Category: Psychology

Brains scans during religious experience reveal the effects of intense divine feelings.

Brain activation during religious experience is similar to that seen during music, gambling, sex and love.

In other words: it activates the areas of the brain that are central to rewards.

For the research, devout Mormons were encouraged to “feel the spirit”.

Feeling the spirit is a critical part of Mormon life.

It is used as the main way of communicating with the divine, as well as feeling peace and closeness with God.

A small group of church members were shown videos and read quotes designed to induce religious feelings.

These almost universally had the desired effect as participants reported feelings of physical warmth and peace.

Many were even in tears.

Brain scans were carried out during this experience.

Michael Ferguson, the study’s first author, said:

“When our study participants were instructed to think about a savior, about being with their families for eternity, about their heavenly rewards, their brains and bodies physically responded.”

The scans showed that intense religious experience was linked to activity in the nucleus accumbens, an area of the brain critical for reward processing.

Spiritual feelings was also linked to activity in the medial prefrontal cortex.

This area of the brain is involved in judgement, evaluation and moral reasoning.

The Mormons also showed activation in brain regions central to concentration.

Dr Jeff Anderson, a study co-author, said:

“Religious experience is perhaps the most influential part of how people make decisions that affect all of us, for good and for ill.

Understanding what happens in the brain to contribute to those decisions is really important.”

It is thought the brain works quite differently during these religious experiences to how it does during meditation.

The study was published in the journal Social Neuroscience (Ferguson et al., 2016).

Seven steps to a more meaningful life includes meditation, movement and maximisation.

Top of the list for living a meaningful daily life is being more mindful, according to occupational therapist Dr. Melanie Austin-McCain.

She says:

“Be present, smile, humble yourself, and acknowledge others.

With mindfulness, you’re really in the present and focusing on your senses and your experiences — what you are feeling, thinking, and doing.”

Healthy daily routines and long-term goals are so important for a meaningful life, Dr McCain says:

“Evidence shows that having a purpose in life is helpful in promoting health and preventing chronic disease.

It’s about finding out about who you are, the things you like do and that are meaningful for you and setting goals that align with those things.”

Here are the six other steps that Dr McCain recommends:

1. Meditation

It’s not productive to set daily goals for meditation, according to Dr McCain.

Instead, it is better to set aside some time to simply sit quietly and review your goals for the day and think about your intentions.

• Read more about the benefits of meditation, including a quick-start guide on how to meditate.

2. Movement

Keep the mind and body active every day, says Dr McCain.

The benefits of exercise are well known, of course, but the mind needs stretching in just the same way.

Try new things from time-to-time and use new strategies to approach old problems.

3. Management

Everyone should occasionally take a little time to take a broader view of their own life.

• Where am I going?
• Am I spending my time in the best way?
• What improvements could be made?

These sorts of ‘management’ sessions could include thinking about diet, exercise, relationships or anything else that is important to you.

4. Maximisation

Use a “future is mine” mindset, says Dr McCain.

Remind yourself of your own potential and that of others.

5. Meaningfulness

Try to find the happiness and joy in the things you do.

Part of this is acknowledging those who provide you support, Dr McCain says:

“Meaningfulness is more like gratitude — awareness and appreciation of the things around you.”

6. Mentoring

It is beneficial to take on a mentor in different areas of life, as well as being a mentor for others, says Dr McCain.

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It helps to provide emotional balance by regulating heart rhythms. It also encourages ecstasy and wonder, as well as joy and calm.

Spending time in woodland areas has a healing effect on the mind and the body, helping to provide emotional balance, new research finds.

Being in nature helps us to regulate our emotions, when compared to an urban environment.

Nature also helps to regulate heart rhythms, the research found.

Together, nature helps to bring feelings of:

• ecstasy and wonder,
• as well as joy and calm.

Dr Miles Richardson, the study’s first author, said:

“We’re excited about this research as it brings together previous work in order to explain how nature regulates emotions and the heart and shows spending time in nature positively changes our health and well-being through helping balance the feelings of threat, drive and contentment we experience each day.

Exposure to nature is emotional and emotion is the constant companion of sensation with feelings, rather than thoughts, coming first when we encounter nature and these emotions have a physiological basis, which nature and well-being research often overlooks.

Overall, the work provides a simple yet compelling argument to convince others of the role of, and need for, nature in our everyday lives.”

The researchers analysed 13 studies carried out on a total of 871 people.

These compared the effects of urban with natural environments.

Nature provides emotional balance

Nature, the studies showed, helped to regular parasympathetic nerve activity, which is linked to feelings of contentment.

It also lowered sympathetic nerve activity, which is linked to lowered drive, or a lack of stress.

Professor David Sheffield, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Nature brings balance to our emotions and the nervous system that influences the function of our internal organs, such as the heart, ultimately revealing the stress-busting power of nature.”

The study was published in the journal Evolutionary Psychological Science (Richardson et al., 2016).

The selfie is sometimes linked to low self-esteem and low life satisfaction, but it depends on your personality.

Selfie viewing on social media is related to lower self-esteem and lower life satisfaction, new research finds.

The study focused on people ‘lurking’ on social media, rather than being active.

Lurking is just observing, rather than taking part.

Posting to social media was not linked to self-esteem or life satisfaction, the researchers found.

However, the more often people looked at selfies — whether their own or other people’s — the lower their self-esteem and life satisfaction.

Ms Ruoxu Wang, the study’s first author, said:

“People usually post selfies when they’re happy or having fun.

This makes it easy for someone else to look at these pictures and think your his or her life is not as great as theirs.”

Selfie viewing good for some

Selfie viewing didn’t have negative implications for everyone, though.

Those with the greatest desire to be popular had higher self-esteem and life satisfaction if they looked at more selfies.

This is probably because it was more likely to satisfy their inner desire to appear popular.

Ms Wang continued:

“We don’t often think about how what we post affects the people around us.

I think this study can help people understand the potential consequences of their posting behavior.

This can help counselors work with students feeling lonely, unpopular, or unsatisfied with their lives.”

Benefits of taking a smiling selfie

While looking at selfies is related to poorer outcomes, taking them might not be so bad for you.

One study has found that taking smiling selfies is linked to feeling more confident and comfortable:

“Taking selfies and sharing them with friends makes people happier, new research finds.

Participants in the study took smiling selfies every day over a couple of ordinary weeks.

Selfies were not the only types of pictures that cheered people up.

The researchers found that sharing images that made the taker feel happy also worked.”

The study was published in the journal Telematics and Informatics (Wang et al., 2016).

Correlation does not equal causation and more standard disclaimers.

Below I’ve listed some ‘standard disclaimers’ that should be applied to some of the studies I mention.

Occasionally I mention these in passing, when they are relevant, more often I don’t.

Most of these disclaimers would be introduced to first year psychology students early on in the course.

I don’t like to repeat them every time as it gets repetitive, so here they are in one place.

1. Correlation does not equal causation. If a study has a correlational design, you can’t conclude that one thing causes the other. If you see the word survey then it’s probably a correlational study.
2. One swallow does not a summer make. One study can’t prove a theory true or, for that matter, prove a theory wrong.
3. People are different (I). Psychologists are generally interested in how everybody’s minds work, on average. Individuals can be as unique and different as two snowflakes.
4. People are different (II). Lots of studies are done on young, white, middle-class college students. Many people are not white, middle-class college students, or even all that young. Does that mean the results of the studies should be binned? Not necessarily, but it is something to bear in mind.
5. It’s the effect size, stupid. Just because a study finds a statistical difference, it doesn’t mean that it makes a real-world difference. Statisticians use something called an ‘effect size’ to quantify this. I almost never mention these.
6. They only measured two things. In the simplest studies, scientists measure two things (let’s say happiness and long life), then, after a survey, pronounce a relationship between them. Yes, there could be all kinds of other things going on that weren’t measured, it’s true.

It is notoriously difficult to tell when someone is lying to you.

It may be easier to tell if someone is lying when you cannot see their face, new research finds.

Contrary to most people’s expectations, being able to see someone’s full face does not help lie detection.

In fact, it actually hurts it.

Dr Amy-May Leach, the study’s first author, explained that the reason may be because it helps people focus on important cues:

“The presence of a veil may compel observers to pay attention to more ‘diagnostic’ cues, such as listening for verbal indicators of deception.”

The finding emerges from a study of the wearing of veils in court.

Witnesses appearing in US, UK and Canadian courts are not allowed to wear a niqab (covering the whole body except for the eyes) or hijab (covering the head and neck).

This is partly because judges believe it is necessary to see the face to tell if someone is lying.

Dr Leach, though, explained that they thought this was wrong:

“We hypothesized that lie detection accuracy would be higher in the niqab condition than in the hijab or no-veil conditions because it would minimize the availability of misleading cues to deception.

It was only when witnesses wore veils (i.e., hijabs or niqabs) that observers performed above chance levels.

Thus, veiling actually improved lie detection.”

The researchers conducted two experiments with a total of 523 participants.

They compared people’s ability to detect lies when witnesses were wearing a hijab or a niqab or neither.

The researchers explained the results:

“Contrary to the assumptions underlying the court decisions cited earlier, lie detection was not hampered by veiling across two studies.

In fact, observers were more accurate at detecting deception in witnesses who wore niqabs or hijabs than those who did not veil.

Discrimination between lie- and truth-tellers was no better than guessing in the latter group, replicating previous findings.”

The study was published in the journal Law and Human Behavior (Leach et al., 2016).

→ Read on: Lies: Why They Are So Hard to Detect

Image credit: Juliana Coutinho

Weird fact about how our brains change size over a single day.

The human brain is biggest in the morning and gets smaller as the day progresses.

By tomorrow morning, though, it will be back to its ‘full’ size.

The conclusions come from a study of thousands of brain scans carried out to investigate Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis.

Scientists found that people generally had the biggest brains in the morning and they shrank progressively into the afternoon and evening.

The total amount of shrinkage is not that great: certainly less than 1% and probably closer to 0.3%.

Why?

The study’s authors write:

“A possible mechanism may be that lying down during the night is associated with a redistribution of body fluids that had accumulated in the lower extremities during the day.

It is also possible that the effect of time-of-day is associated with hydration status.”

The study was published in the journal Neuroimage (Nakamura et al., 2015).

Brain image from Shutterstock

How fashion helps us fit in with others as well as sets us apart.

When women move to a new city they take note of the height of other women’s high heels.

Then they tend to copy the heel-height worn by affluent women and ignore the heels of less affluent women.

Professor Kurt Gray, author of new study analysing shoe purchases by women, said:

“In other words, women want to look like the rich girls, and different from the poor girls.”

The researchers call this ‘trickle down conformity’: the idea that fashion tends to trickle trends down from above.

Cheaper retailers watch the latest fashions in Italy, but the Italians don’t pay much attention to Walmart.

The image below shows the average height of heels sold around the US.

It is all down to status, says Professor Gray:

“From the beginning of time, people have thirsted for respect and social standing, and have aligned themselves with the powerful and distanced themselves from the powerless.

So it makes sense that they do the same with heel sizes.”

While the research only involved women, a similar phenomenon is likely to be seen in men, although probably not in the purchase of high heels.

Professor Gray said::

“Men do the same thing when they purchase clothes, electronics or cars.

When you move from Wichita to LA, you look around and sell your Chevy for a BMW, but when you move from Los Angeles to Wichita, Kansas, you look around, and then just keep the BMW.”

Fashion, explained Professor Gray, is about fitting in and also about distinguishing yourself from others:

“We often think of fashion as something frivolous, but it’s an industry worth $1.7 trillion annually, and clothing often helps define ourselves.”

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Galak et al., 2016).

Image credit: Gilt

Would you put a blanket over someone, put pressure on a wound or simply offer a glass of water?

Only around 2.5% of people receive help from strangers in a public medical emergency, new research finds.

For African-Americans the news is worse: only 1.8% were helped by a stranger compared with 4.2% of Caucasians.

The figures relate to getting help from strangers before emergency medical personnel arrived.

Dr Erin York Cornwell, the study’s lead author, said:

“It’s very surprising and disappointing to find such low rates of people helping each other and that African-American patients and those in poorer counties are left to wait longer for help.”

The type of assistance passers-by can give includes putting a blanket over someone, putting pressure on a wound or simply offering a glass of water.

Dr Cornwell said:

“We find evidence that bystanders can provide help in a huge range of scenarios, but the rates of assistance are so incredibly low.”

The conclusions come from an analysis of almost 22,500 patients who suffered a medical emergency.

Certain neighbourhoods can make it more difficult for people to offer help, Dr Cornwell said:

“When you have a neighborhood environment where people don’t know each other, where people are wary of strangers on the street, and someone needs help right in that moment, people may be more likely to just look away or keep walking without lending a hand.”

The very fact that people do not tend to help each other in more disadvantaged neighbourhoods could be contributing to poorer health in these areas, Dr Cornwell said:

“Disparities in health across race are persistent and growing in many cases.

We don’t really have a good understanding of the reasons why we see such large disparities.

These day-to-day processes could be an important contributor.”

The study was published in the American Journal of Public Health (Cornwell & Currit, 2016).

Accident image from Shutterstock

How the brain deals with conflicts between science and religion.

Religion and science activate different networks in the brain and each suppresses the other, new research finds.

The more empathic a person is, the more likely they are to be religious, the study also found.

Religious people, though, tend to suppress the circuits in the brain which are responsible for analytical thinking.

When people are thinking about the physical world analytically, they suppress the brain circuits related to empathy.

Professor Richard Boyatzis, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Because the networks suppress each other, they may create two extremes.

Recognizing that this is how the brain operates, maybe we can create more reason and balance in the national conversations involving science and religion.”

Dr Tony Jack, the study’s first author, said:

“When there’s a question of faith, from the analytic point of view, it may seem absurd.

But, from what we understand about the brain, the leap of faith to belief in the supernatural amounts to pushing aside the critical/analytical way of thinking to help us achieve greater social and emotional insight.”

Scans revealed a network of neurons which is active when we want to think critically about the world.

The brain also has a network of neurons for thinking empathetically.

Dr Jack explained:

“Because of the tension between networks, pushing aside a naturalistic world view enables you to delve deeper into the social/emotional side.

And that may be the key to why beliefs in the supernatural exist throughout the history of cultures.

It appeals to an essentially nonmaterial way of understanding the world and our place in it.”

Mr Jared Friedman, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Having empathy doesn’t mean you necessarily have anti-scientific beliefs.

Instead, our results suggest that if we only emphasize analytic reasoning and scientific beliefs, as the New Atheist movement suggests, then we are compromising our ability to cultivate a different type of thinking, namely social/moral insight.

“These findings, are consistent with the philosophical view, espoused by (Immanuel) Kant, according to which there are two distinct types of truth: empirical and moral.”

Naturally, we need both analytical and empathic networks, said Dr Jack said:

“Far from always conflicting with science, under the right circumstances religious belief may positively promote scientific creativity and insight.

Many of history’s most famous scientists were spiritual or religious.

Those noted individuals were intellectually sophisticated enough to see that there is no need for religion and science to come into conflict.

You can be religious and be a very good scientist.”

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Jack et al., 2016).

Space image from Shutterstock