Category: Psychology

Say you’re in your car, sitting at a red light behind another car. The lights turn green but the car in front doesn’t move.

Twelve seconds go by. Do you think you’d be more likely to honk if the car was an old Ford or if it was a brand new Porsche?

You might say in reality I would never honk or you might say it is 50/50, but let’s say I force you to choose?

Vote now and I’ll tell you why I ask in the next post (if you don’t see the poll below then you’ll need to visit the website here to vote).

There are four options, answer one of the first two if you’re female and one of the second two if you’re male.

Image credit: Ashley Rose

I’ve read and heard all kinds of rubbish about how to detect lies. Apparently you should look for sweating, which way people’s eyes move, whether they make too much eye contact or too little…and so on.

Ironically advice to look for individual ‘tells’, like a poker player is supposed to, is a mug’s game.

Certainly under laboratory conditions people are very poor at detecting when other people are lying. Across 206 studies people’s hit rates for detecting lies was 54%, which seeing as you’d get 50% right by pure chance is not very impressive (Bond & DePaulo, 2006).

So, why is it so difficult to tell when people are lying? That’s what Hartwig & Bond (2011) examine in a meta-analysis of dozens of studies. They looked at all kinds of different cues to lying like fidgeting, postural shifts, head movements, gaze aversion and speech rate.

What they found is that overall people do pay attention to many of the correct cues to lying. These include things like:

• Vocal immediacy, i.e. the extent to which someone replies directly to questions. The vaguer someone is, the more likely they are to be lying.
• Indifference: if the speaker seems unconcerned then this is associated with lying. It’s probably because they’re trying to play it cool.
• Thinking hard: lying is hard work so when a person has to think hard about a question, it might indicate they are lying.
• Being uncooperative: pretty obvious, but still being uncooperative is often a cue that someone is trying to conceal something.

Although people are generally good, they do overestimate the power of some cues, for example looking away is not a good cue to deception and neither is fidgeting with an object.

But if overall people seem to know what the right cues to lying are, why aren’t they better at detecting them?

What the research suggests is that although people generally use the right cues, the cues themselves are very ambiguous. In other words: usually there just isn’t enough information to go on.

Have another look at some of the apparently effective lying tells above and think of alternative explanations. For example, someone who is just tired might appear uncooperative, or they might look indifferent because they genuinely don’t care and they might think hard because they want to tell the truth as accurately as possible.

Away from the specifics of lying for a moment, we’re all used to how hard it is to read other people’s thoughts and feelings. Body language is ambiguous and anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you a system that doesn’t work.

Better lie detector

Given all that, how do you become a better lie detector? The answer is that (unfortunately) there’s no one magic bullet to detecting lies because lying tells are too weak.

One method for improving the odds is to try and increase the cues given off by suspected liars by putting more pressure on them. Short of waterboarding, one way of doing this is putting them under cognitive load. For example interrogators will get a suspect to tell their story backwards. A study has shown that lie catchers do a better job when people try to tell their story backwards (Vrij et al., 2008).

However these sorts of tricks only increase the chances of detecting lies from almost impossible to just very, very difficult.

The best advice is to rely on your instincts. Overall, in the studies, people do better at detecting lies if they rely on their instincts rather than specific tells.

Image credit: Juliana Coutinho

Here in the UK the weather feels depressing.

We’re in the middle of winter in the northern hemisphere and it’s cold and we’re being battered by gales and torrential rain. The sun, even when it does show its face, is setting at 4pm. It’s no wonder people in the street look fed up.

But according to most of the research on the connection between weather and mood, they shouldn’t be. I’ve covered these highly counter-intuitive findings before and the title of that article sums it up: Weather Has Little Effect on Mood.

When you tell people this, though, they don’t believe it. Most of us intuitively think the weather has quite a strong effect on our mood. Many assume that the rain and cold weather depresses us and sun and warmth perks us up.

So why don’t we see this effect in the research?

That’s the question a new study by Klimstra et al. (2011) tries to answer with a group of adolescents and their mothers. They tested the idea that although our reactivity to weather averages out across the whole population, there are large differences between individuals.

And it turns out this is true. In fact Klimstra et al. found four distinct groups:

1. Unaffected: about half the people in their study fell into this group. For these people it didn’t matter that much whether it was raining or sunny, hot or cold, their mood was mostly unaffected.
2. Summer lovers: here’s the group you’d expect. For these people, their mood improved with less rain, more sun and higher temperatures (15% of adolescents and 30% of their mothers fell into this category).
3. Summer haters: here’s a group of people you hear less about.  These were the exact opposite of the summer lovers so they were happier when there was more rain, less sun and lower temperatures. Summer haters were more prevalent amongst the adolescents (27%) than their mothers (12%).
4. Rain haters: this group’s mood didn’t change with the temperature, sunshine or the wind; they just hated the rain. These guys were in the minority, making up 8% of adolescents and 12% of their mothers.

This helps explain why studies keep finding that weather doesn’t have much effect on mood: it’s because we’re different and these differences were mostly being averaged out.

Most surprising are not the group of winter SADs (seasonally affected disorder) but the summer SADs. We hear a lot about the former and nothing about the latter, but from this study the summer SADs look like a significant group of people, especially amongst adolescents.

There was also an association between how the adolescents and their mothers reacted to the weather. This suggests your weather type may well run in the family. If you’re a summer hater, it’s likely your parents are too.

Image credit: Noukka Signe

Here’s a little tip for life: try to always have something to look forward to, no matter how small. The power of anticipation in boosting our well-being is incredible.

You know that feeling you get when you’re dreading giving a public talk or going to the dentist? That is the negative power of anticipation, but it also works the other way. We get enormous amounts of pleasure from looking forward to good things in the future (Bryant, 2003).

This is part of the reason why our modern consumer society of ‘buy now and pay later’ robs us of pleasure. Part of the fun of purchasing both objects and experiences is in their anticipation. Waiting for good things to come is fun.

There’s a part of our minds that thinks we’ll enjoy it more if we get it right now, but that part is the greedy part. And it’s wrong.

Get it later

You might think that what we lose in anticipation, we’ll gain in reminiscences. In other words we’ll get the pleasure the other side of our purchase. But this doesn’t seem to be the case. The pleasure people get from their anticipation is stronger than from their reminiscences (Van Boven & Ashworth, 2007).

This may be partly to do with the Zeigarnik effect: the idea that something tends to stick in our mind until it’s completed. In the same way once objects or experiences are ‘obtained’ our mind forgets about them. But while they’re still in the future, we keep mulling them over.

There are two other added bonuses of paying now and getting it later:

• Better decisions: People make better choices for the future than they do for right now. Right now we’re more like greedy children who want everything that’s bad for us. When choosing for the future we’re like sensible grown-ups, choosing things we know are better for us. Economists call this ‘hyperbolic discounting’, psychologists call it ‘the present bias’ and I call it the ‘chocolate-now-fruit-next-week effect’.
• Pleasure of uncertainty: The process of choosing creates uncertainty about what we’re going to get. And this uncertainty heightens our pleasure (see this article on How to Feel More Pleasure).

We’re all well aware of how the culture of ‘buy now, pay later’ has got our economies into trouble. But this inability to wait for good things to come is also robbing us of what Dunn et al. (2011) call ‘free pleasure’.

If we can wait, then anticipation, uncertainty and better decisions will all contrive to give us more pleasure from our money.

Image credit: Mike Bitzenhofer

Everyone hates to lose out. Indeed in many circumstances we hate losses more than we love gains (it’s called risk aversion).

The insurance industry knows this only too well so it frames products in terms of losses:

• Worried you’re going to be robbed?
• Worried your holiday will be a disaster?
• Worried you’re going to die?

Well, worry no more! Insurance is the answer!

A lot advertising works like this, by creating a need and then (supposedly) satiating it. So far, so mundane. But insurance is particularly insidious because it purports to be selling ‘peace of mind’.

The question is whether our minds will really be as troubled as we imagine if (and when) things go wrong.

The extended warranty trap

Psychological research suggests the reality is that things aren’t usually as bad as we think they’re going to be. That’s because of the psychological immune system.

The article linked above has the full details but here’s the drift: when we predict how negative events will leave us feeling, we’re usually too pessimistic. The reason is that our unconscious is continually working to reduce the effects of negative events.

We rationalise, we avoid blaming ourselves and our own decisions, so we end up feeling less regret than we predict. In the end we are psychologically stronger than we imagine.

That doesn’t mean that all insurance is pointless. We still need car insurance or a similar system to spread the risk of driving, healthcare insurance in countries where it isn’t provided and other types of insurance can be useful…

But extended warranties are often a waste of time, as are many other types of insurance. Even if the product goes wrong, we won’t regret not getting the insurance nearly as much as we imagine. So save the money and take the risk.

Life is a lottery but, don’t worry, you’ll bear up better than you imagine.

Image credit: Jason Nicholls

Making comparisons between goods and services is supposed to get us a better deal but it doesn’t always work that way. That’s because of the weird way our brains make mountains out of molehills.

The potato chip study

Consider a study by Morewedge et al. (2010). Participants were asked to predict how much they would enjoy a potato chip. Half the participants were in a room that also happened to contain other superior snacks like a luxurious chocolate bar; others were in a room with inferior snacks, like sardines and spam.

People in the room with the superior snacks thought they’d enjoy the chip less than those in the room with the inferior snack. They were wrong. In fact they liked the snacks exactly the same, no matter the surrounding snacks.

Here’s the moral: when you enjoy whatever you choose, you’re mostly not comparing it with other options: you enjoy it for what it is. Comparisons mess with your mind.

The tyranny of small differences

When we go to buy a car, a house or a snack we tend to make a big deal out of the differences between similar products. We notice that this car is faster, or this house is slightly bigger, or this chocolate bar is bigger. In reality the differences in our enjoyment are much smaller than we imagine; maybe no more than a hill of beans.

If you’re the kind of person that really sweats over their comparison shopping, then take note. This research suggests: don’t bother, let it go, it won’t matter. Sure, get the lowest price for the same goods or service, but don’t go crazy choosing between models or features, it really won’t make that much difference.

The danger is that the tyranny of relatively small differences will force you to spend more money than you want or can afford. Then you end up having to pay for something that makes you no happier than a cheaper option. Indeed, when you consider the extra effort required to pay for expensive things like houses and cars, it may even make you less happy in the long-run.

So, be happier, do what psychologists call ‘satisficing’ (a combination of satisfy and suffice): get something that does the job but don’t torture yourself, it’s not worth it.

Image credit: Yampee Yankee

We’re always hearing about how many billions it costs the economy when workers go off sick. Annually it could be as much as $350 billion in the US and $66 billion in the UK.

But what aspects of work make people sick?

Nixon (2011) looked at 72 studies of the effect of occupational stress on physical symptoms including headaches, backaches, sleep disturbances and gastrointestinal problems. Here are the associations with physical symptoms in decreasing order of strength:

1. Organisational constraints

Overall the factor most strongly associated with physical symptoms was organisational constraints. These are the aspects of a workplace environment that stop you getting your job done. It could include things like not having the time, materials or the authority to reach the goals that have been set for you. It seems that this is likely to be the strongest cause of physical symptoms (although we can’t say much about causality as this was a correlational study).

The types of physical symptoms most associated with organisational constraints were tiredness and gastrointestinal problems.

2. Role conflict

This is where one boss tells you to do one thing and another tells you to do something else. Infuriating. This was most associated with gastrointestinal problems.

3. Interpersonal conflict

Interpersonal conflict covers anything from rude or unthinking behaviour by co-workers up to all-out bullying. Interpersonal conflict was most associated with sleep disturbances.

4. Workload

This is the first one that you might expect to appear higher up the list. We tend to think that it’s having too much work that makes us ill. It certainly contributes but not as much as organisational constraints or role conflict. Unsurprisingly workload was most associated with fatigue.

5. Role ambiguity

Role ambiguity occurs when you don’t quite know what the job is. And when you don’t know what’s expected of you, the stress it causes is associated with illness. In fact in this analysis it was most associated with fatigue.

6 & 7. Work hours & lack of control

Work hours is most interesting because of how far down the list it comes. You might imagine that working hours would be at the top but it comes down at the bottom with lack of control, which had a similar association with physical symptoms. Both associations were weak, but still there.

Work hours were most associated with eye strain while lack of control was most associated with backache and problems sleeping.

Image credit: Peter Hellberg

A strange thing happens when we imagine doing some exercise.

That’s what Ruby et al. (2011) found when they had people think about an upcoming session of exercise. Each person tried to predict how much they would enjoy their workout—whether it was Pilates, yoga, weight training, running or something else. Then after the workout they rated it again.

On average people’s predictions were too pessimistic: they actually enjoyed their workouts more than they had guessed. This was true across lots of different types of people. It was true for both moderate and challenging workouts, whether people exercised on their own or in the gym and even when people had designed their own workouts.

The reason was that they focused heavily on the relatively unpleasant start of the exercise session rather than the enjoyable middle section.

The researchers christened this effect ‘forecasting myopia’ and tried to identify ways to combat it.

Focus on the whole

In a final study Ruby et al. asked people to think about their whole exercise routine, including the warm-up, main workout and cool-down. It emerged that this method encouraged people to make more positive predictions of how much they would enjoy their exercise. This also had the effect of boosting people’s intention to exercise in the future.

So it seems that the short-sighted forecasting of how much we’ll enjoy exercising can be overcome. We can do this by focusing on the exercise session as a whole rather than just the (relatively) painful beginning.

Image credit: Patrick Hoesly