30 Psychobabble Phrases - Which Do You Hate Most?


Perhaps it's time to 'get really OCD' about cleaning the fridge?
Thanks to everyone for the great response to my request for psychobabble you love to hate. Here are the best 30 submissions (including a few of my own).

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?
Whenever I see someone drop litter in a public place I feel bad not once, but twice. First all sorts of angry questions surge through my mind: didn't your family teach you any manners? Who do you think has to clear that up? Don't you care about your environment?

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:
  1. Failure to pick up after one's dog
  2. Littering
  3. Illegally parked car
  4. Graffiti
  5. 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.
You know you're in a dream world when the physical laws of the universe appear to have changed. When gravity has been turned off at the socket, objects seem to have no inertia and vanish when they are out of view. Dreams can be surprising and unsettling precisely because we're so used to how the waking world works.

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.


» This is part of a series on 10 crucial child psychology studies. Read more on the emergence of infant memory, self-concept, learning, attachment, social behaviour, theory of mind, language, play and knowledge.

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Psychobabble: Which Expressions Do You Love to Hate?


Do you have issues with your dysfunctional inner child?
Send me your favourite examples of psychobabble and I will publish them here on PsyBlog.

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?
One superpower all psychologists would kill for is the ability to read minds. Not only would it make psychology research a lot easier, we would be able to experience what it is like to be someone else - a fascinating prospect.

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.


» This is part of a series on 10 crucial child psychology studies. Read more on the emergence of infant memory, self-concept, learning, attachment, social behaviour, object permanence, language, play and knowledge.

[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.

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Which Cognitive Enhancers Really Work: Brain Training, Drugs, Vitamins, Meditation or Exercise?


Can 'brain training' software really increase useful, everyday cognitive function?
Although wisdom may come with age, our brains don't get any faster. Many areas of cognitive function decline over time: attention wavers, processing speed decreases, memory starts to crumble.

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.

4 Ways We Fail to Choose Happiness

Cycling

There are two requirements for decision-making that will bring happiness in the future. First we need to know how a particular decision will make us feel in the future. To do this accurately we need to avoid the systematic biases that affect how we predict our future emotional states.

This is no mean feat in itself - the distinction bias, projection bias, impact bias, memory bias and belief biases are tricky customers.

Second we need to actually follow through with the decision. This is where the happiness-seeking individual gets into trouble again because even when we know what will make us happy, we still don't choose it.

Christopher K. Hsee and Reid Hastie from the University of Chicago point to the four main reasons that we don't follow through with decisions that will make us happy (Hsee & Hastie, 2006).

1. Poor rules of thumb

We each follow certain rules of thumb which mean that even though we know what will make us happy we still don't choose it. Here are two common examples:
  • Don't waste: We hate to waste money. Research shows that when people have double-booked an activity they will choose whichever one is more expensive, even when they know they won't enjoy it as much.
  • Variety is the spice of life: Research shows people choose variety even though they know it won't make them happier. Often choosing what we know we like - the same again - is the best option for maximising pleasure.

2. Slaves to rationality

We like our decision-making to appear rational; unfortunately decisions that appear rational can make us less happy.

Research shows that people prefer to receive a gift of a chocolate shaped like a cockroach over that shaped like a heart even though they know they'll prefer the heart-shaped chocolate. Why? Because they're told the cockroach shaped chocolate is worth $2 and the heart-shaped chocolate only 50c. It's more rational to choose the higher-priced gift - but it makes people less happy.

3. Obsession with medium over outcome

We love to collect tokens of value, whether it's air miles or cold, hard currency. In fact, we love collecting the tokens so much we quickly forget what they're for. Research shows people will strive hard to obtain a medium (tokens or money) while paying little regard to what that medium can actually be used for.

4. Impulsivity

What's interesting about impulsivity for Hsee and Hastie is that it's exactly what the other three factors are trying to protect against. Rules of thumb like 'don't waste' as well as our obsession with collecting tokens (money) work against our impulse to spend. Similarly trying to appear rational is another way of trying to limit our profligacy.

Fool me twice, shame on me

The reasons we sometimes fail to choose happiness are straightforward enough. First we find it hard to predict what will make us happy and second, even if we can make an accurate prediction, we still don't choose it.

It's not the end of the world though. Clearly we do sometimes manage to make the right decisions, even if it is pure chance. Research suggests it's likely that being aware of these types of biases and lapses will help us fight against them.

Don't be fooled by what seem like trivial examples in some of the studies - they're all designed to mimic everyday decision-making. Also don't think that these are the kinds of mistakes that only 'other people' make. Almost everyone is convinced they are not like other people.

So next time you're making a decision that will affect your future happiness (and most decisions do), remember this post and don't make the same old mistakes again.

[Image credit: noblelgnoble]

Reference

Hsee, C. K., & Hastie, R. (2006). Decision and experience: why don't we choose what makes us happy? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(1), 31-37.

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Friendships Can Depend on Who You Meet First


Was your friend one of the first people you met in a new group?
I vividly remember my first day at University when I was 18-years-old: not just the terror and the excitement but also the sheer, crushing weight of people I didn't know, and who didn't know me.

Of course everyone was in the same boat and it wasn't long before I had made new friends. When I think back, one of my firmest friends was a guy I met at the introductory session of my course on the very first day.

I wonder if there is something special about the very first people we meet in new social surroundings? Perhaps we are so relieved to find someone to talk to - an island of acceptance in a sea of strangers - that we are more likely to form a lasting bond.

Or perhaps I'm making too much of it; after all, at a new job, club or society we'll probably get to meet everyone eventually. Surely the person we just happen to meet first shouldn't be more likely to become a firm friend in the long run?

Nerve-wracking first day

It's this question that Dr. Mitja Back and colleagues from the University of Leipzig investigated in a new study to be published in Psychological Science (Back, Schmukle & Egloff, 2008). To find out they subjected brand new psychology students to a nerve-wracking first day.

At their introductory session each student was told to sit in a random seat. Then each trembling newbie had to come up to the front and briefly introduce themselves. Immediately afterwards everyone else rated that person on two scales: how much they liked them and whether they would like to get to know them more (sounds frightening for your first day!).

The results showed that people liked - and wanted to be friends with - the people who were initially sat next to them. This might not be that surprising: people have had slightly more exposure to those who they were sitting next to. Or people might have felt a certain affinity for those they were sat near...

One year later

Fast-forward one year. The students are well settled into the course, have probably mixed extensively and now know each other much better. Surely that day one year ago when the lecturer tortured them with random seat allocations, public introductions and instant judgements can't still have an effect, can it?

It absolutely did. Even after one year students who sat on the same row as each other on that very first day liked each other better than people who sat nowhere near each other. For those who sat right next to each other the level of liking was even higher.

This study suggests that in a new social situation it really does matter who you happen to meet first. So, when meeting a new bunch of people, be careful who you approach first, or who you are approached by: you could be stuck with them for a long time!

[Image credit: Fanboy30]

Reference

Back, M. D., Schmukle, S. C., & Egloff, B. (2008). Becoming Friends by Chance. Psychological Science, 19(5), 439-440.

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Venting Emotions After Trauma Predicts Worse Outcomes


The hydraulic theory of the emotions is a misleading metaphor.
After suffering a traumatic experience, 'common sense' has it that immediately 'venting' or 'letting off steam' by talking about the experience helps protect against future psychological problems. But is this really true?

That's the question Dr Mark Seery from the University of Buffalo and colleagues ask in a study that examined how people coped with the aftermath of the '9/11' terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

The answer to this question is particularly pressing now as the recent earthquake in China has left huge numbers both physically and psychologically traumatised. The Chinese government clearly thinks that psychological intervention is useful as they have launched their biggest ever programme of counselling for those affected.

Yet the new research, to be published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, suggests that talking about thoughts and feelings after a trauma may not help. Worse, it may be psychologically damaging (Seery et al., 2008).

A collective trauma

This study's first set of data was collected on the day of September 11th 2001. As people sat at home trying to digest the shocking events of the day, 36,000 people were contacted through the internet. These people were part of a pre-selected nationally representative sample of participants who had already agreed to receive regular requests for surveys.

They were simply prompted to express whatever thoughts and emotions were currently on their minds, should they choose to do so. Of all these people, 2,138 people were followed up over a period of two years after 9/11 to see how they coped with the collective trauma.

The aim of the researcher's prompt was to make it similar to a psychologist asking someone to share their experience after they witness a traumatic event. Naturally some people choose to share and others don't. In this study 1,559 chose to respond while 579 remained silent.

The results make surprising reading.

What they found was that choosing to respond to the prompt was a significant predictor of suffering post-traumatic stress (PTS). What's more, the longer the response, the greater the level of subsequent PTS.

This suggests that, contrary to popular expectations, expressing thoughts and emotions soon after a traumatic event - 'letting off steam' or 'venting' - might actually predict a worse psychological outcome.

Alternate explanations

Although this is a strong finding in a large nationally representative sample, some alternate explanations are possible. Here are the main ones the authors consider:
  • Did those who didn't respond to the prompt express themselves elsewhere? Probably not: other measures suggested that those who didn't respond naturally stayed quiet in these situations.
  • Did those who did respond do so because they couldn't talk to anyone else? Probably not: having fewer social networks was not associated with a greater chance of responding to the prompt.
  • Were those who responded already more traumatised? Probably not: there was still a relationship between responding to the prompt and PTS symptoms even when lifetime trauma was taken into account.

It's important to note that this study is NOT strong evidence that talking about an event actually CAUSES a worse psychological outcome, just that remaining silent isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Junking the hydraulic metaphor

If accurate these results stand in stark contrast to what has become the accepted wisdom. Offering psychological counselling in the aftermath of traumatic events has now become a normal, automatic official response. Popular techniques include 'Critical Incident Stress Debriefing' which is thought to reassure trauma sufferers that their responses are normal and help reduce the chances of PST.

These techniques are in line with the 'hydraulic theory' of the emotions - a popularly held view of how the emotions work. In this view, people's emotions work in the same way as a pressure cooker. Emotions build up inside until the mind can no longer contain the pressure. Then steam is 'let off', releasing the pressure inside and improving the mood.

People who choose not to let off steam in this way are popularly seen as being in denial, and this denial is often seen as pathological.

In recent years, however, the hydraulic metaphor and the therapies that implicitly rely on it have been seriously questioned. Studies on 'Critical Incident Stress Debriefing' have not only found that the technique may provide no benefit to trauma sufferers, but that it also may be harmful.

The strong silent type

Dr Seery's study extends these criticisms to attack the broader idea that talking about a traumatic event soon after it has occurred is usually beneficial. Mounting evidence suggests that those who do not talk about a traumatic event are simply more resilient, rather than being in a state of pathological denial.

This study is also backed up by previous work carried out by Professor Bernard Rime from the Universite Catholique de Louvain. Rime and colleagues have found that despite the fact that people are likely to share their feelings after an emotional event, this sharing does not promote recovery.

So it's time to throw out the old hydraulic metaphor and its attendant rapid intervention therapies. Just because some people prefer to deal with a trauma quietly on their own doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them. While most people do choose to share with others, this immediate sharing probably isn't a major contributor to psychological recovery.

» Related: Rime's work on social sharing of emotions and how it ties in with the potential benefits of expressive writing.

[Image credit: assbach]

References

Seery, M. D. et al. (2008). Expressing Thoughts and Feelings Following a Collective Trauma: Immediate Responses to 9/11 Predict Negative Outcomes in a National Sample. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.

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Susan Blackmore on Memes and Temes (Video)

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is probably the best idea that anybody has ever had. Darwin's idea is not just applicable to biology, though, it also applies to culture.

The application of natural selection to culture has been called 'memetics'. This is the theory that, like living things, ideas - or 'memes' - naturally vary and that (generally) the 'fittest' ideas survive and are replicated across generations.



Neuroscientist Susan Blackmore, who has studied memetics, introduces a new type of meme which she calls the 'teme': the technological meme. Technology, through temes, she argues, is now driving us forward, whether we like it or not.

In this talk Blackmore uses the idea of the 'teme' to pose some interesting questions. She asks whether there are other lifeforms out there in the universe and also whether humanity will survive the arrival of the 'temes'.

Touching Lingerie Makes (Some) Men Impatient for Monetary Rewards


Arousal in one domain can change behaviour in other domains.
Women's underwear is likely to get men thinking about sex, but might it also change apparently unrelated behaviours?

New research conducted by Bram Van den Bergh and colleagues finds that sexual stimuli actually make some men impatient to receive a reward that has little to do with sex.

In a series of studies researchers exposed men firstly to pictures of 'non-nude female models', then to bras, then to a film of hundreds of young women running in bikinis. These conditions were compared with equivalent non-sexual stimuli.

In each case, after being exposed to the sexual stimuli, men were more likely to want a smaller monetary or food-based reward right now, rather than waiting until later for a larger reward. Being reminded about sex reduced most men's ability to delay self-gratification for a greater eventual payoff.

Not all men, though, reacted in the same way to the sexual stimuli. There was a sliding scale of reactivity with some men having relatively insensitive reward systems. This meant that they did not become impatient for a reward after exposure to the sexual stimuli.

This is not the first study to show how being in a 'hot' - although not necessarily sexual - state can affect decision-making:
  • Hungry people have been shown to buy more food and prefer candy over fruit for the quick calorie boost.
  • Behavioural economist Dan Ariely and colleagues have looked at the effects of being sexually aroused on other sexual behaviours. Their research found that aroused men were much more likely to find a woman sexy when sweating or to enjoy being tied up by a woman or to think that, overall, wearing a condom was less desirable.

This new study shows the effect of arousal in one domain generalising to another domain. The fact that for many men the effect of sexual stimulation crossed over into relatively unrelated domains like money and food suggests that the brain has a fairly generalised rewards system.

» Related: how our emotions affect our spending (and what to do about it).

[Image credit: liveu4]