The “science of self-delusion”

 

Update: My original post omitted the link to Mother Jones’ article. Sorry for any confusion. –MGS

Mother Jones Magazine reports:

An array of new discoveries in psychology and neuroscience has further demonstrated how our preexisting beliefs, far more than any new facts, can skew our thoughts and even color what we consider our most dispassionate and logical conclusions. This tendency toward so-called “motivated reasoning” helps explain why we find groups so polarized over matters where the evidence is so unequivocal: climate change, vaccines, “death panels,” the birthplace and religion of the president, and much else. It would seem that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts.

The theory of motivated reasoning builds on a key insight of modern neuroscience: Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call “affect”). Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter of milliseconds—fast enough to detect with an EEG device, but long before we’re aware of it. That shouldn’t be surprising: Evolution required us to react very quickly to stimuli in our environment. It’s a “basic human survival skill,” explains political scientist Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan. We push threatening information away; we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself.

Teenagers in a group are more prone to risk-taking

The New York Times reports:

In studies at Temple University, psychologists used functional magnetic resonance imaging scans on 40 teenagers and adults to determine if there are differences in brain activity when adolescents are alone versus with their friends. The findings suggest that teenage peer pressure has a distinct effect on brain signals involving risk and reward, helping to explain why young people are more likely to misbehave and take risks when their friends are watching.

The human inclination to gossip might have evolutionary benefits, new study suggests

Many psychologists argue that psychological traits found in modern human beings exist not merely by happenstance but because our distant ancestors who possessed a given trait were better adapted to their environment and thus survived (at least long enough to propagate their genes) while humans possessing other, less well-adapted traits died out.

USA Today reports on a new study in this vein:

Gossip, whether “delicious or destructive,” serves a function, according to the study [by Anderson et. al.], to be published online May 19 by the journal Science. In lieu of direct experience, social tittle-tattle allows people to learn about others across a very wide group, the team say. That, in turn, gives people cues on who to befriend (or not) without having to actually have to spend lots of time with them first.

The Anderson et. al. article is available online here (subscription required).

The psychology of zombies

My friends and family are endlessly amused by the fact that I’m a fan of zombie fiction, both on the movie (or television) screen and in print. Although I admit to enjoying the adrenaline rush that comes from being scared-but-ultimately-safe (just as, for example, roller coaster aficionados seek out ever-more intense thrill rides), my training as a psychologist and cognitive scientist also come into play. Zombies represent a kind of twilight state between life and death that gives us insights into our deepest fears and the coping mechanisms we develop to manage those fears.

(In my defense, even the Centers for Disease Control see zombies as a useful way to encourage emergency preparedness.)

Happily, I’m not the only university researcher with a professional interest in zombies. Harvard professor Steven C. Schlozman is a child and adolescent psychiatrist by training but he also has an interest in zombies. Not only has Dr. Schlozman published a well-received work of fiction about zombies, he has also developed what he terms a “theoretical neurobiology and psychology” of zombies.

See here for a short article describing Schlozman’s zombie neurobiology, and see here for a video (with downloadable podcast) of Schlozman discussing zombies at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, MA, as part of a lecture series co-sponsored by the Boston Museum of Science and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

For those who are less neuro-scientifically inclined, Schlozman discusses zombies as a manifestation of apocalyptic thinking in this article from Psychology Today.

The psychology of hypocrisy

NPR reports on a new book, Out of Character, by psychologists David DeSteno and Piercarlo Valdesolo, which examines research into human hypocrisy:

DeSteno cites one experiment in which subjects where told to flip a coin in order to choose between a simple, fun task and a boring, hour-long task. They were also told that the next participant would have to do the task that wasn’t chosen, and then they were left alone to their own devices.

“These were experiments centered on hypocrisy,” DeSteno says. “If you do this, what people will typically do when we leave them alone is 90 percent of them will not flip the coin.”

That is, they’d cheat the system and pick the preferred task for themselves. Later, when asked if they had acted fairly, the subjects responded that they had.

Then, those same subjects were asked to watch another participant — really, a fake participant planted by the researchers — do the same thing. They observed that person skip the coin toss and choose the easy task, just as they had done. Only this time, they were quick to condemn the planted participant.

TIME Magazine on the nature of masculinity

TIME Magazine reports:

Manhood is a social status, something a guy earned historically, through brutal tests of physical endurance or other risky demonstrations of toughness that mark the transition from boyhood to manhood. But while that masculinity is hard-won, it can be easily lost.

Once earned, men have to continue proving their worth through manly action. In modern society, that may no longer mean, say, killing the meatiest wooly mammoth, but there are equivalent displays of masculinity: earning a decent living or protecting one’s family. One misstep — losing a job, for instance, or letting someone down — and that gender identity slips away.

The phenomenon helps explain why men are so touchy about their masculinity. Women don’t have the same problem, of course. Womanhood is largely seen as something innate, immutable: girls become women through puberty; once achieved, womanhood sticks.

In a series of studies, psychologists Jennifer K. Bosson and Joseph A. Vandello at the University of South Florida decided to probe this idea further. Specifically, they wanted to know, do modern men still use physical action and aggression to prove their manhood?

The Bosson & Vandello article cited by TIME is available here (PDF-subscription required).

The psychology of belief and perception

Writing for Wired.com, Jonah Lehrer reviews research on belief and perception:

It turns out that the human mind is a marvelous information filter, adept at blocking out those facts that contradict what we’d like to believe. Just look at this experiment, which was done in the late 1960’s, by the cognitive psychologists Timothy Brock and Joe Balloun. They played a group of people a tape-recorded message attacking Christianity. Half of the subjects were regular churchgoers while the other half were committed atheists. To make the experiment more interesting, Brock and Balloun added an annoying amount of static – a crackle of white noise – to the recording. However, they allowed listeners to reduce the static by pressing a button, so that the message suddenly became easier to understand. Their results were utterly predicable and rather depressing: the non-believers always tried to remove the static, while the religious subjects actually preferred the message that was harder to hear.

Researchers confirm existence of genes linked to depression

The Financial Times reports:

Scientists have for the first time confirmed a specific genetic link to depression, according to new evidence published in the American Journal of Psychiatry on Monday.

The discovery, made independently by research teams in the UK and US, is expected to lead to a better biological understanding of the condition and eventually to more effective antidepressants.

Multitasking, redux: New research finds ‘mindset switching’ impacts self-regulation

I’ve posted in the past on multitasking (see this update, for example). Generally, researchers have found that without special training (such as that received by airplane pilots or other specialists), true multitasking is difficult, and even if we believe we are successfully multitasking, the impact on our decision-making processes can be greater than we consciously understand.

In this new article by Hamilton et. al., published in the May 2011 issue of the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, the researchers examined not multitasking but rather mindset switching. A mindset is a mental state that is intended to achieve a certain goal. Thus, a mindset is a kind of forerunner of multitasking. Interestingly, just as multitasking drains our cognitive capacity, mindset switching appears to impact our capacity to self-regulate – that is, to alter our typical or ‘normal’ actions.

Hamilton et. al. write:

Our findings suggest that the benefits of switching mindsets to accommodate changing situational demands should be weighed against the drawbacks of mindset switching. The results from five experiments demonstrated that switching mindsets taxes limited self-regulatory resources… Repeatedly switching mindsets can impair executive functioning and cause self-regulatory failures on subsequent tasks.

New research on the debate over nature, nurture, and parenting

The New  York Times reports:

Research has found that lifestyle differences — discipline, consistent mealtimes, reading and television watching — account for some differences between lower- and middle-income children in their readiness for school. But does a wealthier parent who forces a child to practice piano 20 hours a week make a huge difference to her overall well-being? “We don’t really know,” said Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, a professor of child development at Columbia. Paradoxically, the kind of parents who follow debates about parenting — typically more affluent and educated — are those who may have the least to worry about. But there is a group for whom the debate is really important: low-income parents. Differences in parenting can matter a lot to poor, underprivileged children, and research shows that better parenting could help improve their opportunities in many ways…

“In one sense you can say parenting doesn’t matter very much if you’re looking at a bunch of upper-middle-class parents who are all basically good parents,” said Janet Currie, an economist at Columbia University. “Then variations don’t matter. But if you’re looking at people who are in difficult situations and aren’t able to be good parents, then improvements in parenting would make a huge difference. That’s part of the problem with the discussion.”

Paradoxically, the kind of parents who follow debates about parenting — typically more affluent and educated — are those who may have the least to worry about. But there is a group for whom the debate is really important: low-income parents. Differences in parenting can matter a lot to poor, underprivileged children, and research shows that better parenting could help improve their opportunities in many ways.