The Forbidden Words That Soothe Embarrassment And Rejection

Certain words can reduce both social pain and physical pain.

Certain words can reduce both social pain and physical pain.

Swearing can help to relieve hurt feelings and an aching heart, new research has found.

Swearing aloud helps to quickly reduce various types of ‘social distress’ such as being socially excluded.

The experiment was carried out to test ‘Pain Overlap Theory’.

This is the idea that physical pain is processed in a similar way by the brain as social pain, the kind you get from being rejected or embarrassed.

Dr Michael Philipp, the study’s first author, explained the results:

“The results suggest that socially distressed participants who swore out loud experienced less social pain than those who did not.

Previous research suggests that social stressors, like rejection and ostracism, not only feel painful but also increase peoples’ sensitivity to physical pain.

Pain Overlap Theory suggests that social distress feels painful because both social and physical pain is biologically coupled.

Pain overlap theory predicts that anything affecting physical pain should have similar effects on social pain.”

In the study some people shouted out swear words in response to social pain.

Others shouted out non-swear words.

Swearing reduced the social pain and also reduced people’s sensitivity to physical pain.

This suggests that physical and social pain are related, as the theory suggests.

It means the hurt you feel when someone gives you the silent treatment is, in some sense, similar to that caused by banging your thumb with a hammer.

Dr Philipp said:

“There is still speculation about why swearing aloud has the effect it does on physical pain and social pain.

What’s clear is that swearing is not a completely maladaptive reaction to a sore thumb or a broken heart.”

Dr Philipp was also quick to warn that swearing all the time reduces its power.

So save it up for when you really need it.

The study was published in the European Journal of Social Psychology (Phillip et al., 2017).

This Is What Testosterone Does To Men’s Brains

Can you get this brain teaser right? If not, maybe you’ve got too much testosterone flowing through your veins!

Can you get this brain teaser right? If not, maybe you’ve got too much testosterone flowing through your veins!

More testosterone makes men more likely to act first and think later, new research finds.

Giving men a dose of testosterone reduced the amount of ‘cognitive reflection’ they engaged in.

After the testosterone, they didn’t bother stopping to think if their gut reaction made sense.

In other words, they decided to shoot first and ask questions later.

Professor Colin Camerer, who led the study, said:

“What we found was the testosterone group was quicker to make snap judgments on brain teasers where your initial guess is usually wrong.

The testosterone is either inhibiting the process of mentally checking your work or increasing the intuitive feeling that ‘I’m definitely right.'”

For the study, 243 men were either given a testosterone gel or a placebo.

They then did a series of questions that tested their ability to think a little deeper.

Here’s one for you to try:

“A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total.

The bat costs $1 more than the ball.

How much does the ball cost?”

The snap answer is that the ball costs 10 cents.

But a moment’s reflection reveals this can’t be the right answer.

Since $1.10 + 10 cents is $1.20 and the first line of the puzzle says the bat and ball cost $1.10 together.

Time for a rethink?

Got it?

The answer is the ball costs 5 cents.

That’s because $1.05 for the bat plus 5 cents for the ball is $1.10.

Confidence boost

Men given testosterone got 20% fewer answers right.

They also answered more quickly, despite being under no time pressure and having a financial incentive for getting the answers right.

The explanation for the effect of testosterone could be down to its confidence boosting and social dominance effect, Professor Camerer said:

“We think it works through confidence enhancement.

If you’re more confident, you’ll feel like you’re right and will not have enough self-doubt to correct mistakes.”

And what does all this mean for men having testosterone-replacement therapy in mid-life?

“If men want more testosterone to increase sex drive, are there other effects?

Do these men become too mentally bold and thinking they know things they don’t?”

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (Nave et al., 2017).

8 Awesome Advantages Of Swearing You Should Know

Swearing or hearing others swear has instant effects on both mind and body.

Swearing or hearing others swear has instant effects on both mind and body.

Swearing can make you physically stronger, new research finds.

During short, intense exercise, people could produce more power if they swore, the study found.

And this is not the only advantage of swearing that psychologists have found.

Here are a few more:

  1. Swearing reduces the pain people feel.
  2. Light swearing can help to persuade others of your sincerity (but use with caution, damn it!).
  3. Swearing is actually a sign that people have a good vocabulary.
  4. Social swearing is a way of making friends when it is intended to show a relaxed atmosphere and happiness.
  5. Swearing wakes us up, giving a jolt to the brain’s ‘fight-or-flight’ mechanism.
  6. Similarly, swearing can be a good way of coping, giving you a mental boost when things are going badly.
  7. Swearing is a sign of honesty. Yes, people who swear more are judged to be filtering their thoughts less, and so are seen as more honest.

The power of swearing

In the latest study, researchers tested people’s handgrip strength, along with the power they produced on an exercise bike.

The results showed that swearing produced more strength and more power.

Dr Richard Stephens, one of the study’s authors, who reported the research at the BPS conference, said:

“We know from our earlier research that swearing makes people more able to tolerate pain.

A possible reason for this is that it stimulates the body’s sympathetic nervous system — that’s the system that makes your heart pound when you are in danger.

If that is the reason, we would expect swearing to make people stronger too — and that is just what we found in these experiments.

But when we measured heart rate and some other things you would expect to be affected if the sympathetic nervous system was responsible for this increase in strength, we did not find significant changes.

So quite why it is that swearing has these effects on strength and pain tolerance remains to be discovered.

We have yet to understand the power of swearing fully.”

The study was presented by Dr Richard Stephens from Keele University to the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society in Brighton, 2017.

Traumatic Memories Reduced 62% By Classic Game

Those who had played the game had 62% fewer intrusive memories in the following week.

Those who had played the game had 62% fewer intrusive memories in the following week.

Playing Tetris — a retro tile-matching puzzle game — can help reduce the formation of intrusive memories after a traumatic event, new research finds.

Participants in the study had all been involved in a car accident in the last six hours.

They were waiting in the E.R. in Oxford, England.

While waiting to be seen, some were encouraged to play Tetris.

A comparison group just filled in an activity log of what had happened since they had arrived in the hospital.

The results showed that in the following week those who had played Tetris had 62% fewer intrusive memories.

Their bad memories also faded quicker than those in the other group.

One participant in the study said:

“It certainly took my mind off it at a time when I probably would have sat brooding and feeling very sorry for myself.”

It is thought that playing the game interferes with the way memory is consolidated.

There is a window of opportunity soon after a traumatic event, research suggests.

Tetris may disrupt the process of moving the event to long-term memory to be endlessly recalled and replayed.

Simple activities like counting and doing quizzes do not seem to work as well.

It requires a visually engaging activity in which the player can get immersed.

Tetris is probably not the only computer game that will work: something that engages the senses will do the same job.

The team plan to study Candy Crush in the future.

Dr Lalitha Iyadurai, the study’s first author, said:

“A brief psychological intervention including Tetris offers a cognitive ‘therapeutic vaccine’ that could be administered soon after a traumatic event to prevent the recurrence of intrusive memories of trauma in the subsequent week.”

The study was published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry (Iyadurai et al., 2017).

6 Ways Being In Nature Linked To Life Satisfaction

A well managed natural environment is particularly important to people.

A well managed natural environment is particularly important to people.

Being in the natural environment is linked to higher satisfaction with life, new research finds.

People were particularly satisfied if they felt their natural environment was being well managed.

Dr Kelly Biedenweg, the study’s first author, said:

“Whether people feel like things are fair and they have a voice in process of making decisions and whether governance is transparent — those are the foundations of why people even can interact with nature.”

The results come from a survey of 4,000 residents of the Puget Sound region of Washington State.

They measured 13 factors that might link to life satisfaction.

Dr Biedenweg said:

“Eleven of the 13 had a positive correlation to overall life satisfaction.

The links between ecological conditions, like drinking water and air quality, and objective well-being have been studied quite a bit, but the connection between various aspects of engaging the natural environment and overall subjective well-being have rarely been looked at.

We wanted to identify the relative importance of diverse, nature-oriented experiences on a person’s overall life satisfaction assessment and statistically prove the relationship between happiness/life satisfaction and engaging with nature in many different ways.”

Nature is beneficial to life satisfaction in six ways, the researchers found:

  1. Social and cultural events,
  2. trust in governance,
  3. access to local wild resources,
  4. sense of place,
  5. outdoor recreation,
  6. and psychological benefits from time outdoors.

Dr Biedenweg said:

“Controlling for demographics, all were significantly related to life satisfaction.

The fact that trust in governance was a significant predictor of life satisfaction — in fact, the most statistically significant predictor of the ones we looked at — it was nice to see that come out of the research.

The way we manage is the gateway to people being able to get livelihoods and satisfaction from nature.”

The study was published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology (Beidenweg et al., 2017).

The Linguistic Trick That Helps You Cope With Strong Emotions

It is a way of expressing universal, shared experience and creating some emotional distance.

It is a way of expressing universal, shared experience and creating some emotional distance.

People use the word ‘you’ when they really mean ‘I’.

It helps to distance them from negative emotional experiences, new research finds.

For example, the expression “you win some, you lose some” probably means the person has failed, but that it could happen to anyone.

The pronoun, therefore, helps you to feel better about the experience.

Ariana Orvell, the study’s first author, explained:

“When people use “you” to make meaning from negative experiences, it allows them to ‘normalize’ the experience and reflect on it from a distance.”

Ms Orvell continued:

“Or saying that ‘when you are angry, you say and do things that you will most likely regret’ might actually explain a personal situation, but the individual attempts to make it something many people relate to.”

Ms Orvell concluded:

“We suspect that it’s the ability to move beyond your own perspective to express shared, universal experiences that allows individuals to derive broader meanings from personal events.”

The study was published in the journal Science (Orvell et al., 2017).

How Using GPS Navigation Alters Your Brain

Using GPS navigation could be having a dramatic effect on the memory centres of your brain.

Using GPS navigation could be having a dramatic effect on the memory centres of your brain.

Using GPS navigation turns off parts of the brain that would otherwise be used to navigate, new research finds.

The hippocampus — an area of the brain central to memory and navigation — did not respond to new streets when using GPS navigation.

The prefrontal cortex also showed no additional activation while people used GPS navigation.

Dr Hugo Spiers, one of the study’s authors, explained:

“Entering a junction such as Seven Dials in London, where seven streets meet, would enhance activity in the hippocampus, whereas a dead-end would drive down its activity.

If you are having a hard time navigating the mass of streets in a city, you are likely putting high demands on your hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.

Our results fit with models in which the hippocampus simulates journeys on future possible paths while the prefrontal cortex helps us to plan which ones will get us to our destination.

When we have technology telling us which way to go, however, these parts of the brain simply don’t respond to the street network.

In that sense our brain has switched off its interest in the streets around us.”

A previous study found that the hippocampi of London taxi drivers expands after they learn the streets.

This study suggests, though, that using GPS navigation does not work memory centres in the brain the same way.

Dr Spiers said:

“The next step for our lab will be working with smart tech companies, developers, and architects to help design spaces that are easier to navigate and increase wellbeing.

Our new findings allow us to look at the layout of a city or building and consider how the memory systems of the brain may likely react.

For example, we could look at the layouts of care homes and hospitals to identify areas that might be particularly challenging for people with dementia and help to make them easier to navigate.

Similarly, we could design new buildings that are dementia-friendly from the outset.”

The study was published in the journal Nature Communications (Javadi et al., 2017).

The Most Controversial Psych Study Is Repeated — Same Weird Result

What would you do if repeatedly ordered to give a strong electric shock to a helpless stranger?

What would you do if repeatedly ordered to give a strong electric shock to a helpless stranger?

The year 1963 saw the publication of what was to become one of the most famous psychology studies ever.

Stanley Milgram’s ‘obedience’ experiments are the stuff of legend.

What his experiments found was that — when ordered to — 63% of people would give a potentially dangerous electric shock to a stranger.

It was designed to show how easily human beings cow to authority.

Now, Polish psychologists, repeating the study, have found that the results are just as surprising in this century as they were in the last.

The question is: what would you do if repeatedly ordered to give a strong electric shock to a helpless stranger?

Dr Tomasz Grzyb, a study author, said:

“Upon learning about Milgram’s experiments, a vast majority of people claim that ‘I would never behave in such a manner’.

Our study has, yet again, illustrated the tremendous power of the situation the subjects are confronted with and how easily they can agree to things which they find unpleasant.”

In the experiment people are put under more and more pressure to electrocute a stranger.

Although the stranger is an actor pretending to be electrocuted, the pain they are inflicting looks real.

Slowly but surely, the poor guinea pig is told to crank up the voltage until it gets to the level marked ‘Danger: Severe shock’.

Of the 80 people in the study, fully 90% went all the way to the maximum level of electrocution after being ‘ordered’ to by the experimenter.

The study’s authors explain:

“Our objective was to examine how high a level of obedience we would encounter among residents of Poland.

It should be emphasized that tests in the Milgram paradigm have never been conducted in Central Europe.

The unique history of the countries in the region made the issue of obedience towards authority seem exceptionally interesting to us.”

Dr Grzyb concluded:

“…half a century after Milgram’s original research into obedience to authority, a striking majority of subjects are still willing to electrocute a helpless individual.”

The study was published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science (Doliński et al., 2017).

The Attractive Myth That Women Are Better At Multitasking

Multitasking myths and how to improve your multitasking skills.

Multitasking myths and how to improve your multitasking skills.

Contrary to what many people believe, women are NOT better at multitasking than men.

Professor Timo Mäntylä, author of a study on gender differences in multitasking, said:

“On the contrary, the results of our study show that men are better at multitasking than women.”

How much better men are at multitasking than women depends on women’s menstrual cycle, the research found.

Professor Mäntylä said:

“Previous studies have shown that women’s spatial skills vary across the menstrual cycle with high capacity around menstruation and much lower around ovulation, when oestrogen levels are high.

The results showed a clear difference in multitasking between men and women in the ovulation phase, while this effect was eliminated for women in the menstrual phase.”

And this finding is not just the result of one study, but several.

Why you should avoid multitasking anyway!

Multitasking is nothing to be proud of.

In general the brain works best when we concentrate on one thing at a time.

And multitasking could even cause the brain to shrink:

“Using laptops, phones and other media devices at the same time could be shrinking important structures in our brains, a new study may indicate.

For the first time, neuroscientists have found that people who use multiple devices simultaneously have lower gray-matter density in an area of the brain associated with cognitive and emotional control.”

How to improve your multitasking skills

Should you be interested in improving your multitasking skills, exercise is one key:

“Physical fitness increases multitasking skills by increasing the size of crucial areas of the brain, a new study finds.

Neuroscientists found larger gray matter volume in several brain areas of those who had higher cardiorespiratory fitness.

These brain areas help boost both reasoning and problem-solving.”

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (Mäntylä, 2013).

Brain image from Shutterstock

The Unexpected Sign You Are A Good Conversationalist

How your eye contact signals whether you are a good conversationalist.

How your eye contact signals whether you are a good conversationalist.

People look away during conversations to stop their brain overloading, new research suggests.

So, breaking eye contact allows us to express ourselves more clearly — perhaps indicating a better conversationalist.

The finding helps balance out the common advice from ‘experts’ to maintain eye contact.

Keeping eye contact is supposed to help build an emotional connection with others.

Broadly speaking, this is true.

But eye contact during a conversation is a dynamic process.

Most people don’t naturally stare unblinking into the other person’s eyes while talking (I say most people, but there are a few!).

By the same token, most people don’t totally avoid eye contact while talking.

Eye contact is usually a kind of dance, where the person speaking tends to look away more than the person listening.

(Again this isn’t always true: some people appear to be unaware that it is rude to let their eyes roam the room while you are talking to them!)

Eye contact is stimulating

In this study people were asked to play a word-association game.

The results showed that looking away helped people find the right word more quickly.

When forced to maintain eye contact while search for a difficult word, it took them longer.

The explanation is that staring into someone’s eyes is mentally stimulating.

So, the brain automatically forces you to look away to conserve cognitive resources.

This only happens, though, when we are searching for difficult words.

When the words are easy, it’s relatively easy for us to maintain eye contact.

The study’s authors conclude:

“…eye contact interferes with domain-general cognitive control processes during verb generation.

This result indicates that the efficiency of cognitive control in conversation is, to some extent, influenced specifically by eye contact.”

The study was published in the journal Cognition (Kajimura et al., 2016).