Category: Psychology

When a person meets you for the first time they ask themselves two questions. The answers to these two questions will have all sorts of knock-on effects for how they think about you and how they behave towards you.

Professor Susan Fiske of Princeton University has shown that all social judgements can be boiled down to these two dimensions (Fiske et al., 2007):

1. How warm is this person? The idea of warmth includes things like trustworthiness, friendliness, helpfulness, sociability and so on. Initial warmth judgements are made within a few seconds of meeting you.
2. How competent is this person? Competency judgements take longer to form and include things like intelligence, creativity, perceived ability and so on.

Susan Fiske’s research has looked at different cultures, times and types of social judgements, but these two concepts come up again and again in slightly different guises. Not only do we make these judgements about other people, but we frame their behaviour using these two questions; we ask ourselves whether it was friendly, moral, sincere, clever etc..

The primacy of warmth and competence may reflect evolved, instinctual reactions to these two questions about others:

1. Friend or foe? Is this person going to hurt me or help me?
2. Capable of hurting or helping? Can this person help me if they’re friendly or hurt me if they’re not?

How warm and competent do other people find you? According to new research by Carlson et al. (2011) you probably know quite well how other people view you.

Image credit: Marco Bellucci

We have to make a lot of complicated decisions in life. Some are made in a hurry and most involve situations in which we don’t have all the information.

Surgeons have to make split-second decisions in emergencies and fire-fighters have to decide which route is safest. Less dramatically we have to work out the right arguments at a business meeting, at home we have to negotiate over the weekend’s activities and in the store we have to calculate the best deals.

These are complex decisions in which time is short. So, should you go with your gut and be done with it or try to use what little time you have to reason it out?

A new study by Mikels et al. (2011) supports the power of gut instincts for quick decisions. Across multiple studies they gave people a series of complex decisions including choosing between cars, apartments, vacations, physicians and treatments.

Overall they found that compared with trying to work out the details, using the emotions led to much better outcomes. In one of the studies the number of participants getting the right answer went up from only 26% in the detail-focused condition to 68% in the feeling-focused condition.

This held for both objective and subjective aspects of a decision (this covers the car that’s objectively best overall and the best car taking into account your preferences).

For quick decisions, then, this looks like good evidence that you should focus on feelings rather than thoughts.

On the other hand, if you’ve got more time—more time than it takes to just understand the problem—then a detail-focused approach is likely to be better. In one of Mikels et al.’s studies, when participants we are given extra time to think, a focus on feelings was positively detrimental to decision quality. With time in hand, the smart money was on the thinker rather than the feeler.

Why is it that our feelings should be most effective in the moment? Mikels speculates that it’s because they are more hooked in to the mind’s automatic, unconscious processes. In a short space of time our unconscious can signal through our emotions the best course of action.

Of course the unconscious is far from infallible, indeed the power of the unconscious mind has been overblown by some popular accounts (see: Can the Unconscious Outperform the Conscious Mind). Still, gut instinct is a remarkably effective resource given the short space of time and complexity of decisions it faces.

Image credit: Julia Manzerova

Sitcoms often take advantage of a very simple fact about human psychology to make us laugh. The set-up will go something like this: main character tells their partner: “I would never compromise my ethical principles for money!” Then that very same character is offered an opportunity to compromise their ethical principles for money…and they take it.

The joke is not just about hypocrisy but also about the main character’s complete unawareness of his or her hypocrisy.

Watching this we might assume it isn’t intended to be diagnostic of human psychology; rather it’s just a way of making a joke at the expense of the main character. But really it’s a perfectly realistic example of how people avoid the truth about themselves.

In a recent paper in the Review of General Psychology, Sweeny et al. (2010) outline the three main reasons that people avoid information:

1. It may demand a change in beliefs. Loads of evidence suggests people tend to seek information that confirms their beliefs rather than disproves them.
2. It may require us to take undesired actions. Telling the doctor about those weird symptoms means you might have to undergo painful testing. Sometimes it seems like it’s better not to know.
3. It may cause unpleasant emotions.

You can see all three of these motivations in play in the sitcom example. Weighed against them—motivating us to find out the truth—are all the reasons you’d expect like curiosity and hope for positive information. Whether we try to find out the truth or avoid the information depends on the following:

1. Expectation. Most obvious and maybe most powerful. The more we expect bad news, the more effort we make to avoid it.
2. Lack of control. Less obvious but it explain a lot. When we feel we have less control over the consequences of information, we are more strongly motivated to avoid it. Like when you could be getting news about a life-threatening disease. Because there may be little you can do about it, it may be better not to know.
3. Lack of coping resources. When people feel they can’t handle distressing information at the moment then they’re more likely to avoid it.
4. When the information is difficult to understand. The harder it is to interpret information, the less we want to know about it.

So people often do their best to avoid learning about themselves and sometimes this makes perfect sense. For example genetic testing may tell you that you have an increased risk of atrial fibrillation after the age of 70. Is that useful information or just one more thing to worry about? If there’s nothing you can do about it then perhaps it’s information that only worsens your quality of life.

Other times we hurt ourselves by avoiding information. Like when we refuse to get that strange mole checked out and end up delaying treatment for cancer.

The trick is to know which information to avoid and which to seek out. But we can’t know this without knowing what the information is. But once you’ve learnt the information you can’t unlearn it. It’s a problem.

I offer no answers, merely to point out that avoiding information is a much more rational strategy for dealing with the complexities of a frightening world than it might at first seem. There’s a good reason we value the innocence of youth: when you don’t know, you’ve got less to worry about.

When we laugh at the hypocrisies of a sitcom character, it’s also a laugh of uncomfortable recognition. As much as we’d prefer to avoid the information, in our heart of hearts we know we’re all hypocrites.

Image credit: Diego da Silva

I’ve just deleted a rather abstract introduction I wrote to this article about truth. The reason? I noticed I wasn’t taking the excellent advice offered in a recent article published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. That advice is simple: if you want people to believe you, speak and write concrete.

There are all sorts of ways language can communicate truth. Here are some solid facts for you:

• People usually judge that more details mean someone is telling us the truth,
• We find stories that are more vivid to be more true,
• We even think more raw facts make unlikely events more likely.

But all these involve adding extra details or colour. What if we don’t have any more details? What if we want to bump up the believability without adding to the fact-count?

Just going more concrete can be enough according to a recent study by Hansen and Wanke (2010). Compare these two sentences:

1. Hamburg is the European record holder concerning the number of bridges.
2. In Hamburg, one can count the highest number of bridges in Europe.

Although these two sentences seem to have exactly the same meaning, people rate the second as more true than the first. It’s not because there’s more detail in the second—there isn’t. It’s because it doesn’t beat around the bush, it conjures a simple, unambiguous and compelling image: you counting bridges.

Abstract words are handy for talking conceptually but they leave a lot of wiggle-room. Concrete words refer to something in the real world and they refer to it precisely. Vanilla ice-cream is specific while dessert could refer to anything sweet eaten after a main meal.

Verbs as well as nouns can be more or less abstract. Verbs like ‘count’ and ‘write’ are solid, concrete and unambiguous, while verbs like ‘help’ and ‘insult’ are open to some interpretation. Right at the far abstract end of the spectrum are verbs like ‘love’ and ‘hate’; they leave a lot of room for interpretation.

Even a verb’s tense can affect its perceived concreteness. The passive tense is usually thought more abstract, because it doesn’t refer to the actor by name. Perhaps that’s partly why fledgling writers are often told to write in the active tense: to the reader it will seem more true.

Hansen and Wanke give three reasons why concreteness suggests truth:

1. Our minds process concrete statements more quickly, and we automatically associate quick and easy with true (check out these studies on the power of simplicity).
2. We can create mental pictures of concrete statements more easily. When something is easier to picture, it’s easier to recall, so seems more true.
3. Also, when something is more easily pictured it seems more plausible, so it’s more readily believed.

So, speak and write solidly and unambiguously and people will think it’s more true. I can’t say it any clearer than that.

Image credit: Lee Huynh

Usually we perform best with mind and body in sync. With our thoughts tied to our actions decisions are made faster, we are more engaged and we feel at one with ourselves.

If you want to be creative, though, sometimes it pays to be out of sync according to a recent study by Huang and Galinsky (2011). They had some people recalling a happy time in their life while at the same time frowning. Another group recalled sad memories while smiling. The idea was to get their minds going one way and their bodies going the other.

In two comparison groups, participants were told to produce consonant mind-body states, i.e. happy memory plus happy face and sad memory plus sad face.

After this participants had to make judgements about how typical words were of a particular category. For example, how typical a vehicle is a camel? How typical a piece of furniture is a telephone? And how typical a vegetable is garlic? These are all weak examples of each category compared with more typical examples of a car, a table and a potato.

The results showed that when participants were in a dissonant frame of mind (say smiling while thinking sad thoughts) they were more likely to judge camels, telephones and garlic as relatively typical examples of a vehicle, piece of furniture and vegetable. On the other hand, those whose minds and bodies were coherent thought they were less typical examples of those categories.

Participants in the dissonant conditions, then, were thinking more expansively. Expansive thinking is very useful in the early stages of the creative process. It allows two previously unconnected ideas to be brought together in new and exciting ways.

As creatures of habit people automatically go down the same avenues of thought time after time. It’s why creating something new is so difficult. Mind-body dissonance, though, sends a signal that we are outside of our comfort zone, that a new type of response is required.

Image credit: Racchio

Humans can be an untrusting race. People are often very cynical about human nature, tending to think that strangers will happily lie to us if there is something in it for them.

We intuitive believe that being cynical is an advantage in detecting lies. Or so Nancy Carter and J. Mark Weber found when they asked a group of MBA students whether people high or low in trust would be better at detecting lies in others (Carter & Weber, 2010).

The results were as we’d expect: 85% thought low trusters are better than high trusters at lie detection.

Is this the right answer though? Are low-trusters really better at detecting lies?

Liar liar

Carter and Weber weren’t so sure, so they measured how trusting 29 participants were and had them watch videos of a staged job interview.

In these videos, interviewees had been told to do their best to get the job, but half were told to tell three lies in the process.

These videos were then shown to participants who rated the honesty of the interviewees, along with how likely they would be to hire them.

Surprisingly, it was those highest in trusting others that emerged as the superstar lie detectors. High trusters were more sensitive to deceit and more accurate at detecting which of the interviewees were lying.

Contrary to our expectations it was those low in trusting others who performed worst. They were least accurate at spotting liars and most likely to hire one of the interviewees who had been lying.

It seemed that the high-trusters were more likely to pay attention to the classic signs of lying, which include fidgeting and changes in vocal intonation and quality.

This leaves us with a counter-intuitive finding to explain: high-trusters, rather than being poor at spotting lies, actually outperform their less trusting counterparts. We’d expect low trusters to be more on the lookout for deceptive behaviour and yet they don’t perform as well as those who are more trusting.

What is going on? Why is our intuition so wrong?

Social intelligence

Although this research can’t tell us why—it only gives us the result—it does suggest a couple of reasons why high-trusters might be better at detecting lies:

1. Sensitivity: People may become more trusting of others because they are sensitive to lies. Since they are better able to detect them, they have to worry less about being duped.
2. Risk-taking: On the other hand, through taking social risks, some people may learn how to detect lies more accurately. Those who don’t practice because they never take any social risks, never learn how to discern lie from truth.

On top of these two factors we also have to take into account people’s innate ability. Some people are naturally gifted at reading body language and have higher social intelligence, while others have to work more at it.

Risk and reward

Whatever the explanation, it emphasizes how automatically trusting others—sometimes without due cause—can be beneficial.  The problem for the low truster is that without trusting strangers a little, it’s very hard to take social risks.

Say you are invited out by someone you hardly know to a restaurant. Refusing on the basis that they must have some evil ulterior motive might be safer, but you might miss out on a great new friend.

The same goes in business. Trust is the basis for commercial relationships: good deals rely on both parties doing their bit, often without knowing that much about each other. A business person who doesn’t trust anyone will find it harder to succeed.

While low trusters avoid being duped they also miss out on potential opportunities. High trusters, on the other hand, get the best of both worlds: they frequently spot when someone is lying to them, and they are able to take social risks earlier in the relationship and so can reap the rewards, whether social or financial.

Image credit: Mohamed Hussain

The line between real and fake has never been so blurred.

In the cinema, on television, in the newspapers, in public life: can we tell what’s real and what’s fake and does it matter? Perhaps authenticity is more important now that so much can be  faked so easily? Maybe the psychological costs of inauthenticity are greater than we might imagine?

A fascinating new study published in the journal Psychological Science hints at an answer by examining the effects of wearing fake designer sunglasses on the self (Gino et al., 2010).

The counterfeit self

Whether we consciously acknowledge it or not, part of the reason we buy certain goods is because of the message it sends to other people about our status. Counterfeiters exploit this by producing goods which send the same message at a fraction of the cost; effectively telling other people that we are richer than we really are.

As long as they are good fakes, other people won’t know any different. Even so,

“Although the wearer intends them to signal positive traits, wearing counterfeits can in fact send a negative signal to the self.”

So Gino et al. wondered if this has consequences for the self, like an increase in unethical behaviour.

To test this out four experiments were carried out in which participants were given designer sunglasses and told in some conditions they were real and in other conditions fake—actually they were always real.

The results showed that, when told the sunglasses were fake, people behaved in more unethical ways than when told they were real. In one experiment, those wearing sunglasses they were told were authentic cheated on a task 30% of the time, while those told they were fake cheated 71% of the time.

People even became more cynical:

“…participants who believed they were wearing fake sunglasses interpreted other people’s behavior as more dishonest, considered common behaviors to be less truthful, and believed that others would be more likely to behave unethically.”

Less authentic

In a final experiment the mechanism at work was tested. This suggested that people did feel less authentic when wearing the fake sunglasses, and this led to more unethical behaviour, which came as a surprise:

“…when we asked a separate set of students [..] to predict the impact of counterfeits, they were unaware of the consequences for ethical behavior.”

So it seems for designer clothes, far from shrugging off inauthenticity, people sending fake signals about their wealth to others make themselves feel fake, with negative consequences for their behaviour.

This study could well have been commissioned by Gucci, Armani or any other brand (it wasn’t), but still it raises the question of whether these types of findings would extend into areas of everyday life unrelated to branding. Perhaps in general faking it cues feelings of inauthenticity and consequently unethical behaviour? Given this research, I wouldn’t be surprised.

Image credit: Darwin Bell