How Beliefs and Values Influence What Tastes Good


Sausage roll anyone? Why meat means power, and (for some) power is tasty.
'Meat is murder', or so the vegetarian's rallying cry goes. But according to a new study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, meat also means social power, and, for some, it's the power that really tastes good.

In this study, conducted by Michael Allen at the University of Sydney, Australia, and colleagues, participants were lied to about the contents of sausage rolls they were tasting.

In some conditions they were told they were tasting real beef sausage rolls when actually they eating a vegetarian alternative that tasted the same. Then they were told they were eating the vegetarian alternative when actually they were eating the beef.

Meaty sausage rolls are aspirational

Allen and colleagues were inspired to this trickery by research demonstrating that how we experience something we eat is influenced by our beliefs. For example in one study people rated yoghurt and sandwiches labelled 'full fat' as tastier than those labelled 'low fat'. In fact both foods were identical.

The current study differed in that it was interested in how people's beliefs about social power affected their taste experiences. The researchers asked participants to complete a questionnaire that accessed the extent to which they seek to dominate others socially and acquire resources, wealth and public recognition.

The results showed that those who were low on social power values preferred the taste of the vegetarian sausage roll, regardless of whether they'd actually tasted the beef or the veggie alternative. Those high on social power, however, found the beef more tasty, even when it was just the veggie option labelled as beef.

Pepsi challenge

In a second test of this idea the researchers did a version of the Pepsi challenge. Participants were given either Pepsi or a store-brand cola to drink. But as before they were sometimes lied to about which one they had been given.

This time the researchers weren't interested in social power but instead on whether people endorsed the idea that life should be exciting and full of enjoyment - something that Pepsi's advertising encourages, and store-brand cola doesn't have much to say about.

Again, those who most strongly agreed that life should be full of excitement thought the cola they were told was Pepsi was more tasty, whether or not they actually were drinking Pepsi or not.

Can you taste the difference?

This research is a fascinating demonstration of how quite subtle differences in the way we think about food and drink can have significant influences on how we experience them. It lends more weight to certain explanations of some everyday phenomena:
  • Organic food is all the rage and many claim it tastes better - others are not so sure. Organic food producers are probably relying at least partly on the psychological effect demonstrated in this study which will make their food taste better to those who endorse 'organic worldviews'
  • Marketing values. Corporations spend fortunes associating their brands with certain values. In the case of food and beverage producers this study suggests the money is well spent, as long as the values they promote coincide with the consumer's. While we tend to assume corporations are mainly trying to convince us of the quality of their goods, the associated values are an important factor in the final experience.
  • Beer tastes pretty disgusting when you first try it, but some people come to associate it with good times and socialising with friends. Then, over time, it starts to taste better. Others may choose wine or some other type of beverage. We tend to think of this as becoming accustomed to, or developing a taste for that drink. But how each type of beverage tastes is probably influenced by the values you associate with it. If the way you see beer doesn't accord with your values, then it probably won't taste so good.

Potato for President?

The authors of the study even wonder if healthy eating could be encouraged by changing the values associated with fruit and vegetables.

Whatever the outcome of the potential rebranding of fruit and vegetables (carrots march into war, aubergines win promotions and a potato is elected as President) this study is certainly a neat demonstration of one more aspect of our everyday experience which is directly influenced by our beliefs and values.

» The full paper is available on Scribd.

[Image credit: alisdair]

Are Boys Better Than Girls At Maths?


Answer to a maths question one confused (or perhaps brilliant) child gave in a maths exam.
Think back to your school days and conjure up an image of the archetypal maths-whizz: striding ahead of the rest of the class, solving problems with ease, clearly destined to be a mathematician, physicist or engineer later in life.

Chances are that person was not female, and considering how few women occupy the top spots in maths-based professions, your memory is probably accurate.

Explaining this disparity between men and women has been the source of considerable controversy. Former President of Harvard, Larry Summers, argued that one reason men do better in maths-related fields is because they have a superior innate ability. Summers, of course, was forced to resign in 2006 after his public endorsement of this view caused a furore.

On the other side of the debate are figures like Elizabeth Spelke, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, who argues that the differences at the top levels of maths and science are rooted in social factors.

Boys are better than girls at maths - aren't they?

Whichever side you lean towards, the widespread assumption has been that there is a difference in mathematical achievement that needs explaining. Research has shown that both parents and teachers commonly hold this belief. Indeed research on thousands of SAT scores published in the 1990s backed this up: for complex problem-solving males had a significant advantage over females in the general population, especially at the high end of the distribution.

For critics, though, the problem with results of this kind is that beliefs can feed straight back into performance. If you believe the stereotype that, as a woman, you're bad at maths, guess what, it will lower your performance. When that belief is widespread amongst women - such as is true in the case of maths - it will lower performance.

Confirming this theory, studies show that when women are reminded of the stereotype, they actually do perform worse in maths tests. So we end up with a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This is exactly the kind of social factor to which Elizabeth Spelke is referring. And if Spelke is right then when social conditions change, so should the difference between men and women on mathematical reasoning ability. Could it be that women have been hamstrung by a self-limiting belief?

To find out let's fast-forward a decade or two. Women are now no longer encumbered with the same restricting stereotypes they once were. Certainly all is not rosy in the garden of gender equality, but major strides forward have been made.

Just as in other aspects of society, these strides can be seen in mathematics. At school girls now study calculus alongside boys and later go on to earn almost half of all undergraduate degrees in mathematics in the US. Still, this data is circumstantial - what we need to know is how young boys and girls are doing right now at school - young boys and girls who are not exposed to the same extreme gender stereotypes as previous generations about who is good at maths.

New data

In a new study published recently in Science, Professor Janet Hyde and colleagues may have spotted the first signs of change. They used data from around 7 million US children in 10 US states from grade 2 through to grade 11, routinely gathered as part of a national assessment exercise. They wanted to find out if boys are still performing better than girls at maths.

What they found was that in marked contrast to earlier research, there was little or no difference in maths performance between girls and boys in all of the 10 states. In some states girls performed fractionally better, on average, than boys, and in other states this trend was reversed.

"There just aren't gender differences anymore in math performance," says Professor Hyde. "So parents and teachers need to revise their thoughts about this." This result brings an impressive weight of numbers to bear on this question and helps challenge the widespread belief that boys are more gifted than girls at maths - whether as a result of nature or nurture.

Perhaps, though, girls are now doing better at maths because of a greater gender equality in society - discovering a talent previous generations were told they didn't have. Yet not everyone is convinced that we will see women rise to positions of eminence in the currently male-dominated worlds of mathematics, engineering and physics.

High achievers

Many have argued that men's and women's abilities in maths may well be comparable on average, but that the specific individuals who go on to become great mathematicians, physicists and engineers are rarely average. The argument has been that these talented individuals who lie at the extreme end of the bell-curve distribution of mathematical ability are more often men. It's this extra talent at the extreme high end of ability that is thought to account for the fact that men dominate in fields that require advanced maths skills.

Professor Hyde's study also addresses this question, and once again her data questions the assumption. She sliced and diced her sample of students down to focus just on performance on the most difficult types of problems. If the prediction was right that the best boys can outperform the best girls, then this difference should emerge in their data. Again, though, the differences between boys and girls, even on the hardest questions, were small.

This study won't end the debate, though, because as Professor Hyde points out, even the hardest questions on this test are still not complex enough to stretch the most talented students and really uncover whether a gender difference exists at the extreme end of the distribution. Other studies continue to find that at the more gifted end, boys outperform girls in maths.

Challenging stereotypes

Mathematical ability might be yet another difference that turned out to have less to do with nature, and more to do with nurture.1 In a recent survey of the literature on sex differences in maths and science, Diane Halpern, a past-president of the American Psychological Association, and colleagues found that success in maths and science careers was predicted by a complex web of factors. These included biological constraints, the cultural context and educational policies. While biology is in the mix, it's far from king of the hill.

Although Hyde's study could have identified the vanguard of change in challenging stereotypes, we won't see the evidence before our eyes until women begin to believe in their ability. Who knows, perhaps in a few generations we'll see just as many female theoretical physicists as male. Unfortunately, as Professor Hyde points out: "Stereotypes are very, very resistant to change, but as a scientist I have to challenge them with data."


Notes
1. On 78% of psychological variables the differences between men and women are either small or zero. The three main areas of difference identified by Professor Hyde in previous reviews of the literature are sexuality, aggression and motor performance.

The Way We Were: 10 Crucial Child Psychology Studies

Baby

Once upon a time, although it seems barely credible to us now, we were all children. We gurgled, we cried, we laughed, we explored, we fell down, and we had very little idea about the journey on which we had just embarked.

Barring mishap, over the first few years of our lives we developed memory, language, self-concept, cognitive, social and emotional abilities. We took our first steps towards our future selves.

Child psychology - or, more broadly, developmental psychology - is not just the study of children, it is the study of you and me and how we came to be this way. Just as discovering your history can teach you about the future, so child psychology shows us what we once were and even what we will become.

Here are 10 classic studies that have illuminated crucial areas of childhood development. Each one is a piece in the jigsaw puzzle that is ourselves, and each one reminds us, through examining just one piece, how aspects of experience we now take for granted were once so complex.

  1. Infant Memory Works From Very Early
  2. When the Self Emerges: Is That Me in the Mirror?
  3. How Children Learn the Earth Isn't Flat
  4. The 'Strange Situation': Window on a Child's Past and Future
  5. Infants Imitate Others When Only Weeks Old
  6. When Children Begin to Simulate Other Minds
  7. Infants are Intuitive Physicists: Object Permanence
  8. How Infants Start the Journey to Their First Word
  9. 6 Types of Play: How We Learn to Work Together
  10. Jean Piaget's Four-Stage Theory: How Children Acquire Knowledge

[Image credit: Patrick Q]

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Irritating Psychobabble: Disorders Win!


We're all disordered now.
Recently I asked for your (least) favourite examples of psychobabble - technical psychological terms used out of context.

You responded with many great suggestions, 30 of which I published. 750 of you (and counting) voted for your favourite and now the results are in.

There are three clear front-runners who received one-third of the votes between them. And so, without further ado...drum roll please...the most-hated psychobabble top 3 are:
  1. I get really OCD about... (12%)
  2. Retard (10%)
  3. Bipolar (10%)

Thanks to everyone for voting in this poll and for the further suggestions in the comments to the vote. I think we have found a worthy winner in the misuse of the diagnosis 'obsessive-compulsive disorder'.

What struck me about the list of psychobabble phrases you suggested and voted for is that many of them are clinical diagnoses. This seems to reflect how much the modern psychiatric professions' drive to categorise mental illness has permeated our cultural lives. The names of disorders now trip off our tongues like never before - it wasn't always this way.

A short article from TIME on psychobabble from 1977 lists quite a different set of phrases as an inescapable part of the 'psychological patter of the '70s':
"Are you relating? Going through heavy changes? In touch with yourself and doing your own thing? Are you up front, or just hung up and uptight?"

To modern ears these phrases are redolent of a past era. It's impossible to hear them without visualising the stereotypical hippie. Talking to TIME, writer R. D. Rosen describes this language as:
"...difficult to avoid and there is often an embarrassment involved in not using it, somewhat akin to the mild humiliation experienced by American tourists in Paris who cannot speak the native tongue."

If Rosen thought things were bad in the '70s, just look at the state of psychobabble now. At least the psychobabble of the '70s was warm and fuzzy, while what we have now is clinical and cold, cynical even; driven not by the language of intellectual or emotional growth, but by the language of disorder.

[Image credit: Angel Photographer]

Jean Piaget's Four-Stage Theory: How Children Acquire Knowledge


Jean Piaget: the second most-cited psychologist of all time, after Freud.
He has the dubious claim to fame of having produced perhaps the most criticised psychological theory of all time. His experiments and theories about how children build up their knowledge of the world have faced endless challenges, many of them justified.

But because of his immense contribution and his grand vision it is fitting to round off this series on 10 crucial child psychology studies with the work of the famous Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget.

To give you a flavour of why Piaget's research has faced so much criticism and also why psychologists often regard him with such awe, I'll describe one of the observations he made of his own three children, why his conclusions are probably wrong and the central insight at the heart of his four-stage theory.

When the duck is out of sight, it's out of mind

One of Piaget's many careful observations was made when one of his daughters, Jacqueline, then 7 months old, dropped a plastic duck on the quilt and it fell behind a fold so that she couldn't see it. Piaget noticed that despite the fact that Jacqueline could clearly see where the duck had dropped, and it was within her reach, she made no attempt to grab for it.

Fascinated by this, Piaget put the duck in her view again but, then, just as she was about to reach for it, he slowly and clearly hid it under the sheet. Again, she acted as though the duck had simply disappeared, making no attempt to search for it under the sheet.

This seemed strange behaviour to Piaget as Jacqueline was clearly interested in the duck while she could see it, but seemed to forget about it the instant it disappeared from view - out of sight and, apparently, out of mind.

What Piaget deduced from these observations, along with many experiments, was that children do not initially understand the idea that objects continue to exist even when out of sight. This concept, he thought, children had to work out by themselves by interacting with and experiencing the world.

It wasn't until around 9 or 10 months of age that Piaget noticed his children began to search for a hidden object.


Piaget's four-stage theory of development

While many parents play games with their children like this, what set Piaget apart was that he used these observations along with many experiments to develop a theory of how children acquire knowledge, a theory for which he is rightly best-remembered.

This theory is a four-stage ladder up which Piaget thought children climbed as they gathered knowledge about the world:
  • Sensorimotor (birth to 18-24 months): infants are aware only of their sensations, fascinated by all the strange new experiences their bodies are having. They are like little scientists exploring the world by shouting at, listening to, banging and tasting everything.
  • Pre-operational (18-24 months to 7 years): during this stage children can process images, words and concepts but they can't do anything with them, they can't yet operate on them. It's like they've acquired the tools of thought, but don't yet know how to use them. E.g. in maths they can't understand that 2 x 3 is the same as 3 x 2.
  • Concrete operations (7 to 12 years): at this stage children gain the ability to manipulate symbols and objects, but only if they are concrete - abstract operations are still a challenge.
  • Formal operations (12 and up): from here on children are able to think in abstract terms about the world. Now they can understand concepts such as the future, values and justice. From around this age children start thinking like adults.

It's for this grand theory of development that Piaget is much admired. Unfortunately, like many an ambitious theory, over time evidence was uncovered that contradicted aspects of this neat time-line.

For example Piaget's conclusions about his daughter Jacqueline's failure to reach for the duck were probably wrong. Subsequent studies have revealed infants as young as 3.5 months appear to understand object permanence. Psychologists nowadays might explain Jacqueline's behaviour as a failure of memory or an inability to grasp something that is out of view.

Einstein on Piaget: genius

Although findings such as these have chipped away at Piaget's theory, his work has continued to attract interest and stimulate research. From observations like hiding his daughter's duck to his grand four-stage theory, Piaget's central insight was that children think in a fundamentally different way from adults. They don't just have less knowledge, less experience or less processing power; the qualitative content of their thoughts is actually different.

Even though psychologists now question many of the details of Piaget's observations and theories, this central insight remains intact. And it's this central insight that Albert Einstein once described as "so simple that only a genius could have thought of it".


» 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, object permanence, language and knowledge.

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6 Types of Play: How We Learn to Work Together

Play

Play is a serious business. The pioneering developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky thought that, in the preschool years, play is the leading source of development.

Through play children learn and practice many basic social skills. They develop a sense of self, learn to interact with other children, how to make friends, how to lie and how to role-play.

The classic study of how play develops in children was carried out by Mildred Parten in the late 1920s at the Institute of Child Development in Minnesota. She closely observed children between the ages of 2 and 5 years and categorised their play into six types.

Parten collected data by systematically sampling the children's behaviour. She observed them for pre-arranged 1 minute periods which were varied systematically (Parten, 1933).

The thing to notice is that the first four categories of play don't involve much interaction with others, while the last two do. While children shift between the types of play, what Parten noticed was that as they grew up, children participated less in the first four types and more in the last two - those which involved greater interaction.
  1. Unoccupied play: the child is relatively stationary and appears to be performing random movements with no apparent purpose. A relatively infrequent style of play.
  2. Solitary play: the child is are completely engrossed in playing and does not seem to notice other children. Most often seen in children between 2 and 3 years-old.
  3. Onlooker play: child takes an interest in other children's play but does not join in. May ask questions or just talk to other children, but the main activity is simply to watch.
  4. Parallel play: the child mimics other children's play but doesn't actively engage with them. For example they may use the same toy.
  5. Associative play: now more interested in each other than the toys they are using. This is the first category that involves strong social interaction between the children while they play.
  6. Cooperative play: some organisation enters children's play, for example the playing has some goal and children often adopt roles and act as a group.

Unlike Jean Piaget who saw children's play in primarily cognitive developmental terms, Parten emphasised the idea that learning to play is learning how to relate to others.


» 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, object permanence, language and knowledge.

[Image credit: Seema K K]

Reference

Parten, M. (1933). Social play among preschool children. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 28, 136-147.

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Human-Cat Psychology: Do Cats Improve Our Mood and Become Attached to Us?

Cute Cat

"There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats." -- Albert Schweitzer

Last year I covered 5 unusual studies on the psychology of dogs and their owners. This kicked off a comment thread which discussed how dogs act as ice-breakers, how they might mediate the tension between couples and how long after you died they would wait to feast on your flesh.

Apparently dogs wait longer than cats although I'm pretty sure there's no experimentally controlled evidence for this.

But what about cat-lovers and research into the psychology of cats? Inspired by MindHacks, I've uncovered a small literature on cats' effects on human mood, their ability to become attached to their owners, their personalities and our relationships with them.

Can cats improve your mood?

Cats are frequently accused of being selfish, but it's humans who are often being a little selfish when they get a cat - they hope it will give them pleasure. But do cats really consistently improve mood - was Albert Schweitzer right?

Research carried out by anthrozoologists suggests he was. A recent Swiss study recruited 212 couples with cats and compared how both their cat and their partner affected their mood.

Their results showed that, in line with previous studies, cats could alleviate negative moods but were unlikely to promote positive moods. People's positive moods were more associated with their partners.

So it's a cautious thumbs-up for cats - they might not make you burst into song, but they'll take the edge off a bad day.

Is your cat really attached to you?

The reason that cats can alleviate negative moods is often attributed to attachment - the emotional bond between cat and owner. But cats are well-known for being fickle so do they really become attached to their owners?

Remarkably there's actually been a quite sophisticated study on cat attachment behaviour towards their owners.

The classic procedure for investigating attachment in humans is the 'strange situation'. It tests how infants react to their mother (or father) leaving the room and then returning.

Well, this Mexican research used a similar procedure, but on cats. Analysis of the cats' behaviour suggested they were indeed emotionally attached. While the cats were with their owners they appeared more relaxed and were more likely to explore their environment.

This is pretty good ammunition for all cat-owners who are fed up with being told by cat-haters that cats don't care about...well...anything other than food and catnip.

What is your cat's personality?

So it seems that cats can alleviate negative moods and become attached to humans, but do they actually have personalities of their own?

Most cat-owners would say yes. Indeed in this study owners were asked to rate their cats on 12 items and when these were analysed, four dimensions of cat personality emerged. These were the extent to which their cat was:
  1. Active, clever, curious, and sociable.
  2. Emotional, friendly and protective.
  3. Aggressive and bad-tempered.
  4. Timid.

Remember these aren't categories but rather dimensions, so that a cat might receive a rating on each of these four dimensions which altogether would make up their personality.

With a bit of imagination these four factors can be superimposed on the widely agreed five factors of human personality: the first factor is like extraversion, the second could be neuroticism, the third factor agreeableness and the last factor openness to experience.

Obviously the final human factor, conscientiousness, has no place in the psychology of cats - whoever heard of a conscientious cat?

One legitimate criticism of this research is that people are just imagining or projecting personalities onto their cats. But these dimensions do line up with previous research on cat personality which has been carried out by people rating cats they didn't know.

How to develop a good relationship with your cat

Like any relationship, that between a cat and a human seems to require give and take, especially since cats are so independent.

Dr Dennis Turner from the Institute for Applied Ethology and Animal Psychology has carried out a series of studies investigating how humans and cats interact (e.g. this one).

From his research Dr Turner argues that the best relationships between cats and humans are found when humans respect a cat's independence.

Of course anyone who actually owns a cat hardly needs to be told that!

Random cat psychology facts

Here are some other random cat facts I uncovered:
  • Fat cat facts: Owners of obese cats can't see how fat their cats really are. Also, unlike the owners of fat dogs, owners of fat cats tended not to be overweight themselves.
  • Cats sent off to quarantine are friendlier, more affectionate and more timid when they return home.
  • Cats lack a sweet taste receptor - so there's another reason, along with the fact that it can seriously harm or kill them, not to feed them chocolate.

Any other cat psychology facts you'd like to add? Please do add a comment below...

» This is part of a series on the psychology of the everyday.

[Image credit: swanky]

How Infants Start the Journey to Their First Word

An infant's very first step in their year-long journey to their first word is perhaps their most impressive. This first step is discriminating and categorising the basic sound components of the language they are hearing.

To get an idea how hard this might be think about listening to someone speaking a language you don't understand. Foreign languages can sound like continuous streams of noise in which it's very hard to pick up where one word starts and another word begins.

Young infants face an analogous challenge but not initially at the level of words, but at the lower level of pure noise. Their first struggle is to tell the difference between the most basic components of speech, the individual sounds we are making, the phonemes.

Noticing the difference between 'b' and 'p'

Until a classic study carried out by Peter D Eimas and colleagues from Brown University in 1971, psychologists were not sure how soon infants could discriminate phonemes.

Eimas and colleagues' study used infants aged between just 1 and 4 months old and tested their ability to discriminate between a 'b' sound and a 'p' sound (Eimas et al., 1971). To get an idea of how difficult this is, consider the fact there's only a 10ms difference in timing between the two. To be able to hear this difference, a baby has got to have a very fine-tuned ear.

The method they used for intuiting whether the infants had noticed a change from one sound to the other was pretty ingenious. They were hooked up to a fake nipple which measured their rate of sucking, the idea being that this was a proxy for how interested they were in what was going on around them. The more interested, the faster they suckled.

First, infants' suckling rates were measured while they were exposed to one repeated sound, say the 'b'. Initially infants found this interesting and sucked a bit faster. Then after a while they get bored and their suckling rate reduced.

Here's the crucial part: in some experimental conditions the sound is changed to a 'p', while in other conditions it continues with the same 'b'. The question is whether infants notice this change, as evidenced by an increased suckling rate, and thereby demonstrate that they can discriminate the tiny difference between a 'b' and a 'p' sound.

Innate ability to discriminate phonemes

What Eimas and colleagues found was that even the one-month old infants appeared to be able to tell the difference between a 'b' sound and a 'p' sound.

This findings, and more like it, suggests to many psychologists that infants are born with skills which enable them to categorise sounds that only slightly vary. This skill is one of the basic building blocks of language learning.

Most languages contain about 40 distinct phonemes and an infant's ultimate task is to master all of them. During their first three months of life infants make all kinds of sound, but none of them bear much resemblance to speech.

But, partly because of this innate ability to discriminate the components of speech, by 3 months they start producing vowel-like sounds. They've conquered their first few phonemes and are well on their way to their first words.

The first word

While infants seem to be born with an ear fine-tuned for language, this starts to subtly change at around 11 months of age. Subsequent findings have shown that adults cannot successfully distinguish as wider a range of phonemes as infants.

This is because until about 11 months of age infants are masters of discriminating phonemes used in all different types of languages. But after 11 months infants settle down with one set of phonemes for their first language, and lose the ability to discriminate the phonemes from other languages. Infants are beginning to specialise in their own language.

The specialisation at 11 months in one set of around 40 phonemes, along with other linguistic processes, is clearly crucial as it quickly brings a magical moment: the first word.


» 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, object permanence, play and knowledge.

[Image credit: creativesam]

Reference

Eimas, P. D., Siqueland, E. R., Jusczyk, P., & Vigorito, J. (1971). Speech Perception in Infants. Science, 171(3968), 303-306.

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Ask For Help: Why People Are Twice as Likely to Assist as You Think

Cycling

Psychological researchers are always asking people for help. Doing research means asking people to fill in questionnaires, press buttons in computer programs and sit in fMRI scanners - all in the name of science and usually for little or no apparent reward.

In response to these requests people are generally very co-operative, in fact unexpectedly co-operative. When psychology students carry out their first few studies they are often pleasantly surprised. Their requests for help, instead of being met with blank faces and excuses, are often met with smiles and agreements.

In everyday life asking others for help can be embarrassing, perhaps even a painful experience. Requesting help potentially shows our own weakness and also opens us up to rejection. It's a relief when people say yes.

A helping hand

Perhaps this explains the conclusion of new research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that finds we grossly underestimate just how willing others are to help us out.

In a series of studies Francis Flynn and Vanessa Lake of Columbia University tested people's estimation of how likely others were to help them out. They got people to ask others to fill in questionnaires, to borrow cell phones and to escort them to the gym.

Across these studies they found that people underestimated how likely others were to help them by as much as 100%.

This is such a high figure that it demands an explanation - what's going on here?

Embarrassing to say 'no'

Part of the answer is our egocentric bias - we find it difficult to understand what others are thinking and feeling because we are stuck inside our own heads.

But it's more than just that, argue Flynn and Lake, it's also the fact that we underestimate just how much social pressure there is on other people to say yes. In effect, when you ask someone to help you, it's much more awkward and embarrassing for them to say 'no' than you might think.

In two further studies Flynn and Lake supported this intuition by asking participants to put themselves in either the role of someone asking for help, or someone being asked for help.

They found that when people were help-seekers they reliably played down the social costs of saying no. But when they were the potential helper they realised how difficult it was to say no.

Ask for help, but don't ask for too much

There's two very practical messages coming out of this research:
  1. If you want help, just ask. People are much more likely to help than you think, especially if the request is relatively small. Most people take pleasure in helping others out from time-to-time.
  2. Make it easy for others to say no. The other side of the coin is that most of us don't realise just how hard it is to say no to a request for help. Other people feel much more pressure to say yes to our requests than we realise. If the help you need is likely to be burdensome then think about ways of making it easier to say no.


» This is part of a series on the psychology of the everyday.

[Image credit: LiminalMike]

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Better Golfers See Bigger Hole


Which hole is the same size as the golf cup?
A new study demonstrates that imagination can have a direct effect on our perception of the world. This may help explain why more accomplished sports-players describe perceiving the ball, or target such as a golf cup, as bigger.

Jessica K. Witt, an assistant professor at Purdue University, found that golfers who play well are more likely to actually see a bigger hole.

Witt's research team conducted three experiments. In the first, 46 golfers were asked to estimate the size of the hole after they played a round of golf. The diameter of a golf hole is 10.8 centimeters. The golfers selected one of nine black holes from a poster that ranged in size from 9-13 centimeters. Those who selected larger holes were the same players who had better scores on the course that day.

These findings matched up with previous research by Witt and Proffitt which found that people who were successful at hitting a ball remembered it as larger.

The question all golfers, and other athletes, will be asking is: how can I change my perception to increase my performance? Unfortunately this study can't tell us what causes what. The big question is whether playing better causes the hole to appear larger, or imagining the hole is larger causes better play.

Imagination instantly influences perception

Although Witt's research doesn't tell us, a second new study does show how easy it is for imagination to directly influence our perception of the world. Joel Pearson from Vanderbilt University and colleagues found that people's imagination influences both how they currently see something and how they see it in the future.

In their experiment participants imagined a pattern of either vertical or horizontal stripes. They were then presented with a horizontal pattern to one eye and a vertical pattern to the other eye. The effects of binocular rivalry mean that most people see the two patterns alternating. But subjects in this experiment were more likely to see the pattern they had been imagining.

"You might think you need to imagine something 10 times or 100 times before it has an impact," says Frank Tong, associate professor of psychology and co-author of the study. "Our results show that even a single instance of imagery can tilt how you see the world one way or another, dramatically, if the conditions are right."

Pearson and colleagues found strong individual differences in the influence of imagination on perception. While imagination influenced everyone's perception, some people were much more influenced than others. This might suggest that some sports-people have a better developed talent for effective visualisation than others.

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Why Our Ideal Self Seems Further Away For Us Than Others


Is everyone else reaching their true potential quicker than you?
Understanding ourselves is partly about understanding who it is we want to become.

Because each of us is a perpetual work in progress, we live our lives with one eye on the future. In that future we see ourselves transformed into our true, ideal self - just as we would like to be.

While we take this for granted in ourselves, research finds we are much less likely to see other people's good intentions and hopes for the future as part of their selves. Instead we are likely to judge them just as they appear to us - defined by their past and present, stuck in the moment, unlikely to change and ultimately knowable.

Future selves: our own and others

This is the conclusion reached by Elanor Williams and Thomas Gilovich from Cornell University in a new study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. They devised a series of experiments examining how we see our future selves in comparison to others.

In the first study 50 students were asked to assess how much their past, present and future selves contributed to their overall conception of themselves. Williams and Gilovich found that participants ascribed an average of 30.6% of their overall sense of self to their future selves1. Almost one-third of their self-concept, therefore, was future-oriented.

But when they thought about another person this went down to 21.6%. This suggested participants believed that more of their future plans were included in their own selves than in other people's selves.

Can I know myself?

The proportion of the self that people ascribe to the future is effectively unknowable, unlike the past and the present. Because people ascribe around one-third of their self to the future, but less to other people, this suggests people consider themselves fundamentally more mysterious than others.

To test this theory a second study invited 68 students to think about the self as though it were an iceberg. Part of an iceberg, like a person's future self, lurks below the surface and so can't be seen. The students were asked to indicate for both themselves, and other people, how much of the future self lurks below the surface.

The results showed that people thought that more of themselves was hidden below the surface than for other people. This suggested people saw themselves as being more mysterious and mutable, while other people were more likely to be just who they appeared to be.

How far away is your ideal self?

Williams and Gilovich's research heads towards a somewhat downbeat conclusion: most of us feel we have further to reach than others to attain our ideal selves2. The researchers tested this conclusion in a final study where participants indicated how far advanced they were on 'life's journey' towards 'self-actualisation' both for themselves and for the 'average Cornell student'.

When thinking about themselves students thought they were about 30% to where they wanted to be, while they thought the average student was about 50% towards becoming who they wanted to be. This confirmed their earlier studies which suggested we really do think other people are further towards fulfilling their potential than we are.

Future obsession

What Williams and Gilovich suggest is that the reason we feel others are doing better than us in the 'project of the self' is partly that we fail to take into account other people's dreams and aspirations4. Our own future intentions are only too clear to us, and they often serve to remind us just how far we are from our goals. But when thinking about others we often fail to acknowledge their goals and aspirations and wrongly assume how they are is how they want to be.

As Williams and Gilovich put it:
"Understanding ourselves is largely an effort to understand where we are headed; understanding others is more of an effort to understand where they are."

Unfortunately for us understanding our own hopes and dreams can be a source of considerable pain when we realise how far we have to go3. This pain may be made worse when we compare ourselves to others who may appear so much closer to realising their full potential.

The irony is that actually most people feel like this. Contrary to what we might imagine, other people are just as obsessed with the future as we are, and just as worried that everyone else is getting there faster than us.


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Notes

1. Like me, you may have baulked at the idea that the self can be sliced and diced into percentages for past, present and future. This assumes that if part of ourselves is yet to be revealed in the future then the rest is necessarily already exposed in the past and present. But this is a strange way of thinking about the self and may be unrepresentative.

Williams and Gilovich, therefore, used an alternative method which didn't rely on absolute percentages but accessed the same ideas. They got the same pattern of results again, suggesting the conclusion from their percentage-based studies was correct.

2.The alternative, that we set higher standards for ourselves, they claim is ruled out by another completed, but as yet unpublished study.

3. People who are in very close relationships with others are more likely to understand the other person's aspirations. This may mean that the effect seen in this study is reduced in the case of close relationships.

4. Williams and Gilovich suggest that as people get older they may see their current selves as closer to their full potential. The findings in the current study may not, therefore, apply so strongly to older people.

[Image credit: javYliz]

Improve Your Mind-Reading: Focus on the Big Picture You


Don't sweat the small stuff - instead focus on the big picture you.
We are surprisingly poor at working out what others think of us. Experiments suggest we rarely do better than chance at rating how likeable, intelligent or attractive others think we are.

So how can we be so bad at reading other people's minds and what can we do about it?

Writing in the latest edition of Social and Personality Psychology Compass, Dr Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago argues that the biggest obstacle to our understanding how we are viewed by others is our egocentric bias. We are all stuck inside our own heads.

The egocentric bias means that when we try to imagine how we are seen by others, we can't help but be biased by the way in which we see ourselves. Effectively to read others' minds, we first read our own minds.

Unfortunately it turns out that we often don't see ourselves as other people see us. Here are two major reasons why:
  1. Attentional bias: we assume others are paying much more attention to us than they really are. People usually don't notice the details we think they do.
  2. Construal bias: We see everything filtered through our own beliefs, attitudes and intentions, especially when situations are ambiguous or when our own beliefs, attitudes and intentions are very different from our mind-reading target.

How can we improve our mind-reading?

The time-honoured approach for finding out what others think of us has been to try and take their perspective. In a series of unpublished studies, though, Tal Eyal and Nick Epley found that this was not effective in increasing people's accuracy.

Instead three experiments they conducted suggested the answer was to think about yourself at a higher level of abstraction. Participants in one condition were asked to focus on central and defining features of the self rather than low level details. They were then able to judge what others thought of them more accurately.

Dr Epley explains: "You can look at yourself from the street level or you can look at yourself from the satellite level. Other people see you from the satellite level, so if you think of yourself from that big picture perspective, you'll tend to be more accurate."

"While we live our own lives under a microscope and we are present all the time when we do things, other people are not there with us," notes Epley. "That's a problem for intuiting other people's thoughts because we tend to evaluate ourselves in much finer detail. We look at ourselves from the street view, whereas other people are looking at us from space."

» There's a video with Dr Epley explaining the research and more details here.

[Image credit: nataliej]