Psychology - Page 13 of 55

Dogs Recognise Familiar Human Faces in Eye Tracking Experiment

A new study suggests that, like humans and some primates, dogs have the complex skills required to recognise faces.

A new experiment suggests that, like humans and some primates, dogs have the complex skills required to recognise faces.

The research is the first to measure dogs’ eye movements as they looked at pictures of both humans and other dogs.

The research, conducted by Somppi et al. (2013) and published in the journal Animal Cognition, trained dogs to lie down and look at images presented on a computer screen in front of them.

The dogs were shown pictures of their owner and other dogs they knew, as well as both humans and dogs who were strangers to them.

All the while their eye movements were tracked.

It was clear that dogs were most interested in the faces of other dogs, as they looked at these images the longest.

The dogs also spent more time looking at the faces of their human owners than they did at the faces of strangers.

Fascinated by the eyes

In addition, dogs were shown the pictures upside down. This is because upside-down faces are thought to help reveal how our brains process faces.

The researchers found that the dogs were interested in the upside-down faces and looked at them for the same length of time, on average, as those that were the right way up.

Like humans, though, dogs were most fascinated by the eyes, especially when the faces were the right way up.

The authors conclude that dogs may well be able to pick their owners out in a photograph:

“Dogs are likely to recognize conspecific [other dogs] and human faces in photographs, and their face perception expertise may extend beyond their own species.”

→ Read on: 5 Intriguing Studies of Human-Dog Psychology

Image credit: Charlie Stinchcomb

License to Sin: How to Dodge a Devilish Self-Control Loophole

Giving yourself permission to sin means you can get what you want, but at what cost?

You want another slice of cake or glass of wine, but you know you shouldn’t have one.

It’s the classic self-control dilemma.

But luckily there’s a loophole; sometimes we mentally give ourselves permission to indulge: “Well, I’ve worked hard today, so I’ll have another slice of cake or glass of wine.”

Now there’s a ‘license to sin’.

A recent study cleverly demonstrates this ‘license to sin’ and shows how dangerous it can be (de Witt Huberts et al., 2012).

A little snack

To investigate, the researchers tricked one group of people into thinking they’d worked twice as hard on a boring test as another group.

Both groups were then asked to do a ‘taste test’ of some rather tempting looking snacks.

The group that thought they’d worked harder now had more of a ‘license to sin’ as a reward to themselves.

And sure enough they ate, on average, 130 calories more in 10 minutes than the other group.

It’s fascinating that the participants did this without being told they’d worked harder or being given any other cues.

Also remember that, on average, both groups had their mental self-control muscles depleted the same amount as they’d both spent the same time doing the boring task.

Avoid the loophole

What this study is showing is that these well-worn mental thought processes can be insidious. The mind has all sorts of tricks it plays so that it can get what it wants.

The ‘license to sin’ is one of them. You want to over-indulge, so your mind creates this little story that says: I’ve worked hard, so I deserve it.

The clever thing is that it can completely bypass all those logical, rational things we’ve told ourselves about healthy eating (or whatever it is) and, non-coincidentally, we get what we want.

None of this is to say that we shouldn’t indulge ourselves from time-to-time, but the question is: how often is the license to sin being invoked?

It’s a way of allowing our misbehaviour that is like an exception we all know about, but somehow don’t pull ourselves up on.

Being more aware of, and watching out for this trick may be useful in bolstering our self-control.

Image credit: Christophe Verdier

Like to Stay Up Late? Different Neural Structures Found in the Brains of Night Owls

For the first time differences in neural structures have been shown between people who are night owls and early risers.

In the new research on 59 participants, those who were confirmed night owls (preferring late to bed and late to rise) had lower integrity of the white matter in various areas of the brain (Rosenberg et al., 2014).

Lower integrity in these areas has been linked to depression and cognitive instability.

This research doesn’t tell us what the relationship is, but the authors guess that it may be related to ‘social jet-lag’.

Social jet-lag comes about because night owls are forced to live–as most of us are–like early risers.

Work, school and other institutions mostly require early rising, which, for night owls, causes problems.

As night owls find it difficult to get to sleep early, they tend to carry large amounts of sleep debt.

In other words, they’re exhausted all the time.

As a result, they tend to be larger consumers of caffeine and other stimulants, in order to counteract their sleep debt.

Who’s a night owl?

Night owls make up around 20% of the population, with about 10% of us being larks–preferring to sleep early and rise early.

The rest of us are balanced in between.

This means about 70% should be able to adapt to either rising early or sleeping later, as long as they stick to good sleep habits (see: How to Fall Asleep Fast).

Men are more likely to be night owls–this seems to be related to higher levels of testosterone.

This is why adolescent males have the tendency to be extreme night owls, staying up all night and sleeping in all day.

Naturally, then, women, along with the elderly of both sexes, are more likely to be larks.

The Brain “Sees” Objects That You Don’t Perceive

A new study shows how much visual input the brain processes, but we never consciously see.

Every day, when you open your eyes in the morning, there is a huge flood of visual information from the external world into your mind.

Your brain edits this flood down to a trickle of things that are highly relevant: Where is the dressing-gown? Where is the curtain? Where is the door?

The rest of it–the state of the carpet, the shadows on the ceiling–all gets ignored.

Or does it?

How much processing does the brain allocate to things you’re not consciously aware of? What does ‘it’ see that ‘you’ don’t? (Obviously ‘you’ are ‘it’, but let’s not get into that!).

Fascinating new research, published in the journal Psychological Science, addresses this question.

Sanguinetti et al. (2013) had participants looking at the silhouettes of objects in the centre of a screen, while there were other shapes around the outside.

It’s like the everyday situation where you are concentrating on something, but there are all kinds of other objects and shapes in your peripheral vision.

By monitoring their brainwaves, the researchers were able to determine whether participants were processing these peripheral objects.

People don’t usually take much notice of what’s going on in their peripheral vision because they are concentrating on what they are looking at.

The same was true in this study: participants were not consciously aware of the peripheral shapes.

And yet, the electrical activity they measured suggested that their brains were processing these peripheral shapes for meaning.

This goes against how many theorists have suggested that vision works. Professor Mary Peterson explained:

“Many, many theorists assume that because it takes a lot of energy for brain processing, that the brain is only going to spend time processing what you’re ultimately going to perceive. But in fact the brain is deciding what you’re going to perceive, and it’s processing all of the information and then it’s determining what’s the best interpretation.”

Naturally, the brain edits information coming from the eyes, because only a portion of it is useful for us.

It’s like a film director who doesn’t bother showing you the hero going to sleep or brushing his teeth.

To follow the story, what you need is the salient details, and that is what the brain is trying to give you: the edited version of the most useful visual facts.

However, what this study suggests is that even information that isn’t that useful or relevant is still being processed in the brain for meaning.

The study is a fantastic reminder that what we see is the result of an extremely complicated editing and filtering process.

What we actually perceive is just what the brain thinks will be most useful to us. But, while we don’t perceive the rest, it seems much of it is still being processed unconsciously.

Image credit: Patrick McArdle/UANews

People Are More Moral in the Morning

Faced with a moral decision? Study suggests you should make it in the morning.

A lot of bad behaviour goes on at night. Too much drinking, eating, fighting and all the rest.

But is this just down to the fact that people are mostly at work during the day, or is it more than that?

Could it be that people’s self-control is sapped by everyday events and, by the evening, those with the relevant tendencies can’t stop themselves cutting loose?

Certainly every new day presents all of us with a series of little–and sometimes not so little–mental workouts.

Even small things like choosing what to wear, planning the day’s activities and attending a routine meeting take their toll.

All this mental effort depletes our reserves so that we can almost feel it seeping away with each new task.

We may start the day with all the best intentions, but by the time the evening rolls around, these have gone out of the window.

If this is really true, then it should be possible to see this decline in people’s self-control over the day.

If, say, we compare people’s moral behaviour in the morning with that in the afternoon, there should be a measurable difference.

That’s exactly what Kouchaki and Smith (2013) have done in a new study published in Psychological Science. Being positive souls, though, they called it the ‘morning morality’ effect: the idea that we are at our most moral in the mornings.

They checked out this theory of a ‘morning morality’ effect by giving participants in four studies opportunities to cheat while carrying out simple computer-based tasks.

Sometimes people were tested in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon. Each time, during the tasks, they were surreptitiously given chances to cut corners or tell little fibs.

Across the studies, the researchers found that people were less likely to cheat and lie in the morning than the afternoon.

People who cheated more in the afternoon also showed lower moral awareness, suggesting their moral character was bleeding away as the day proceeded.

So, perhaps all the bad behaviour that goes on at night is more than just opportunity, it’s also a result of the collective erosion of people’s moral fibre.

The authors of the study even suggest that the morning morality effect is worth knowing about if you’ve got some important decisions to make:

“The morning morality effect has notable implications for individuals and organizations, and it suggests that morally relevant tasks should be deliberately ordered throughout the day.” (Kouchaki & Smith, 2013)

Simply put: don’t make any really important decisions in the afternoon, especially those with moral implications; you’re more likely to act immorally.

Image credit: Sean Rogers

Synesthesia Could Explain How Some People See ‘Auras’

Experience of ‘auras’ around people may be result of a neuropsychological condition called synesthesia.

Synesthesia is a fascinating condition which causes a cross-wiring of the senses. People with it find they can taste numbers or associate particular colours with certain people.

Rather than being weird, spooky or mystical, it is now a recognised neuropsychological phenomenon which is thought to affect about 4% of the population.

Some argue that synesthesia may help to explain the claim that people have auras–a subtle field of energy around them which can be read.

It may be that seeing this ‘energy field’ is a type of synesthesia.

One example of this cross-over between New Age beliefs and recognised neuropsychological phenomena is the case of Esteban, a faith healer from southern Spain.

Researchers from the University of Granada have examined him and found that he has mirror-touch synesthesia (Milan et al., 2012). He experiences a sensation when he sees other people being touched; this means he can literally feel other people’s pain.

He also has face-colour synesthesia, which results from a crossover between parts of the brain responsible for face processing and colour perception.

These synesthetic phenomena, along with high levels of empathy, and a slightly delusional personality, mean Estaban has special emotional and pain reading skills.

In Estaban’s case it looks like there is some relationship between his synesthesia and his perceived special abilities.

To further examine the claim, though, Milan et al. looked specifically at four synesthetes who don’t claim any special ‘New Age’ abilities.

They then compared this with known faith healers and aura readers who do claim special abilities. A large enough overlap between the two might suggest a causal role for synesthesia.

The researchers, though, found too many differences between the experience of synesthetes and those claiming to read auras.

This does not mean that the aura readers are really seeing auras, just that their ‘powers’ can be explained by alternative means. Seeing auras may instead be a result of the normal functioning of the visual system:

“…the complementary colour effect, which results from a temporary ‘‘exhaustion’’ of the colour-sensitive cells in the retina, could account for the presence of auric colours seen by a sensitive viewer when staring at a person. Staring at a darker object (a human figure) against a bright background may induce the perception of a bright ‘‘halo’’ around the object.” (Milan et al., 2012)

Or it could be that ‘aura readers’ simply see what they want or expect to see, and perhaps invoking synesthesia is too complex an explanation for a much simpler cause.

Image credit: PhotoGraham

Why Do Cheaters Cheat When The Stakes Are Low?

Despite having little to gain, petty cheaters feel happier and more self-satisfied than those who follow the rules.

In short, the reason that cheaters sometimes cheat, despite tiny rewards, is that it feels good.

Although we tend to assume that cheating should mostly trigger negative emotions like guilt, that’s not the conclusion of a series of studies carried out by Nicole E. Ruedy at the University of Washington, and colleagues.

In their studies, people who cheated on a problem-solving task–while having little to gain–experienced a kind of ‘cheater’s high’ (Ruedy et al., 2013). They felt more satisfied with themselves and happier than those who didn’t cheat.

Some people were even specifically reminded after the study how important it was not to cheat. Perversely, these people felt even better!

Even more confusingly, when asked, most people in the study thought that someone who cheated would feel worse, or at least ambivalent afterwards. So, their prediction of how cheaters would feel was completely wrong.

Little to gain

One reason people’s bad feelings were likely limited in this study was that the cheating behaviour itself did not hurt anyone else. Participants were simply peeking at the answers to math and logic problems.

Nicole Ruedy explained:

“When people do something wrong specifically to harm someone else, such as apply an electrical shock, the consistent reaction in previous research has been that they feel bad about their behavior. Our study reveals people actually may experience a ‘cheater’s high’ after doing something unethical that doesn’t directly harm someone else.”

If you’ve ever wondered why people cheat when there seems little point–for example, by stealing something from a shop that they can easily afford–then this study may help explain it:

“The good feeling some people get when they cheat may be one reason people are unethical even when the payoff is small.”

Image credit: Craig Sunter

Rule-Breaking Teens Make More Successful Entrepreneurs

Study finds successful entrepreneurs have brains and a history of risky behaviour.

Study finds successful entrepreneurs have brains and a history of risky behaviour in their teens.

According to a new study, successful entrepreneurs are three times more likely to have engaged in illicit activities as teens like shoplifting, skipping out of school and even drug-dealing.

The insight comes from a nationally representative sample of 12,686 Americans who have been followed for other 30 years, since they were teenagers (Levine & Rubinstein, 2013).

They looked at what types of cognitive and other factors were associated with becoming a successful entrepreneur—especially one that had incorporated their business.

Naturally they found that successful entrepreneurs have to be smart, have high self-esteem and be well-educated; but they also need the attraction to risk.

Those who turned out to be the best entrepreneurs often had a history of being rule breakers in their teenage years. They were more likely to have smoked marijuana, to have bunked off school and even to have assaulted others.

But this illicit aspect was also coupled with a very stable family background. Successful entrepreneur’s were disproportionately likely to come from families that were:

high-income,
well-educated,
and stable.

So we’re not exactly talking about disadvantaged youths here.

We’re also not talking about women here: since men, on average, are more aggressive and are prepared to take on higher risks, they are more likely to become entrepreneurs. Women made up just 28% of the entrepreneurs who had incorporated their business.

Does more risk mean more reward?

But does this extra risk pay off?

This study found that in a financial sense, the risk may well pay off. Successful entrepreneurs earned 41% more per hour than similar salaried workers, although they also worked longer hours (on average, 27% more).

The study doesn’t, however, tell us anything about the effects of being an entrepreneur on family life or on psychological health. Perhaps these may not be as favourable as the economic benefits.

In a similar vein, the taste for risk-taking plus high self-esteem can provide a dangerous mix which can easily lead to lapses in judgement. Because of this, entrepreneurs are likely to need someone more risk-averse around who can rein them in when they go too far.

Image credit: Philip Daun

Why You Can’t Tickle Yourself

Tickling robot reveals the mysteries of why we can’t tickle ourselves.

It’s a well-known fact that you can’t tickle yourself.

Try it; you (mostly) can’t. Brush your own fingers across the soles of your feet. You certainly feel a sensation, but it’s nothing like when someone else does it.

But why can’t you tickle yourself? If someone else can tickle you, then you should be able to tickle yourself. After all, I can feel my own touch just the same as someone else’s can’t I?

The answer is, psychologists think, that our brains have a basic function which is designed to tell whether some sensation is caused by ourselves, or whether it comes from outside (Blakemore et al, 2000).

Telling the difference between the two is important because otherwise your own touch might give you the same surprise as when someone comes up behind you and taps you on the shoulder.

To test this out some researchers have created a simple tickling robot (Blakemore et al., 1999). The way it works is you put your left hand on a little stick and move it around. This causes a sponge to move around on your right hand.

It turns out that when the robot works like this, people feel little, because it’s like they are causing the sponge to move themselves, through this ‘robot’. It’s like when you brush a feather duster across your own palm: your brain knows you’ve caused the sensation, so it doesn’t feel that ticklish.

But, when the robot introduces a delay of one-third of a second between their left hands moving the stick, and feeling the sponge move on their right hands, suddenly it tickles!

The reason is that the ‘robot’ has tricked the mind into thinking the source of the movement is external. And because it feels like someone else is causing the sensation, then it tickles!

Ah, tickling robot! Don’t tickle me!

Image credit: Matt Batchelor

Category: Psychology