiness in the Garden of Epicurus. Journal of Happiness Studies, 1-27.

Schalkx, R., & Bergsma, A. (In press). Arthur's advice: comparing Arthur Schopenhauer's advice on happiness with contemporary research. Journal of Happiness Studies, 1-17.

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