Category: Psychology

If you were to undergo brain surgery, would you care if the surgeon regularly carried out mental practice of the operation? Or, would you only be interested in the physical practice?

(By mental practice I don’t mean getting ‘psyched up’ or making plans or getting in the right frame of mind; I mean mentally running through the physical movements required for the operation.)

Quite naturally you’d probably be much more interested in how often the surgeon had carried out the operation in real life, rather than in his imagination.

But should you be? What is the value of mental practice, not just in surgery, but in life in general? How much benefit is there to mental rehearsal and do we undervalue the power of mental practice?

Rehearsal

For neurosurgery specifically there is no study looking at what difference mental practice can make (although some surgeons do carry out this sort of rehearsal). But we do know that for basic surgical techniques, mental practice can benefit performance.

One study by Sanders et al. (2008) was carried out on medical students. On top of their usual training—which included physical practice—half were trained in mental imagery techniques, while the other half studied their textbooks.

When the students carried out live surgery, those who’d used mental imagery performed better, on average, than those assigned the book learning.

Another study looking at laparoscopic surgery has also shown benefits for mental practice for novice surgeons (Arora et al., 2011).

Away from the operating theatre, the main way we’re used to hearing about mental rehearsal is in sports. Whether it’s an amateur tennis player or Roger Federer, sports-people often talk about how mental rehearsal improves their performance.

My favourite example is the British Formula 1 driver, Jenson Button. In practice he sits on an inflatable gym ball, with a steering wheel in his hands, shuts his eyes, and drives a lap of the circuit, all the while tapping out the gear changes. He does this in close to real time so that when he opens his eyes he’s not far off his actual lap time.

Powerful pinkies

The reason that sports-people, surgeons and many others are interested in the benefits of mental practice is that they can be so dramatic, plus they are effectively free.

Here’s a great example from a simple study in which some participants trained up a muscle in their little fingers using just the power of mental practice (Ranganathan et al., 2004). In the study participants were split into four groups:

1. These people performed ‘mental contractions’ of their little finger. In other words, they imagined exercising their pinkies.
2. Same as (1), but they performed mental contractions on their elbows, not their little fingers.
3. Did no training at all.
4. Carried out physical training on their little finger.

They all practised (or not) in the various different ways for four weeks. Afterwards, the muscle strength in their fingers and elbows was tested. Unsurprisingly those who’d done nothing hadn’t improved, while those who’d trained physically improved their muscle strength by an average of 53%.

The two mental practice groups couldn’t beat physical training, but they still did surprisingly well. Those imagining flexing their elbow increased their strength by 13.5% and those imagining flexing their little finger increased their strength by 35%. That’s surprisingly close to the 53% from physical training; I bet you wouldn’t have expected it to be that close.

Thinking practice

This is just strength training, but as we’ve seen there’s evidence that mental rehearsal of skills also produces benefits. Examples include mentally practising a music instrument, during rehabilitation from brain injuries and so on; the studies are starting to mount up.

Indeed some of these have shown that mental practice seems to work best for tasks that involve cognitive elements, in other words that aren’t just about physical actions (Driskell et al., 1994).

So it’s about more than mentally rehearsing your cross-court forehand. Rehearsal could also be useful for a job interview or important meeting; not just in what you’ll say but how you’ll talk, carry yourself and interact with others. Mental rehearsal could also be useful in how you deal with your children, or make a difficult phone call or how you’ll accomplish the most challenging parts of your job.

Notice the type of mental imagery I’m talking about here. It’s not so much about visualising ultimate success, with all its attendant pitfalls, but about visualising the process. What works is thinking through the steps that are involved and, with motor skills, the exact actions that you will perform.

To be effective, though, mental practice has to be like real practice: it should be systematic and as close to reality as you can make it. Just daydreaming won’t work. So if you make a mistake, you should work out why and mentally correct it. You should also make the practice as vivid as possible by tuning in to the sensory experience: what you can see, hear, feel and even smell, whatever is important.

If it can work for surgeons, elite athletes and little-finger-muscle-builders, then it can work for all of us.

Image credit: Adam Rhoades

With the rise of credit cards, PayPal and other ways of transferring cash electronically, real cash-money is in decline. Like CDs and books before it, the folding stuff looks certain to be another victim of technological advances.

But not just yet.

We still love our cash and it turns out that money’s physical manifestation has all sorts of interesting psychological effects on us.

For example, people tend to spend more when they have larger denomination notes, even if the amount is the same. In other words they spend more when using one $20 bill than if they have four $5 bills.

We are also emotionally attached to our currency. Americans continue to resist the introduction of a dollar coin, preferring the dollar bill, and British people like their pound over the euro.

Dirty money

So what about the effects of dirty money? I don’t mean money that’s the result of criminal activities; I mean, literally, money that is soiled.

As bills circulate, they pick up all sorts of muck, including bacteria and traces of illegal drugs. In fact, in the UK 80% of banknotes contain traces of illicit substances, usually cocaine—surprisingly it’s not an urban myth. Similar rates have been found in the US and elsewhere around the world.

Naturally dirty bills are periodically replaced. The average $1 bill in the US is in circulation for about 18 months while for the less-used $100 bill it’s about nine years.

This means that when you go to the cash machine, sometimes you get a bunch of crisp, new notes and sometimes it’s a little wedge of crinkled up scraps that look like they’ve been around the block more than a few times.

Surely everyone prefers to get the crisp new notes from the machine. But does it make any difference to how we spend it whether money looks new and crisp or old and soiled?

Out with the old

In a new study by Muro and Noseworthy (2012) they found that it does. Across a series of experiments, when people were given old, worn bills they usually spent more than when given crisp new ones.

For example, participants given a crisp $20 bill spent an average of $3.68 but those given the old one spent an average of $8.35.

The same was true when participants were offered a chance to gamble. A new bill proved a way more tempting prize than an old soiled one, with 80% of participants willing to gamble away an old one to get a new one, compared with only 23% willing to gamble a new one to get an old one. It seems crazy because the amount of money on offer was exactly the same.

So it seems we generally prefer to get rid of old notes and keep the new ones. But this isn’t always true; sometimes the dirty money stays in our pockets.

All of the transactions in the previous study were made by people on their own. What happens when there are others around?

The researchers found that in public our preferences reverse. When we think other people are watching us, we are more likely to spend the crisp new notes, rather than the old crinkled ones, if we have a choice.

This study demonstrates two interesting things. Firstly, we find soiled bills disgusting and want to get rid of them. Secondly, when other people are watching we prefer to show off our crisp, new bills, despite the fact it means we have to keep the dirty bills instead.

Once again it shows the emotional attachment we have towards inanimate objects that, on the face of it, seem interchangeable. People in this study felt measurably more pride towards their crisp bills than the dirty ones.

It’s the same reason some people still love vinyl and the traditional dead-tree-type-book: the physical form that things take has a strong effect on us; it’s not just about the information that’s contained within.

Image credit: Adrian Clark (Detail from a £20 note)

Most people hate public speaking. The very idea starts the palms sweating and the stomach churning.

It makes sense: with everyone’s eyes on you, the potential for embarrassment is huge. Crowds, we are told, can sense our nerves.

Or can they? We may feel terribly nervous here on the inside, but what can other people read from our facial expressions, speech patterns and general demeanour?

When this is tested experimentally we find an interesting thing.

In one study in which people gave extemporaneous speeches, participants were asked to rate their own nervousness (Savitsky & Gilovich, 2003). This was then compared with audience ratings.

The results showed that people tended to over-estimate just how nervous they appeared to others. And this is a consistent finding. We think others can read more from our expressions than they really can.

In other studies people have been tested trying to hide the lies they are telling, as well as their disgust at a foul-tasting drink and even their concern at a staged emergency. In every case people think their emotions are more obvious to others than they actually are (Gilovich & Savitsky, 1999).

Sometimes simply knowing this can help. In a follow-up to the public speaking study, some participants were told that they didn’t look as nervous as they felt. These people went on to deliver better speeches as their nerves didn’t get to them so badly.

Tap out a song

Psychologists call this the ‘illusion of transparency’. It’s the idea that we feel our emotions are transparent to others when in fact they are not, or at least not as much as we think.

You can test this illusion by tapping out the rhythm to a song and getting a friend to try and guess what it is.

When this study was carried out, people guessed that those listening would get it about 50% of the time (Newton, 1990; PhD dissertation). In fact it’s incredibly hard to guess. Listeners in this study got it right less than 3% of the time.

This was true even though the songs were incredibly well-known—in this case it was “Happy Birthday To You” and “The Star-Spangled Banner”.

When you do this with a friend, you find yourself staring in amazement at them because it seems so obvious. You can hear the chords thundering away in your head as you tap, but you forget that they can’t.

Just the same is true of written communication. When you write an email it seems perfectly obvious to you what you meant but language is open to interpretation and sometimes the meaning gets twisted or lost in the journey from one mind to the next.

None of this means, of course, that our thoughts and feelings are totally impenetrable to others. Nevertheless the illusion of transparency is worth bearing in mind as it affects so much of our everyday life and helps explain arguments that begin with: “But I thought it was obvious how I felt…”

Image credit: KnockOut_Photographs

Have you got enough time for everything you want to do? If this survey is correct then about half of us are ‘time-poor’, as the expression goes, or worse, are experiencing a ‘time famine’.

So, what if I said there was a solution to feeling continuously short of time, and it involved giving your free-time away to others?

No, you might say, quite rightly, that doesn’t make sense. If I give away my free-time to others then I will have less time for myself and so I will feel even more rushed. It doesn’t add up.

This is a perfectly logical response, except that it doesn’t take into account the weird way in which the mind works.

For the mind, time is not always perceived in exactly the same way. I have written an article on this (10 Ways the Mind Warps Time) but suffice to say here that many things like our emotions and attention affect our perception of how much time has passed. To repeat Einstein’s quote:

“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.”

No matter how much free-time we actually have, what really matters is our personal perception. So how can we change our perception of how much time we have?

Giving time gives you time

That’s what was tested in a new study which gave people some time and had them either (Mogilner et al., 2012):

• spend it on themselves,
• waste it, or,
• spend it on others, whether friends or strangers.

What they found was that people who spent the time on others felt afterwards that they had more time in both the present and the future, compared with those who spent it on themselves or wasted it.

This seems odd and the opposite of how people intuitively deal with being short of time. A regular response to being rushed is to hoard spare time for ourselves. So why does giving it away help?

Here’s how the study’s authors answer this question:

“…spending time on others makes people feel like they have done a lot with their time – and the more they feel they have done with their time, the more time they will feel they have.”

It seems that time well spent expands in our mind, giving us the illusion of being time-rich. When we spend our time well, i.e. by giving it away, it makes us feel more effective and capable.

Of course there is an upper limit to how much giving time will make you feel you have more time yourself. Some people, like full-time caregivers, already give so much of their time away that giving more is detrimental.

But for the majority of us, when making decisions about how to spend our spare time, defaulting to ‘me-time’ may not be the best answer, either for others or for ourselves.

Image credit: themysteryman

After a long hard day’s work it feels good to flop down and enjoy your favourite TV show.

Is that so wrong? Or should we be doing something more challenging or creative with our time? Perhaps taking a spin class or learning the Peruvian nose-flute?

A new study, however, suggests that the ‘idiot box’ may have its psychological uses after all (Derrick, 2012).

Sense of belonging

The problem with stressful days is that they sap our self-control. This is a finite resource which easily runs down at the end of the day.

While you might start out with good intentions for what you’ll do in the evening, these are all shot once you’re worn out.

One way that we can replenish our self-control is to escape into a familiar social world. People we know well provide a sense of belonging, can give us energy, boost our mood and be self-affirming.

Since research has shown that people experience the characters in TV shows as real people, perhaps they can also provide this sense of belonging.

Where you know everybody’s name

When Jaye Derrick from the University at Buffalo tested this in an experiment, she found that after using up their self-control people did automatically seek out a familiar fictional world, such as those found on TV.

Not only that but this immersion in a fictional world also had positive effects. People did better at a difficult puzzle that required self-control once they’d watched a favourite TV program or read a favourite book.

A second study suggested it wasn’t just about watching any old TV show. It made a difference that the fictional world was a familiar one, such as you might enjoy in a well-established sitcom or drama series.

None of this is to say you should drop your real friends and rely totally on Frasier Crane, Jerry Seinfeld or Homer Simpson for your social interactions. But this research does suggest that, at least in the short-term, watching a familiar TV programme can have a restorative effect on self-control.

Image credit: Luca Rossato

Have you ever wondered why society hardly ever changes? I think most of us have.

One answer is that humans have a mental bias towards maintaining the status quo. People think like this all the time. They tend to go with what they know rather than a new, unknown option.

People feel safer with the established order in the face of potential change. That’s partly why people buy the same things they bought before, return to the same restaurants and keep espousing the same opinions.

This has been called the ‘system justification bias’ and it has some paradoxical effects (research is described in Jost et al., 2004):

• Poor people don’t strongly support the sorts of political policies that would make them better off. Surveys find that low-income groups are hardly more likely than high-income groups to want tax changes that mean they will get more money. Generally people’s politics doesn’t line up with their position in society.
• Oddly, the more disadvantaged people are, the more they are likely to support a system that is doing them no favours. This is because of cognitive dissonance. In one US example of this low-income Latinos are more likely to trust government officials than high-income Latinos.
• Most disturbing of all: the more unequal the society, the more people try to rationalise the system. For example in countries in which men hold more sexist values, women are more likely to support the system.

People seem to rationalise the inequality in society, e.g. poor people are poor because they don’t work hard enough and rich people are rich because they deserve it.

Incredibly, this means that some (but not all) turkeys will keep on voting for Christmas.

Image credit: kris krug

A little critical, analytical thinking is a good thing. Without doubting ourselves sometimes we’d find it difficult to make good decisions.

Too much doubt, though, can stop us living our lives to the full. Some people can never make up their minds about their careers, their love lives or much else.

Unfortunately that sense that you’re not quite sure can leave you living in permanent limbo, never taking that final decisive step.

The problem is that we can we never really know what the outcome of our decisions will be, that’s the nature of life. But the person who never takes a risk, however small, never gets anywhere. At some point, after a little looking, you’ve got to leap.

Psychologists have found that people who doubt themselves too much end up engaging in excessive information processing which leads to procrastination and self-handicapping.

Self-doubters are also more likely to suffer from depression and social anxiety. Some soul-searching and self-analysis can be useful, but too much is a recipe for stagnation.

Shake your head

A recent study, though, points to a possible path for escaping the doubt habit.

For their research Wichman et al. (2010) recruited people who were chronically uncertain. They were then given a test which unconsciously encouraged them to be uncertain about their uncertainty. This was done by getting them to unscramble sentences which were related to uncertainty, like: “her speaker doubt I explanations” (you’re allowed to drop one word, in this case ‘speaker’).

Ironically it didn’t increase their uncertainty further but reduced it. This suggests that doubting your doubt can be useful. Of course this wasn’t a permanent solution, but it did momentarily reduce their levels of uncertainty.

Just the same effect could be seen when participants in a second study shook, rather than nodded their heads. The physical action of shaking their head while thinking about their uncertainty caused one to cancel out the other. Through this they temporarily reduced  their doubts.

Doubt your doubt

This is a fascinating counter-intuitive case when lack of confidence in your own thoughts is beneficial. For some people having confidence in their doubts just leads to more procrastination, self-handicapping and worse.

Perhaps learning to doubt the doubt more will offer one way of helping to escape from some of the crippling effects of excessive self-doubt.

While shaking your head can’t be considered a miracle cure, it is interesting that doubting your doubt can work to dispel the original doubt.

Image credit: paurian

Here are 50+ studies on the psychology of work:

• 10 Psychological Techniques to Help You Get a New Job – Get hired using the fruits of psychological research on interview technique.
• 7 Easy Ways to Give Your Résumé the Psychological Edge – Getting your résumé picked for interview is about more than just education, experience and background…
• 10 Psychological Keys to Job Satisfaction – Do you get a pleasant satisfied feeling after a hard day at work?
• Why Career Planning Is Time Wasted – Our culture worships planning. Everything must be planned in advance. Our days, week, years, our entire lives.
• Ten Powerful Steps to Negotiating a Higher Salary – Recent psychological research reveals 10 strategies that will help you hike your paycheck.
• Why Teamwork is Overrated – Does teamwork always enhance the performance of organisations?
• Can You Get Things Done Without Making People Hate You? – Psychological research on leadership locates the assertiveness sweet spot.
• 7 Ways Work Can Make You Physically Sick – Sick of work? If you are held back by your organisation, it may be making you physically sick.
• The Problem With Narcissistic Leaders – Narcissistic leaders reduce information sharing in groups, leading to poor task performance.
• 7 Reasons Leaders Fail – Around two-thirds of workers say the most stressful aspect of their jobs is their immediate boss, their line manager.
• How To Be a Great Leader (in under 300 words) – The six psychological factors that make a really great leader.
• Top 5 Career Regrets – What do professionals—from a Fortune 500 CEO to a self-employed photographer—say they regret the most about their careers?
• The New Science of ‘The Meeting’ – The subtle signals that—thank the heavens—decisions are being made and how long the wrap-up will last.
• 10 Keys to Building Great Teams – Spread the team’s story, prioritise social skills, mix genders, build trust and more…
• Which Professions Have The Most Psychopaths? – Are there ‘successful psychopaths’ amongst us?

Image credit: Alex Proimos

A few years ago I wrote an article on weird psychology studies. It included studies on tickling, superstitious pigeons, a psychic dog and self-conscious urinators.

It seems I hardly even scratched the surface. Here are 10 even weirder psychology studies that have mostly been published in academic journals, some more reputable than others…

1. Cerebral activation during micturation in normal men

Nour et al. (2000) had people urinating in a PET scanner. And from this they tell us:

“We conclude from this study […] that the onset and maintenance of micturation in normal men is associated with a vast network of cortical and subcortical regions, confirming observations from clinical and animal studies”

…and also that their PET scanner now has a funny smell.

2. Unwanted intrusive thoughts and the growth of facial hair

You’re going to think I’ve just made this one up, but I haven’t. From Durac (1997):

“An increase in hair production on the end of one’s nose or ear can produce an automatic negative cognition. Equally, a negative automatic thought can produce an immediate increase in hair growth on the outer surface at the tip of the nose…”

So what happens when you clip your nasal hair? Do all those bad thoughts immediately evaporate? If only it were that easy.

3. Men and women holding hands: whose hand is uppermost?

Chapell et al. (1999) tell us:

“A combined total of 15,008 handholding couples were observed in six studies, and across differences in height, age, hand preference, ethnicity, culture, and sex of the initiator of handholding in public, men were significantly more likely than women to have the uppermost hand.”

I’ve never noticed this before, but I’ll definitely be on the lookout now.

4. Does smelling granny relieve depressive mood?

Black (2001) wins the prize for the most unusual abstract for a study:

“Chen and Haviland-Jones claim if you’re down
You needn’t be depressed and mope around
Check out Granny’s smell
It’ll make you feel well
One problem: no supporting evidence was found”

There’s your answer: granny may smell wonderful but sniffing her won’t cheer you up. Better to speak to her instead.

5. Neurological and cognitive abnormalities associated with chronic petrol sniffing

Maruff et al. (1999) tell us that…

“…subtle neurological and cognitive abnormalities do occur in individuals who abuse petrol but who do not have acute toxic encephalopathy and that the severity of these abnormalities is reduced with abstinence.”

Not exactly earth-shattering news that sniffing petrol isn’t good for your brain and you’ll probably get better if you quit. Still, good to know that someone is on the case.

6. Farting as a defence against unspeakable dread

Sidoli (1996) tell us about the defence mechanism of boy who was had been a victim of abuse and neglect:

“When feeling endangered, Peter had developed a defensive olfactive container using his bodily smell and farts to envelop himself in a protective cloud of familiarity against the dread of falling apart, and to hold his personality together.”

Childishly I found the title funny but reading the abstract made me feel bad for Peter. But when the authors start talking about a fart holding someone’s personality together, I had to stifle a giggle.

7. Gender differences in book carrying

Kushkituah:

“The results show our study replicated Jenni’s: females use Type I (books in front of body), males preferred Type II (books at side of body). For bag carrying, males prefer backpacks, while females prefer one/two-strap bags. However, no differences exist in carrying style.”

Unlike the handholding study, which I hadn’t noticed, this one I remember from school days. The key for young men is to hold the books as nonchalantly as possible, as though you’ve forgotten they are there.

8. The rubber hand illusion

An out-of-body experience with a rubber glove described by Tsakiris and Haggard (2005):

“Watching a rubber hand being stroked, while one’s own unseen hand is synchronously stroked, may cause the rubber hand to be attributed to one’s own body, to “feel like it’s my hand.”

These sorts of illusions are fascinating and have a corollary in the phenomenon of phantom limbs. There people who’ve had limbs amputated find that they still have sensations from it. This is very irritating if they get an itch which they’ll never be able to scratch.

9. Becoming a vampire without being bitten

Gabriel and Young (2011) tell us:

“…participants read passages from either a book about wizards (from the Harry Potter series) or a book about vampires (from the Twilight series). Both implicit and explicit measures revealed that participants who read about wizards psychologically became wizards, whereas those who read about vampires psychologically became vampires.”

I’m too old for vampires and Harry Potter but I remember just this effect from watching Superman, Star Wars, James Bond and the rest.

10. A phenomenological investigation of being bored with life

If all these weird studies are getting you down then remember that everything is interesting if you look hard enough. Even studying gender differences in book carrying is better than being bored. As Bargdill (2000) explain:

“Boredom is equivalent to the freeze response. In this response, people ignore the possibility of taking creative steps toward making their lives meaningful. Instead, they wait for others–for outside assistance to a very personal insight. Like a deer in the headlights, these people freeze. They hope that the intrusive danger, meaninglessness, will disappear and that they will be able to return to their daily lives. [Instead] they are no longer in motion. They are aware, but paralyzed. They are bored.”

Image credit: Derrick Tyson