Social psychology - Page 25 of 26

Social Rejection Triggers Release of Natural Painkillers in the Brain

New study demonstrates that the brain treats social pain in a similar way to physical pain.

Being rejected by other people is no fun.

Contrary to the old ‘sticks and stones’ saying, it seems words can and do hurt, and the brain responds accordingly.

A new study from the University of Michigan Medical School has found that the body produces natural painkillers in response to social rejection, just as if it had suffered a physical injury (Hsu et al., 2013).

The lead author, Assistant Professor David T. Hsu, explained:

“This is the first study to peer into the human brain to show that the opioid system is activated during social rejection. In general, opioids [are] released during social distress and isolation in animals, but where this occurs in the human brain has not been shown until now.”

In the study, social rejection was simulated in the lab. Eighteen participants were asked to look at fictional online dating profiles and choose some they were interested in.

Then, while lying in a PET scanner, they were told they’d been rejected by their potential online dates.

The scans showed that in response to the rejection, the brain sent out painkillers in the form of opioids into the spaces between neurons. This dampens down the pain signals.

In fact participants knew in advance that the online dating profiles were not real, and neither was the rejection. Nevertheless, the simulated situation was still enough to set off the release of painkillers.

Participants who were highly resilient were the most likely to produce high levels of the natural painkiller.

At the other end of the scale, those with low painkiller production may be particularly vulnerable to rejection. One of the authors, Professor Jon-Kar Zubieta explained:

“It is possible that those with depression or social anxiety are less capable of releasing opioids during times of social distress, and therefore do not recover as quickly or fully from a negative social experience.”

This is further evidence that social pain is not as different from physical pain as many thought. More and more research is pointing to an overlap in the brain’s response to both.

Image credit: josemanuelerre

The ‘Beer Goggles’ Effect: What Causes It?

Does alcohol really make others look more attractive to us and, if so, why?

I’m usually slightly nervous reporting the Ig Nobel awards, the annual spoof of the Nobel prizes.

The Ig Nobels are designed to highlight the kind of research that makes people ask: “Don’t these so-called scientists have better things to spend their time on?”

This year’s psychology prize has gone to Brad Bushman, of Ohio State University, and others, who experimentally confirmed a sort of reverse beer goggles effect: that we feel we are more attractive after a few drinks (Begue et al., 2012).

My hesitancy is not just that the research seems trivial–that’s the point of the awards–but also that it reinforces the idea that psychology is just common sense.

But, take a closer look at the study, and you’ll see that it’s not all common sense.

One of the findings is that, even people who were tricked into thinking they’d had a drink when they hadn’t, also judged themselves as more attractive.

So this is demonstrating the expectancy effect: that sometimes drugs have the effect we expect, even when there’s little or no active drug present (compare with: 80% of Prozac Power is Placebo).

Beer goggles

Look a little further and you’ll find more instances of apparently ‘common sense’ studies revealing unexpected or fascinating results.

What about the closely related ‘beer goggles’ effect? This is more than just that drunk people take more sexual risks; it’s that after a few drinks we actually rate other people as more attractive.

That one is pretty obvious isn’t it?

Indeed, some studies do suggest we find others more attractive after a few beers (Jones et al., 2003).

But then, in 2012 many media outlets reported that the ‘beer goggles’ effect had been debunked.

The study, conducted by Vincent Egan at the University of Leicester, did indeed get the opposite finding (Egan & Cordan, 2011). On average, across all the participants, people who’d been drinking found members of the opposite sex less attractive. Beer seemed to be making people appear uglier.

But the devil, as you so often find, is in the details.

In fact, the study divided people by age. And, for mature faces (in this study it meant 20-year-olds, so not that mature), the beer goggles effect held. It was only when looking at pictures of 10-year-olds that alcohol intake reduced attractiveness ratings.

The study, you see, was much more concerned about under-aged sex and whether alcohol might reduce men’s ability to judge the age of a female.

Incidentally, the study found that even large amounts of alcohol consumption did not affect men’s perception of age. So, it’s no excuse.

Facial symmetry

While the beer goggles effect probably still stands, despite reports of its demise, what we’re less sure of is how it works.

It certainly makes us less inhibited, and more likely to take risks; but what about this increase in others’ attractivity?

A clue comes from the study of facial symmetry. People are remarkably good at detecting quite small variations in the placement of facial features–it’s a talent we need to tell each other apart.

Facial symmetry is also important because many, many studies have found that it underlies what people consider attractive. More symmetry, it turns out, is often more beautiful, perhaps because it signals better genes.

And, now, a series of studies on alcohol and facial symmetry have found that the beer goggles effect may come about, at least partly, because alcohol inhibits our ability to detect facial symmetry (Halsey et al., 2012).

One study has even shown that women who drink a lot may damage their ability to detect facial symmetry in the long-term (Oinonen & Sterniczuk, 2012). In other words: they’re wearing permanent beer goggles.

First laugh, then think

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why psychology, and science in general, is so interesting. You start with an intuitive theory, which you confirm. So far, so common sense.

But, along the way, you demonstrate things that are not common sense (the placebo effect), and are hardly trivial (that alcohol doesn’t affect age perceptions and that it can be neurotoxic), and you delve into the deeper recesses of cognitive psychology (alcohol harms the perception of facial symmetry).

The promise of the Ig Nobel awards is certainly delivered: it’s research that, “first makes people laugh, and then makes them think“.

Image credit: G Morel

The Incredible Dating Power of a Guitar Case

Would you give this man your telephone number? (Don’t let the guitar case influence you.)

In France there’s a psychologist, Professor Nicolas Gueguen, who roams the North-West, asking young women for their telephone numbers—or at least his research assistants and experimental confederates do.

This isn’t just to boost the national stereotype, but all in the name of science.

The results they’ve reported over the years confirm some things we think we already know and a few new insights. His experiments often involve approaching random strangers (usually women) in the street and asking them for something (usually their phone number). So far he’s found that:

Men getting out of expensive versus cheap cars are more likely to get the numbers of passing women.
A fire-fighter’s uniform makes women more likely to divulge the digits.
A touch on the forearm makes a man more likely to get a woman’s number (it also works on men, see 10 Psychological Effects of Nonsexual Touch).
And, on a slightly different tack, why loud music in bars increases alcohol consumption.

Now, in his latest experiment, he’s been testing the pulling power of musicians. How much extra sheen does it give a man if he’s carrying a guitar case when he asks a woman for her number?

Naturally women are pretty cagey when approached by random strangers in the street, so Gueguen et al. (2013) chose a young man who had been highly rated by a panel of women.

He was told to stand in a local shopping centre and approach women of between 18 and 22, without regard to their appearance, and say to them:

“Hello. My name’s Antoine. I just want to say that I think you’re really pretty. I have to go to work this afternoon, and I was wondering if you would give me your phone number. I’ll phone you later and we can have a drink together someplace.”

Then he smiled and gazed into their eyes. The poor chap had to do this in three different conditions while holding either:

a guitar case,
a sports bag or,
no bag at all.

What happened was that when he wasn’t holding anything he got a number 14% of the time. The sports bag, though, put women off and dropped his average to just 9%.

It was the guitar case that did the trick, bumping up his chances to 31%. Not bad at all considering he was approaching random strangers in the street.

So the mystical, romantic image of the musician had a pretty powerful effect. Well, it will until she discovers the guitar case only has a sports bag inside.

(No mention is made of what the young man did with all the telephone numbers, but I’m sure they were dealt with ethically.)

Image credit: Kris Kesiak

Stereotypes: Why We Act Without Thinking

Three classic experiments show how stereotypes can influence our behaviour without our knowledge.

Despite their bad name, stereotypes can be handy short cuts that give us useful information about the world and other people. For example the stereotype of psychologists is that they are going to analyse you, then start meddling. There’s certainly some truth to that, after all that is their job.

When stereotypes are dangerous is when we automatically draw conclusions about individuals that aren’t accurate and may even be insulting to them. So the question is: when a particular stereotype is activated — say we see an old person, a French person or a psychologist — can we avoid thinking, respectively, ‘slow’, ‘rude’ and ‘nosy’?

Until the classic social psychology study I’m about to tell you about, it was thought that we didn’t automatically act on stereotypes, that we were able to consciously discard them. But, asked Yale Professor John Bargh and colleagues, how can we consciously discard a stereotype if we’re not even conscious that it has been activated? And will this unconscious stereotype have any effect on our behaviour?

To find out Bargh et al. (1996) conducted three experiments, starting with an attempt to make some people ruder and others more polite, using a very simple cue.

Polite or rude?

In the first experiment 34 participants were divided into 3 groups with each group unconsciously cued into a different state: one ‘rude’, one ‘polite’ and one neither. This had to be done in a roundabout way so that the participants didn’t suspect they were being manipulated. What the experimenters did was give them a word puzzle to unscramble. To activate the idea of rudeness in one group it contained words like ‘bother’, ‘disturb’ and ‘bold’. To activate the idea of politeness the next group unscrambled words like ‘courteous’, ‘patiently’ and ‘behaved’. The third group unscrambled neutral words.

After finishing the unscrambling participants left the room to track down the experimenter but found them deep in conversation with someone, forcing them to wait. The question the researchers wanted to answer was what percentage of people would interrupt if the experimenter kept ignoring them by talking to the other person for 10 minutes.

In the group cued with polite words, just 18% of participants interrupted with the rest waiting for the full 10 minutes while the experimenter continued their conversation. On the other hand, in the group cued with impolite words, fully 64% interrupted the experimenter. The neutral condition fell between the two with 36% interrupting.

This is quite a dramatic effect because participants were unaware of the manipulation yet they faithfully followed the unconscious cues given to them by the experimenters. One group became bold and forthright simply be reading 15 words that activated the concept of impoliteness in their minds, while the other group became meek and patient by reading words about restraint and conformity.

Old and slow?

In the second experiment the researchers turned their attention to the stereotype of age. They used the same trick as before of splitting 30 participants into two groups and cueing stereotypes in their minds by getting them to unscramble words. One group unscrambled words associated with being old like ‘Florida’, ‘helpless’ and ‘wrinkled’ while another group unscrambled words unrelated to age.

This time the experimenters wanted to see how fast participants would walk down a 9.75m corridor after they had completed the task. Would cueing people with words about age actually make them walk slower? Yes, indeed it would; participants primed with old age took, on average, a full extra second to cover the short distance to the elevator. That was some pretty slow walking!

African American and aggressive?

In both the previous experiment the researchers checked with participants whether they had noticed any connection between the words they were unscrambling and what was going on. Although only one did, the experimenters then changed their method in a third experiment to make the cueing of participants completely subliminal (below the level of conscious awareness). In the previous experiments participants had been mostly unaware of the connection between cueing and what was being measured but in this experiment they wouldn’t even be aware of the cue.

This time 41 participants were given a very boring computer-based task to do. While doing it a picture of either a young Caucasian male or a young African American male was periodically flashed up on the screen so quickly that it was impossible to consciously apprehend (for about one-fiftieth of a second). They did this because previous research had shown that people generally stereotype African Americans as being more aggressive than Caucasians. After they had finished, the experimenter told the participants (none of whom were African American) that the computer had failed to save their data and they’d have to do the task again.

What the experimenters were interested in was the participant’s reaction (which they recorded) to the possibility of doing the whole boring study over again. Directly after their facial reaction, the experimenters told participants it was OK, the computer had saved their data and they didn’t actually need to do the study again; they had what they needed: that crucial first flicker of emotion to a frustrating event.

So, did the subliminal primes of either Caucasian or African American faces have the expected effect? Participants primed with the Caucasian face were rated by independent observers as showing hostility of just over 2 on a scale of 1 to 10. Participants shown the African American faces were rated as showing hostility of almost 3 out of 10. This suggested the African American faces had activated the stereotype and made people react more aggressively to the frustrating situation. As a side-note, the experimenters also measured the racist attitudes of the participants and found that even participants who were low in racism were still likely to behave in a more hostile manner if cued with the African American face.

Buy Pepsi Cola!

The authors of the paper draw the parallels between their own work and the supposed power of subliminal advertising. As you may know subliminal advertising generally doesn’t work in the way advertisers would hope by causing a stampede for their products. But in these experiments the researchers do seem to be subliminally influencing people to act in pre-defined ways, so how can these opposing findings be resolved?

In fact there’s a subtle difference because in each of the situations in these experiments the response that was primed was absolutely appropriate in each of the situations. Getting angry when your time has been wasted is perfectly normal. It was just the scale of the reaction that was affected by the experimental manipulation. Advertising, however, can prime certain ideas in our minds and associate them with products but the leap to parting us with our cash is much bigger than that in the current experiment, and so more difficult to achieve.

What this study demonstrates very neatly is just how sensitive we are to the minutiae of social interactions. Subtle cues from the way other people behave and more generally from the environment can cue automatic unconscious changes in our behaviour. And by the same token signals we send out to others can automatically activate stereotypes in their minds which are then acted out. As much as we might prefer otherwise, sometimes stereotypes can easily influence our behaviour and our conscious mind seems to have no say.